Table of Contents
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
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About The Author
Copyright
Dedication:
For the truest fans
“Monsters are real. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
~Stephen King
The Reii will rise when the world is at its close.
Vampyre Covenant XXV, The Book of Reii
ONE
Prison of Lights
The magic rose to her command, her blood racing like wildfire in her veins as the creeping shadow unfurled in the corner, its eyes gleaming and vicious. Victoria suppressed a shiver as she stood against the side of the far wall, her body rigid. She swallowed hard, adrenaline making her ears throb. “You never should have ventured from whatever hole you call a home.”
She’d marched into that dark corner of the room of her own free will, and now there was no doubt in her mind that it was now or never. She had no choice but to stand her ground. Fight or flee, as it were. She took a deep breath, pulling the magic that she would need to the fore as she faced her enemy square in the face.
“Die,” she said, her heart in her throat. “You’re going to die.” The creature stared back at her, uncowed by her threats as it shuffled closer. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Ignis cremo,” she yelled, leaping onto the bed and brandishing her arms wildly.
Her would-be attacker exploded as the fire spell ignited and charred its target until nothing remained but a blackened hole in the carpet. Victoria sighed with relief as she sank back against the pillows.
Stupid spiders.
The sprawling old Parisian château had its charm, but it also had its not-so-charming variety of sinister visitors, including this particular beast. Christian’s home was impeccably decorated and furnished, but given its age, circa early seventeenth century, it was natural to expect some uninvited guests here and there, hiding in the most unexpected places. This one—the size of her fist—had practically hunted her down from the bathroom.
Well, at least it was gone. A hissing noise drew her attention and Victoria’s eyes snapped open, her cheeks reddening as she noticed Leto’s mirthful expression. Propping herself up onto her elbows, she glared at the cat that had been at her side since birth and scowled. He continued to make that silly hissing noise that sounded like laughter, and she flushed with embarrassment—he must have seen her showdown with the spider.
“What?” she muttered defensively. “It was the size of a house.”
At least this one died a quick death, he replied, his mental voice sounding strangled.
“Shut up, Leto,” Victoria said. “Before I banish you back to Maine.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and flung herself onto the bed. Leto was an old and arrogant silver-furred feline, and, as she’d discovered last year, certainly far more than a mere cat. He was her familiar—her spirit link to a world full of witchcraft and magic.
Magic—as in real live witches and warlocks, spells and curses. No flying brooms though, which was a pity. She’d read Harry Potter along with everyone else in the world, and racing a broom around a Quidditch pitch sounded pretty fantastic. Then again, it wasn’t like Victoria had much to complain about—she could teleport in the blink of an eye, heal any wound, cast a number of spells, and had a talking cat for a guide.
She’d inherited Leto from her grandmother’s friend, Holly Milton. Despite his annoying tendency to disapprove of everything she did, he had been instrumental in most of her education in the ways of witches over the past year. Victoria sighed. Most days, she vacillated between being a source of disappointment or one of entertainment for him.
Today, it was obviously the latter. Victoria could see his body still shaking with silent laughter at her expense, and she bit her lip to keep from doing something rash, like tossing him out the window and testing the theory of whether cats did indeed have nine lives. She settled for some bland conversation instead.
“I really need to call Holly and let her know that we are okay,” she said.
I am sure Holly is fine. You spoke to her last week.
“I know, but we’ve been here over a month now and I’ve only called her twice,” she said. “I feel guilty.”
Truth was, she missed Holly. She’d been a rock over the few months when things had gotten more than a little rough during Victoria’s last year of high school in Maine. One of her best friends—who turned out to be an evil power hungry warlock—had tried to kill her. And that was after he kidnapped her and tortured her friends. It’d been a fight to the death, which thankfully had not been hers, or any of her loved ones, for that matter. All because of one teeny tiny curse.
A summer ago, it started with a random blood disease that had attacked her nervous system. The disease was parasitic—infecting her very cells and leaving the doctors baffled, even more so when she recovered in perfect health. In the space of the few weeks following, however, her entire world was flipped upside down. The mysterious blood disease wasn’t a sickness at all. Instead, it was the precursor to the centuries old curse that had ushered in her magical powers … powers that everyone else in the world seemed to covet. Running for her life, the only person she could trust turned out to be a vampire.
A vampire … as in a blood-sucking creature of the night that preyed on people and stole the life from their veins, one with fangs and claws that never aged and feared the sunlight. Victoria smiled to herself. Christian wasn’t all bad. Okay, well, he did drink human blood, but he wasn’t a killer. And he wasn’t just any vampire—he was a vampire royal who had risked his immortal life for her.
The thought of him made her blood tingle beneath her skin as it always did. The intimate nature of their relationship had drawn the censure of the Witch Clans and the Vampire Council, the governing factions of both species. She glanced at Leto. He’d been fiercely against them, too, and had only recently come to a reluctant acceptance of the fact that Christian wasn’t going anywhere.
