He peered into emeralds and saw for the first time in a long while they were unguarded. Like they’d been at the beginning.
“I’m sure she’s itching to tear strips off me.”
“She wouldn’t be Aurelia if she didn’t want to do that.” He laughed. “But she let you live. Even helped heal you. Me, on the other hand…” Hame’s finger stabbed him in the ribs.
He crunched his side. “Ow!”
“You keep any more secrets from me, there won’t be anything left to bury.”
For all the humor in Hame’s voice, Carn’s blood turned to ice. “I…I’m so sorry.” Tears bit his eyes, and his breathing stuttered. Hame moved but, Carn couldn’t bear to see the accusations. How could he ever expect Hame to love him after what he’d done?
Lips pressed his and he tried to escape them. He didn’t deserve them. But the kiss came again, and he couldn’t resist. He opened his eyes and saw everything he needed to see.
Hame broke away, his thumb wiping Carn’s tears. The rough touch of his skin sent a shiver up his spine. “You’re mine, Carn Gwyn. Ain’t no demon going to take you from me.”
Hame kissed him quickly and snuggled beside him, his arm heavy and reassuring across his ribs. Carn breathed deeply, the scent of earth wafting from Hame’s hair. There was a lot to talk about, and although Hame might have forgiven him, he still had amends to make and demons to slay. But, for now, he held tight to the oracle in his arms.
Because if this was all there was, it would be enough for him.
Epilogue
“Maybe I should have kept you locked up from the beginning.”
Manacles slid around his wrists and ankles and pinned him to the stone wall. Of course the cunt had a dungeon.
Olivier didn’t struggle, not while she was there. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing him howl and holler. Instead he watched her jugular throb. The way he hungered now, even her stinking blood would suffice.
She sneered and scuttled away, taking that rotten stench with her, and bolted the door, plunging him into darkness.
Certain she’d gone, he rattled the chains. How dare they treat him like this? His shaking became more violent, but the shackles held.
If it weren’t for witches…
Slaughtering the Duke had weakened him, allowing his once-beloved brother to betray him and make him a sacrifice so his slut-whore could live.
Hunger leached strength from his bones, making his head droop and body ache. All that paled compared to the ice-cold rage thundering within. Aurelia might think she had him trapped, but he’d escape.
Then he’d wipe her whole fucking species off the planet.
And drown the world in blood.
Preview: Binding Blood
Bonds of Blood: Book III
He rose from darkness into an expanse of gray. A shapeless, endless landscape rolled around him and enclosed him above and below. The only difference was him, an unsteady point in this unfamiliar place. He looked behind him—felt back with his awareness—without needing to turn. Nothing followed him, but something had sent him there, something he’d wanted to escape.
Something still out there.
He drifted, not knowing where to go or if the something prowled before him or behind. It didn’t matter which way he went. A drab vastness extended in all direction towards a horizon that never came nearer. Yet inside himself grew an uneasiness brought from wherever he’d been before. It clawed out of the deep, still hidden in shadow, but its approach became harder to ignore. He hastened.
How had he got there? How could he leave? He traveled, checking back often to see if whatever was after him—yes, something was after him. Something had chased him there.
Breath had gouged his throat, his insides cut with little hooks—
Hooks?
No… Teeth.
Biting into him. Taking chunks out of him. Except not chunks.
Blood.
The teeth had taken his blood. Drained him of it. Exiled him there. Wherever he was. He couldn’t return.
Not yet. Not yet.
It wasn’t safe to go back.
Not yet. Not yet.
But those teeth that had stolen the life from him would follow. And he had nowhere to hide in all this gray. Nothing to defend himself with. Nothing but his hands—
He raised them and waggled his fingers. Yes, his hands. He could use them to fight. But as he looked, they shattered and reformed into glowing shards of purple crystal. It vanished and his hands reappeared. He looked down at his body, his bare chest, and ran his hands over it. Solid, yes, but neither hot nor cold. And then his body disappeared, replaced by purple crystal. The fear intruded more. He swiveled. It was getting nearer. Whatever it was. Whatever had hurt him.
Whatever was coming to hurt him again.
He spun, and the gray rotated around his axis as he shifted between flesh and light, blinking between one and the other, spinning faster and faster. He wouldn’t return. But where was he? And what was he becoming?
He flashed. He spun. He beckoned.
And the horizon changed.
