Black

by Donya Lynne

  For every vampire who got hooked on the blue shit, the vampire race became that much easier to defeat. If nothing was done, it was only a matter of time before the power balance shifted and drecks claimed the upper hand.

  And if that happened, God help the human race.

  Not all drecks were bad, but the leadership was, and the dreck race would do what the leader wanted. And if Premier Royce wanted to exterminate humans or turn them into slaves, the rest of his race would have no choice but to comply.

  That’s where Ronan’s special, self-appointed vigilante status came in. Micah had to follow protocol, Ronan didn’t. He was Robin Hood. Green Arrow. Batman and Robin. He put on his mask, hit the streets, and took out the trash. If said trash ended up dead along the way, so much the better. He was making the world a better place, not playing footsies with political correctness.

  Ronan exited the closet, cinching a leather belt around his waist. He was dressed all in black and had one of his skull masks tucked under his good arm. He kept a few changes of clothes at Alexis’s place. Like everything else about them, it was just simpler that way, especially when they worked—and played—together as often as they did.

  Alexis sat in the center of the bed, the sheet draped over her lap, her breasts shamelessly exposed. “You coming back here when you’re done?”

  “I can if you want me to?” He wouldn’t mind spending the day with her. Nobody knew about their relationship, not even his father, so he didn’t have to worry about anyone tracking him down here. He could hide out at her place for a day or two and have a little fun, all while ensuring his loathsome family left him alone.

  Alexis looked him up and down then shrugged one shoulder. “Sure, why not? It’s been a while since you tied me up.” Her mouth curled into a sexy smirk.

  He grinned. “Then I’ll be back before dawn.” He took his mask out from under his arm. “Hey, do you have any more of that tincture? The one that hides my scent?”

  She sighed, her eyes rolling as her head tilted to one side. “Are you out again?”

  “Not yet, but I’m getting low.”

  Making a tsking noise, she threw back the sheet, exposing her gloriously naked body as she swung her legs around and got to her feet. He stared at her slight but supple curves then followed her as she passed him and strolled back to her first aid kit, where she fished through the contents on the bottom.

  Turning, she held out a small vial. “This is my last bottle until I can make more, so try to make it last.”

  He plucked the tiny bottle from her hand and stashed it in his pocket. “Yes, Mom.”

  “Ugh, I am not your mom.”

  Cozying up to her, he set his mask on the table and slid his hand over her hip and around to her bare ass, where he gave her cheek a squeeze. “And thank God for that.” He pulled her hips forward as he pinched her nipple with his free hand, relishing the way it made her gasp sharply, and then released her. “Can I take your bike?” She had a kick-ass Kawasaki built for speed and agility. It would be a lot better for hunting targets than his Jeep.

  With a lick of her lips and flushed cheeks—because, yeah, nipple play really did work that fast at turning her on—she took a step back and chucked her chin to where her spare keys hung on a rack on the wall. “Just don’t wreck it.”

  He retrieved his mask, snatched the keys from the hook, and twirled the ring around his index finger, catching the keys with a jingle of metal on metal in his palm. “Where I’m going, I’d be more worried about it getting stolen.”

  “Ro . . .”

  He cradled her cheek in his palm, tucking his fingers into her hair. “I’m only kidding.” He pecked her on the lips. “I’ll keep it safe.”

  “You’d better.”

  Seconds later, he was out the garage door and slinging his leg over the saddle of one of the finest pieces of machinery he’d ever ridden as the bay door slowly crawled upward.

  A turn of the key, the hungry whine of the engine . . .

  Let the hunt begin.

  Chapter 6

  Micah lay on his side, watching Sam sleep. Bruises shackled her wrists, and her neck and breasts were covered with bite marks, but she wore a delicate smile, as if, even in sleep, she was content and right where she wanted to be.

  He’d used her body within an inch of sanity for over an hour, but with every release, he’d exorcised a few more of the demons that had been awakened by all that had transpired tonight. Learning your pops was still alive and that you had a little bro made for a serious mindfuck, and didn’t Micah know it.

  But now he was better. More focused. More like his old self again.

  His head wasn’t exactly a calm sea of ambience, but at least his thoughts were less scattered, and fragmented questions no longer strangled his brain. It was like he’d been a clogged drain that had been Roto-Rootered, Liquid Plumbered, and snaked all at once, letting the water flow freely again. So, yeah, the rough fucking had done its job. All that haunted him now were a few straggling, ghostlike memories.

  Rolling to his back, he rubbed his palms up and down his face and stared up at the ceiling as his thoughts returned to his childhood. To the first time his father took him hunting.

  He’d been twelve years old.

  Oh sure, Micah had gone on hunts before, but only as an observer. Only as a student to learn how to track and corral the quarry for the kill. This had been the first time he’d been armed with his bow and arrow . . . an active participant rather than a bystander.

  He closed his eyes, and once more, he was racing through the trees on his skinny, twelve-year-old legs, tracking the wild boar they would roast later for the celebration of the newly mated couple in their village. It was midday, but the thick forest canopy blocked out the sun, keeping his father and the other vampires safe from sunlight. The heavy, hooded cloaks they wore were an added protection.

