by Lyons, Rene
His mother’s voice echoed in his mind, her voice dripping with ice when she declared she would not abide a weak son. If Aislin Draegon saw him now, he was sure the bloodthirsty bitch would be proud of what she, Henry, and that cocksucker Ulric Chambers created.
Over the course of his life the man was beat out of him and replaced with a cold-hearted creature who faced an archangel defiantly and dared him to take his soul.
The mere thought of Ulric, the man he was given to for the price of a bag of gold, was enough to have Constantine wanting to hurt someone. He needed to take the pain out of himself by beating it into another.
Yet when Lex’s husky laugher drifted to him, it chased away memories better left forgotten. They were memories that made him dangerous when allowed to poison his mind.
He looked over at Allie’s sister and felt a stab right through his dead heart. Her beauty made his eyes hurt. Small and delicate and so damn clean he was afraid if he touched her with his filth he’d soil one of God’s most glorious creations.
Yet he sensed there was more to her than met the eye. He felt what others couldn’t, not even the other Templars. There was trouble all over what he felt brewing in her. He felt a power in her, a strength he doubted she even knew she possessed.
She must have felt his hot gaze on her since she turned to him and pierced him with her intense stare. Her eyes cut him clean to the place his soul should have been.
If she knew half the things he wanted to do to her, he wondered if she would still look upon him as if she could see past the monster everyone else saw to the man he might have been if given the chance.
Their fight finished, Tristan and Raphael walked off the lists. Rogue went over to Lex and draped his arm around her shoulders. When Raphael said something to her that made her laugh, he wanted to seriously hurt him.
Fuck it all. Constantine pushed himself away from the wall with a grunt. He had to get away from Lexine Parker. She made him dare to imagine things he had no goddamn business thinking about.
Like having her open herself to him so he could taste the clean of her.
Constantine moved to go back inside the keep but Lex’s husky voice stopped him dead. “Constantine?” She came over to him, her tiny hand lightly resting on his arm. Her touch felt like fire on his flesh. “Where are you going?”
His eyes devoured her, taking in every nuance of her, committing it to memory to get him through the coming nights when he needed a bit of peace to calm his rage. “Inside.”
“Oh.”
Now why in the hell did she look so disappointed? She should be glad he was going away. No one liked being around him, he doubted even his fellow Templars could stomach him for too long.
“Dragon,” Tristan shouted to him. “Are you ready for a go?”
His eyes stayed on Lex, her hopeful expression a dagger to his heart.
Never one to turn down a fight, Constantine shook her hand from him. With effort, he managed to take his eyes from her. He looked over her head at Tristan. “You haven’t been able to beat me in over seven hundred years. What makes tonight any different?”
Tristan cocked a brow. “I have Lexine to cheer me on.” He winked at Lex. She turned bright red.
Constantine stalked to the lists, pissed off at Tristan’s easy manner with her. He’d never have that, it wasn’t in him to be playful, to color a woman’s cheeks with an adorable blush. They might like his dark looks, want to have a go at him for the thrill of danger surrounding him, but that’s where it began and ended. He was too scarred, inside and out to provoke anything other than disgust in a woman, which was why he made damn sure he never got close to any one, merely used them for a quick fuck and feed and was done with them.
Yet here was Lex, beautiful, innocent, struggling to keep pace with him as if she actually liked being around him. Didn’t she know she should be running to get as far away from him as possible?
Obviously Allie failed to inform her sister the threat Constantine posed to her.
By the time he got to the lists, he was tightly wound with frustration and primed to do harm, ready to beat Tristan into the ground. He peeled off his shirt and threw it aside. He heard Lex’s small intake of breath at the sight of his bare chest.
He felt branded by the heat of her gaze taking in his tattoos and his scars. Whip marks cut across his back, his legs as well, though his pants covered those. As for his tattoos, he bore an angel on each pectoral; one with white wings, the other with black. On his upper left arm was a blood-red heart with a sword of the Order cutting down it, the flames engulfing the heart creeping up the side of his neck.
He attacked Tristan with a brute force that had Raphael stepping in to end the fight even before it started. No one stopped him when he threw down his sword and walked away without a word.
Instead of heading toward the keep, he strode out of the bailey. He needed to get away. He needed to think. Or maybe he already thought too much. At this point, he didn’t know which. Nor did he give a shit. All he knew was he had to get away from Lex before he lost his control and did something stupid.
Like forget he was a monster and dare to take what he saw offered in the depths of her captivating eyes.
Confused by Constantine’s fury, Lex looked to Tristan, who stood watching him go with a brother’s worry lighting his eyes. “Is he going to be okay?”
Tristan glanced down at her, his burning silver eyes striking in an incredibly handsome face. “He’ll be fine. He needs time to cool down.”
As Lex’s gaze followed Constantine, she felt a stab of pain in her heart as he was swallowed by the night.
Chapter Twenty
Lucian was coming out of The Gate when he felt the familiar prickling sensation at the nape of his neck.
He hated that bloody feeling since it meant only one thing and right now he wasn’t in the mood for a fight. Dawn was coming and all he wanted to do was get back to Randal Manor to sleep the long day away.
