Flesh And Blood: House of Comarre: Book Two (House of Comarre 2) (2 page)

She couldn’t imagine he was in any rush to face Tatiana again. Not after finding out she was the one responsible for his curse. He probably wanted to kill her as badly as Chrysabelle did.

What must it feel like to have the person you’d married turn on you that way? It was bad enough the vampiress had killed Maris and destroyed the covenant, but for Mal to find out the woman who had been his mortal wife was the one responsible for his years of imprisonment and his curse …

Maybe Chrysabelle wasn’t the only one whose life was a mess.

She cranked the water off, grabbed a towel, and dried herself before wrapping her hair up. She threw on a robe and opened the door. The rich smell of steak made her stomach growl. She headed downstairs, ready to dig in.

After dinner, she settled on the couch with one of Maris’s journals, but her mind kept returning to Mal. She needed a distraction.

‘Screen on.’ The wall across from her flickered to life, and the late-evening news projected into the room with holographic precision.

‘ … an ex-soldier in Little Havana who preaches outside the abandoned Catholic church. His message? Vampires need to be cleansed.’
The anchorman smiled like he didn’t expect his viewers to believe in vampires either. Idiot. Newsreel of the ex-soldier flashed on the screen and Chrysabelle peered closer. There was something familiar about his shaved head and the glint of his dog tags, but she couldn’t place them. What she did know was that the ex-soldier wasn’t human. He was fringe, a less-powerful class of vampire compared to the nobles but
vampire nonetheless. Couldn’t the anchorman tell? Or had he, like a good portion of his audience, chosen not to believe?

‘A woman at a Coral Gables Publix reported the man behind her in the checkout line had horns.’
The woman’s face filled the inset screen hovering beside the anchorman’s head.
‘He had gray skin and a lot of silver earrings and horns. Horns!’
The woman made looping motions at the sides of her head.
‘And it’s not even Halloween yet!’

A shadeux fae picking up eggs and milk was the least of that woman’s worries. What would the public do when Halloween had come and gone but the monsters still remained? The Samhain holiday was less than two weeks away.

The camera switched its focus back to the anchorman.
‘More and more reports have been coming in from all over New Florida about strange sightings just like this one. If you’ve seen something unusual in your area, give our tip hotline a call at—’

She changed the channel to another local news station.
‘In a press release today, Mayor Diaz-White announced she will be forming a task force to investigate what can only be described as the paranormal happenings taking place in the city, although the mayor claims every incident can be explained.’

‘Screen off.’ The holographic image vanished. Chrysabelle had seen enough. Paradise City was only beginning to wake up to the new reality the whole world now faced with the covenant gone. As the days ticked by, the inevitable clash between light and dark forces came nearer, escalating until there would be no denying what was happening. No matter what the mayor told the people.

Which brought her thoughts back to Tatiana. Did a more evil, conniving, ambitious vampire exist? Chrysabelle doubted it. Tatiana had killed Maris as part of the ritual that tore the covenant away, but Chrysabelle had prevented Tatiana from
keeping the ring of sorrows. How long before Tatiana made another attempt to claim the ring? It was safely tucked away, but Chrysabelle had considered destroying it several times in the past weeks. If only she could be sure enough of its power to determine that destroying it wouldn’t cause further damage to the world around them.

The swirls of gold tattooed on her skin glittered softly as her thumb rubbed the band on her ring finger. One click released a tiny blade, sharp enough to pierce a vein and drain away the excess blood in her system. Those born into the comarré life, raised to fulfill the needs of the vampires who purchased their blood rights and heavily tattooed with the special gold signum that purified their blood, produced the substance in rich, pure, powerful abundance. Without a patron, the excess blood would sicken her, poisoning her system until she went mad. She’d been on the verge once and that was enough.

She held her wrist up to the light. The veins pulsed thick and blue. The time to drain the excess was upon her. Maybe that was why Mal had been on her mind so much these last few days.

