by Marie Hall
Fury churned in the pit of his belly. Why had Lise not told him this? How could Mila hope to escape a creature whose sole purpose in this life was to consume her?
There had to be a weakness. There was always a weakness.
“My boon, then?” She smiled, so docile, so responsive to him.
His fingers curled, itching to trace the absurdly long length of her neck, wrap around it, and choke the very breath out of her. But she could not die. Doing that would serve no purpose.
“If it is a kiss you want”—he smirked—“then it is a kiss you shall receive.”
This time when he took her, he breathed death into her throat. It would not hurt her—for a creature like her, death was nothing. But there was more to him than simply killing; when he looked into a soul, he saw the life. Saw every tear, every smile, the love, the hate, the need, the lust.
Visualizing death’s kiss as a type of undulating frost-nipped fog, he forced it down her throat. She moaned, but not with pleasure. Her body jerked in his grasp and the hands suddenly stilled.
Pushing more of it through her, he shoved it deep into her belly, through her veins, into her pitch-black heart, and finally, into her brain, where he could access her memory banks.
A vision came to him then—indecipherable images of flashing light coalescing with shadow. The woods. Famed fae hunters with bows. The Morrigan. Not as a woman, but in her other form—her raven form—she rode the air on powerful crimson wings. The darkness of night danced with golden flickers of sparkling color. This was the wild hunt. This was a vision of the shade’s birth, how from the darkness she sprang. Fully formed. Living, breathing shadow. Neither child nor woman, she took her first breath, and then stepped out of the blackness, and there was only one purpose. One goal. Find a seer.
It was an all-consuming hunger, a need to own. To possess.
The Morrigan dropped before the shadow, beady black eyes staring deep into her own, and a thought, a whisper passed between them. Then the crow was gone.
A loud thunk rang through the room. Pulled from the vision, Frenzy jerked his eyes open. She was cold, like living marble in his arms. She still breathed, but she’d gone rigor. He’d pumped so much death into her veins she wouldn’t move for days, hopefully weeks.
Angry eyes stared at him as he gently laid her down.
Damn The Morrigan; it was no wonder the queen was so keen to learn of Mila’s location. The magic of the wild hunt came not from nature, but from the queen herself. Nothing could be born of the hunt unless the queen willed it. She was the gatekeeper; she was the key to destroying the shadow.
Lise had known that—that was why she’d refused to allow the queen to listen in. Whatever the queen knew, Lise had to know as well. The Ancient One had helped Cian, surely she would help him also. After all, she was the one who’d forced him to guard the woman.
Grabbing the bag of toiletries that’d fallen at his feet earlier, he swiped open a rift in time and went to fetch his woman.
Chapter 9
What in the hell did he do to you?” the queen snapped at the beating pulse of shadow standing before her.
The Morrigan had been in her chambers when she’d heard the keening cry of the hunter in her head. Death’s kiss had been forced down her throat. The shadow had relayed it all to the queen through visions.
Damn that insufferable Frenzy. She’d not thought to warn the darkness that the reaper was known to beguile even the most heartless of hearts. She’d assumed shadow had no heart to speak of. But Frenzy had proven his namesake true yet again.
The shadow’s form pulsed like a throbbing heart. Death’s kiss had knocked her silly and it was all she could do at the moment to retain any sort of form.
“He kissed me.”
“Why did you let him?” She stalked to the creature shaking before her throne.
But she wasn’t shaking in fear; the shadow shook in fury. She snarled when she looked up at the queen. “Because I want HER! And I would do anything to possess her.”
The Morrigan narrowed her eyes. “The girl is mine. You are to track her only, drochturach. She is the last of her kind. Disobey me and it will be to your own peril.”
With a shriek to rival a banshee, the shadow wrapped herself around the queen, her embrace like a python’s grip. “I am not so weak that I cannot suck the soul out of you.”
The Morrigan would rather die than admit how much the creature’s grip hurt, or that it made her insides feel like they might liquefy from the pressure. Lifting her chin high, she growled, “I created you, creature. Release me. Now!”
