by Alyssa Day
He nodded and pressed a brief kiss to her lips. “More coffee?”
“Yes. I hope you brought a lot.”
As Ven gathered the pot and bag of coffee, he glanced back at her. She’d rolled up her sleeves and was choosing another gemstone. “Sing to me, damnit,” she muttered, and a grin quirked at his lips.
If anybody could lay the magical smackdown on a hunk of rock, his money would be on Erin.
Hours later, Erin sat half covered by the sleeping bag, surrounded by Ven’s unique spicy scent, and watched him pace the tiny cabin floor. “This isn’t easy for you, is it? Being inactive?”
“No. I think I’d rather be stabbed than sit around waiting.”
She curled her arms around her knees and sighed. “I’m sorry I’m holding us up, I really am. But I needed time to rest. My magic is drained. Plus, I have to study the scroll and the book of the Fae that Gennae gave me, to see if there’s any way I can be prepared to find and then deal with a gemstone as powerful as the Nereid’s Heart. I’m worried that it will knock me out or something, because I don’t know what I’m doing, and then you’ll be surrounded by attacking vamps with an unconscious witch on your hands.”
He crossed over to her and touched her hair. “I wasn’t criticizing you in any way, please know that. You are braver than any of us have any right to expect.” He clenched his hands into fists at his side, and then forced his fingers open, but not before she saw the suppressed rage in the movement. “If there were any way I could retrieve the jewel without you—”
“You can’t, so forget it. Marie said the Heart would destroy anybody who wasn’t a gem singer who tried to touch it. You do hear it, though? I’m not going crazy?”
He nodded. “I do hear it, but very faintly. More like a quiet reverberation that I feel under my feet than a sound, really.”
“I think it’s the gem singer thing. I’m attuned to it, so it blasts through me every time it starts up. It’s more frequent now, did you notice? More like every forty-five minutes.”
“As if it recognized your presence and wanted to make sure you noticed it?”
She forced a smile. “Yeah, well no worries there. It would be hard to miss.”
He began pacing again, and she tried to think of something that would distract him before he went nuts with the enforced idleness. The slight soreness between her thighs gave her an idea, but she wanted to actually talk to the man, not become some lust-driven bimbo. The thought made her laugh. If any witch in the history of the Craft had less likelihood of becoming a bimbo, lust-driven or otherwise, she’d like to meet the woman. They could form a club: only the grim and dedicated need apply.
“That’s an interesting smile. You wanna share that joke?” Ven had stopped pacing and was leaning against the wall near the door, his arms folded across his chest.
“No, that was definitely an inside joke,” she said, reminding herself to work on her poker face later. If she had a later. “Tell me about yourself. Tell me about Atlantis. What does it mean to be the King’s Vengeance? Is Ven a nickname from that title, or your real name? Exactly how old are you?” The questions tumbled out as fast as she could think of them. Anything to keep the calculation of probabilities associated with later at bay.
“The King’s Vengeance is my title from birth, as the second son to the prince and heir. But it is only an honorary title until I have earned it by battle challenge.”
“What does that mean? You had to challenge the old King’s Vengeance to some kind of duel?”
He smiled. “Not exactly, not like your movies with the swords or pistols at dawn. But there is a component of the position being passed down from uncle to nephew. My uncle served as King’s Vengeance to my father, but after—” His smile faded so quickly that she knew his uncle hadn’t merely stepped down from his job.
“Was it bad?” she asked hesitantly. “I saw some of your past when we…with the soul-meld. But I didn’t want to pry into your privacy, especially when I know how those memories can burn.”
“It was obscene,” he said flatly, all warmth and humanity leached from the vast, icy darkness that looked out at her through his eyes. She shivered, and the movement seemed to bring him back from some faraway place, but the iciness in his expression remained. “My mother—Anubisa tortured my mother nearly to death while she made my father watch. She has some sick, twisted vendetta against my family—especially the males of our family—and she held my father captive for nearly a year before she killed him.”
