by Vivi Anna
INFERNO
Also by Vivi Anna:
“Night of the Jaguar” in Sexy Beast
Hell Kat
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank my wonderful critique partner, Jenna Black, for helping me flesh out this book.
Without your help and support, I think this book would’ve eaten me alive.
Also, I want to thank my Allure girls: Lisa Renee Jones, Sylvia Day, Sasha White, Delilah Devlin, Cathryn Fox, and Myla Jackson, for always being there for me. Without your support and love, nothing would go right.
And especially to my family, for always believing in me, even in my ugly moods! I love you!
1
Not again. Oh, please, God, not again.
That was all Hades could think of when he stepped into the dank, dark chamber of his dreams and smelled the familiar metallic tang of blood.
She was there, hanging by her wrists, shackled to the ceiling of the cold, empty, cemented room.
Blood pooled beneath her feet. Hades knew there would be long raised welts across her slender but muscular back. He’d seen them before in his dreams.
With slow, hesitant steps, he neared her swinging body. Praying under his breath that she still had a pulse, he reached toward her and stroked her leg. Her waxy skin was cold to the touch.
Swallowing the bile rising in his throat, Hades swung her around and glanced up into her face.
With a heavy sigh, he closed his eyes.
It wasn’t her. It wasn’t Kat.
He didn’t recognize the dead woman. Her anonymous face would, hopefully, not haunt him in the future. But if he was here again, in this nightmare, Kat was here somewhere, too.
He never came alone.
Cautiously he strode through the lofty chain room to an open metal door. Stepping over the threshold into a dimly lit hall, Hades had the distinct sensation of being led. As if some phantom chain had been attached to his neck, and he was being tugged forward into the unknown.
With each step, the overhead fluorescent lights flickered. When Hades reached a T intersection in the hall, each thin bulb blacked out one by one, and he was once again thrust into darkness.
There were only two ways for him to go. And he suspected that horror lay in wait in either direction.
Turning to his right, Hades reached out blindly for the door. He grasped the metal handle and pushed down. The door unlocked with an audible click and creaked open of its own accord.
At first, the room seemed just as dark as in the hallway. But then Hades could see a glow emanating from the middle of the room. Compelled, he stepped into the room and walked toward the faint yellow light. It grew brighter as he advanced.
Eventually he came to a four-poster bed. A red candle burned brightly in a glass holder on a small table next to the bed.
The bed was empty. But Hades could hear movement near him, a soft swishing sound, like flesh rubbing against fabric. Undeniable aromas of sweat, musk, and arousal floated to his nostrils.
The overpowering scent of sex.
Scrutinizing the mattress, he could see the bedcovers ripple and bunch as if one or two people were moving over top of them. Clear indentations of a hand, a knee, and other body parts pressed into the mattress.
A low whimper reverberated from the bed. He recognized that low, husky sound. He’d heard it moan deliciously into his ears.
Kat.
She was there. Somehow she was on the bed in front of him, although he couldn’t see her.
A light breeze of air blew over his arms as if someone was moving in front of him, moving toward him. Within seconds he felt a hand on his forearm. Her hand. Unable to pull away, he allowed the phantom fingers to stroke him, trailing up and down his skin. He sucked in a raspy breath when that hand brushed his crotch with a knuckle or two. It didn’t take much for his cock to respond to her touch.
Iron hard and aching with desire, Hades allowed the apparition to pull him onto the bed.
Reaching out, he found her body, all hard planes and slopes but soft and pliant where a woman should be. He molded his hands over her breasts, teasing her rigid nipples with his thumbs.
Again she moaned. This time it was in his ear. He could feel her lips so close to him, so warm and inviting. Turning his head, he captured her mouth with his. She tasted as he remembered, like rain, cool and refreshing. She swept her tongue over his and then nipped at his bottom lip.
