by Chloe Hart
Something was happening to her bones. They were shifting, blurring, as if the boundaries between her and Luke were burning away. Everything was burning away, leaving her in a maelstrom with nothing but hunger, a hunger that clawed at her insides like—
Luke broke the kiss suddenly, and Kit cried out in protest. Then he put his hands below her ribcage and lifted her off the ground. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her eyes opening as she settled against him, her arms coming to rest on his shoulders.
Her breath caught in her throat.
The way he was looking at her…like she was sunlight…
He put a hand behind her head and guided her to him. His mouth brushed gently over hers, a kiss like velvet against her bruised and battered flesh. Again, and again, until Kit couldn’t bear it any longer and she pressed closer, her lips parting as she opened to him. She heard him growl his approval as he slid inside, his tongue stroking her with rough sensuality, claiming her as he had done before but with a different quality, something that felt like reverence.
Then suddenly he crushed her to him, lips and teeth branding her in one blinding, breathless moment, and as quickly released her so she slid down his body and onto her own feet again.
He took her by the shoulders and looked directly into her eyes.
“Are you with me?” he asked, and there was an undercurrent of urgency in his voice.
Her heart was hammering. She couldn’t think, couldn’t speak.
He shook her roughly. “Are you with me?” he asked again.
“Yes,” she finally managed to say. “Why…why did you kiss me?” She raised a hand to her mouth and pressed it to her swollen lips.
“I wanted you to pay attention to me. Now that you are, I need you to understand that those voices are not real. They’re not human beings who need your help, and they’re definitely not your brother. Peter is being held in the black city at the end of this road. That’s what the ferryman said, and the ferryman doesn’t lie. So even if you don’t believe me, believe him. Even if you—”
“My God.”
Kit looked over her shoulder at the impenetrable shadows beyond the road, out of which still came the sound of people crying out for help, for her help, including a voice she couldn’t believe she had taken for Peter’s. There was a whining, cloying tone there that Peter had never used in his life.
Kit drew back from the shadows. “I almost left the road,” she whispered, half to herself. She looked back at Luke. “You stopped me.”
His expression flooded with relief. “They don’t have power over you anymore.”
Kit shook her head. She felt the aftermath of adrenaline, as if she’d been jerked back from the edge of a precipice. Luke had saved her. Of course the means he’d used had been a little…
“So that kiss,” she began as nonchalantly as she could, her heart still thudding against her ribs. “It was just…medicinal?”
Luke stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“It was just…you know…like a slap on the face or a bucket of cold water. It wasn’t a real kiss.”
“Not a real kiss? My God, Kit, if that didn’t qualify as a real kiss, I’d like to know what would.”
“But you didn’t really mean it,” Kit went on, knowing she should shut the hell up but unable to stop. “You were just trying to distract me.”
He was still staring at her. “You daft girl. You think I didn’t mean it? Here’s how much I meant it. If I saw another man kissing you like that I’d cut his heart out.”
Kit made a face, although her own heart, against all reason and sense of decency, felt lighter. “That seems a little extreme.”
“I’m a vampire. I have possessive tendencies.”
Kit wrapped her arms around her waist. “But that doesn’t mean—you don’t think you possess me, do you?”
Luke sighed and backed away a couple of steps, as if he sensed her defenses snapping into place again. “I don’t think any man will ever possess you, Kit. Possessive tendencies don’t equal possession. But don’t think you’re immune to the feeling. Tell me right now if you want me to kiss another woman the way I just kissed you.”
Kit knew the wave of jealousy that swept through her was as perceptible to him as it was to her. He was too good at reading her emotions.
“Okay, fine,” she muttered. “Maybe all those women in Wales weren’t so dumb. How was I supposed to know you’d be so good at that?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve spent four hundred years getting good at that. I’m good at other things, too. If you find yourself starting to listen to those voices again, think about that instead. Maybe it’ll help distract you.”
He held out a hand, and she took it after a moment’s hesitation. They started down the road again, and Kit kept her eyes resolutely forward, doing her best to ignore the cries for help that were growing in volume and desperation on either side of the road. Luke’s voice was a low murmur beside her.
“Think about what it would be like with a man who’s spent centuries finding out exactly how to please a woman. Learning every nerve ending, every nuance of your body, every touch and stroke that could drive you to madness.”
Well, he was definitely distracting her.
Kit cleared her throat. “That’s all fine and dandy, but what about me? I mean,” she went on quickly, trying to treat this like a purely academic discussion, “what about the woman? What if she’s intimidated by all your experience? What if she’s not very experienced herself and—and isn’t so sure how to please you?”
The voices seemed to fade further into the background. Talking with your vampire guide about sex was one way to get through the valley of death.
“And what about the whole jealousy factor?” she went on. “What about all your other women? In four hundred years you must have had dozens of great loves, while she’s only had…I mean…” her voice trailed off.
“We’re speaking hypothetically, right?”
“Of course,” she said, looking straight in front of her.
