by Aja James
For this reason, vampires seldom chose to Mate. More often, they opted for a rogue’s path—a solitary, lonely, selfish existence. On occasion a few vampires might form temporary hordes, like wolf packs. And rarely, large, sophisticated vampire hives were built, with a queen at its center.
One such powerful Hive belonged to the New England Dark Queen, Jade Cicada, the exquisite Asian beauty Grace had met briefly without even knowing who she was.
It was all terribly mind boggling for Grace, who could mentally grasp the concept of vampires, because stranger things occurred in the natural world. And she’d seen them with her own eyes. Touched, held and had scorching sex with one in particular. Aliens, too, definitely existed. It was just that humans hadn’t found a way to either identify or make contact with them.
But things created by the human imagination to explain away that which were difficult to describe, like magic, destiny… souls—Grace didn’t believe in the existence of souls. Even less than the notion that the heart was more than a muscle, a complex, blood-pumping organ that powered the body.
Therefore, she couldn’t understand why anyone would ever choose to tie themselves irrevocably to a Mate. It wasn’t logical, given the risks.
Not that it mattered where Devlin and herself were concerned. It was more than clear to her by now that they didn’t belong together.
On the seven hour flight from London to New York she sat in a corner alone with Devlin, holding his head loosely in her lap, taking the entire rear of the private jet for themselves, while Maximus and Ramses sometimes conversed in low tones in front and Simca washed herself meticulously with her sandpaper tongue before stretching out for a cat nap on a row of buttery leather seats.
Grace used the time to mull over in detail everything she’d learned in the past few weeks, especially the past twenty-four hours.
Her mind flicked through the events she saw in her parents’ file, triggering long-buried memories from her childhood. A knack for all things technology seemed to have run in the family, for both her parents had been just like her. Brilliant with codes, awkward with each other and their only child. But even so, they’d all fit together seamlessly. They’d understood one another and…
And loved one another.
Unconsciously, tears leaked from the corners of Grace’s eyes.
Surprised, she wiped them away on her fingers and stared incomprehensibly at the wetness.
She never cried. The last time she felt tears was just the other night when she’d lived through Devlin’s past. But that had to do with his pain, not hers.
Though some part of herself realized unwillingly that perhaps they were one and the same.
She hadn’t cried when the police came to tell her that her parents had died. She hadn’t cried or so much as rebelled when the government had come to take her into custody. She’d been dry-eyed and numb when her aunt Maria had taken her to visit her parents’ graves.
Once humans died, there was nothing left. Their bodies decomposed into the earth again or turned to ashes if cremated. Why would she cry for something that would eventually happen to everyone?
Except.
Her parents had loved her. They’d lost a lot of time that could have been spent together had they lived to the end of their natural lives. Grace would have had two people who completely and unconditionally understood her, cared for her. It was somehow terribly important to be understood.
And she’d loved them in her own strange way. She couldn’t explain it. She simply knew it.
She finally knew it.
Maximus had carried Devlin directly to the healing chamber and allowed Grace to remain with him, while he and Ramses went to debrief the New England Dark Queen.
She now sat beside Devlin’s extremely comfortable-looking mechanical bed, holding one of his hands in hers.
It was like déjà vu. She wondered how many more of these exact same experiences she’d have if she stayed with him.
She’d had a lot of time to think. A lot of time to decide.
Just as she got up from her chair, releasing Devlin’s hand, Anastasia entered the chamber.
“How is he?” the Chosen asked softly, concern for her comrade evident in her tone.
“He’s still in his physical form and his body is intact, so he should make a full recovery,” Grace echoed almost word for word what the other female had said to her before.
She realized now that the casual way Anastasia had spoken was intended to make Grace less afraid for Devlin, just as Grace did this time around.
A ghost of a smile appeared on Anastasia’s curvaceous lips.
Looking at the warrior before her, Grace wondered why Devlin didn’t choose to love someone like her. So fiercely beautiful and loyal. Obviously competent in martial arts, as everyone seemed to be in the so-called “Chosen” guard of the vampire queen.
“Why haven’t you and Devlin ever gotten together?” Grace blurted out exactly what her mind currently chewed upon.
“Or have you?”
“No need to challenge me with that lethal stare, human,” the vampire said, vastly amused.
Grace didn’t know she was staring at the Chosen in any particular way, but at her words, she tried to force her expression into blankness.
“Just because we work and fight together doesn’t mean we can’t control ourselves from humping each other’s bones. The same goes for all the other Chosen. Surely humans are not that different.”
“But…” Grace tried to find the right words. “You’re beautiful. He’s beautiful. You probably respect and like each other. Don’t you feel an attraction?”
Anastasia shrugged, leaning one hip against a table.
“Perhaps, when strangers first meet, and all you see is a healthy, red-blooded male or female in their prime. But very quickly you get a sense of what they’re like on the inside.”
She nodded toward Devlin, slumbering peacefully on his bed.
