Rarely did a binding bite occur anymore, and Jacob didn’t wonder why. In binding a soul, the master vampire created a self-weakness. If the bound lover were to be killed, the master vampire would suffer. Depending on how powerful the binding of their two existences, the suffering could range from agonizing headaches to insanity to destruction—incineration from the inside out. Never had a Principatus been bound to a vampire. To do so…
Jacob suppressed a sharp sigh. “Make her mine” fell into none of those criteria, but it sounded damn near close to binding.
He rubbed his hand over his mouth again, the points of his fangs pressing against the insides of his lips. That they were even extended showed him just how unsettled he was. This was not good.
Not good? This is a fucking nightmare. A master vampire marking a Principatus his property? Hell’s pit. Killing her would be better.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
Ezryn’s growl made Jacob jump. His master never tuned into his thoughts anymore—a privilege all master vampires held over their loyalist network—which meant Jacob’s expression revealed way too much. He shook his head and bit back a curse. “Am I that transparent?”
“No,” Ezryn replied. “I’ve just known you for a very long time.”
Jacob gave his friend a level look, trying to calm the disquiet knotting in his chest. “So I don’t have to tell you I think you’re treading dangerous territory?”
Ezryn’s jaw bunched.
“Or that you should let me take care of the situation?”
Ezryn turned his head, regarding Jacob with cold red eyes. “And how would you do that, General Ford? Destroy my brother?”
The ice in Ezryn’s voice made Jacob swallow. “No,” he answered, keeping his own voice steady. “You have strictly forbidden me to do so, and as such I will abide by your command.”
Ezryn’s eyes glowed a deeper red. He said nothing. He waited for Jacob to continue.
Ah, shit, Jake. You’re the one treading dangerous territory now.
He swallowed again. “I would destroy the Principatus.”
Ezryn’s nostrils flared. He stared at Jacob, face expressionless. “You will not.” He turned back to the window, the purple glow of pre-dawn casting his pale skin in a soft light.
Jacob studied his profile. “Because?”
Ezryn didn’t answer. He just watched the sky grow lighter, each second passing with oppressive silence before he turned from the window and left the room, fists clenched and jaw bunched.
Jacob let out an entirely redundant but utterly ragged sigh. Dark Ones. What the hell did he do next?
Disobey Ezryn’s command not to kill the Principatus?
He pictured the woman he’d seen stretched out on the bench back in the Pleasure Pussy. She was tiny, the top of her head unlikely to reach his chin. How easy would she be to defeat?
He’d never faced a Principatus before. By vampire standards, he was fairly formidable, but were his own strength and power enough to destroy one of the Highest’s assassins?
If it means preventing a war? If it means stopping Ezryn from doing something stupid?
Jacob’s gut clenched. He had no idea what his master had planned, but something told him it was more than Ezryn had revealed. He’d seen the set expression on the master vampire’s face before, the night Ezryn had stepped aside for his twin’s joke of an ascension. It was an expression that preceded a bleak future. Whatever Ezryn had in his mind to handle Fat Harry’s order, it didn’t bode well for Ezryn. Which in Jacob’s opinion was stupid.
Take out the Principatus before Ezryn does. Follow her, engage her in battle and destroy her.
His stomach clenched again. Easier said than done. Now he knew what she looked like, finding her wasn’t the problem, but engaging her in battle? How? Unless there was a reason for their confrontation, if he attacked her without provocation he was achieving nothing, just a senseless slaughter leading to the very bloodbath he sought to prevent.
The only way he could possibly conceive to entice the Principatus to attack him was to go on a violent feeding frenzy of the local humans, and he really, really didn’t want to do that. To save Ezryn’s life, however…
So what did he do now?
He didn’t know.
Dragging his hands through his hair, he gave the lightening sky a frazzled scowl. Daybreak, and he was nowhere near his own penthouse.