The shadow laughed, slowly unwinding its body from around the queen. “I would never harm you. Mother.”
Taking a breath that hurt, the queen fought the tremor that threatened to give away her true anxiety. The shadow was stronger now than it’d ever been.
When she’d first created it, it was weak. Looking to her to be fed and cared for, and in return it had obeyed any and all commands. But she’d fed, gained too much power over the centuries. The Morrigan could not have seen how each time the shadow inhaled yet another seer’s soul that she would strengthen, morph into a being even more powerful than the queen herself.
And this was when the creature was at less than full speed. Frenzy’s kiss had weakened her. Casting Dagda a look from the corner of her eye, she knew her consort would not come to her defense.
Part of retaining the power and respect within fae was being able to control her own destiny. To control those around her. He would not come to her defense, nor she to his. That was not the way of things in faerie.
She’d already suffered a humiliating defeat when Lise had taken Cian from her care. She could not afford to appear any weaker than she already did.
“Follow them,” she hissed out as an order to the shadow, pointing a finger at the black blob’s chest. “Do not kill her, or I swear, I will end you.”
The shadow chuckled a low, menacing sound. “I’ve scared death off; he will find her and they will run. How am I to track them now?”
Tracking death wasn’t easy. Part of their abilities was that they couldn’t be found unless they were harvesting. When their hands turned to bone, then and only then could The Morrigan get a lock on their location.
Frenzy was ten times smarter than any of her reapers. During his dark days (the period after his mortal’s death) he’d secluded himself in outlying areas, terrorizing villages and mortals, always one step ahead of those who could catch him. The queen had finally found him when she’d discovered that she could trace him when he harvested a soul.
Knowing his pattern, he’d likely squire the woman off to some remote locale and, if the past repeated itself, there’d come a point where being constantly in her company would make the baser side of him come out. The side that would protect her no matter the cost.
The side that would kill to keep her safe. And when he did, she’d find him again, and by finding him, she’d finally find her seer.
She smiled. “You leave the tracking to me. I’ll send for you in a few days. When I do, you will find her, and you will bring her to me.”
The shadow didn’t utter another word, simply turned and vanished within a plume of smoke.
It did not escape the queen that she had not agreed. The shadow could wind up being a problem. The Morrigan hadn’t lied when she’d said she’d kill the shadow. The creature might think itself invincible, but no one truly was.
“Dagda.” She turned to her consort. “Fetch me my black box.”
Standing, the earth god bowed and walked toward their study.
The Morrigan smiled. It may not seem it, but everything was falling into place.
* * *
Mila turned at the sound of a twig snapping and then sucked in a sharp breath when she took in Frenzy’s cold face and angry eyes. And though there was fury and fire burning through him, her body responded to his heat, to his nearness. Her nerves snapped and sizzled. He was gorgeous, dangerous, and she wanted hi
m. Desperately.
Shielding her breasts from view with the curve of her arm, she stepped backward into deeper water. She’d been invigorated to learn that her new unhuman skin didn’t get cold the way her human skin would have. He’d been gone awhile, but she hadn’t felt any fear thanks to the death kiss he’d let roll throughout her clearing. At one point she’d seen a deer, nose up in the air as it drew closer to the invisible barrier, and almost as if it’d sensed the wrongness of the place, it’d jumped as though startled and turned in the opposite direction.
Most animals seemed to know to stay away. One bird had flown too low, though, and, almost as if slamming up against a glass shield, it’d gone rigid and dropped with a thunk to the ground. It had hurt her to see the bird die in that way, but also given her a sense of peace. Even irritated at her as he was, Frenzy had protected her.
She’d tried to catch her bearings, get a rough estimate of where she was, but he’d dropped her off in the middle of nowhere. It was just one endless stretch of trees and rolling hills. Kind of peaceful, in an off-the-grid sort of way. In fact, she’d been floating on the lake’s surface staring up at the sun without needing to blink or flinch, thinking that this was a type of eternity she could probably deal with. Smiling softly to herself, she lay there unmoving, until finally she got the sense that someone was definitely watching her. Prickles rushed over skin and made her stand up quickly.
