To lift a curse, she must survive an orgy of pleasure.
Delaney Jones dedicates her life to the Peace Corps—up at dawn, work past dusk. On a mountain overlooking the Sacred Valley in Peru, she’s thousands of miles away from the real reason she fled her home. Her stepbrother, rock god Jaden Seavers.
But half a world isn’t far enough to outrun the strange, erotic visions of him that disturb her dreams. When she unexpectedly encounters Jaden on a desolate Peruvian road, their mutual hunger is stronger than ever.
In the uncontrollable rush of desire, Jaden can no longer hide the truth. He is a vampire—and he’s not alone. Many of his kind have come to Peru to take part in a ritual that will make them mortal.
All they need is a vessel strong enough to withstand the power of five vampires gone wild with an unholy craving. And when the eruption of lust is over, survive to fill the emptiness of the one man who loves her more than life itself…
Warning: Contains the ultimate battle between sex and death. An orgy of pleasure so sinful, so forbidden, readers might need a week to recover. If you get lightheaded, remember to put your head between your knees.
Carnal Sacrifice
Angelika Helsing
Dedication
To the man who brought me coffee during the long Italian winter when I huddled, writing, in the attic. John Arnold, you are the most extraordinary, talented and intuitive soul I know. There is no part of my heart that doesn’t have you in it. Ti amo, mio principe scuro.
Chapter One
From a distance, the baby’s cries sounded like the mewling of a kitten.
Delaney tightened her grip on the medical kit and quickened her pace. Why hadn’t anyone told her the baby’s mother had gone into labor? Over two years into her Peace Corps mission to the Peruvian outback as a field nurse, and she still hadn’t gained the Indians’ trust. They called her yachachej—teacher—respectful enough, but she knew it was lip service. They must have been desperate to have summoned her. Maybe Rayn, the baby’s mother, was dying.
Pushing back against rising panic, Delaney toiled up the rocky slope. The golden light of late afternoon set the jagged peaks of the Andes ablaze, warmed the underbellies of the clouds that wreathed them. A condor scythed through the thin mountain air.
Rayn lived with her husband’s family in a round stone hut shaped like a gnome’s cap at the top of the hill. Terraced rows of corn and potatoes flanked the hunt on its western slope. A pack of llamas regarded Delaney with imperial disdain. No doubt she would be met with more of the same inside.
She pushed aside the heavy woolen blanket that served as a door and was hit by the odor of putrefying flesh. Surrounded by her mother, two sisters, and the village midwife, Rayn lay on a bloody pallet of straw. Delaney’s stomach lurched in sympathy. Pain had put an even sharper edge to the high cheekbones, had dulled the sheen of her lustrous black hair. The baby continued to wail—cries of hunger, Delaney guessed. Frustration and worry rose up, which she hastily quelled.
“What happened?” she said in Quechua.
Amaru, the village midwife, stepped forward with the baby, whose tiny arms waved pitifully as it squalled. Amaru wore her customary polite smile, but always, it seemed, behind those dark unfathomable eyes, she’d retreated three clicks back. A few strands of silver glinted in her hair. Fine lines radiated from the corners of her eyes, but Amaru could have been anywhere between forty and eighty. With a nod, she indicated the girl on the pallet.
“Q’aymay,” she said. She’s in a bad condition.
“How long ago did she have her baby?” Delaney asked.
“Last night. The Hungering Ones were out. With my eyes, I saw them. They punish us. They bring fever to Rayn.”
Twelve months ago, Delaney might have dismissed such a report as superstitious nonsense. The Quechua worshipped both the old gods and the new—hedging their bets, as it were. But there had been incidents Delaney herself witnessed since she got here. Eerie, unexplainable incidents.
With prickling disquiet, she knelt beside Rayn and snapped open her medical kit. Fever sweat pooled in the base of the girl’s throat. The stench of decay nearly gagged Delaney, but she refused to embarrass Rayn by showing it.
