The Red Lily (Vampire Blood)

by Juliette Cross

  He wanted to veer toward the port and commandeer the fastest ship immediately, even if it meant coercing a captain with violence and intimidation. But she was right. The voyage would take a week if seas were calm. This time of year, it would take longer. And even now, her pulse had slowed to the point he could hardly detect it at all. Unable to come to terms with what was happening, he wound his way toward Silvane Forest, obeying her last wish, slowing as he came upon the trail where he’d encountered her the day he landed from Cutters Cove.

  He walked past the knotty oak, remembering how she’d spilled her basket of pears. Remembering the lovely pink blush that had crawled up her neck upon seeing him. And her confident walk as she led him to her cottage, even as her pulse tripped so fast. He’d sensed her attraction but also knew her will was made of steel. Her strength had lured him like a fish to the hook. And she’d caught him for certain, digging the hook deep.

  Hart wolves howled in the nearby Silvane Forest. They sensed her approach. Nikolai gently shook her in his arms.

  “Sienna,” he whispered. “Your friends are welcoming you home.”

  He crossed into the dark woods, sensing a supernatural arm wrapping around him and Sienna, sending a chill down his spine. His boots crunched on the leaves. The howling drew closer. Her hart wolves were coming to her.

  She stirred. “Nikolai?” Her head sagged against his chest, her body still cocooned in the woolen blanket.

  “Yes?”

  “I can feel the forest.”

  Stepping under a grove of black oaks, the cool wind shook through the thinning leaves, knocking bare branches together in a somber lament for the Woman of the Wood.

  “Yes, love.”

  “Let me see.”

  He stopped along the path of thick black oaks, moon and starlight shimmering on the silvery leaves. Kneeling on one knee, he set her down gently, bracing her torso up in his arms. He unwrapped one fold. She winced when the fabric stuck to her charred skin. His elixir had worn off.

  “I’m sorry,” he said in earnest, pulse pounding that he’d hurt her in the slightest.

  “Oh, Nikolai.” She stared up at him, her chest rising slowly. “You are so beautiful.” Her gaze moved to the sky. “The night…the forest is so beautiful.”

  She was right. It was as if night’s beauty had come out to kiss her farewell. The moon shone perfectly in her round eyes, dark from the shadows’ embrace. He cupped her hand in his and pressed it to his heart, her pulse horribly faint now. “I am so sorry, Sienna.”

  Her dazzled gaze moved from the boughs and the stars above to Nikolai. Her mouth creased into the loveliest, warmest of smiles, a tear slipping from one eye into her hair.

  “I am not. I am sorry for nothing, dearest Nikolai…man of my dreams…man of my heart.”

  Her eyes glazed wide, her mouth frozen as if she might say something more.

  “Sienna.” He pulled her close, feeling for her pulse at her neck. Nothing. “Please don’t leave me. Please. God, I beg you.”

  He begged the heavens to spare her. They did not. He thought this the cruelest punishment for his crimes. This was the final payback for his darkest sin, the one that still stained his soul. Fate had given him the loveliest maid in all the world only to take her away with brutality and pain.

  He remembered the moment he fell in love with her. He stood in that small chapel at Marius and Arabelle’s midnight wedding ceremony. It was only them four and the priest. He heard not a word the priest said at the altar, the moon shining through the rose window, the candelabras gilding the room in warm golden light. All he could see was the lovely creature standing by Arabelle’s side, her auburn hair hanging in loose waves down her back with small braids crowning her sweet head. All he could think was how her silky cream skin shone by candlelight and her full lips tipped up in a gentle smile for her friend’s happiness. He’d memorized the haunting beauty of her green eyes and the way they’d flicked toward him repeatedly during the ceremony, before darting away nervously. It was then that he knew he was lost. In love.

  “Please,” he begged again. “Please don’t take her from me.”

  He cradled and rocked her in his arms as a torrent of wind swirled around them, crashing through the trees and pouring down a shower of sable-silver leaves, mourning the loss of the fair lady of the wood. Nikolai crushed her to his chest and wept. And the forest wept with him.

