Vampires and Sexy Romance (23 page)

“Not enough to save you,” she laughed.  “Stupid cow!” 

Lucy looked at her hands, dripping with her blood and the vampire’s blood, and an idea popped into her head.  “You said the markings on the walls protected vampires, making anything else’s powers useless.”  Lucy dropped the knife, stumbling toward the closest wall marking.  She reached out to the creepy crimson design and swiped her bloody hands over it, immediately feeling a sizzle and then a flux of power.  Suddenly she knew, right then and there, that the spell (at least in that room) had been broken.  She could feel it.
             

“Shit!” Delia spat as her eyes flashed murderously at Lucy.  She lurched forward, forgetting the painful gash in her stomach, and ran right for Lucy, her eyes crazed, her fangs dripping with strings of saliva.

Lucy called her power up around her, the familiar heat flickering in her head.  “Delia, stop.”

As if she’d run into an invisible wall, Delia halted in her tracks; though she was still seething and trying to reach her arms out to grab at Lucy.

Lucy fell to her knees, suddenly too weak to stand.  She pulled her hand away from her neck wound again to find it drenched and dripping with even more blood. 

I’m dying…

Delia stalked closer, as if she were trying to pull free of whatever was holding her back. 

“I said stop, super bitch!”  Lucy’s power flashed hot in her mind, and she felt it reach out and hold Delia back.

But the vampire was smiling.

“You’re fading fast.  Won’t be long before all that delicious blood of yours is all over the floor.  And when you pass out…” She clapped her hands together in exclamation and smiled all the more devilishly.  “You’re mine.”

The psycho-bitch-monster-of-death has a point.  Once I pass out—which I’m already starting to feel—I won’t be able to hold her back at all.
  Lucy shivered as darkness crowded her peripheral vision. 
Either she’ll kill me, or…or I’ll wake up with fangs. 

“I’m torn,” Delia said, obviously feeling better, her wound probably almost healed already.  “Should I just turn you and get this over with?  Or…I could make you drink just enough of my blood to heal you, and then I can carve you up for a while, see how
you
like it!” 

While Delia was
monologuing her ass off about the ravages she was going to inflict on her, a very simple thought revealed itself to Lucy.  She didn’t know if her little ability covered it…and even if it did work, would it last after she’d passed out?

“Or I could wait until you dead, dead.”  Delia twirled with excitement.  “With only the tiniest sparks of life left, and then bring you back as—”

“Go to sleep,” Lucy said, her eyes locked on those of the vampire. 

Her monologue abruptly interrupted, Delia stared at Lucy with slack jawed disbelief.

Lucy breathed in one deep breath, calling up what was left of her strength, feeling the hot annoyance burn in her skull.  Delia was just about to say something when Lucy said: “Go—to—sleep—Delia!  And don’t wake up again until I tell you to.”

She gave a snort of laughter, shaking her head, but then her knees buckled and she fell to the ground, her arms shaking as she tried to hold herself up from the floor.

“No...you...
you can’t
...”

“Sleep...” As the word fell from Lucy’s lips, so fell Delia to the ground.  Her frosty cold blue eyes stared out at Lucy for a few very uncomfortable beats before they too slid shut, and Delia’s entire body went slack with sleep.  

Hopefully she’ll stay that way after...after I...
  A dark curtain started to fall over Lucy, only the sound off her own breathing filled her ears, a frightening cold enveloping her body, making her numb and scared. 

I’m really going to die…

She felt a tear trickle hot down the side of her cheek.

This…so…bites!

From the other side of the room came an earsplitting crash, the sound of splintering wood and metal being ripped apart.  Lucy tried to keep her eyelids open, but they fell like a curtain as a very large, very scary shape burst through the wall, roaring like a freaking T-Rex.   

Great… 
It rushed on all fours toward her.  S
omething else that wants to kill me.

IT WAS THE TASTE that woke her: sweet and rich and…
to freaking die for.
  It gushed over Lucy’s tongue and down her throat in greedy droughts.  Better than ice cream, better than chocolate, better than a caramel mocha latte made with whole milk—even better than the cake her grandmother had baked special for her birthday.

As if the scrumptious liquid was a magical cure-all for everything that had ever gone wrong in your life, or had ever laid a finger on you, Lucy felt the panacea rush through her veins, warm and pulsating with life, making every molecule in her body sing with joy, all her pain vanishing as her heart thrummed in her chest.

Strong arms held her, cradled her as she drank from—her lips were latched tight to flesh—someone’s wrist. 

“That’s enough,” a man’s voice Lucy knew she should recognize said.  “Any more and she might…”  He didn’t finish.  He pulled his wrist from her grasp, eliciting a whimper from Lucy’s lips.  He gathered her up in his strong arms and moved them both effortlessly through the ruins of the room, through the gaping hole in the wall, and out into the cool night.

