Ellowyn Found: An MM Vampire Trilogy Omnibus Edition Books 1 - 3

by Kayleigh Sky

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “You’re coming with us.”

  He struggled in the grip of another vampire on the other side of him. “Coming where?”

  The third vampire, Pan, swung his arm, and the back of his hand smashed into Asa’s face. His head rocked back against the rim of the truck’s roof and white-hot pain exploded behind his eyes. He slumped into a vampire who held him around the waist.

  “Enough,” one of the vampires said. “Leave him be.”

  “I have my orders,” said Pan.

  The vampire holding onto him dragged him up the driveway. Asa’s head pounded with every step. He blinked and squinted at the lights in the windows. The vampire dragged him past the heat lamps on the patio and down a flight of steps into a narrow corridor. The sound of voices and laughter came from far away and struck his heart with pain.

  Though why?

  It had been his choice to avoid people unless he thought they could help him. Dennis and Casey and Will. Maybe they liked him. Now he felt sick, the pain in his head turning his stomach.

  Was Isaac in there?

  At the end of the corridor, they turned down another flight of stairs. Below the basement?

  His heart pounded faster.

  Sinuous shadows from the lights in the sconces played on the stone wall. The floor was stone too. Unadorned and cold. He jerked back against the vampires holding onto him and got a laugh from Pan. He panted, his breath thin and pale.

  “What are you doing? I want to see the king. You can’t do this. I have rights.”

  “Do what?” asked one of the vamps. “We’re taking you to a safe place.”

  “Storm’s coming,” added Pan.

  “I can’t get used to snow,” said the first.

  The conversation had a surreal feel that wrenched a hysterical laugh out of him. “You’re all crazy.”

  “We’re just following orders,” said the one holding onto him.

  “Yeah. We aren’t the murdering savages,” said Pan.

  Murder—

  “You think I did that? Killed somebody? I don’t even know who’s dead.”

  They rounded a corner, and Asa lunged toward the vampire standing outside a metal door. “Justin! Tell them to let me go.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” Justin said. “You’ve reflected badly on me. I’m disappointed in you.”

  “I haven’t killed anybody. I’m not a murderer.”

  “You ran.”

  “I didn’t. I went into town to buy a present.”

  “For whom?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “You no longer have the luxury of privacy. Do you also deny you asked Carl to drive you to Comity?”

  “I was coming back.”

  “Your story is thin at best. Strip him.” Asa jerked an arm free, twisting in his captor’s grip.

  “Settle down!” Justin’s voice froze him. “You will not be harmed, and you will get your clothes back in a minute. If you want them in one piece, take them off yourself.” Justin pulled open the metal door behind him. “It’s warmer inside. I brought in a space heater. You also have water and blankets. We’re not cruel.”

  “You’re locking me up for a crime I haven’t committed.”

  “If the king’s detective determines you’re no risk, you’ll be released.”

  “Let me see him.”

  “He’ll return in the morning. Now. You have ten seconds to remove your clothes. Ten… Nine…”

  Justin fell silent and extended a hand as soon as Asa took his coat off. Asa gave it to him and stepped through the door.

  The room was stone like the hall, lit by a single bulb in the ceiling and slightly warmer than outside. He pulled his sweater off and tossed it to the other vampire holding out his hand.

  Justin dug through his jacket pockets. He pulled out Asa’s new book, his chess set, and—

  “Please be careful with that.”

  Justin’s gaze snapped up, a frown on his face. He turned his attention back to the case and pressed the latch.

  “Please,” Asa said, fingers frozen on his shirt buttons.

  Justin stared, unmoving for a moment, until his gaze rose to meet Asa’s. Asa shivered.

  “What is this?” asked Justin. “Where did you get it?”

  “It’s a chess set.”

  Expression flat, Justin closed the case and passed it to the vampire who’d led Asa into the dungeon. “We will take care of your possessions.”

  Possessions. It was the only thing he had of his mother.