Before he could respond, he could feel her pulling away. Blindly he reached out but couldn’t find her again. He knew she was still there, could feel her heat and smell her scent. Why couldn’t he touch her?
He motioned as though to sit up but was forced back down onto the mattress. A heavy weight settled on his legs, as if someone had straddled him. Hades reached forward and touched warm, inviting flesh. He moved his hands up over the smooth skin of Kat’s muscular thighs. When he could reach no farther while lying down, he felt her take his hands in hers and raise them up.
Sighing, he closed his eyes when a pair of soft, full lips touched his skin. A tongue traced a wet path over his wrist, suckling every now and then. His eyes sprang open when he felt the scrape of pointed fangs on his flesh.
Pain, immediate and sharp, sang up his arm. He scrambled away, pulling back his arm. Hades jumped off the bed and cradled his hand to his chest.
Shocked, his stomach roiling in revulsion, Hades watched as two forms materialized on the bed.
With smiles, blood dripping down their chins, Kat and Baruch reached out to him and spoke in unison. “You can’t escape, Hades. You’re ours.”
Heart hammering in his chest, Hades bolted up in his bed. Cold sweat dripped down his forehead and into his face. The salty liquid stung his eyes. Lifting a shaky hand, he wiped at his eyes.
It had been more than seven months since he’d had a nightmare like this—one his mom would have called a premonition. When he was a child, she had called him a Dream Seer because of the constant images in his head that had come true. Like so many times before, he hoped this was just a dream and nothing else.
Swinging his legs off the bed, he set his feet on the cold wood floor and peered around his small bedroom. It was still dark, and the air felt crisp. He had heard that there might be a frost in the night. Frost. Cold. These things were still so new and surprising to him he welcomed the ice on the ground and the bitter chill in the air.
He’d spent his whole life on the outer rims, where the scorched earth tried to resurrect itself from the devastation caused by nuclear war. Snow, cold, and ice were foreign occurrences, ones he had read about only in books and heard about through rumors of the Promised Land in the north.
A land he had finally found.
With practiced ease, he found his fur-trimmed leather slippers with his toes without the aid of light. Sliding his feet into them, he stood, wrapped his deerskin robe around his bulky form, and shuffled to the small window. Cracking open one wooden shutter, he peeked outside. The sky was still dark, but the promise of the sun had started to trim the edges with a dull pink. Dawn was close by.
It being a little earlier than he wanted to be rising, Hades resigned himself to starting his day. He still had wood to cut and a fence to mend before winter settled in for the year. Rubbing a hand over his bald head, he sighed and shuffled into the kitchen to make tea and start his breakfast.
Maybe a shot of whiskey would help erase the bloody images of his dreams.
Even in the dark, Hades made his way around his cabin with proficient effortlessness. When he neared the stove, he opened the little iron door, tossed in a few logs, and grabbed the box of matches sitting on the counter. Before he could strike the flint, the hairs on his arm stirred to attention.
Someone was in his cabin.
Dropping
the match, Hades reached for his knife lying on the counter near the sink. Even now, his weapons were not far from him. When he spun around, knife poised to strike, a soft light emanated from the kitchen table. The lantern sitting on the wooden surface sparked to life, and the person, sitting in one of the chairs behind it, took form.
A pale luminance played over Kat’s sharp, angular face. “You’ve lost your edge, Hades. Country living and clean air have made you slow.”
The sound of her voice instantly tightened things inside him. She had that effect on him. Her laugh alone could spurn a raging hard-on. He must be getting lax if he hadn’t noticed the moment she had stepped into his cabin.
He took in a ragged breath, inhaling her scent. She still smelled of spice and musk. His cock twitched at the memory of her.
He eyed her, taking in everything. Some things had stayed the same. The way her full lips lifted at the corners in a sexy sneer. The sharp cut of her cheekbones and chin. In addition, the look in her eyes—that devilish, dark look that sent shivers down his back.
Other things had changed.