*****

Time flickered by and Lucy now felt warm all over, the wondrous taste still in her mouth, and everything that had hurt wasn’t hurting anymore.  She realized she was so warm because she was pressed against Gabriel’s naked chest, his strong arms wrapped protectively around her.  She sighed as she indulged in the thought that she’d died and gone to heaven, and in heaven Gabriel was naked, at least from the waist up.

Lucy opened her eyes a little more and saw they were riding in the back of car, a sedan with tinted windows.  Delia’s brother, Vin, was driving.  Lucy felt the car sway as Vin zigzagged through traffic, making her hold tighter to Gabriel’s bare torso.  Glancing up to the driver’s seat again, Lucy suddenly felt a jolt of astonishment.  Vin had a white linen handkerchief wrapped around his wrist.  Lucy’s stomach lurched with revulsion as she realized what had happened.

It hadn’t been some dream, or a trick of the mind.  Vin had fed her his own blood, probably saving her life…but was she really alive anymore? 

“Am I a vampire now?” Her stomach did another flip, and her heart started really thumping.  She didn’t care that one of them had saved her life or not, becoming fangy and dead and—well, she just couldn’t get past the whole
dead
thing—just wasn’t in her life plan.

Delia’s brother finally spoke, his voice silky and smooth, and irritatingly calm.  “It takes far more than drinking a little blood to make the change.”  He gave her a wink as he gazed at her through the rear view mirror.  His eyes were the same blue as Delia’s, yet they were not cold as ice.  No, they were liquid blue heat, smoldering as he gazed at her.  “So, do not worry.”

“You’ll be fine,” Gabriel said, holding her closer.  Lucy took a deep breath and snuggled into his bare, ever so warm flesh.  But then she saw Delia lying in the front passenger seat beside Vin.

“What the hell is she doing here?” Lucy blurted out, an edge of hysteria to her voice.  Her entire body jerked as her eyes snapped open and her heartbeat began to race again.

“I think she’s asleep,” Vin said neutrally.

“And I so was hoping for ‘she’s dead’ to pop out of your mouth.”  All of a sudden Lucy felt like an ungrateful child, talking to Vin like that.  After all, he’d literally saved her life.

He acted as if he hadn’t heard her, saying: “Would this be your doing?”

Gabriel turned and looked to Lucy with a confused expression on his gorgeous face.

“Yeah,” Lucy mumbled, “I’m surprised it stuck.”

Out of nowhere Lucy felt something cool and silky move over her, slipping effortlessly into her consciousness.  It was lust and wanting, and an acute hunger.  And it wasn’t hers.  Instantly she knew she was feeling Vin’s emotions, and no sooner did she try to recoil from them than she heard the vampire’s thoughts, as clear as if he’d whispered them in her ear.

Her power is extraordinary.  I’ll have to keep an eye on her.
  Then, with a frantic flash of images, all of them of her, reflected through the yearning of his mind, he thought: 
Would I kill to be with her?

Lucy’s entire body tightened until she was sure she’d break apart in Gabriel’s arms.  She’d seen in his thoughts that he wanted to bed her, and he wanted to eat her—drink her, whatever—quite literally.  She knew without knowing that his thirst for her blood, and his attraction to her and to her very scent, was overwhelming—just being in the confined space of the car with her, even with Gabriel there, was almost unbearable.

He’d kill me in an instant…or worse…

Lucy was hyperventilating and trembling when Gabriel pulled her closer, pressing his soft, warm lips to her forehead.  “I won’t let anything hurt you,” he whispered, his breath warm and tickling against the flesh of her ear and neck.  “I promise.”

Lucy snuggled deeply into Gabriel’s naked flesh, the thick slabs of super-heated muscle.  She wanted to be home.  She wanted to see her grandmother and her mother…hell, she even wanted to see Seth…

But most of all Lucy wanted for what she felt right then—in Gabriel’s arms—to be real.

She caught Vin looking back at her again through the rearview mirror
.  Just keep your eyes on the road, and on your comatose psychopath of a sister.

Lucy already knew Delia wouldn’t stay asleep forever.

***End***

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One night turned into forever…

Min thought her biggest problem was the soulless vampire she’d captured with magic and made into her personal sex slave for the night.

That was until her comatose mother’s most deadly secret threatened to destroy them all.  So much of what she remembers is a lie and one she trusts completely and loves deeply is the reason why. 

Can she save the ones she loves—and herself—when the Queen of Air and Darkness comes calling.

~*~

Eva Slone

Copyright 2012, 2013

Previously published as Dark Surrender

Kindle Edition

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On the night her world ended, Katarina Boccherini flipped the “closed” sign over against the glass of the shop door and turned off the front window display lights.  A lock of her wavy salt and pepper hair fell out of the bun she’d pulled it into and dropped to tickle her nose.  Absently she pushed the hair back behind her ear and picked up some misplaced books to reshelf.  She needed to balance the cash register and fill out the slip for the night deposit.  She also wanted to check the online special orders and to sweep the floor. 

But by the goddess she was tired.

Running a magic shop was more work than anyone would guess.  She felt lucky that both her girls, Min and Andy, had gone into the family business with her.  She’d be thankful when they got back tomorrow from the supplier convention. 

