by Kresley Cole
“Were any of the records salvageable?” he asked with little hope. If the vampires of this castle had spent as much energy fighting as burning, they might have kept Oblak. To his disgust, they’d fled. He didn’t understand it. When defending your home, you defend to the death.
He had.
Kristoff answered, “None.”
Without the records, their own ignorance would kill them. Kristoff, the rightful king, had been raised by humans far from Demestriu’s reach. For centuries, he had lived among them, hiding his true nature yet learning little of the Lore. His army consisted of human warriors he’d turned as they died on the battlefield, so they knew nothing. Before Nikolai had seen Kristoff standing over him like an angel of death, offering eternal life for eternal fealty, Nikolai had thought vampires were mere myths.
The rules of this new world were complex and often counterintuitive, and their order knew little more than conjecture and what had been learned by painful trial over centuries. They were trapped in a kind of twilight—not human and yet universally shunned by all the factions of the Lore. Those beings hid in the shadows, fleeing from whatever land Kristoff’s army occupied, working together to always be one step ahead.
Nikolai’s human experience said they should have been able to get information by now, but the reality was that this was a different plane altogether. The same effort that went into hiding the Lore from humans for ages went into keeping Kristoff’s soldiers in the dark as well.
“Any sign of Conrad or Sebastian?” Kristoff asked.
Nikolai shook his head. He hadn’t seen his brothers since shortly after they’d been turned, but he knew natural born vampires often clashed with turned humans. Though he and Murdoch hadn’t expected to find their brothers here, they had distantly hoped the two might be in the dungeon of the castle they’d strategically needed to take.
“Perhaps the next Horde stronghold.”
Nikolai nodded, though he doubted it. He sensed his brother Bastian was dead and suspected the mind of the youngest, Conrad, was unreachable even if he could be found. The two had not appreciated the eternal life their older brothers had forced on them.
Murdoch examined a gouge in his arm, seeming unconcerned with this blow, but then he generally seemed unconcerned about everything. Though they shared similar looks, he and Nikolai couldn’t be more different in personality. Nikolai believed in Kristoff’s cause, seeing many parallels to his own past, and wanted to continue to fight. Murdoch didn’t particularly care. Nikolai suspected his brother fought only as a favor to him—or because they had nothing else now.
“Nikolai found a being in the dungeon,” Murdoch said. “She seems to have extensive knowledge of the Lore.”
“What kind of being?”
Nikolai answered, “I have no idea. She appears fey, delicate, with sharply pointed ears. But she has these small fangs and her fingernails were more like … claws. She’s not vampire.”
Kristoff frowned at that. “Perhaps she’s born of more than one species?”
“Perhaps.” More speculation. Nikolai was sick of it. He wanted to know the rules of the game so he could dominate it.
“Find out everything you can from her.”
“She won’t talk. I’ve interrogated enough to know she’ll hint but never truly divulge. And she hates vampires.”
Kristoff pinched his forehead. “Then tomorrow night if we haven’t gotten information from the rest of the prisoners, we treat her as the Horde would. Torture her for the information if you can’t get it any other way.”
Nikolai nodded, but the idea sat ill with him. As a human he’d been merciless to his enemies, but he’d never tortured a woman. She wasn’t truly a woman, he reminded himself. She was a female among the Lore, and their army’s survival could depend on the knowledge she held.
Perhaps he’d never tortured a woman because he’d never needed to.
The creature had been right, Nikolai thought as he made his way to his new chambers. He was going to call her up to him.
To do what with her, he didn’t know.
CHAPTER TWO
Did you miss me? Because I missed you,” the female said when a guard escorted her inside his bedroom.
Out of habit, Nikolai stood when a lady entered, and she flashed him a brilliant smile. “A gentleman warrior. Who cleans up very well.” She fanned herself with her hand. “I think I’m in love.”
