by Tessa Dawn
As her fingers fought for purchase along the steep, stony edge of the pool, she curled her toes around a large smooth stone beneath her, desperate to push up without slipping as she climbed from the bath.
A searing pain shot through her ankle, and she spun around, shrieking, only to find Ramsey directly beneath her. He had tossed Kristina’s body from the pool with a mere flick of his wrist—pitching her thin, frail frame across a large expanse of grass and trees as if she weighed no more than a tiny stone hurled from a slingshot—while he wrapped the claws of his free hand around Deanna’s ankle and tugged. His eyes alighted with fury as he dug the talons in deeper and snarled. “Leaving so soon, love?”
Deanna kicked back against him, surprised at her own strength. “Let go!” she demanded.
He grunted as the kick connected with his jaw but resisted her easily. “Not today,” he snarled. And then, with one brutal tug on her ankle, he flung her back into the pool.
Deanna’s head, shoulders, and back hit the water parallel as if in a reverse belly flop. As the impact stung her skin, she sank deep beneath the surface, her neck hyper-extending backward. As she flailed her arms, trying to regain her bearings, her mouth flew open and she swallowed what felt like a gallon of water. Using all of her strength, she pulled her body upright and splashed wildly, desperate to break the surface and breathe.
Ramsey laughed like a sadist.
He held her under and twisted her body this way and that, sinking brutal talons into her hips and waist in an effort to reposition her onto his lap. Finally, when Deanna had grown utterly desperate, convinced that she would drown, he wriggled his body beneath hers and allowed her to break the surface.
She came up coughing violently. Feeling like her lungs were on fire, she spit out large streams of water and gagged as the fluid left her windpipe in ferocious sputters. “Help. Someone.” She tried to scream, but it came out weak and muffled.
“Shh, love,” he whispered in her ear, pulling her back against him and bracing her chest with his arms. His right fist was just below her left breast, the palm of his left hand planted firmly on her left thigh; and the dual sensations, along with her burning lungs, made her feel queasy. “Let me go, Ramsey,” she panted between gasps for air.
“Be still,” he bit out, showing her no quarter.
After what seemed like an eternity, she managed to draw in several clean breaths of air and stop struggling. Her heart was beating so hard it felt like it might come out of her chest as she fought to hold back tears and reason with the maniacal vampire. “Why are you doing this?” she managed to whisper.
He sighed as if it were all a game. “Why, indeed,” he replied. “Perhaps the real question is not why…but who.”
“Who?” she repeated, her voice betraying her confusion as well as her terror.
“Yes,” he answered. “Who.”
He shifted his weight beneath her as if trying to get more comfortable, and she cringed. “I don’t understand.”
“Mmm,” he groaned in her ear. “Perhaps you will—once we have formally met.” He licked her earlobe, and she sat perfectly still. Waiting. Listening. Cringing. “Now then,” he drawled lazily. “Allow me to introduce myself properly.”
Deanna stared straight ahead, waiting in morbid anticipation and horror, her eyes fixed on nothing in particular.
He lifted his hand from her thigh and placed it over the back of her left hand as if in a reverse mockery of a handshake. “My name is not Ramsey Olaru—thank the Dark Lords.” He spoke in a slow, Eastern-European accent as if the situation suddenly called for formality. “It is Saber Alexiares, and I was born to the house of Jaegar.” She could feel him smile against her jaw—actually feel the slow curvature of his lips against her skin just below her ear. “I am an enemy to all those who name themselves in the house of Jadon—which now includes you, sweet destiny.” He gripped her chin with the fingers of his right hand and wrenched her head backward so she could see him as he spoke. Eyes flashing a deep crimson red, he added, “Mine will be the last face you will ever see.”
Deanna’s mind raced a mile a minute: processing his words, deciphering his claim, trying to make sense of all she had learned from the Silivasi brothers and their mates about the house of Jaegar and the descendants of the original, evil twin.
The Dark Ones.
They were the mortal enemies of the lighter vampires.
