by Sharon Page
Althea blinked and Miranda saw her hug herself. As a mother, Althea must be able to sympathize. “Those murders took place two thousand years ago,” she said slowly. “How did you see them?”
“I don’t know. I had a vision of them. It was as though I were looking through the eyes of the murderer. I also saw Lukos’s torture, when he was given to Lucifer as an apprentice.”
Serena stood, her hand at her back. “But with Zayan, you saw visions that he could not have seen.”
Miranda nodded. “That’s true. He said he did not know who killed his children.” She looked from auburn-haired Althea to dark-haired Serena. “Who did it?”
Althea’s brows drew together. “The truth of that is lost to the past, Miss Bond. My father is a vampire slayer, and I helped him with his research, combing ancient books. It was my father’s original intent to destroy Zayan. You see, Zayan sired my husband Bastien. He was the one who turned him into a vampire, when he lay dying on the street.”
Althea told her of how her husbands Yannick and Bastien de Wynter had been known as the Demon Twins. “I would like to tell you the truth,” Althea said. As she spoke, Miranda was amazed that Althea would reveal such personal things. Althea revealed they had hunted Zayan; then Bastien had asked for him to be imprisoned and not destroyed.
“After Zayan’s imprisonment, I had to learn as much about him as I could. Yannick—my husband—told me about his past. It was said that Praetonius drank the blood of his victims, even as a mortal. Then he craved the blood of pure strong men, to keep him vital and strong. And as he aged, he sought the blood of the young to give him life.” Althea paused. “Like Countess Elizabeth Bathory, drinking the blood of young women in the belief it would keep her young.”
“It was said,” Miranda repeated. She had felt Zayan’s agony over his children’s deaths. How could he be the instrument of death to others? Lukos had said so—but she didn’t want to believe it. “But is there any proof?”
Althea pointed to one of the stacks of books on the long desk. “The one on top is a diary—the journal of a vampire slayer from the seventeenth century, who had battled Zayan. I brought it with me. It was in there that I learned about the murders of Zayan’s children. That slayer believed that Zayan’s wife was the lover of another general, a compatriot of Zayan’s. Mucius Gaius. The slayer believed that Gaius was the man who killed the children.”
Miranda remembered that glimpse into Zayan’s thoughts.
“In the journal, the slayer wrote that he believed that Zayan’s wife betrayed her own children. That was different than the story Yannick told me of Zayan—it had been believed she had been betrayed too. But it appears she knew of the general’s plan to murder them but did nothing to either stop him or protect them.”
Miranda was appalled. “Dear heaven, why? Why hurt her own children?”
“For power, it was believed. She wanted Zayan, who was then Marius Praetonius, to be crippled by grief and pain, and to lose in battle, to perhaps even be killed there.”
“But why not just…just have killed Zayan? As his wife, she could have done so and spared the lives of her children.”
Althea shook her head. “I cannot understand it, but that vampire slayer believed she did it because she wanted to destroy the children she had given to a man she hated.”
“I can understand,” Miranda said softly, staring down at the journal but not touching it, “why he might have become a vampire in anger, after he was so viciously betrayed, and so mad with grief.”
Althea rose from her chair. “Zayan became a vampire before his children were killed.”
But that was not what Zayan had told her. She held her breath as Althea glided to the table, then held the journal to her. A strip of leather marked a page. Miranda opened it, forcing her eyes to become accustomed to the cramped handwriting.
The first paragraphs explained the tenuous hold on political power of Rome’s emperor. He feared the popularity and power of Marius Praetonious. Mucius Gaius had fed into the emperor’s increasing paranoia, until the emperor had begun to plot Praetonius’s downfall. Finding himself subject to sabotage, Zayan had faced losing a battle. And he had made a pact with Lucifer to survive. And to win.
Miranda looked up at Althea. “Did he become an apprentice to the devil, like Lukos?”
Althea shook her head. “Zayan bargained to walk as a devil among the human world, to enter into the service of Satan for eternity, and in return, he would turn living, breathing people into the undead, delivering their souls to the dark lord who craved them. But he began to believe himself stronger than the devil he served. And so Lucifer tried to have him destroyed.” Her ladyship walked over and laid her hand gently on Miranda’s arm. “He was not driven into brutality by grief. He was always brutal. According to that journal and others I have found since his imprisonment, he was one of the most brutal of vampires. He never tried to control his urge to feed. We are vampires—all of us—but we do not kill for blood.”
“You should have some brandy brought for Miss Bond,” Serena suggested.
Miranda thought to refuse, to prove she was strong enough for truth, but then she relented and nodded.
“You did know we are vampires, didn’t you?” Serena asked softly as Miranda tugged the bellpull.
“I saw your eyes. But I assume my aunt also knows, and if she trusts you, I believe I can too.”
Serena gave a little gasp and put her hand to her tummy. “A kick,” she explained. Her soft smile faded. “I must now tell you about Lukos. There is a prophesy, you see, and the end of it was only discovered last year.”
