by M. J. Scott
As I smell the scent of the blood they drink. But I am used to the insidious odor and even though it is still unpleasant, I can control my reactions. Overlying the notes of death and fear, I smelled the heavy musk and wood cologne Lucius wore. It invoked a different sort of reaction. Lucius wears his perfumes dabbed on wrist and neck and misted over his clothing. They fill the air I breathe when I drink his blood, indelibly linked to memories of ecstasy.
My breath quickened and a slow pulse beat between my legs. Lust warred with rising horror. How long would the dose he’d fed me take to wear off? How long until I could regain control and school my body to ignore the need? Would this new fiercer hunger ever wane?
“Well?” Lucius asked. One hand smoothed the black velvet of his jacket, red glinting against the white skin. He wore his rings tonight. Heavy rubies set in iron. Iron that flaunted his power, a deliberate taunt to the Fae. The black metal had brutal edges, clasping the rubies with spiked tongues. His rings could carve flesh from bone with the force of a vampire’s strength behind the blow.
My blood had fed those rubies more than once. Was that what he’d brought me here for? Remembered pain swam through me and I swallowed as the fear surged, trumping the lust.
I sucked a breath, braced my knees, focusing on staying upright. “My Lord, I believe he would be expecting another attempt. I cannot imagine he will leave himself undefended.”
He adjusted one perfectly white cuff. “Are you telling me to leave him alone? To call off my dogs?”
Yes. I almost flinched when the word sounded in my head. I did not care about the sunmage. I would not care about the sunmage. I needed to care about surviving the next few minutes. “No, my Lord. But I do not think I am the best weapon to serve you in this.”
His fist clenched. “That is not your decision to make.”
I wished he would just hit me and get it over with. I’d survived beatings before and Lucius was always safer when his rage had been bled off. “No, my Lord.”
He moved then. Fast enough that I didn’t have time to react. His fingers closed around my jaw, forcing my head back. “You do as I say,” he said with deathly calm. “If I want Simon DuCaine or any other man dead, then he dies. You do not fail. You do not interfere. You obey. Always.”
His nails bit into my skin, not quite hard enough to draw blood but close. Tears stung my eyes even as Simon’s name rang in my ears. I stayed still. Lucius could snap my neck from this position with one quick movement.
Just as I could sink a stiletto into his heart, I thought for a wild moment. But I wouldn’t. My stilettos wouldn’t kill him. And if he lived, I might escape if I shadowed, but he wouldn’t suffer me to survive for very long. I would be hunted. Tortured. It wouldn’t be an easy death. As much as I sometimes longed to be free of Lucius, I was not ready to give up my life to gain that freedom.
“Always,” he repeated, shaking me.
“Y-yes, my Lord,” I managed. “I am your shadow.”
His grip eased slightly, not enough for me to get free or move. “Yes. Mine. I think it’s time to remind you of your place, shadow.” His breath washed over my face and I shivered, caught between fear and desire as his scent surrounded me again. I clenched my teeth, fought the whimper rising in my throat.
He trailed a finger from his free hand across my throat. “I could make you completely mine,” he said softly. His hand dropped, slid between my legs, pressed against me and sent shards of hungers splintering through me.
“One drop of my blood and you’d be begging for it. Is that what you want, shadow? Me between those pretty legs of yours?”
I should’ve said yes. My body wanted it. After all, would it really be so different from what I already submitted to? But I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t willingly give him the one part of myself still mine. I shook my head.
A slow smile spread across his face. “Good. Because I’m not interested in your pleasure today, shadow.”
He pulled his hand away, then casually tossed me across the room.
I hit the wall with a crash and pain exploded down my spine. Lucius was on me before I could move or shadow or do anything at all to protect myself, lifting me effortlessly to plow a fist into my stomach, driving what little air was left from my lungs, leaving me clawing for breath as my insides cramped and throbbed.
He set to work, face calm as he struck again and again.
