Immortal Bad Boys

by R. York, R. Laurey, L. Thomas-Sundstrom

  "Because you would save me now, Dante?" Elizabeth said. "The damsel in need fuels the mystery?"

  "Why did you not tell me of this?"

  "Why did you deserve to know?"

  Dante's head thudded with a dull ache. He was not certain if it was Elizabeth's retort or the degree of his hunger that produced the discomfort.

  He stood, turned to the angel.

  "The nunnery?" he said to Elizabeth over his shoulder.

  "Deemed by her family to be the safest place to keep her."

  Dante grinned briefly at the suddenness of the ill news. "Of course. The nuns would keep locked up a woman sought by the devil, would they not?"

  He waved Elizabeth's protest away without looking at her. "It is what I thought when you first told me the tale, though I can imagine another twist on it now."

  The angel was within reach, eyes still downcast, arms bound behind her back. The stench of the garlic was overwhelming. She was wrapped tightly in the stuff, inundated by the odorous weed that was the bane of all creatures he shared a similar circumstance with.

  He nearly laughed at his stupidity. Of course this angel would stand out in a crowd. Her lustrous, luminous skin, so pale, so fragile looking, so porcelain-thin, was the result of long years without the sun. The nuns had locked her away, all right, but not for her own good. For the good of others.

  Laughter bubbled from his throat. The angel looked up. Her light eyes found his. "I thought you an angel," Dante said to her. "However, I was mistaken regarding the venue of the term, was I not? Is it an angel of death that stands all wrapped up before me? Was my attraction to you due to the fact that a part of me recognized what my mind could not firmly grasp?"

  The low growl returned in place of a reply. The angel's face remained smoothly passive.

  "Are you not the perfect match for Elizabeth's brother? A queen to his midnight kingship?" Dante asked her. "Do you require all this… hindrance to keep you in line after so long being locked away? I wonder what they fed you, how they kept you alive? And why they kept you alive? Surely the nuns could have killed you in the name of their God and all that is holy?"

  "Wallace," Elizabeth whispered behind him.

  Dante nodded. "Ah, yes. No doubt your keepers were paid handsomely by your father. Did he not have the heart to destroy his daughter, in the end? No matter what she had become?"

  Dante thought backwards, to the tower room and the garlic-infested bed that had kept him away. Here, the angel was also a prisoner. Pity welled up inside of him, though he usually had little of it to spare for others like himself.

  He turned to Elizabeth. "Have you done this to her?"

  "Only to safeguard you," Elizabeth replied.

  "Why? When I am like them?"

  "You are different. Everyone knows this."

  "And your brother? Why would he kill me? Not, I assume, just because I am better endowed and higher in the ridiculous aristocracy he thumbs his nose at anyway? Those things are false for our kind now. We go on. We endure."

  No answer or comment came from Elizabeth. Dante moved to the bed, pulled Elizabeth up by her arms, and swung her around the back side of a heavy burgundy drape separating the room from another. Holding her against the stone wall with his body pressed to hers, he ran his fingers through her tangled honey-hued hair.

  "You might like his attention. Your brother's. You might want to keep that attention to yourself, and prefer not sharing him with anyone," he said to her.

  Elizabeth looked momentarily stricken, but rallied courageously. "And you might as easily die with a stake through your heart this minute. Five men are prepared to do it if I cannot."

  Dante ran the tip of his nose down her cheek, still alerted to the perfume of her blood, aware of the state of her undress.

  "You could have accomplished this many a night since I arrived," he remarked.

  "Yes," she agreed.

  "Yet you did not. Neither did you stake your dear brother, and yet look what he has done to you. Are you a prisoner here, Elizabeth? Have I stumbled into the Midnight Court to find you trapped within it?"

  The growl came from nearby. Candlelight flickered eerily against the stone. Dante considered what the angel was trying to tell him, and gazed deeply into Elizabeth's green eyes.

  "We must let her go," he said.

  "She has already roused my brother."

  "I will wager on that," Dante said wryly.

  Elizabeth's lips upturned briefly.

