by Larissa Ione
“A little.” Eidolon leaned back in his chair. “And we’ve discovered a half-dozen wargs who were exposed but didn’t contract the infection. The R-XR is trying to determine what makes them immune.”
The U.S. Army’s paranormal unit was involved now? And Eidolon was working with them? She’d known that her sister-in-law, Runa, used to be a member, and that Runa’s brother still was, but holy crap—it just didn’t feel right for the government to be getting involved in any way with Underworld General.
“So I’m here, why?” she asked. “You in need of assassination services, or what?” She’d thrown that out just to get a reaction from her uptight, always-in-control brother, but to her surprise, it was Con who made the noise.
“You’re here because wargs are dying, and it’s your fault,” he growled.
She wrenched her head around to peg him with a glare. Which might have been a good plan, if he hadn’t looked so damned good in his black paramedic uniform, which set off his deeply tanned skin and sun-streaked blond hair so beautifully. Toss in those sterling eyes, and there was no glaring at him. Only admiring.
“Why are you even here?” she snapped, more irritable with her reaction to him than anything. “I didn’t think the disease affected dhampires.”
“I’m on the Warg Council. I’m keeping them informed.”
“Well, good for you.”
Eidolon cleared his throat imperiously. “Actually, you’re both here for a reason. Sin, it’s time that we work with your gift. We’ve got to determine a way to use it to treat the disease.”
“My gift kills. It doesn’t cure.” Her gift was something she’d really like to give right back to her Seminus father. Too bad he was dead.
“Yeah, well, technically, you shouldn’t exist, so I’m not ready to write off the impossible.”
Oh, she loved the reminders about how she was a freak of nature, the only female Seminus demon to ever have been born. “So what’s your plan?”
“Can you use your gift to determine what kind of disease resides inside a body? If you touch someone who is ill, can you tell what he or she is sick with?”
“Sort of. I can feel the arrangement of the virus or bacteria or whatever. And once I learn it, I can replicate that specific disease.” She shot Conall a smirk. “Khileshi cockfire is a favorite.”
Wraith laughed. Conall paled. Eidolon looked at her as if she was responsible for every case of the excruciating venereal disease he’d ever treated.
“As disturbing as that is,” Eidolon said, “it’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
There was a tap at the door, and Lore strode past Wraith, who was still playing doorjamb sentinel. Lore held a folder in his leather-gloved hand, and Sin didn’t think she’d ever get used to seeing her twin brother in scrubs. “I read the R-XR’s initial report on the immune wargs, and something stuck out. The wargs who didn’t catch SF after being exposed were born wargs. So I examined the bodies in our morgue. I know not every warg that’s been infected has come through the hospital, but every one who has? Turned warg.”
Sin frowned. “SF?”
“Sin Fever,” Wraith chimed in with a little too much enjoyment.
Sin Fever? They’d named the fucking disease after her? Bastards.
E seemed oblivious to everything as he flipped excitedly through the folder. “Just when I thought we’d never find a link between the victims. I’ll call the R-XR and let them know. Excellent work, Lore.”
“So, what was it you wanted with me?” she asked.
Eidolon looked up from the paperwork, and the circles under his eyes seemed to have lightened a little. “About that… see, that’s why I called Con to this meeting.”
Bracing his muscular forearms on his knees, Con leaned forward in his chair. When he spoke, his fangs flashed as fiercely as his eyes. “What are you saying?”
“You know you were exposed to SF when you brought in patient zero.” When Con nodded, Eidolon continued. “It’s in your blood. Your body isn’t attacking it, nor is it attacking you. But when we introduced Sin’s blood to the mix in the lab, your white blood cells and hers joined forces to attack the virus. It’s a major find, and we’re working on developing a possible vaccine, but as I told you before, it could take months, if not years.”
Sin’s skin prickled with foreboding. Eidolon was dancing around something. “Skip the buildup and backstory. Bottom line. What do you want from us?”
“I need Con to feed from you,” he said softly. “And I need it to happen now.”
I need Con to feed from you.
Eidolon’s words kept ringing in Con’s ears. To Sin’s credit, she wasn’t ranting and raving. But then, with the hell no burning in her black eyes, she didn’t need to. Lore looked as if he wanted to take a piece out of Con. Wraith just looked amused.
Con shoved to his feet. “As much as I’d like to help you out, Doc, I can’t do what you’re asking.” Sure, he’d tasted Sin’s blood before—and it had been damned good—but that was exactly why he couldn’t do it again.
“I get that she’s not your favorite person—”
“He said he can’t do it,” Lore growled. “Let it go, E.”
Eidolon shook his head. “Unfortunately, there’s no let it go option. This might be our only shot at a fast solution.”