He didn’t answer, and she didn’t seem to mind as she casually scanned the room. “Retro Nosferatu. Not necessarily what I would have done, but then I’m not married to sunproof shutters like you might be…” She shrugged, then headed for the bathroom. “Taking a shower if you don’t mind,” she said airily over her shoulder, making him raise his brows.
At the doorway, she unbuttoned her tight blouse and shrugged from it, leaving only a transparent black bra. She turned to him, revealing her scarcely covered breasts, he knew, just so he could see the creamy flesh spilling from the lace when she bent over to remove her boots. What he didn’t know was why.
Was she truly mad? Most people who were mad didn’t think they were, but she seemed to be proud of it. He was usually quick to determine people’s motives. Yes, she wanted her freedom, but for some reason he knew she wouldn’t sleep with him to receive it.
If he had to guess, he would say that she simply didn’t see stripping in front of him and making herself completely at home in a stranger’s bedroom as odd. In fact, he suspected she didn’t see them as strangers at all.
As he stood, concealing his surprise, she untied the fastening of her silky skirt at her hip, and it too fell to the ground.
A fine gold chain around her tiny waist caught his attention. It was unusual, the design appearing very old, but it glinted like new when she moved. Once he could take his eyes from it, he found her in only that wispy bra and scanty, black underwear so intricate he was shocked anew. They were like a work of art—or a like a ribbon decorating one.
She gave him a teasing smile. “Vampire like?” she purred, unclasping the front of her bra to toss it with her other clothes. He scowled because he did like. Very much. He ran a hand over his mouth, wondering if her high, plump breasts could be any more beautiful. She had coral pink nipples that he could spend hours tonguing and alabaster flesh he wanted to cup and palm. He began to speak, then had to cough in his fist to continue. “You’ll strip in front of a vampire when you don’t even know his name?”
She gasped with mock horror and covered her breasts with her hands. “You’re right! So what’s your name?”
“My answer will be as forthcoming as yours. What do you want it to be?”
She smiled at that but then replied to the question, “Some kind of name that fits a battle-scarred, overgrown vampire warlord.”
Battle-scarred? Overgrown? He wondered why in the hell he cared how she saw him. She was divinely wrought, but mad. He’d take his scars with his sanity. “Nikolai Wroth,” he grated.
For the briefest second he thought he saw recognition flicker. But then she eyed him archly and breathed, “Oh, you are good. Wroth, the old word for rage? That’s a bingo idea for a name.” Her hands dropped. “I’ll just call you by that,” she said, shaking her head with a rueful smile as if she couldn’t believe he was so clever.
… as a hatter.
Then she leaned back against the doorway, raising her bent arms above her head to grasp her elbows. Displaying her mouthwatering breasts and flashing a flirtatious smile that would’ve dropped most men to their knees, she asked in her whiskey voice, “Care to join me, Wroth?” She winked when she said his name and rolled her hips up off the doorframe.
“No,” he bit out the word with difficulty. He didn’t want her to know how his body didn’t respond to her. His mind did, his vague memories of being human did. But not his body. He was the walking dead. No respiration, no heartbeat, no sexual need—or ability. Not until he found his predestined Bride and she “blooded” him fully. With his blooding, something inside him,
some essence—maybe even his soul—would recognize her as his. He would see her as the one he was meant to spend eternity with, the woman he could love without measure, if one believed in that, and his body would wake for her.
In the past he’d yearned for his Bride because of the power she would bring him—he would finally be as strong as blooded vampires, his senses as acute as theirs—but he’d never missed the sex before this. And Nikolai knew after this display that she was not his. For this should’ve blooded any vampire.
She shrugged, the simple movement a sight to behold, then turned the corner to the bathroom. When she emerged fifteen minutes later clad in a towel, she crossed to his closet. He was almost certain she’d used his toothbrush.
Which … charmed him for some reason—
The towel dropped, leaving her with only her chain and him with a view of her perfect ass.
