Seducing the Vampire (31 page)

“I've been aware the entire time I was in the coffin.” She slid her bloodied hand along his cheek. “The first will not be ours.”

“No, but it must—”

And she kissed him silent, so that his protests rang in
his heart and regret surfaced, and he knew then why the faery had appeared outside of the cathedral.

“The future promises to be quite challenging,” he said, then bowed to kiss her again.

They spoke no more, instead answering the centuries-long hunger for one another as Rhys stripped the clothes from Viviane, and found his place inside her. A place where he belonged. Home.

Nine months later…

M
OONLIGHT SHONE THROUGH
the nursery windows. A twinkle of stardust seemed to beam over the twin cribs nestled against the wall. Rhys helped Viviane stow away the diaper-changing supplies, quietly closing the cupboard doors so as not to wake the newborns.

Two of them born two days ago, one but moments after the other. A surprise. Rhys had sent Poole out to buy another crib before the midwife had left.

Viviane nudged a shoulder against his chest and turned to nuzzle against his neck. His beard was thick for the moon was soon full. But he needn't fear a raging werewolf. Since Viviane had lured his werewolf to take her blood, he had continued—as vampire—to drink from her once a fortnight. And he allowed her to take from him. It bonded them so deeply he had never thought it possible to love someone more.

And it seemed to keep Viviane sane. She had to take blood every day from a donor, because if she missed a day, Rhys noticed her mind wandered.

She would ever struggle with insanity, but he would not allow it to win.

Simon had actually been doing research into post-traumatic stress disorder and anything he could find regarding madness and possible cures. He had been Rhys's
rock since he'd gotten Viviane back. And to pick up the work Simon could not manage, he'd hired Steve Monroe to assist at the Paris office of Hawkes Associates.

Viviane kissed him, and he indulged in the moment, holding her in the moonlight, the babes sleeping peacefully nearby. Her dark hair veiled his neck and tickled his skin, stirring him as her touch always did. Life could not be more perfect.

How odd that they had journeyed through the centuries, each at their own pace, and while once she was the one two centuries older than he, now they were both the same age. Time had literally frozen her, and the gestating babes, until the moment of her release from hell.

Grasping his hand, she led him to the cribs and the two looked over the tiny beings. Viviane stroked the thick sprigs of hair on the first infant. “Red,” she whispered. “And so much of it.”

“I've been told my father had red hair,” he said quietly.

“Yes? That explains it, then.” She pressed a kiss to her fingertips and placed it to the baby's nose. “Trystan, who makes me laugh to look at him.”

She delivered a kiss to the next infant's nose. “Vaillant, my dark prince.” The babe's hair was black as Rhys and Viviane's hair, and he was not such a tubby bundle as his brother and had yet to cry. “They are blessings, yes?”

He hugged her from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Truly, we are blessed. Have I told you today that I love you?”

“This afternoon when I rose, and then an hour later after I'd fed, and just ten minutes ago. Don't ever stop, lover. I need to hear it always.”

“I love you, Viviane. Ever after.”

Viviane suddenly stiffened, and Rhys momentarily
wondered when was the last time she'd drunk blood. It had been a few hours earlier when they'd stolen a moment in the shower while the babies had been snoozing.

“What is it?”

She turned toward the open nursery doorway where a brilliant shimmer danced upon the opposite wall in the hallway.

Rhys's heart dropped. Viviane slipped from his embrace.
Not now
. Not ever, he pleaded fruitlessly.

His lover kissed his lips, and lifted his hand to clasp against her mouth. Bright azure eyes spoke things they had not spoken since the eighteenth century. A promise had been made.

“I cannot stay in here,” she said. “This is for you to do.”

“Viviane, I—”

She kissed him silent. “I love you, Rhys. Now you must pay the boon.”

And she slipped noiselessly across the room to the door that adjoined the master bedroom, closing it with a click of the lock behind her.

Only then did the faery enter the room. With a dazzle, the faery's wings swept the door frame and the top of the vanity and dressers as she approached.

