by Lexi Blake
“Absolutely not.” Dev Quinn didn’t have the excuse of youth. He was just being an asshole.
“Your mother feeds a vampire every day,” Summer pointed out to her friend who obviously wanted to be more than friends.
“My mother loves my father. He’s a good male. We don’t know anything about this vampire. You know as well as I do that an unattached vampire is a dangerous vampire.” Dean had moved in front of Summer like he could protect her from Marcus. “She is not yours to use.”
He was going to be super fun to mentor. I would be the one teaching him how to fight, and that meant regularly putting the kid on his ass. I would probably enjoy that. Unless he turned out to be a whiner like Casey. “Guys, it’s a little blood. It’s going to make things so much easier. We can’t have Marcus getting antsy on us. You remember how he fucked around in your head? That could get worse if he’s hangry. You won’t like him when he’s hangry.”
He would be the mental equivalent of the Incredible Hulk, and when Marcus was on the angry side, he liked to watch people gut themselves. I needed to avoid that.
“I offered to help him,” Dev said between gritted teeth. “He doesn’t need to feed from my daughter. I’m sorry. I meant from Daniel’s daughter.”
Summer sighed. “I’m Fae, Green Man. I do understand the relationship. If you are married to my mother and in a partnership relationship with my father, then you are my father, too. And I was in your head back then. You were terrified that night. I doubt you would have actually allowed the demon to take me. Even when you told Zoey to give me up to fulfill her contract, you were already trying to find a way out of it.”
I stared at Quinn. “You tried to give away a baby?”
He frowned my way. “Zoey’s soul was on the line. She’d signed a demon contract and the only way to fulfill it was to give him what she’d stolen. Unfortunately, what she’d stolen turned into Summer.”
“Yes, we all know the queen signed a contract. It’s precisely why no one else is allowed to.” There were now all kinds of laws and regulations concerning when a vampire, or one considered vampirekind, are allowed to sign contracts. “But back to the issue of Marcus going crazy due to lack of sustenance. Marcus, Quinn’s blood is fine. If the idea of putting your mouth on his neck and sucking is too homoerotic for you, we’ll do it the toxic-masculinity way and find something for Quinn to bleed into. I don’t guess anyone brought along a travel mug.”
Summer stepped around Dean. “I said I would help him and I will. He saved me, and he didn’t kill you when he could have. Now that I know he hasn’t fed in days, I’m grateful for his self-control.”
Control was Marcus’s stock-in-trade, and it was probably why he hadn’t been feeding. He’d stayed in Dallas for my wedding. I’m not saying he was fading due to my marrying someone else. That’s not it at all. But we’d had something, something Marcus hadn’t found in a long time, and it had been over before he’d wanted it to be. I think in some ways, Marcus had hidden away in our relationship. Before meeting Summer, he’d believed Evangeline was potentially his fated companion, the one he’d waited millennia for. As she was a child, he feared he would never be able to see her as a woman. He’d thought he might be able to avoid the whole thing if we stayed together. We hadn’t, and I think Marcus had been mourning that safe place. He could get mopey.
“Awesome,” I said. “Summer is going to give Marcus some blood and then we can figure out where we’re camping for the night. Someplace far from the undead, right? But not too far. I think we need to stay here until we figure out how to get back, and pretty damn quick.”
Something Gray had said to me whispered along my brain. Never leave the path.
Was I already off the path? What had he meant by “path”? Sometimes words meant different, not so literal things in prophet speak. I got that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me I might have already fucked things up.
“She’s not giving him anything,” Dean declared. “I won’t have her caught in a marriage she doesn’t desire.”
Before Summer could speak, Marcus held up a hand. “I would not trap her. That is why I shall go into the woods and find a creature to feed off of.”
Was he thinking at all? “A creature like the water horse who made you sick? That kind of creature? We’re in a weird-ass place where we don’t know how you’re going to react to things. I do not need a psychotic Marcus to deal with.”
“And I do not need to deal with the withdrawal I will feel when she refuses to feed me next time,” he said savagely.
“An excellent reason not to do this,” Dev pointed out.