They were the monsters who had tried to kill the king—Napolean Mondragon—the ones who had hatched the plot that had ultimately wounded Nachari so deeply, the ones that Marquis warned her would surely want her dead and seek to kill her at every turn, if they were able.
She looked back at the soulless creature behind her, stared at what she now recognized as the signature coronet of the Dark Ones—his hair, the crown of the king cobra—and the full realization finally sank in.
Kristina had been duped.
Lied to.
Used.
They had both been lured into this animal’s trap, They had refused to answer his telepathic calls when he’d tried to check up on them—and they had lied to Kagen about where they were going.
Oh god…
She eyed the heartless demon one last time as he slowly released his fangs and bent to her neck. She had come to Dark Moon Vale to find the man from her dreams…of her dreams…the tortured soul in her sketches.
In a sense, she had followed her destiny in order to become his.
And now they were both going to die.
twenty-two
Nathaniel Silivasi stormed out of the casino supply room closet and threw up his hands in frustration. Confusion nearly clouded his vision. They had searched every inch of the casino: the main floor lobby and gaming rooms as well as the second-floor offices. They had called in extra security, the sentinels, and other Master Warriors. They had utilized the hidden game-table cameras, the eye in the sky, their heightened sense of sight, sound, and smell; yet Kristina and Deanna continued to elude them.
They were simply nowhere to be found.
Marquis Silivasi strolled anxiously toward his brother, his face a mask of barely restrained fury and stark concern. “Nothing?”
“No…nothing,” Nathaniel answered. “I don’t get it.”
Marquis turned to Saxson and Santos, who were approaching from the right. “Anything?”
“No,” Saxon said, sounding equally perplexed. “If there’s a Dark One somewhere on these premises, my name isn’t Saxon.” The agitated sentinel turned up his lip in a sneer.
“I concur,” Santos said.
“Son of a bitch!” Marquis snarled. Kagen, brother, they aren’t here. No one is here.
Kagen chimed in on the common telepathic bandwidth instantly. You sure? he asked. And you’ve checked everywhere.
Everywhere, Nathaniel assured him.
Did you try again to reach them telepathically? Marquis demanded.
Several times, Kagen said. No answer.
But you have taken her blood?
Yes, Kagen responded. Hold on. The Healer didn’t need to be told what to do. What they were asking was obvious: Kagen was the only brother who had taken Deanna’s blood, ingested a small amount in order to keep track of her if necessary; he would be the only vampire capable of quickly tracking her whereabouts.
Nathaniel stood perfectly still, listening to the beat of his own heart, his nerves completely frayed, his body itching with the need to fight…to move…knowing that whatever he was experiencing, Marquis was feeling double as they waited for Kagen Silivasi to turn his high-powered senses inward. To grab hold of the unique strands of DNA that represented Deanna Dubois, strands that now flowed within the Ancient Master Healer’s own blood, and follow them backward like a homing beacon until he could pinpoint her position in the casino.
Hurry, Marquis urged him, obviously knowing that such a thing wasn’t possible. They were talking about deciphering information on a minute, quantum level.
Nathaniel tapped his foot ner
vously on the floor. If something happened to the girls before they got to them…if something happened to Deanna…
Dear gods…
He wasn’t going to give life—or energy—to the thoughts.
After what seemed like hours, but could not have been more than several minutes, Kagen Silivasi chimed back in, his psychic voice ripe with fury. They aren’t at the casino, brothers.
What? Marquis stormed. How is that possible?
Nathaniel asked, speaking to no one in particular.Kristina lied to us?
Holy mother of Auriga, Kagen muttered as the information became clear, they went to the hot springs…and something is wrong.
What? Marquis demanded, his voice betraying his disbelief.
The Dark Ones have already gotten to them.
“Go!” Marquis thundered, his penetrating eyes boring into his brother’s—the command was implicit to the other sentinels as well.
Not one of the warriors answered Marquis’s imperious command verbally. Each had already shimmered out of view.