A figure melted out of coalescing clouds. He stumbled back but kept his eyes forward and locked on the figure as it neared him. He couldn’t run but trying was instinctive. However quickly he covered ground, the figure—a woman—drew closer. Raven hair waving in a breeze that wasn’t there, a benevolent smile and sparkling eyes, her body close despite his retreat. She reached out a hand ready to touch him. He wheeled, fell, and cowered.
“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “I’m here to help you. We’ve been looking for you.” Her hand stroked his cheek, and the suddenness of it hoisted him to his feet. He jumped back and bunched his fists.
She vanished and reappeared behind him, catching him. “I’m not trying to hurt you.” Her soothing voice smothered her lies. Everything there was designed to harm him. He should have been safe—safe from the thing that sent him there—but he’d landed in another trap.
He jolted out of her arms and positioned himself where he could see her.
“I’ve searched for you for so long.” She offered him her hand. “You shouldn’t be here, but this is not the end.”
He flinched. What did she mean? And how could she help him? She was a part of this. He didn’t know how but he knew it deep inside him where the thing lurked. Because of her, he was there. Anger stirred inside him and unleashed a torrent of shouted words. His mouth moved, he yelled, but she didn’t hear him. She couldn’t decipher whatever he said, and concern chiseled into her pale brow. Around him the light flared, a violet haze sparking as he raged with the transformation.
Slim hands raised. “Calm yourself, please. I’ll guide you back.”
Back? No. Back was where he’d be torn apart. He’d be… He’d be killed!
Her hand came nearer, and he tensed. He’d destroy her if he had to; just to get away from her. Just to be safe.
To be whole.
She froze, and her eyes drifted over his shoulder and into the distance. “Get behind me.” She rose up, growing bigger, and guarded him with her body.
He followed her wide gaze, and his heart plummeted. The thing he’d been fleeing stalked out of the gloom. The woman had grown three times her original size, and he peered around her.
A demon strode out of the oppressive clouds. Wings the color of tar, horns gleaming like polished obsidian, impatiently thrashing a pointed tail, eyes glowing crimson.
The demon didn’t come alone. Men and women swept across the plane to surround them. The space between his gasping breath and this army of death shimmered.
“Well done, Sinara.” The demon’s voice rumbled with the destructive glee of an earthquake. “Thank you for finding it.”
She snarled, an inhuman sound that sent him stumbling away from the protection of her back. Menace swept from the warriors with a stickiness that cloyed at the back of his throat. Trapped. He wrapped his arms around himself, but still his body shook with enough forc
e that he feared he’d burst into a shower of splinters.
“If I were you, I’d make this easy. Give it to me now and I’ll let you leave unharmed.” The demon leaned forward and glowered with a toothy grimace. “Then again, I’m not you, and I’d prefer to see you beaten and burned.”
“I’ll die before I let you control it,” she growled.
“Let’s hope so. Proceed.”
The army opened their arms and light burst forth. He braced, preparing to be blown apart by their magic—yes, magic, he knew of magic—but the attack rebounded. The hail of red power streaming towards him struck a shield that covered him and the woman. She checked points on it, tension held at the corners of her eyes. She protected them, but her muscles clenched the longer the assault lasted.
“I have to get you out of here,” she grunted. “You’re needed elsewhere.”
She grabbed his wrist, but her words had the touch of prophecy and he rebelled in her grasp. He wasn’t going to be used again. He’d already suffered for it once and that’s what…
That’s what had brought him there. That’s what had brought him close to—
A chill crept up his feet and legs, into his belly and his torso, freezing his heart.
I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead.
“No, don’t think that. You’re alive,” she said in a hurried whisper. “You just got lost.” Desperate eyes stared into him as if her saying it could make it so. But the cold had almost engulfed him, and the fear was draining. Whatever they thought they could do to him, they wouldn’t get the chance.
“We’ll find you.” Heat bloomed through her hand into his wrist, and her warmth kept him alive.
He screamed silently and thrashed. The heat intensified. The siege roared around them and the sound of stone cracking lifted his eyes as a jagged line spidered across the shield. His body seared with the blaze of her magic, and as an explosion shuddered around him, her power propelled him down to where the vampire waited to finish what he’d started.
Oberon’s consciousness slammed against his skull. Air punched into his lungs and heaved his torso off the ground. The violent jolt whipped awake the agony coiled in his body.
But he was alive.
He held the breath, a pause in mid-air before his strength dissipated, and he collapsed back on the singed carpet.