“This one is old-school. He is extremely private, even with those of us who’ve known him almost as long as he’s been a vampire. He’s closest to Takamura, whom you haven’t met. But I’d wager none of us knows the full truth of his history. Not that we sit around divulging our deepest secrets, mind you. Devlin has always been the friendliest but also the most aloof within our group.”
Grace knew his history. All of it. Did that somehow make her special? But he’d told her he loved her before her dream.
Why did he love her? She couldn’t understand it.
Her parents’ love, Aunt Maria’s love, she could sort of comprehend. They were family. Devlin, on the other hand, he could be with anyone he wanted. Why would he choose her?
She walked to the chamber door and opened it to leave.
Anastasia stayed her with a hand on her arm.
“You’re not waiting until he wakes?” The Chosen sounded surprised, and a disapproving frown lined her brow.
Grace shook her head. “I have things to do,” she said without further explanation.
“Give this to him when he’s up.” She handed the Chosen her red notebook. “And tell him not to look for me.”
Anastasia took it with now open consternation. “You’re leaving him?”
“Yes,” Grace replied without emotion. “A human can’t remain with a vampire. It’s against reason.”
“But—”
Grace didn’t wait for Anastasia to object further. She simply walked out of the healing chamber, down the long, unmarked corridor that took her to the private elevator tucked secretly within the core of the Chrysler building and stepped inside.
The elevator automatically descended, carrying her away from the Cove.
Grace didn’t looked back.
*** *** *** ***
They have the list.
The Creature communicated telepathically with its Mistress, wondering whether she was very put out. She must have known already.
She always knew. Sometimes it wondered whether she planned it all. The setbacks they�
��d encountered over the past couple of years.
This recent one was mammoth-sized. Not only did the Pure and Dark Ones have the list of targets, they also destroyed Zenn’s central mainframes, which brought the whole company to its knees.
One of Zenn’s functions was to help spread the fight club networks through viral digital media using secured, untraceable data bundles. Now, not only was the technology backbone of Zenn broken, they’d also lost the ingenious architect behind it all—Grace Darling.
Moreover, Grace was more than just the digital architect. At times, the Mistress, through one of her minions, instructed Grace to work on “special projects,” such as covering the fight club networks’ tracks, hacking into secure government and other entities’ databases, creating and falsifying records, finding the elusive whereabouts of the warriors on the list. They had other cyber geniuses at their disposal, but Grace was the best.
The Mistress remained silent over the brainwaves. Brooding? Plotting?
Probably plotting. She never seemed phased by setbacks and obstacles.
We failed to acquire Alend Ramses before he chose to join Jade Cicada’s elite guard. He put up much more of a challenge than we anticipated.
You must anticipate better, child, she finally deigned to speak to him.
The Creature didn’t mistake her reference to it as an endearment. She called it that to remind it its place. To remind it that it had a lot to learn. That it would never outgrow her reach and influence.
Ramses should never be underestimated, she continued. He is very old and very powerful. One of the few remaining True Bloods.
Older even than you, Mistress?
It was probably foolhardy to ask her such a private question, the Creature was aware. But sometimes, its curiosity got the better of it.
She ignored its inquiry, as she quite often did, saying instead, He would make a formidable Consort for the Dark Queen.
I doubt she has that role in mind for him, the Creature gently but firmly dissented. It had on good authority that Jade Cicada was enamored of another male entirely, none other than the Pure Ones’ Consul Seth Tremaine.
Then she’s a fool, the Mistress hissed. And the advantage will be to us.
She was fantastically brilliant whenever she plotted, but where the heart was involved, the Mistress had a tendency to miscalculate.
What should we do about the list? The Creature redirected their conversation to the original point.
Their enemies now knew who they were targeting to join their ranks. Its eyes and ears on the ground revealed that the Chosen Commander, Maximus, was already contacting every Dark One on the list and Seth Tremaine was doing the same with the Pure Ones.
The warriors both Pure and Dark that were on the list were already incredibly difficult to bring in when they didn’t know they were being targeted. Now that they were forewarned…the Creature had its work cut out.
Get more creative, was all the Mistress said, her tone dismissive. She might as well have said instead, “Why do you bother me with such trifles.”
The Creature decided to switch topics.
What do you want to do about the General?
Tal-Telal was never alone. His daughter or her Mate was always with him, else they were all within the unbreachable walls of the Shield, the Pure Ones’ base. This did not mean that it was impossible to recapture him if it tried, but it would rather not make the attempt if the Mistress had other ideas.
Leave him, she issued the order, confirming its suspicions. He will lead me straight to the one I truly desire. And then he will return to my bosom, where he belongs.
The Creature gave a delicate shudder.
The Mistress’s bosom might be one of the finest belonging to a female of any race, but the heart that beat within it was that of a monster.
*** *** *** ***
Devlin was groggy and weak when he first regained consciousness.
Damn.