With one last look at the fading night, he crossed to the bar, filled Ezryn’s empty glass with blood and downed it in one swallow. The warm liquid hit the back of his throat, his gullet, and he closed his eyes for a moment, letting the life of the blood fill his existence. The buzz lasted but a second. He placed the empty glass in the bar’s sink, walked to the other side of the room and punched in a complicated sequence of numbers on a control panel.
Instantly, the floor-to-ceiling windows turned black, plunging Ezryn’s living room into pitch darkness.
With a nod of satisfaction, Jacob moved to the long, leather lounge in the middle of the room and dropped onto it, his gut churning, his throat tight. Toeing off his shoes, he raked his fingers through his hair and then stretched out along the luxurious piece of furniture. “Looks like you’re having a sleepover, General Ford,” he muttered, crossing his ankles as he closed his eyes. “And here you are without your toothbrush.”
Haral Lynwood Navarr, proclaimed first born of the First Family, overlord of the vampire race, sank his long, perfectly manicured fingernails into the young female kneeling before him. Her blood trickled from the puncture wounds in her throat, oozed over his fingers and down his wrist, dripping onto the cold marble floor beneath his feet in perfect crimson beads. He stared into her eyes, reveling in the pain and terror he saw there. The sight of her fear and the smell of her blood made his prick jerk in eager attention. When he was done with her, he would wake his new wife and fuck her until she sobbed for mercy.
At the moment he had other more pressing needs. “What do you mean, he didn’t kill her?”
The female at his knees flinched at his question, as if each word caused her pain. Which they probably did. She knew nothing she said would save her. It was just a matter of time.
Her short, stubby fangs flashed at him from behind lips wet with both snot and spittle. “He…he didn’t…he didn’t…” The quivering vampire choked back a strangled sob, the pathetic action causing fresh blood to squeeze past Haral’s fingers. “He didn’t kill her.”
Haral drove his claws deeper into her throat, bending slightly at the waist to bring his face closer to hers. “You told me you followed him. You told me he’d found her. If he didn’t kill her, what did he do to her?”
The bleeder’s stare flicked around the room.
“Well?” Haral snapped, giving her a sharp shake. Tiny drops of blood splattered his pajama legs, seeping into the expensive gold silk to become large, crimson blossoms. He glared at the sniveling bitch at his feet. He liked these pajamas. They were his favorite, and she’d ruined them. “What did he do to her? Fuck her?”
The vampire nodded, her blood-soaked chin slapping against his hand. “Yes. Yes, sort…sort of.”
Haral narrowed his eyes, an icy shard of furious disbelief pushing into his chest. “Sort of? He fucked the Principatus…sort of? Where?”
“In…in a strip club called the Pleasure Pussy…in…” bright-red blood bubbled past the female’s lips in a hiccupping gasp, “…in one of the back booths.” Her wild eyes rolled, fear excreting from her pores in sickening waves. “He shoved his…head between her legs…then his hand down her pants…they kissed, she said…something I couldn’t hear and then he left.”
“And then he left,” Haral repeated. The icy fury in his chest grew colder. His brother fucking a Principatus? He released his grip on the whimpering excuse for a vampire and straightened, her sobs and blubbered “thank you, sire, thank you, sire, thank you” fading to silence in his head.
Ezryn Navarr, the prodigal son, fucking a Principatu
s? Defying a direct command from his lord? Condemning hundreds to bloody slaughter? Haral had given Ezzie four nights to kill the bitch Principatus before the carnage began, and this was how his holier-than-thou twin brother spent the first one? Tongue deep in the assassin’s cunt?
He stared at the shuttered windows of the compound he’d commandeered for his stay in Australia, the candelabrum casting the expansive ballroom in a warm, orange glow. Outside, the sun was almost above the horizon. Sleep called him with urgent insistence, but he ignored the pull. He lifted his hand to his mouth and flicked his tongue along his fingers, the vampire’s blood tingling over his taste buds.
What did it mean that his brother, the moralistic bastard, would send so many to their deaths? A vampire who’d left his home country and everything he knew behind to prevent that very thing happening? For the life of a Principatus, no less?