“There will be no food cooked here, O’Fallen.” His tone was brusque, his words gravelly, his stare intense. “We will do as you asked and move to another location.”
She nodded, wondering what, if anything, he planned to do. He was looking at her like he…needed something. Her sluggish heart thumped.
“Can I bathe?”
Her throat was so dry she could hardly speak. He was asking for permission to come in here with her, she knew it, felt it. There was an energy to him, something intense and primal and it called to every one of her new, baser instincts.
Deciding not to overthink it because she was actually glad to see him, she nodded, and could not have looked away even if told to when he began to undress. Except instead of being bashful as she had last night, she locked her gaze on his. There wasn’t an ounce of shame on his countenance when he stripped.
Frenzy stood on the bank, his shirt off, pants gone as well. He was completely nude. But instead of it making her shy and anxious, she found she was quite the opposite.
There was a monster inside of her. Ever since turning she’d felt the slumbering beast unfurling sensuous claws deep inside, making her crave. Not only blood and meat, but sex. It was a lust-fueled haze that was slowly getting stronger, demanding its needs be met.
Fire and heat inched through her belly, making her hum whenever he was around. Making her aware of his scent of spicy male, a mix between spring rains and his own unique earthiness. The way he moved, like a graceful, sloping predator. How the softness of his shoulder-length hair could not distract from the rugged beauty of his face. How his abdominal muscles rippled like thick ropes with each step he took into the water.
His angry gaze never strayed from her own.
“What…happened?” she mumbled, shivering now, but not from cold, rather from a want so powerful it bordered on desperation.
Her legs trembled, her skin prickled with a wash of intense need, and it was all she could do to swallow and not jump on him, become a wild, ravenous beast.
Licking her lips, she stood her ground, curling her fingers into fists as she repeated slowly to herself that what she felt wasn’t real. It was hormones. The mad passion of a vampire. They’d earned their reputation as lotharios honestly; there was none within the realm of others quite as depraved or desperate for sex as the vampires.
“We cannot go back,” he finally said, stopping inches from her.
The world was electric, alive. Vibrant. She felt it move against her, felt the heat flowing between them. Biting down on her lip to prevent from moaning, she nodded. “The apartment? Why?”
“Because I met her.”
She blinked. “Met who? Who’s ‘her’?”
His eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, and this time when he moved in to her, she didn’t just feel the simmering crackle of pent-up energy; his thigh rubbed against her own and she sucked in sharp breath. Her entire being focused on the point of contact. Because being a vamp meant she was at the peak of perfection.
His thumb touched the tip of her jaw. “The shadow. It is a female.”
Ears buzzing, blinking rapidly because her heart was suddenly fluttering in her throat, she started to back up, mud squishing between her toes from the slippery lake bed. “It…She found you? Us?” Glancing left and then right, she shook her head. “We have to go, I can’t stay here. I can’t. I have to—”
His arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her into his tight body. His gaze still menacing, threatening. “You know, don’t you? How she tracks you?”
She shook her head, frazzled, finding it difficult to think clearly. “What are you talking about? I don’t know how the bloody thing finds me.”
His jaw working from side to side, hard fingers digging into the curve between her spine and the top of her rear, she couldn’t pull her eyes away from his penetrating, soul-deep gaze. The silver swirled, reminding her of a mad spinning toy top. Her nostrils flared, fighting the instinct inside her telling her not to move.
Because she needed to get away from him. Away from the things he made her feel—not just lust, but protected. Safe. As crazy as that was, they were on the run, but when he was near, it was like nothing could hurt her. Being with Frenzy was madness, his world, her world now…It was scary and frightening, but she was okay as long as he was with her.
“So you don’t know that there isn’t a single ward that can keep that vile, black, soulless creature out? It can find you anywhere you go. Anywhere we run. It lives in the shadow it was born from; we cannot escape its hunt.”