  Darting around the trees, Micah made hardly a noise as his long black hair whipped behind him. Most of the males in the village wore their hair short, but not he and his father. They left their hair long as a sign of status.

  Coming to an abrupt stop, he lifted his bow and nocked an arrow with expert quickness, then drew the string back by his ear and held his breath. His young vampire hearing, which was only just beginning to develop, picked up the approach of both the boar and the other hunters driving it toward him.

  It was a high honor that they had chosen him to send the fatal arrow into their quarry, and he refused to let them down. To let his father down. Because if he failed, it would reflect badly on not just him, but his father, too.

  Closing his left eye, he tracked with his right as he stared down the length of the arrow to the deadly tip, following the crashing noises of the boar as it barreled through the forest toward him.

  The moment the boar burst through the undergrowth, Micah took a moment to steady himself, girding his courage against the raging, snarling beast, and then released the bow.

  The arrow zipped through the air and penetrated the boar straight between the eyes.

  A desperate squeal peeled from the animal’s throat as it lurched and fell forward. A moment later, his father rushed into the clearing, the others behind him, and drove his knife into the boar’s neck, ensuring the beast didn’t suffer needlessly. They didn’t hunt for sport. They hunted out of necessity, for food and pelts, which they used for a variety of items around the village, from clothes to waterskins to floor coverings. No part of the boar would go unused. Not even its blood, which a member of their hunting party rushed forward to collect in a satchel made of animal skin as it poured from the wound in the beast’s neck. The females would use it to make blood sausage for tonight’s feast.

  “Clean kill, Micah.” His father rose and stood tall, his shoulders straight and chest lifted. “I’m proud of you.”

  Micah lifted his shoulders and chest, too, mimicking his father as pride coursed through him. Pleasing his father was the greatest reward he could hope for. Nothing was better than
receiving a pat on the shoulder or a smile of approval from his father.

  “Those are some superb skills you have there, boy,” his uncle Rory added, joining his father as he wiped the sweat off his brow. Rory turned toward his father. “You’ve done a good job with this one, Drake. A damn fine job.”

  His father beamed as he approached then knelt in front of Micah. “You’ll make a powerful warrior someday, Micah.”

  “Just like you?” He would be honored to be only half the warrior his father was.

  His father had fought with the king during the war, and from the way the others in the village revered him, Micah knew his father’s reputation was legendary.

  The elder male placed his large palm on Micah’s small shoulder. Its heaviness threatened to tip Micah over, but he forced himself to stand tall. “Micah, I daresay you’re destined to become the greatest warrior our race has ever seen.”

  The greatest? How could that be? No one could ever be greater than Drake Black.

  Micah smiled and nodded, accepting the compliment even as he doubted his own abilities to overtake his father’s lofty example. “I won’t let you down, Father.”

  His father rose to his full height and shook his head. “My son, you could never let me down.”

  As his father’s words echoed in his memory, a wave of energy jarred Micah from his thoughts. He opened his eyes and frowned up at the ceiling. Sam still slept beside him. But what was that weird humming? Like white noise fuzzing his thoughts.

  He lifted his head and scanned the room.

  Then the static-like noise was gone.

  His frown deepened, his senses sharpening as he glanced around the dark, silent room. The only sound was that of Sam’s gentle breathing.

  But something had stirred him from the reliving of his past.

  And there it was again.

  A soft surge of energy touched his mind in a way that reminded him of how it felt when he heard other people’s thoughts. Only, no words echoed inside his head, just a subtle vibration and static. Well, it was more like a soft popping or crackling.

  And then the sensation was gone again.

  With his mind freed from whatever had just reached out to him, he sat up and glanced at Sam. She remained undisturbed, in deep slumber, her eyes moving behind her eyelids as she dreamed.

  Maybe that’s what he’d felt. He occasionally picked up on her dreams, and doing so did feel similar to hearing people’s thoughts. But he’d always caught snapshots of images and words from her dreams, not the Rice Krispies elves doing the Snap! Crack! Pop! thing inside his head.

  Shaking it off, he dismissed it as nothing. Just Sam’s dreams reaching out to him, only in a new way.

  His sweet Sam. His mate. His life. He would be lost without her.

  Careful not to wake her, he eased out of bed. After slipping on a pair of sweats, he quietly retreated to the living room, where he stood in front of the wall of windows and stared out over downtown Chicago, his thoughts returning to how it had felt to earn his father’s approval when he was still but a little boy.

  He had looked up to his father once. Drake Black had been his entire world. His hero. His idol. His mentor. Now Micah didn’t know how to feel about him.

  How do you see someone as a hero when they’ve let you believe a lie for nearly a thousand years?

  Chapter 7

  Persephone paced at the head of an alley behind an abandoned building in the heart of Chicago’s notorious, gang-riddled South Side. A shot rang out from a few blocks to the west, followed by more gunshots, distant screams, and then sirens.

  Toto, we’re not in Kansas, anymore. The South Side was as different from the North Shore as a Timex was from a Rolex. Hey, but at least a Timex couldn’t kill you. Death was a real possibility on the South Side.