Alive. And in pain.
A shoulder ruined by fangs, a violated asshole, a crunching ache in every bone and muscle, and a migraine drilling through both eyes: all converged to gnaw on his feeble energy.
Was he still there?
Panic sparked through his weakened body. His lead-lined eyes struggled to open, then battled to focus. Lights from the street cast shadows through the window across the sofa, the broken candles, and the crumbling living room wall; signs of his efforts to fend off Olivier, but no sign the vampire remained. The search exhausted him, and he slipped back into darkness.
We’ll find you.
His eyes sprang open. Who’d said that? As real and as recent as if they’d been in this shithole of a room. Air scoured his lungs. Something was after him, and he couldn’t stay.
He released what should have been a simple jet of power. Sweat drenched his body, but he managed to bring his phone within reach. How could there be so little in him? He rested before he punched at the screen, letting his body steal a few precious seconds of his waning life force to recover for a further attempt at saving himself. Talons scraped through his body, while the prickles of the carpet fibers dug into his flesh with each shallow gasp, reminding him of how weak he’d been when facing that fuck Olivier.
He’d tried to help the vampire and been half-killed for his trouble. He focused on that invasion, and fury at being brought so low galloped through his body. He hitched his soul to it until he bucked with its violence. He should have been able to stop that bastard from—
He wrenched his mind away from the memory, not wanting to relive it, inside or out, not while this naked and exposed, this close to death. Survival came first.
Through drooping eyelids, he keyed in the number for emergency services. Thank Christ it was so short. The tinny voice of the operator came up the line. He pleaded for an ambulance, gave his address, told her he’d lost a lot of blood. Speaking snatched the last of his strength, and the phone slipped onto the carpet. He didn’t know what was said after that, whether they were coming, what would happen next.
He fought against the dimming of his mind, but he was too feeble, too far gone. A desperate rattle of alarm at finding the vampire waiting for him sustained his consciousness for a second, but then that too evaporated and he floated into nothingness.
“Can you hear me?”
Words broke through the fog. Latex-coated fingers pressed at his wrist, then his neck.
“Please…” he whispered.
Please don’t let me die.
His awareness rose and fell as his body lurched off the floor, as he was covered, as the door banged, as the trolley rattled, and the ambulance lurched.
“Hold on,” a woman said. “Don’t be afraid.”
Don’t be afraid…
Why did that seem so familiar? Like he’d just heard it. The more he focused on those words, the more his connection to the planet evaporated, the more gray swirled around him.
And something told him he had to stay away from the gray.
He hunted for something that would keep him tied to Earth, and then, scrabbling with desperation at losing time, at losing life, he found it.
He sank all of himself into where the vampire’s teeth had torn his skin and marked him.
And it pulsed with life.
Everything else—thoughts, words, the grayest of mists and the glittering of obsidian—all vanished below the blazing vengeance and shame and disgust.
Buy or borrow from Kindle now…
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my good friend, Nikki Logan, for the many hours she spent critiquing this book, providing untold feedback to bring it up to a publishable standard. I’m so grateful to have someone like you in this business.
And thank you to my family, friends, and fans, who enjoyed Beckoning Blood and wanted to see what happened next. My husband, Glen, gets extra marks on this front.
Also by Daniel de Lorne
Get a FREE story & be the first to know about new releases, cover reveals, giveaways and more. Sign up at danieldelorne.com or click on the image above.
Urban Fantasy/Paranormal
Bonds of Blood series
Beckoning Blood
Burning Blood
Binding Blood
Romantic Suspense
Echo Springs series
Embers and Echoes
Contemporary M/M Romance
The Love Left Behind
One from the Heart series
Set the Stage: A Rivervue Community Theatre Romance
Christmas Short Stories
The Faller
Flour, Eggs, Sugar, and Magic
About the Author
Daniel de Lorne writes about men, monsters and magic (often with a bit of mayhem thrown in). In love with writing since he wrote a story about a talking tree at age six, his first novel, the romantic horror Beckoning Blood, was published in 2014.
In his other life, Daniel is a professional writer and researcher in Perth, Australia, with a love of history and nature. All of which makes for great story fodder.
And when he’s not working, he and his husband explore as much of this amazing world as they can, from the ruins of Welsh abbeys to trekking famous routes and swimming with whales.
Connect with Daniel
www.danieldelorne.com
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Burning Blood: Bonds of Blood: Book 2 Page 25
