City of the Fallen (Dark Tides, Book One)

by Bocco, Diana

  Her eyes lingered on it, mesmerized. He seemed to catch the heavy sight of pleasure in her gaze and bent over to kiss her, the metallic taste of blood mixing with her saliva. A second orgasm rippled through her as his tongue tangled with hers, the wave of pleasure making her gasp for air.

  She clanged to him as the waves of the orgasm rippled through her, making her soar higher than she’d thought possible. As her muscles pulsed around his length, he responded by grunting and pounding harder into her body, reaching so deep her insides trembled with the invasion.

  She opened her eyes and saw the tightness in his jaw, the fire of his eyes burning deep into hers. She pushed into his hips hard, demanding, holding his pleasure tight and pulling until she thought he couldn’t take it any longer. And then he exploded inside her. He grabbed her ass and pumped into her one more time, grunting as he released, arching his back as a howl of pleasure erupted from his throat.

  When his face came down to stare at her, there was a flash of rapture in his eyes. Satisfaction. She wasn’t sure if it was a look of possession or a look of abandonment. Either way, it tore down into her, making her body tingle with something that felt like bliss.

  She felt exhausted, sleep washing over her and grabbing her until she felt weak and sluggish. Her limbs were soft, trembling still with the aftershocks of the climax. And as she fell asleep, her mind blissfully softening into the night, she heard him get up and leave the room. Before sleep overtook her, she heard his command to one of the guards.

  “Find out who she is.”

  Chapter 8

  She woke up slower than usual the next morning. Her body was spent and sluggish, a heaviness washing over her. Part of her also felt warm and comforted, though, and that was somewhat more unsettling considering what had brought it on.

  The sounds of the morning were filtering in through the half-open window, slowly lifting her drowsiness. Her mind was a blur of cluttered ideas and trying to make sense of them was almost impossible. She opened her eyes slowly, taking her surroundings in one detail at a time. She was in his room. Alone.

  The memories of the previous night rolled over her, like waves crashing against the sand. Each crash brought with it a new flash of skin, of pleasure, of fire on fire exploding. She was a traitor. It had taken one touch, one second of his lips on hers to forget everything. Even though she had known from the beginning that sleeping with a vampire was part of the deal, she hadn’t expected to enjoy it. The pleasure had been the greatest treason of all.

  She shifted on the bed and her muscles ached. It was the kind of glorious pain that a wild night could bring. Only that in this case, it felt like something more. Her body seemed different. Branded. She reached for her neck and the two puncture wounds there. They were barely noticeable but they were there—like a brand. You’re mine. Marcus’ words looped in her mind, bringing a shiver with them every time she heard them again.

  She took a deep breath and sat upright. Her biggest distress wasn’t about the marks on her neck. It was about something deeper. Somehow, her soul felt marked. Last night hadn’t been about passion or sex or blood. It had been about surrendering—and she had done it. Completely and without reservations. And the consequences of that terrified her, because suddenly she was having second thoughts.

  Maybe the king wasn’t such a monster.

  Maybe she didn’t need to kill him.

  Except that there was no other way out. And that realization was paralyzing. He was the king of the monsters. He was also Marcus, the one who had made her body sing the night before. She could feel a war starting between her heart and her mind, so she decided to get up and stop thinking about it for a while. Or at least try.

  There was something else nagging at the back of her mind: the word rabid. She’d had little time to think about it last night because Marcus’ kiss had erased everything else from her mind. But now the word was back, sending chills down her spine. Rabid.

  She’d never seen any vampire who would fit the description, so she had no idea what Marcus had meant. Up until the day before she had never even come face to face with a vampire. She had seen them exploring the surroundings, hunting for blood—but she had never had the chance to exchange words with one. But even from the distance, they had always looked graceful to her. They had a certain quality to their movements, a touch of regality that humans lacked. A few times she had found herself almost hypnotized by their movements.

  When the invasion first began, many had tried to deny the reality of what was happening. The news spent the first few hours reporting the attacks as mass hysteria and just a few isolated incidents of violence. She suspected that the government had tried to keep things hush-hush to avoid panic, but what they created instead was a nation unprepared to fight. By the time the invasion was obvious, civilization had run out of chances to do anything about it.

  Her first close encounter with a vampire had been in the hospital. She had been doing her intern rounds in the ER when an ambulance rushed in. The victim was barely moving and she was incredibly white, but it wasn’t until they started working on her that they had realized the problem: she had barely any blood left in her body. Massive blood loss usually meant a considerable injury, but the woman had no visible injuries, except for a small set of puncture marks on her left wrist.