“I don’t understand.” At some point, Sin had produced a throwing knife and was now flipping it between her fingers, and Con had a feeling the speed directly related to her level of agitation. The sucker was flipping fast. “What do you mean, a solution?”
Eidolon tapped his finger on one of the papers on his desk, where he’d scrawled a lengthy column of numbers. “I can’t inject the amount of your blood we need to destroy the virus into Conall without killing him. He needs to ingest it. As a dhampire, he has a double-chambered stomach to deliver blood almost directly into the bloodstream. So if my calculations are correct, a normal feeding will allow him to take in enough blood to start attacking the virus. Once that’s done—”
“I can use my gift to learn the composition of his blood and replicate it inside someone who is diseased,” Sin said.
“Exactly.” Eidolon grinned. “Told you that you should be working here instead of as an assassin.”
“Bite me,” she snapped.
Eidolon gestured to Conall. “That’ll be his job.”
“No,” Con said grimly. “It won’t. It’s not that I don’t want to help. But there has to be another way.”
“I agree.” Sin came to her feet, her blue-black hair swishing angrily around her waist. “I don’t let anyone fang me.”
You let me, you little liar. Hot little liar. Man, Con wanted to call her out on that, but at least two of her brothers in the room were a little on the overprotective side, and the other didn’t need an excuse to kill things.
“Look,” Eidolon said. “If there was any other way, I’d find it. But there’s not. And there’s something else to consider.”
Con didn’t like his tone. Not at all. “What else?”
“You.” Eidolon paused as though searching his brain for the right words, and Con’s gut hollowed out. “The virus is inside you, alive and replicating like crazy. It wants out.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Con rasped. “I’m a fucking carrier. I could have infected people.”
“Unfortunately, yes. The disease seems to be transmitted via both direct and indirect contact, as well as by air, but as an asymptomatic carrier, you might transmit it differently. We need to run tests to be sure, but since Luc hasn’t come down with the virus, it’s not likely that you’re breathing it out or passing it on by casual touch. But you need to avoid intimate contact.”
Oh, holy fuck. How many females had Con fed from and slept with in the last month? His mind raced as he counted and eliminated those who weren’t werewolves. Only one had been a warg… but had she been born that way, or turned?
Con had a call to make. “Hold on, Doc.” He dug his cell from his pocket, dialed, and tried to keep his pulse r
ate at a reasonable level. Yasashiku, a member of the Warg Council, answered on the second ring.
“Con. You’re missing the meeting. Valko’s about to pop a vein. Where are you?”
“I’m at work. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Moving toward a corner, he lowered his voice. “Have you heard from Latisha lately?”
The sudden silence made the pulse in Con’s ears pound even louder. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?” Don’t say it. Don’t. Fucking. Say it.
“She caught the virus,” Yas said, his faint Japanese accent thickening with emotion. “She was… she died last night.”
Con didn’t even reply. Numbly, he closed the phone. He’d done his share of killing in his thousand years of life, some of it justified, some not. But there was something truly obscene about killing someone with pleasure.
Sure, there was no proof that he had given the virus to the ginger-haired warg. No proof at all, but the timing was right, given the timeframe from onset to death.
Crimson washed over his vision as both nausea that he’d killed an innocent female, and anger that the person ultimately responsible was right there in the room with him, collided. This had to end.
Especially since all of the risk would be Sin’s.
“Con?” Wraith’s deep voice was a mere buzz amongst the other noise in Con’s head. “Dude. You okay? You look like you’re about to take a header.”
“Then I guess I’d better feed.” Conall’s voice was as cold as the center of his chest as he swung around to Sin. “And it looks like you’re lunch.”
THE DISH
Where authors give you the inside scoop!
From the desk of Larissa Ione
Dear Reader,
“Family” is a word that means something different to everyone. Your family might consist of those who were born into it, or it might be made up of the people (or pets) you choose to bring into the fold. Your family members might be tight, or they might be estranged. Maybe they fight a lot, or maybe they get along beautifully. Often, family dynamics exist in a delicate balance.
So what happens when something happens to throw off that balance?
In ECSTASY UNVEILED, the fourth book in the Demonica series, I explore that question when the assassin hero, Lore, is forced to go up against his newfound brothers in a dangerous game of life or death.
In previous books, the conflicts each hero faced brought the demon brothers together to battle an enemy. In ECSTASY UNVEILED, the conflict is more internal, their bond is put to the test, and they become their own worst enemies.
Can love and trust overcome suspicion, tragedy, and an old enemy bent on tearing them apart?
When Idess, an angel bent on thwarting Lore’s mission to kill someone close to his brothers, begins to fall for the coldhearted assassin, family ties are tested, betrayals are revealed, and a dark shadow falls over Underworld General Hospital.
Fortunately, “family” can also be a source of hope, and with Idess’s help, Lore may yet find the family he gave up hoping for so long ago.
