From Jennifer Ashley, With Love: Three Paranormal Romances from Bestselling Series

by Jennifer Ashley

  Adrian poured more blue-black syrup over the half-eaten helping, not looking at her. “I didn’t want to interrupt you. Besides you told me that intriguing tale about your vampire.”

  Her cheeks burned still more. “Thanks a lot, Adrian.”

  “Never be afraid to talk to me about sex.” He raised his eyes, dark gaze intent. “Or anything else for that matter. I want to know all about you.”

  “Goddess, I swear, if we weren’t in public I’d throw something at you.”

  “I’d probably catch it. My reflexes are good. But you were going to tell me about your initiation.”

  “I didn’t do it naked, if that’s what you want to know,” she growled.

  “Don’t be pissed off. Tell me.”

  Amber stabbed at her pancakes. “My dedication I did alone in the woods north of town at a cabin my parents owned. My initiation was a year and a day later, at Samhain, in the same place, with my parents and my sister with me, as well as a few other witch friends.”

  “Which aspect of the Goddess did you dedicate to?”

  “Hathor,” Amber said. “I always liked her.”

  “Good choice. I’m sure she was flattered.”

  “I hope so.” Amber had taken a long time to decide to dedicate her studies and devotion to Hathor, a goddess who was not only wise and powerful but had a good sense of humor.

  “I’ll ask her when I see her,” Adrian remarked, starting on his third stack of pancakes.

  Amber coughed. “When you see her? You know Hathor?”

  Adrian nodded, jaw moving as he chewed and swallowed. “She helped train me, she and her priestesses. When I was small, and Hathor took her cow form, she let me ride on her back.”

  Amber hastily gulped her orange juice. “I never know whether to believe all this stuff you tell me.”

  “You’re a witch with great power, the undead and other magical creatures walk the earth. Why should I not know gods and goddesses?”

  “It’s different . . .”

  Vampires and werewolves, the Sidhe and witches, were part of everyday existence. Gods and goddesses watched from afar, even though she’d sensed the presence of the Goddess and Hathor in her rituals and the magic workings she’d done with Susan. But Amber had never seen Her or imagined Her training Immortal warriors to fight battles.

  “The goddesses have removed themselves more in modern times,” Adrian said. “They are pleased with the resurgence of Goddess cults in the world, though. The goddesses have been forgotten for too long.”

  “I suppose you’re on speaking terms with the God, too.”

  “Sure.” Adrian nodded and attacked his last stack of pancakes. “We hunt together sometimes.”

  “You are the strangest man I have ever met.”

  “Probably.” Adrian ate steadily, not the least bit uncomfortable from all the food he’d consumed. “I’ve met beings far stranger than you, but not nearly as pretty.”

  The look he gave her was full of sin. Amber’s thoughts flashed back to how he’d suckled her breast, at the same time spreading his legs to give her full access to himself. His cock had been huge and hot, and her hands had wanted to go on and on stroking it. She’d felt the pulsing behind his balls which meant he’d been ready to come, right before the demon had interrupted. Damn demon.

  Adrian’s eyes darkened. He licked a drop of syrup from his fork, tongue curving to flick the sweet substance into his mouth.

  “I’m sorry we’re in a hurry,” he said, voice low.

  Warmth pooled in Amber’s belly, and she shoved her plate away from her with more force than necessary. “How is it you think I can help you?” she asked. “You say I’m a powerful witch, but Susan had all the power. She belonged to an order called the Coven of Light, a couple dozen very powerful witches from all over the world, who do spells together by connecting with stones or mirrors or water scrying. They held a memorial with me for Susan.”

  He reached across the table and touched her forehead, and she felt a flicker of magic move across her skin. “You’re wrong. You have great power, untapped maybe, but you have it. You stayed in the shadows, didn’t you, while Susan shone?”

  “A little bit.” Amber flushed. “Not because I felt inadequate, but because she was so compelling. If you’d known her, you’d understand.”

  “If you want to avenge her, to not make her death a waste, it’s time to come into the light.” He brushed a lock of her hair back, and the warmth inside her grew.