“Well, then, this hypothetical woman has nothing to worry about. She’s not like any other woman the vampire has ever met. She makes all the others seem like shadows. She—”
He stopped suddenly, and when he spoke again his tone was much lighter. “And about the whole experience thing? That’s just crazy. Any man worth his salt thinks more about how to please you than how you can please him. That’s what intensifies his pleasure. And that goes double for vampires.”
Kit risked a glance at him. He was grinning down at her, a lock of dark hair fallen over one eye.
“Of course, like everything else with us, there’s a selfish motive involved. The more aroused a woman is, the better she tastes.”
That brought up images Kit really wasn’t ready to deal with, any more than she was ready to deal with what he’d said before. About how she was different. How she made the others seem like shadows.
Although, come to think of it, he probably said that to every woman he seduced.
It was then that Kit realized that she was being seduced. It wouldn’t take much more to make her putty in the vampire’s hands. One kiss, and she was ready to go back on everything she’d said, everything she believed about herself. One kiss, and she wasn’t even sure who she was anymore. Who was this woman holding hands with a vampire, trusting him, wanting him?
She thought about Peter, somewhere in that cold dead city they were walking towards. What would Peter say if he knew?
And then, suddenly, she heard a voice.
“You’re holding hands with a devil, Kit! He’ll corrupt you if you stay with him. Peter doesn’t want that. He’d rather stay here forever than lose you to darkness. If you walk away now you can save Peter and yourself.”
Kit glanced involuntarily at Luke, but it was obvious that he hadn’t heard what she’d heard.
This time, apparently, the voice was speaking only to her.
Insidious bastards. Well, she was damned if she was go
ing to listen to them again…even if they were right. Even if she didn’t understand her own feelings. Her mind said she was crazy, but her heart told her she could trust Luke.
For once, she was going to listen to her heart. The only problem was the voices, rising in a crescendo, playing like violins on her deepest fears, harder and harder to ignore.
“Luke, you have to help me.”
He glanced down at her. “Glad to, sweetheart, but what are you talking about?”
They were closer now, the city looming ahead in the shadows like her own tomb. As the voices rose her despair rose with them, and Kit felt hope itself beginning to die, to fade away, to drown in the blackness. She gripped Luke’s hand and forced herself to keep walking.
“The voices are in my head now, and they’re trying something different. You have to help me stop them. I’m not fishing for another kiss here, but you have to do something to drown them out again.”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “Even if you were fishing, I’m damned if we’re going to make the rest of our journey in a lip lock. Makes it hard to walk, for one thing. Does my voice help at all? Does conversation help?”
“A little…but…maybe if you sing?”
That sent his eyebrows to his hairline. “You want me to sing?”
She tried to smile. “It worked for Orpheus, didn’t it? And you’re Welsh. I thought the Welsh were supposed to be such great singers. You know, the whole bardic tradition. Come on, Luke, just try it.”
He sighed. “This job was supposed to be about getting you into the underworld. Nobody told me I’d have to cope with a love spell, or kiss you senseless, or sing, for God’s sake.”
“Stop complaining. And you did not kiss me senseless.”
“Really.”
“Well, listen to me. I may need some help but I still have sense, don’t I? Do you want to hear me give the cube roots of complex numbers off the top of my head? Go ahead. Give me a number.”
“You are the strangest girl I’ve ever met. But for some odd reason, I find it impossible to refuse you. What would you like me to sing?”
The shadows on either side of the road pressed inwards, immense and impenetrable. The voices were gibbering in her head. The very air she breathed was dry, dusty, cold, dead. Life wasn’t meant to exist down here. Every step grew harder as they approached the city.
“Something about light,” she said impulsively. “Something to fight the darkness.”
“Something about light,” Luke muttered. A moment or two went by, and then he began.
His singing voice was a revelation: a strong, rich baritone that sent shivers of pleasure down her spine. His song choice was even more unexpected.
“O come, O come Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appears.
O come, O come, thou Dayspring bright
Pour on our souls thy healing light
Dispel the long night’s lingering gloom
And pierce the shadows of the tomb.”
His voice, which had been so strong, faltered suddenly, and it was as if her heart stopped beating.
“It’s a Christmas carol,” he said. “The English translation isn’t very old, but the tune dates back to the 15th century and the Latin text is much older than that. There are more verses, but I don’t know if I can remember them.”
“You can’t stop!” Kit said breathlessly. “Please, Luke—sing it again.”
“You liked it?”
It was the first time she’d heard him sound like the young man he appeared to be, hesitant and almost shy. The lock of hair had fallen over his eye again and she longed to brush it back. A wave of tenderness overwhelmed her and she forced it down with difficulty.
“Stop fishing for compliments and sing.”
When Luke complied, the voices in her head and the voices in the shadows faded to nothing. They finished their journey like that, step by step, hand in hand, the vampire singing Christmas carols one after the other, some in English, some in Latin, and some in a language she thought must be Welsh. They were almost unbearably beautiful.