And how did he, overlord of the vampire race, capitalize on it?
What did he do with this unexpected news to bring about Ezryn’s utter and complete humiliation and defeat?
What did he…
A smile pulled at the corners of Haral’s mouth and he laughed, the sound bouncing around the cavernous room. Of course. He knew exactly what to do.
Holding out his hand, he turned his smile on the cowering bleeder sobbing at his feet. “Hush, child.” He stretched his smile wider. Softened it. Made it reach his eyes. “There is no need for tears. You have made your lord pleased.”
The female hiccupped, wiping at her blood-laced snot with the back of her hand, her eyes wide. Hope flooded her face. Hope and disbelief and relief. She smiled, a toothy expression as incredulous as the light in her eyes. “Oh, thank you, sire, thank you, thank you, thank you.” She took his offered hand, her trembling, snot-smeared fingers sliding over his. “Forgive me. I will do better. I will make you so pleased.”
Haral bestowed her with a warm look of love. “Yes. Of course you will.” And in one fluid move, he yanked the bitch from the floor and tore her head from her body.
Turning to the silent guards standing at the ballroom’s main doorway, he threw the pathetic thing’s remains at their feet. “Toss that into the street. Let the dogs feed on it until the sun turns it to mulch.”
An image of Ezryn filled Haral’s head and he grinned, his prick growing hard with cold elation. It was time to show Ezzie that he was the stronger brother, the better brother. The brother fit to rule the vampire race. Haral, not Ezryn, no matter what the fawning fools who followed the bastard believed.
It was time to show Ezzie just what his twin brother was capable of achieving. And how merciless he could be.
Chapter Four
Going without sleep wasn’t working. Nor, Inari was disgusted to discover, was spending the daylight hours running on Bondi Beach. She’d spent the morning scaring off perverted men lurking near unsuspecting children before moving to her local gym to kick the shit out of a punching bag. When her clothes were so wet they clung to her body the gym owner—a gruff old retired boxer who didn’t care squat for anyone—told her to go home before she collapsed. No matter what she’d tried in the last twenty hours, Inari couldn’t get the master vampire out of her head.
It was driving her insane. He was driving her insane.
She glared at the sun sinking behind the western horizon, the towering office blocks and apartment complexes of Sydney heart throwing shadows over her that should have chilled her warm flesh but instead made her angrier. Night was upon her, and all she wanted to do was track down the bloodsucker and pick up where they’d left off in the Pleasure Pussy.
Fuck it.
Shaking her head, she turned from the sunset and shoved her way along the crowded footpath, making her way toward home. Whether her body was telling her it wanted hard, wild sex with a vampire or not, she still had a job to do. The Powers may not have assigned her a target, but she hadn’t forgotten the prickling heat razing the back of her neck last night. Somewhere in the city was a demon she needed to find and find soon. The idea of a demon watching her didn’t help her current state of mind at all. As soon as she got home, she’d change into something a little more appropriate for demon killing, weapon up and go on the hunt. If she were lucky, she’d find the unknown creature making her neck feel like it was covered in fire ants within the first few hours and could then spend the rest of the night at an all-night movie marathon watching cult musicals and doing her damndest to keep the thought of the master vampire out of her head.
Yeah. Like singing “The Time Warp” is going to work. The only way you’re going to get the bloodsucker out of your head is to screw him out of it, and you know damn well that’s not going to happen.
She hurried her pace, the thought irritating her. She really needed to track down Ven Watkins. She needed to talk to the supreme Principatus. Ask him the questions she should have asked when first reborn as an assassin. He was notoriously secretive, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She’d spared his only brother’s life twenty years ago, after all. He owed her. Embarrassing or not, she needed to know if she could—
The back of her neck itched. Not just a prickling heat, but a full-on, incinerating blaze that shot up the back of her head and turned her scalp to a crawling, burning skull-cap.
