by Nora Roberts
It took the wolf between the shoulder blades, and its body jerked up. Blair’s arrow struck home.
“Nice work,” she said as black smoke and ash flew.
Hoyt started to speak, then Glenna’s voice sounded in his head as clearly as if she’d been standing beside him.
Behind you!
He spun, pivoted. A second wolf leaped, its body slamming Hoyt aside, knocking him to the ground as it fell on Larkin. Man and wolf grappled, an instant only. Even as Blair drew her sword, and Hoyt his, the wolf was rolled beneath a bear.
The bear’s claws swiped, slicing deep across the throat. There was a gush of blood. The bear collapsed on the black ash, and became a man again.
Blair dropped to her knees, running her hands frantically over Larkin. “Are you bit? Are you bit?”
“No. Scratched up here and there. No bites. Ah, the stench of that one.” Out of breath, he pushed to his elbows, looked down in disgust at his bloody shirt. “Ruined a good hunting tunic.” He looked over at Hoyt. “All right then?”
“I might not have been. Glenna. They must be watching. I heard her in my head.” Hoyt held out a hand to help Larkin to his feet. “If you wear that, they’ll smell us a half league away. You’ll need to…wait, wait.” And his smile came slow and grim. “I’ve an idea.”
The black wolf crouched over the bloody figure, and from outside the rear of the stables, sent out a low howl. In moments, a vampire armed with a battle-ax opened the door.
“What do we have here?” He glanced over his shoulder. “One of the wolves brought us a present.”
Facedown, Hoyt let out a quiet moan.
“It’s still alive. Let’s get it inside. No need to share it with the others, right? I could use something fresh for a change.”
As they stepped out, the second spared the wolf a brief grin. “Yeah, good dog. Let’s just have a—”
He exploded into ash as Blair rammed the stake through his back and into his heart. The second didn’t have time to lift his ax before Hoyt sprang off the ground and sliced his sword through its neck.
“Yeah, good dog.” Blair mimicked the vampire, and added a quick ruffle of Larkin’s fur. “I say we stick with a winner, use the same gambit on the next outbuilding.”
They had nearly identical results with the second building, but on the third, only one came out. It was obvious by the way he glanced surreptitiously back at his post that he intended to keep the unexpected meal for himself. When he rolled Hoyt over, the unexpected meal put a stake through his heart.
Using hand signals now, Blair indicated she would go in first, with Hoyt covering her.
Quick and quiet, she thought as she slipped inside. She saw the other guard had made himself a cozy nest with blankets and was taking an afternoon nap in what she thought was a dovecote.
He was actually snoring.
She had to bite back the half a dozen smart remarks that trembled on her tongue, and simply staked him while he slept.
She blew out a long breath. “I don’t mean to complain, but this is almost embarrassing, and a little bit boring.”
“You’re disappointed we’re not fighting for our lives?” Hoyt asked.
“Well, yeah. Some.”
“Take heart.” Larkin stepped in, surveyed the area. “There are nine in the cottage, where we’ll be severely outnumbered.”
“Ah, thanks, honey. You always know just what to say to perk me up.” She hefted the battle-ax she’d taken from the first kill. “Let’s go kick some ass.”
Bellied down behind a water trough, Blair and Hoyt studied the cottage. The wounded man/wolf gambit wasn’t going to work here, and the alternate they’d agreed on was risky.
“He’s already gone through a lot of changes,” Blair murmured. “It starts taking a toll.”
“He ate four honey cakes.”
She nodded, hoping it was fuel enough as the dragon landed lightly on the thatched roof. Larkin shimmered free of it, then picked up the scabbard and the sheath for his stake. He signaled down to them before swinging down to peer in one of the second-story windows.
Apparently, Blair thought, he didn’t have to change into a monkey to climb like one. Larkin held up four fingers.
“Four up, five down.” She moved into a crouch. “Ready?”
Keeping low, they rushed to either side of the doorway. As agreed, she counted to ten. Then kicked in the door.
