by Lucy Lyons
“You have to stop. You can’t win this fight.” Michael lifted me up and cradled me like a baby. I beat weakly on his chest with my right hand.
“You have to let me go. You have to protect Nicholas,” I babbled, but my vision was failing and when I touched my cheek, my hand came away wet with rotting disease. “No,” I whispered. “We can’t let them get past us.”
The world spun and went black, and when I opened my eyes, I could see clearly, and the fight was down to two, Dominique, and Caius. My mentor danced out of reach of his ability to rot, and she remained whole, but as I watched, he lashed out again and Dominique fell flat on her back.
“No!” I shouted, and struggled against the hands that held me down.
“Stay calm child. For the love of God, you aren’t the only one who can help her, you know.” I gaped at Henny in disbelief.
“How, when did you get here?”
“We came in the back way, as Clayton suggested. It was a good idea,” she whispered, and I nodded. It had been a good idea, but I set aside my irritation at not thinking of it myself.
Clayton slid a sword across the floor to Dominique, who parried another blow and sliced at Caius’ wrist. I saw the blade flash with searing light, and Caius hand dropped to the floor. It wriggled and went limp, then liquified into diseased ooze that stank of rotted flesh.
“Oh God, we can’t kill him in here,” Colette gagged next to me. “We’ll never get the smell out. Our eyes met, and I mirrored her sudden grim smile. “Great minds, Caroline.”
“Right. But where’s Delius?”
“Our master bested him in battle. He was struck through the heart and turned to dust. It didn’t stink,” she added. It made sense. Delius had been made of dry rot. He’d just dried up completely.
Nick, we must get Caius out where the Venatores can see him. They must see Dominique vanquish him, and help her if they can. I couldn’t see my master, but I felt him nearby, and smiled as his relief that I was alive.
I stood up with Colette’s help, afraid to touch my face and find that the respite I felt from my pain was just a magical pain block. More wolves and vampires joined us as we stepped over the dead and dying vampires and twitching, wriggling zombie bits.
Get out into the moonlight, Dominique,” Nick called out, and Dom backed toward the door. As she glanced back over her shoulder, fear, then realization flashed across her face. She rolled back and sprang to her feet and we rushed Caius.
He took the bait, and thinking we had tried to steal his prey from him, Caius flew through the door. His robe billowed out as he flew, revealing mucky wet stumps were calves and feet should’ve been, and I gagged again.
Caius hovered between Dominique and the club, and I shot a worried look at Colette. If the Venatores decided to kill Domonique first… I thought, and stumbled forward. But the Venatores had better prey than the sorceress, and arrows flew at Caius, catching in his robe without hitting him.
“He’s a grandmaster, you must use holy water, and silver, best if it’s anointed,” Dominique called out.
“My sword is anointed and high silver content,” I hissed at Colette, who disappeared behind the wall of wounded vampires and wolves. Not two seconds later, a blur flew out one of the broken windows. I saw a familiar flash of silver in the moonlight as Colette called out to Dominique and she leaped for the sword that now wobbled, point down in the ground.
She pulled the sword as Caius lunged at her neck teeth bared. She swung around and with one blow, severed his head, spraying herself, Venatores, and vampires alike with his diseased flesh.
He fell to the earth in two pieces, and we all watched with equal parts horror and amazement as he dissolved into putrid liquid that burned the ground where is soaked in. People who had been touched by the stuff started screaming, and Henny and the pack members in human form rushed forward to bring the wounded inside for treatment.
A Venatores hunter with broad shoulders and a massive red beard strode forward to stop us from treating his people, and I forced my legs to move, meeting him at the curb.
“Vladikk Agnarrson. So nice of you to visit our club,” I said politely. “We’re able to treat the wounds your hunters inadvertently received while your esteemed sorceress vanquished the grandmaster vampire.”
“We will never set foot inside that den of abomination,” he snarled, and I laughed, more from relief that the world was still as it should be, small minded hunters and all.
“Drop it, Agnarrson. I was hit by that stuff, and there is nothing I can say that adequately describes the pain.” I held out my hands in supplication. “Please. Let us treat your hunters and send you home whole and victorious. Your sorceress arrived in time, and saved my life, and the lives of my people.”
Agnarrson’s eyes flew wide open and he gaped at Dominique.
“You lie. She’s been here all along.” I blanched at his snarl, and Colette raced to my side with her dagger drawn.
