by Stone, Ciana
For all my creature of the night friends.
Meet you at the witching hour. Bring wine.
To Fred Alan Wolf, whose books Taking the Quantum Leap and Parallel Universes opened up a new universe of ideas for me to explore and have fun with. And to my honey-man, who listens as I build my new worlds and populate them with people from my dreams. Without you none of this would have been possible.
Book One
An Unwanted Hunger
Prologue
Journal Entry
I saw the initial rush of fear as I seized you. I’ve seen that look countless thousands of times—the blackness of the pupil contracting in upon itself to become a pinprick of darkness in a shimmering island of blue on a widening white sea. Yours is not the first heart to pound like hooves in a stampede, or the first breath to catch like a rabbit in a snare. No, you are not the first at all in ways too numerous to mention.
Yet you are different from all others, for never has the terror transformed without my willing it so. Never has a woman looked at me with such rage, such curiosity, wonder, infatuation, courage and pity. It is the pity that amazes me. How could you, frail human, pity me?
Now, I sit and watch as you go about the task of cleaning the tools of your abominable trade. Your excitement is a palpable thing. I can taste you in the air. It excites me and repels me. Soon you will leave for the hunt, and once more we will be adversaries, pitted against one another in a battle that cannot end until one of us is no more.
Unless, of course, you fall victim to my considerable powers of persuasion. I’ve yet to unleash the full power of my charm on you. I find the dance we engage in far too stimulating to sway the balance in my favor.
“How many chances to live have I granted you?” I asked as we stood there beside your rumpled bed, your slender throat easily held in one hand.
“That’s not what this is about and you know it,” you replied, brave in your fear and ignorance.
I must say that your answer surprised me. True, I’ve been aware of your efforts for some time. You haven’t exactly made a secret of your attempts to find me, or to destroy me. In fact, you’ve made something of a name for yourself in certain circles. Unfortunately, you would not approve of the name you are sometimes referred to behind your back.
Perhaps you are demented by the standards of this world. I will not fall into the trap of presuming that I understand humanity, even after all the years I have walked among you. They are and ever will be a species unlike my own.
I have known men and women considered mad, insane by their human counterparts, and you could well count in this number, but until I take you I will not know for certain all that is within you. Your thoughts are known to me as words on a page, but the cause of your emotions from one moment to another is as a fogged window.
It’s a curious pleasure, contemplating the idea of delaying the moment when I take you, and know all there is to know of your body and mind. Actually, this entire moment is an odd pleasure. I sit here, watching you hurry about, making your preparations to capture yet another of my kind and bend them to the will of those you call master.
I sense the longing inside you. The need to know, the questions you yearn to ask. Alongside longing there exists conflict, deep and intense. It tears at the fabric of your soul. There is a kernel inside you that rebels at the role you play. I find a certain amusement in the dichotomy of your nature—the need to know warring with the need to fulfill your duty. Which, I wonder, will win out in the end? Will you succumb to the dictates of the master who drives you, and continue blindly in your quest, or will you give in to the questions that haunt you and open your mind to possibility beyond what you have been taught to accept as truth?
And if you ask, will I give you truth or will I perpetuate the myth that grows about me and the rumors that abound about you? That you truly are insane, a demented woman, infatuated and possessed with the notion of me, hiding from your own sanity in order to preserve your illusions. Hiding from your own true nature.
You cast a glance at me and I sense your thoughts. You wonder if I will speak true or if this is merely a ruse to entertain myself until I take you and end your chance to know.
To know. Your thirst for the truth is as vast as my thirst for you, for that which nourishes me. Your thirst drives you as relentlessly as does my own. It gives you courage and makes you reckless and it isolates you as effectively as my own does.
“If you value your life you will not seek me again.” I projected a whisper of my power along with my words as we stood there, locked eye-to-eye in those first moments.
“I’m not going to hurt you. For now,” you replied through growing fear, for your mind accepted my suggestion readily enough. “First, I want to understand.”
Your words stunned me. You answered as if you wore the shoes of the predator. How curious. Why did I not know your answer before you spoke it?
“What shall I make clear to you before I take you?” I was thrown off-guard enough to resort to tried-and-true tactics—increase the fear, make sure the victim understands they are the prey and their lives are mine.
“Where you fit in the pattern,” you said, giving me yet another surprise.
“The pattern.” Even as the words slid across my lips, I saw it in your mind.
“Yes, the pattern. There’s a pattern, a rhythm to everything. We’re all part of it. If you’re here then you must be part of the pattern. But what? Are you and your kind designed to be our natural predator and if so does that make you a step up the evolutionary ladder, superior to mankind? And if you are superior, then why aren’t you using that superiority to help prevent humans from destroying the world that is home to us all?”
What an interesting woman you are and how your mind delights me. You refuse your fear, shove it back from you like an unwanted suitor, impatient that it interferes with what you want.
And what you want most is me. You are not ready to admit it, but I know it for the truth. That gives me pause.
“Either speak or leave, I have work to do and the night is wasting.” Your voice is low yet vibrant with excitement and dread.