She no longer possessed the tumbling mass of ebony hair. Instead, shocks of dark hair stuck up in random order over her head. Short and spiky, her hair was a carefree mess. Somehow it suited her and only helped to accentuate her piercing facial features. Hades also noticed the absence of her eye patch and the fact that her eye no longer looked opaque and useless but seemed to be changing back to its original emerald green even as it tracked him from across the table.
Obviously the Dark Dweller virus was still hard at work inside her, healing past wounds.
Turning, Hades set the knife back on the counter and reached for the banged-up teapot. “Do you want some tea?”
There was a long pause while Hades lit the stove and set the teapot on the burner.
“Yeah, sure,” she finally said.
Taking two cups from the cupboard above, Hades set them on the counter and added some peppermint and sage herbs from his tin canisters. He grew his own herbs in a small boxed garden in the den. Kat, he was sure, would laugh at that—Hades having a garden. But he would not feel ashamed of it. He had earned this little thing. Had bled for this place in utopia where he had found relative peace and sanctuary. A haven he had hoped to, one day, share with her.
“Nice place. Very cozy.”
Hades turned back around. Leaning against the counter, he crossed his arms over his chest to cover his hands. He hoped she didn’t notice the slight quiver in them. They ached to reach across the table and touch her. To fill his palms with her hard, hot flesh. It had been only in the past three months that he had stopped aching for her in the middle of the night, stopped having sweaty, erotic, wet dreams in which he could find no release.
“Built it myself.”
“Huh.” She nodded. “Who knew you had skills?”
He chuckled. “You know I do, babe.”
His heart skipped a beat when the smile finally lifted the corners of her delicious mouth. The woman didn’t smile often, but when she did, it squeezed him in low erotic places like his cock.
He sighed. “Damn, woman, where have you been?”
“All over the fucking place.” She spread her hand over the table and leaned back in the chair.
“Ended up in Atlantis for a month.”
“You’re kidding? That’s the last place I’d expect you to go back to.”
“I guess I needed a place to heal and think. I even did their weird cleansing ceremony.” She rubbed her hand through her cropped hair as evidence of her words.
“Hmmm, I was wondering about that.” He smiled, lifting his brow. “So is it growing back in other places, too?”
He remembered watching one of the Nerieds’ cleansing ceremonies during which the young woman had had all her hair removed. Even over her pubic mound.
“Maybe.”
When she cocked her brow with that sexy grin, Hades realized how much he had truly missed her. And how much she had hurt him when she had left. Seeing her now made him realize that he could go on without her, maybe even find some happiness, but he damn well didn’t want to.
Breaking the uncomfortable silence, Hades turned and surveyed the bubbling teapot. He busied himself by pouring the hot water into the cups. “How are Nemo and Kele?”
Turning, he set a steaming cup in front of Kat and then leaned back again against the counter to sip his cup.
He couldn’t imagine that Nemo, the village chieftain, had welcomed Kat back so easily. Nemo had been anxious for Kat and Hades to leave the last time they were there. Nemo and his wife, Kele, had suffered greatly by Dark Dweller hands. Hades was sure that the last person Nemo ever wanted to see again in his village was another person succumbing to the virus. Nemo had done that before and lost many of his people to the blood-lusting rage a Dweller went through after being infected.
“Nemo is frustrating, as usual, but I convinced him to let me stay.” She chuckled and then sobered, as if laughing hurt too much. “Kele is healing. I’m sure it will be some time before she can truly forget what she went through at the hands of Baruch and his ghouls.”
Hades noticed that she lowered her gaze when she spoke Baruch’s name. Hades wondered if he still haunted her dreams as well.
“What about Leucothea? How is she?”
Kat smiled slightly when Hades mentioned the young Neried’s name. “A pain in the ass. She followed me around like a puppy.”