“Sure, that’s your reason,” I shot back.
Marcus turned. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He stalked off toward the woods.
I turned on Dev. “Are you trying to kill him?”
“Of course not.” Dev’s shoulders straightened and he went toe to toe with me. “You heard him. He doesn’t want to risk getting addicted to a woman who might not want to have anything to do with him in the future. She’s made herself plain.”
“What are you talking about?” Summer asked.
But I was busy arguing with Quinn. I’ve gotten to like Quinn over the years. He can be one of the nicest men in the world if you’re in his circle. Or if you’re trying to get pregnant. Then he’s all about lending a girl a hand, but he can be a raging asshole to others. His wife usually tempers him, but I didn’t sleep with the dude. “She’s known him for five minutes. Could you give them a chance? You know the prophecy.”
“I know Jacob told Marcus what he needed to hear. He was trying to get Marcus to do an important job.” Dev loomed over me. “That doesn’t mean I should sacrifice one of my daughters to him. You know he hasn’t always been the paragon of virtue he portrays himself to be now.”
I wasn’t going into that. We had an audience. I had one guy I might be able to go to when it came to Quinn. “What does Bris say? Bris can sense compatibility. He’s had enough time around them to have formed an opinion.”
Quinn’s jaw went stubborn.
“I’d like to talk to Bris,” I said, enunciating each word.
His eyes changed and so did his stance. His shoulders relaxed and his lips curled up. His accent became a lyrical Irish. “Please forgive my host. He’s unsettled. He will pretend to be confident, but he’s worried about getting back to our home.” The fertility god turned to Summer. “And he’s worried about you, sweet daughter. Guilt can be a hard thing to bear, and Devinshea feels it sharply in your case. He’s quite desperate to ensure your safety and to get you back to the Earth plane. He fears if you form a connection with Marcus Vorenus, he’ll lose his chance to be important in your life.”
“She’s not getting close to a vampire,” Dean said.
Bris turned those eternally green eyes on the boy. There was more than a bit of sympathy there. “That will not be up to you, but you should know that what you feel now will seem like nothing when you finally meet the woman you are destined for. I cannot see in the way of a prophet, but I feel your destiny, child. Remember that great sacrifice is often repaid with great love. Open yourself to it. No matter how it comes to you.”
“What did he mean about withdrawl? I remember my father being worried about it the night I was born.” Summer had her hands on her hips, but her eyes trailed off to where Marcus had disappeared.
I hadn’t even thought about that. The problems were piling up and I still had a headache. If I couldn’t get him to drink from me or Quinn, I wasn’t sure what the hell I was supposed to do. I was going to have to find a way to make this a less intimate experience. “Companion blood is addictive to earthbound vampires. If he does feed from you, he’ll go through some pretty painful withdrawal if you don’t feed him next time.”
“Daniel said it was terrible, and he only fed from Zoey once that first time,” Bris explained with a long sigh, as if he was finally realizing the trouble we would have. “It took him months before
he felt normal again, and I don’t think he ever stopped craving it.”
“Marcus has been through it before.” I knew all about Marcus’s past. He was open with me when it came to the women who had come before me. Given how long he’d lived, it was a surprisingly short list. Marcus liked to flirt, but he wasn’t what I would call a player. “He wasn’t one of those vampires who constantly kept a companion. He fell in love with them and when they died, he mourned them.”
“He would be ill, Kelsey,” Bris said. “You would be exchanging a day or two of good health for a very sick vampire. He wouldn’t even be able to take regular blood for a few days. In this my host is right. We need to get him to take our blood.”
“Plenty of vampires live off animal blood.” Dean wasn’t moving.
“Not earthbound vampires,” Bris explained. “I am a creature of the Earth plane, but I know a bit about how the planes were populated. Vampires all come from the Earth plane, as do all creatures. The Earth plane is the cradle of all life. As humans became the dominant species, many supernatural tribes sought their own home worlds and learned how to pierce the veil, and they left the plane to establish their own. As all living things do, they adapted. Marcus is not like the vampires you know. He requires human or humanlike blood to be truly healthy. We must convince him to allow Devinshea to feed him. Perhaps if I speak to him…”
Marcus could be stubborn. “We can try.”