“So soon?” Rhys asked. And then he had the brief thought that perhaps sooner was better.

It can never be better. This was the most horrible thing
.

And yet, two had been born. Almost as if… No, he would not think it.

“Two?” Cressida said as she approached the cribs.

Rhys wanted to wrest her away and fling her out the patio doors. If he could harm the faery he would—and then he would not. He was a man of his word. Hell, he'd
not been able to bring himself to seek out Constantine. Much as his brother deserved to die for his crime, he was not the heartless man to enforce that punishment. And besides, he now spent every moment with Viviane. He would not taint the time they shared with foul acts against his brother.

“I have waited a very long time,” Cressida announced.

“You have.”

“Which one shall it be?”

He joined her before the cribs and looked over the sleeping infants, blissfully unaware that both their lives would now be irrevocably altered.

His chest tightened and his throat squeezed. How could a father be expected to make such a choice?

“You must do it,” he said, and turned his back to the cribs. “Quickly, please.”

Eyes closed, he listened intently and sensed the faery leaning over one crib and studying the child.

“So bright, his hair,” she commented.

Rhys winced. Trystan now slept on his back, a bit of his plump belly showing beneath the soft shirt he wore. His thumb was always securely in his mouth, a habit he'd assumed but moments following birth.

“This one is rather thin. He barely breathes as he sleeps.”

And Vaillant, Viviane's dark prince. The quiet one who never cried, and would not suckle from his mother no matter how Viviane tried. But she cooed to him and rocked him, with bottle in hand, and seemed to spend more time with the babe, perhaps because he was so different.

Would they both be half-breeds? Or would his vampire
blood and Viviane's make them full vampire? Impossible to know until puberty.

Viviane was brave to grant him this situation without raging or protesting. He knew she loved them both, as did he. How dare he cast away one of his own children?

“Cressida, there must be some other manner in which we can—”

Rhys turned. The faery no longer stood in the room.

He rushed to the cribs. Trystan lay untouched.

Vaillant's crib was empty. A glitter of faery dust stained the sheets.

“No.” Rhys grabbed up the sheets and pressed them to his face—soft, powdery, baby scent—then flung them down, and quickly grabbed up Trystan.

He pressed the babe's warm head to his cheek. Tears wet the thick crop of red hair. Falling to his knees before the cribs, Rhys rocked back and forth, struggling to hold in a raging howl.

Fourteen years later in Faery…

V
AILLANT HAD ACHIEVED
puberty last eve. Cressida had seen the wild look in the young half-breed's eyes, and had expected them to go completely gold as he then shifted to werewolf for the first time. He must shift. His mother had been vampire, his father a half-breed. Vaillant's blood was mixed to a delicious brew. Faery rejoiced in those of mixed blood.

He did not shift.

Instead he'd claimed intense hunger, and she suspected it was his vampire half that needed mortal blood. She'd had a mortal brought to Faery.

He did not drink blood.

But still he insisted hunger.

Frustrating. She had chosen the half-breed child as her boon in repayment for enchanting Rhys Hawkes's vampire so long ago. Half-breeds were valued to mate with the sidhe. Their mixed blood combined with faery ichor produced powerful hybrid offspring.

“What have you determined?” Cressida asked the seer, who had just come from Vaillant's quarters. The sylph in red silks floated beneath a canopy of intoxicating honeysuckle. “Is he ill?”

“No, he is a perfectly well, bloodborn vampire.” The seer cringed at Cressida's sharp inhale.

“What?” Cressida drew the seer to her with a crook of her finger. “You lie to me. I have no need for a bloodborn vampire. They are common and unusable.”

The seer shrugged, then shifted to small size and fluttered off into the bright white sky.

Seething, Cressida spread out her wings, which swept the honeysuckle, and scythed off the fragrant blossoms in a golden storm. She keened long, high and loud, and it shook all of Faery. The entire Unseelie court shuddered to recognize the faery's anger.

She had chosen incorrectly.

And yet, how was it possible Vaillant was bloodborn?