  Sienna was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Nikolai heard and felt nothing but his own grief. Immersed deep within himself and his heart-piercing loss, he jumped when something cold and wet touched his cheek. He looked up into the electric gold eyes of Duchess, the snow-white hart wolf. She nuzzled Sienna.

  The wolf’s mate, Luca, full black and fierce, stood on Nikolai’s left. Her brothers, Hugo and Kai, stood to his right. For the first time, they did not bare their teeth in menacing show or warning. Rather, they looked on him with what he could only surmise was empathy. Strange, these beasts of the forest were more than animals. He’d always known it. And Sienna had always told him so. An eerie tingle prickled over his skin as if the air itself had changed, whispering of magic and mystery, something he could not detect with his acute vampire senses.

  Duchess turned to leave but caught his gaze over her shoulder. Then Nikolai heard an echoing voice in his head. A lovely, melodious feminine voice.

  “Nikolai. Bring Sienna. Follow me.”

  He stared at her in disbelief as she trotted ahead. When he didn’t move, the biggest of her brothers, Hugo, stood at his side and snuffed. The beast was the largest of the four, his size and demeanor intimidating. Yet he seemed to be trying to encourage Nikolai, not intimidate. Duchess stopped on the path again and swiveled her head toward him. The voice came again.

  “If you love Sienna, then stand with her and follow me.”

  No mistake. The voice was somehow that of the she-wolf. But in his head.

  He lifted to his feet, hefting Sienna close, her lifeless body heavy in his arms and her sweet head lolling against his chest. He did not understand where they were going or what they wanted, but it was apparent he was now receiving a guardians’ escort as the two brothers flanked him and Luca walked behind, watching the woods for danger.

  “Faster, lieutenant. While Sienna’s spirit still hovers nearby.”

  Nikolai was thrown off balance by her words. But when she started to lope through the woods, he kept pace, even while his own body sagged with fatigue from the long journey and from his gut-wrenching loss. But he did not falter. Soon enough, the five of them were at a full run, still slower than Nikolai could move with his supernatural abilities, but fast.

  They wound away from her cottage, which puzzled him. He thought perhaps they wanted to see her home, where they’d always protected her. Instead, they led him deeper into Silvane Forest, farther into the heart of the wood where only black oaks grew in dense abundance. Thick-trunked giants sprouted everywhere, their gnarled roots jutting out of the earth. The charcoal branches were nearly naked now, the ground carpeted in black and silver leaves.

  An unknown force shook Nikolai to the core. He stopped running, sensing a vibration in the air. No, not just the air. In the earth, too. A rhythmic tempo pulsed all around him, as if the forest had its own heartbeat.

  “What is this place?” he asked Duchess, who had circled back next to him.

  Her golden eyes were fire-bright. She crossed over into an open circle within a round of black oaks that was somehow filled with soft-tufted, spring-green grass on the verge of winter. Impossible.

  Duchess walked forward, as did her brothers and her mate. The white she-wolf began breathing heavily, puffing out great white breaths as if she were choking on her own breath. She crouched on the ground, whining. Nikolai took a step forward, thinking she was injured and needed aid. Then the other three followed suit, growling rather than whining as their bodies trembled unnaturally.

  “What—”

  Before he could finish his t
hought, Duchess shimmered in a way that looked like a vampire did when they moved in a blur. Her white coat vibrated, and she opened her mouth as if to howl but no sound came out. Then a succession of cracking rippled down her body. Within a blink the wolf was gone and in her place crouched a woman. She paused, sucking in a lungful of air, then quietly stood to her full height and stared at him—a stunning vision with wispy white hair down to her naked thighs and sharp predator’s eyes. Black-inked tattoos contrasted with her pale skin, sweeping in sharp lines and a swirling pattern just beneath her collarbone and over her shoulders, sliding down her sides to her hips.

  Nikolai stepped back, his heart hammering at a brutal pace. She was human? How was that possible? He could hardly wrap his mind around what he was actually seeing. Then, in another moment, where her mate and two brothers stood within the circle, were now three very large men. Luca was a dark-skinned male equal to Nikolai in height. His unearthly blue eyes glinted star-bright in the dark. The brothers were both bronze-skinned and packed with muscle like Luca. Hugo was the tallest, with broad shoulders and rippling with lean muscle. As a wolf, his glare was the most ferocious. This was the same in his human form. Hugo and Kai had long hair falling down their backs, but Luca had short-cropped black hair to his scalp.