Because I am a vain and arrogant being, derived from centuries of habit, I stare into your eyes, sending clouds of doubt into your mind.
“Please.” You are as irritated as afraid which pleases me for some inexplicable reason, resorting to the annoying human tendency to stretch that one syllable word into two so that it becomes an insult.
The hunger pulls at me, spiking like a solar flare at the soft insult. Before your mind can register the images your eyes send, I am on my feet, towering above you. You are taken aback, your heart rate accelerates. Will I attack? Am I brave enough not to?
Brave enough? That you should think such a thing is unprecedented, and enough to cool the fire that burns within me. Like the grand showman you think me to be, I rip the dark cloak and clothing aside, baring the upper half of my body.
Fear recedes from your mind as your eyes travel up the length of me, taking in the smooth, unblemished skin. Wonder and, yes, longing, wash away the last of the fear leaving me powerless over you by fact of what I am, but more in control than ever because of what I am to you. Here is your dream, about to become real. The truth is so close. You hunger so for it, regardless of the fact that it is an unwanted hunger.
Your breath catches in your throat as you find yourself moving to me, your body pressing against mine, your head tilted back so that your eyes remain my prisoner. Hunger rumbles through me and you are so inviting. I could take you now. I want to take you, in all the ways a man can take a woman, in all the ways I can take a woman.
But no, this experience should not be rushed. It means too much to you. I suspect it means
too much to me. I will wait, but I will give you a hint of what can be. Your lips are pliant and willing beneath mine and you do not hesitate to move your hands up and tangle them in my long hair, pulling my mouth more firmly against yours.
Your taste is sweet, of coffee beans and chocolate, of the sweet smoke of the glass pipe you favor and of something unique to you. Your breasts are warm and firm against the coolness of my skin, your hand strong on my bare shoulder. I smell you, your desire. I feel the heat within you growing hotter. It fuels the need inside me and sparks a new hunger, one I have not felt in so long that it has been all but forgotten.
It is a need that is forbidden to me. It is the need every male of every species feels when he finds a female suited to him. But you are not of my species and nothing can come from such a union.
Yet the need persists enough to unsettle me. With regret I end the kiss, projecting a beautiful lie to ease the rejection you feel.
Your eyes narrow slightly and lock with mine. You don’t believe me. How is that possible? Humans cannot resist me—or any of my kind.
Chapter One
Resa cursed as the shadowy figure merged with the swirling fog. Damned fog. It was a Vampyre favorite. The bastards were adept at becoming one with it, using it as a shield to get in close, which was how they liked to fight. Up close and personal.
She’d prefer the battle to be waged at a distance. Her crossbow was useless up close, forcing her to rely on hand-to-hand fighting. Not that she wasn’t adept with a dagger, she just preferred to keep some distance between her and the blood suckers until she’d at least winged them. Then she didn’t mind getting in tight to finish the job.
She slipped the bow into the harness on her back and snapped her forearms out straight, releasing the specially designed blades that slid neatly into her hands.
If he wanted to bring it to her, then so be it. She’s been tracking this bastard all night and until now he’d managed to evade her. He was good. She’d give him that. It normally took far less time to track and dispense of one of his kind. But the grudging admiration was fleeting. She had a job to do and it was time. He wouldn’t get away.
A slight movement of air to her right had her turning to peer into the fog. Darkness moved within, pinpointing his location. She smiled and pivoted slowly, the move reminiscent of a dancer executing a graceful turn.
Her arms moved in an intricate pattern, slicing the air as she turned. A hiss from her opponent turned her smile into that of a predator. He’d made his first mistake, given away his position.
“Vânător,” he whispered, circling her. “You should have heeded my warning.”
The voice brought a flare of heat to her loins. How could she not have known it was him?
“Vampyre,” she returned the whisper, putting as much scorn into the word as he had into her name, trying to ignore the passion that burned in her belly. “You should have stayed out of my city.”
A chuckle had her slicing the air again, but he’d anticipated her move, and before she could turn was behind her, his hands like iron claws on her upper arms and his breath hot on her neck as he whispered to her. “You beg to be taken, Resa. How long must this continue, this dance? How long must you battle the beast that hungers inside you, the lust for knowledge, for truth? How long will you deny your true hunger? How long must you play the role of seductress? Night upon night you prowl the darkness, searching for me, tempting me.”
Despite the hard bolt of truth in his words, she would not give him the satisfaction of acknowledgement or agreement. They were of two different breeds. Each a predator. Enemies. Not even the unholy desire he inspired in her would sway her from her duty.
She’d already taken too many chances, been sanctioned and reprimanded far too many times because of him. The last time she’d stood in audience before the Alliance, they’d made their position clear. He had no truth to impart to her. She was misguided in assuming he did. And her role was not that of Inquisitor. She was a Dhampir, a hunter, sworn to uphold the vow she’d made. No more delays would be accepted. She would find him and kill him.
She rammed one elbow back, feeling the satisfaction of connecting with hard flesh. “Tempt this,” she growled and whirled, both knives at the ready.