  And that was when she’d seen him. In the frantic running around, she had lifted her eyes for a second and seen the vampire standing a few feet away. His eyes had shone bright as he watched the doctors work on the woman. There was a subtle buzzing of energy around him, almost as if he was affecting the electricity of the room by just standing there. Now she would never mistake his poised movements for anything else, but back then, she wasn’t yet convinced of the existence of vampires. So she stood in place, distracted for a second by the stranger’s unrelenting look.

  When the machine finally beeped a flatline, he had turned around and left.

  That first image had always defined her view of vampires: cool, unmovable. And dangerously alluring.

  The idea of a rabid vampire, acting deranged and thrashing around like an animal, seemed unthinkable. So why had Marcus mentioned it? And what exactly were they?

  Because if there was something else out there, something she didn’t know about, it meant the people back at the house didn’t know it either. And history had proven that ignorance would get you killed.

  So before she signed her own death sentence by trying to kill the king, she needed to figure out what the world was really up against.

  ~*~

  Marcus looked towards the blackened window and a pang of irritation hit him. The sun was up and he was still awake. This was the second day in a row that sleep had evaded him and he wasn’t happy about it. In fact, he was pretty annoyed about the whole thing. Now on top of having to deal with the threat of the rabid vampires and the void spreading, he also had a woman dancing in his mind.

  It was an unsettling mix of emotions. For a vampire who had been around for centuries, it was also a startling discovery knowing a human had such power over him. He wouldn’t have minded so much if he had some way of controlling the situation, but Isabelle was way beyond his reach.

  He paced, moving away from the window and towards the door that separated his studio from his bedroom. He heard a ripple in the air coming from the adjoining room and knew Isabelle was awake. It was just a small crackle, the sound of skin brushing against fabric—but it was enough to tell him she was up and moving. His stomach contracted and he cursed. He wanted—needed—more time with her. There was something about Isabelle that called him. It was a sort of electric hum that spread down to his bones and awoke his hunger. Something he’d never experienced with a human before.

  Something he hadn’t experienced in a very long time.

  There hadn’t been any female vampires for over four centuries. When the void had spread, it had had a devastating effect on the female side of his breed. Female vampires became erratic and violent much faster and much sooner—
not only against humans but also against other vampires. Many were killed by their own partners in an attempt to crush the spreading plague. In less than a year, every single female vampire had been infected with the void and died—either of hunger or at the hands of other vampires.

  Back then, many had turned to keeping human pets as a way to fight the loneliness. He had tried it too, but had quickly realized it wasn’t what he wanted. Humans were fragile and always terrified. The physical pleasure he got from them did little for his mind and his soul. What he wanted was a partner, an equal—and humans had never been able to reach that level.

  Against all reason, he was now wondering whether Isabelle could.

  The question had been in his mind since the moment he first realized she was immune to charming. But after last night, the question had become a lot stronger. A lot more real.

  What if?

  His body tensed and he had to shake his head to let go of the thought. Suddenly, he was glad he was alone and didn’t have to explain his emotions to Miles or anybody else who knew him well. It wasn’t hard to imagine what their reactions would be.

  The king taking a human companion.

  It wasn’t forbidden or impossible, but it was surely unheard of—and it made him uneasy. But thinking about it also sent his heart into a race and that was enough to tell him there was something there.

  Of course, he knew little about Isabelle besides the fact that he couldn’t charm her. He knew she was passionate and strong. He knew that in bed, she was already his equal. Whether she could be the same outside of the bedroom was a question to ponder.

  A knock on the opposite side of the room startled him. The compound was built over a long series of underground tunnels that stretched for miles. They connected all the important rooms inside the compound to each other and allowed his kind to move around without being exposed to sunlight. He remembered a time when daylight meant hiding away in cellars and caves—and he had made sure no hiding was necessary when he built the compound.

  “Come in, Miles,” he said without approaching the hidden door.

  A panel on the wall slid open and Miles walked in. His face was somber, tight.

  “What is it?”

  Despite the grave eyes, Miles seemed calm and collected. But then, Miles always looked that way. It was the reason Marcus had appointed him to deal with security. Miles was immovable. Not because he didn’t have emotions, but because he never let them affect him. At least not visibly.

  “The first patrol group came back,” Miles told him. “They found a few rabids.”

  “How far?”

  “A couple of hours away,” Miles said. “They’ve never been this close before.”

  Marcus slid into the chair facing his bedroom door. Isabelle could’ve run into one of them out there—and so could the other humans trying to reach the compound. While there was enough blood in the compound, the supply was low everywhere else around the country. He couldn’t risk losing humans to the rabids out there. On the other hand, he knew that the less the rabids fed, the faster the void would spread. It was a losing proposition either way.

