by Eve Langlais
“I told you, the phae don’t want another war.”
“Another… So who sent that spy thing?”
He hesitated. “The imps belonged to the one who held the Steel Throne before the king.”
“And where is that guy now?”
“She. The Undone Queen was freed from her unbreakable prison cell and she vanished. Some very dangerous phae escaped with her.”
Avery snorted. “The Undone Queen? Well, she sounds like the sort to let bygones be bygones.”
That hint of a dimple appeared in his cheek again before fading. “She was a monster, but for centuries she ruled over worse monsters and kept peace, though at a terrible price. The sunlit realm avoided the interference of the phae–except for rare incursions–because she kept them locked away.”
With a shiver, Avery wrapped her arms around herself. “And yet you’re asking me to pave the way for their return.”
“They don’t have a choice anymore. And neither do you.”
Before she could argue–and she was definitely going to argue–the double doors across the room creaked open.
“Everything’s good in here,” Avery called and then, as three heads peered in, added, “No thanks to you all.”
Tira Dyer strode in, flanked by two large men with “security” conveniently labeled in big letters across their even bigger chests. No glimpse of teeth, but somehow Avery knew they were all ravpyrii; maybe it was the smooth, quick way they moved or the honed edges of their features.
The trio ranged on the far side of the imp from Hugo and Avery. One of the males looked at the dissolving corpse and swallowed hard before bringing his eyes front and center. So, not all ravpyrii were bad asses.
Dyer never even glanced down. “We swept the casino and found no other trespassers.” Her gray eyes were chill. “Other than you two, of course.”
“Who just saved your Christmas Eve Eve,” Avery reminded her. “You’re welcome.”
“I have to wonder what tomorrow night will bring,” Hugo mused. They all twisted to stare at him, and he shrugged. “The casino will be at peak capacity, and I’m sure the festivities will be broadcast everywhere. What better time to attack for maximum exposure?”
Dyer shook her head, her expression stricken. “But we stopped it.”
“We destroyed one imp,” Hugo corrected. “The deposed queen of the phae has more where that came from and worse besides.”
Dyer paced away, as if rejecting his words. “This was supposed to be our sanctuary.” She whirled to face him. “We have no quarrel with the phae or the werelings. Why would this queen come after us?”
“For the same reason we came to you. Because Barrows’ sanctuary is now a beacon for the preternatural.”
Since the ravpyrii woman looked like she was wavering, Avery pushed. “We need to talk to Barrows. Especially if there’s more to come.”
Dyer shook her head. “You can’t.” When Avery took a sharp breath, she held up one hand. “Because he’s not here yet. But he’s due in tomorrow. He made this place for us to be a feast of every sentiment and of course he’s coming to partake.”
Avery wondered how many people he needed to feed on, and how many ravpyrii were secreted among the staff.
She’d lost her childish joy in Christmas to a long–ago circle of holly as her mother stepped into nothingness. Was this Christmas Eve destined to end not in a ring of red berries but in blood?
Chapter Eight
Hugo wasn’t touching Avery, but he felt her waver beside him, the unquenchable strength she’d shown until now draining away. Knowing she wouldn’t appreciate being undermined before their adversaries, he didn’t reach for her though every nerve in his body screamed for him to pull her into his arms, away from the keen eyes of the other ravpyrii.
And if he was being honest, he was shocked to discover a tribe of those like him, who had apparently found equilibrium with their unnatural existence. The only ravpyrii he’d known had fallen into the phaedrealii as he had, inadvertently drawn by their curse to forgotten phae portals.
As if the sunlit realm itself sought to push them out.
But here in this desert wasteland of artificial lights and contrivance, they had made a place for themselves.
He gave Dyer a brusque nod. “Very well. We will meet with Barrows when he arrives. In the meantime, I want to see your plans for tomorrow’s events. I have some experience with battle lines. Perhaps I’ll see a weakness the queen intends to exploit.” The security guards glanced at Dyer uncertainly, but she gave a nod of her own, even more curt than his. “And we’ll need a room where we can wait.”