Maris had told her that eventually her system would adjust, but Chrysabelle had twice drained her blood to feed Mal and twice he’d kissed her in return, giving her the infusion of vampire power that was her due. Those kisses had kept her body producing. Kept her thinking of him.

She should drain the blood into the sink, wash it and her thoughts of Mal away. She sighed softly and wished he were that easy to forget. He wasn’t. Not even close. She stood and headed for the kitchen. What was one more container in the refrigerator among the others? Her blood was valuable. Whether Mal wanted it or not.

*

Corvinestri, Romania, 2067

‘This is going to hurt, my sweet. Are you sure you can withstand the pain?’

‘You’ve already told me it will hurt. And I’ve already told you I can withstand more pain than you can dream of.’ Tatiana glared at Zafir. ‘Do you think it was pleasant when that comarré whore sliced my hand off in the first place?’ If he knew what she’d endured while in the clutches of the Castus Sanguis, but of course, he had no idea.

‘
Laa
, my darling, of course not.’ His lush, black lashes fluttered over his olive cheeks. ‘I only wished to prepare you.’

‘Just do it. I will be fine.’ She lay back on Zafir’s lab table, her head propped on his folded coat, her remaining hand flat on her chest covering her locket where it lay beneath her blouse. Zafir and his brother, Nasir, were both exceptionally beautiful in a dark, Arabian kind of way, but according to Lord Ivan, who’d sent her here, Zafir was the most circumspect of the talented pair. And in this matter, discretion was of the utmost importance. Few knew her hand had been severed, and she intended to keep it that way. The servants who found out had been dispatched, save Octavian, the head of her household staff. She would not, under any circumstance, be made to appear incapable or disadvantaged. She intended to have Lord Ivan’s position of Dominus one day, and nothing,
nothing
would prevent that. Soon she would renew her standing in the eyes of the Castus. Show them she was worthy once again. Reclaim the ring of sorrows – and the power it held – that was rightfully hers.

This new hand was the first step toward that goal.

‘
Na’am,
you will do very well, won’t you?’ Zafir laughed softly.

She wanted to slap his face until that patronizing tone became a cry for mercy. He was no Mikkel, that much was certain. Mikkel’s talents in the black arts had been exceptional. Of course, those talents hadn’t kept her late paramour alive either. And if Zafir’s talents in alchemy were as powerful as he claimed, he might be better than Mikkel. If he failed to do as he’d promised, then perhaps she’d give the brother a chance. At the very least, Zafir was Mikkel’s equal in bed.

Life had very quickly taught her that pleasure and power were the only real rewards for pain. Her sweet Sofia’s face flashed before her eyes, something that had been happening more and more since her confrontation with Malkolm. Seeing him had stirred up the past. She tightened her grip on the locket, the silk of her blouse cool against her fingers. ‘Get on with it.’

‘As you wish.’ Zafir moved the meticulously crafted platinum prosthetic into place at the end of her right wrist. The gleaming hand lay open, the lines and creases on the palm mirror images of those on her left because it had been modeled after that hand. The hot metal had been quenched in her blood to further seal the magic.

He painted the stump of her wrist with a foul-smelling paste that burned slightly, then he adjusted the prosthetic so that her flesh touched metal. The metal was cool, but her body was warm because she’d fed from her comar before coming to give herself strength.

Using a glass spoon, Zafir scooped pale silver-white dust from a squat glass jar and sprinkled the joined area with the powder.

The pain struck in a searing wave.

A cry ripped from Tatiana’s throat and she jerked away from the agony, but Zafir grabbed her forearm and kept it pressed against the metal.

‘You mustn’t move, my love.’

Fire traveled the length of her arm and bit into her shoulder. Lava flowed through her joints, melting her bones with blinding pain. She clenched her jaw to keep from vomiting.

She could endure this. She’d endured the Castus Sanguis’s punishing use of her mind and body, and would again if that’s what it took to regain their favor. All that mattered was the unholy power they wielded and that a portion of it become hers.
Pain brings clarity.