He swallowed. “Have you no modesty?” Never in his life had he encountered a female so quick to be naked. Of course, he’d never in his life encountered a female who should so utterly be naked at any chance.
“Not at my age,” she said as she began exploring his recently unpacked clothing. How strange to hear her say that when she looked so young. He found his head tilting to keep his gaze on her as she moved and bent. The chain swayed at her waist, and her long, damp hair cascaded down over her breasts. He stifled a groan at a particularly fruitful glance.
A true redhead. He closed his eyes. And he couldn’t have her.
“How old are you?” he grated, opening his eyes.
“Physiologically, I’m twenty-five. Chronologically, I’m … not.”
“So you are an immortal?”
An amused smile played about her lips. “I am.” She pulled on one of his shirts though it fell far off one shoulder and well down her legs.
“Why did you stop aging at twenty-five?”
“When I was strongest. Not for the same reason you were frozen at …”—she trailed off, eyeing him—“thirty-four?”
“Thirty-five. And why do you think I stopped aging then?”
She ignored him to continue digging. After a few moments, she plucked out an old bejeweled cross from his bag. She pinched the relic, holding it away from her, keeping her gaze from it. “You’re Catholic?”
“Yes. It was a gift from my father.” To help keep him alive in wartime. Nikolai shook his head at the irony of just how well it had worked. “I thought I was the one who should be repelled by it.”
“Only a turned human would say that. Besides I’m in no way repelled. With jewels like that? If I look at it, I’ll want it.”
“So you wouldn’t want it because you’re Catholic, I take it?”
“My family was very orthodox pagan. Can I have?” She held it forward, still not looking at it. “Can I, can I, Wroth?”
“Put it back,” he said, fighting the unfamiliar urge to grin. With a pouty expression, she returned it, mumbling something about tightfisted vampires, then dipped her feet into his boots. When she turned to him with her hands on her hips, his lips almost curled at the sight of her, a mad pagan immortal swallowed by his boots.
“What did your mother feed you?” she teased. “Renaissance anabolics?”
His urge to smile faded. “My mother died young.”
“So did mine.” He thought he heard her murmur, “The first time.”
“And I was born after the Renaissance.”
She drew her feet from his boots and sauntered past him. “But not by much.”
“That’s true. And why do you think I stopped aging at thirty-five?” he asked again.
She frowned as if she didn’t know where his question had come from, then said, “Because naughty Kristoff found you dying on a battlefield, decided you’d make a fine recruit, then made you drink his blood. Bit a wrist open, perhaps? Then with his vampiric hoo-doo blood in your veins, he let you die. Unless he was in a hurry, then he would’ve killed you. One to three nights later and voilà, you rise from the dead—most likely with a frown on your face as you think ‘Holy shite, it worked!’ ”
He ignored the last and asked, “How do you know the blood ritual?” He’d thought that only vampires knew the true way to turn a human. In movies and books, the change always came as a consequence of a vampire’s bite, when in fact a human had more chance of turning if he bit a vampire.
“Like I said, I know everything.”
Yes, but he was learning, if sporadically. She was an immortal, who’d been frozen physiologically at twenty-five. If she was pagan she was at least several hundred years old. She knew of the blood ritual and that Kristoff “recruited” his soldiers straight from the battlefield.
When she scooped up her clothes, opened his door, then snapped her fingers for a guard down the hall, Nikolai merely watched like a bystander.
“Psst. Minion. I need these laundered. Very little starch. Don’t just stand there gawking or you’ll anger my good frenemy General Wroth. We’re like this.”
He couldn’t see her but knew she was twining two fingers together.
Once she’d foisted her laundry, she closed the door by dramatically leaning back against it—as if to say he couldn’t get away from her now—then glided over to him. As a rule, he observed, he calculated and he waited, but he’d never quite enjoyed sitting back and watching events unfurl as much as with her. Unpredictable didn’t begin to describe—
She clutched his shoulders and straddled him.