“Make it a suite,” Avery interrupted.
Dyer glowered but flicked one finger at the ravpyr beside her. He turned away, tapping something into his phone. “I’ll inform Mr. Barrows what happened here tonight,” Dyer said, her tone low and rumbling. “If he questions anything you’ve told me–”
“I’m sure he’ll have questions,” Avery said before the other woman could complete the threat. “God knows I do. We’ll swap answers.”
The security guard angled his phone to Dyer, who clenched her jaw then said, “The Lotus Suite is open. Take the private elevator in the registration lobby to the penthouse level. The code for the elevator and the suite is ‘scarlet’. I’ll forward tomorrow’s schedule and schematics to the room and contact you when Mr. Barrows is available.”
Hugo nodded and turned, finally reaching out to put his hand at the small of Avery’s back. Beneath the touch, light as it was, he sensed the straightness of her spine and for some reason it steadied him.
Confused and exhausted though she might be, she would not break.
“Mr. de Grava.” Dyer’s voice, softer than it had been, stopped him in his tracks. When he glanced back, she said, “Hugo. No matter the reason you are here, Mr. Barrows would make a place for you if you swear yourself to him. Many of us have come from… difficult circumstances, but he understands. Whatever the phae and the werelings have promised you, ComeTrue can give you, plus the companionship of your own kind.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “They promised to lift this curse from me.”
When he looked again, the other ravpyrii watched him with shuttered gazes. “It can’t be lifted,” Dyer said. “Not ever. You know that.”
He didn’t answer, merely steered Avery around the smoldering imp that was now little more than a pile of stinking ash. The bells glimmered through the destruction, as if the gore had purified them.
In silence, the two of them made their way in reverse through the casino, back up the stairs to the main level, past the shops and eateries, through the crowded hallways of oblivious gamblers. As if the night was rolling backward.
But for once, he wasn’t wishing he could return to his old life. If he hadn’t come here, he wouldn’t have kissed Avery, would never have tasted her desire.
Without her boots, she was smaller beside him, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder. He wanted to wrap her in his arms, hide her from the world. Whether the impulse was more protective or possessive he wasn’t sure, though he suspected she would reject both out of hand.
At the elevator, a human security guard gave them a look but didn’t speak as Avery punched in the code Dyer had given them. They ascended, still in silence, and when the elevator opened, they made their way down the hall to a set of double doors carved with a lotus blossom.
Avery entered the code again, and the doors swung open.
They stepped into the doorway together.
Finally, Avery let out an audible breath along with a very soft curse. They crossed the threshold and closed the doors. She abruptly sank to the floor, her back against the lotus, her stockinged legs straight out in front of her.
Hugo spun in alarm, but she waved him back.
“I just… I just need a second, okay? Go raid the mini bar and I’ll be right there.”
He wasn’t quite sure what a mini bar was, but he knew when he’d been dismissed.
&n
bsp; A quick circuit through the rooms showed him the large sitting area and the equally spacious bedroom plus a bath nearly as big. He shied away from the intimate spaces and returned to the main room where Avery was standing with a crystal decanter in her hand.
“No mini bar, which sucks,” she said. “Just the top–shelf stuff that’s going to knock me on my ass. So I shouldn’t do this, but…” She took a long swig from the decanter. Lights beaming through the floor–to–ceiling windows shimmered through the cut crystal, and tiny prisms danced across her neck. The undulation of her throat as she swallowed rippled the gold chain and made his pulse throb, slow and heavy.
With a liquor–spiced gasp, she lowered the decanter and thrust it toward him. “Want some?”
Oh, he wanted.
He took the decanter gently from her hand and placed his lips where hers had been. Even over the burn of the alcohol, he tasted her delicate flavor. The burn that went through him had nothing to do with the scotch.