“Or I can agree to feed him as long as he’s here on this plane. I can make a deal with him,” Summer said. “I would like to meet my parents, and Kelsey has said she might help to train Dean.”
“I’m already in training,” Dean insisted. “I don’t need any more.”
I snorted. “You totally need more unless you want Myr…multiple bad guys to murder you.”
I wasn’t ready to admit I might know more about Dean’s “destiny” until I was sure I actually knew what I thought I knew. I also wouldn’t admit it in front of Dev. Bris was looking at me in a way that made me think he’d picked up on my subtle change of verbal course.
Luckily Summer turned her exasperated self on Dean. She pointed a finger his way. “Have you considered the fact that you need to get to the Earth plane? That we have no idea how to send you there and suddenly three powerful Earth plane beings fall from the sky? Have you considered the fact that apparently my father is now the ruler of the supernatural creatures of the Earth plane and could be invaluable in aiding your mission?”
“I won’t trade you for a mission,” Dean argued. “I’ll find another way.”
“You don’t have a choice. You don’t own me either, Dean.” She turned to Bris. “You don’t believe the vampire will hurt me or will attempt to push the boundaries of a negotiated relationship if I offer to feed him?”
Bris chuckled, a deep, sexy sound, but then he was an actual sex god. “Oh, he’ll try anything he can, daughter. But he will also protect you and yours with everything he has. Marcus believes you are his fated mate. He believes it in his soul.”
“Because of this prophecy thing?” Summer asked.
“Because of how he feels when he looks at you, when he is close to you. I can feel his emotions, they are so strong,” Bris corrected. “He has been waiting for you for hundreds of years. He’d almost given up hope.”
“I don’t want to be anyone’s fate.”
“Then I need to convince Marcus to feed off Dev, and we need to find him a hooker.” There was more than one hunger we needed to feed. “Earthbound vamps require sex to function properly, too. I would bet it’s precisely why Marcus hadn’t fed. He wasn’t in the mood to bump uglies with some rando, so he went on an ill-timed fast.”
“I can aid in this,” Bris offered. “I am sexual energy. I can focus it and Marcus won’t need sex for a while.”
Summer nodded. “Excellent. Then we’re going to do this. Dean, if you argue with me again, I’ll ship you back to Erna.”
Dean’s jaw tightened but he didn’t say another word.
Summer looked out to the forest. “I need to find him before he takes down something that could make him sick.”
Bris knelt and touched a hand to the grass. “Find the vampire.”
There was a line of grass suddenly greener than the rest, and where there was no grass, moss peeked from below the dirt, lighting the way as efficiently as any signpost.
“Summer, don’t do this.” Dean’s voice had lost its hard edge, and he sounded more like the young man he was. “We can find another way.”
There was resolve in Summer’s eyes. “Sometimes things happen for a reason. I’m going to find Marcus.”
“And then we should have a talk about the necklace you’re wearing, daughter. I would like to understand why you’ve bound your magic,” Bris said.
Her eyes flared and there was fear there, but she merely nodded. “Of course, Father. I’ll return shortly. Dean, see if you can salvage that book. We need it.”
She jogged down the path Bris had created.
Dean stared at the fertility god. “If he hurts her, I’ll find a way to pay you back.”
“Calm yourself,” Bris said, not unkindly. “But prepare because I believe those two will find their way to each other. They are intensely compatible. She will ease his loneliness in a way no other woman can, and he will be the supportive lover she has always craved. They will complete each other if they are allowed to bond.” He seemed to focus inward. “Yes, Devinshea. He will complete her. She has a hole inside her soul, and he will fill it if you allow him to.”
Suddenly Dev was back, the eyes going from emerald spheres to normal human eyes. Incredibly beautiful, but normal for a faery prince. He took a long breath. “I will endeavor to support my daughter in whatever she chooses to do.”