“Oh, Ven, I’m so sorry. Please, you don’t need to tell me this now—”
“Yes. Yes, I do. You should know what you’re getting yourself into with me,” he said, his voice gone flat and dead, as if he’d given up any hope that she would want him after he told his story.
He didn’t know her very well yet if he thought that, she thought. Seeing his pain and hearing what he’d suffered only made her want him more; want to comfort him and heal him and sing solace to his soul.
“It wasn’t the first time she’d captured my father. She held him briefly long ago, when Conlan and I were very young, and when he came back he was changed. Drained. Silent. As if she’d broken something inside him that couldn’t be repaired. My mother helped him, but I never quite believed he came all the way back.” He stared at the fire, and she had the feeling he was almost talking to himself, expressing thoughts he’d never before spoken out loud.
“That’s how my father was after my mother and sisters were killed,” she murmured. “It was almost as if they took his heart and soul with them, and all that was left for me was his body, hollowed out, going through the motions of life without the intent or the meaning.”
Ven seemed to come back to himself at her words, and she saw warmth in his gaze again. “I am sorry you had to endure so much pain so young. I wish I could take some of the anguish from you.”
“I feel the same way, but we all have to carry our own burdens, don’t we?” She’d meant it as a rhetorical question, but somehow it came out differently. Almost as a plea.
“No, I don’t believe we do. I would have said the same thing before I saw what Conlan and Riley are to each other. But somehow they share the weight of each other’s burdens and, in so doing, lighten the load of both.”
She thought back to the fiercely passionate looks the two had shared, whether or not anyone was watching them, and felt a moment of sharp envy…that vanished under concern. “What will happen to him if she…if she—”
“He will end his existence,” he replied, and the ice formed over his features again. “If she and her babe die, he will die as well, and I will be left, alone, the last of my bloodline.”
She pushed the sleeping bag aside and stood up, then swiftly crossed the room to him. “Then we will make sure that doesn’t happen, won’t we?”
He pulled her into a fierce hug, and she felt his heart thundering beneath her cheek. “I cannot believe Poseidon has gifted me with you, no matter how briefly you choose to stay.”
She smacked his arm. “Hey! I’m tired of that kind of talk. It sounds like you’re trying to get rid of me,” she joked, trying to lighten the mood a little. He rewarded her with his quick grin. “Am I so annoying that you’re already trying to dump me on some other man?”
The grin vanished, and the blue-green flames flared in his pupils again. “Simply because I bow to the dictates of free will does not mean that I would not want to kill any man you took to your bed, Erin. I am a predator and have been one for nearly half a millennium. I would ask that you do not tease me about this one subject.”
Her breath caught in her throat, and desire flared at the stark need in his eyes. “You have an interesting way of going from caveman to polite gentleman in one sentence, Ven. I’m not sure I’m witch enough to deal with your contradictions.”
His arms tightened around her, and pain flashed so briefly in his eyes she wasn’t entirely sure she’d seen it. “You are all the witch—and all the woman—that I could ever ask for,
my little gem singer. Do not ever doubt it.”
She rose on her toes to kiss his nose, fighting the urge to rip his shirt off and kiss him senseless. She knew they were terrific together with their clothes off. Now she wanted to know how good they were with their clothes on. Just in case.
Just in case.
Pulling away, she took the two steps to put her in front of the fire. “So Ven is your real name?”
He took a long breath before answering, but she didn’t look back at him, afraid that if she saw heat mirroring hers in his eyes she would be back to the naked thing in a heartbeat.
“Yes, it is. Ven, the King’s Vengeance, of the House of Atlantis. There are seven isles that comprise Atlantis, each with its own House, and the main and largest of them is also named Atlantis, and houses the rulers of the Seven Isles.”
“So it’s a royalty thing, I got that, and it must be hereditary. What about the other Houses? Are the rulers there dukes or earls or something like that?”
