by Laken Cane
And it was heaven.
Angus didn’t wait. He got to his knees, slapped my ass—hard—then once again shoved his hugeness into me. I clenched around him, wet and hot and eager.
I bit Clayton.
With Clayton’s blood hitting my throat and Angus’s cock thrusting into me, hard and fast, I climaxed so fiercely that there was a breathless moment of nothing. Then a wave of pleasure roared through me and spilled out of me, and I was quite sure every single one of my men, there or not, would be taken by the overflow of that vast, consuming pleasure.
We were connected, and they would feel it.
They would be part of it.
The master, who’d refused to interfere with my first night back home.
Rhys, whose absence was perhaps lucky, because the executioners were coming and sex would likely bring his dragon, and he would sprint from the house and light up the sky with his screams and darkness and enormous power, and they would hear, those horrible executioners.
Even Leo, for his blood was inside me. My bite was part of him. He might not understand exactly what he was feeling, but he would feel it. He would climax, his cock in his hand, me on his mind, and he would wonder, perhaps, what the hell was happening.
And Shane, miles away, holed up in some dark, angry place, would feel it. Would feel me.
I’m coming for you, Shane Copas.
And as I climaxed, and climaxed again, and again, and again, I kept an image of my hunter in my mind, and he was there with me.
I’m coming for you.
I felt his resistance.
But his resistance would not matter.
He was coming home.
Chapter Thirteen
HUNGER
Seconds before dawn came, I slipped into sleep.
I didn’t dream—I didn’t think vampires could dream—but on the fringes of my mind lingered the perfection of that night.
It was like the blink of an eye. One minute I was sinking into darkness and the next, I was fully awake and ready to take on the night.
I sat up, my first thought on eating. The men had left as I’d slept. When I’d lived with the master, I would awaken every single night to find him watching me.
He would feed me seconds after I opened my eyes, except for after he’d decided to start standing me alone in the city to teach me control. Waking up without him felt wrong.
And I didn’t like it at all.
I was covered with blood and sex. I took a shower, and when I stepped from the shower to peer into the mirror above the small sink, my gaze wandered curiously but dispassionately over my scars, and I wondered what the guys had thought of my marked face and body.
I’d had scars before, but not like the ones I now possessed. The rifters had torn me up. Still, most of the scars were silver and thin and swirly, almost pretty, maybe, decorating my face and body. They told the story of everything that had happened to me.
They were part of me, and I didn’t mind them. Trinity the human would have. Trinity the vampire did not.
Amias had kissed every single one of those scars, even the ones he’d given me when I’d been human. Especially those.
“Master,” I whispered, morose.
It was too quiet, and I was too alone.
Hunger had taken up residence in my brain during my sleep, and when it hadn’t been satisfied after I’d awakened, it began to grow. There were things I’d have to get used to, now that I was back in the real world.
Some of my clothes had been transferred from my bedroom to the sleeping room, and I dressed hurriedly, eager to leave the confines of my basement grave. I needed to greet the moon, to embrace the night, to feed.
Most of all, I needed to see Amias.
I rushed up the stairs, through the house, and to the one place I knew I’d find a warm body. The kitchen.
I placed Silverlight on the countertop. “Hello.”
Jin peered into the oven, from which the rich scent of cooking meat wafted, and he barely glanced at me. “Good evening,” he said.
Clayton sat at the table, reading something on his phone, unsmiling and serious as always. He stood and I walked into his embrace with a sigh, then buried my nose against his throat. I inhaled the vanilla scent of him. The cake scent.
But now, there was something even more appetizing mixed in with the cake. Blood.
“Mmm,” I murmured, and touched my tongue to his skin. “You smell good, and you taste even better.”
“Hungry?” he asked, and I didn’t have to look at him to know he smiled. And he wasn’t awkward in the least. There’d been no real introductory phase. No dark times when they had to get to know Trinity the vampire. It was as though I’d always been the person I’d returned as.
“Not here,” Jin demanded, damn persnickety for a man who ate corpses.
I ignored him and concentrated on Clayton.
My belly tightened with anticipation. Hunger churned through my body like an angry river, consuming everything in its path.
And then I was just the ravenous undead.
Clayton’s body was like a warm loaf of bread, and his blood was the mouthwatering stew in which I wanted to dip it.
My appetite had taken over, and the man I loved was nothing more than walking, breathing food.
I drew back my lips and prepared to pierce his flesh, my mind empty of all thoughts but eating. It was that consuming. That important.
That good.
Then the door flew open and Amias yanked me from the hunter.
“No, my love, my greedy love. Your night will begin with your master.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and he carried me out of there. One second I was in the kitchen, Jin’s annoyed voice beating the air like ineffectual butterfly wings, and the next I was inside Willow-Wisp. I rode Amias to the ground and straddled him, my mouth already forming a seal around his skin, pulling in the one thing a vampire needed to thrive.
His blood carried the essence of the woman who’d fed him last, and a hot streak of jealousy competed with my hunger.
