Harlequin Nocturne September 2014 Bundle: Beyond the MoonImmortal Obsession

by Michele Hauf

  * * *

  The demon stepped through the bright, viridescent Faery forest, his hooves taking the mossy land swiftly, his heart showing him the way to his wife. He’d made this trip monthly for years. It never took long, but it was always fraught with an urgency that he would lose it all if he were not quick enough.

  When finally he landed on the snowy grounds that covered his wife’s home, his hooves took the cool surface up to the portcullis. The doorman opened it and, recognizing him, rushed him along.

  “She’s in labor!” the hob-brownie called after him.

  Oz quickened his pace. Was he too late? After all he’d been through to convince the hunter to finally accept his soul—no, he was just in time. He knew it as he turned into Winter’s bed chambers and his beautiful wife of the long snowy hair and bright violet eyes beamed at him from her bed.

  “The babe is coming! I wasn’t sure you’d make it, my demon lover. Your mortal full moon day is nearly over. I wish you could stay longer.”

  “I am here forever, my love.”

  Winter’s face lighted.

  He nodded. “I’m free. I’m yours. Forever.”

  Epilogue

  “Oz sends his love,” Rook said as he strode into the bedroom.

  Verity sat naked on the bed beneath the azure canopy. They’d made love all night. And now that it was morning, Rook carried in breakfast on a platter, which he set on the bed beside her.

  “How did you speak to him?”

  “He sent a messenger. A sprite, I believe. Oz is tied up with his new family and didn’t want to leave them, but I sent return word asking him to promise to bring his wife and babe for a visit as soon as they feel up to traveling.”

  “So his wife gave birth in Faery?”

  “That’s where he plans to live with them. The message reports Winter had a girl with ten toes and ten fingers, two wings and two horns.”

  “Sounds like she’ll be a real handful.”

  “They named her Azar. It means fire. I’ll wager they named her after you.” He kissed her. “My wild and fiery witch.”

  Verity smiled. “So how did Oz, the demon who has only ever been allowed to tread the earth twenty-four hours out of every month, ever manage to hook up with a woman from Faery and marry her and get her pregnant?”

  “Easy.” Rook poured her tea and settled beside her with a plate of crumpets spread with cinnamon honey. He took a bite, then offered her one. He loved to feed her, and she loved when he spoiled her.

  “I actually dated Winter once about five years ago. She used to visit the mortal clubs, and one night we hooked up. Initially we hit it off, but it grew obvious as we tried to rush through what was lackluster sex for both of us that we just weren’t meant for one another. Yet, all the while, Oz was bouncing up and down inside me. I took a chance and explained Oz to her and how much he wanted to meet her.”

  “That’s the coolest meet story I’ve heard. On Oz’s part, not yours. Lackluster sex? Really?”

  “Sometimes the chemistry isn’t there. Unlike us.” He kissed her lips, licking off the smudge of honey. “Mmm, you’re always tasty. So anyway, Oz and Winter hit if off immediately. And Oz, being a demon, has easy access to Faery. He’d always head there as soon as he took over my body.”

  “So, uh…” Verity teased a bit of honey from the crumpet he held and licked it off her finger. “I get that you were present when Oz was out, and vice versa. It was always your body, in a way, and he was just a passenger, and vice versa when he was out. Does that mean you might, if even partially, claim some parentage to this fiery new baby?”

  Rook set down the crumpet and ran his fingers through his hair. “I never thought about that. Maybe? That might be the reason you thought you saw me as a father.”

  “No. I’m pretty sure that’s not it. Besides, I saw you as a father before Azar was born. You sure you haven’t fathered any children over the centuries?”

  “I have always used a condom.”

  “You didn’t with me.”

  “I…okay, so not always. Most of the time. Those things were nasty in the earlier centuries. They tended to fall apart and get tears in them. No kids, Verity. I’d know. And the woman would tell me.”

  “Not if she didn’t want you to know or couldn’t find the man who very purposely made a point of only having one-night stands over the years.”

  “You have me there. I can say with ninety-five percent surety that the only child I have ever fathered was with Marianne.”

  “And you said the midwife took that baby away? It was swaddled. Did you look at it?”

  Realizing she’d startled him with that question, Verity embraced her lover and tilted her head against his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have put it that way.”

  “No, I’m glad you did. I never did lift the blanket to see the child. I was so concerned for Marianne. And we both assumed the witch had taken the child away to bury. I didn’t seek her out after that. I was too heartbroken…and also battling vampires. Could it have been alive?”

