by Eve Langlais
So he found Dyer, who had already gotten the update from Barrows, and was speaking to her ravpyrii cohorts in a closed basement room almost as bleak as Barrows’ unfinished penthouse. For all Barrows’ talk of luxury and privacy, their vaunted sanctuary still at times smacked more of a fortress. The ravpyra jerked her chin at him by way of acknowledgment, and he sensed the flick of furtive glances on him as he stood against the wall with his arms crossed.
Dyer distributed devices halfway between the cell phone Yelena had given him and the computer keyboard Avery had used in their suite. The ravpyra handed one to him. With a touch of asperity, she murmured, “Know how to use this?”
He hoped Avery hadn’t been indulging him when she’d said he was a quick study. “I’ll figure it out.”
Dyer turned to the group. “On the tablets are your assignments…”
With a circumspect side eye at his nearest companions, Hugo poked at the screen. He managed not to curse, loudly and in French, when the screen exploded in riotous color. It was everything he had studied the night previous–the layout of the casino and its grounds, the route for the parade through the streets outside, the schedule for security personnel–in the palm of his hand. He wondered what the ancient phae would make of this new magic.
“…so we don’t know how or even if the attack will come,” Dyer was saying, “but if it does, this is our home, and we will defend it. To the death.”
A crackling surge of energy zinged around the room–at least they had all fed recently and well, and they were strong in their resolve–but no one cheered, for which Hugo was grateful. He knew too well that righteous fury was no guarantee of victory.
As the ravpyrii filed out, a few gave him tentative nods. Apparently Dyer had been sincere about him finding a place in their sanctuary, if he so desired. The proffered camaraderie soothed a raw spot inside him that he’d never noticed before. The inevitable loss would be another point of pain, although not so bad as walking away from the seething human woman in their suite somewhere high above him.
But he too had to hold tight to his purpose if he wanted his freedom.
He pivoted on his heel to follow the others, and Dyer paced him. When he tried to hand her the tablet, she shook her head. “Keep it. Mr. Barrows appreciated your suggestions on reinforcing positions on the street. If the phae bitch comes that way, we’ll be ready.”
“The queen might be Undone and vulnerable, but she is still royalty and by her temperament incapable of not making an entrance.”
Dyer scowled. “I told Deon we should get out, start again elsewhere, leave you to die for this phae spectacle since that’s what you want so badly.”
“I can tell you are young,” he said gently. “The world still smells of spring to you. Barrows sees winter and knows even ravpyrii won’t last forever.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I do.”
She snarled in the back of her throat. “I curse the powers that brought you here.”
“Get in line.”
She opened her mouth to fire back, but his phone rang and he peeled away to answer it while she stalked off with one last hostile sniff.
“Beck?” Hugo said.
“Friend of,” answered an unfamiliar, gravelly voice. “And closer to you than his pack. He said it’s going to be a hot night in Sin City and you could use some help putting out fires. Or setting them, depending.”
Hugo spoke to the man at length, only disconnecting when the phone beeped a new call. “I’ll send you what we have,” he promised before switching over.
“Hugo,” Yelena said, relief in her voice. “We just heard from Beck. Are you all right?”
“For the moment,” he replied. “At least we now have a fairly good idea where the queen went after she escaped her prison.”
“Fabulous,” the tigress wereling drawled. “As if we didn’t have enough problems.”
“Your wolf friend said you’re dealing with troubles in the phaedrealii,” Hugo said.
“Remind me why a good little kitty like me fell for a big bad phae.” Even through the black magic of long–distance wireless communications, amusement and affection vibrated in her tone. Love for the Ruiner King.
Hugo shook his head, glad the wereling couldn’t see his bafflement. “I’m sure he’ll understand if you feel the need to cry off.”
Despite whatever was happening in the court, she laughed. “Raze is not getting away that easy.”
Whatever was going on in the phaedrealii must be bad and the king was probably facing untoward peril, but for a slow beat of his no–longer–human heart, Hugo wished he could be the king–not for riches or power, but to have a lover say his name with such velvety possessiveness.
Though he wasn’t picturing the tigress’s powerful golden glory, but a darker crimson beauty.
He made Yelena the same promise he’d made to Beck’s contact and disconnected. He paused, knowing he needed the work he’d done on the computer back in the suite.
Well, if he was going to save the world from the Undone Queen, he’d just have to brave Avery Hill’s accusing glower.
***
When the Lotus Suite doors swung silently open, Avery concentrated extra hard on the TV screen where she was writing up her notes. But she knew exactly who was stalking toward her. From the corner of her eye, his black–on–black figure should have been alarming. Instead, every nerve in her body yearned toward him like she’d spent the last couple hours walking around Death Valley and someone just offered her shade and an ice–cold lager.
She’d been in Vegas long enough to know that after dark was when life really started.
He stopped, just out of reach, and loomed there. The smell of him–the lingering eucalyptus soap combined with his own fragrance, like elegant black tea and primeval forest–drifted over her, and her pussy tightened with yearning.