  Speaking of timepieces . . .

  Stepping farther into the shadows, she checked the platinum Cartier watch on her trembling wrist. She was shaking so badly it took her a few seconds to confirm the time.

  The people she was there to meet were late. Then again, they usually were, but only by a few minutes.

  She lowered her arms, gripping her left wrist tightly with her right hand, trying to make the shivering stop. No such luck. All she managed to do was transfer the violent tremors from her arms to her teeth, which chattered as she slinked a few steps farther into the alley as a pair of drecks appeared on the street corner, spotted her, and headed her way.

  Just the sight of them with their small duffel of yes-please-I-need-some was enough to calm the shakes and bring a sigh of relief.

  She’d tried to get off the blue powder, which had become blue rock, and then injectable blue serum. A month ago now, wasn’t it? Or was it two? She couldn’t think straight enough to put a timeline on when she and Miriam, her best friend and the king’s daughter, had decided to enter AKM’s cobalt addiction rehabilitation program and get off the crap.

  Miriam had succeeded and remained sober.

  Persephone hadn’t and was back on the blue death.

  Then again, Miriam had her new mate and her new and improved father to thank for her clean status. Persephone didn’t have that kind of support at home. Lucky her.

  Everything was different now that Miriam had Io in her life. She was a recovering addict, in love, and expecting her first young. All because her father had realized the error of his ways.

  Almost losing his daughter had made the king reevaluate how strict he’d been with Miriam, which had led him to understand he was to blame for pushing her to use cobalt as a coping mechanism. Once he realized he was contributing to his daughter’s near-death overdoses, he quickly modified his behavior, and now he and Miriam were closer than ever, and she was getting the support she needed to stay sober.

  Too bad Persephone’s own father couldn’t drink King Bain’s brand of Kool-Aid and give her some slack, too. But, noooo, her father was even worse than Miriam’s father had been before he pulled his head out of his ass. At least the king had always desired a true mate for Miriam. One who had bonded to her, soul to soul, tied one to the other through biology. It had been his methods of finding said biological mate for Miriam that had been the problem, even though his heart had always been in the right place.

  But Persephone’s father’s heart was all wrong. In every way.

  He followed the old traditions. Or, as Persephone called them, the archaic traditions. Traditions that had fallen out of favor with the king eons ago because of their preference for arranged matings instead of natural ones. Traditions that dismissed the natural order of things and sought to do better what Mother Nature would always do best.

  Caring more about social standing and money, her father insisted on choosing a mate for her that met his standards, whether she liked the guy or not.

  Only a male of proper breeding could bed his daughter, even if said bedding would never result in offspring, because it was well known among the vampire race that unless a biological mating occurred, a male couldn’t have a calling, and if he couldn’t go into a calling phase, he was practically infertile.

  But to people like her father, who still engaged in the practice of arranging unions for their children, pedigree was more valuable than a male’s ability to sire a young. All they cared about was that if an arranged couple was blessed with a young, at least the bloodlines remained pure.

  At least half of the vampire couples of the upper class who had been together longer than five hundred years still had no children, which was why so many bloodlines had gone extinct. No callings meant no children to pass on the family genes.

  That was a fate Persephone couldn’t envision for herself. She wanted young. She wanted a lot of young. The more the merrier. But with a mate who had been chosen for her rather than one who had bonded to her naturally, a large family was out of the question.

  Her father had already tried to pair her with Arion Savakis, the pure-blooded son of Gregos Savakis, another of the king’s liaisons.

  She had like
d Arion. He was handsome, virile, and a member of the king’s warrior class. Every female she knew wanted Arion for a mate, and she had been prepared to sacrifice her dream of a large family simply at the thought of feeling his strong, able hands on her body, her breasts, her sex. After all, if she couldn’t hope for children, she could at least hope for pleasure.

  But Arion had already mated another—the male Severin—and King Bain had upheld the pairing, leaving her like a jilted human at the altar, no groom, no wedding, no honeymoon.

  Still a virgin.

  But her father—while livid at being robbed of something he felt was his right—simply moved on, scouting the pool of unmated upper-class sons like he was tossing a fishing line into a lake without caring what he reeled in. All that mattered was how wealthy the fish was. The quality of the meat wasn’t as important as the size of the fish’s bank account, even if what he landed was a slippery eel instead of a red snapper.

  She would be mated by summer’s end. That much she was sure of. And since it appeared he’d made his selection, because she knew of only one male he was still interviewing, the mating was likely to happen sooner rather than later.

  Persephone’s gag reflex nearly engaged, helped along by her cobalt withdrawal. She held no desire or fondness for the male in question. He had clammy skin, oily hair, and needed to put on at least a hundred pounds and grow six inches to be of ample size to even begin appealing to her sense of physical attraction. Not only was he shorter than she was, his eyes were too close together, his lips as thin as a thread, and his nose small and pointed.

  He reminded her of Professor Snape from the Harry Potter movies, but even Snape was better looking than this male.

  How would she ever withstand his cold, snakelike touch? The thought of kissing him was enough to nauseate her. Sex would surely make her retch.