Nothing between them but his pants and a few inches. He could even feel her heat as she knelt over him. She was definitely not his Bride or he would’ve ripped through his zipper to get inside her. His heart would beat, he would take his first breath in three hundred years, and in the space of one of those breaths he would be buried so deep in her tightness, wrenching her down on him… But nothing approaching that happened.
“Now, Wroth, we need to work some logistics out. When I’m kept as a pet, my care is very involved.”
His brows drew together. “I have no wish to keep you as a pet.”
“You hold me prisoner. You think to order me. How does this differ?”
“You’re not a pet,” he insisted. He couldn’t think—her eyes were mesmerizing, her sex was inches away from his, and her pleasing accent was lulling.
She leaned in by his ear and murmured, “What if I want to be your pet? Would you like that, vampire?” Her fingers brushed their way over his chest, unbuttoning his shirt. She picked up his hands one at a time and set them on the armrests, giving each a squeeze as if to let him know she wanted them to stay that way.
With raised eyebrows, he let her. He wasn’t about to move, and couldn’t imagine what she would do next.
“If I was your pet, you could keep me for your pleasure, and I would serve you in every way you desire.” She pulled his shirt open, clearly admiring his chest. “Hard.” Her voice was breathy. “Scars.” She moistened her lips. “I’d endeavor to blood you so you could wake at sunset with my mouth greedy on you while you clutched my thighs to drink from. You would go to sleep at sunrise still deep inside my body.” Her hand was trailing down, her eyes raptly following the jagged scar that had been his deathblow. “I am here for the taking and ache for your touch.”
She reached down and cupped him beneath her before he could grip her wrist. In an instant her seductive look vanished, though she showed no surprise that he wasn’t hard. She felt around his cock, arching an eyebrow. “Well, my word, Wroth. If you were hard, I wouldn’t know whether to be tantalized or terrified.”
Then with blurring speed she was off him, and in the bed, lying on her stomach, chin propped on her hands. She was utterly unaffected by what had just occurred, while he was angered and … shamed that she’d felt him like this. He wanted to show her hard…
“How do you plan to keep me here during the day? An unblooded Forbearer shouldn’t be so hard to vanquish.”
Vanquished by her? Amusing. “I’ll send you back to the cell. You want to be my pet? I’ll
take you out and put you back in your cage at my pleasure.”
She blinked at him. “You don’t want to send me back. Who will entertain you? I can deal poker and make shadow animals.”
He shook himself. This was just another instance of the Lore playing with them. She was not normal. He knew that anything he’d learned about females was inapplicable with her.
If she could be unaffected, he could pretend it. “I want you to answer some questions. I need to know what you are and what your name is.”
“I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine.”
“Done,” he said quickly. “Ask.”
“Were you afraid when Kristoff stood over you?”
“I was … tired.” Strange question.
“Most mortals would have been terrified to see the Gravewalker.”
“Is that what he’s called?” Kristoff would find that amusing. At her nod, he said, “Well, I’d seen a lot by that time.”
“What’s his agenda? Doe’s he want to replace Demestriu?” Nikolai hesitated, then answered honestly, hoping that she would do the same. “He wants his crown back, but he doesn’t want to rule over any faction except our own.”
“Uh-huh.” She raised an eyebrow as if she didn’t believe him, then asked, “That was your brother in the dungeon?”
“Murdoch, yes.”
“Turned vampires don’t usually have family within the Horde.”
“Murdoch died in the same battle. I’ve two other brothers turned later as well.”
“You’re young. Yet you’re a general. How’d you swing that?”
He was over three hundred years old. Young compared to her? “I refused the dark gift if certain conditions weren’t met.”
Her eyes grew bright with new interest, and she patted the bed for him to come sit with her. He felt he was on the verge of learning something, so he complied, resting against the headboard to face her, stretching his legs out.
