Blood Vengeance (Blood Curse Series Book 7) (5 page)

Stepping back from his contradictory embrace, she turned toward the kitchen and sighed. Human guests, indeed. “I think I’ll have that glass of wine now.” To hell with propriety: What was she supposed to do with him? How would she ever get through this? “In fact, just bring a bottle, if you don’t mind.”

Ramsey chuckled, deep, low, and gravelly from the throat.
Would you please stop doing that?
He took a few steps toward the kitchen. “Red or white?” His voice was positively lethal.

Tiffany cringed at the unspoken implication: red or white?

Blood or wine
?

“White,” she quickly asserted. And then she inadvertently eyed the stocked pine-and-glass bar situated next to the parlor. “Unless you have something stronger.” What the hell, she was not too proud to self-medicate.

His lips turned up in a wicked grin as he sauntered to the bar instead, grabbed a thin plastic toothpick out of a crystal jar, and stuffed it between his ridiculously pouty lips. “Now you’re speaking my language,” he mumbled around the toothpick. “Name your poison.”

Tiffany searched for the nearest seat in the living room, whichever chair was small enough to seat only one person at a time.
Poison?
Oh yeah, the male hardly understood the power of his words. Or maybe poignancy was a better term. “You choose,” she said evenly. And then she watched as he set about creating the perfect mixture of
poison
in an exquisite, monogramed glass.

Geez, could the male be any more of an
enigma?

She buttoned her tailored blouse to the very tippy-top and waited for her drink.

four

Tawni Duvall set down her chalk on the kitchen counter and checked the time. It was 11:00 PM, and the moon was an unusual shade of pale coral, almost as if it had some kind of red dye in it. She stared at the immaculate crisscrossed lines outlining the carefully drawn, five-pointed star which made up her latest diagram, and she frowned in spite of the perfection. She was at her wits’ end, honestly. As in, what did the elusive entities of the underworld want from a faithful servant in order to grant her an audience? Hells bells, she was beautiful, college-educated, and willing to delve as deeply into darkness as the devil himself.

What kind of minions were the demons looking for these days, anyway?

She stared at the diagram and practically seethed with rage and frustration. Tawni had read every book she could get her hands on about conjuring dark spirits, and she had performed every nasty ritual imaginable, including sacrificing several cutesy little furry animals.
So what!
She had loved every minute of it. The surge of power she had felt as the creatures shivered in her hands, the thrill of possibility that washed over her when she thought about the absolute command she held over their lives—all of it absolutely titillated her, and she made no apology for her actions. She had even gone so far as to park her POS clunker outside of an elementary school the other day, just to watch the prim and proper children exit the building and get onto the little yellow school bus. There was a particularly cute kindergartener in pigtails who caught her eye, all flawless skin and big blue eyes, but she had been too much of a chicken to approach the girl.

Tawni had not crossed over into harming humans yet, not ever, but she was willing to consider it if she had to. Eventually,
something
had to work. She was getting tired of all the endless waiting.

She stepped into the center of the diagram and opened the tattered book of spells she had purchased in some corner dime-store shop in a quaint little village, the last time she’d been in Europe, and began to read a highlighted passage: “Dark shadows, wayward souls, I summon you now before me. With my free will and power, I bid you:
Appear
. Come to me. Come to me. Come to me.”

She waited quietly with bated breath.

When nothing happened, she read it again, this time placing undue emphasis on the last three phrases. “
Come to me
.
Come to me
.
Come to me.
Now!” She added the last word for effect.

All at once, an icy breeze swept through the kitchen window, as if from a sudden gust of winter wind—but the window wasn’t open—and a dark, evocative presence began to take shape in front of her like a specter rising out of a fog. She spun around on her heels to stare at the front door, as if a summoned soul would need to use a door.

She bit her bottom lip, barely realizing that she was doing it.

And just like that, the entity appeared in her living room, on the other side of the tiny bar that divided the room from the kitchen. The being was about six feet tall, imposing, definitely muscular, and he had the most glorious demonic-looking hair she had ever seen: It was halfway down his back, swirling in an unseen wind, like a host of living snakes, each coiled band shimmering midnight black or a deep blood red.

It was magnificent.

Creepy.

Unlike anything she had ever laid eyes on before. And bless the darkness, but unlike hers, it did not look like it had been dyed! She gasped and met his dark sapphire eyes with approval. They glowed with lethal intensity, and then he winked at her, his thinly arched brows furrowing from the gesture. “You called?”