There’s a trick to surviving a beating. You have to find the rhythm of it, so you can anticipate and send your mind away from the pain at the right time. But I couldn’t do that. Lucius is a master at keeping you on edge and present for every second. That way, every hurt inflicted makes its intended point.
Instead of retreating I tried to use the pain, forcing my focus down to each shaky breath I took. Proof I was still alive. He didn’t touch my face—he never did. But the rest of me was fair game. The pain grew with each blow and I had to fight the overwhelming urge to shadow. It would only be worse if I tried to escape.
Eventually there was a lull. I lay on the floor, tears wetting my cheeks as pain settled and dug its claws in the nooks and crannies of my body. Nothing shrieked with the burning red of a snapped bone. But there was a chorus of hurts clamoring for attention. I have strength beyond a human’s, but I doubted there was an inch of me below my neck that wouldn’t be purple-black with bruises tomorrow. I couldn’t yet tell whether the damp patches I felt against my skin were fear sweat or blood where he’d split my flesh.
“Get on your feet.”
I obeyed, unable to stop a moan as my body shrieked. Somehow I stood, knees locked against the adrenaline tremors.
Lucius smiled. He looked exactly the same as he had when I’d walked in the door. Cool. Removed. Icy. No sweat or wrinkled clothing to show he’d spent hells knew how long hurting me. I’d hoped violence would have provided an outlet for his rage, but pools of scarlet still rode the depths of his pupils.
If anything, they were brighter now. He wasn’t as calm as he appeared. Would tonight be the night his control snapped? I doubted I’d survive if it did. Bile rose in my throat.
“Good. See, it is easier to obey, is it not? Easier to be mine?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak without sobbing. Shame and fear and hatred coiled deep in my stomach, spreading and burning far below the pain, settling into my bones. It had been a long time since he’d beaten me so badly. Part of my mind whimpered like a scared child but that part I ignored. Instead I focused on the hatred. Hate was a reason to live. Fear only made death seem appealing.
Lucius circled slowly. I wanted to turn, to track where he was, but I couldn’t make my body obey. It hurt to move. He moved close behind me, one hand brushing my neck. “Yet you’ve never been truly mine, have you? Never served my needs in full.”
The tremors flowered into shakes as his fingers settled against the place where my pulse beat below my jaw. Surely he wouldn’t? None of the Blood had ever fed from me. Human blood sustained them. I wasn’t human. Plus, Lucius wouldn’t have stood for it. But he would hardly gainsay himself.
“Trembling,” he whispered mockingly in my ear. “Anticipation, my shadow? Do you wish to serve me?”
I wished to kill him. The desire was a pure ache inside me. Clean. And simple. Fiercer than ever before. Yet, despite it, another want stalked me as well. I couldn’t control my body’s reaction to him being so near. Even battered and bruised and aching with the hurts he’d inflicted so mercilessly, there was the hated yearning. The whispers in my mind urging me closer, telling me to please him, to do anything for another taste of him.
I schooled myself to stillness, resisting the need. Movement was danger. Not only for the capitulation it demonstrated but for the simpler truth that it would trigger the predator within him.
But stillness did not save me. His fingers coiled into my hair, yanking my head sideways, baring my neck.
“Mine.” The whisper came again and I winced. Lucius always rode a knife’s edge of control, casually
vicious in his rages when he chose to be, icy at other times. But now there was a thread of something . . . wanting in his tone. Maybe his control had snapped. Maybe, for him, insanity looked no different from reason.
The tone was something too close to what I’d heard in the voices of other Blood who’d become obsessed with a particular human. The object of a Blood’s obsession rarely survived long. Arousing the true hunger of a Blood lord was a ticket to destruction.
So I needed to be unworthy of his attention. Be as any human. Submissive, willing, compliant. Boring. I tried to make myself relax against him a little as I tipped my head even farther. Wooded musk filled my nose and suddenly I was glad of the need that answered even through the pain. It could take me away as well, shield me from reality. “Drink, my Lord,” I said softly.