For more about the Demonica world and the families that make it come alive, please visit my Web site at www.LarissaIone.com to check out deleted book scenes, sign up for the newsletter, and enjoy free reads.
Happy Reading!
From the desk of Laurel McKee
Dear Reader,
When I found out I had just a few days to come up with something for The Dish, I froze! There were just so many things I could write about that I couldn’t decide. Should I talk about the rich history of late eighteenth-century Ireland? The beautiful Georgian architecture of Dublin? The gorgeous fashions? Irish music? The inspirations behind the characters? Or maybe a cautionary tale of my one attempt at Irish step dancing (there were head injuries—that’s all I will say about that!).
I confessed my dilemma to my mom, who suggested we throw an Irish party with lots of Irish food and some Chieftains CDs, and then I could write about it (though there would be no dancing).
“Great!” I said. A party is always good. “But what are some Irish recipes?”
“Er—there’s your grandmother’s soda bread recipe,” she said after some thought. “And, um, I don’t know. Something with potatoes? Fish and chips? Blood pudding?”
“And Guinness,” my brother added. “Every Irish party needs Guinness. And maybe Jameson.”
I happily agreed. Fish and chips, soda bread, Guinness, Irish music, and you have a party! Blood pudding, though, can stay off the menu.
It was lots of fun to have what we called a “ halfway to St. Patrick’s Day” party. I just wish my characters, the Blacknall sisters and their handsome heroes, could have joined us. And if you’d like to try the soda bread recipe (which is supereasy—even I, officially the “Worst Cook in the World,” can make it), here it is:
4 cups flour
1½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
2 cups buttermilk
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Grease a round pan. Mix the ingredients thoroughly before kneading into a ball.
Cut a cross in the top, and bake for 50–60 minutes.
Serve with fresh butter and a Guinness!
And for some background on the history and characters of COUNTESS OF SCANDAL and the Daughters of Erin series, be sure to visit my Web site at http://laurelmckee.net.
Enjoy!
From the desk of Lilli Feisty
Dear Reader,
For those of you who have read my previous book, Bound to Please, you may have noticed I have a bit of a thing for music and musicians. My latest novel, DARE TO SURRENDER, is not about a musician, but it’s still related to music. It’s about a woman whose emotional release is to dance. She won’t dance in public; she’s much too shy for that. But she dances by herself. A lot.
And it’s not just any sort of dancing; she prefers to belly dance. She’s quite good at it, better than she thinks. In fact, Joy is better at a lot of things than she gives herself credit for, and it was great fun helping her realize that. Because don’t we all have our hang-ups? And working our way through them can be quite an exhilarating release.
If you read DARE TO SURRENDER, I’ll tell you right now that there are a lot of similarities between the heroine, Joy Montgomery, and myself. She’s a redhead. She’s not necessarily comfortable with her curvy figure. She’s totally disorganized. Her handbag is the size of a small suitcase.
There’s more. She works in an art gallery—I owned one. She’s very spontaneous, to the point of getting herself in crazy binds because of it. I do that. A lot. She drives an old Mercedes. So do I.
So you can see we have a lot it common. Except the dancing in public thing. To put it simply, I love to dance. Am I any good at it? Probably not. But I simply can’t help myself. If I’m out, and I hear a good beat, I’m lured to the dance floor. In fact, I tend to dance at any opportunity, however inappropriate. It was quite pathetic, but just the other day, I was reprimanded at the grocery store for doing the Wang Chung in the frozen food aisle.
However, let me tell you, belly dancing is not as easy as it looks. To be good, you have to be able to move separate parts of your body at varying speeds and rhythms. For some people (me), it’s not easy. But that’s irrelevant—it’s fun, and once you let yourself go, it really doesn’t matter how good you are. You feel the music take over your body and you want to shimmy. To undulate. To dance! I think belly dance is one of the sexiest, most feminine, mesmerizing forms of dance there is.
Some people assume belly dance was created for the sole purpose of entertaining men. In fact, this is not true. It was invented by women, for women. I think that’s why it’s such a sexy form of dance. When you belly dance, you’re celebrating being a female. You use your hips, your arms, your waist. And, of course, your belly. And you don’t need to worry if your belly is a bit round because it’s about having fun and using your body to express yourself. And let’s not forget the costumes. Belly dancing costumes are pretty
darn gorgeous.
So this is Joy’s hobby. And it’s mine too. The only difference is that Joy is too shy to do so in public so she only practices in her own bedroom. (Also Joy is way better at it.) Of course, when she meets Ash Hunter, he slowly begins to chip away at Joy’s inhibitions. But does he get her to dance in public?
Well, I won’t give away the ending. But I will say, by the end of their story, Joy is ready to take the dare to surrender everything, even if it means embracing every facet of her femininity.
I hope you enjoy their story.
XXOO,
