CONTENTS
Prophecy
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Epilogue
Thank you
“If you do not create your destiny, you will have your fate inflicted upon you.”
William Irvin Thompson
Caisteal Vimora
Venn Dom, Ancient Realm of the Strong
“My lord, we have found the faine.”
The words crashed through the mind of Toran the Tenn, the heir to the throne of the Vimor daemons.
His heart began to thunder with such force that he feared the sound would fracture the thick stone walls of the ancient castle he called home. Taking in a calming breath, he willed his face expressionless to mask the turmoil raging inside. The only outward sign of his distress was the faintest sheen of venna shimmering just above his skin.
At last.
Turning sharply towards the fire, Toran allowed himself a moment to breathe in this new reality. The red flames flickered in his ebony eyes as he contemplated nearly six hundred years of waiting, six hundred years of aching futility. All was behind him now that the faine––the last remaining pureblood in existence––had finally been found.
Toran turned to face the daemon warriors who had gathered in his chamber to deliver the momentous news. “Where?” he demanded, his rough voice matching the intensity of his feelings.
Two of the three battle-hardened males shifted in their boots. The third, his cousin and trusted second-in-command, stepped forward, unfazed, to answer.
“We found her on one of the human parallels.”
“You disobeyed my wishes?”
Thorny silence filled the air.
“Your wishes, Tor?” Merus bit out as an age-old disagreement threatened to erupt once more between them. “What? Are your wishes now commands?” he said. “You know our soldiers face no trouble on the mortal ‘els.”
Unlike me.
Toran’s venna hissed with bitterness.
“Besides, we have searched the entirety of the Mythos for centuries. She is not among the Strong,” his cousin added, his blond brow arched in perfect punctuation.
Toran screwed his eyes shut, his hands balling at his sides. He knew there was no room for his petty anger––especially on the night his fated faine would be returned to him. She was, after all, the only creature alive strong enough to bring his long-poisoned life force to heel.
With unaccustomed optimism, Toran shrugged aside the sting of his venna. He stepped forward to shake the daemons’ hands. “I apologize, brothers. It is because of your efforts––on this parallel and others––the faine has been found. I owe each of you much.”
Toran thanked Merus last. He clasped his oldest friend’s hand, his dark eyes meeting the other male’s lighter ones with purpose. “This has been a long time coming, cousin.”
Merus held his gaze. “It has indeed. We will bring her to you.”
“No.” Toran nodded, his voice steady and determined. “I’ll bring her home myself.”
CHAPTER ONE
Mandalay Bay Resort Event Center
Las Vegas, Nevada
Gods’ sakes alive, her best friend’s creativity fed from a bottomless pit of inanity. The crazy witch was always cooking up some hair-brained scheme designed to “charge Liv up,” often in the most mortifying ways imaginable.
This little stunt certainly took the cake.
Somehow, someway, Mandy had talked her into being an octagon girl.
“Girl, with your hair and your body. Jesus, just look at you,” she’d said. “You’ll nail it. Just like me.”
Liv shuddered to think who or what exactly Mandy would be nailing later that evening. The arena teemed with potential candidates. As Liv would not be partaking in any horizontal activities as usual, she focused on the task at hand. And, given walking around half naked wasn’t exactly going into battle, Liv figured she could brave it––even if it had taken a couple of years to muster up the courage.
Though once she caved to Mandy’s cajoling to “try something new,” it turned out her night outside the octagon could not have come soon enough.
As much as it worried her to admit it, she had lately been running on fumes.
Since her exile from her homeland almost six centuries before, Liv had floated through life the best she could. There were times when she lived breath-to-breath, touch-to-touch, barely hanging onto the faintest sense of her corporeal self, completely benumbed to all tactile sensation.
The last few months had been one of those times.
She would have been much better off if she could have fed from those of Mythos blood. Daemons, vampires, and the odd assortment of this and that were scarce, though, outside the otherworldly planes. Constantly devoid of a truly nutritious life force, Liv just didn’t have the energy to survive a shift over to a better parallel.
She remained solidly stuck amongst the mortals.
Mandy was good for an innocent suck or two when Liv really needed a boost. The problem was her friend was an actual witch. Feeding from Mandy’s marvelously fun and funky spirit gave Liv a wicked hangover, oftentimes leaving her far off worse than before.
Over time, improvements in travel on the human ‘el had made her life a bit easier, which is how she and Mandy had landed in Vegas.