With the battle-ax, she decapitated the one on her right, then used the staff of it to block the hack of a sword. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a ball of fire flash into Hoyt’s hand. Something screamed.
From overhead, Larkin and a vampire flew off the loft to land hard on the floor. She tried to hack her way to him, took a hard kick in her healing ribs. The pain and the force knocked her back into a table that broke beneath her weight.
She used the splintered leg to dust the one that leaped on her. Then she threw the makeshift stake, striking one that rushed Hoyt from behind. She missed the heart, swore and shoved herself breathlessly to her feet.
Hoyt thrust out with a back kick that made her warrior’s heart sing. When the vampire fell, Larkin finished it with a sword clean through the throat.
“How many?” Blair shouted. “How many?”
“I took two,” Hoyt said.
“Four, by the gods.” Even as he grinned, he was grabbing Blair’s arm. “How bad?”
“Off my game. Caught my ribs. I only got two. There’s another left.”
“Gone out the window above. Here, sit, sit. Your arm’s bleeding as well.”
“Shit.” She looked down, saw the gash she hadn’t felt. “Shit. Your nose is bleeding, mouth, too. Hoyt?”
“A few nicks.” He limped toward them. “I don’t think we’d need worry overmuch about the one that escaped. But I’ll be doing a spell to revoke any invitation. Let me see what I can do for your arm.”
“Spell first.” Breathing through her teeth, she looked at Larkin. “Four, huh?”
“It seems two of them were mating, and distracted with it when I came through the window. So I had them both with one blow.”
“Maybe we should only count that as one.”
“Oh, no, we won’t.” He finished tying a field dressing on her wounded arm, swiped blood from under his own nose. “Jesus, I’m starving.”
It made her laugh, and despite her aching ribs, she wrapped her arms around him to hug.
“They’re fine.” Glenna let out a shuddering breath. “A little battered, a little bloody, but fine. And safe. Sorry, sorry. But watching it like this, not being able to help…I’m just going to have a short breakdown.”
As promised, she buried her face in her hands and wept.
Chapter 7
Escaping, Cian left Glenna to Moira. In his experience, women dealt best with women’s tears. His own reaction to what they’d seen in the crystal hadn’t been fear, or relief, but sheer and simple frustration.
He’d been delegated to do no more than watch while others fought. Cozied in the bloody parlor with women and teacups, like someone’s aged grandfather.
While the training sessions were some level of entertainment, he hadn’t had a good fight since they’d left Ireland. Hadn’t had a woman in longer than that. Two very satisfying ways of releasing tension and energy had been denied to him—or he was denying them to himself.
Hardly a wonder, he thought, he was tied up in nasty knots over a pair of steady gray eyes.
He could seduce a serving girl, but that was fraught with complications and probably not worth the time or effort. He could hardly pick a fight with one of the very handy humans, which was too damn bad.
If he went out on a hunt he could likely scare up at least one or two of Lilith’s troops. But he couldn’t rev himself up to go out into the endless rain on the chance of a lucky kill.
At least back in his own time, his own world, he’d had work to occupy him. Women if he wanted one, of course, but work to pass the time. The endless time.<
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With none of those options available to him, he closed himself in his room. He fed, and he slept.
And he dreamed as he hadn’t dreamed in decades and more of hunting human.
The strong and salty scent of them stung the air, rising as even their puny and smothered instincts warned them they were prey.
It was a seductive and primitive perfume to stir needs in the belly and in the blood.
She was only a whore, working the alleyways of London. Young though, and fair enough despite her trade, which told him it was unlikely she’d been at it very long. As the aroma of sex clung to her, he knew she’d made a few coppers that night.
He could hear tinny music and the raucous, drunken laughter from some gin parlor, and the clopping of a carriage horse moving away. All distant—too distant for her human ears to catch. And too distant for her human legs to run, if she tried.
She hurried through the thick yellow fog, quickening her pace with nervous glances over her shoulder as he deliberately allowed her to hear his footsteps behind her.