He laughed. “No, we don’t have such titles. The ruling families are simply Lady and Lord, but Atlanteans from nonruling families can also earn the title of Lord or Lady for acts of valor or distinction. Marie is the sister of my friend and brother warrior, Bastien, and she has earned the title of Lady many times over, for her great service healing the childbearing women and their babies.”
Erin bit her lip. “Crap. I must have broken protocol a dozen times in the brief time I was there. I never called Marie ‘Lady Marie’ at all. Nobody mentioned—”
“She does not allow us to use the title, saying that she is content to be simply Marie, or First Maiden in service to the Nereid Goddess.”
She heard the admiration in his voice. “You think a lot of her, don’t you?”
“She was always following me around when she was little. The most curious and annoying little girl child I’d ever known,” he said, fond amusement in his tone. “Who could have guessed that she would grow up to be such a serene beauty?”
She felt a tiny, petty twinge of jealousy at hearing him call the other woman a serene beauty. “Yeah, she’s a lot different from me,” she said glumly. “Tall and elegant and serene, not short and dumpy and frazzled.”
Before she heard him move, he was standing behind her, pulling her back against his chest. “Dumpy? Are you having an attack of temporary insanity brought on by standing too close to the fire? You are beautiful, and your body is so perfect that I cannot look at it without imagining you naked.”
Heat rushed through her that had nothing to do with the fire, but still, she was a woman who faced facts. “My butt is way too round,” she said. “It’s a family trait, so I can’t really hate it, but facts are facts.”
He tightened his arms around her so that she was pressed against the very hard, very unmistakable evidence of his desire. “Your butt, as you so inelegantly name this rounded temptation, is as perfectly curved as the rest of your body.” He lifted his hands to cup her breasts, and made a growling sound into her hair. “Speaking of your body…perhaps we could spend some of the hours until dawn wearing fewer clothes?”
She turned her neck and lifted her head and he was simply there, fitting his mouth to hers, and any doubts she had about the rightness of them being together were swept away by the heat of his touch. He kissed her deeply and urgently, and she twisted in his arms and put her own around his neck, still kissing him.
She heard a low moaning sound but wasn’t sure if it came from him or from her, because the sound was captured inside of their mouths, which were locked together, their tongues first dueling for supremacy, then surrendering in a tasting, exploring dance of passion. Ven lifted her up off her feet and she wrapped her legs around his waist, still kissing him, clutching his shoulders tightly, not letting go, never wanting to let go.
Suddenly he jerked his head back from hers and stared wildly around them. “Did you hear that?”
“Did I hear what?” she asked, still dazed from their kisses.
He whispered “wolves” in her ear, then lowered her to the floor, saying nothing else. As he lunged for his cache of weapons, eerie sounds resonated through the cabin. It was wolves, howling out something that must have been a warning or a threat. From the sound of it, there were a lot of them.
And they were surrounding the cabin.
Chapter 23
Headquarters, Circle of Light
Alaric startled awake out of the half-dozing trance he’d put himself in to speed his recovery. A noise—something unexpected. He looked up to see Justice standing in the open doorway to Gennae’s small sitting room, sword in hand.
“You should get out here, Alaric. We’re being attacked, and this time it’s coordinated,” Justice said grimly. The blood still stained his hair a macabre shade of maroon-streaked blue, and the dark shadows under the warrior’s eyes spoke of more pain from his injuries than he’d admitted.
Of course, he’d admitted to none, following the ancient warrior code of “leave the healer to guess.” Alaric snarled at the thought. “I cannot properly heal that which you do not describe to me, Lord Justice.”
Justice, being Justice, snarled right back at him. “Don’t bother wasting your time on me, priest. There are many far worse off, including Brennan and Alexios. But right now we need to figure out what’s going on out here and make it stop, because there is no fucking way in the nine hells that I will put up with night after night of attacks from these bloodsuckers.” With that, he whirled around and headed down the hall toward the door. As Alaric followed, he mentally tested his readiness to call the sort of power that would proclaim to the undead exactly what—and whom—they were facing.
