Welcome to the Underworld (Siren Publishing Menage Amour)

by Jane Wallace-Knight

  “What’s she like? This Eva person,” Sera asked as they stopped at the door.

  Henri wasn’t really sure how to answer that. In all honesty, she was kind of the best of a bad bunch but Henri wouldn’t tell Sera that. There was no use in making her even more nervous than she already was.

  “She’s a bitch,” Leo answered before Henri had a chance to.

  Henri shot him an unimpressed look out of the corner of his eye. “You might have noticed that Leo isn’t a big fan of vampires.”

  “Which just makes me more curious about how the two of you ended up together,” Sera said.

  Henri pressed the buzzer and waited to be let in. “Well, we’ll have plenty of time to talk about that later.”

  Henri knew there was a camera on them so they could be identified. When the door opened on its own, Henri let go of Sera’s hand and took a deep breath.

  * * * *

  It wasn’t that Leo just had an unprovoked hatred of vampires. Henri was a vampire and he clearly loved him. Both Leo’s pack and Henri’s coven had been against them being together from the start, insisting that they were natural enemies. At the time Leo hadn’t understood it, but he kind of did now. Hatred could be inherited and the hostility he had faced from vampires had only nurtured his own.

  Henri didn’t tend to bring him around his coven very often, not that Leo minded, far from it. He knew that the coven wouldn’t hurt Henri because he was one of their own, but it didn’t stop the prickle on his skin that he got whenever something didn’t feel right. Now walking into the lion’s den with Sera, who was basically vampire catnip, Leo’s hackles were well and truly up.

  They stepped out of the elevator right out into the penthouse. Everything was white, black, and chrome. There was a high-backed, ornate chair that could easily be described as a throne sitting against the far wall, with some smaller chairs facing it.

  When Eva saw them she stood from it, her long black slinky dress trailing after her.

  “Henri,” Eva greeted Henri, with a big fake smile as she held her arms out to him.

  She liked to play the part of the devoted mother, even going so far as to call her coven her children. She wasn’t Henri’s maker though, that blame lay with someone else.

  “Eva,” Henri greeted his self-elected queen, with the same false smile as hers. The vampire queen embraced Henri and looked at Leo and Sera over his shoulder. Behind her were ten other vampires, all of them dressed in variations of formal wear. In Leo’s head, he calculated how many of them he could take out and how long it would take, just in case one of them tried something with Sera.

  Eva’s gaze briefly flitted over Leo, just long enough for him to note her disapproval about him being there, before landing firmly on Sera.

  The look in her eyes quickly turned predatory and Leo found himself moving even closer to Sera until their arms were touching. The wolf in him puffed up with pride when Sera leaned into him a little, as though subconsciously seeking him out for protection.

  “How did you acquire her?” Eva asked as she finally broke the too long hug. Leo clocked the positions of all the other vampires and the movements they made, his senses on high alert.

  He felt Sera tense at being talked about as though she were a possession. Leo really couldn’t blame her.

  “Leo and I have both sworn to protect her,” Henri told Eva, making sure there was no doubt about how far they would both go to keep the nephilim. “As you know, any human we bond with is considered part of the coven and thus under the coven’s protection.”

  “True,” Eva said, her eyes sweeping over every last inch of Sera. “But then, she’s not human, is she.”

  “She’s half human and the bond still stands,” Henri argued. “Like I said, she’s under both our protection.”

  Leo might not be able to take on all the vampires in the room, but just one bite from him would be fatal and they all knew it.

  “Fair enough,” Eva said, trying and failing to mask her disappointment. “Though, she would be safer here with me. I doubt Price would be stupid enough to attack you outright and start a war, but what if he were to—”

  “Sera is mine,” Henri said in a tone that was just commanding enough to let her know he wasn’t fucking around, but not so forceful that it sounded like he was disrespecting his queen.

  Eva sighed and moved closer to Sera, her pupils dilating a little as she breathed in her scent. “A shame. I would make you very comfortable here.”