The smell of her fear was intoxicating—so fresh, so alive.
It was so easy to catch her, to cover the squeak of her mouth with his hand—to cover the rabbit-rapid jump of her heart with the other.
So amusing to see her eyes take in his face, young and handsome—the expensive clothing—and go sly, go coy, as he eased his hand from her mouth.
“Sir, you frighten a poor girl. I thought you be a brigand.”
“Nothing of the sort.” The cultured accent he used was in direct opposition to squawking cockney. “Simply in need of a little comfort, and willing to pay your price.”
With a flutter and a giggle, she named one he knew would be double her usual rate. “For that I think you should make me very comfortable.”
“I’m sorry to ask for pay from such a fine and handsome gentleman, but I have to earn my keep, I do. I have a room nearby.”
“We won’t need it.”
“Oh!” She laughed when he pulled up her skirts. “Here, is it?”
With his free hand he yanked down her bodice, covered her breast. He needed to feel her heart, beating, beating, beating. He drove into her, pumping hard so that her bare buttocks slapped against the damp stone wall of the alley. And he saw the shock and surprise in her eyes that he could give her pleasure.
That beat beneath his hand quickened, and her breath went short and expelled on gasps and moans.
He let her come—a small gesture—and let her dazed and sleepy eyes meet his before he showed his fangs.
She screamed—just a quick, high sound he cut off when he sank his fangs into her throat. Her body convulsed, bringing him to a very satisfactory orgasm as he fed. As he killed.
That beating under his hand slowed, stilled. Stopped.
Replete and sated, he left her in the alley with the rats, the price she’d named tossed carelessly beside her. And he strolled away to be swallowed by the thick yellow fog.
He woke in the here and now on an oath. The dream memory had awakened appetites and passions long suppressed. He almost, almost, tasted her blood in his throat, almost smelled the richness of it. In the dark, he trembled a little, an addict in withdrawal, so forced himself to get up and drink what he allowed himself as substitute for human.
It will never satisfy you. It will never fill you. Why do you struggle against what you are?
“Lilith.” He said it softly. He recognized the voice in his head, understood now who and what had put that dream into his mind.
Had it even been his memory? It seemed false now that he was steadier, like a stage play he’d stumbled into. But then he’d killed his share of whores in alleys. He’d killed so many, who could remember the details?
Lilith shimmered into the dark. Diamonds glittered at her throat, her ears, her wrists, even in her luxurious hair. She wore a gown of regal blue trimmed in sable, cut low to highlight the generous mounds of her breasts.
She’d gone to some trouble with her dress and appearance, Cian thought, for this illusionary visit.
“There’s my handsome boy,” she murmured. “But you look tense and tired. Hardly a wonder with what you’ve been up to.” She wagged her finger playfully. “Naughty of you. But I blame myself. I wasn’t able to spend those formative years with you, and as the twig is bent.”
“You deserted me,” he pointed out. Though he didn’t need them, he lighted candles. Then poured himself a cup of whiskey. “Killed me, changed me, set me on my brother, then left me broken at the bottom of the cliffs.”
“Where you let him toss you. But you were young, and rash. What could I do?” She tugged her bodice lower to show him the scar of the pentagram. “He burned me. Branded me. I was no good to you.”
“And after? The days and months and years after.” Odd, he thought, odd to realize he had this resentment, even this hurt buried inside him. Like a child tossed aside by its mother. “You made me, Lilith, birthed me, then left me with less sentiment than an alley cat leaves a deformed kitten.”
“You’re right, you’re right. I can’t argue.” She wandered the room, lazy sweeps that had the skirts of her gown brushing through a table. “I was careless with you, darling boy. And what did I do but take out my temper for your brother on you. Shame on me!”
Those pretty blue eyes twinkled with merriment, and the curve of her lips was charmingly female. “But you did so well for yourself—initially. Imagine my shock when Lora told me the rumors I’d heard were true, and you’d stopped hunting. Oh, she sends her regards, by the way.”