She bowed her head in reverence. “Greetings, Dark One.” Her voice was trembling, and it caused him to smile.
Smile
. A grin of pure, unadulterated wickedness.

“You have no idea how truly
accurate
that salutation is.” His forehead creased with interest, and he gazed directly at her from beneath a pronounced widow’s peak before speaking once more in a heavily laced voice: satin, fire, and brimstone. “Greetings, Miss Duvall.”

She gulped. “Greetings.” And then her voice came out in a thin, fearful chirp. “Wh… what am I so accurate about?” She could barely contain her excitement, despite her mounting fear.

“The term you used:
Dark One
,” he lilted, almost singing the words. “It is fitting on so very many levels. It is, indeed, my correct title.”

She felt her knees grow weak beneath her. Tawni had anticipated this moment a thousand times in her mind, the excitement, the titillation, finally coming in contact with
true
dark energy, but nothing had prepared her for the sheer breadth of power that radiated about the creature now standing in her apartment. He practically oozed malevolence; cruelty emanated from every pore of his skin; and the taint of evil expanded and contracted with every flex of his muscles, accentuating his hard-cut body. His aura contained three distinct colors, inky gray, sickly purple, and a garish shade of yellowish green; and it swirled in and out of his thick mane of hair as if mating with the illusionary snakes.

He took a step toward the kitchen, gliding like an upright cobra, and every cell in her body trembled with terror.
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit
.
What had she done
? This demon was death on two feet, and if he wasn’t intimately pleased with her efforts, she knew she would never live to see the light of day. It was written all over his beautiful,
terrifying
face.

“My liege… my lord… Dark One?” Oh hell, she had no idea how to properly address him going forward. “I’m honored that you came. Thank you for responding to my summons.” She bent to one knee and bowed her head, too terrified to hold his piercing gaze.

“You may call me
master
,” he drawled lazily, and then he entered the kitchen noiselessly, though she never saw him move.

“Yes, master,” she whispered, feeling like she might just empty her bladder.
Oh, please, no. Not now. Not here
. She clenched her Kegel muscles as tightly as she could and bent her head even lower.

He took another step in her direction, stopping just short of stepping on her hair, and his presence, so near and domineering, was more than her quaking body could handle.

She fell prostrate on the floor, her forehead pressed to the cool, dirty tiles, trying desperately to staunch her rising nausea. The genuflecting wasn’t planned or even intentional. It was simply instinctive, occurring on a deep primal level. Somehow, Tawni just
knew
she had to become smaller, weaker, make herself less and less significant before him. She had to demonstrate her utter and absolute surrender… if she wanted to live.

He chuckled sardonically. “Very good, Miss. Duvall. I see you know your place.”

“I do,” she whispered, imagining what it would feel like if he actually touched her.

“I do,
what
?” he growled in that inhuman voice.

“I do,
master
,” she repeated, pressing her face further into the tiles.
Good lord, he was scary… and sexy as all get-out.

He crouched down to eye her more closely, and she nearly fainted with anticipation. And then, he snatched her by the hair, yanked upward to force her gaze, and released a pair of wicked-looking fangs. “Look at me, human!”

Tawni’s scalp blazed as if it were on fire. His fingers were as strong as forceps, and her roots were burning. “My lord?” she asked, shocked by his sudden violence and anger.
What had she done wrong?
“I mean, Dark One,
master
?”

He chuckled deep in his throat. “Your place,
Tawni Duvall
, is as a grub beneath my feet. You don’t summon me. You don’t
summon
anything. You are nothing more than a paltry, insignificant worm, an ameba that I could crush in an instant, a vessel that I
will
use for my perverted pleasure—and your unspeakable pain—whenever I so desire. You are a mere tool within my hand, one that I may devour, destroy, or defile at will.” He looked down at her faded blue jeans and frowned. “And if you lose your bowels on this floor, in front of me, I will tear this hair from your head, wipe up your excrement with your scalp, and stuff it down your insignificant throat. And then I will snap your bones, one at a time, starting from your head to your toes, while I force you to eat them, before I let you die.” He paused, as if considering his next words carefully. “So, if you need to use the restroom, I suggest you do it now.”

Tawni froze.

This was nothing like she had envisioned.

He
was nothing like she had imagined.

Perhaps she just needed to try harder to please him, to win his regard and affection. She could do that. She was born to do just that. She did have to urinate, but she wasn’t about to tell him that now. She could hold it.
She would hold it.

He released his grip on her hair and stood up.