  “We’d better go,” she said.

  Adrian took a last sip of coffee, eyes closing as he enjoyed it, throat moving in a slow swallow. He set down the cup and licked the last drop from his lips. “I’m ready.”

  Amber resisted saying, I’m ready too, and made herself stand up and walk to the front counter.

  Adrian paid at the cash register, dipping into a full wallet. He slid his hand to the small of her back, warm against the early morning chill, and guided her out the door.

  Amber decided that, when they reached the car, she’d cast a glamour so no one would look their way, and then she’d get her need to kiss him out of her system. Amber imagined his tongue, sweet with syrup, sliding into her mouth, moving in slow seduction . . .

  The scenario was spoiled when a half dozen young men, some with young women clinging to their arms, came out of the shadows to surround the car. The men all wore low-slung jeans, T-shirts, and jeans jackets. The young women had more variety of dress, either shorts and cropped tops or black leather skin-hugging pants and Lycra shirts that pushed their cleavage toward their chins. All wore dead white face makeup, black eyeliner, and black lipstick.

  Gang kids, Amber thought at first, and then she felt the brush of death magic.

  Not gang kids. Vampires.

  Chapter Seven

  Adrian never broke stride. “It’s all right,” he said. “The car is protected.”

  Amber’s heart beat double-time as she hurried to keep up with him. “Yes, but we’re not in the car.”

  “So many together,” Adrian said softly, almost to himself. “They are gathering in strength and numbers, and not just here. I want to know why.”

  He moved ahead of her, lengthening his stride, and Amber, with a sigh of exasperation, half-jogged to keep up with him. The vampires lounged around the car, unworried. It was nearly dawn, but they smirked with confidence, convinced they’d make an easy meal of Amber and Adrian and get underground before the sun rose.

  The waiting group was not all vampire, Amber saw as they drew nearer. The four girls and two of the young men were human, likely blood slaves, but that didn’t make them less dangerous. Blood slaves would fight to the death for their vampire masters, and they’d fight dirty. They did whatever it took to keep their masters alive.

  “Can we at least come up with a plan?” Amber panted behind Adrian.

  “Are you afraid?” Adrian looked back at her in surprise, as though she’d confessed a fear of the geckos that hung out on her back porch. “They’re only vampires.”

  “There are ten of them, including the blood slaves, and two of us.”

  “Not very good odds for them, no. They should have brought more help.”

  Amber looked for a flicker of humor in his eyes and found none. He was perfectly serious. “You’re saying the vamps are the ones in trouble?” she asked.

  “They are.”

  Amber stared back at him for a long moment. “Must be nice to be an Immortal.”

  “Not really.”

  Without explaining his cryptic statement, Adrian continued to the car and the waiting vampires around it.

  Amber sensed a power building inside him, of a magnitude she’d never before encountered. The magic was a little like the light that had flowed from him into the crystals but much, much stronger. A man who grew up riding on the back of Hathor and being trained by Isis probably had no need to fear something as paltry as modern-day vampires. One strike from that power, and the vampires and blood slaves would be dust.
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  “Do you plan to kill them?” she asked conversationally. “Or just blow them across the parking lot?”

  They were close enough for the vampires and blood slaves around the car to hear. Their grins began to fade. The vamps should be getting a tingle of the magic inside Adrian now—bright life magic, stronger and more concentrated than any magic Amber had ever encountered.

  “I haven’t decided,” Adrian answered. “They’re not very strong, but I don’t want them lingering to retaliate on the innocent because they’re pissed off at me.” He studied the sky. “Maybe I’ll just hold them in place until the sun comes up. Letting them melt away won’t be pretty, but it will be effective.”

  The vamps heard them. Two began to back off.

  Amber’s confidence rose, giddiness tingling in her fingertips. She’d never had to face an entire gang of vampires before, but Adrian’s calm assurance started to assuage her fear.

  “Vampires flying all over the place will attract a lot of attention,” she pointed out.