  "I would have saved you, had I known you earlier," Dante said. "I might have ridden off with you on a black steed at the crack of dawn, skirting the sun, basking in your arms in the darkness."

  His smile returned. He could not help it. "However, I am not so certain you needed saving, for all the scars. I am not fully certain you would like dwelling in the shadows, for all the compliments you have bestowed upon me."

  The gold flecks in Elizabeth's eyes danced.

  "You mentioned that your brother would cringe and shake in his boots if he knew what you truly were about. You spoke the truth about this?" he said. "Why do I have the feeling I'm left empty-handed in knowing what it is that you want? You would now hide behind threats and fickleness and take the night's confidences back?"

  "Use caution, Dante. I will only go so far, and they approach, even as we speak, stakes in hand."

  "Yet you told me you were not going to kill me, and that your brother would not be allowed to do so. You would not allow him to kill me."

  Her remark began to take on new meaning as he considered it.

  "I am a woman of my word, just as you are a man of yours," she said.

  "Nevertheless, I accepted your challenge, did I not?"

  "You would not have lived if you had. You are here now because you didn't."

  "And so you brought the challenge to me here? You brought the angel, all wrapped up, to see if I would betray you?"

  "I brought your angel here to show you what she really is, and why my brother holds her so dear."

  "I am all eyes, Elizabeth. And all ears."

  "You did not kill me," she repeated.

  "Yes, well perhaps I should have, thus liberating myself from this annoying game of yours."

  Again, Elizabeth smiled. Her eyes shined in the near dark of the dank room that was his tomb, his salvation from the light. And suddenly, quite abruptly, Dante knew that she had become his salvation. Elizabeth Rothchilde had removed the tedium of the shadows, had dangled before him the promise of a fate he had not conceived of.

  "Game," Elizabeth echoed. "Yes. I suppose you could think of it in no other terms."

  Her face was infuriatingly earnest, Dante decided. Smooth, delicate, and lit from within. He had tried to spare her, attempted to keep her from this. From himself. And now she was smiling. Was this another victory for the mortal? The woman? The weaker sex?

  Damn her hide. There was nothing weak about Elizabeth.

  She stirred against him. She would be cold, of course. Chilled to the bone. Dante tore from his shoulders the remnants of his shirt and draped it around her neck, hesitating when his fingers touched her wounds.

  "I don't kill for pleasure," he said before realizing he had spoken. "It is not much of a line separating me from the others of my kind. Still, it is somewhat of a line."

  Elizabeth's eyes reeled him in. Her lips parted. "I brought her here," she said. "I found your angel for Alan. I hauled her out of the dungeons, relieving the nuns from their pact to protect the devil. I brought her to the devil himself and presented her with her fate—to escape mine."

  Dante could not hide his surprise at this revelation. Seeing this, Elizabeth went on.

  "It seems that I may not be the woman you thought I was, and that we all have things to hide."

  Amen, Dante wanted to cry, even though he might have forgotten exactly what the damned word meant.

  Chapter Seventeen

  « ^

  Elizabeth's hand was light on his—a puff of wind, so slender and colo
rless. Dante had to work to control himself from muttering more obscenities. There was a hardness to her expression he had not seen before. Yet another surprise.

  "Do you know what the Midnight Courts are?" she asked him soberly.

  "Every creature like me knows of them," Dante replied.

  "You think you know. But you see what you want to see, and believe what you want to believe."

  "I came here to find out for myself," Dante said.

  "Yes. And you found me."

  Dante grinned despite the change in her demeanor.

  "It is well known that the Midnight Courts are gatherings of ostentation, debauchery, and greed," Elizabeth began. "Silver, gold, jewels, lust… an agenda that draws many."

  "To their fates, as you have so aptly put it," Dante added. "Unless they are the intended creatures. The creatures the courts were designed for."

  Elizabeth nodded.

  "They were designed as traps, of course," Dante continued. "Creatures such as your brother brought the ignorant mortals here to trap and then feast upon them. The mortals were the supper, the entertainment, the embellishments; all of them fair game for any creature participating in a Midnight Court. Isn't that it?"