“No, she arrived several hours ago, presumably when you sent her to spy on the council emissary, Louis? He is… was, Caius’ servant.” I made a show of glancing around. “Has anyone seen the grandmaster’s servant?”
A Venatores hunter dragged the robed man to Vladikk’s side and shook him until he whimpered. The hunter glared at me across the hunched back of his captive and growled in disdain.
“Oh, Louis, you survived your master’s death. Awesome.” I held out my hands to Vladikk and grinned. “You got the kill and a prisoner. We’ll treat your people and send you on your way with no casualties and all the glory. All I want is for the fighting to be at an end tonight. I’m calling a truce between our peoples.”
Vladikk’s lip curled in a surly grimace, but he nodded and I directed the wolf pack to lead the infected to Henny, where she could heal them.
“What about the zombies?” Colette asked, and Dominique made a face, obviously in pain from the spray, but trying to hide it from the Venatores.
“Might I suggest that we clean the body parts up and take them elsewhere before you lay them to rest. Then, when all the furor has died down, you’re going to teach me how you did that.” I hesitated, then nodded.
“You’re safer now, aren’t you? I felt something when you killed him. like you got power from it.”
“I did, but not the way you might be thinking.” She said, her voice ragged from the pain of her wounds.
“Go get healed, Dominique,” I ordered her. She sighed and touched my arm, then stumbled and I held her up. Vladikk glanced back at her, and she shook me off and started towards him. “Good thinking, making it sound like you don’t know what’s been happening within the Order.” She whispered as I followed her toward the club.
“I still have friends on the inside. No need to cast suspicion on them.” She gave me one last curt bow and caught up to Vladikk, letting him take her arm and support her.
“She’s totally sucking up to him,” Colette gasped, and I chuckled.
“It’s who she is, Colette. If it’s not Nick, I don’t really care.”
Chapter 12
Maybe I did care, but only because she’d seen almost the entire compound and could use the information to improve her standing with the hunters. Clay and I both had walked away from the Venatores Lamiae and been better for it. Dominique wasn’t that strong. With such a huge win to take back with her, she could finally argue her loyalty, and Vladikk, who was fiercely loyal to any who killed for the cause, would protect her from Sophia, at least for a while.
Henny and I redid the runes as soon as we got rid of our Venatores guests, and Ashlynn arrived in time to go with us to the woods and lay the animated bodies to rest again. Everyone who was well enough gathered in the club and the humans who had chosen to stay under our protection joined the clan upstairs. The Venatores had tried to drink us dry, but Paul and a couple of other bartenders brought back the top shelf liquor they’d packed away to save from the fighting, and everyone toasted Nick and Clay for their leadership.
I wat
ched as Ashlynn listened to the wolves replay the battle, and her eyes kept going to Clay.
“Henny, did I bring Ashlynn her mate?” I murmured to the pack witch as the Alpha wolf whispered something in my friend’s ear and led him away from the party.
“Well, if you did, it will certainly help you in your pack relations.” I pretended to gag, and Henny laughed aloud.
“Hey, in case you didn’t know, I saw the professor. They took him to the Vatican to protect him from the crazies that are running the Seattle Venatores complex right now. I just didn’t want you to worry.” She smiled at me and I saw tears fill her eyes, but before Henny could reply, I felt a cool hand on my arm.
“Excuse us, Madam. I need to speak with my…” Nick interrupted gently. I looked up at him out of the corner of my eye and smiled wanly.
“Your servant?” I chirped, but my heart was sinking. I’d raised the dead and kept power from him and he was going to turn me out.
He didn’t say anything, but led me to the back stairs and down to the compound, where Michael and Germain were back on duty. I started to drag my feet after we passed them, and he tugged my arm, digging his fingers in until I hissed at the pain.
“What are you doing? Just come on,” he commanded, and I held my ground, forcing him to stop or hurt me more.
“Whatever it is you want to tell me, you tell me now. I’ve done everything I can to be my best for you, and it’s never enough. I didn’t mean to hide the zombie raising, necromancy thing from you, but at the time, it seemed like there were more important things to talk about.” I stopped rambling and took a deep breath, glaring at him from across the hall.
“Trust me. You want to talk about this inside the room.” He glanced back at the guards who were watching us with unabashed curiosity.
I nodded and we ducked into my bedroom and I waited for him to rage at me. Instead, he scooped me up and threw me down on the bed, tearing at my slashed and ruined clothes and throwing them on the floor.