Still warm with the blood of the woman he’d fed from, he stopped in mid-step. Tearing his yearning stare off his car, he pulled free his sword. He felt the sensation of being watched and looked across the road and into the trees. Though he knew something was out there watching him he couldn’t see it.
Still, he sensed it waiting for him.
Call it instinct but he knew whoever was watching him was the same son of a bitch who killed those girls and left them for him to find.
Good. Come out from hiding you sadistic prick.
Listening to the night, Lucian reached out with all of his senses to locate exactly where the renegades were lying in wait for him.
He sensed an ancient death all around him. It made the air heavy as he searched the darkness for the renegade he believed to be stalking him.
Frustratingly, there was nothing to see. Nor could he hear anything besides the quiet sounds of the country summer night. That is, until a faint whispering of his name reached him.
He knew that voice, one he hadn’t heard in seven hundred years.
“Lucian…”
Lucian’s hand came off his sword. Suddenly weak, he went down to his knees, as his past came back to him in a myriad of sights and sounds. He shook his head as if trying to shake the voice out of his head. It couldn’t be. That voice didn’t belong here. His mind must playing tricks on him.
Suddenly, and completely unbidden, a tear of blood slipped from his eye to travel down his cheek. This was the first time he wept since so long ago when the monster overtook the man and everything he’d ever known was lost in a single moment of madness.
Slapping the tear away, all he did was smear it across his cheek. Lucian forced the memory from his mind. He couldn’t allow himself to remember that night when he dragged his starving and mindless self back to Penwick. The memories were too painful.
He’d spent the last centuries begging God to forgive him for the sins committed that night. Yet with every plea he knew it was a forgiveness he’d never get nor deserved.
He came meandering out from between the two trees. Dressed all in black, he reminded Lucian of moving night. His burning silver eyes cut through the darkness. The renegade pierced him with such stark hatred that Lucian felt as if he was going to shatter under its weight.
A face he knew well slowly came into sight as the vampire walked closer. A face so like his own, yet so different. He couldn’t be seeing this. Not now and not here.
Yet the man came closer. Close enough now to see every nuance of the renegade’s face…
Renegade.
Jesus Christ, it couldn’t be. “Stephan.”
Lucian’s mouth formed a name he hadn’t spoken in six hundred and ninety-five years.
The vampire came right over to him. Arrogantly. Daring him without words to strike.
Normally, Lucian would have attacked already, taking the renegade’s head with little effort. But not this time. He could no more fight this vampire than he could fight one of his fellow Templars. Instead, all he could do was take in the sight of the man standing before him. Face to face with his past.
Face to face with his sins.
They were the same height, their hair the same color brown. Though now Lucian’s was longer, at one time it was as neatly cut.
The differences of the two were as striking as their similarities. Where Lucian’s face held the edge of a man who knew too much war and death, Stephan’s possessed a softer, more youthful look to it, bearing the look of a man who was never touched by the ugliness of life.
At least not until Lucian returned to Penwick, bringing Hell with him.
Oh sweet God, what have I done?
“No,” Lucian’s mind rebelled at the sight of Stephan, at what he’d become.
Stephan’s lips drew back, revealing fangs. Lucian hissed out a sharp breath and staggered backward. “Surprised to see me, Lucian?”
“You’re not Stephan.” His hand shot to his sword. “Stephan is dead.”
He pulled the blade free and raised it to strike as the events of the last weeks rushed him and all the pieces fell neatly into place. It all made sense now. Why it was his name written in blood and why he couldn’t place the scent he detected.
He couldn’t place it because he couldn’t accept it.
His arm dropped, the tip of his sword scratching across the concrete of the road. Stephan laughed, evil delight gleaming in his eyes. Four other vampires came out from the trees. One of them Lucian recognized as Jude.
Oh God, when the others found out Allie’s ex-boyfriend had joined the ranks of the renegades they were going to tear him apart. Especially if they ever found out Jude’s part in whatever it was Stephan had planned.
“Easy, dog,” Stephan said nastily. “I am Stephan and I am dead.”
He stepped even closer to Lucian, almost daring him to attack.
Lucian didn’t strike. He couldn’t. The Knight, who faced down entire armies with a pride that earned him the respect of kings, took a step back. The four renegades came to stand by Stephan. Lucian knew he could take them all. He was that good of a fighter. He had to be in order to be worthy of the Knights Templar. Yet, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t bring himself to take them out. For the first time since it was placed in his hands, Lucian’s sword slipped from his fingers and clamored on the ground. One of the renegades rushed to grab it. Lucian did nothing, just watched as his weapon was dragged away.
“Look at him.” Stephan motioned to Lucian arrogantly. “Look at the Templar. He’s nothing but a coward.”
“Don’t do this, Stephan,” Lucian warned between gritted teeth.
Stephan tilted his head and regarded Lucian coldly. “Oh, but I have to. I have to make you suffer as you’ve made me suffer.”
Suffer.
Yes. Lucian had brought so much pain to Stephan. More than he could ever imagine. He did to him, the one thing that would break a man as religious as Stephan had been. He removed him from God’s grace.