Deanna didn’t know what was worse, the horrific, unbearable pain in her neck—the feeling that someone had driven a spiked railroad tie through her jugular and was killing her slowly with unmitigated agony—or the realization that as her life’s blood ebbed out of her, so did Nachari’s future…and his family’s hope.
Her eyelids drifted down for the third time, growing increasingly heavy. If she had to die—if they all did—she wished Saber would just get it over with. The pain was more than she could bear.
She wanted to fight.
Wished she could fight.
But at this point, she didn’t even know which way was up.
All that existed was pain. And weakness. A slow slide from consciousness into a gray murky void where, soon, all that she had known in her young, vibrant life would grow forever dark…and empty.
An abrupt jolt of energy startled her from her semiconscious state, bringing her suddenly to attention. Saber withdrew his fangs from her neck, spun around in the water like a living cyclone, and dropped low into a fighting stance, his powerful back turned to block her view. The air pulsed with energy. Streams of vibrating color gathered together at enormous speeds. And then, one by one, the harsh, angry faces of warriors—males from the house of Jadon!—appeared before her, surrounding the natural pool.
Deanna gasped at the terrifying sight of Marquis Silivasi: His eyes glowed feral red; his canines protruded from his upper lip like medieval daggers, sharp as a blade and deadly with purpose; and his left hand bore the extension of elongated claws while his right hand sported some sort of a crude, ancient implement—a spiked cestus, fisted and ready to strike.
Hope entered her heart for the first time.
“Marquis!” she exclaimed, her cry both desperate and pleading. In her peripheral vision, she could see two warriors bending over the slumped body of Kristina, lifting her gently off the ground, turning her over, and applying…something…maybe venom to her wound.
“Step back, Deanna!” Marquis ordered, his voice fierce with intensity. His eyes never left Saber’s. “Go to Nathaniel!”
“Yes,” Saber hissed haughtily, glancing over his shoulder, “run to your brothers like a coward. See if they can save your life. Or not.”
Marquis growled in response, and the low, angry echo shook the sides of the pool, instantly raising the temperature of the water by a couple of degrees.
Deanna moaned at the heat, trying to force her heavy eyes to focus. Nathaniel…where was Nathaniel? She tried to turn her head, to look behind her shoulder, but the world spun around in dizzying circles. “Nathaniel,” she called, “where are you?”
Two strong hands appeared out of nowhere, anchoring her beneath both armpits—Was Nathaniel in the pool with her? Where had he come from? As her mind struggled to orient her body in space and time, she felt herself lifted from the pool as easily as one might snatch a Raggedy Ann doll from a pillow, and she and Nathaniel flew backward together.
Saber spun around in a mad fury, taking flight in quick pursuit. In the space of a heartbeat, he lashed out at the two of them, swiping deftly at Deanna’s stomach with a handful of murderous claws; no doubt, he intended to disembowel her before she could get away.
Deanna screamed in horror, but Nathaniel moved faster than the sound, slicing his right arm down in a graceful arc in order to take the full brunt of Saber’s fury. When he drew back the limb, it was marred by a deep laceration and oozing flesh and blood.
“Not today, Dark One,” Nathaniel hissed, appearing to ignore the pain. He bent his head slowly to the wound, lapped up the blood in one slow stroke of his tongue, and met the Dark One’s eyes with a sinister smile on his face. “You fight like a girl,” he chided, laughing. Setting Deanna aside, he pushed her gently behind him and took a confident step forward. “If it is blood sport that you want, then blood sport you shall have…but our games will remain between men.” Glancing over his shoulder, he called out to Ramsey. “Attend to her,” he said, focusing his full attention back on Saber.
Before Deanna could take another step back, the real Ramsey appeared at her side, wrapped one enormous arm around her waist, raised the other to his mouth, and tore open the vein at his wrist with his fangs. He placed the wound against her mouth. “Drink,” he crooned in her ear. “You have lost too much blood.” His voice was hypnotic, as if heavily laced with compulsion, and Deanna felt her body respond on its own accord.