  They bore jagged and swirling tattoos like Duchess, though they appeared more violent in their making. The men bore interlacing knots across their torsos and backs and down their arms and legs, similar but not the same. Whereas the ink Duchess wore looked as if the wind had smattered it prettily with a few sharp edges, the men’s ink appeared as if a storm had cut it into their skin with beauty but also violence.

  Nikolai pulled Sienna tighter in her arms, these beasts in men form seeming far more dangerous than they did as wolves. When he could find his speech all he could ask was, “How?” He continued to back slowly away out of the meadow, even as the rhythmic tempo vibrating out of the earth seemed to soothe him.

  “Please.” The woman stepped forward with a hand in the air, seemingly unaffected by her nude form. “Don’t be afraid, Nikolai.”

  He scoffed, narrowing his gaze. “What are you?”

  “We are hart wolves. As we’ve always been. I am Allora Godrick. This is my mate, Bron. And my brothers, Connell”—she gestured toward the smaller of the two, then toward the larger, severe one—“and Dane.” She walked up to Nikolai, a subtle power humming on her skin, but not as strong as the constant throbbing pulse all around them.

  He flinched away when she reached out with her hand. “Don’t touch me,” he warned. Though he sensed no fear, his instincts were to fight against what he couldn’t understand.

  “Please, lieutenant.” She eased her hand forward and he kept still this time.

  When she laid her hand upon his shoulder, a surge of calm and reassurance swept through him. She held magic in her touch, and perhaps it was trickery, but something told him it wasn’t. There was no danger here, despite having never seen a hart wolf transform into a human before in his life. As far as he knew, no one knew this even possible.

  “We will have time to talk afterward. But now you must bring Sienna forward.”

  The sensation of others hovering close drew his gaze to the surrounding shadows. Within the dark appeared one pair after another of glowing, gold eyes. Hart wolves, dozens of them, surrounded the ring wherein he stood holding Sienna. He turned in a slow circle, sensing their heavy presence, though not one growled or launched forward with aggression. They merely watched in a kind of reverence.

  “Nikolai. Bring her forward.”

  “To where?” he asked her, seeing only a plot of strangely fertile grass in the round.

  She touched his arm again. He flinched as the pulse swept through him, and immediately a large slab of smooth black stone appeared at the center of the clearing. Or perhaps it was already there, only he couldn’t see it. He could also now observe a perimeter of standing monoliths made of the same shiny, smooth stone.

  “The hartstone,” he whispered.

  “Yes. And she wants you to lay Sienna upon her.”

  “She wants—?”

  “Time is running out.” Allora clutched his wrist with a tight hold, gravity in her voice. “Put her on the stone. Now.”

  He felt no malevolence from the pulsing halo around the hartstone. Rather, he sensed something else. The same magic that murmured and sighed through these woods far and away pounded out a bone-rattling pulse this close to the hartstone. He didn’t know why or how, but he felt a tug on his very soul, pulling him toward the stone, assuring him this was right.

  He strode forward in five long steps and set Sienna gently upon the black slab, realizing on the surface it wasn’t black at all, but iridescent. As he lay her body down, a ripple of luminescent light pinged outward. The liquid wave of light began to tremble, rippling faster. Nikolai’s breath whooshed out of him as an unseen force dragged him a safe distance and released him on his feet. He stumbled to catch his bearings.

  Allora and the others stood on either side of him, watching as the pulse intensified. Nikolai clasped his hands over his ears, as did the others, the throbbing beat increasing. The luminescent light waved off the stone, piercing the darkness and shining out on the black oaks, their sable trunks shining like silver beacons.

  The wool blanket wrapping Sienna evaporated. Her arms fell outward into a cross as her burnt body levitated off the stone, higher and higher till she was even with the lower boughs of the trees. Tendrils of her red hair floated like seaweed waving in an unseen ocean. The hartstone’s light rose from the stone slowly, then like lightning pierced straight into Sienna.

