Dark Awakening (4 page)

“Mmm,” was all she could manage in response. She turned into his touch as his skilled fingers slid into her hair, as he let go of her hand to slide his around the curve of her waist as he stepped into her. It was like drifting in some dark dream, and Lily embraced it willingly, sliding her hands up his chest and then around to his back, urging him even closer.

She wasn’t sure what she was asking for—but at Tynan’s touch, something stirred inside of her, some long-dormant need that arched and stretched after a long sleep, then flooded her with aching demand. She turned her face up to his, a wordless invitation. His warm breath fanned her face, and even through the strange haze that seemed to have enveloped her, she thrilled a little at the ragged sound of his breathing, at the erratic beat of his heart against her chest.

“Lily,” he said again, and this time it was almost reverent.

He bent his head to hers, and Lily’s lips parted in anticipation. She had never wanted a man’s kiss so desperately; her entire being seemed to vibrate with desire. Her breath stilled as she waited for the press of his lips against her own. But instead of taking what she offered, Tynan’s mouth only grazed her cheek, and his long fingers deftly cupped her chin to turn her head to the side.

Lily made a noise then, a soft, frustrated moan that drew a chuckle from her tormentor.

“Patience, sweetheart,” he admonished her, his gruff brogue more pronounced now. “Too fast and you’ll spoil it.”

Tynan trailed soft kisses along her jawline, the relative chill of his lips against her warm and sensitive flesh a shocking pleasure. Lily writhed in his arms, wanting to be closer, wanting some nameless
more
that she couldn’t
identify. But Tynan seemed to be relentlessly controlled, the uneven intake of his breath the only clue that he might be as close to undone as she. Lily heard his voice then, seeming to echo right inside her head.

Let me taste you.

Powerless to do anything but obey, Lily let her head fall back in submission, baring her throat to him, willing him to touch more, take more. In some dim recess of her mind, it occurred to her that this entire situation was madness at best, suicidal at worst. But the harder she tried to hang on to any rational thoughts, the quicker they seemed to evaporate. And wasn’t it so much more pleasurable to just give up, give in? As though Tynan wanted to illustrate just that point, he nipped at her ear, flicking his tongue over the sensitive lobe.

“Please,” Lily moaned, moving restlessly against him, not even sure what she was asking for. Then he was drawing her hair away from her neck, tugging her head to the side to gain better access. He forced the collar of her shirt down, baring her collarbone to the cold night air. Lily allowed it all, her only desire to feel his lips on her skin again, to give him whatever he wanted. All the world had vanished except for Tynan. She could feel his hands shaking as his handling of her roughened, and she sensed his need was even greater than her own.

Suddenly he stopped, going stock-still as he expelled a single shaking breath. Lost in the deepening fog of her sexual haze, Lily gripped the thick wool of Tynan’s coat harder and made a soft sound of distress. Why had he stopped? She needed… she
needed
…

All she heard was a softly muttered curse in an unfamiliar tongue.

Then, a ripple of air, a breath of chill wind. Lily slowly opened her eyes, only barely beginning to register where she was and what she had been doing. Her hands were fisted in nothing but empty air. She blinked rapidly, taking a stumbling step backward, feeling a crushing, if nonsensical, sense of loss. She turned in a circle, knowing that he had to still be here. He couldn’t have left. It was impossible for a man to vanish into thin air.

But whoever—or whatever—Tynan MacGillivray was, Lily was soon forced to acknowledge the truth.

He was gone.

T
Y CROUCHED SILENTLY
on a tree branch, his silver eyes unblinking as he watched Lily Quinn slowly make her way to her car. She still seemed dazed, though by the time she reached the parking lot, the wobble had gone from her step and she’d quickened her pace, throwing a final, fearful glance over her shoulder before getting in and driving off.

He couldn’t have seen what he thought he’d seen, Ty knew. It had to have been a trick of the light and his bloodlust-addled brain. Likely it was a birthmark, or even a tattoo, a wicked little surprise hidden beneath the classy wrappings. No mortal could wear a vampire mark, and Lily was most certainly mortal. But just as certain was that she was also… more.

Gods, had he ever reacted so strongly to the scent of a woman’s blood?

The memory of her pressed against him, the feel of her skin beneath his hands, threatened to send him running after her to finish what they’d started. Instead, Ty clung to
what control he had left, sinking his claws into the wood beneath him, the fur along his back rising in response to the ancient struggle inside of him. He needed to feed, and soon—even though it meant he would have to force himself to drink from yet another nameless, faceless victim.

Leave it to him to want a woman he would never be allowed to taste.

With a surly growl, Ty sprang from the tree. By the time he hit the ground, he was a man again, stalking off in the direction of the town square. He ought to be grateful that
something
had stopped him from sinking his teeth into Lily Quinn. If he had, he would have ruined what was likely his only chance at fulfilling his mission.

Still, it would have been nice if he’d noticed he couldn’t catch even a hint of the woman’s thoughts
before
he’d gotten so close that he could think of nothing but her neck. That impenetrable mind was the undeniable hallmark of a Seer. Lily’s particular beauty was just a bonus, and an unfortunate one at that. To bite her would rob her of the ability he was in dire need of.

As the Americans liked to say, he needed to get his head back in the game.

Ty pulled his cell phone from his pocket and kept walking, his long legs eating up the distance with a speed that bordered on inhuman, and called the only woman he had any true allegiance to. His queen’s favor had elevated him far above what any gutterblood like himself could normally expect; she had drawn him into her trusted inner circle, where his kind would never have been tolerated before—though in truth, he was only barely tolerated by the rest and had learned early on to rely on subterfuge to get what information he needed.

Still, right now, even having a vampire queen on speed dial didn’t quite make up for the fact that he was alone.
Again.
And hungry in a way that he’d somehow have to assuage.