As if that wasn’t enough to fuel the fire, Christian had a sadistic twin brother who wanted nothing but both their deaths and was still conspiring to usurp Christian’s position as head of the House of Devereux. Lucian had been coveting Victoria’s magic from the beginning, which led to why they were here, at Christian’s family estate, just an hour south of Paris. Face the enemy directly and all that. Not that Victoria wanted to be anywhere near Lucian, but she could do a lot worse than spending the summer in the most romantic city in the world.
Not that she’d seen any of it either.
Victoria sighed and stared upward, her eyes tracing the intricate gold swirls of the crown molding on the ceiling. Upon his return to Paris, Christian had resumed his duties, mostly to keep an eye on his marauding brother and his vampire consort, Lena, who was now a member of the powerful Vampire Council. Victoria had accompanied him to Paris to learn about the Witch Clans, but s
he knew that Christian was obsessed with her safety. Thus far, she had yet to leave this drafty old castle or meet any of her own kind.
As a result, she was going stir crazy and killing insects for sport, while Christian insisted that it was not as safe as he would like. The night before, they’d had a huge fight about it. She had argued that she could more than take care of herself, but he hadn’t budged an inch, and in the end, given that this was his territory, she had given in—if ungracefully—to his demands.
“I need to get out of here,” she muttered, more to herself than to Leto.
You could always teleport to Holly’s or Angie’s, Leto suggested helpfully.
Victoria smiled as she thought how great it would be to see her friend Angie, who had started out as an enemy and had ended up becoming her closest friend. Or not, as she immediately imagined what Christian’s reaction would be if she disappeared without telling him. She sighed. She had to get him to be reasonable or she’d just go back to Canville. Anything was a better alternative than being a prisoner in someone else’s home in someone else’s country, fighting abnormally large spiders all day long.
“Any more news on what the other familiars are saying?” she asked Leto, trying to change the subject to something that would distract the slow, angry simmer of her emotions.
Since their arrival in France, Leto had been communicating with other familiars that lived in the Paris covens. It irked her that he had been able to go out, but she was desperate for any information she could get, especially when Christian was being so overprotective and secretive. Victoria hadn’t asked how Leto had known the other familiars—it was one of those things that went along with his endless knowledge of witchcraft. One of these days, she would get him to tell her his life story. Her attention snapped to him at his next words.
They are mobilizing, he was saying. They sense that the Cruentus Curse is near.
Victoria’s body tensed at the mere mention of the blood curse that had haunted her for the past year, and Leto’s mental voice shifted into a deep purr, dissipating the tension with some of his own special magic. She felt the rigidity seep from her shoulders.
They are looking for you to lead them, he added.
“Lead them against what?” she asked, frowning.
It is your birthright, Victoria. You are a witch queen. You must take your place among the Witch Clans.
She shook her head. “We’ve been through this before, Leto. I can’t lead them. I can’t even deal with my own life. And think about it. They’d never accept me given where I live or who I’m with, now would they?” Victoria’s pointed reference to the fact that she was practically shacking up with a vampire—which was not condoned by either of their worlds—made Leto dip his head in silent acknowledgment.
Even so, you are the witch from the prophecy, the descendant of a legend. Who is to say you cannot make your own rules? You could make them agree, you know. He said the last part so quickly that she almost didn’t hear him. But she did, and her eyes widened.
“I couldn’t. Could I?”
Yes.
Victoria frowned in disbelief. “Forcing others to bend to my will?”
What’s wrong with changing an antiquated belief so that you can live in your world on your own terms?
“But I am living on my own terms with Christian,” she said, working through Leto’s muddled logic. Sometimes she didn’t know if he wanted her to heed his advice or whether he was playing devil’s advocate and expected her to argue. What he was suggesting was barbaric. Tyrannical. She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s that easy. We’re talking about millennia of mistrust between two feuding species. Witches and vampires are like oil and water—they don’t mix.”
Except for her and Christian. They were the anomalies … the exception to the rule. They shouldn’t be together. But somehow when they were, nothing else seemed to matter. From the very first moment she had met him, she had known that he was hers. Just as she had been his. Their road hadn’t been an easy one. Love didn’t always conquer everything—especially not other people and what they believed.
Victoria had once called their love “impossible” and that wasn’t far from the truth. But despite the odds, they made it work because the alternative of life without each other was not an option either of them were willing to accept. She stared out the window, her heart aching. She could never leave him, no matter how lonely she got.
On cue, she felt the soft mental brush on her senses as Christian’s car pulled up the long driveway leading into the estate. Victoria raced down the curving staircase to the foyer and flung herself into his arms as he was walking through the doorway. His blond hair was unkempt as if he’d scrubbed his hand through it a thousand times—as he was wont to do anytime he met with the Vampire Council—but his tired gray eyes sparked at the sight of her.
