A Touch of Crimson (41 page)
Damien leaned closer and spoke under his breath. “She should be on fire in this level of sunlight. How is it possible that she’s not?”
Adrian sat on the railing and watched Lindsay go through an elaborate and unwittingly sexy calisthenics routine. “I don’t know, but I suspect my blood has something to do with it. Much like Fallen blood conveys a temporary immunity.”
“Other vamps have bitten Sentinels before. They weren’t then able to practice yoga on an uncovered deck.”
“But only Lindsay has drunk Sentinel blood exclusively after being turned by one of the Fallen. Every cell in her body is nourished by blood that protects her. As long as she continues to drink from me, she might keep the benefits.”
“A minion with the gifts of the Fallen.” Damien lifted a hand to his brow, as if pained. “If Sentinel blood cures the vampire disease and imparts immunity to the healthy, and others were to learn of this—”
“—we’d be hunted to extinction. I know.”
“Without the lycans, we’re sitting ducks.”
“Siobhán is testing whether lycan blood is an alternative. They were once seraphim, too.”
Damien was silent for a moment. “I’ll pray for a miracle.”
“Pray for us all.” Adrian set his hands on the railing and tipped his face up to the sun. The morning breeze blew across his feathers in a soft greeting from the new day. “We’re going to need it.”
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“We need to find out whether or not there are other Alphas.” Elijah glanced at the lycan who walked beside him, wondering at how easily Stephan had stepped into the role of his Beta.
Instinct weighted heavily on everything they did as a fledgling pack, a truth that unsettled Elijah more than it soothed. He would have preferred that their destinies be shaped by their own hands and not by the demon blood that flowed through their veins.
But as he traversed the long stone hallway, the number of verdant gazes staring back at him was irrefutable proof of how dominant a lycan’s baser nature was. Every one of them had the luminous green irises of a mixed bloodline creature. They lined the walls by the hundreds, staring as he passed them, forming a gauntlet through the red rock caves in southern Utah that he’d selected as his headquarters. They thought he was a damn messiah, the one lycan who could lead them into a new age of independence. They didn’t realize that their expectations and hopes for freedom imprisoned him.
“I’ve made it a top priority,” Stephan assured. “But half the lycans we send out don’t return.”
“Perhaps they’re returning to the Sentinel fold. As far as quality of life goes, we had it better working for the angels.”
“Is any price too high to pay for liberty?” Stephan asked. “We all know the Sentinels don’t stand a chance if we take the offensive. There are less than two hundred of them in existence. Our numbers are in the tens of thousands.”
The gentle prodding for Elijah to be proactive instead of reactive wasn’t lost on him. He could feel it in the air around him, the crackling energy of lycans ready and willing to hunt. “Not yet,” he said. “It’s not time.”
An arm shot out and grabbed him. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”
Elijah paused and turned, facing the brawny male whose eyes glowed in the shadows of the cave. The lycan was bristling and half shifted, his arms and neck covered in a grayish pelt.
The beast in Elijah growled a warning, but he held it in check, a control that made him Alpha.
“Are you challenging me, Nicodemus?” he asked with dangerous softness. He’d been waiting for this, had known it was coming. It would only be the first challenge of many, until he established his dominance through physical prowess in addition to a lycan’s instinctive need to follow a leader.
The lycan’s nostrils flared, his chest heaving as he fought against his beast. Lacking Elijah’s control, Nic would lose.
Prying the man’s grip from his arm, Elijah said, “You know where to find me.”
Then he turned his back to the challenge and walked away, deliberately baiting Nic’s beast. The sooner they got this over with the better.
Nic had asked him what he was waiting for. He was waiting for cohesion, trust, loyalty—the cementing framework that would hold all the packs together. Greater numbers or not, there was no way they’d win against a tightly commanded elite military unit like the Sentinels if they didn’t work together.
A female approached him at a near run, agitation radiating from her tense frame. “Alpha,” she greeted him. “You have a visitor. A vampire.”
His brows rose. “
A
vampire? As in one?”
A
vampire? As in one?”
“Yes. She asked for the Alpha.”
Elijah’s curiosity was more than piqued. The lycans had been created by the Sentinels for the sole purpose of hunting and containing the vampires. The fact that the lycans had revolted from Sentinel control didn’t mean they’d forgotten their ingrained hatred of bloodsuckers. For a vamp to walk into a den alone was suicidal.
“Show her to the great room,” he said.
The lycan turned and ran back the way she’d come, with Elijah and Stephan following at a more sedate pace.
Stephan shook his head. “What the fuck?”
“She’s desperate, for some reason.”
“Why is that our problem?”
Shrugging, Elijah said, “Could be our gain.”
“Do we really want to become a safe house for bloodsucking losers?”
“Let me get this straight: we rebel and we’re better off, but a vampire bolts and they’re a loser?”
Stephan scowled. “You know as well as I do that the pack won’t take in vamps.”
“Times have changed. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re pretty damned desperate, too.”
Elijah was stepping over the threshold into the great room when he heard the growl behind him. Lunging forward, he shifted into his lupine form before his paws hit the rock floor. He whirled around at the moment Nicodemus charged, taking a full-on ramming in the side that knocked the wind from him. Rolling over, he regained his feet, righting himself in time to catch his challenger by the throat midleap. With a toss of his head, Elijah threw the other lycan across the room. Then he howled his fury, the sound reverberating through the massive room.