It was easy to see how hard that was for Dev. I had tears in my eyes because I was happy Marcus was going to find what he needed. “I’m glad. Now let’s try to figure out what we’re going to do. They could be a few minutes. Dean, are you all right?”
Dean frowned as he picked up the satchel Summer had left. “I pretty much wish none of you had ever shown up in my life. The faster I can get you off this plane the better.”
I had a suspicion he would be coming with us. I turned back to Dev while Dean started going through the soaking-wet satchel. “I’m worried we’ve already screwed things up. Gray’s prophecy gave me some instructions, but I don’t know what they truly mean.”
He nodded. “I think it’s pretty clear. The trick and the trap. Yes. The painting was a trick and we’re most definitely trapped. The question is why, and who would do this to us?”
I stared at him. “Myrddin gave Daniel the painting.”
Dev nodded again as though something had become clear to him. “Yes, so this was a trap for Myrddin, not us at all.”
I screamed. Internally, but I still screamed. I was not going there with him. “Whoever it was for, Gray said something about never leaving the path. But I didn’t see one.”
If I was supposed to follow the yellow brick road, shouldn’t it be all shiny and present? There was other stuff in there, but the path was what I was hung up on. The rest would play out, but he’d been clear about this. Never leave the path.
“There wasn’t a path.” Dev glanced back to where we’d come from. “Marcus and I were stuck for several hours before you got here. We studied our surroundings. There were no paths, though I’ve been keeping one.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the ground knows where I’ve walked. I can get us back to the field where we entered this plane,” Dev assured me. “Don’t worry about not being able to get back. I know the way.”
Somehow I didn’t think that was what the prophecy was about.
“I think I can get this sucker dry.” Dean had a book in his hand. I would bet it was leather bound and had some lovely calligraphy in it if it was anything like some of the witch’s books I’d seen. Liv had a pretty spectacular one, though she mostly used crappy noteb
ooks to actually work out her spells. Only when she deemed it good enough did it get transferred to the gorgeous bound volume she’d been given when she’d reached the age of twenty-one.
I’d stopped her from burning it three weeks ago. God, I hoped Casey was looking after her because my best friend was a mess since she’d lost her magic.
“What is that?” I asked since Summer had been very concerned with the book. “Is it yours?”
“Nah, it’s something she stole, but it’s important to me,” Dean replied.
“She’s been stealing?” Dev asked, but his eyes were lit with mirth. “Oh, her mother is going to be so excited. I always knew it was written in her DNA. It looks like she passed it on to our daughter.” He frowned suddenly. “Perhaps I should not get her together with Lee. They might form their own crew. I should get a bail fund ready.”
I’d already started saving up for Lee’s. I would need it because I was pretty sure I would be the one getting that call and not his parents. A low groan brought me out of those thoughts.
“Damn it. She’s going to kill someone. Probably me.” Dean held up the book. It was perfectly dry now, but the pages were empty. “Could we not tell her that there was writing there before I worked that spell?”
Whatever Summer had been looking for, she was out of luck.
And I had to pray that I found the path in time.
Chapter Fifteen
Summer
I followed the winding line of green that would lead me to the vampire. I was a moth to the flame. I should have allowed Dev and Kelsey to deal with the problem and stayed far away. Instead, all I could think about was Marcus sinking his fangs into Kelsey or some other woman, since he didn’t seem at all interested in taking my second father up on his offer. I told myself this was all about paying the vampire back for saving my life, but I knew I was lying to myself.
He intrigued me in a way no other male had in years. Perhaps ever. It wasn’t that I didn’t like sex. I liked it quite a bit. I’d grown up in a Fae society, and we consider sex to be a part of what connects us to the divine. I’d had my fair share of hot encounters and I’d kept them light and fun for the most part. It had only been the last few years that I’d buried myself in work and guilt and sorrow. Even then I’d managed to find pockets of respite, and they usually involved sex. Again, I consider myself Fae and it’s pretty much how we handle things. Nervous? Have some sex and calm down. Angry? If you find your opponent even vaguely attractive, throw down with him and see if you can resolve your argument through multiple orgasms.