It was a sad place. Truth was, it depressed the hell out of her. But there was no shortage of human emotion from which to feed.
Excitement.
Fear.
Lust.
Greed.
Definitely greed.
But regardless of her lot in life, Liv was happy to make the most of it. Whether she was breathing in the bustling docks of eighteenth century England or was stuck in the seed
y underbelly of a western desert, she was grateful for the give and take.
And, tonight, there was no question she was going to take as much as she could.
Glancing down at her body, though, Liv stifled a groan. A tiny official UFC uniform graced her equally tiny frame. Just a scant couple of inches over five feet tall in her white athletic shoes, she wasn’t exactly statuesque. But height wasn’t everything. Despite her reservations regarding her current lack of clothing, Liv knew her willowy body looked smokin’ hot tonight. Her ample C-cups were high and perky, and her black sports bra showed just the right amount of cleavage. Skintight boy shorts molded her buttocks so tight, Liv swore she felt a breeze on her barely covered behind.
Her face flamed red.
But that wisp of wind caressing her skin was the point of all this, right? Standing near naked in front of the gods and everybody, it was obvious Liv was desperate enough to do just about anything to experience the tiniest tingle of sensation.
The energy in the arena was exhilarating, unwittingly trying its best to slake her unquenchable need to feed. Each surge of the crowd sparked the faintest pinprick of warmth against her skin. The aggression dripping from the fighters stoked her senses. The heady blend of emotions gave rise to the tangible colors of life she craved… if just for the briefest moment in time.
Soon enough, her senses would once again fade away to numbness.
They always did.
But right now, breathing in the arena’s delicious energy, Liv thought, That little witch was right.
This was totally worth it.
Lifting her face to the heat of the lights, Liv welcomed the announcer’s exuberant cry blasting over the PA.
“Ladies and gentlemen…
“It’s time.”
Liv hoisted the cardboard placard high above her head. Swishing her hips, she sauntered around the perimeter of the octagon, a cameraman hot upon her heels. Tossing her long honey-brown hair behind her shoulders, she opened her pores to accept the crowd’s adoring energy. The frenzy of their emotions broke through her numbness, her body sparking to life more than she could ever remember.
Aw gods, she thought, this is heaven.
*****
Hidden high up in the rafters, Toran did not immediately sense his faine. Quickly cycling through the information his cousin had given, Toran knew he was in the right place. Merus was an expert tracker. If he said the faine would be here, this was where Toran would find her.
He settled in to wait.
His attention soon drifted to the action playing out on the arena floor below. Two near-naked warriors were locked in hand-to-hand combat. For mortals, they weren’t half bad––even if, to Toran, they looked a bit ridiculous. Though most Vimora his age had long adopted the casual dress of the more advanced parallels, Toran and his men dressed in full battle gear when they faced an enemy. Even now, he wore mystical armor and boots with thick leather soles to ground his venna, the mercurially electric life force unique to the Vimor race.
That was proper attire for waging war.
These humans fought for sport.
Not for kingdom, not for destiny.
At the thought, Toran huffed out a snort.
When was the last time he’d fought for anything that mattered?
It wasn’t that he was a coward, not in the strictest sense of the word. Outside his own realm, Toran made a killing, literally and figuratively, waging wicked, unrepentant war on behalf of the highest bidder. He was the strongest of the Strong, a legendary mercenary renowned across the Mythos for his crushing control, his cold dispassion, his calculated brutality.
At home, not so much.
In Venn Dom, he was nothing. This, despite the fact that there was no disputing that he was the Tenn. He had been decreed so at birth by the sheer volume and force of his venna, just as his father, and grandfather before him, had been.
He was born to rule the mighty Vimora.
Yet, despite his impeccable bloodline and legal claim to the throne, the fates had conspired against him. Toran’s future had been pissed away by his father, a weak and selfish daemon who cared more for wanton pleasure than his own family… or his own people. Defying all propriety––and rule of law––the king had spurned his queen and mother of his only heir… to bed his faine.
In the face of such heresy, the daemons of Venn Dom had lashed out, choosing almost assured self-destruction in their furor to hunt down and destroy every living faine.
Instigated and fueled by the righteous revenge of Toran’s mother, the Great Cleansing had lasted for nearly a century, culminating in the near annihilation of an entire race of beings. Only a handful of half-breed faine were spared. His mother’s end had come soon after. She had been murdered in her bed by an assailant unknown.