  To her credit, Sera stood strong beside Leo. “I’m happy where I am, thank you.”

  Eva shrugged an elegant shoulder. “Well, you can’t blame a girl for asking.”

  “So now that you’ve met her,” Henri began. He didn’t get to finish his sentence because Eva clapped her hands together.

  “Oh darling, you can’t rush off. I don’t get to see nearly enough of you and I’ve arranged a dinner, a twenty-three-year-old vegan non-smoker,” Eva said with delight.

  Leo had to stop himself from growling. He didn’t want to be there any longer than he had to.

  “I even made sure to put on a spread for your…companions,” she said, once again giving Leo a dismissive glance.

  “How thoughtful of you,” Henri said tactfully.

  “Well, I have to make the most of you while I have you,” Eva all but purred. “Perhaps you’d let me have a taste of—”

  She didn’t get to finish what she was going to say because this time Leo did let out a growl. Eva turned to him with fire in her eyes, but Henri quickly defused the situation by laughing.

  “My mate’s very protective of me and what’s mine,” Henri said.

  Once again Leo puffed up at hearing Henri refer to himself as Leo’s mate. He did so anytime the vampire used the term.

  “Mate,” Eva said the word as though it left a bad taste in her mouth. “Such a werewolf term.”

  “I like it,” Henri told her. “And we appreciate the offer of dinner—”

  “Wonderful,” Eva said before she clapped her hands together twice. One of the vampires who had been lurking off to the side nodded to her and went over to open the doors to the dining room. Leo couldn’t say he felt particularly hungry, especially knowing that he would be under the scrutiny of Eva and her hanger-ons.

  Henri shot him an apologetic look, which Leo responded to with a sigh.

  “Is this going well?” Sera whispered to Leo. “I honestly can’t tell.”

  Leo felt the corners of his mouth twitch upward. “I think that’s the point.”

  He put his hand on the small of Sera’s back and started walking to the dining room. It was decorated like the rest of the apartment. The stark white and chrome wasn’t appealing to Leo. Henri’s country house in Kent was much more his style and he preferred the surrounding fields and woods to the city.

  The long glass table was laden with food. In the center of the table was a large punch bowl filled with what could only be blood. As Leo took a seat, he took a discreet sniff and noted that that blood was human. He just about stopped himself from wrinkling his nose at the scent. It was something he had gotten used to with Henri, though Henri typically drank straight from a bag and even then it was usually animal blood. Having it all out in the open like that, in a serving dish with a fucking ladle seemed somehow grotesque. He knew better than to ask questions about where the blood had come from.

  Eva took her seat at the head of the table, making sure that Henri was on one side of her and Sera the other.

  Leo glanced between the two of them, each with an empty seat beside them. In the end, he decided to sit next to Sera. The wolf in him felt the need to protect Sera more greatly.

  “Before we get down to business,” Eva said as her table quickly filled up with the elite. She clapped her hands again and a young human man came out of what looked like a bedroom. He was naked, save for a black silk robe. The young man came to stand by Eva’s chair and she ran her hand down his arm like he was a pet. “Nathan.”

  The h
uman, Nathan presumably, nodded to his mistress and promptly untied his robe, letting the silken garment fall to the floor. The man was fit and slender and completely free of body hair. Eva took hold of her glass and held it up to Nathan, who raised his arm above it.

  Leo watched, an uncomfortable pit in his stomach, as Eva pulled a knife from the bodice of her dress and slashed the human’s forearm. Not a drop of the blood was spilled as she collected it in her wine glass. When she was satisfied with the amount, Eva grabbed hold of his arm and quickly ran her tongue along it, gathering up any stray drops. Her supernatural saliva closed the wound and she moaned at not only the taste but the connection it had caused.

  Beside him, Sera was staring open-mouthed at the display.

  “Henri,” Eva said with a smile as she held her glass up to him.

  Henri took his own glass and held it still while she poured some of the blood into it from her own.