After what felt close to forever, she let out a long–suffering sigh–which was not an excuse to breathe more of his exotic scent–and said, “What?” If she could have chosen a shorter word, she would have.
“I need you.”
The tension in her core spread to her chest. I need you. She might’ve said the same thing to him. How could that be so true after less than a day? And a short, winter day, at that. “That’s what you said yesterday to get me into this shit,” she snarked.
“Can you help me send tonight’s security measures to some people?”
A male, of any creaturely species, actually asking for help? The world really must be coming to an end.
She sat back with a huff, and he strode around the end of the couch to join her on the cushions. He stared at her work posted on the TV. “You have a picture of Barrows. I thought no one had ever caught one.”
“While he was ranting at us, some simple human you might happen to know snapped one from a cell phone.” She glowered at the screen. “Still looks more distinguished than he has any right to be.”
Hugo grunted in agreement and laid a high–end tablet in her lap along with his phone.
“These–” he indicated the plans on the tablet “–need to go here.” He showed her his phone contacts.
She didn’t want to pry–not because she wasn’t curious but because she knew better than to prolong contact when her whole body fairly buzzed with his nearness. But she was on the front lines of the most profound change the world might ever know. Myths and legends and bedtime tales were coming out of the closet, and she needed to be near him. History and humanity demanded it.
Her own traitorous desires didn’t figure into her decision at all.
She forwarded the files as he’d asked, her gaze lingering on the avatar of the woman with the glorious golden brown hair. “Who’s Yelena?” She was gratified that her tone wasn’t even a little jealous.
She must have fooled him because he replied with distracted indifference, “She’s the wereling mate of the phae king.” But then she decided she hadn’t fooled him at all, because he glanced at her w
ryly and added, “I don’t know her very well, beyond my belief that she feels more for the king than is wise.”
Twined emotions rolled inside her: a shameful relief that the lovely Yelena was already spoken for and a fretful concern that Hugo didn’t have anyone who could dissuade him from his fatal path.
“I don’t think there’s any story told anywhere in the worlds–mine or yours–where love is wise,” she said.
He looked up from his tech and met her gaze, his black eyes steady. “You of all people would know.”
She couldn’t discern from his tone whether that was a slam or endorsement.
But for once she wasn’t interested in digging for the truth. She leaned forward to kiss him. To make him realize all he was throwing away: her, them, this.
Instantly, his hands were buried in her hair, as if he’d only been waiting for her invitation. He tilted her head to slant his mouth over her, the kiss deepening until she imagined a blazing path from her lips to her pussy, her heart on fire in between.
He angled her neck further to the side, his long fingers splayed over her raging pulse. And though they’d only just touched, barely even swapped spit, she felt him inside, felt herself moving inside him. The out–of–body feedback loop should’ve been scary as hell. Instead, his cock was reaching for her–she didn’t even have to cup his jeans to know it–and her panties were wet with wanting.
They half stripped on the couch in the winter light, him with his jeans half down, her with her shirt half up. He shoved the cups of her bra under her breasts, plumping the aching flesh up to his mouth. He suckled at her stiff nipple, her blood rushing up in the skin, and she moaned, clutching his shaggy black hair with one hand, his bare ass with the other, urging him to come inside, come now, now, now.
He plunged into her with abandon, and he chanted her name.
Except the room echoed with only the sound of their panting, the slick suck of his cock ramming into her ready cunt.
She was hearing him, in her head, hearing the ragged need with none of the modulating frequencies added by breath and tongue. She was deep in him, felt his desolation, his hunger.
“Oh, Hugh,” she whispered. “Of course you can still dream of wanting more.”
He came with a violent spasm, and the almost excruciating pleasure that drew his every muscle to bone–breaking tautness triggered her own orgasm. She jackknifed around him, pulling him flush to her body, sweat and cum binding them, her tongue pierced on his incisors in an open–mouthed kiss.
The taste of her made him come again, and she echoed him helplessly, ecstatically, their bodies entwined, breath and blood in one everlasting ring.
***
Except it couldn’t last. Avery knew the moment he came back to himself, felt him withdrawing as their passion cooled. His absence ached, and she couldn’t imagine what it would be like when he was really gone.
He eased out of her, though she couldn’t stop her tender flesh from tightening around him, her wet folds releasing him with a soft sound like regret. His jaw tightened as his own body protested the separation, his arm shaking where he’d braced himself on the back of the couch.
She didn’t try to restrain a spurt of spiteful amusement at his post–coital vulnerability. He could run, but she wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
“Avery…”
“If you say anything that even remotely rhymes with ‘sorry’ I will kill you myself, immortal or no.”
He hovered over her, his arm now locked with granite strength as he glared down at her. “I wasn’t going to say anything of the kind.”
“Then what?” She shrugged her shoulder, which popped her bra back into place, and yanked down her t–shirt.
His jaw flexed again, as if those pointy teeth weren’t quite sharp enough to bite off whatever he wanted to say. “I wanted to tell you how much I admire you.”
She squinted at him. This was actually shaping up to be worse than sorry. “Really.”
“You are willing to pursue your questions even when you don’t like the answers. You deserve better.”