  “If so, then I wish that child had the best life.” She kissed him and took the plate from him. “Can we go for a walk in the moonlight later?”

  He nodded absently. She had put the thought about his child into his brain, and he’d muddle on it a while now, surely.

  “Love you,” he finally said and leaned in to kiss her.

  * * *

  The first snowflake of the season captured Verity’s glee. Dropping his hand, she rushed ahead to chase the fluttering jewel down the cobbled sidewalk that edged the dark, bejeweled waters of the Seine.

  Rook felt the life that stretched before him promised much happiness. Finally he was at peace with his past.

  Once, he’d done what his heart had commanded. It had not gone well. He’d been punished for that mistake for four centuries.

  Now, he would move forward without fear. Mistakes would surely be made again, but he would face them with Verity by his side. And now, as a mortal man, he would have to adjust to the possibility that death could come easily. He’d have to step up his training and make sure that Kevlar covered all the important parts before he next went out on the hunt.

  The witch’s hand slipped into his, and her bright smile stole his heart. He would never tell her that he suspected Marianne’s soul still shone from within her, that perhaps a piece of her soul had been imprinted forever. He was good with that, as he knew Verity would be.

  And the question about his child would forever challenge his heart. Could the babe have been alive? He might drive himself mad with the wonder over it. Surely, had it been alive and the witch or some other couple had raised him, the child was now long dead.

  Rook pressed a hand over his heart and wished blessings on the child who may have existed but he had never known. Had he been given opportunity to raise the boy, his life would have been fraught with vampires and demons and a strange conglomeration of wicked creatures that no child should have to endure. If he had indeed survived, Rook wished only that his life had been as normal and blessed as could be.

  Verity tugged his hand up to kiss it. Her lips were cool, as was the tip of her nose as she brushed his wrist with her lips. “I love you.”

  “Beyond the moon,” he replied. “Our love will last beyond the moon.”

  * * * * *

  If you’re interested in reading more about the knights

  in the Order of the Stake, check out Kaz’s story,

  THE VAMPIRE HUNTER,

  and Lark’s story,

>   BEAUTIFUL DANGER.

  Lyric and Vail’s story is

  FOREVER VAMPIRE.

  All are available at your favorite online retailer.

  Also, Ian Grim has a habit of popping up in

  the stories I set in my world of Beautiful Creatures.

  If you’re interested in learning more about the

  creatures and people who populate my world,

  stop by clubscarlet.michelehauf.com.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from IMMORTAL OBSESSION by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom.

  We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Nocturne story.

  You harbor otherworldly desires…. Harlequin Nocturne stories delve into dark, sensuous and often dangerous territory, where the normal and paranormal collide.

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  Chapter 1

  Death was coming in the form of a cold, hard blackness.

  Christopher St. John looked for it with his eyes wide open.

  He gave the woman down the block a cursory glance, drawn to the shivering gleams of silver coming off whatever she wore as she passed beneath a streetlight, sensing something else about her that he had no time to explore. Though intrigued by all that shine on a gloomy night, no unnatural darkness floated in the woman’s wake, so he couldn’t afford a second look.

  Where was death hiding?

  The air he breathed carried an odor of old boots and had the slimy feel of an oxygenated oil slick, as if something nasty had left an indelible imprint. Alerted by that, St. John turned his head and caught sight of an ooze of movement so subtle, human eyes would have missed it.

  He watched the shadow pass into the alley on his left. Tuning in, he fired up his senses to determine that shadow’s status and to name and categorize the anomaly, which was just another thing that shouldn’t exist, but did, hanging on to darkness as if it needed, ate, breathed, required the worst part of a day. Midnight.

  “Shade,” St. John said, disgusted.

  Shades were evil suckers. Unable to possess actual physical form, they couldn’t be touched or destroyed by regular physical means. It took cunning, guts, and a whole lot of properly functioning know-how to take down something so substantially unsubstantial. And like flies on a fetid carcass, the presence of this Shade meant some poor fool had died in that alley, probably minutes ago.

  St. John’s fangs dropped, pressing threateningly against his tongue. He worked his jaw to relax himself. It was imperative that Shades and creatures like them were kept away from London’s human population, and that they remained underground. He’d have to follow this one and do his bit to mop up the danger before anyone found out.

  Taking a step toward the alley, he paused, his attention disturbed by a sudden prickle at the base of his neck. Cutting his eyes to the left, he saw another shadow hugging the building beside the alley. Then he saw a third.