That was something I’d need to get over. I was possessive of all my men, but Amias had to eat, and he could not always eat me. I was the servant, he was the master. He could be my only food source—at least for a while—but I could not be his.
That time, my jealousy lingered.
Amias shoved my pants over my hips and pushed his hand between our bodies, sliding a finger inside me. I moaned as I fed but didn’t try to help him as he freed his cock, grabbed my hips, and shoved himself inside me.
He thrust into me and the familiar routine of fucking and feeding from my master finally shoved everything else from my mind.
There was excitement in that encounter, but there was also comfort. I didn’t realize how much I’d needed it until it was over and I was lying wrapped in his arms.
“I didn’t like waking up without you,” I told him, lacing my fingers with his.
“You did well.” He kissed me, gently. “I wish you needed me as much as you believe you do.”
“Amias. I—”
“I will go now,” an unfamiliar voice said.
I gave a startled shriek but Amias didn’t react. He’d known someone was there, of course, would have heard the man approaching.
For some reason, I’d been blissfully unaware that an audience of one was watching.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, sitting up. “Who…”
But the second I glimpsed him, I recognized him. Deep in my vampire brain, I knew him.
The vampire elder.
I grabbed my jeans off the ground, unable to take my stare from the ancient power who crouched a few yards away, his faded eyes holding a grim sort of interest.
“Bring her,” the old man told Amias, and then he floated to his feet and just…disappeared.
He was that fast.
I looked at Amias. “Did that just happen?”
The master’s face was completely blank. His eyes didn’t hold so much as a spar
k. I understood that he’d shut down. I didn’t understand why.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him, as he got to his feet and straightened his clothes.
He didn’t look at me. “Nothing is wrong.”
But I could feel his fear.
“Why does he frighten you so much?” I was genuinely curious. “Can he hurt you?”
He gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Oh, my darling. The elders are back, and though they are taking some time to settle into their places, they are very, very powerful. And very old. They rule the vampires.” He looked at me expectantly.
“Yeah?” I said. “So? Himself rules the supernaturals, but they don’t shrink away from him or fear the very thought of facing him.” I frowned at him. “I feel your fear, Amias. I don’t like that he scares you.”
“Not just fear, Trinity.”
There was the slightest note of impatience and disapproval in his voice, as though he disliked that I hadn’t grasped the situation. As though I’d insulted him by pointing out his fear.
He took my hand and led me in the direction the elder—I assumed—had gone.
I said nothing, just waited for him to continue as we walked.
“It is respect,” he said. “And the knowledge of what they can do to those who break the rules they’ve set for us. It is the realization of what is to come, what will be.”
While the elders had been occupied with the rifters, the vampires had lost their guidance, their rules, their place in society. They’d been left unmoored and had drifted quickly into the dark waters of a human’s world. They’d become hated creatures the humans—and even the supernaturals—hunted, despised, tortured. Their lives had been…difficult.
But the elders were back to help change all that. The vampires would once again have rules and discipline and support.
And punishments, apparently.
“What is to come?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
He stopped walking and took my shoulders, then leaned in to kiss my lips, once. “The changes with the humans and their reactions to us. That is not just because I have charmed them, or because you gave your life for them. It is not just because we swore to protect them and their city against further invasions.”
I held my breath, waiting.
He hesitated, but finally, he told me what he needed me to understand. “It is because the elders hold a subtle sway over the humans. They influence a human’s thoughts.” He fell into silence and watched me intently, wondering how I would take that bit of information.
“You’re saying,” I murmured, “that by being here, the elders automatically mesmerize the humans? They make the humans…more accepting of the vampires?”
He inclined his head. “It is a complicated process, but yes. Somewhat. Just as your sacrifice was part of the process. The humans are influenced in certain ways by the very existence of the vampire council. It is a natural occurrence that is not truly understood, not even by the elders. Certainly not by me.”
“They are priming the humans for change.”
He nodded. “If the elders had continued to guard the rifters and were not here to influence the humans, I could not have posted you on the city streets to teach you control. Vampire clubs would not have sprung up overnight. No matter what we did to protect them from the monsters, the humans would have been unable to accept us.”
“So it’s all a lie,” I realized. “They’re…brainwashed into accepting us.”
He smiled. “Us. It brings me joy to hear you say that.”
I shrugged. “I’m part of you now. I’m a vampire.” How easily that rolled off my tongue. And suddenly, a fierce pride clawed its way through layers of cottony coldness inside me and I knew it would be there forever.
And I understood how very hard it had been for the prideful vampires to be reduced to the contemptuous, ugly, hated creatures they had become.
No one had loved the vampires.
I clutched my stomach, only realizing I was crying when Amias kissed the tears from my cheeks.
“I’m so very sorry,” I whispered, finally. How had he borne it when I’d hunted and killed his kind? How had he borne it when I’d tortured them, staked them, sent them into the horror of their afterlife? And now, with the knowledge of what I’d done, how would I bear it?