She went behind the counter to take a look at the sales ledger, and gazed for a moment at the photograph of her girls that hung on the wall right above the cash register.  It showed the two of them arm in arm, smiling ludicrously, both so young, so beautiful.

My girls.

But she could feel the remnant energies, the mere shadow of a spell that still clung to the photograph, and it made her sad.  It hid a secret, one that was now mixed in with all she loved most, which made it all the more important.   Would she ever be able to tell them the truth?  Or would they all be better off if the lie went on forever? 

As if on cue her question was answered.  

The door to the little shop blew open and banged against the wall, and the bell attached over it clanged madly.  She turned and gasped, knowing the moment the cold, wintery air bit into her flesh that everything had just gone straight to hell.  It was July, and the city of Augusta, Georgia was in the middle of a heat-wave.   That meant only one thing:
she
was coming.  

Katarina turned to run.  She cried out in surprise as she bumped into a display table with her hip.  Jars of scented oils crashed onto the wooden floor.  She stumbled but caught herself, her breath already showed in frosty, labored puffs.  The air was so cold that the act of breathing hurt.  She slipped through the beaded curtain and into the backroom.  She slammed the heavy oak door shut and threw the deadbolt.  The act of locking the door was the trigger for her extensive battlement of wards, and immediately she felt them spring into place, strong yet pliant, and lethal.   

She’d no more taken one labored breath when the ice began to slide down the length of the door.  The temperature in the room dropped as a gale of frozen air poured into the room from under the door.  Katarina’s defenses hadn’t even slowed her down.

Should have known they wouldn’t.
  This was not her home.  There was no threshold for the wards to feed from.  She gulped in a lungful of air and backed up as the ice flow spread into the room and encroached on her fast. 

Only one chance…they’ll need help.
  In a desperate rush she circled around her desk and reached into one of the drawers.  She pulled out a silver dagger carved with ancient runes, a language no mortal was ever meant to read.  In the gleam of the blade she saw the greenest eyes she’d ever seen looking back at her.  A heartbeat later they were gone.  She set it gingerly on the top of her desk and whispered one of her daughter’s names.

“
Min
…”

She darted back around the desk and stood straight and tall as she steeled herself.  She was ready to fight, but knew it would be pointless.  She had to endure what was to come. 
And not tell the cold-hearted bitch a damn thing
.

Frozen mist billowed from under the door.  Soon the room was lousy with it, obscuring her sight.  Frost formed on her lips and eyelashes.  Out of the mist came a smooth, chillingly close voice.  “This doesn’t have to be unpleasant.” 

Katarina chuckled, though just the sound of that inhuman voice made her entire body shake uncontrollably.  Maybe she was in shock; it had to be well below freezing in the little room.

The voice whispered in her ear.  “I know you’ve helped hide it from me.”  The voice fulfilled its angry potential, biting into her mind.  “That you helped
her
hide it from me!”

Katarina recoiled in pain.  “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about…I’m just a—”

“A witch!”  The voice snapped, and glass jars all through the room shattered.  Katarina covered her ears.  “And in my cousin’s service.”

“I’m not—”

“I could make you mine,” the cold air taunted and blew against her body like rough, uninvited hands.  “Force you into
my
service.”

The simple truth of that statement tore through her body, and nearly made her scream with panic.  Gasping for breath she pushed away the thought that she could just give in and tell her what she wanted to know, that she could end it.  That the months of hiding, of the pressure she’d lived with every day since she’d made the pact could be over. 

But just the thought of betraying one she loved so greatly filled her with fiery strength.  She would never tell the bitch what she wanted to know.  She would never betray her girls. 

Never. 

“I serve no one.”  She held onto the table she’d backed into, and though she couldn’t see it, she knew everything that was displayed on it.  She turned and reached out for a pot filled with cellophane wrapped, pastel-colored balls of bath-salts.  She swung back around and tried to pull off the cellophane wrapping when a hand materialized from the mist and grabbed her wrist.  It pulled her arm up at a painful angle; so strong, so very strong. 

She tried to free herself, but the hand only grasped her harder and became more solid as a shape materialized in the mist.  A face came into sharp relief only inches from Katarina’s. 

The Queen of Air and Darkness, Monarch of the Winter Court of the Sidhe, stood before her.  Her long black hair was like writhing shadows; her lips were the color of frozen mulberries, and her skin as smooth and white as ice coated snow.  But it was her eyes—the pale blue of a winter sky, cold and inhuman, their irises vertical slits like a cat—that made her look monstrous. 

Katarina pushed back the tears that welled up in her eyes and the screams that wanted to tear from her throat.  She would give the faerie no such satisfaction.  The disembodied face smiled, closed her eyes and pulled Katarina near. 

A whimper escaped Katarina’s lips an instant before they came in contact with the Queen’s cold, blue lips.  She tried to take in a breath, but instead what air she had in her lungs was sucked from them.  Her body flash froze and her life force, her very soul, pass out through her lips.

All fell black, time stopped, and the world went away.