  He finished unbuttoning his shirt and pulled it off, skin crawling at the fingers of cold that made it past the heater’s warm gusts. His nipples tightened, and his toes curled on the cold floor. Justin passed his book to one of the vamps Asa didn’t know.

  “Can I have that back?”

  “Tomorrow. Please hurry,” said Justin.

  So fucking polite. Vampire Jeeves.

  He unzipped his pants and peeled them off with his underwear. His dick and balls shrank on their way inside his body. His shivers turned into shudders. The vampires inspected his clothes as though he’d sewn in secret layers. They turned flat eyes on him, naked, completely at their disposal. He was nothing again. What he’d always been. Usable. Sucked dry and thrown away.

  “Does Zev know I’m here?”

  Justin’s eyebrows rose. “We are all at the king’s command.”

  He clenched his jaw as another shudder went through him. “Is the plan for me to freeze to death?”

  “The plan,” said Justin, “is to keep you safe.”

  “From what?”

  Justin took his pants and underwear from the other vampire and tossed them over. “Perhaps you should say from whom.”

  He pulled his pants on and grabbed his shirt from the vampire’s hand. “My case?”

  “We’ll keep it for you, as I said.”

  “It’s all I have.”

  “You needn’t worry,” Justin said. “You have my word we will return it.”

  Something sharp tore at his chest as his boots and coat hit the floor and the dungeon’s metal door clanged shut like something out of a horror movie. He moved over to the little heater and finished getting dressed. A minute later, the door opened again, and one of the vampires tossed him a stack of blankets then jerked his chin at the back wall.

  “Could be worse,” he said, closing Asa in again.

  Asa gazed behind him at the metal hooks and cuffs hanging from the stone. He hadn’t noticed them before.

  The blankets were thick, cozy flannel. He wrapped himself in one and sat against the wall to wait.

  42

  A Fight In The Dungeon

  Zev waited in the salon off the foyer. A fire roared behind him but only pushed at the cold inside. He sat at the window where he’d watched the families arrive. His enemies, except now… Now Emek was his enemy too. Asa. Though Zev’s heart didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want to risk it. He stared into the night, remembering the day he first saw him. They’d already taken most of the cities that later became Comity, but they’d let the Lakewood Refuge hold out—without Qudim’s knowledge—because of Gladstone Solutions. It was there Zev felt him.

  Mine.

  The pull to Asa had been like barbs in his skin, tearing his flesh every time he resisted it. But he had resisted until he’d discovered who Asa was.

  “It has to be you,” Rune had said. “You’ve waited for him your whole life. You believed in fated love even before I did. You believed in it for a reason. We are meant to be here. We are meant to save both our kinds and only he can help us.”

  Rune had admitted to his own fated love, though he still hadn’t found him.

  But Asa was only a boy walking his dog under the trees. He had a strong face though. Strong and sad. And he called to Zev.

  Mine. I am close.

  Come get me.

  Zev’s moment had come when he’d saved Asa from the gutter-crawling humans who�
�d attacked him. Had that been fated? So perfect.

  He’d always imagined that Asa had felt their bond too, but now Asa was Emek… and Zev’s enemy.

  Why had Emek cast his spell on Zev? To get him to open his arms for a knife to the heart? It would be difficult for a human to kill him otherwise. But why murder Og? And how? Another spell? Maybe the autopsy would tell him. Otto had been right to insist on that. And he hadn’t said outright that Emek had killed Og. Though he wouldn’t. Not without proof. That wasn’t Otto’s way. But it gave Zev a reason to hope, and hope was dangerous. It clashed with a promise he’d die to keep.

  He drained his drink and stared into his empty glass.

  His reflection in the window thinned and hardened into Emek’s.

  Zev gasped from the pain in his heart and drained the bourbon from the glass beside him.

  “I want to help you,” the boy whispered. “I want to stop the war.”

  He clenched the thumb drive in his fist, but Zev wouldn’t take it from him. Wouldn’t put him in the position of betraying his own people. This was his fated mate. He’d throw down his life for him. Tear the world apart to save him.