  Adrian looked down at her. If she hadn’t already grown used to the fathomless darkness of his eyes, she’d have stepped back—no, she’d have sprinted away from him. Incredible magic filled every space of him, and what she glimpsed in his eyes was terrible. Adrian held more magic than any witch she’d ever known, any werewolf, any vampire, even any demon.

  She again asked the question to which she hadn’t gotten a satisfactory answer. “What are you?”

  “A son of Isis,” Adrian said. “And you are right—using my power in this way will attract too much attention. The demon will focus on us when he feels it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d encouraged these vamps to look for us so he could pinpoint us when I fought them.”

  His immense power began to dampen, the pulsating magic receding. Fear left a few the vampire’s faces, and their smiles returned.

  “All right, so what do we do?” Amber asked. “Politely tell them to move so we can get into the car?”

  “That might work,” Adrian said. “But I’m thinking we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  He held out his arm. Ferrin slithered to his hand and solidified into a sword, the blade catching the yellow lights lining the truck stop’s parking lot. The vampires stopped smiling and formed into ranks, the blood slaves behind them.

  Adrian lifted the sword over his head. Giving the fierce and gleeful shout she’d heard rolling through the mountains of Scotland, he attacked.

  Vampires understood this kind of fighting. They met Adrian’s attack, swarming him despite the silver sword that cut straight for them. The blood slaves, four women with madness in their eyes, turned to Amber. All had knives in their hands and the determined look of women ready to defend their men to their last breath.

  “Adrian,” Amber shouted, backing away. “We’re still outnumbered.”

  Adrian slammed his sword through one vampire’s neck, neatly severing his head from his body. The torso fell to the ground, where it began to decompose. Not rapidly—the stench was horrible.

  “You are right,” Adrian said as he swung to slice at the other vampires. “You’ll have to do the spell.”

  “Spell? What spell?”

  One of the women began to keen, her edge of sanity snapping. The dead vampire must have been her master. Wailing, she tore at her own eyes, and the woman behind her screamed and charged at Amber, flailing with her knife.

  Amber jerked her half-moon knife from her jacket pocket and deflected the blow. Do a spell? Oh sure. Spells required accoutrements—tools to hone the concentration—and they also needed focus and quiet. All three in short supply here.

  “Use the spell you told me about in the car.” Adrian shot at her before turning and ferociously slicing another vampire in half.

  He meant her story about Julio. She remembered lying in bed with him, candles flickering eerie light through the room. Julio had pinned her with strong hands while his mouth came down on her. She remembered her terror and shock when Susan’s anti-glam spell had kicked in, and she’d seen Julio for what he was. She remembered her fear, then rage, and then—fire.

  Two of the vampires burst into flames. They ran, shrieking, desperately clawing at themselves. Their blood slaves abandoned the fight and dashed after them. Amber slashed her knife at the remaining blood slave who danced out of the way, clearing her path to the car.

  Amber brought her finger down sharply, slicing an opening in her protective sphere. She dove through it and yanked the car door open. The last blood slave attacked her again, viciously flailing with her knife. She stabbed Amber’s shoulder to the bone at the same time Amber dove into the passenger side.

  Amber yelled in pain and kicked the girl’s leather-clad legs out from under her. The blood slave’s eyes were wide with grief and rage, bloodshot and terrible. She raised her knife again.

  Amber clenched her shoulder, pain weakening her, and pointed at the bubble to reseal it. The magic closed with a snick before the young woman could strike. The blood slave screamed and threw herself against the bubble, but she was mortal and not a witch, and she couldn’t breach it. The girl pounded at the sphere, but the magic held and didn’t break.

  Amber rummaged in her glove compartment for her first-aid kit, happy she always made sure it was well stocked. She eased off her windbreaker, noticing the cut was deep. She’d need stitches—and painkiller, she thought, wincing—but she could hold it together now with a big square bandage.

  Adrian faced the last vampire. He held his sword loosely, moving on the balls of his feet, his face set in the grin he’d worn when he’d slaughtered the Unseelies on the mountainside. Amber wiped off the cut and slapped a gauze bandage over it, clenching her teeth against the pain. Outside, the vampire launched himself at Adrian, extending his fingers like claws.