“I think the girl’s in awe of you. The mighty warrior Hell Kat.” Hades chuckled, remembering how the girl had eyed Kat with wonder and longing in her pale, innocent face when Leucothea had helped them after they had been discovered near death on the outskirts of the Wastelands.
The girl had sobbed something fierce when they had left the first time to travel to the Vanquished City.
“She even annoyed me enough to teach her some self-defense moves.” Kat met his gaze, something akin to sorrow swimming in her eyes. “I told her she needed to be prepared in case more Dwellers came to the village.” Kat smiled, but it was not a grin of happiness. “Dwellers are a nasty lot.”
Hades witnessed the pain in her face and could hear the edge in her voice. He couldn’t imagine the agony she suffered, knowing that the same thing that made these scavengers heartless, sadistic killers was the same thing that poisoned her blood.
Taking a step forward, Hades uncrossed his arms. “Kat, I…”
She smirked. “No worries, Hades. I’m a tough bitch, remember?”
“I remember more than that.”
She met his gaze and then, noticeably swallowing, lowered it. Putting her nose to the table, she took in a deep breath. “Who’s the woman?”
The change in conversation knocked him off guard. “What woman?”
Putting her feet on the table, she leaned back in the chair. “The woman you’re fucking.”
“I’m not fucking her.”
“But there is a woman.”
Hades sighed and leaned against the counter. It was obvious that Kat wanted to fight. Fighting had always been her way to deal with emotions she wasn’t used to dealing with. That particular personality trait obviously hadn’t changed.
“I can smell her,” she continued. “She usually sits here when she’s in your kitchen.”
“You can smell her?”
“Yeah,” Kat scoffed. “One of the many joys of turning DD.”
Hades drank the rest of his tea and turned to set it on the counter, giving her his back. Probably not the best idea, considering. “What does it matter, Kat? You left me, remember? We never made any vow of commitment.” He glanced over his shoulder at her.
She slid her feet off the table and sat forward. “You’re right, I did leave. But you knew why.”
Hades reeled around, anger and hurt fueling his movements. “Bullshit! You didn’t tell me anything when you split. I could only assume that you felt you needed to.”
“I had to leave, you dumbass,” she remarked. “With this…t
his virus running rampant in my veins, I would have killed you. Do you understand? You would have been my first victim.”
Hades had understood. He knew the reasons she had left, but still it had ripped him apart, knowing there was nothing he could have done about it. No way he could have aided her. In the end, he had felt useless and impotent. He hated that feeling and never wanted to feel that way again.
“So.” He lifted his lips in a mischievous grin. “You don’t want to kill me now?”
There was a long pause before her resolve broke and she laughed. “That’s debatable. Give me some time; I’ve been back only an hour.”
“Why are you here, Kat? I have a feeling it’s not because you want to play house with me.”
“I need you to get me someplace.”
“Uh-huh, I’m still listening.”
“Inferno City.”
Hades didn’t need to think about it. “Nope. You broke into the wrong house this morning, sweetheart. Inferno is a one-way ticket to hell.”
Kat rose from the chair, rounded the table, and sat on it in front of him. “Hey, we’ve been to hell, remember?”
“Shit, the Vanquished City was purgatory compared to Inferno.”
“I need to go, Hades. It’s my only chance.”
“Only chance at what?”
“To find a cure.”
He wanted to cross the distance between them and touch her. Grab her and cradle her in the security of his arms. He wanted to tell her it was OK, that he would do anything for her to help her. But he couldn’t make himself move.
“What if there isn’t one, Kat?”
“There has to be, because I refuse to become one of them. I refuse to become a vampyre.”
Her gaze was piercing, and he had the unsettling urge to turn and run. He could see in her eyes the rage and violence of the alien blood racing through her system, contorted in her beautiful, haunted face.
He didn’t know how long it took for the virus to possess a person, but he knew Kat had been fighting it fiercely since being bitten seven months ago. He wondered if she had taken blood lately. If she had finally succumbed to the insatiable lust for it.