  His fangs began to sharpen automatically, chiseling into lethal points as if they recognized danger all on their own and were getting ready to face it. In this case, the fangs were harbingers of doom. Three Shades in the area meant three dead bodies, since Shades were entities uninterested in sharing their spoils. Three dead bodies in a row suggested the presence of vampires. Probably more than one. These Shades had likely been attracted to leftovers.

  Death tonight had manifested in the form of a bloodsuckers’ blood fest, a vile breach of etiquette in London’s trendy West End. Most vampires here, unless newly made, knew better than to trespass on ground owned by their older immortal cousins. The careless vamps heralding the Shades were either really stupid, had been freshly bitten, or they had a death-after-death wish. Same difference in terms of the results.

  “Too damn close to mortals to be excused.”

  St. John again glanced down the street, to where he had seen the shapely woman in silver walking alone. He looked at the row of lights announcing the first of the West End’s string of nightclubs, thinking as he always had that these clubs and the people they attracted had become too tempting for the city’s extended list of subterranean inhabitants.

  The lights were, in essence, like big neon arrows pointing the way to an all-night buffet. But this particular grouping of night creatures currently flouting the rules were truly on the wrong path if they assumed they’d get away with leaving corpses in alleyways so near an immortal’s domain. Especially his. Nobody liked gore on their front steps.

  Closing his eyes briefly, St. John again felt death’s dark touch, a blackness he knew intimately. In a distant part of his subconscious, he pinpointed the nearness of the other uninvited creatures in the area. Vampires, yes. Rogues, giving off signals of rage and insatiable hunger, things he had long ago mastered, though his fangs were empathetically aching.

  Something else nagged at his attention besides the five young vampires emerging from the far end of the alley sporting haughty expressions and exhibiting no evidence of their recent kills. Some other warning had caught hold of him, mixed up in the brief gleam of a woman’s silvery light.

  Shaking that warning off, St. John watched the tight group of young vampires, reminiscent of a group of wild animals on the prowl, boldly cross the street, heading for the biggest club on the block. The same one the woman in silver stardust had entered.

  Striding past the queue of waiting guests, the rogues looked the club’s controller up and down until that man stepped aside, but not before he’d sent St. John a silent signal of alarm that rippled across St. John’s skin in the form of a really good chill.

  St. John nodded his head to the man in reply, wondering if perhaps these ignorant fanged parasites had also seen that dazzling young woman and had been attracted. Scavengers, like crows, loved anything that glowed.

  Or maybe they were just trolling for dessert.

  A wave of apprehension rolled across his scalp. Keeping tabs on the ever-increasing hordes of fledgling vampires would have been a full-time job for a small army. Keeping them out of his own territory was a personal necessity.

  Drawing his hands out of his pockets, St. John pressed his lips over his pulsing, aggression-seeking incisors.

  “Wrong road, wrong night, boys,” he said aloud, adding in honor of whatever Shades were lurking nearby, “I’ll be back for you.”

  Thinking of what a bunch of unrepentant, openly visible monsters might do to an unsuspecting woman like the one in the intriguing silver getup they were no doubt salivating for, and knowing that mercy wasn’t a viable word in bloodsucker vocabulary, St. John set his shoulders, squinted at the club’s lights and started off in that direction.

  He wasn’t called the Protector for nothing. And that woman, still very much on his mind after only a glimpse, didn’t have any idea of the extent of the trouble about to strike.

  Copyright © 2014 by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  ISBN-13: 9781460338964

  Beyond the Moon

  Copyright © 2014 by Michele Hauf

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ork of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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  As her Protector, he was bound to oblige her every desire.

  A rogue group of human-hating vampires have overtaken London. But the elite immortals who own much of the city may have found the key to protecting their territory: Madison Chase, an American newscaster investigating a story about missing teenagers. If she can convince someone to help her infiltrate the dangerous faction, she just might stem the bloodletting and find her brother in time….

  St. John can’t escape his dark family legacy. But the instincts that keep him from being fully human also make him the rogues’ worst enemy. His desire for the ethereal redhead is immediate, all-consuming—and forbidden. And as the investigation escalates, Madison must discover if St. John is her trusted Protector—or if she’s being seduced by a monster.

  A sensual game of Russian roulette.

  “You’re alone?”

  “Not anymore,” Madison replied over her shoulder. “Though you might want to choose a better line.”

  St. John hadn’t been fully prepared for the deepness of her voice, or that it might rival her sultry exterior. As the surprise washed over him, he grinned.

  “Also, there’s a rule about having to dance while on a dance floor,” she said, swiveling side to side so that her hips lightly brushed against his thighs.