“Where is the…” Delaney wanted to say “afterbirth”, yet despite her near-perfect Quechua, couldn’t locate the right word. She substituted a Spanish word instead, which drew nods of comprehension from Amaru and the others.
“Her wisja keeps it,” Amaru said. Her womb. Rayn hadn’t expelled the placenta. Worse, Amaru hadn’t put Rayn’s baby to nurse, which would have stimulated the contractions.
“We are cursed,” Rayn’s sister murmured, eyes wide with remembered horror. “Think what happened to the crops this season.”
Two weeks ago, when it had been time to harvest the potato crop, Delaney herself had pulled on her work gloves and joined the others on the slope. Dawn had fallen softly that morning. The wind held just a hint of snow. Eagerly, she’d followed the potato vines to their source. The intoxicating, loamy smell of the dirt filled her nostrils. But when they unearthed the potatoes, the villagers were stunned into silence. The tubers themselves were intact, but written on each one, as though branded by tongs, was the word Yawar.
Blood.
Delaney blinked, refocused. She couldn’t think about that now—had, in fact, tried not to think about it at all. After smothering her hands in gel antiseptic, she squeezed them into a pair of latex gloves, remembering the consequences of pulling the umbilical cord too hard or too fast: death by hemorrhage. Her Peace Corps neighbor had lost a young mother that way. She’d bled out in his hands.
Rayn gave Delaney a look of mute pleading. A rush of compassion gave Delaney strength of purpose. Reaching between the girl’s blood-smeared thighs, with painstaking slowness, she tugged the decaying cord. It gave slightly, and then stuck fast while sweat gathered on Delaney’s forehead, and Rayn moaned in pain. She pulled again, gently, gently, barely permitting herself to breathe. Two inches more and…with a wet plop, the placenta emerged. A small river of fluid followed it, but to Delaney’s relief, it wasn’t blood. Her shoulders slumped in gratitude.
“The baby,” she said to Amaru. “Let it nurse.”
“No, no. The Hungering Ones. We must not anger them.”
“If you don’t let her nurse, the baby will die.” Delaney kept her tone even, despite the urgency. “We don’t even know what the Hungering Ones want. Not really.”
Amaru cut her eyes in the direction of the lanyard of garlic that hung in the doorway. Then she gravely considered the child in her arms. Delaney recognized her struggle. And just for an instant, she glimpsed herself as Amaru surely did: a brash young American burning with do-gooder determination—and undermining her authority. Yet Amaru’s village, like the Inca settlements before it, had survived in one form or another for thousands of years, long before the Peace Corps had so much as dug its first latrine.
The baby caterwauled in hungry protest while Amaru gently rocked it, chanting an ancient prayer. The other women watched. Delaney sensed their uncertainty. She administered a hypodermic of penicillin to Rayn, relieved to see her color returning. Better to stay busy, she told herself, pretend as though she didn’t care greatly about the outcome.
“I am ready for the baby, Curandera,” Rayn said softly to Amaru. The term denoted respect, and Delaney found herself wondering if Rayn too was using flattery as a sop to Amaru’s vanity.
A long silence. Still chanting her ward against evil, Amaru put the baby to its mother’s breast, where it suckled greedily. A look of deep contentment spread over Rayn’s face. Tenderly, she petted the child’s
dark hair. It amazed Delaney to think that sixteen-year-old Rayn, seven years younger than herself, assumed the role of motherhood so naturally. Perhaps the precariousness of life in a mountain village, accessible only by foot, left no time for the giggling immaturity of Rayn’s American counterparts. All the teenagers Delaney knew back home were swooning over rock stars.
She left the village women. After the fetid air of the stone hut, the breeze outside carried with it the cold refreshment of snow that blanketed the peaks at higher altitudes. Delaney signaled to Rayn’s young husband, who’d waited anxiously. He sprinted up the mountain to see his wife and child, scattering the herd of llamas.
Her own stone hut was situated on the outskirts of the village. She set out, determined to capture what light remained of the day to finish her medical acquisitions report. Requests for supplies had to go out weeks, sometimes months, in advance. Porters brought them from Cusco, the nearest big city, which was a four-day hike, and even items like gauze bandages were hard to come by.