“I helped create you,” he said, sternly and with absolutely no doubt or judgment. “What you did, what we did, Trinity, was what we needed to do at that time. There will be no regrets or guilt or sorrow over that tiny moment. Just as you explained to Rhys that he was not to wallow in his guilt. Do you understand?”
But I’d felt his sorrow when he’d watched his people die. I’d felt his rage, his despair, his horror.
Now, I understood it.
And I was crushed beneath the weight of that knowledge. “Your pain will haunt me forever. That is what I understand.”
His stare softened. “I know.”
He did know. It was the same way he felt about me and my pain.
I didn’t care at all that the humans were being gently manipulated. We needed all the help we could get convincing them to accept us.
At last, Amias took my hand and we walked on through the way station graveyard, and I felt somehow changed, yet again.
“How did you know what I told Rhys?” I asked.
He smiled. “I will not be far from your side until you are older. Until you are in less danger of being hurt.”
My tense body relaxed and I gave a long sigh of relief as something inside me melted into the ground and left only serenity in its place.
“What does the elder want with me?” I asked.
“To know you.” He squeezed my hand. “To speak with you.”
“Cool,” I said.
But fear colored his words as he gave one last entreaty. “Be careful, my love. Please. I would not like to see you disciplined.”
I curled my lip. “If he tries anything, I’ll tear him to shreds.”
Amias only sighed.
It took us ten more minutes to find the elder.
In front of us was a clearing, free of tombstones, debris, and foliage. The clearing was bathed in moonlight, and a bright beam of it shone directly down on the two people who sat on the ground, their heads together as they discussed things I could only imagine.
One of the people was the elder. The other was Himself, the King of Everything.
I hadn’t seen him since he’d sat behind me on the back of the dragon, and I was strangely reluctant to see him now.
I couldn’t have said why.
Maybe just because I didn’t know how I should feel about him anymore. Should I be angry? Should I feel betrayed? Should I kowtow to him, as always, now that he was no longer my king?
But then, he’d never really been my king.
The elder, though. He was my king.
“You’re wrong. Your king will be the one with whom you rule.”
I cried out and clutched my head as Himself invaded my mind, and anger, fierce and vast, bubbled like a spring inside me.
“Get out…”
To my utter shock, he obeyed me. No, I realized, immediately. He hadn’t obeyed me—I’d simply expelled him.
Somehow, I had expelled the King of Everything from my mind.
And when I lowered my hands and opened my eyes, Himself and the elder were both looking at me. Himself lifted his hand and beckoned me into their circle of light.
Amias melted away and I walked reluctantly into the clearing to join the two ancient beings—and my future—alone.
Chapter Fourteen
LIGHTBRINGER
“Is this the end?” I asked, as I knelt with them.
“Oh, no, child,” Himself said, his black eyes nearly lost in the folds of his skin. “It is the beginning.”
I swallowed past the dryness in my mouth. “What happens in the beginning?”
“There is light,” the elder replied.
He looked at me, waiting. In the waiting I saw th
at he was not a male. He wasn’t female, either. He was both, and neither, and something beyond my comprehension.
“What do I have to do?” I whispered, dreading his answer.
He surprised me. “You have only to be, in one way or another.”
“But my purpose—”
“Is to be,” he interrupted, firmly.
Himself was more willing to elaborate. “The nonhumans have lived in darkness for such a very long time,” he said. “It has crept upon them so subtly they began to accept their torment as a matter of course. But you. You and your sword. You will be their light.”
My palm itched with the need to squeeze Silverlight’s grip, but I’d left her in the kitchen with Jin. “How?”
They both smiled, as though I was a child they were tolerating. “Exactly as you have been since the beginning,” Himself told me. “You protect the secrets, you connect the powers, and you bring the light.”
I looked from one to the other. “By being nearly killed by a sick, mad vampire? By getting my entire family slaughtered? By standing by as Angus was beaten, his children tormented, my men subdued? By hunting and killing because my blood says that I must? By dying?” I curled my fist and hit the ground. “By becoming a rifter?”
The elder flinched at the word rifter. But his reply was immediate and impatient. “By being. You do not have to understand or accept it. It is so. You have decisions to make now. Leave me to my peace. It was hard-won and well-deserved.” He lifted his nose into the air, closed his eyes, and dismissed me.
Himself’s smile was almost mischievous as he watched my frustration. “Come, Lightbringer,” he said, climbing to his feet. “We will leave him to his peace.”
“Child,” the elder called, as Himself took my arm and began to walk with me from the clearing. “You will tell the occupants of the way station that my job there is done. I shall remain in Willow-Wisp. They needn’t fret overmuch. They are to continue bringing me warm blood, and I will not again darken your doorstep.”
I gaped at Himself. “The supernaturals have been feeding him?” No wonder they wanted him out of the way station.
Himself urged me to continue walking. “The elders do not require human blood. They prefer the magical blood of the supernatural—the more powerful, the better.”