His lips settled against my throat and his fangs scraped my skin. It wouldn’t hurt, I told myself. Not like the beating. The venom in his fangs would numb the pain and his saliva would heal the wound once he was done. But still I shook as I stood there, shook like a rabbit cornered by a fox.
Then he bit. One tearing, stinging plunge through my skin. I gasped as his lips clamped down. The sensation of my blood being sucked out through the wound made my stomach roil. I bit my lip. Hard enough that I tasted blood. Harsh and coppery and salty. Not delicious like his.
It made my throat close and my body bucked against his. Lucius snarled, pulled me closer, his arm iron against my bruised body. His swallows were soft and wet in my ears and my stomach rolled as my knees sagged.
But despite that, I felt intimacy fall around us like a cloak. Felt rather than heard that his heartbeat matched mine. Felt that doubled pulse as if it were my own, a curious sensation as though I’d lost my place in the world. Like I no longer knew where the boundaries between us were.
His arm gentled around me, though the pressure of his lip increased. I could feel his attention on me, somehow knew that nothing else existed for him at that moment. Our joined heartbeats skipped and then steadied. Grew louder in my ears. One beat. Two . . . by the time I’d counted to ten, I was growing dizzy and my knees buckled.
Lucius gasped then and lifted his head, shoving me away with a snarl as he straightened. I half stumbled, reeling from the sudden sense of disconnection, but managed to keep my feet. “Go now,” he said. His pupils no longer flared red, but something swam in the brown depths that I couldn’t name. Something hungry.
Flee. It was all I could think, but some part of me remembered protocol and survival. I bent in a bow that hurt enough to make me want to vomit, straightened with teeth gritted and pinwheels of light starring the air before me as dizziness swept over me. I stepped back and he reached for me again, his movement almost seeming involuntary. He traced the curve of my cheek with one finger. The finger that he usually pricked to draw blood. It felt cold, almost soothing against the aches swimming under my skin. His touch moved down my cheek to my lips. It was as gentle as Simon’s hands had been, but unlike Simon’s, Lucius’ touch brought only fear.
“Do not forget, shadow,” he said softly as he stroked my mouth. “And do not disappoint me again.”
“Stick to the plan,” I muttered as I stared at the neatly clubbed black hair of the man in front of me. The throng of people crowded around the gates was moving slower than a dying carthorse, but that didn’t stop the sense of anticipation from the Nightseeking fools surrounding me growing stronger with each step we took toward the doorway to Halcyon.
I tried not to breathe too deep of the oily smoke from the torches flaring around the gates. It was a long time since I’d been around so many Nightseekers. There’d been flames then also. Flames and worse.
The mild night air felt suddenly cold and I forced my mind away from the memories before they could rise, rolling my shoulders to ease the tension riding the top of my spine. I would never understand humans who sought the darkness of the Night World, turning their backs on their kind. Lesangre was one of the worst of the Night World boroughs, its streets and alleys often deadly to those outsiders who sought the dubious pleasures they promised. It was only natural to feel wary here. I could blame the uneasiness prickling the back of my neck on that rather than memory.
Or simply on the fact that I was waiting to enter a Blood Assembly to try to woo a wraith away from a Blood lord.
Or kidnap her out from under his nose.
Gods and suns, what had I been thinking?
Somewhere on a nearby roof, Guy lurked, ready to come roaring in, sword blazing, if things went badly and we had to resort to force to retrieve Shadow. Hopefully we wouldn’t. I had no desire to endure endless retellings of “the night I pulled Simon-the-imbecile’s arse out of Halcyon” at family gatherings.
He would delight in doing so this time, if he were proved right.
We never spoke of what had gone before. Of the night he hadn’t been at my back.
My hands fisted and I uncurled them with an effort. The past was past, and tonight would be different. Our family was protected. Guy had taken precautions with Mother and Hannah, and Saskia was safe at the metalmages’ Guild House.