Since she’d told him that, she wasn’t too impressed with this blow–off speech. “Better than what?”
“Better than what magic did to you.” He took a breath. “Better than me.”
“The phae and their power haven’t been good to either of us, whether they meant it or not,” she reminded him. “That’s why we’re here: to make sure that changes this time around.”
“It’s been too long for me.” He reached out to touch her cheek, but she flinched away from him and he stopped. “I can’t change how I feel.”
“I didn’t ask you to change anything.” She pinned him with her glare, not willing to give him any opportunity to misunderstand. “I let you in knowing exactly what you are. I knew you were too old for me, that underneath your gracious exterior you’re even more cynical than I am, that you’re a fucking vampire. And still. I. Let. You. In.”
It was his turn to flinch, as if each tiny word was crueler than a pinprick bite. “Only because I used the powers of my curse to manipulate you into… letting me in.”
“Oh yeah?” She gave him a smile that was all human teeth as she slipped her feet back into her panties and leggings. “You think you can manipulate me? Just try it. And let me know how it goes. Because this thing between us–this mélange, you called it, the blood link–it goes both ways, in case you hadn’t noticed. You can’t fool me without fooling yourself.”
He recoiled, so fast he was at the other end of the couch before she could blink, his jeans still down around his thighs.
She smirked at him. “Yeah, that scares you, doesn’t it? More than the monsters that are coming. More than dying. You’re scared that after seven hundred years of not having to feel anything, you might find a new reason to actually live.”
“This isn’t life,” he snarled. Her spine prickled at the fury in his voice, but she felt the panic and pain just below the surface. “There’s nothing left of who I was. I exist only on the leftovers of others, on spare energy and stolen emotions.”
“That’s what life is! Being continually reborn out of who we used to be and how we are changed by our connections to others.” She came up onto her knees to pull her leggings over her ass, and he edged backward another cushion length. “You said the king’s wereling loves him too much. Well, you know what? I’m suddenly feeling more optimistic for the world than learning that magic exists or eternal life or even proving that vampires don’t sparkle.” When he took a breath, she flattened her hand at him. “Every Christmas I’d wonder if this was the year Mom would came back and say all the stories she told me were true. Now I know maybe I’ll never see her again, but I’ll love her my whole life and I’ll never stop hoping. That’s something I’ll hold onto even when there’s no reason to believe.”
For a heartbeat, he looked so stricken, his black eyes wide, that she thought maybe her outburst had broken something in him. Or maybe broken through.
But then he blinked, and when his long lashes flared open, the obsidian depths of his gaze were void of the emotions he’d claimed the ravpyrii hungered for, that were still ricocheting through her like shrapnel shredding her from the inside. Wouldn’t that be a vampire’s feast?
Instead, Hugo backed off the couch, pulling his jeans smoothly into place over his cock, still half swollen: a wounded warrior hiding his vulnerability behind black denim and a flat stare.
“I too have hopes,” he said at last. “That your mother is somewhere in the phaedrealii, that the king and his mate will be free to share their love and magic with the world. But I have none for myself.”
“What about wanting to give Sibilla a proper burial? What about vindicating her for trying to save your village?”
“You can make that your next story. And then I can bury myself.”
He gave her a short bow, but he was far enough away that she couldn’t lash out: not physically as she’d threatened, and she apparently couldn’t reac
h him even through the fragile bond still stretching between them.
And he was gone before she could say another word.
Chapter Thirteen
The minor chords of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue chimed from Avery’s phone. She didn’t have to check it, even out of habit, because she’d been watching the skies for the past half hour. The silver light in the cloudless sky turned to pure gold but the dark was close behind as the sun set behind the Spring Mountains.
She hoped they’d all live to see spring.
“You should have fed him,” Dyer said.
Avery jerked her head up, having missed the ravpyrii female’s approach. Dyer joined her at the window overlooking Fremont Street. The bar behind them was almost empty, the vacant slot machines chirping out their lonely, come–and–touch–me songs. But below them, the street was filling up with revelers.
Avery frowned at the other woman. “What are you talking about?”
“If you’re the only one Hugo is feeding from, you should have given him more of yourself, to amplify his ravpyrii powers.”
At the cold flush of fear, Avery steadied herself against the window glass. “I… He did… bite me.” She’d given him her blood and other bodily fluids besides.
Dyer huffed out a breath. “Well then, I guess he really does want to die. Because he didn’t take enough.”
That was true, Avery thought with a surge of despair that almost sent her to her knees. She’d wanted to give him all of her, and he’d taken even less than he needed to live. Did she need him to say the words aloud? Her fingers fisted against the window. As if she could hold herself up on the slick surface. Or maybe break through and find him out there.
He had not been given a fixed position on their security grid; he would roam where the trouble was. That had been the task he’d been kidnapped for when he was a boy, and though she knew this was for a better cause, she ached at the past that must be haunting him tonight.
Though he’d emerged from the phaedrealii into a desert full of lights, this was no sunlit realm for him, just more shadows of old memories and bad magic.