  He stroked Asa’s face, skin so soft, only his chin rough and bristly. He brushed the side of his mouth with his thumb, and a tantalizing jolt of electricity surged through him as Asa leaned in. But he pushed him back, thumb against his throat. “Not yet.”

  Zev hadn’t been teasing him or holding back until he’d gotten the formula. He’d wanted Asa to grow up in a world that had found peace again and come to him only because he wanted to.

  But what had followed wasn’t peace. It was blood.

  And a broken promise.

  Asa had pushed the thumb drive on him, and he’d taken it.

  He jerked at the knock on the door and stood. “Come in.” His enforcer, one of the ones who’d gone with Justin, stepped inside. “Is it done?” he asked.

  “Yes, sire. He is confined.”

  Zev poured himself another drink. “Did he say anything?”

  “Only that he’s… innocent.”

  Zev glanced at the enforcer. A frown pinched his brow. “What is it, Anin?”

  “We searched him.”

  “And?”

  Anin held out his hand, palm up. Zev approached, his pulse tripping. What if the enemy was Anin and not Emek? He had something on his palm. A stone as luminously green as the lights in Celestine. Zev picked it up between two fingers and let it catch the light. A symbol had been carved on both sides. A Letter of the Revelatory Passion.

  “I don’t know what it is,” said Anin. “It was in the human’s chess set. Justin found it when we searched him.”

  Anin’s family was common. The letter would mean nothing to him, only a decoration on jewelry, on the replicas of the royal necklaces. “It’s a letter. Emmolith. It means sacrifice.”

  Anin nodded. “Justin said the human is a spy. Expendable.”

  “Not to me,” Zev said with a smile.

  “Your wish is my own,” said Anin.

  Zev studied him, the youngest and newest of his enforcers. Uriah had found him, and Otto had hired him. His own instincts gave him no confidence anymore, but he trusted Uriah and Otto.

  “What do you think of him?” Zev asked. “The human?”

  “I think he is confused.”

  Zev raised his eyebrows. “About what?”

  “About why he’s in the dungeon.”

  “An act?”

  “Maybe.” Anin opened his coat and reached into an inner pocket. “I took these. They seemed important to him, and I thought they’d be safer with you.”

  Zev took the metal case and a paperback book. The Immortal Game. He grunted. “Wasn’t it safe where it was? You give this to me to guard? The belongings of a servant?”

  Anin dipped his chin lower. “Forgive me. I thought…”

  “That he means something to me?”

  That he wasn’t expendable?

  “Yes, sire.”

  “What family did you serve before mine?”

  Anin shifted his gaze away. Zev cocked his head. He’d been complacent. Maybe he shouldn’t have trusted Uriah or Otto either.

  “Anin.”

  “The Nezzarrams, sire.”

  “And how did Uriah find you?”

  “I petitioned. Several months ago, Camiel said he wished to attend the next coven meeting, and I expressed to him my wish to serve you. He agreed it would be good to have me in your household.”

  Zev dropped his fangs. “So you could spy?”

  Anin’s chin pressed against his chest. “As a friend to Camiel. He is among enemies here.”

  “So am I,” Zev whispered.

  “I wish to serve you.”

  “And Camiel. Are you lovers?”

  “We were,” Anin said. “Camiel is loyal to you.”

  “And a Nezzarram.”

  “Uriah is too, sire.”

  Zev took a deep breath and gazed at the items he held. He pressed the latch on the case, and it popped open. A chess set. A smile formed until the card tucked inside the lid caught his attention. He shoved the book under his arm and tugged the card loose. Amanda Henley Gladstone, 1974-2022.

  Asa’s mother and Emek’s last name.

  His heart clenched. Emek shouldn’t have kept something that would give him away like this.

  “Thank you, Anin. Send Moss to me.”

  “Right away, sire.”

  Zev took his drink back to his chair and sprawled on the seat. The bourbon burned his throat, and he coughed. He’d better be careful or it would be sparkling apple cider for the rest of his life. Mal routinely sent cases to the manor for Otto. For my brother’s swain. The trail of his bourbon burned like acid. Asa had had a family. A living father at least. A home. And now… Now he was Zev’s enemy.