Before Serena began, Miranda stroked the book she held. The story told in this journal might not be true, she realized. The vampire slayer had not lived in Roman times. He was working from stories that would have been distorted over hundreds of years. And if the emperor had been afraid of Zayan, he must have tried to destroy Zayan’s reputation. If he wanted to kill Zayan, he would hardly object to spreading lies. What she was being told were stories. It was not necessarily the truth.
She laid the book firmly on the table. “And after you tell me about Lukos, I want to know what you meant by a love shared between three.”
“Oh, you overheard that?” Serena asked.
“Definitely brandy, then.” Althea managed a smile. “Both Serena and I are married to two men. Two men each. My husbands are Lord Brookshire and Bastien de Wynter. And Serena is pledged to both Drake Swift and Lord Sommersby. English law believes we each have only one husband, but that is not the truth. To defeat our foes, we had to learn to harness the magical powers created by a ménage à trois. And our foes, Miss Bond, were Zayan and Lukos.”
He approached a placid pool of water. It was an elaborate bathing room, the pool itself in tile the rich blue of the Mediterranean. The deck was startlingly white, and elaborate patterns had been created in the mosaic on the walls. Naked women cavorted and giggled in the water. Some pairs sucked at each other’s nipples. Two women lay face to cunny, like the numbers six and nine, and they were…were kissing each other’s vulvas.
Their play amused him. He had Praetonius’s wife, and she was wild in his bed, obsessed with him, but he liked this play.
This small pool was empty, and the mirror-like surface of the water threw his own image back at him.
He saw it. Blood—spatters of it on his cheek. The women would see it. They would be revolted by it. The blood of Praetonius’s children. He kept seeing it on him, though he bathed over and over—
He knelt by the pool, dipped his hand into the center of his condemning image, scooped a handful of water, and desperately scrubbed his face—
But he knew when he looked again, he would see the blood. He would never be rid of it. He shuddered. As long as he did not hear their screams again. They haunted him.
Miranda grasped the post of her bed to keep herself from falling forward. She had been standing by her bed one moment, thinking of what she had learned about Zayan, then the next�
��the next moment she had been seeing a bathing room through the eyes of the blackguard who had killed two innocent babes.
She sank to the edge of the bed and drew up her knees. She shivered, hugging them.
She had seen the face of the man who had murdered Zayan’s children.
If she described him to Zayan, would he know who that man was? Would it help him to know the truth? Or wound him even more?
Her window rattled and she saw the subtle play of moonlight on large black wings. Zayan. He had come to her room.
He was always brutal, Althea had said. He was not driven by grief…. Althea and Serena had showed her many books that substantiated their stories of Zayan and Lukos….
She should keep away from him, as Aunt Eugenia had demanded. But she wanted to know the truth. Had he lied to her, or were the words of history and journals the lie?
Perhaps she was mad, but she wanted to believe Zayan could open his heart to love, and that it could, somehow, redeem him.
And why was he insane enough to come to a castle that housed seven vampire slayers determined to destroy him? Could it really be for her?
Would she let him in?
Zayan circled in front of Miranda’s window. For long minutes, she stared at him through the streaked glass as he slowly beat his wings to hover where he could watch her. Moonlight poured on her, illuminating her oval face, her remarkable china-blue eyes. He witnessed the war of emotion on her face, and felt her turmoil as strongly as if it were his own. He sensed her heart demanded that she let him in, but her logic warned her not to be so mad—that letting him inside could mean her death or the deaths of others.
No, Miranda, he murmured into her mind. I would never hurt you.
Damn, he felt a spurt of guilt. He was lying to her. Tonight, he had to take her power. He had to absorb all of her energy to take it inside him and bargain with the red power.
Because once he had risen tonight, the voice of the red power had come to him. It had warned him that it was going to take Miranda’s power itself, if he didn’t do it for him….
If you rebel, if you refuse to do my bidding, you will lose any chance to ever have your children again. The red power’s voice had purred to him, sounding eerily like Claudia, his former wife—the wife who hated him to the point of madness.
Zayan, I can subject your children to great torture in their afterlife. I could condemn them to hell, if I wished.
What are you? he had shouted to the dark sky in rage. Though he had searched for two thousand years for some clue to what this red fog—this mystical entity—really was, he was still as ignorant as he had been when he had finally succumbed to its lure.
And fear welled up. He’d never known such horror. Do not punish them to hurt me. Punish me. Destroy me. Torture me. I don’t care.
Serve me, and they will not be hurt at all. Serve me and I will give you the man who killed them. He is immortal, just as you are. He has lived also for two thousand years. You’ve hungered for vengeance for such a long time. I can give it to you. If you give her to me…
What he should do was warn Miranda away from him. Tell her to run.
He couldn’t bear to hurt her. He had taken the magic force away from others—from angels and demons—without regret, without emotion at all. It should be as easy with Miranda. He had known her only a couple of days. She should not matter to him.
But she did.
Miranda began to walk resolutely to the window to let him in. She was doing it on her own volition. He had tried to compel her but felt that power bounce off her, like dull arrows on armor.
No woman who knew what he was had ever willingly let him in before.
But if he spared her, if he didn’t drain her power, which would likely kill her, he would lose everything. His children…
It would be like losing them all over again. And the grief was just as unbearable, as agonizing, as it had been two thousand years ago.