  "It is what you were supposed to believe. But you see, my beautiful Dante, that is not what the Midnight Courts really are."

  Elizabeth slid her hand to his face, caressed his cheek. Over the scent of the blood at her wrist, Dante caught a whiff of something more dangerous. It was the odor of excitement. Elizabeth was aroused.

  Eyes locked to hers, he arched a brow in question. But a terrible idea occurred as Elizabeth's fingers moved to his bare shoulder, then dipped to his waist.

  She was not the bait.

  He was.

  The idea took form as his skin moved beneath her touch. He voiced it.

  "Ah," he sighed. " We are lured here. Not just the mortals. We are to be trapped, as well. Feast and then…"

  "Die," Elizabeth said.

  The idea was not so fantastical, Dante thought. It certainly was no more than his kind deserved. "We kill the mortals, and then your brother kills us. Less competition that way. More for himself. Perhaps he then takes on the property of the deceased, feeding his accounts and his gullet simultaneously?"

  Insidious thought. Ridiculous, surely?

  But Elizabeth's face told him he was not mistaken in this theory. And dread set in, starting in his toes and working its way slowly up his legs. Enlightenment accompanied the sensation.

  "Or," he whispered, "perhaps you are a part of the game, and not its victim? Perhaps your brother's reputation is ill-gotten?"

  "Bravo," Elizabeth said, eyes boring into his. "In truth, it is my brother who is used."

  Staring hard at her face, considering this confession, Dante experienced a rush of coldness and a feeling akin to shock. He controlled his voice reasonably well. "You are a Hunter, Elizabeth?" he said. "A Slayer."

  Gold flecks in the green.

  Secrets.

  Bloody fucking hell.

  "You provide us with a last supper, and then put us out of our misery? This is the reason for the Midnight Courts? They are traps. Lures, all right. But death for the night creatures who frequent them."

  Elizabeth's hands were on his thighs, precariously close to his crotch. Damned if he didn't feel himself swell. Damned if he had any control over what she had the talent to do to him, while allowing him to believe he was in control—even knowing what he now knew.

  She had garlic in the room. She had a cross. She had guards standing by, no doubt with spears, and the angel in chains. He had to laugh. He had not seen this coming. And he had prided himself on his intuition.

  And his cock was hard.

  "So," he said with a quick exhale of breath. "You will have your way with me and more."

  "I will not harm you, Dante. Not you. Not in the way you imagine. I have no grudge with anyone, mortal like myself or vampire, who is honorable, and who hates the feeding breed. It is simply that your kind is rare. You are rare."

  "I am here at the court, Elizabeth."

  "Because you could not refuse my invitation. You would aid the damsel in distress, while ignoring other pleasures."

  "I thought it was the angel who needed my help."

  "You were wrong there, of course," Elizabeth whispered, hand now firmly locked around his stiffened shaft. "You do not kill them, my mysterious Dante. Not even the foolish humans. I know this firsthand, do I not? You drink only as much as you need to survive. Somehow you get by on this. You maintain your wits. The lad you found in the hallway stumbled back to me after you left him. He was still able to speak."

  "And your brother?"

  "My brother is the prisoner here. He is alive because of my good graces. Oh, he benefits in his own way, I suppose, but his cousins do not leave the Midnight Courts. No vampire leaves this castle to inflict more torture and punishment on the land. I see to it, Dante."

  "And why is your hand wrapped around me?" Dante asked. "Why have you offered yourself to me?"

  "I have failed, after all the years, and all the work."

  "But you do not love me, Elizabeth."

  Dante found himself smiling, perhaps cruelly, perhaps only to cover what was taking place inside of himself.

  "Well, I'll be damned," he whispered. "The Huntress would give herself up for…"

  For what?

  For love?

  "I have merely to taste your blood. Is this not how it's done?" Elizabeth said.

  She did not want to die. She wanted something far worse, Dante now saw. A lightness he had not recalled until now kept his gaze riveted to her face. Some of the light he had perceived in her seemed to cling to his skin. She would do this for him. She would sacrifice her life in the sun for his.