“I’ve missed you, chérie,” he murmured, his lips soft against her temple.
Despite her pleasure at seeing him, Victoria couldn’t help herself, the snappy comment slipping out before she could curb her tongue. “Well, you wouldn’t as much if you took me with you.”
Christian kissed the top of her head with a deep sigh, and she instantly regretted her outburst. It was no secret that the last few weeks had been hard for both of them. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said. “It’s just … hard. And lonely.”
“I’m sorry, love,” he said, tipping her face up to his. “But it’s too dangerous. Lucian hasn’t recovered from your blood attacking him or forgotten what happened in New York. He’s unforgiving at the best of times. I can’t take the chance that he won’t retaliate in some way. At least here, there are safeguards in place for your protection.” Something dark flickered in Christian’s eyes at the memory and Victoria cringed. Her witch blood had tried to murder Lucian through possession of Christian, and despite his casual manner, she knew that he had yet to recover. She bit her lip as he continued. “But I do have some good news. I invited Aliya to have dinner with us tomorrow night.”
Victoria brightened. Aliya was a high priestess of a witch coven in Paris, whom Victoria had briefly met during her last visit to Paris, and was someone that she had been looking forward to seeing during this trip to France.
“How did you get her to come?” she asked.
Christian smiled. “Simple. I told her you were here with me. She has been looking forward to spending more time with you since La Défense. And I know you have questions for her, too.”
“I didn’t think she would want to see me after the last time. I was pretty rude.” She glanced up at Christian, a twinge of embarrassment winding through her. Aliya had had the unfortunate timing to be there when Victoria found out about Lena—Christian’s vampire progeny—and Victoria hadn’t left the best impression. She shrugged off the sour recollection. “I’m surprised she agreed, but glad. She’s the only witch I’ve met, and I want to ask her so many things about magic and energy, and who I am, and … you know … all of it.”
“I agree, it will be good for you,” Christian said, shedding his jacket in the foyer and walking toward the back of the house. She followed. He sat on one of the chairs in the bright kitchen that looked out onto the rambling, expertly manicured gardens. Removing his cufflinks and rolling the cuffs on his shirt, he watched her with a smile on his face as she chewed the ends of her nails. “You have nothing to be nervous about, Tori,” he said as if he could sense the anxiety spearing through her. “Stop driving yourself mad.”
“But she knows about us. I sensed it that last time. Won’t she be against it? Against us?” Victoria asked.
“Chérie, she accepted my invitation—our invitation—in full possession of all her faculties. If she does know, then perhaps she is withholding any judgment until she can make up her mind for herself. Now come here,” he said in a deliberate voice that made butterflies erupt in her belly.
She complied, sitting in his lap at the table and winding her fingers through the
soft strands of hair at his temple. “Yes, Your Grace?” she said demurely.
“I’ve been thinking about you all day, especially when I was stuck in that boardroom with a handful of very serious and grouchy Elders. All I could think about was this.” His fingers grazed up her bare arm, making her pulse leap and the blood rush to the surface of her skin, every cell responding to his touch. “And this.” They lingered at her throat for the briefest of moments before stroking across her jaw and mouth. Her lips parted against them, her tongue darting out to moisten his fingertip, and his silver eyes flared. Christian bent his head and she closed her eyes. “And especially this.”
The minute he kissed her, she forgot everything. All she could do was melt into him, her lips parting beneath the pressure of his. Her body felt like it was separating into a thousand pieces as his mouth claimed hers, gently at first and then less so as desire took over. He nibbled her lips, drawing them between his, and then kissed her deeply. She arched against him. Christian’s fingers dug into her arms, drawing her to him as the tip of his tongue traced a hot path down her jawline, and then lower still. Her heart caught and slowed, his hot breath fanning against the hollow of her throat. Her pulse there leapt toward his lips.
Stop now.
She didn’t know whether the ragged thought was hers or his, only that it was a warning, a desperate one. Breathless, Victoria pulled away from his grasp, her fiery blood racing like a wanton river, and struggled to control its wild surges. She knew it was daring him to take it. That was what her blood did—it taunted and tortured. Inhaling deeply, she licked her tingling lips and stared at him, her chest heaving. Christian’s eyes were stormy silver, latent hunger darkening their edges as his bloodlust rose in response to the dark call of blood. Her blood.
With a frustrated growl, he gently but firmly separated their bodies, composing himself with a harsh breath. Victoria sighed and leaned back against the table, watching a muscle work in his jaw. It should be getting easier, but it only seemed to be getting harder—and riskier—for them to be together. Every touch, every look, every kiss drew them closer to the edge of the abyss from which there would be no return—one mistake and one of them would die. Victoria took his cool hands in hers.
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