“Does she? I imagine she’s a pretty sight at the moment.”
Lilith’s smile faded, and a hint of red showed in her eyes. “Careful there, or when the time comes it won’t just be that fucking demon hunter I rip to pieces.”
“Think you can?” He slouched into a chair with his whiskey. “I’d wager you on that, but you wouldn’t be able to pay up, being a pile of ash at the end of it.”
“I’ve seen the end of it, in the smoke.” She came to him, leaning over the chair—so real he could almost smell her. “This world will burn. I’ll have no need of it. Every human on this foolish island will be slaughtered, screaming and drowning in their own blood. Your brother and his circle will die most horribly. I have seen it.”
“Your wizard would hardly show you otherwise,” Cian said with a shrug. “Were you always so gullible?”
“He shows me truth!” She shoved away, her gown sweeping in a furious arch. “Why do you persist in this doomed adventure? Why do you oppose the one who gave you the greatest gift? I came here to offer you a truce—a private and personal agreement, just between you and me. Step away from this, my darling, and you have my pardon. Step away and come to me, and you have not only my pardon but a place at my side come the day. Everything you hunger for and have denied yourself I’ll lay at your feet—in repentance for abandoning you when you needed me.”
“So, I just go back to my time, my world, and all’s forgiven?”
“I give you my word on it. But I’ll give you much, much more if you come to me. To me.” She purred it, molding her breasts with her hands. “Remember what we shared that night? The spark, the heat of it?”
He watched her run her hands over her body, white against red. “I remember, very well.”
“We can have that again, and more. You’ll be a prince in my court. And a general, leading armies instead of slogging through the muck with humans. You’ll have your pick of worlds and all their pleasures. An eternity of desires met.”
“I remember you promising something along those lines before. Then I was alone, broken and lost, with the graveyard dirt barely washed off me.”
“And so this is my penance. Come now, come. You have no place here, Cian. You belong with your own kind.”
“Interesting.” He tapped his fingers on the side of his cup. “So, all I need do is take your word that you’ll reward me rather than torturing and ending me.”
“Why would I d
estroy my own creation?” she replied in reasonable tones. “And one who’s proven himself to be a strong warrior?”
“For spite, of course, and because your word is as much an illusion as your appearance here. But I’ll give you mine on one vital matter, Lilith, and my word is as hard and as bright as those diamonds you’re wearing. It will be I who comes for you. It will be I who does for you.”
He picked up a knife and slashed it over his own palm. “I swear it to you, in blood. Mine will be the last face you see.”
Fury tightened her face. “You’ve damned yourself.”
“No,” he murmured when her image vanished. “You damned me.”
It was deep night, and he was done with sleep.
At least at such an hour he could wander where he liked without bumping into servants or courtiers or guards. He’d had enough of company—human and vampire. Still he needed distraction, movement, something to clear away the bitter dregs of the dream, and the visitation that followed it.
He admired the architecture of the castle—something a few steps up, and over into fantasy than what would have been usual when he was alive. It was storybook, inside and out, he mused, with the shifting lights of torches rising from their dragon sconces, the tapestries of faeries and festivals, the polished, jewel-toned marble.
Of course, it hadn’t been built as a fortress, but more as a lavish home. Fit, most certainly, for a queen. Until Lilith, Geall had existed in peace and so could focus its energies and intellects on art and culture.
He could, in the quiet and dark, take time to study and admire the art—the paintings and tapestries, the murals and carvings. He could drift through the dark with the perfume of hothouse flowers sweetening the air or wander to the library to peruse the tall shelves.
Since its creation, Geall had been a land for art and books and music rather than warfare and weaponry. How apt, how cold, that both gods and demons should select such a place for bloody war.
The library, as Moira had indicated when falling in love with his own, was a quiet cathedral of books. He’d passed some of his time with a few of them already, and had been both interested and entertained that the stories he’d found there weren’t so different from ones written in his own lifetime.