As he walked out the door and looked up at the dozens of vamps darkening the night sky, a sudden certainty slammed into him that the one directing these attacks knew exactly who he was dealing with—and was coming after them because of it.
Gennae stood a small distance from the front door, holding a shield over the entire building. Even from a dozen paces away, he could sense the strain in her magic. He scanned the group of heavily armed shape-shifters who stood at the front corners of the building. “Quinn and her people are on all corners?” Alaric asked.
Justice hesitated. “Quinn’s people are, and Christophe is with them around back.”
Alaric pounced on the omission. “Quinn?”
“Don’t aim those glowing eyeballs at me, priest,” Justice growled. “She and the tiger took off several hours ago. I get the feeling they were headed to Mount Rainier to help Ven and Erin, but they dodged my questions.”
Alaric wanted to roar out his rage and frustration, but fought his instincts and remained silent. He sent his senses out into the air to reach for her, but found nothing. She was nowhere near, then.
“If Caligula harms her, he will never again know a single peaceful moment until the time that I flay the skin from his bloodsucking bones,” he said, power thrumming through his voice.
“I’m an expert at flaying, so just tell me the time and place,” Justice replied, examining the edge of his sword. “For now, we should prepare. That red-haired witch doesn’t look as if she can hold that shield much longer.”
Alaric nodded, began to stride toward the witch, then paused. “Where are the remaining of the Seven?”
“Denal went through the water to report back to Conlan some time ago. Alexios tried to drag his broken ass out of bed, and I knocked him in the side of the head hard enough to make sure he didn’t go anywhere for a while. Brennan is still unconscious.” Justice cast a sharp, measuring glance at him. “Are you sure you’re up to this? You don’t look all that great yourself.”
“Keep your worries for your own well-being, warrior,” Alaric said, raising his hands to call power. “I have some vampires to incinerate.”
The cabin
Ven peered through a crack in the boards covering one of the windows, while Erin did the same with another. “There are at least seven here,” she whispered.
“Anoth
er half dozen on this side,” he said. “Those can’t be ordinary wolves.”
She stood with her eyes half closed and her hands held out for a moment, then shook her head. “They’re not. They’re shifters. There’s magic out there, too. Either one of them can call magic or they’ve got a witch hiding in the trees.”
Just then a female voice called out to them from outside the cabin. “We know you’re in there, Erin. You and your Atlantean need to come out now before we smoke you out.”
Erin gasped and steadied herself with one hand on the wall. “That voice! It can’t be her—”
“Who?” he demanded, tossing her coat to her.
“Lillian. My friend. She’s the one we thought Berenice captured…that must be it. They must be forcing her to do this,” she said, her voice gaining strength. A little color washed back into her pale cheeks as she shrugged into her heavy jacket. “She wouldn’t betray us. I know she wouldn’t.”
He glanced outside again. “Regardless of her motive or whether it’s voluntary, we’d better do what she says. Because she’s standing there with a torch, and five of those wolves just shifted into their were-shapes. I’m game to take on a crowd of eight-foot-tall monsters on my own, but I’m not going to risk you, especially since there are more of them surrounding us.”
She raised her chin. “We’ll see what they want. Don’t forget, I have power, too.”
“I’m not forgetting anything, but are you as powerful as she is? Honestly?” He kept his voice gentle, but he needed to know the facts. “Exactly what chance do you have against her?”
“It depends. I’m stronger than I let any of them know, but if she’s called the dark magic, I can’t match that.”
“Even with your gem singer powers?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know enough about what I’m doing, yet. I need—”
“Time’s up, Erin,” Lillian shouted. “Come out now or we’re going to see how fast old wood burns.”
“Let’s do it,” Ven said. “Stay behind me.”