A distortion in the air marred her sight, air swimming as if suddenly liquefied and imbued with dancing lights. Her skin prickled as it enveloped her. She blinked, trying to clear her vision.
And found herself face-to-face with a woman from the dreams of childhood, a woman of ethereal beauty. “Who the fuck are you?” Resa’s eyes moved over her surroundings, her knives ready for an attack. “Where is he?”
The woman laughed, a sound that made Resa wince, it was so pure and beautiful. “You may call me Pandora, and we are the only ones here.”
“Another trick, Vampyre?” Resa growled. “Shape shifting? Nice try, but I’m not falling for it.” She attacked, the knife in her right hand arcing up as the left stabbed in a vertical line toward the woman’s heart.
And met with nothing. Resa pivoted, seeing the woman now seated on a divan, a smile on her face and her eyes twinkling.
Resa was a little disconcerted. She’d never heard anything about him having such advanced shape-shifting abilities, and certainly nothing about him having such advanced mind-control or telepathy but it had to be some form of extrasensory perception for him to have pulled the memory of her “fairy godmother” from the recesses of her mind.
“’Tis neither,” the woman said and patted the divan beside her. “Come, sit with me.”
“Lady, I don’t even know what you are.”
“Then allow me to explain.”
Resa’s eyes narrowed suspiciously but she braced herself, legs apart, arms crossed with knives in hand and nodded. “Okay, explain.”
“As I said, my name is Pandora.”
“As in Pandora’s box?”
Suspicion turned to disbelief as Resa listened to Pandora’s tale. Curiosity overcame suspicion and questions poured forth. Minutes turned to hours and hours melted away as Pandora explained and answered every question put to her.
“And so the bottom line is, you expect me to go back and spend my time trying to find this…man and protect him from…whatever comes up?”
“Essentially yes.”
“Well, excuse me for throwing a monkey wrench into your plan, but that’s a shitty idea.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. First of all, I have a job and it’s kind of an important one.”
“Yes, I know all about that, Resa Vânător. Just as I know about Bram and how he raised you, trained you to become a Vânător, a hunter, and named you accordingly, Vampiresa Vânător. I know that you are a Dhampir, born of a Vampyre father and witch mother who was gifted with the Sight. I know that you detest the name Vampiresa and had it legally changed when you were twenty-one to simply Resa. I know that you possess the Vampyric abilities of your father and the Sight of your mother even though you try to deny both except when it aids you in locating and destroying Vampyres.
“I know all this and more because you are correct. I am no stranger to you. I was with you when you were but a frightened, lonely child. The hands that pulled you from the fire were mine, and had not Bram wrested you from me, your training in life would have been far different.
“But you were destined to walk a path other than that I would have chosen. A path that ultimately led you back here, to me, so that for the first time in your life, you can hear words of truth.”
Resa glared at Pandora. She didn’t like the idea that Pandora knew so much about her. She’d worked hard to keep her past a secret, and to carve a place for herself in the world where she could be anonymous and unnoticed. The idea that Pandora was real scared her. She’d always thought her memories of the beautiful woman with the kind smile and soft hands, who pulled her from the fire that consumed her parents, was just a figment of her imagination. To think that what she remembered was real meant that Bram had li
ed to her every time she’d ever asked about the way her parents had died and who had saved her.
In a hidden place in her heart that she kept tightly locked, she believed Pandora. But that small space was one that could not be set free into the light of day because with it came pain, betrayal and loss. Better to convince herself that Pandora spoke lies than allow that tiny space to explode and envelope her reality.
“You know a lot of facts, I’ll give you that, but about me, you know nothing.”
“I respectfully disagree, my dear. And if you would be so bold as to take my hand, I can prove it to you beyond all doubt.”
“So bold?” Resa scoffed. She’d fought and vanquished Vampyres as old as time and lived to fight another day. One slight woman, however quick, was not enough to scare her.
She marched over to the divan, sat and extended her hand to Pandora. And fell out of reality as she knew it into a vortex of time.
When Pandora released her hand, Resa blinked, feeling slightly dizzy and a little nauseous. She had no words. What she’d seen did indeed prove that this woman, Pandora, knew her. Knew her rage, her grief, her fear, and even her desire. Pandora was real. The woman from her past, the memory she’d clung to all those years when affection was a fleeting thing, doled out infrequently, and only when she’d met certain expectations.
Pandora knew all that and more. The insane passion and longing Resa fought every day for the Vampyre who had eluded her for so long, haunted her dreams, and threatened her life and her position with the Alliance.
“There is much we must discuss,” Pandora said, but Resa shook her head and rose from the divan.
“No, not now,” she said as she walked to the door of the balcony and looked out at the deserted beach that sat almost beneath the feet of the lavish house. “I need time to digest this, sort it out.”
“Take all the time you need, my dear.”
Resa nodded, keeping her eyes on the beach, watching the waves wash in and recede, listening to the pound of the surf as the tide rose. Yes, she had a lot to consider.