At the first taste of the coppery substance, Deanna’s stomach did a backflip, threatening to make her retch. She felt positively queasy. Whether from the idea of drinking blood so soon after her conversion, the overwhelming weakness in her own body that had her so close to death already, or the knowledge that it was Ramsey—as opposed to Nachari—that offered this strange new sustenance, she had no idea. She only knew that the act was abhorrent to her mind, and if it weren’t for Ramsey’s compulsion, she would never be able to get through it. Not this soon. Not in this type of setting.
As if the act of taking blood was not enough, she suddenly felt a sharp stab against her neck and instinctively knew that Ramsey was injecting her with venom even as she was feeding from his wrist: He was working to heal her injuries.
Deanna gathered her courage, summoned that all-pervasive innate will to live, and forced her body to relax, to continue to take—and receive—what Ramsey was giving her. All the while, she watched with rapt fascination, and more than a little fear, as her new brothers faced off with the Dark One who had tried to take her life.
Nathaniel faced Saber Alexiares head-on, even as Marquis flanked him from the rear, both appearing as if they could kill him with their eyes alone. Their bodies were primed, eyes focused, muscles twitching, each waiting for the enemy to make the first move.
Saber was as calm as a cucumber. “Haven’t we met before?” he asked, his weight shifting to his back foot as if he were simply copping a leisurely lean. He smiled a grin of pure derision.
Marquis’s eyes lit up with recognition and a frown creased his brow. “In the valley by the snake river…when the Lycans attacked outside the old cabin.”
Saber shrugged then. “Ah, yes.” He turned to eye Nathaniel. “I believe I met your wife.” He snickered. “She stroked my hair and whispered sweet nothings in my ear before that blond animal tried to have his way with her. Pity I didn’t have a chance to get to know her better.”
Nathaniel didn’t respond.
He didn’t even move, not even a twitch.
He just stared blankly ahead, and the complete absence of emotion on his face was far more frightening than any overt display of rage could have ever been. It was like watching a calculated robot—something that contained neither reason nor emotion—like death on two feet, simply waiting to strike.
Deanna winced.
Saber turned to Marquis then. “And you—you mated an original princess. Hmm, interesting. We did enjoy her visit in the colony, by the way. I hear she spent a delicious amount of time
in the chamber of snakes—offering her body to the cobras for Salvatore’s amusement. If you ask me, the male is a couple cards shy of a full deck, but then, who am I to understand the mind of a sorcerer?” As he spoke, he very subtly rotated his body so that both of the Silivasi brothers were in his forward line of sight as opposed to surrounding him. His eyes took in his full surroundings—the placement of the other warriors, the carefully hidden weapons concealed in the warrior’s cloaks—and Deanna got the distinct impression that Saber Alexiares was neither insane nor maniacal but very, very calculated and intelligent. Why don’t they just attack him? she wondered.
Connected to her by physical touch as he was, Ramsey Olaru apparently heard her thoughts. It’s a very delicate dance, he whispered in her mind. Saber may be from the house of Jaegar, and thus, an inferior-trained warrior, but he is Vampyr, which makes him extremely dangerous. Not only can he render himself invisible, but if he moves faster than Marquis or Nathaniel, he could possibly dematerialize before they can anchor him with a diamond collar, get hold of a vital organ, or bleed him out to the point of weakness. It would be unheard of for a Dark One to retreat from a battle—regardless of the odds stacked against him. They are much too arrogant, but one never knows…
Your brothers want only to fight. To kill. They are waiting for that chance.
Deanna shivered at the thought, wondering if Nachari was anything like his brothers. Before she could contemplate the question further, she saw the slightest of movement in Marquis’s body—his left pectoral muscle twitched. “Do the cowards in the house of Jaegar always stand around and talk?” he asked, his voice thick with contempt. “Here in house of Jadon, we prefer to fight.”
Saber smiled broadly then. “Yeah,” he agreed, “hotheads one and all.” And then he flicked his wrist outward, sending a searing bolt of fire from the tips of his fingertips directly at Marquis’s chest.