“Thank you,” she whispered, struggling not to massage her burning scalp.

“Get up!” he ordered.

She stumbled to her feet, took one hard look at his face, and nearly passed out.

He caught her by the arm and steadied her, maintaining his iron grip until she regained her balance. “Now then,” he drawled, “your
master’s
name is Salvatore Nistor, and I have come in answer to your
request
, not your summons.”

She started to reply, but he held up his forefinger to silence her, waggling it back and forth in warning.

Enough said.

No problem
.

She waited like a silent lamb.

“The entities you seek do not exist as you have sought them, at least not in the way you imagine. Your human demons are inside of you, projections of your fears, manifestations of your own inner guile and bitterness. They are the living, breathing creations of so much envy, self-revulsion, and hate, born of your errant, contrary vibrations. Without your
summons
, they would not appear. Do not get me wrong: Such demons do, in fact, exist. They exist for those humans who desire, feed, or fear them, and they take the form of the monster that lives inside. They become that which you believe… or need… or create.”

Tawni frowned, not understanding his words. “Then… then what are you?”

“I, sweet Tawni, am the real thing.” He laughed so loud that the foundation of her kitchen shook. “A monster unlike any you have ever envisioned: Vampyr… Nosferatu… a creature of the night. And I make the grotesque demons in your human art, your restless dreams, your furtive imagination, look like fairy tales, mere hoaxes that go bump in the night.” He narrowed his diabolical gaze. “I can assure you, I am very real. And in my world, the dark lords are real as well.” He reached out, produced a claw on his first finger, and began to carve a mock diagram, like the one she had drawn on the kitchen floor, into the front of her chest, just below her collarbone, just above her breasts. The pain was excruciating, yet somehow exquisite, and she bit down on her tongue to keep from crying out. And then, once he’d finally finished, he stepped back and tasted her blood, sucking suggestively on the tip of his finger. Her stomach clenched in reaction.

“So, think long and hard before you choose to trade your soul for the power I offer you,” he said. “For once you do, there is no turning back.”

Tawni glanced down at her bleeding chest and gasped at the perfect insignia. It was all she could do not to sway in place from the blistering pain, but she was determined to be strong… and to think. She placed her open palm over the bloody diagram and tried to regulate her breathing as his words sank into her soul:
Think long and hard before you choose to trade your soul for the power I offer you; for once you do, there is no turning back.

She needed to ask more questions.

She cleared her throat and reached for her courage, and then she looked him straight in those demonic sapphire eyes. “I want it more than words can say,” she began, “but maybe I should find out a little more about what
it
is… first.”

He smiled in a deceptively gracious manner. “Ah, then you are not
quite
as stupid as you look.”

She nodded, but she didn’t reply.

He clasped her jaw in his hands, and his fingers bit into her cheeks. “Just so that we are crystal clear: Do you wish to trade your
soul
for power?”

She nodded again, still trying to catch her breath. If only he knew—that was
exactly
what she wanted, what she had
always
wanted—it was the stuff that had fueled her dreams as a child, given birth to her rebellion as a teenager, fed her fantasies as a fully mature adult. But he still wasn’t being very specific. “Yes, my soul for power… and for immortality.” She raised her jaw and boldly held his gaze. “I hate this weak, pitiful society I live in. I hate their trivial rules and their petty laws and their self-righteous ways. I hate their fake, ugly faces, their hollow platitudes, and their meaningless, empty lives. I want more, much,
much
more.”

He cocked an eyebrow with interest. “Such as?”

She drew in a deep breath for courage. “Such as power… domination… and immortality. I want to be at the top of the food chain.”

He nodded, far too slyly, and his smile was almost seductive in its duplicity—but for the life of her, she couldn’t detect any obvious deceit. “You wish to be dominant over other
humans
?” he echoed for clarity. “To possess an immortal body, with the potential to live forever? You wish to be at the top of the food chain, a mammal amongst mammals, physically superior to your planet’s animal and human inhabitants? Be explicitly clear, Tawni Duvall: Is this what you seek?”

She couldn’t think.

Her head was positively spinning with the possibilities, but yes, that sounded exactly right: Tawni wanted superiority over all the beasts of the earth, human and animal alike. She nodded emphatically, and he covered his mouth with his hand as if to stifle a laugh. She measured him sideways—what was so funny about that? Her throat was suddenly dry, and she cleared it for emphasis. “Can you, or can you not, give those three things to me, Master
Salvatore
?” She waited, hardly able to contain her hope as his eyes twinkled with amusement.