Flat on his back in the healing chamber again. No recollection of how he got there. Must have been carried by Maximus, or worse, that newcomer Ramses. What a great way to establish oneself in the pecking order of the Chosen warriors.
Involuntarily, his hands felt around beside him for a familiar touch. When his seeking fingers found no mate, he forcibly peeled his eyelids apart and struggled to a sitting position.
Slowly, he scanned the interior of the healing chamber with a hazy gaze. Finally, it landed on a female form sitting cross-legged in a chaise lounge against one wall.
“She’s not here,” Anastasia greeted him with those inauspicious words.
“Where is she?” His voice was gravelly and it hurt his throat to speak. Guess that was what struggling out of the jaws of death did to a male.
“Gone,” the Chosen said, not unsympathetically.
A blast of cold hurtled through him, freezing him from the inside out.
“She left this for you.”
Anastasia got up lithely and came to Devlin’s bedside. In her outstretched hand was some sort of a journal, bound by sturdy red leather.
Mission accomplished, Anastasia left the chamber without another word, though Devlin barely noticed her departure.
He rubbed his eyes and blinked hard, trying to dispel the last vestiges of slumber. With some trepidation, he turned the notebook to the first page.
Grace’s handwriting reflected her personality quite accurately: neat, concise, minimalistic. It could have been typed it was so perfect.
A strange sort of panic welled inside of Devlin. It could mean anything that she wasn’t here when he awoke, leaving instead her journal. She was never without her journal, he argued with himself; therefore, she must mean to come back soon to retrieve it.
But the almost pitying look Anastasia had given him warned him not to have high hopes.
The first few pages of the journal were mostly stream of consciousness, categorization of everyday things and activities. Mostly nouns and verbs, factual, to the point.
Then she started writing about the new pets she’d gotten for herself under his persuasion. She described the ever-changing colors of Antony and Cleopatra’s scales, Miu-Miu’s baby-soft fur and hypnotic black eyes. She wrote about Aunt Maria’s hugs and her visits to the orphanage in Brooklyn where her aunt worked most days.
A third of the way through, she documented how they’d met for the first time and described in explicit, excruciating, triple-X-rated detail his smell, his scent, his voice, his body. With particular emphasis on the circumference, length, feel and taste of his reproductive organs.
And what she did with them, how they made her feel, and what she planned to do with them next.
Devlin jerked his head up and hastily looked around as if questioning the absoluteness of his privacy in the healing chamber.
The room was wired for sound and visual, and he feared he might have made a few gurgled noises as he read. Certainly his face was volcanic in its temperature and he didn’t have to look in a mirror to know that it gave new definition to the color vermillion.
For the next fifty pages or so, the ant-like writing continued to march in orderly, almost cheerful fashion, from line to line, documenting in words everything he and Grace did in the two nights of marathon orgy. Devlin was so turned on, he was in danger of ejaculating right there in the mechanical bed, in the dirty, bloodied clothes he’d worn fighting ancient vampire assassins two nights ago.
She went on to describe from her point of view the life-changing events she experienced over the last few weeks. Though she used plenty of adjectives and adverbs as her writing grew more vivid, she still shied away from voicing her emotions.
As he began to grasp her thought process more intimately, he realized that she didn’t lack for emotions. To the contrary, her factual, logical words all but thumped with feeling, like a raw heart beating, naked and vulnerable.
On the last page of the journal, she wrote:
“A human and a vampire cannot be together. It goes against reason. It
would be conducive to my peace of mind to accept this truth.”
Ruthlessly, in block letters she wrote next, “There. I accept. It’s time to move on. The End.”
Numb and barely breathing, Devlin closed the journal and lay back against the pillows. He felt like he’d been shot.
Again.
This time fatally through the heart.
Chapter Eighteen
The next night, Devlin left the healing chamber on his own two feet, spurning any assistance offered.
He’d been jacked up to countless bags of blood for two nights straight, but his body seemed to reject further attempts at healing. Some bones were still broken, and the internal bleeding still trickled, but this was as well as he was going to be until he got his head—and especially heart—screwed back in place.
The safe, frozen place before he met Grace Darling.
It seemed that Alend Ramses was making himself at home in the Cove. He’d conferred with the queen, pledged his allegiance and shared unstintingly everything he knew about the names on the list they’d retrieved from Zenn’s HQ. Turned out, he knew quite a bit, having met many of the targeted Pure and Dark warriors over the millennia of his long existence.
Even Maximus was impressed.
Thus, he decided to join their small band of warriors, the New England Dark Queen’s royal guard. The Chosen.
He’d already arranged for a total overhaul and remodel of Simone Lafayette’s old quarters, making them his own.
Queen Jade bestowed the formal title of “the Sage” upon him, as wisest among the Chosen, probably because amongst the group of them, Ramses had lived the longest. Especially now that they no longer counted Inanna amongst their number, though they still considered her an ally.
Well, Devlin was certainly not a contender for that title. Maybe after another two-hundred and thirty years—make that double—he might have enough sense to love more wisely.