  Anin had hinted that Emek wasn’t the murderer, but then who? Camiel? Zev opened his hand and stared at the stone nestled on his palm, then closed his fingers when Moss strode in and slid the door shut behind him.

  “We have everybody in their rooms. Enforcers on every floor.”

  “Anything from Otto?”

  “He radioed in. They ran into car trouble on the way back. It looks like sabotage. They aren’t hurt, but with the storm…”

  He trailed off, and Zev nodded. “They might not make it back.”

  “Somebody doesn’t want them to.”

  Zev tipped his head back and held up his hand. “Look at this.”

  Moss pulled the opposite seat closer and sat. He picked up the stone and examined it with a squinty stare. “It’s pretty. Sacrifice. What’s it for though?”

  “I don’t know. Emek had it.”

  Moss pulled his lips tight. “It’s probably just a bauble.”

  “You don’t think it’s something? You didn’t trust Emek before.”

  “I don’t trust him now. That’s not the same as saying he killed somebody, Zev. But he’s hiding something.”

  “The identity of his employer?”

  Moss shrugged. “Possibly.”

  “The new enforcer, Anin.”

  “What about him?”

  “Camiel spoke for him.”

  Moss frowned, but under the frown, a thread of worry wove a knot between his eyes. “I thought Uriah brought him on.”

  “Uriah is a Nezzarram.”

  “Uriah is loyal to you.”

  “To Rune.” Zev sighed and set his glass on the table beside his chair. “Which is the same thing, I suppose. Tell me something, Moss.”

  “Anything.”

  “Is something going on between you and Uriah?”

  “This would not be the time.”

  “Interesting answer.”

  Moss’s smile returned, lighting his face. “In a different time and a different place, I might be curious.”

  “And you don’t worry that he’s a Nezzarram?”

  “You never question the loyalty of the Seneras, who are the children of Qudim.”


  Zev let out a breath as he smiled. “True. I think I want to talk to Camiel though.”

  “I’ll get him.” Moss stood and held out the stone. “I have Anin outside and another enforcer guarding your rooms. The rest are upstairs keeping watch on the families.”

  “Thank you.”

  Zev picked up his glass and drank the rest of his bourbon. It was doing nothing for him tonight. He stood and strode to the liquor cabinet on the other side of the fireplace. This time, he added a few ice cubes. Thin, but still not Otto’s apple cider. Jealousy stabbed him, and he let it. He enjoyed his walks alone, but solitude was not his nature. He was made to be a part of somebody else. He’d always known that. He needed to share. He needed an end to his loneliness. He’d known about his fated love since he was eighteen. Now he was forty, and loneliness dug into him with claws and fangs.

  Even Otto had a whole heart now.

  He sank back into his chair as the door opened, and Camiel entered.

  “Cam,” Zev said. “Sit across from me.”

  Stiff, gaze darting from corner to corner before settling on Zev again, Camiel lowered himself into the chair. “Do you suspect me, Majesty?”

  “You argued with Og?”

  He was only guessing that’s who Asa had seen together on the patio the night of Zev’s attack, but the flash in Camiel’s eyes confirmed it. His mouth opened and closed. Then he shook his head and said, “Not argued. I spoke with him. I wanted to read for him.”

  Zev cocked his head. “You’ve taken to forcing your clientele?”

  “Of course not. I don’t have clientele.”

  Zev’s smile stretched thin at a memory of Abadi. He hadn’t known her well, but she’d laughed when Qudim once called her a fortune-teller. Parlor tricks, she’d said.

  “You don’t charge?”

  Camiel flashed a grin. “Well, my bills don’t pay themselves. I have a business. You know that already, I think. But, sire,” Camiel leaned forward, “If I see something that needs telling, I tell it.”

  “What needed telling?”

  “We were playing earlier. Og was taunting me.” Camiel shrugged. “Not my better moment, but it annoyed me. I threw for him.”