She spun on her heel, her stare jumping around the busy, early evening crowd. Oxford Street was its usual flamboyant self—transvestites, straights, gays, bis, tourists and businessmen all jostling for prime footpath position as they moved together across the gray concrete past organic cafes, hydroponic shops, independent book stores and lavish restaurants overflowing with beautiful people dressed in retro fashions. Not one of them radiated any hint of demon power. Not one of them paid her any attention. Hell, not even the straight guys looked her way, their attentions firmly fixed on their iPhones and iPods as they weaved through the eclectic melee on their way to wherever.
The fiery prickle crawled up the back of her neck again, stronger this time.
Inari turned a perfect three-sixty, scanning the people around her. People. That’s all they were.
So what’s watching you? Who’s watching you? And where is the bastard?
Demon. A powerful one. Close by.
She narrowed her eyes, concentrating her senses on the mass around her. The scent of sexually active males and females flowed through her, along with some ambiguously androgynous ones. The pit of her belly reacted to the stimulus, her sex contracting instinctually at the overtly potent taste of mature men on the air.
The reaction made her grind her teeth. It had been a long while since her body had been so responsive to the human Y chromosome, so…
Hungry for it?
She bit back a growl, sinking her nails into her palms. It was that cursed master vampire’s fault. She’d denied her succubus nature completely before he found her in the Pleasure Pussy. How was she to pinpoint the location of the demon nearby when all she could think about was fucking?
Just fucking? Tianya’s voice questioned. Or just fucking him?
“Oh, for God’s sake, shut up.” Rolling her eyes, she started walking again, pushing her way through the Oxford Street crowd. The itch on her neck had not subsided. In fact, she could almost believe it had become more intense. The demon filth somewhere in her location was very powerful.
And taunting her?
Quickening her step, she headed toward Kings Cross. It would take twenty minutes, give or take a few minutes, to walk to her home via the most direct route. If the non-human was, as she suspected, tracking her, the chances of it confronting her were minimal. If she took the backstreets however, those only used by locals, those dark and shadowy and perfect for an ambush…
She felt the adrenaline turning her blood hot flow more freely through her veins. Her nipples pinched hard. She was uncertain what aroused her so much, but she hoped to all the levels of hell it was the notion of being stalked by a soon-to-be-dead piece of demon scum. Twenty years of being in control of her libido only to have it destroyed
by one nameless master vampire would really piss her—
“Hello, Principatus.”
The deep voice, smooth and yet at the same time gravelly, slipped into her right ear. She spun around and locked her stare on that very master vampire walking silently beside her. Her heart slammed up into her throat and she gasped, her eyes growing wide. “How did you—?” Her pussy fluttered, an eager throb that almost made her catch her step.
He chuckled, the sound just as low and gravelly as his voice. “Not sure, really. I thought of your delicious flesh, your honeyed cream, and I knew where to go.”
Heat flooded Inari’s face. Liquid heat flooded her sex. She jerked her stare from his ink-black eyes and hurried her stride. “Aren’t you clever,” she snarled, ignoring the licentious ache between her thighs. “Now go away.”
The vampire chuckled again. The wicked sound sent a ripple up Inari’s spine. “You are an enigma, Inari Chayse. The last Principatus I came face to face with tried to destroy me.”
Inari shot him a sideward glance. “What? You practically rape them in a strip club too?”
His black eyes glinted red. The muscles in his jaw bunched. “We both know what occurred between us in the Pleasure Pussy was mutually consensual. Do I need remind you the very title that fell from your lips?”
Master.
The shameful word whispered in Inari’s head, and her feet stumbled beneath her.
Before she could right herself, the vamp curled his strong hand around her upper arm, bringing her to a halt. She turned to glare at him, the urge to smash her fist into his face almost as powerful as the urge to press her body to his. Was he the one she’d sensed? And if so, why wasn’t her neck on fire now? He was touching her, for God’s sake. You couldn’t get much closer than that.
Dark Embrace (Principatus) Page 7