Nic skid sideways on his paws, then found traction and attacked again. Elijah rushed forward to intercept him.
They collided with brutal force, their jaws snapping for purchase. Nic caught him by the foreleg and bit hard. Elijah went for the flank, his teeth digging in deep, his beast growling at the heady taste of hot, rich blood.
Kicking off his attacker, Elijah turned, ripping a chunk of flesh away. Nic yelped and came back around, limping. Elijah crouched, prepared to leap, when the lush scent of ripe cherries slid across his senses in teasing tendrils. The fragrance swept through him, burning through his blood and sending aggression pumping through his veins.
He was abruptly sick of playing with Nicodemus. Elijah vaulted ahead, twisting midair to avoid Nic’s snarling maw and coming down on the lycan’s back. Catching him by the throat, Elijah pinned him to the floor, his jaws clenched tight enough to wound and warn, but not enough to kill. Yet. Just the slightest increase in pressure would cut off Nic’s air.
Nic writhed for a few moments, his limbs flailing in an effort to shake off his opponent. Then blood loss and exhaustion stole his strength. He whimpered for his release and Elijah let him go.
Elijah’s low growl rumbled through the room. He turned, his gaze meeting those of every lycan in the room. They stood around the perimeter, their gazes lowering quickly as he dared any comers.
Satisfied that he’d made his point for the moment, he shifted and faced the arched doorway to the great room, his attention riveted to that ripe, sweet scent that was making his dick hard.
“Get me a change of clothes,” he said to the room at large, uncaring of who did it, just that it got done. “And a damp towel.”
He’d barely finished speaking when she appeared, looking just as he remembered her—black heeled boots, black Lycra bodysuit that clung to every curve, scarlet red hair that fell to her waist, and pearly white fangs. She looked like something out of a BDSM-laced wet dream and he wanted to fuck her nearly as badly as he wanted to kill her. The lust was instinctual and unwelcome; the fury was laced with grief and pain. She’d killed his best friend in a slow, agonizing death while trying to get to him.
Be careful what you wish for, bitch.
Baring his teeth in a semblance of a smile, he said her name, “Vashti.”
Her gaze narrowed as she picked up his scent. “You.”
Shit.
Vash stared at the naked, blood-spattered lycan standing across the room and her fists clenched. The lack of the familiar weight of her sword sheath on her back had already been driving her nuts, but now it pissed her off.
He’d killed her friend, and he was going to pay.
She stalked closer, her booted heels clicking across the uneven stone floor. They lived in a goddamn cave and fought among themselves like animals. Fucking dogs. She’d tried to talk Syre out of this fool’s errand, but the vampire leader would not be swayed. He believed in the old “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” way of conducting a war and she might have agreed with that, if they were talking about anyone but lycans.
“The name is Elijah,” he corrected, watching her with the focused gaze of a natural hunter zeroing in on its prey.
Another male approached him with a towel in one hand and clothes in the other. Elijah took the towel and began to wipe the blood from his mouth and jaw. His gaze never left hers as the cloth moved across his broad chest and arms.
Vash found her attention reluctantly drawn to the stroking of white terry cloth over golden skin. He was ripped with powerful muscles from head to toe, beautifully defined in a way she couldn’t help but appreciate. There wasn’t an ounce of extraneous flesh on him and his virility was unquestionable, even without his display of an impressive cock and weighty testicles. His scent was in the air, an earthy yet exhilarating fragrance of clove and bergamot that was rich with male pheromones.
He handed the towel to the lycan standing next him, then stroked his long, thick penis from root to tip.
“Like what you see?” he taunted in a deep rumbling voice that affected her physically. Blood oozed from a nasty gash in his calf, the scent so delicious her mouth watered for a taste of it.
She forced her gaze to lift from his groin with insolent leisure. “Just marveling that you don’t smell like wet dog.”
His nostrils flared. “You smell like sacrificial lamb.”
Vash laughed softly. “I’m here to help you, lycan. You’re safe while you’re underground, but you’ll have to surface at some point, and beneath the open sky is where the angels will slaughter you all. Since you’re already fighting among yourselves, you won’t have a chance in hell against Adrian’s Sentinels without allies.”
The lycans around the room rumbled their disgust at the very idea. She raised her voice and spoke to the assembly at large. “I absolutely agree with you. I don’t want to work with you either.”
“Yet you came when Syre sent you,” Elijah said, stepping into a loose pair of jeans. “Walked straight into a wolf’s den at his order.”
She faced him again, her chin lifting. “We’re more civilized than you, lycan. We know the value of a hierarchy of power.”
He approached her, his barefooted stride sleek and predatory. The tight roping of muscles over his abdomen flexed as he walked, riveting her gaze. A surge of heat moved through her as his scent grew stronger.
Fuck
. She’d been celibate too long if a lycan could make her hot.
. She’d been celibate too long if a lycan could make her hot.
Her hands fisted as he stopped in front of her. Too close. Invading her personal space. Trying to intimidate her with his powerful body and sharply edged hunger. She saw the need in his eyes and smelled it in the air around him. He hated her, yet he desired her.
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