  And what could he offer her? What would she lose by living in shadow?

  Everything.

  He would not allow it, of course. Could not bear it. Yet he could never let her go, could never lose her. Not now. Not when he loved her so utterly and completely. Not when he had met his match and his existence, no matter how much he detested it, suddenly seemed worthwhile.

  "Join me?" he said with a laugh as he swept her into his arms. "I think not, dear heart."

  His eyes glided over her paleness, her expression, her wide-open eyes. "I like you just the way you are, my fearless, dearest Elizabeth. Besides, if you were like me, who knows what I might have to put up with both night and day."

  "Dante…"

  "Elizabeth," he said, seeing that the room was now clear of everyone except the two of them, and wondering how she had accomplished that. "A man, vampire or no, must have some self-respect."

  His lips upturned as he drew her closer, still, as he felt her nakedness next to him. Life with Elizabeth would be the test to end all tests, he thought as he eyed the bed with a calculation of just how long it would take to get her into it.

  We don't think you will want to miss

  JUST A HINT—CLINT

  by Lori Foster coming in October 2004 from Brava.

  Here's a sneak peek.

  A bead of sweat took a slow path down his throat and into the neckline of his dark T-shirt. Pushed by a hot, insubstantial breeze, a weed brushed his cheek.

  Clint never moved.

  Through the shifting shadows of the pulled blinds, he could detect activity in the small cabin. The low drone of voices filtered out the screen door, but Clint couldn't make out any of the slurred conversation.

  Next to him, Red stirred. In little more than a breath of sound, he said, "Fuck, I hate waiting."

  Wary of a trap, Clint wanted the entire area checked. Mojo chose that moment to slip silently into the grass beside them. He'd done a surveillance of the cabin, the surrounding grounds, and probably gotten a good peek in the back window. Mojo could be invisible and eerily silent when he chose.

  "All's clear."

  Something tightened inside Clint. "She's in there?"

  "Alive but pissed off
and real scared." Mojo's obsidian eyes narrowed. "Four men. They've got her tied up."

  Clint silently worked his jaw, fighting for his famed icy control. The entire situation was bizarre. How was it Asa knew where to find the men, yet they didn't appear to expect an interruption? Had Robert deliberately fed the info to Asa to embroil him in a trap so Clint would kill him? And why would Robert want Asa dead?

  Somehow, both he and Julie Rose were pawns. But for what purpose?

  Clint's rage grew, clawing to be freed, making his stomach pitch with the violent need to act. "They're armed?"

  Mojo nodded with evil delight. "And on their way out."

  Given that a small bonfire lit the clearing in front of the cabin, Clint wasn't surprised that they would venture outside. The hunting cabin was deep into the hills, mostly surrounded by thick woods. Obviously, the kidnappers felt confident in their seclusion.

  He'd have found them eventually, Clint thought, but Asa's tip had proved invaluable. And a bit too fucking timely.

  So far, nothing added up, and that made him more cautious than anything else could have.

  He'd work it out as they went along. The drive had cost them two hours, with another hour crawling through the woods. But now he had them.

  He had her.

  The cabin door opened and two men stumbled out under the glare of a yellow bug light. One wore jeans and an unbuttoned shirt, the other was shirtless, showing off a variety of tattoos on his skinny chest. They looked youngish and drunk and stupid. They looked cruel.

  Raucous laughter echoed around the small clearing, disturbed only by a feminine voice, shrill with fear and anger, as two other men dragged Julie Rose outside.

  She wasn't crying.

  No sir. Julie Rose was complaining.

  Her torn school dress hung off her right shoulder nearly to her waist, displaying one small pale breast. She struggled against hard hands and deliberate roughness until she was shoved, landing on her right hip in the barren area in front of the house. With her hands tied behind her back, she had no way to brace herself. She fell flat, but quickly struggled into a sitting position.

  The glow of the bonfire reflected on her bruised, dirty face—and in her furious eyes. She was frightened, but she was also livid.