  Sienna’s arms flexed straight out, her back and neck arched, her mouth open toward the sky in a soundless scream. Her body glowed from the inside, brightening to a blinding white. Then multicolored flames burst upon her skin and licked up out of her body, burning away the blackened, charred decay, transforming it with a pearlescent glow.

  Nikolai watched in awe as every inch of her body was covered in flames of red, orange, blue, green, and gold, purging away the scars and bruises and bites, the injuries that had caused her death. Nikolai fell to his knees, removing his hands from his ears, as her body lowered to the hartstone, the thumping pulse fading.

  Once she lay upon the flat surface, the heartbeat of the stone dimmed to a distant echo. Sienna’s chest rose and fell. She lifted an arm to her throat and sat up. Nikolai lurched to his feet but couldn’t move forward, paralyzed with fear that this was all a dream. If so, he prayed he’d never wake up.

  Sienna pushed herself up and stood off the stone with a stumble. Nikolai was there in a flash before she could fall, his hands on her bare waist. She looked up into his eyes. The same spark of beauty shone there, but now the green was flecked with bright gold. A star-bright aura haloed her skin, as if the cosmos had fallen to this spot and filled her body with its radiance. He could feel its heat vibrating up his hands and arms. He trembled as he continued to hold her, trying to convince himself this was real.

  She lifted a hand to his jaw and smiled, speaking in a broken whisper. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  Clutching her to him with frantic speed, he let out a choked laugh. “You thought you lost me?” He buried his face into her hair, her smell of lavender-in-the-woods tinged with a third scent—fire. But not the sickening smell of charred flesh. The smell of wildfire when it devours a forest, warning all creatures that it is dangerous and wields power, demanding all onlookers to bow in awe. Nikolai reveled in her smell, the softness of her skin, wrapping her so tight he feared he might crush her. His hand slid down her back and braced her close.

  “Sienna. There’s something you should know.”

  “What is it?” she asked, her face still buried in the crook of his neck.

  He stepped away, though it nearly ripped out his heart to do so, and turned, half expecting them to be back in wolf form. Sienna peered around him slowly. He took her hand and walked alongside her.

  Al
lora walked forward and met them, her smile the kind one might bestow on a long-lost friend finally come home. In fact, that is precisely who Sienna was. She had left this realm, her spirit journeying elsewhere. And now, she was back. Transformed, though Nikolai could not yet detect precisely how.

  “This is Allora Godrick,” he said. “You know her as…Duchess.”

  Sienna gasped and jumped, squeezing his hand on instinct. Her gaze moved from Allora to Nikolai, a slight frown pinching her brow.

  “It can’t be.”

  “I know it’s hard to believe,” said Allora, stepping forward. “But it’s true. I am your friend, the one you call Duchess.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Sienna, shaking her head, taking in the sight of the other three behind her. “So you were human all along?”

  “We are hart wolves first. Humans second.” She seemed at a loss for words to explain, then gestured toward the others behind her. “You know my brothers,” said Allora. “This is Connell. And Dane. And my mate, Bron.”

  They all nodded a greeting, not stepping forward to clasp her hand, which was a relief to Nikolai. He knew in his heart of hearts that they meant her no harm. Rather the opposite. But his innate need to shelter her from all men still twisted in his gut. Especially after what the last ones had done to her.

  Dane flicked his gaze to Nikolai, a tilted smile cracking his stern expression, as if he knew the torture Nikolai suffered. “Perhaps we’d best have this conversation tomorrow.” He glanced up at the starry sky. “It will be snowing soon.”

  Nikolai tested the air with his senses, finding no smell of the weighty pressure before a storm or snowfall. “Are you sure?”

  “Quite,” said Dane. He stepped back toward the shadows. With a crackle of energy and a rippling pulse of power, he transformed into his husky brown wolf and fled into the woods. His brother nodded at Sienna again and, without saying a word, followed his brother. The many hart wolves that lurked in the dark and had watched Sienna’s awakening now whisked away as well. Only the swift padding of their feet could be heard as they retreated into the woods.