A stranger choice for a vampire could hardly be imagined.
She remembered waking up that morning—it seemed a lifetime ago—and her flash of insight into what it must be like to be exiled from the sun. Now she thought about what it must be like for a 17th century Welshman, raised in a strong religious tradition, to be exiled from his church.
Kit herself wasn’t a churchgoer. Science had always been her religion. Nonetheless she felt she could understand, at least a little, the pain that might arise from such a banishment. Especially at this time of year, with Christmas only a few weeks away.
Luke was still singing when they came to the city of the dead, its outer wall a single block of stone breached only by a gate of iron. Two massive pillars stood on either side, robed in shadow. Kit’s eyes were fixed on the gate, its surface marked by a pattern of squares, each one filled with what looked like ancient writing.
Then she noticed the monster beside one of the pillars.
Chapter Nine
How about that, Kit thought as they approached the gate, hoping Luke had the sense to keep singing. Apparently the old tricks were the best ones after all. There was Cerberus the gatekeeper: monstrous, terrifying—and sleeping peacefully in the shadow of a pillar. All three mouths were open and emitting faint snores.
Continuing to sing, Luke stood in front of the iron gate and searched the checkerboard design, reading the glyphs until he found the panel he was looking for. He pressed his hand against the cold metal and the massive gate swung silently inwards.
Kit gripped his arm as they walked through the gateway. Inside they found a paved street, running between houses of dark stone. Illumination came from the torches of the dead, high on the walls, burning with ghastly blue fire. The city was empty and silent.
Only when the gate had closed behind them did Luke stop singing. Cerberus woke immediately, snarling like a thousand wolves on the other side of the wall.
“What did I tell you?” Kit said shakily. “I said it worked for Orpheus. Of course when I asked you to sing, I didn’t realize we’d actually have to deal with a three headed dog. How did you get past him the last time you were here?”
“I fought him.”
“You fought him?”
“He’s tough, but he’s not actually that brave. I knocked one of his heads unconscious and he turned tail and ran. Still, I like this way better. I owe you one, Kit.” He looked down at her and squeezed her hand. “Let’s go get your brother.”
Ever since they’d come here, Luke had been making her braver, making her stronger, saving her life. Now they walked hand in hand into the silent city, their footsteps echoing in the tunnel created by the buildings on either side.
“Where is everybody?” Kit whispered.
“They’re here. Sometimes they show themselves, sometimes they don’t. When they do show up, it tends to be all at once. Don’t let go of my hand,” he added.
“All right. I wonder if—”
Before she could finish, the dead were there.
One minute the street was empty and silent, the next a thousand wailing spirits were crowding around them, hatred in their faces as they reached for Kit, screaming in languages few living creatures had ever heard.
“Keep walking,” Luke said in her ear. “They can’t touch you.”
She was almost overwhelmed with fear and horror, but she managed to keep going. It was a good thing Luke didn’t have any circulation, she thought grimly. Otherwise the death grip she had on his hand would have cut it off.
“They look like they hate me,” she said, pressing closer to him as ghostly hands and claws and things she couldn’t identify reached for her. “Why do they hate me?”
“Because you’re alive. But they can’t touch you, Kit. The creatures in the borderlands could have consumed you, but the spirits of the dead have no
power. Only hatred for the living.”
“How horrible! Can’t anything be done to help them?”
“Only you would ask that. Almost all the creatures down here are demons, and their existence in death mirrors their existence in life. If they were full of hatred then, that hatred continues unabated here. Don’t waste your pity on them.”
“What about the humans? Are there any humans down here?”
“Very few. The ones we know about are those like your brother, who come down here by accident or were cast here by a demon. There are rumors of others but no one knows for sure. I’ve heard a story that suicides end up here, to spend eternity in the state they were in when they died, with no possibility of change or redemption.”
Kit shuddered. “That’s terrible.”
“I know. With stories about the underworld, it’s hard to tell what’s true, what’s metaphor, and what’s a cautionary tale we’ve invented for ourselves. I suppose you could say the same thing about heaven,” he added.
“This place has nothing to do with heaven,” Kit said through gritted teeth. The effort of ignoring the spirits, bodiless and powerless as they were, was starting to get to her.
“We won’t be out here much longer. I can see the palace up ahead, and none of the dead dwell there. Only those who rule the dead, their servants, and their guests.”
Kit was surprised when Luke stopped at a small, very ordinary looking wooden door that led into a building much like all the others they’d passed: blocks of stone that reached higher than they could see by the light of the torches; every door closed; every window barred.
“There’s nothing special about it,” Kit said, looking up at the building stretching above her. “I guess I expected something grand.”
“It’s grand enough inside.”
“What will we face in there? I mean…what’s it like?”
“It’s beautiful.”
She looked at him in surprise as Luke knocked on the wooden door.
“Beautiful? I don’t believe it.”
“You should,” Luke said grimly. “You’ve seen the horror of the underworld, but its beauty is far more dangerous.”