Tonight would go smoothly. I didn’t need the sort of trouble that would require Guy’s intervention. Which did beg the question of why, exactly, I was so damned set on walking into a Blood Assembly owned by the vampire who’d tried to have me killed the night before. In order to see the girl who’d tried to kill me.
Mad.
Crazy.
Unholy fucking insane, to use Guy’s exact phrase.
I didn’t have any fitting comeback to that. There was no comeback. It was fucking insane. But we needed her. Needed her evidence. And beyond that, in the place I didn’t want to think about, the part of me I was trying to bury deep, I knew I could help her.
Shadow.
Even if she didn’t think she needed to be helped.
This one I could save.
Had to try to save.
Insane, indeed.
My fingers itched for a pistol, but guns weren’t allowed in the Assemblies. Blow too big a hole in even a very old vampire with a silver bullet and he might not recover. So my only weapons were two daggers. The utilitarian one Guy had lent me and the more delicately wrought, though no less deadly, one I hoped to use as bait to coax its rightful owner into conversation.
Shadow.
Her dagger’s haft bit into my skin as my hand curled around it. My fingers almost engulfed the handle. I imagined her hand there, resting against my hip. Then imagined it slightly lower.
Blood rushed to my groin. I set my teeth.
Brains, not balls, little brother. I could almost hear Guy’s voice at my ear. A correct assessment of the situation. I was under no illusion that other wants besides the need to bring Lucius to heel and set someone free of the cesspool of the Night World were at play. But I could keep those other wants in check.
Had to keep them in check. I needed my wits about me to pull this off. I’d stained my hair black and dressed in uncomfortable foppish black velvet to blend in with the Nightseekers, but there was no guarantee of my safety.
After all, the creature who owned this place wanted me dead. Guy had tried to convince me to let him be the one to go inside. But his Templar crosses marked him as an outsider, if not an outright enemy, and there was no way he’d get anywhere near Shadow. If I was recognized, I would have to rely on the assumption that Lucius wouldn’t kill me in plain sight in flagrant violation of the law. If he did, then Guy and the Templars could at least use that to nail his ass to the wall at the renegotiations.
I smiled grimly. Good to know my death would be good for something.
The crowd shuffled forward a little farther and I tried to curb my impatience. At least the stench of too many colognes and eager sweat somewhat lessened the oily reek of the burning torches and the darker stinks of the cobbled street. But the musky combination did nothing to ease me, only reminded me I was surrounded by those drawn to the Night World. Surrounded by danger.
Which it just might be if you had an extremely perverted view of the perfect afterlife.
Personally I thought spending eternity—or close enough to it—as a vampire sounded like hell. Cut off from the light and the day and everything human. Thank you, but no. Not a choice I would ever make. And the thought of her surrounded by all that darkness made me want to hurt something.
Guy was right. Unholy fucking insane.
Chapter Four
The smell of incense and human sweat swirled around me, clinging to my skin as I made my way downstairs from Lucius’ office, fighting the need to wince with every step despite my cautious pace. I couldn’t afford to let anyone see I was hurt. When surrounded by predators, never show weakness. Never be the slow, sick calf at the edge of the herd.
I resisted the urge to touch my neck, to see if the bite marks were still there, branding me. It would only draw the exact kind of attention I wished to avoid. The bites are supposed to heal almost instantly, but I had no way of determining if they had. I had pulled my collar high around my neck; it would have to suffice.
Slow deep breaths kept me focused as I navigated carefully through the room, trying to ensure that no one brushed against me. I longed for the cool gray of the shadow where, removed from the needs of flesh, I could think without pain clouding each breath. Where the brush of my clothes against my skin didn’t hurt. But no doubt Lucius had his spies throughout the assembled throng. They would be watching. He might even be watching from his aerie of an office, high above the crowds.
I needed time to think. To plan. I’d never managed to fall this far from his favor before. Worse, I’d never aroused his blood hunger. Prey indeed.