As he’d done a millions times before, Lucian wished he’d never gone back to Penwick. He wished with everything he was that he could take it all back. Undo the evil he had done. But it was far too late now, his sins finally caught up with him.
His gaze devouring Stephan, he died again at the hatred etched all over his face. It radiated from him, a tangible force between them. The fury blazing in his silver eyes burned him where he stood. Lucian never meant for this to happen. He’d never meant to hurt them. He’d only wanted to go home.
He should have stayed away. So goddamned far away…
“You were the one who kidnapped and murdered those women.”
An arrogant grin spread across Stephan’s face. “I left them as gifts to you. I wonder if you would have relished their sweet pleas and anguished cries as much as I did. After all, you proved you do love to prey on the innocent and the defenseless.”
“Stephan…” Lucian went to reach out to him, but the vampire slapped his hand away.
“You don’t touch me,” he snarled viciously. “I’m going to make you hurt so bad you’re going to beg me to kill you.”
Lucian shook his head sadly. “This was never about finding the Daystar was it? It was about me.”
Stephan laughed nastily and shook his head. “Of course. The Daystar means nothing to me. What need have I with such power? I never even wanted this, but I had no choice in the matter did I? You took that from me. You took it from all from us.” He turned to his companions. “Through Allison Parker you can find the Daystar.”
Hearing that spurred Lucian into action.
With the roar of a wild animal, Lucian attacked Stephan, grabbing him by the throat and lifting him clear off the ground. When the others came at him, one brandishing Lucian’s own sword, he easily knocked them away one by one with no effort at all. Even though the tip of the sword opened a deep wound down his cheek, he held fast to Stephan.
He squeezed the throat of the renegade. “Your fight is with me. Hurt her and I’ll destroy you.”
“Do it,” Stephan taunted. He didn’t fight Lucian’s hold on him. “You killed me once, Lucian. Think you can do it again?”
Lucian felt as if the archangel Michael tore out his heart all over again.
Lucian wasn’t going to play this game. He sinned once. He’d not do so again.
With a disgusted grunt, Lucian tossed Stephan back.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill his brother twice.
Chapter Twenty-One
“When are you going to start investigating the kidnappings and murders of those girls?”
Allie cringed inwardly even though she expected the question. After all, she knew it was only a matter of time before Josh or Nick brought up the subject of the missing and murdered women.
Not surprisingly, there was a stack of old newspapers compiled in the corner of the stiflingly small room. Josh Bartlett was a packrat, his specialty old newspapers and magazines. Which was why, when she stabbed a finger at the papers, Allie wasn’t shocked by the smiling face of Jordan Brewster staring back at her from the front page of the top newspaper on the pile.
Glancing down the table, a rickety metal thing with eight extremely uncomfortable folding chairs surrounding it, she felt the heat of seven pairs of inquisitive eyes staring back at her. Suppressing the urge to squirm uncomfortably at the curious—and suspicious—stares directed at her, she did her best to ignore them.
She hated these monthly staff meetings, when she was reminded of the people she was forced to call colleagues. With every intention of bailing on tonight’s meeting, she rethought the idea when Josh threatened to hold her pay unless she attended it.
Sweating to death in the back room of the run-down building in Mount Pleasant was the last place Allie wanted to spend the better part of the evening. Josh and Nick, the two brothers who owned The Sp
ecter, turned this building in the magazine’s headquarters. This was where Nick liked to say they made the magic. Allie hated his flare for the dramatic.
“I’d be wasting my time to investigate those murders.” Allie gave Josh her best “I-won’t-budge-on-the-matter” voice.
She was impressed at how easily the lie slipped past her teeth.
Nick raised a brow at her in the imperious way that never failed to make her want to grit her teeth in indignation. He held up the article she submitted to him. Not her best work, merely something she slapped together to hand in to make her deadline. Obviously, by the look on Nick’s face, he thought it was a flying turd.
“So, let me get this straight. You honestly expect us to believe this article on UFO sightings in some nowhere town of Twin Falls has a supernatural element to it?”
“No. Not at all,” she retorted smoothly. She didn’t like Nick. He was a sneaky bastard who’d sell off his own mother for a dollar. “It has an extraterrestrial element to it.”
Kelly Fitzpatrick, The Specter’s resident medium, snickered into her hand. She tried to cover it with a cough, though it was obviously a laugh, clear as day.
Kelly was no more clairvoyant than Allie was, and Allie wasn’t at all. She was soft-spoken and sweet, put on a good act, and believed her own bullshit, which put her in high demand when it came to the medium market. That added up for big revenue for the Bartlett brothers and their growing magazine.
“Allie,” Davis Mack said slowly, as if addressing one of his five children, who had the manners of a pack of wild dogs. “We all know those girls were killed by vampires. I’m sure you realize your close relationship to those men is clouding your judgment.”
“And I’m sure you realize how silly you sound implying those men are vampires,” Allie shot back, addressing the unspoken accusation he threw at her.
“You expect us to believe they aren’t?” Madam Morgana exclaimed in her high pitched, and vastly annoying, voice.