The busier she was, the less likely her thoughts were to stray. There were a thousand dark alleys she needed to avoid there.
Despite her fears, the sight of Machu Picchu in the far distance, ancient capital of the Incas, never failed to raise her spirits. It thrust almost vertically out of the floor of the Sacred Valley, magnificent and green, yet the top of it was cloaked in mist. Around it sloped lesser peaks, some purple, some grayish-blue, others little more than a brown rocky precipice, denuded of trees. Scudding clouds cast their wraith-like shadows over the mountains and the valley floor.
Another blast of cold air had Delaney shivering, despite the sturdy camp shirt. Temperatures dropped precipitously at night, and she didn’t help matters by wearing shorts and hiking boots. A chinchilla stared at her with beady eyes before diving into the brush. The wind lifted strands of her waist-length black hair and brought the hollow sound of a pinkillu, an Andean flute. The stark longing of the flute player’s song made her breath catch.
Cresting a ridge, she saw her hut in the gathering darkness. Someone wearing a red shirt loitered outside her door. She hurried toward the figure, hoping no bad news awaited her. It was her greatest fear—with no phone, no electricity, and no Internet connection, news traveled slowly, if at all.
Whoever it was smiled at her with a mouthful of white, distinctively Peruvian teeth. Cori. Cori lived in Cusco but carried letters and supplies to the mountain villages. Delaney was glad to see him.
“Wen Dia,” Cori called to her. His grin turned shy and a little flirtatious. Still in Quechua, he added, “Your cheeks are red.”
Reflexively, she put her hands to her face. Perhaps the wind had infused it with color. “Do you have mail for me?”
“Two letters and a parcel. Medicine, maybe. When will you come to Cusco, miss?”
“Why? Are you threatening to take me to a nightclub again?”
“It is no good for beautiful young ladies to make so much work,” he said, switching to his charming English. “Better you come with Cori and make a dance and drink a glass of Cusquena.”
“I’ll let you know.” Delaney took the letters from him and checked the postmarks. The first was standard Peace Corps issue, a newsletter maybe, but the second, addressed to “Miss Delaney Jones,” was dated six weeks ago. Something about the handwriting seemed unpleasantly familiar.
She opened it and then stood thunderstruck. “My God.”
Cori stared at her.
“My stepmother—” She almost called her the Wicked Witch of the West before realizing the allusion would be lost on Cori. “My stepmother booked a tour of Machu Picchu. For some reason, she’s coming here.”
“When, miss?”
With a feeling of sick dread, Delaney refolded the letter and stuffed it back into the envelope. “Today.”
Chapter Two
All night, the winds roamed through the cathedral-like hallways of the Andes, restless angry ghosts. They teased the tasseled edges of the hand-loomed blanket that served as Delaney’s door and made the necklace of garlic knots next to it go tap-tap-tap against the wall.
When the winds were keening, villagers kept to their houses, crucifixes in hand. Mornings would always bring a grisly tribute: a half-dozen desiccated carcasses of smaller mammals, such as guinea pigs and chinchillas, which the Quechua depended on for food. Only these weren’t eaten; they were de-juiced, like small furry raisins.
The villagers would search until all the remains were found. Then they buried them. No one uttered a word, for fear of attracting the attention of the things that preyed upon the creatures. Unspoken, always, was a name the Quechua used to describe what Delaney had long thought to be the stuff of imagination: the Hungering Ones.
The wind went from a howl to a low wubber. She had grown accustomed to the wind and its moodiness. For two years, she had huddled here, listening. Alone.
My God, was she feeling sorry for herself? How disgusting. If only she hadn’t gotten that damned letter. It was the letter that had summoned those ghosts, had made her skittish and sleepless. Past midnight, and here she was shivering in her long johns and flannel robe, all because Valerie Seavers-Jones had decided to track her down and do… What? Browbeat her into joining the Junior League? Delaney was well acquainted with her stepmother’s opinion of her humanitarian work. But then, beneath the contempt, Val had always been rather indifferent to what she did.