Flames licked her skin. Wisps of smoke wafted from the joint of flesh and metal. Blisters rose, filling with fluid. Her fangs pierced her lower lip, and the taste of copper washed her mouth.

‘Almost there,’ Zafir encouraged. ‘That’s my girl.’

Killing him might ease the pain. She was no one’s gir—

Daggers dug into the stump of her wrist, grinding through the muscle and burrowing into her bone. She cursed loudly. Then cursed again. And just as she was about to shove the fingers of her good hand into his chest and rip out his heart, the pain subsided to a dull throb.

She yanked her arm away from him. ‘Do you have any idea how badly that—’

He laughed triumphantly and pointed. ‘How do you like it?’

She followed the line of his gaze to the platinum fist at the end of her arm. She willed the hand to open. It did. She wiggled the fingers – her fingers – and the bright platinum digits waved back. She leaped off the table, pain forgotten.

‘Oh, Zafir, this is brilliant.’ She stared at her reflection in the palm of her hand. Pain always seemed to make her more beautiful.

He grinned at her words, showing off his fangs. Something about the contrast of those long, white teeth against his dark skin
gave her a perverse thrill. He was a handsome devil.
Devil
being the operative word. ‘There’s more.’

‘Such as?’

He threaded his arms around her waist, turning her back against his chest. He nuzzled his mouth, cool from not feeding, into the curve of her neck. ‘Think
sword
, my lush wonder.’

‘Sword?’

‘Yes. A wicked scimitar or a deadly katana. Whatever you like.’ His fangs scraped her skin, and she shivered with pleasure.

‘Very well.’ She thought of the hefty two-handed blade her former husband, Malkolm, had once wielded in his mortal occupation as a headsman. She’d always admired that weapon. She should have used it on him. She sniffed. Now was not the time for burdens of the past. She focused on the image in her head.

Tingles of sensation shot up her arm from her new hand. She held it up toward the light. What was happening? The tingles became pressure and her fingers fused together.

She inhaled, the bitter air of Zafir’s laboratory clogging her throat. ‘What the—’

‘Just wait,’ he urged. His grip tightened, as if he thought she might bolt. Or turn on him. Wise boy.

Her fingers melted into a solid shaft as they elongated into a polished knife, then longer still until the blade replicated the image in her head.

‘Unholy hell.’ She went utterly still, very aware that her mouth hung open.

He laughed softly, sending vibrations through her skin. ‘You should not doubt me in the future, my sweet.’ His hands slipped lower, only to climb again once he’d breached the hem of her blouse.

She pushed him away with her elbows and broke out of the embrace, all without taking her gaze off the sword extending out from her wrist. She slashed it through the air. Perfectly weighted. ‘Bloody amazing. How is this even possible?’

‘Does a magician tell his secrets?’ He shrugged. ‘Of course, such magic comes with a price.’

The blade glinted like sunlit water, but she managed to pull her gaze away to stare him down. ‘We discussed no price.’

He whispered something in Arabic as he pulled her into his arms again. The sword shrank back to a hand.

She arched a brow, warm tendrils of suspicion growing along her spine. ‘How did you do that?’

‘I am not a fool.’ He kissed her cheekbone.

Neither was she. The fact that he’d built in his own controls angered her beyond the point of reason. Red tinged her vision. Had Lord Ivan put him up to this? If so, they both deserved to die. No one dictated what she did. No one. ‘What is this price you speak of?’

‘The only payment I require is more of what you’ve already been paying me.’ He cupped her body against the hard lines of his own. ‘If Nasir could see me now, he would be very jealous indeed.’

Barely restraining the urge to tear his throat out, she tipped her head back to let him kiss her neck. How dare he think to control her? ‘Does Nasir know what you’ve done for me?’ She’d insisted their relationship remain a secret, telling him she wasn’t ready to be scrutinized by the rest of the nobility until her hand was restored.

‘Mmm,’ he hummed against her skin. ‘And give him a chance to tell me how I should be doing things?
Laa
, my darling, I’ve kept you for myself.’