  He turned towards Miles, searching for answers. “How worried are you?”

  Miles frowned. “More than I was six months ago.”

  Marcus’ heart thumped against his ribs. “What about the guards?”

  “They’re on the walls since last night. But if a group of rabids attacks—”

  “I know,” he interrupted. “It’ll be a nasty fight.”

  “We’ll spread the word throughout the compound tonight. Tell the humans to stay away from the outer walls.”

  “How much time do you think we have?”

  Miles moved closer. “Can I speak freely, sir?”

  Marcus nodded. If there was somebody he could count on telling him the truth, it was Miles. They were as close as brothers. “Of course.”

  “If the void keeps spreading, we’ll be outnumbered soon.”

  Marcus knew it.

  “How’s the research going?”

  Miles shook his head slightly. “Nothing new, I’m afraid, but I was thinking… the new woman…”

  Marcus’ whole body tensed up.

  “There’s something different about her,” Miles continued. “Maybe we can…”

  “No.”

  He could feel his own eyes darkening as he looked at Miles.

  “Nobody is touching her except me,” he said softly, but the words burned their way up his throat.

  Miles stood quiet, not a single muscle moving.

  “Understood,” he finally said.

  “Make sure everybody’s aware of this, Miles,” Marcus said. “If we ever come under attack, her safety comes first. Are we clear?”

  Miles’ face was a perfectly-carved piece of stone.

  “Yes, sir.”

  As he was leaving, Miles turned around to face the king just one last time. “Marcus?”

  The king looked up and saw the concern in his friend’s expression.

  “I’ll be careful, Miles.”

  Miles nodded, then stepped through the secret door and disappeared into the labyrinth of tunnels.

  Nothing was going as Marcus had expected. When he had put the team of scientists together—the “great vampire minds,” Miles had called them—he had been hoping for a much faster resolution. He’d even sent a team around the country to collect the best lab equipment they could find—and that hadn’t been an easy task, considering the state of ruin of everything around them.

  And still, they had nothing.

  Coming up with a blood substitute had proven a lot more difficult than the scientists had expected. They were close—or so they kept saying—but they couldn’t nail the right combination of chemicals and nutrients. Or when they did, they couldn’t figure out how to keep the blood “alive” for more than just a few minutes.

  Time was running short—especially now that the rabids were getting closer. When he’d first started the lab, the only thing he had had in mind was making sure everybody could feed even if humans disappeared. At the rate they were being killed during the invasion, it had been a very real possibility that they would become extinct someday. Now he was wondering whether having a blood substitute could stop the void from spreading. And whether the rabids could be turned back if given enough blood. He didn’t know if that had ever been attempted before. After all, it made more sense to just abandon or destroy the vampires who became rabid—or at least it had made sense centuries ago, when science could not have attempted to come up with a cure.

  If there was a chance for his plan to work, though, it had to happen soon. He could feel the rabids closing in on him.

  Chapter 9

  She had spent most of the day thinking about him and what happened the night before. Replaying the skin and the kisses and the fire over and over again. Until she felt like she was about to go insane if she didn’t find a way to press pause on the movie playing in her head.

  So she’d kept herself busy by exploring the courtyards and trying to make sense of the layout of the place. Figuring out the connections of the different sections and where each door led gave her a headache, so she ended up returning to the memories of the previous night over and over.

  By the time Miles came to get her, she was going insane with anticipation.

  The minute she got back into Marcus’ room and saw the outline of his form in the darkness, a weight lifted and she could finally relax. She let out a sigh and immediately realized she’d been half-breathing the entire day.

  “You can sit down, Belle.”

  Belle. The nickname sounded like music on his lips.

  She found a plush sofa and sat down. God, he’s beautiful. In the semi-darkness of the room, his eyes almost sparkled. Every time he moved, the ripples in his muscles flexed and tensed up. Flashes of skin against skin looped through her mind.

  She blushed and he groaned in response.

  “Stop it,” he whispered. “I can hear your heart fr
om here.”

  She took a deep breath and tried to steady the beating in her chest. Then he got closer to sit on the couch and her heart went on a frenzied dash again.

  Damn it.

  “You have no idea how tempting that sound is,” he said.

  It was taking all of her willpower not to move closer. Judging by the tightness in his neck and shoulders, it was obvious he was feeling the same.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said. It sounded almost like a complaint.

  She nodded, mainly because she wasn’t sure she could actually speak without moaning in the process.