She was following his path through the room, though her steps were more meandering than his had been. She disappeared into the bedroom, and he closed his eyes, imagining her running her hand over the silken surface of the big, round bed, the luxurious array of jewel–toned pillows strewn like lotus blossoms across a quiet pond. Her pale skin would gleam against the bright sheets…
He swallowed back a curse as the decanter slipped from his slack fingers, and his eyes popped open. But it was just Avery at his side, tugging the scotch from his grasp.
She took another drink then slapped the decanter back in his hand. “Don’t let me drink it all. Even if I beg.”
He wanted her to beg while he drank her down.
She wandered to the L–shaped couch arranged in front of a wide, blank screen. Still standing, she fetched a keyboard from the low table in front of the couch. She tapped something and the screen whispered to life. “No messages,” she reported. “Dyer hasn’t sent anything yet. I should probably check to make sure she didn’t lock us in here.”
Despite her gloomy words, she didn’t go to the door. She just threw the keyboard down on the couch and stared at him, her arms hanging limp at her side, her green eyes huge and shadowed.
With another curse, he strode toward her.
He set the decanter on the table and wrapped his fingers around her upper arms. She hung loose in his grasp though her stare never wavered.
“I’m guessing now you are frightened,” he said.
“I just need to finish the rest of that bottle.”
“Definitely not.” He turned her carefully by the shoulders. “You need a different sort of liquid refreshment.” He walked her toward the bathroom. “Did you know that until I came here, I had never experienced indoor plumbing?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Seven hundred years without a shower? Damn.”
“Sucks,” he agreed.
He was rewarded with her crooked smile. “You learn quick. Like a little kid, learning all the bad words first.” Her smile faded. “Why do the bad parts stick with us?”
As much as he wanted to contradict her, he was still suffering from his wounds seven hundred years later.
In the bathroom, he studied the shower controls for a moment. The room that Raze and Yelena had procured for him had been fine, but its bath hadn’t featured so many nozzles. With a mental shrug, he turned them all on, and the room began to fill with steam.
He didn’t bother turning on the lights. The bathroom had no windows of its own, but the wall it shared with the bedroom was all wavery glass blocks, so the multi–colored casino lights from the street outside reached them in subdued streamers.
With slow hands, he unfastened the buttons of her blouse, starting at the bottom, giving her time to object. But she only bent her head, her hair falling around her face in dark strands.
Then her hands closed on his. “Did it get you?”
He glanced down where she was fingering the slashes in his sleeve. “Despite having only three legs, imps are notoriously fast.” When she peeled back the fabric to expose the matching gashes in his arm, he winced. The wounds seeped a translucent ichor, barely tinged to pink with the blood he’d taken from her earlier.
“Hugo! Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”
“Imps aren’t venomous, and my kind don’t sicken. Besides, the leather took most of the damage.” Yelena had given him the long leather coat with a snicker, saying it was de rigueur for a vampire.
“But it must hurt,” Avery prodded.
Again, he couldn’t deny her statement so he said nothing.
She began unbuttoning his black shirt. “C’mon, we’re both going to wash this day right out of our hair.”
He wanted to dally over the unveiling, but his hands shook with such need that the fleeting moments seemed to come to him in soft focus: her blouse falling open to reveal the lacey brassiere, wine–dark against her white skin; the curve of her belly and then her thighs as she unzipped her skirt; the strong flex of her calves as he knelt to push down her wooly stockings.
On his knees, his hands loosely manacled around her slender ankles, he pressed a kiss to the triangle of silky material covering her mound. The scent of her desire, still lingering faintly from their encounter earlier, flushed anew as she placed her hand on his crown.
“Hugh…” Her hands slipped over his hair and down the sides of his neck, until she gripped his shoulders, urging him up. She pushed his shirt back, making a muted sound of distress when she saw where the imp’s stabbing leg had gotten past his improvised leather gauntlet. Three ragged holes slashed across his bicep to pierce his chest above his heart. “Oh God,” she whispered. “If you’d been human…”
“But I am not.” He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to remind her; rather than reassurance, he heard stark warning in his voice.