  “Thank you,” Henri said, though Leo could tell he felt uncomfortable drinking it.

  “Now then, onto the Bale pack,” Eva said before taking a sip of her blood and savoring it like it was fine wine. “He sent people to attack you in your home.”

  “He did,” Henri confirmed. “It seems he owes Christian Price some sort of debt and Sera was his way of paying it off.”

  “That must be a substantial debt. Well, we can’t let that stand,” Eva said. “Technically, Price has so far done nothing wrong, but Bale, on the other hand, owes us compensation.”

  “Considering the men he sent after us are now dead,” Leo said. “I think we’re even.”

  Eva didn’t even bother sparing Leo a glance or acknowledging him in anyway.

  “Leave it with me,” she said to Henri, ignoring Leo’s comment. She then turned her attention on Sera. “So, dear girl, tell me about yourself.”

  Sera looked over at Leo as though she was comforting herself with the werewolf’s presence. “There isn’t much to tell.”

  “Nonsense,” Eva said with a too wide smile. “Come now, if we’re to be friends then we must get to know one another.”

  Leo knew what kind of friend Eva wanted Sera to be, the kind that Nathan clearly was. There was no way he was letting that happen.

  “Seriously, there’s nothing to tell,” Sera insisted. “I work, or worked I guess, at a café and a grocery store.”

  “And now you live with a vampire and a werewolf,” Eva said with a smirk. “How amusing.”

  “Quite,” Henri said, trying to take the focus off Sera. “It’s going to be something of an adjustment for all of us, but I’m certain we can make it work.”

  “And what of your pastimes?” Eva asked Sera. She looked at her like a viper might look at a mouse as it slowly slithered up behind and prepared to strike. “When you aren’t working, what do you enjoy doing? The ballet perhaps? I have a box at the Royal Albert Hall, you know.”

  “Uh, not really,” Sera said. “I mean, concerts are more my thing.”

  Eva looked delighted. “How wonderful, have you been to the Proms?”

  “I’m not really into classical music,” Sera said. “I’m more of a classic rock girl.”

  Leo had to smile at that. “You’re twenty-two years old, what’s classic to you is probably music from the late nineties.”

  Sera pretended to glare at him but the corners of her mouth had turned up so it lost any menace she might have intended it to. “For your information, I like Bon Jovi, and Guns and Roses.”

  “You call that classic rock?” Leo said playfully. “Pretty boys with long back-combed hair in skin-tight trousers?”

  “I thought you would have appreciated the skin-tight trousers,” Sera teased.

  Leo nearly laughed before he remembered where they were and what they were surrounded by. He quickly sobered.

  “Even the tight pants can’t distract from that hair,” he said. He looked over at Henri and saw him take a small sip of his blood. Their eyes met and Leo sent him a small smile, letting him know that he was accepted even with the blood drinking. Perhaps it was because they were natural enemies that Henri felt so uncomfortable drinking around those who weren’t his own kind. Leo loved him and if he could put up with Henri’s love for antiques, then he could put up with that.

  “So now that I’m…Henri’s,” Sera said, still having trouble getting over the wording of their new relationship. “This Price man will leave me alone?”

  Eva leaned back in her chair and gave Sera what was clearly a false look of sympathy, at least it was clear to Leo. “Alas, my dear girl, it’s impossible to say exactly what Christian Price will do. One never knows with that man.”

  “The vampire that tried to attack me last night,” Sera said, this time directing her attention to Henri. “Was he working for Price?”

  “Tried to attack you?” Eva asked, sitting forward with interest.

  “Yes,” Leo said, making sure Eva was looking at him. He stared at her hard, making sure his words came out sounding like just enough of a threat to make her think. “Sera shattered the glass in the café where she works and made a pin cushion out of the vamp with the shards, all with her mind.”

  He might be overplaying what had actually happened, just a little, but if anyone there was secretly working for Price then it would get back to him and maybe, just maybe, he would think twice about trying to come after Sera.