The phone rang only once before she picked up, and Arsinöe’s honeyed tones could do nothing to disguise her agitation. The hairs on his neck and the backs of his arms prickled with it, warning him to tread lightly.

The woman was a force of nature. And when she was angry, she was apt to destroy everything and everyone in her path.

“Tynan. Calling to tell me of another fruitless adventure, I presume?”

Her voice was a smooth purr, and Ty could picture her reclining on her chaise, her kohl-lined eyes narrowed, her long red nails tapping on the fabric. She had always been kind to him, in her way, though he had seen plenty of her cruelty. One couldn’t stay the ruler of the greatest of the vampire dynasties without it. But he had sensed a change in her lately, a strain and barely leashed fury that he attributed to the murders and her inability to stop them. Ty hoped his discovery of Lily could start to reverse that… provided she was, in fact, a Seer.

He could have been perfectly confident, were it not for that odd little decoration on her skin.

“Not this time,” he replied, turning onto the sidewalk and heading for the lights of the city’s old-fashioned downtown square. He slowed a little to give himself time to talk. No one else needed to hear this conversation.

“Tell me.” The change in her tone was instant, sharpening with keen interest bordering on desperation. He wondered what more had happened since he’d last spoken to
Arsinöe. More death, likely. Ty found he couldn’t dredge up much sympathy. He doubted he would have attempted to get close to many of the Ptolemy even if they hadn’t given him a wide berth. His bloodline was known for producing cold-blooded killers, after all. The Cait Sith were gutter vamps, ruthless hunters with no leader and no conscience. This tended to give one an aura of unapproachability. Which was fine with Ty. Highbloods were a tedious lot, full of entitlement and fond of entertaining themselves by looking down on… well, on mongrels like him.

“There’s a woman here,” Ty said, keeping his voice low. “Her mind is closed to me. Can’t hear a bloody thing, and you know I’m good at that.”

“Yes, good, but can she
See
?” The angry snap in Arsinöe’s voice surprised him, as he’d expected at least a modicum of praise for all these months of searching. But then, much about the queen had changed since the Mulo had come. Maybe, Ty thought darkly, some of it was permanent.

Or maybe it was always there and you just didn’t want to see it.

He shoved the traitorous thought aside and focused on the situation at hand.

“I’m not sure yet,” he allowed slowly, glad to be so far out of range of Arsinöe’s stinging claws for once. “But she’s the first I’ve found like her.” He thought again of Lily’s strange mark and nearly mentioned it. But something held him back. In his mind’s eye, Lily’s face appeared, innocent, open, her eyes closed and lips parted in invitation. For the briefest instant, Tynan felt an urge to protect her in a way that was borne of some deeper, unfamiliar instinct.

The kind of instinct, Ty thought as he ruthlessly snuffed it out, that could get a vampire like himself killed.

Still, he held his tongue. Another look at Lily’s sexy little tattoo would doubtless reveal nothing. And if he was wrong… well, he would deal with that only if he had to.

“Tynan,” said the woman on the other end of the line.

The weariness in her voice did pull at him now. He and Arsinöe had known each other a long time. There was, despite the class separation, some modicum of affection there. And the gods knew he owed her a great deal for all she had given him.

“I’m glad, of course, that you think you’ve found something,” she continued. “But in the last week, we’ve lost fifty of our line, not to mention a number of priceless artifacts. The Mulo must be stopped, and I’m…
concerned
… that we are running out of time. I don’t want possibilities—I need facts. Be certain before you bring her. I’ve no interest in another pretty toy when my people are dying. How long is this going to take you?”

“That depends,” he replied. “Do you want her willing?”

“You should know by now that I don’t give a damn about that,” she said smoothly.

Again he felt that faint unease with the way things seemed to have changed back in the thick of Arsinöe’s court. Something felt off, but he didn’t know if it was her or if it was simply that he’d been out of the loop for so long now. It was one of the reasons he’d struggled with being chosen for this hunt: despite the way it had been presented, it felt like he was being eliminated.

She’d made a show of it, of course. Fawning over him, telling him how much more trustworthy he was than the others of his blood, how his skills were far better suited to finding this needle in a haystack than so many of her courtiers who had gone soft from easy living. Backhanded insults to
his much-maligned bloodline that Ty was certain sounded like praise to Arsinöe’s ears… but, of course, he was used to that. All Cait Sith were. All her praise notwithstanding, he had stopped being called, stopped being included. After all his efforts to prove himself over the centuries in her service, he could sense that Arsinöe had begun to push him out.

And the Ptolemy courtiers, who seemed to have grown more bitter and vicious over the years he had spent among them, gloated openly at his departure. They cheered at the purge of the gutterblood who had somehow infiltrated their rarefied little club.

He worried less about himself and more about what would become of his other blood brothers and sisters in his absence. Arsinöe had softened considerably over the years in her treatment of the Cait Sith she had conscripted, especially considering how dark things had been at the time of his own siring. But though the queen was strong, she was hardly immune to the views of the highbloods closest to her. And, gods, but he was tired of the politics.

“A week. Two, tops,” Ty said after a quick canvass of his options. “I know nothing about her at this point. And setting people at ease isn’t usually my strong suit. But as I doubt she just sits around having visions all day, I’ll have to try and learn some people skills, I suppose.”

He’d meant it as a little joke, but Arsinöe was obviously not in the mood.

“It had better be less than two weeks,” she said, and Ty could hear the steel in her voice. “And if she is what you say, the woman will do as she is told. She will be well compensated, of course. Tell her she will be returned home. Tell her everything will go back to normal, will be set to rights if she does this service for me. For my
people
.
And throw in an offer of money if that isn’t enough. That should do it. It always does.”

“You would let her go after this?” Ty asked, surprised.