Miranda ran the last few feet to the window. She darted to the lock as though determined to do it before she lost her nerve. Her hands closed on the sash and threw it open. Open for him.
He swooped through the beckoning window and shifted shape in front of Miranda.
“What is wrong, Zayan? You look…haunted.” She reached out and traced the tight lines that ringed his mouth. “Are you in pain?” She frowned and looked to the door. “Why did you come? Are you mad? They’ll destroy you if they catch—”
He silenced her words by drawing her into his embrace. He didn’t want to speak. Slanting his lips over her warm, plump ones, he let himself sink into the heat of the kiss. Her fingers stroked his cheek lovingly. A woman’s caress—he’d never known one so gentle, that spoke so much of emotion and caring. The stroke of just her fingertips along the line of his cheekbone sent shivers of pleasure down his spine.
Why did you come? What do you want? she asked.
You. This. Her mouth was more intoxicating that any wine he’d drunk, sweeter than any plump grapes held to his lips by a beautiful slave, richer than any pleasure—
You’ve captured me.
He knew how she had tried to protect Lukos. How she had risked her own life to save three children. It was true. She had captured him.
His hands slid down over silk. She wore a nightdress, a thin creation of silk that clung to her round, high breasts, and fell sinuously from her hips to hint at the long curves of her legs. Shimmering white, the gown threw off light like the moon, and she called to him the way the moon did.
Miranda. Zayan moaned her name in need and hunger—something he had not done since he had been a general, but still a young man, and had first kissed Claudia, his wife.
Zayan’s tongue was playing with hers, doing delicious things to the inside of her mouth, making her melt, and Miranda drove her fingers into his broad, naked shoulders to keep from puddling at his feet.
She wanted him. As much as she had wanted Lukos. It seemed sinful and wanton, but as she surged into Zayan’s kisses, hungrily savoring his mouth, she knew she couldn’t deny her desire for him.
Teasing gently, his long hair fell against her cheek as he devoured her mouth. What had he looked like as a mortal man? Strangely, she wanted to know.
Stop. She shouted it into his thoughts. You lied to me, and I want the truth. When I asked you why you gave up your soul, you made me believe it was because you had lost your children.
His hands skimmed down her back, ruthlessly igniting her need. That is the truth, he murmured, his voice husky even in her thoughts.
Lady Brookshire told me that you became a vampire before your children were killed.
Lady Brookshire was not there. With a push on her shoulders, he drew back from the kiss and faced her. “What I told you is the truth. When I was a general, once when I was facing a huge defeat, a voice came to me—a voice that came out of the sky around me. It promised me great victories in return for my soul—and ultimately, my servitude. I refused. I won the battle using my own wits, the courage of my men, and perhaps some mad and ruthless moves. I was taken prisoner once, and the rumor was that I survived by becoming a demon. But those were stories spread by my enemy. By another general, Gaius, my wife’s lover—”
“And the man who murdered your children. I saw him.” She impetuously gripped his biceps. “I’ve had visions of the man who did it. And in the last one, I saw his face reflected in the water of a bath.”
His hands tightened on her arms and she almost squeaked with fear. It was as though he would snap her arms in his anguish and anger. “Tell me. Please tell me what he looked like, Miranda.”
Straining to remember every detail of the face she had seen in the pool of water, she told him. All the while, he stroked her shoulders, and his touch made it easier to see that face again.
“It was Mucius Gaius. He did it himself. I assumed he sent someone else to carry out the crime—”
“No.” She could barely speak; her throat seemed to be closing tight and she could not breathe. “He k
illed them with his own hands. I saw it—I saw what he did—”
“By the gods, Miranda, at least I was spared that.”
“I—It—” No words. There was none she could give him. It had been horrific, but it would not help Zayan to be told that. Her eyes itched and burned and she blinked at him. “I am so very sorry.”
“Those stories about me—about drinking the blood of children, about becoming a demon and serving Lucifer. They were not true. I was brutal. Yes, I cannot deny that. I took human lives to satisfy my hunger. But I want you to see—” He broke off. And time stood still as he bent to her neck and she forgot to breathe.
Perhaps she was foolish, but she tipped her head to the side to expose her skin. For her, it was like shouting to him that she trusted him. That she believed him. Tensing, she waited…
He kissed her there. That was all. His lips touched hers with the softness she remembered from her mother, long ago. The touch of someone who loved her.
“Did you summon this fog?” she asked. “Are you controlling it?”
“It came to me, but I didn’t summon it. It controls me. Don’t ask me what it is, love, because I don’t know. I cannot tell you. But it made me into a demon, two thousand years ago, and has haunted me ever since.”
His mouth traced the scooped neckline of her silky nightgown. Her most beautiful one. He reached the swell of her right breast and she giggled, then sighed in desire. His mouth made her feel like she was floating, without any magic lights or stars or spells.
“I’ve never shared as much with any woman as you, Miranda,” he murmured before tracing a circle around her puckered right nipple. Through her nightdress. With his fangs.
Sensation streaked from her breast to her quim. “Oh!” Her nipple stood harder, her breast seemed to swell and lift toward him in her pleasure.