And his father? Well, like the traitorous bastard he was, he had committed one last act of defiance. He had jeopardized his kingdom’s safety to choose death––the act of which had ripped apart Venn Dom’s defenses as his blood and venna bled out beside his faine.
With the end of the Cleansing, and deaths of its king and queen, Venn Dom had fallen into complete disarray.
Nearly six hundred years later, Toran’s homeland still struggled with the loss of the hated faine––Toran most of all. Without his faine, he was unable to have what he wanted most in life, much less assume the throne. The acts of his father… and mother… had cursed him with a pervasive misery from which he could find no relief.
He had to find relief.
But it wasn’t just a selfish desperation for personal ease at stake. Toran’s kingdom teetered on the brink of destruction, its existence dependent upon a cobbled-together alliance that held more allegiance to Venn Dom’s coin than any fealty to a common cause.
Other than helping protect his people with his own sweat and blood, Toran was helpless to do much more.
After all, he was not yet king.
And there was the rub.
Despite his enormous strength, Toran was physically unable to do the one thing required of him by law to take his crown.
At least not without the help of his faine.
His key.
Toran’s greedy eyes once again swept the floor below, hungry for a glimpse of the female whose presence was promised to change everything.
Like most Vimor daemons, Toran gave sway to just three things in life: brutality, fate, and prophecy.
There were those who thought he should have chosen to fight, to outright battle to take his place as king. But Toran just didn’t have it in him to crush what was left of his people’s spirit.
They had suffered enough.
And, fate? Well, he held no illusions that such a fickle bitch could be thwarted outright. Thus, he saw no point in wrestling towards any specific outcome.
He’d let fate fall where it may.
Somehow, someway, Toran knew he was meant to be king, which had to mean something.
That left prophecy.
Luckily, prophecy seemed squarely on his side.
Toran believed his path to the crown rested in the words of a dying mystic, a tortured soul who whispered of a female spirited away.
The faine destined only for him.
Yes, to become king, Toran had chosen to play the long game. Instead of taking action guaranteed to further harm his people––and, he had to admit, himself––Toran was a slave to a long-decreed prophecy that promised to unlock a better future.
This had better be fucking worth it.
A slight shift in the air signaled the arrival of his faine.
Thoughts of his past and future melted away as his attention zeroed in on the small figure in the spotlight below. Small sparks of vibrant blue energy escaped his tight control, hissing impatient anticipation into the night.
Whispering a word of thanks, Toran cast out a lash of venna and cut the lights.
The last thought he had before touching his faine for the very first time was that, finally, something had gone right in his tot
ally fucked-up world.
*****
Holding her number card high, Liv strutted around the octagon, the gold in her hair glinting in the spotlight.
She was literally eating up the crowd’s attention.
Out of nowhere, she stumbled.
The barest hint of ozone colored the air before an earsplitting screech drove her to her knees.
The lights overhead shattered. Crying out, Liv gripped the cardboard tightly above her head, grateful for the thin layer of protection from the shards of glass raining down from above. In one single exhalation, the breath of thousands united into a deafening scream as the arena plunged into complete and total darkness.
Out of the blackness, blue light pulsed across the ceiling.
Liv struggled to her feet, her movements made difficult by the jostling mob trying to fight free of the chaos. Dropping her placard to the floor, she threw out her arms and blindly tried to make an escape out of the darkness. Her instincts screamed to harvest strength, strength she knew she’d need to save herself from whatever was to come.
And something big was definitely coming.
As if on cue, a frisson of energy kissed her skin, drowning out the feeble offerings of mere mortals.
What now touched her body was the undeniable and heady presence of the Strong.
Venna.
In the span of a heartbeat, the crowd disappeared, bodies brushed aside as easily as breadcrumbs off a table. The heaviness of empty air swaddled Liv in a cool embrace just before meaty fists wrapped around her upper arms and jerked her to a stop.
She was crushed against the chest of a tall, powerful male. Liv lifted her face, up, up, up, to gaze into cold, coffee-colored eyes that flashed an unworldly electric-blue.
A throaty moan escaped her lips as pure sensation bolted through her core. Energy she hadn’t tasted in over half a millennium pulsed from the male, bringing her long-numbed body to life.
Liv felt the hard edge of muscle pressed against her softness. The exquisite bite of fingernails into her skin. The searing heat of another’s body.
Gods, his touch.
She began to shudder against him, her heart struggling to process the feast of sensations. His grip tightened, further ratcheting up the fire coursing through her veins.
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