“You’ve gone nose blind to the rot,” he explained as he took off his shirt and pants, leaving his perfectly sculpted body bare for me to gawk at.
I cleared my throat, but it just closed right up again, leaving me speechless and light headed from lack of oxygen as he climbed onto the bed with me.
He held me against him and kissed my forehead, then my cheeks, tracing my face where the rot had begun to corrupt and blind me.
“Henny does good work. We’ll have to thank her,” he whispered huskily as he pressed me into the bed with his torso, lifting my arms above my head and trapping my wrists in one hand.
“What are you doing, Nick? We must go take care of our people. We have, oh Lord, we have even more people now. The wolves…”
“Mmhmm,” he mumbled as his lips roved down my jaw to my throat and lower. My pulse sped and things low in my body heated up as I felt his fangs in the curve just below my collar bone.
“Nick,” I moaned, and his fangs sank into me as I writhed under him. he fed then kissed my mouth, his lips still coated with the sweet metallic tang of my blood.
“Marry me, Caroline,” he crooned in my ear as he pulled away.
I stopped breathing and stared at him.
“I’m sorry. I think I just hallucinated.”
He laughed and released my wrists, pulling me on top of him.
“No hallucinations, just a question.”
“You’re not mad about me raising the dead?” I sat up and looked down at him. “Oh, it’s hard to think with you all naked and tasty and perfect like that.”
“I’m not asking you to think. I’m asking you to marry me.” He was grinning and I knew he was fully aware of how gorgeous he was.
“If I say yes, will you cover yourself so we can talk about what just happened?” I complained, and he flipped a pillow off the top of the stack and laid it across his lower abdomen. I bit back a smile at the frilly lace and met his eyes.
“Yes, Nicholas, Lord D’Elbrecht, master of the west coast territories, I will marry you. But I want a ring, eventually.” He scoffed at me and I laid down in the curve of his arm. I put my head on his chest, where his heart beat faint, but steady. I jumped back up and clapped my hands in glee.
“Does this mean Dominique will have to call me Lady, now?” I grinned broadly and he groaned and smacked me with the pillow he’d had over him.
“You are a sorceress. You’re also, apparently, a necromancer, which we will be addressing, and the most powerful vampire servant in the entire country. Why do you care what she thinks?”
“She’s my mentor, and you loved her first. Can’t I be a little jealous?”
He pulled me into him, so the long, hard line of his stomach was pressed against my back. Curling me into the fetal position, he sighed into my hair and pressed his lips to my shoulder.
“No, Caroline, blood of my heart, song of my soul. You may not be jealous of a woman whose very survival has depended on you since the day she realized you were the witch she’d been searching for after so many scores of decades.”
I snuggled into him. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course not. She’s incapable of full honesty, though it does make her good at keeping secrets, just like she’ll keep ours. But Caroline, she’ll never be mentioned in our bed again. You’re to be my wife. There has only ever been you, and I knew it the moment I saw you, that my wait was over.”
His arms were strong, and his skin warm from feeding on me. We were safe for the moment, from our immortal enemies, and those who walked in the day.
“I have questions, about the Queen of Vampires, and the council,” I said, hating myself for not being able to lose everything in the happiness of the moment.
“Me too, Caroline. But we’ll get the answers. I’ve learned that with the two of us together, there is literally nothing that we can’t do, be it building a symbiotic relationship with humans, or raising the dead. What are a few council members against that?”
Part of me hoped we never found out. But the larger part of me felt the thrill of the hunt. Nicholas was meant to be the greatest of all master vampires, the one who could usher in a peace between the preternatural and natural worlds. I didn’t believe in prophecies, but I felt the air shift around us, and knew that God, or the universe, had changed the course of the world, because of us, and the power of our life-altering love.
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The Vampire’s Embrace
The Gift of Blood:
Book 1
Lucy Lyons
© 2017
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© Copyright 2017 by Persia Publishing - All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 1
Ashe lay on the roof of the music building looking up at the foul grey clouds as they raced across the sky. Her head lay on her backpack and her feet rested on the raised lip of the flat roof. Anyone looking up would only be able to see the worn soles of her shoes peeking over the ledge. A book lay open across her stomach: a collection of short stories for her English literature class. Though it was November, Ashe wore nothing more than a simple t-shirt and a pair of tight jeans with holes in the knees and up the thigh. She was never bothered by the cold. In fact, she loved the winter and the quiet cool months leading up to them.