Shivering, feeling the cold in a way she hadn’t before, she shoved him away. How could she ever have a hope of escaping it? If it lived in shadow, then it would always find her; whenever the sun set she’d be in danger. “That’s how it finds me?” She squeezed her eyes shut. It made so much sense.
Why her mom and gran never stayed in one place long. Why they’d separated her from her father, from all those not part of the line. They’d never told her why, and maybe they weren’t sure themselves, but they always said to never stay longer than two, three years in any one place. To not mingle much, to keep to yourself, trust only family. A few months back she’d reached out to her da, only to discover he’d died of a stroke ten years before. She was truly alone in this world, a thought that left her ready to weep if she dwelled on it for too long.
Living like this, it’d been a way of life for her. She’d seen so many different parts of the world and had grown used to the lifestyle. To the wanderlust she’d always thought her mother and gran possessed.
“You didn’t know?” he asked softly, almost tenderly now, and she heard the bafflement in his voice, as if he was shocked to discover that she’d had no clue how the shadow had tracked her. She heard the pity behind his words too, and it made a fury blanket her mind.
She shoved him. Hard. Causing him to stumble backward and make her smile, if only briefly. “Why would you think I’d know that? And how the hell did you get that thing to talk?” Her words dripped poison, growing thick with the accent she tried so hard to keep penned up.
A cocky grin fixed firmly on his face, he said, “I seduced her. Of course.”
Words could not do justice to the sudden hate and disgust she felt. Because it wasn’t remotely similar to anything she could ever remember feeling as a human. This was a level of soul-sucking, mind-numbing fire that twisted her insides up, made her fingers itch to flex and claw and her throat burn to scream.
Not able to understand what was going on with the crazy surge of emotions, the up and down and hot lust mixed in with cold fury, she sank
under the water. It was the only rational thing she could think to do. If she walked out of the lake, she’d run and he’d catch her; if she attacked his oh so disgustingly gorgeous face, he’d restrain her. She couldn’t win either way.
Sucking in water through her nose and mouth, she was astonished to find it didn’t hurt her. She didn’t know why she’d done it—maybe to test the limitations of her new body. It didn’t make her brain want to spasm with the need for breath. She couldn’t drown, so she opened her mouth and screamed.
He’d touched it. Seduced it. And she hated him for it, hated that it bothered her, hated that it made her feel so damned jealous.
Her life was over. She couldn’t die. Couldn’t undo the wrong done to her. It all hurt so much and the worst of it was she had to entrust her life to a being she didn’t understand at all. Frenzy didn’t care for her, and it was ridiculous that that thought hurt.
Hard hands gripped her upper arms, dragging her up. It was all too much. She slapped him.
“Woman,” he growled, not releasing her arm. “You’ve grown too accustomed to hitting me. No more. Do you understand?”
“Did you sleep with it?” She lashed out. And it so wasn’t what she’d meant to say. It really wasn’t. She wanted to rant and rail and tell him to piss off. Tell him anything, anything but asking, Did you sleep with it?
He jerked, seeming astonished by her question. The firmness of his grasp didn’t let up an inch. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You seduced it. What else did that devil tell you, eh? What else does it know about me?”
Mila had grown up almost on her own. She’d lost her gran and her mom to the demon when she’d been fifteen. They’d never had a chance to tell her everything, to teach her how to survive. But she’d learned, she’d figured it out. Even thought she’d been somewhat successful at it. And she’d grown careless and cocky because of it. Sixteen years on her own, she’d thought working with HPA would be possible. Feasible. That for once in her life she could use her gifts to make a difference. Not to hide it from the world, but to make her life matter. She’d been stupid taking such a high-visibility job, but she’d only been a freelancer, working on the side when they needed help with a cold case or serial killers. If she hadn’t helped that girl, if she hadn’t stepped in, made a scene at a bar, maybe things would be different now. She’d still be living in the basement of that wonderful Ms. Henley, who’d baked her chocolate chip cookies every weekend and been one of the few people she knew who still made her lemonade the old-fashioned way.