“I should kill that thing again,” she said with a snarling curl of her lip.
For some reason, he wanted to laugh, not at her audacity but because she knew what he was…
And was still not afraid. She was even protective of him, the monster who would not die.
Her hands lingered at the fastening of his trousers, and the wonder inside him morphed like one of the more dangerous phae into something deeper and darker.
She glanced up at him through her lashes, her green eyes flashing mysterious in the watery light. “May I?”
“Please,” he rasped.
She unzipped him and he groaned as his erection surged free.
She peered up at him again, eyes crinkling in amusement this time. “I should’ve known a seven–hundred–year–old guy would go commando.”
He couldn’t respond, paralyzed by her warm exhalation feathering over his thick flesh while she peeled the black denim down his hips.
She pursed her lips and he groaned again as his imagination wrapped those lips most intimately around him. She eyed him uncertainly. “Are you hurt down here?”
“The ache is nigh unto killing me.”
Her eyes crinkled again. “Oh, I get it. Into the water with you then.”
He kicked off his boots and socks with alacrity and followed her into the shower, hissing as the hot spray from multiple angles stung in his wounds.
She smoothed her hands over his chest. “Tough guy.” She reached past him to trigger a dispenser on the wall that squirted a pale green gel. He shuddered at the reminder of the imp’s gore, but the minty pine fragrance reassured him. “Eucalyptus,” she said.
“Smells good.”
“And antibacterial, although you say you aren’t at risk of infection.” She spread the gel over his shoulders and white foam fizzed up beneath her hands. She kept her gaze fixed on her efforts as if it was the most important thing she could do. “Ravpyr,” she murmured, the stroke of her fingers slowing, flaring wide over his skin. “You actually exist. I really shouldn’t be too surprised, I guess. So many human cultures have some version of vampires.”
He tipped his head forward to let
the water sluice down over his chest, burning in the holes above his heart. “Millennia ago, phae and werelings and other creatures walked the sunlit realm freely. They were part of your ancient history and never left your stories.” He put one hand on her hip to draw her closer. “Now your stories will make humans aware of us again.”
She spread more soap in a circle over his pierced breast. “Right. Anyway, in most of our old stories, vampires are… not technically alive.”
At the disquiet in her tone, his fingers tightened on the curve of her hip. As if she might run from him now. He set his other hand over hers, flattening her palms above his heart. “Do you feel that?”
Her brows furrowed. “Your pulse.”
“I breathe. My heart beats. I bleed, though it’s crystal clear if not tinted with borrowed juices.” Despite the endless hot water, a chill ran through him. “The curse has made me faster and stronger, more instinctively aware. I suppose ravpyrii exist somewhere between the magic of the phae and the animalism of the werelings. Hence the sharpened teeth.” He exhaled slowly. “And yes, ravpyrii means ‘unburning’ because we are never extinguished. Our human kin didn’t revile us for being dead. They hated us for never dying.”
Her hand tightened into a fist under his hand, but he wasn’t sure if she was rejecting him or reacting to the memory of pain he couldn’t keep out of his voice.
Finally, she said, “Well, I’m happy you didn’t die tonight.”
“As am I.” And to his surprise, it was true.
She pushed herself up to her toes and slid up his soap–slicked chest to kiss him. Her mouth slanted across his, urging his lips to part. At the bite of scotch on her tongue, he closed his eyes, reveling in the sensation. Breath, pulse, blood, they all quickened with his rising hunger.
She let out a moan when his cock prodded her. Reaching down between their bodies, she took his engorged flesh in her hand and gave him a stroke. His hips bucked against hers, and he gasped, inhaling water and the perfume of her own spiked craving.
It had been so long…
But really, he had bitten her mere hours ago. Yet he needed her again. And again.