No, Val had come to talk about Jaden.
The twin flames inside her ’70’s Coleman lantern dipped and then held steady, indicating that the fuel was running low. She didn’t relish the idea of extinguishing her only light source on this, of all nights, but told herself she was being ridiculous. Now the hut was pitch-black and full of night music. Delaney forced herself to breathe, but her thoughts proved harder to control.
Jaden, Val’s son by a previous marriage, was practically a household name. At least any household that had one or two teenagers. Delaney had put a lot of miles between her and Jaden. Thousands of them. So why had Val booked this tour? Peru wasn’t the type of vacation she liked. There wasn’t any shopping.
Maybe Jaden had another album go platinum, or he’d gotten a star on Hollywood Boulevard, or he’d been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Or he was getting married.
No. This was crazy. Even if Val’s tour bus made it anywhere close to the village, over half the tourists would surely be laid out with altitude sickness. Plus, the village was accessible only by foot, and Val never wore anything less than a three-inch heel. The day had come and gone, and still no Val, so why would anyone torture herself with this kind of idle speculation?
She clicked on the radio and spun the dial to the only station she could get clear reception on, one that played Peruvian rock. Maybe if she drowned out that incessant wind, she could drown her thoughts as well. Maybe tonight the dream wouldn’t come, and she wouldn’t awake again, trembling with need. Eyes shut. Brain off. Eyes shut. Brain off. Eyes shut…
She’s back in Seattle, lying naked on her bed after a midnight swim. The window beside her is open. Her nipples stiffen beneath a breath of August wind. On the pillow, her damp hair fans out in rivulets. She stretches her arms above her head and sighs in voluptuous pleasure. Even the ache of her breasts, made fuller by her monthly cycle, is delicious, and she allows herself a rare moment of enjoyment in the topography of her body, the flatness of her belly, the slight prominence of hip bones, the length and taper of her legs. With only a moment’s misgivings, she slides her hands around the curving half-moons of her breasts, testing their weight and ripeness. Something deep within her stirs, like an animal roused from sleep. She brushes sensitive fingertips over her nipples, which strain to meet them, and experiences the first hot ripples of need licking pathways to her sex. The breeze moves over her. It caresses with a lover’s touch her swelling labia and the rich coppery scent of her moon blo
od. She should find some way to contain it, but knows she won’t have to, knows that with exquisite enjoyment, he will come and lave her clean again.
With a shiver of anticipation, she turns on her side, facing the moonlight that spills over the coverlet, and draws her knees up. Her sex aches for him, is already slippery and engorged. She rolls one nipple between a thumb and index finger, then the other, until both stand at attention. Pleasure and need force a moan to her lips. She can’t wait much longer. Her body won’t let her.
Breath catching, she slides one finger over her clit and nearly tumbles off the bed. How is it possible for such a tiny organ to pack so much power? Every impulse is heightened. Brighter. Keener. Eyes closed, she arches her back and pushes two fingers inside herself, as her thumb continues to tease her clit. It’s so easy to pretend as though they’re his fingers, his tongue, his…
As always, she senses his presence in her room before she sees him. It’s as though the shadows coalesce into the strong beautiful planes of his face, the angular cheekbones and full lips, his dark hair, his deep-set eyes. She knows their color be to green, knows also where they’re focused right now, and feels her sex clench in hungering submission.
He moves out of the shadows and approaches the bed. On her back now, she waits, thighs open, watching. She can sense his craving and matches it, heat and musk and desire shimmering in the air between them. Moonlight bathes one side of his face. It traces the hard muscles of his arms and chest, the carved abs. Her gaze drops. His enormous cock strains upward, its split, plum-shaped head and veined underside clearly delineated. Her vagina contracts again in one long erotic pulse.
“A taste,” he says without words, his voice directly in her head. She feels his big hands on her knees, gliding down as he pushes her thighs farther apart. The anticipation drives her mad. Choked sobs sound in her throat. Her fingernails dig into the sheets.
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