  “Astonishing,” Eva said. “I’ve met two other nephilim in my time and neither of them could use their gifts quite like that, and they certainly didn’t smell nearly as tempting as you do.”

  Leo glanced around the table at the other vampires. It was only now he realised that they were all looking at Sera, an entranced look on their faces. It made him very uncomfortable.

  “You’ve met others like me?” Sera asked with interest.

  “Yes,” Eva said with a bright smile. “Though not in many years. Let’s see, first there was Gerty in Chicago in nineteen-seventeen. She was a sweet little thing. Then there was a child, a boy in nineteen-eighty-seven.”

  “A child? What happened to him?” Sera asked.

  Leo could already guess. He was either attacked and drained by a vampire who couldn’t control itself, or he became the human pet of someone like Eva.

  “He belonged to an acquaintance of mine,” Eva said. “Sadly, one of his underlings lost control one day, no longer able to resist the temptation, and drank from the boy until he was dead.”

  Leo saw Sera’s face pale.

  “And the other one? Gerty?” Sera asked.

  “The foolish girl tried to get away from her bonded. She was gone for two days before another vampire found her,” Eva explained. “Again, it doesn’t have a happy ending.”

  Leo frowned and forced himself not to growl. He knew that in the eyes of vampire kind that Sera now belonged to Henri, but Henri would never see it that way himself. It made Leo angry that these people thought they could own another life.

  Beside him, he noticed that Sera had started to shake a little. It was minute, but he could feel the slight vibrations. If it was hard for Leo to hear something like that then he could only imagine what it was like for Sera.

  Across the table he shared a look with Henri.

  “Sera? Are you okay?” Henri asked.

  The nephilim quickly nodded her head, but it was clear to both of them that she was far from okay.

  Leo reached for her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Sera?”

  “I just…don’t feel so well all of a sudden,” she confessed in an uncharacteristically small voice.

  “What? It isn’t the food, is it?” Eva asked as she sent a glare over to one of her lackeys.

  “No,” Sera quickly insisted. “I just think that everything that happened yesterday is finally catching up with me.”

  Leo knew it was a lie but it was a good one. It was also a good excuse for them to use to get Sera out of there. It seemed that he and Henri were on the same wavelength.

  “Forgive us, Eva, but I think we sh
ould get Sera home,” Henri told their host as he stood from the table.

  “But there’s still much to talk about,” Eva insisted as she stood, as well.

  “Another time,” Henri told her with a pleasant smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “She is partly human after all, and she didn’t have enough sleep last night.”

  “Not to mention the shock of finding out what she is and the attack from Bale’s men,” Leo added.

  He stood up and took hold of Sera’s arm, urging her to stand, too. He felt like an animal that had been kept caged. He was raring to get out of there.

  “Well then, we’ll continue this another night,” Eva said. She was smiling but Leo could see how annoyed she truly was at the disruption to her soiree.

  “Of course,” Henri assured her.

  They walked through the living room to the elevator, Eva walking them like the good host she prided herself in being.

  As soon as they were in the elevator, and the doors had closed, all three of them seemed to let out a deep breath.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There was a gentle breeze to the night air but it was warm and the scent of honeysuckle and barbeque drifted over Sera. It smelt like heaven. The sound of the water lapping against the wooden bridge on the river and the steak and vegetable kebabs that were put in front of her just topped it all off.

  She didn’t even know how late it was. Considering how late they had slept in, Sera’s sleep pattern was off. She knew that it had to be past midnight. She had fallen asleep in the car on the way back to Kent. The rollercoaster of emotions she had been on had taken it out of her and she had woken just as the car pulled to a stop. Both Henri and Leo had insisted she relax while they made dinner, seeing as both she and Leo had barely touched the food at Eva’s. She would have felt bad about not eating any of Eva’s food when the vampire had apparently gotten it all especially for her, that was if the fierce looking woman hadn’t wanted to use Sera for her own gains.