  If the vampire thought he’d be able to dive under Adrian’s reach, he was wrong. Amber watched as Adrian easily dispatched the vampire with one wide sweep of his sword, leaving it to decompose on the asphalt. Then he turned to face the last blood slave, his blade stained black with vampire blood.

  The young woman’s eyes widened. Without even trying to fight, she turned and sprinted into the woods after the others, and Adrian lowered his sword.

  Amber closed her hand over the crystal on the dashboard and opened the protective circle so Adrian could get into the car. Ferrin changed to the snake as Adrian slid behind the wheel. Ferrin studied Amber with his black lidless eyes, then wrapped himself around Adrian’s bicep and became metal again.

  Adrian started the car. “You all right?”

  “I will be.” Amber shoved the first aid kit into the glove compartment.

  “Let me see.” Adrian started to lean toward her, but Amber caught movement outside and froze.

  “Adrian . . .”

  From the woods poured a horde of vampires. They moved through the silent parking lot toward the car, these vamps carrying knives and clubs, their intentions clear. The first vampires must have been the test group, sent to see how difficult fighting Adrian would be. They’d been sent to be slaughtered.

  “Will you be all right until we get farther down the road?” Adrian waited for her answer, making no move to put the car in gear and get the hell away from here.

  “Fine, I’ll be fine,” Amber said hastily. “We should go now.”

  Adrian turned from the wheel, sliding his arm across the seat as though they had all the time in the world to chat. “I don’t want you to be hurt, especially not because of me.”

  “That’s nice. Can we talk about it later?”

  Adrian continued to study her, his dark eyes glittering with the joy of the fight and the magic inside him. “There’s syrup on your lip,” he said.

  Amber lifted her hand to wipe it away. Adrian leaned down, gently moved her fingers aside, and brushed his tongue softly over her lips.

  In spite of danger running toward them at vampire speed, Amber sank back into the seat, her feminine places warm and hungry.
/>   Adrian finished the kiss and eased away, eyes softening. “You taste sweet, with or without the syrup.”

  Amber’s heart sped and the warmth between her legs became out-and-out fire. “You’re flattering, but shouldn’t we be going?”

  Adrian brushed his thumb over her lower lip. “Yes. Regretfully. When we reach my house, we’ll have more time to talk.”

  He was perfectly confident they’d make it to Los Angeles with no problems, despite the fifty vampires who flung themselves against the car.

  Adrian flashed her another warrior’s grin and gunned the engine. “Hold on,” he said.

  Amber grabbed the seat, thankful she’d already buckled herself in. Adrian slammed his foot to the gas, released the break, and tore into the vampires, ramming the ones foolish enough to be in front of him. The car fishtailed around the parking lot, then sped back toward the road, the speedometer needle rapidly reaching sixty, then eighty, then a hundred.

  Adrian threw his head back and laughed with the confidence of one who knew he couldn’t die. The car flung off the last of the vampires and hurtled up the onramp of the happily empty freeway.

  Heart in her throat, Amber clutched the seat and looked through the back windshield to the swiftly receding truck stop. The vampires watched them go, unable to stop them. But the sun was just streaming over the horizon, its first rays flushing the parking lot with healing light, and the vampires fled back into the shadows of the woods.

  * * *

  Amber’s car died fifty miles down the road. Adrian felt Amber’s accusing stare as he pulled the car to a stop in a patch of weeds studded with dew from the morning. Trucks rumbled past on a freeway now bathed in sunshine of full daylight. At least they wouldn’t have to worry about more vampire attacks.

  Amber scrambled out and glared at the car, hands on hips. She was furious, her brown-gold eyes flashing, as a thin spiral of smoke drifted from under the hood.

  What a beautiful woman she is. Adrian hadn’t been wrong about her tasting damn good with syrup. He imagined her lying under him, her body firm and deliciously curved, while he spilled syrup between her breasts, drop by drop.