by Jill Myles
“Hey, what’s a hundred years or so between immortals, right?” But her eyes looked suspiciously watery.
“Right,” I said slowly. “Is there something we can do to help?”
“Not a thing,” she said. “Can’t kill him because then I die. I have no choice but to serve.” She turned her head and snapped at a passing waitress, “Hey! What’s a girl gotta do to get some chocolate chip pancakes around here?”
I pushed my plate toward her, no longer hungry. “You can have mine.”
“That’s why you’re a true friend, Jackie,” she said sweetly.
I was her friend. And that was why I was going to save her from this fate.
Just as soon as I figured out how.
#
Remy was silent on the car ride home. I agonized over her silence—it was so unlike her. Normally she’d yak a mile a minute and look for any excuse to play lame car games. She drove Zane insane with her incessant, cheerful chatter. Tonight? She was utterly silent. Her mind was probably focused on having to return to her master. Poor Remy. I felt guilty that just when we were starting to enjoy ourselves, she was going to have to serve a cruel master for the next hundred years. I couldn’t even fathom that. A hundred years of service.
I pulled the car into Remy’s long, winding driveway and stopped, then glanced over at Zane in the passenger seat.
“All that breaking and entering and we didn’t even steal anything,” he said with a rueful grin at me. “You should have at least lifted some jewelry.”
“The manuscript we needed wasn’t there,” I said softly and watched with more interest as Remy left the car and headed inside the house, her shoulders slumped. “The manuscript can wait another day.”
“It can?” Zane arched an eyebrow at me.
I nodded, leaving the car and trotting after Remy. My friend needed me.
I followed Remy inside the house and stopped in surprise at the sight of Ethan, down on one knee, his head bowed. In his hands, he held a carton of ice cream, upraised it like an offering.
“I have returned with your request,” he said in a grave voice.
Remy looked uncertain, tossing her long black hair over her shoulder. “But, Pooky, I said I wanted Canadian maple syrup ice cream. From Canada.”
Ethan looked up, his eyes flashing silver with his good deed. “This is made in Canada. It is available in your grocer’s freezer.”
Remy burst into tears again.
Immediately, Ethan’s face darkened. He crushed the carton of ice cream in his big hand, a devastated look on his face. He clearly thought he was the cause of Remy’s fresh tears, and that he had failed her.
Oh crap. Here Remy had tried to chase him off and now she wouldn’t be able to get rid of him until she thought of a new task.
I rushed forward and grabbed Remy’s shoulder, pulling her close in a hug. “Remy is so touched by your thoughtfulness, Ethan.”
His big hands stopped squeezing the ice cream carton and he gave Remy an uncertain look.
“It’s true,” she said in a wobbly voice, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I was just so surprised and delighted to see you back so quickly that I was… overcome.”
Ethan nodded slowly, the look on his face skeptical. “You know I will do anything for you, Remiza.”
“I think you kids should test that theory. Upstairs,” I said, giving Remy a little push toward Ethan. She could probably use a few hours of distraction. “You and I can talk later, Remy.”
She gave me a nod and then turned to Ethan, sliding her fingers up his arm. “Looks like my warrior got all dirty-wirty, didn’t he? Someone needs to be licked clean, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, he does,” Ethan said in a grave voice.
Remy took him by the hand and led him up to their room, baby-talking all the dirty things she was going to do to him. I grabbed some towels from the kitchen and mopped up the spilled ice cream.
“Perhaps we should head upstairs too,” Zane said, leaning against the frame of the still-open front door. “A tongue bath sounds like just the thing.”
I sighed, unable to muster a playful retort. “I’m worried about her, Zane. This business with her master. A hundred years of servitude. It’s… it’s not good.”
He moved forward, shutting the front door behind him, and tugged me into his arms, pulling me close. “You can’t save the world, princess. You’re a busy woman. You have two halos to track down before you can be free of the Serim.” His fingers rubbed against the promise burned onto my wrist. “Remy’s a big girl. She can fight her own battles, or get that lovesick goon to do it for her. You can’t rush in and save the day for everyone.”
“Can’t I? She’d do it for me. She’s done it for me in the past. Any time I’ve been in trouble, Remy’s been there for me,” I said. “Why would I abandon her?”
“Because you have other things on your mind than babysitting a brainless girl who made a bad deal with her master,” he said cajolingly. “And I have it on good authority that your own master wants to keep you selfishly at hand.” He toyed with a lock of my hair, his hand sliding down to cup my ass. “I think it’s because you taste so delicious.”
I leaned in close, and when his lips brushed mine, I licked his fangs. They scraped along my tongue, and the taste of blood filled my mouth. I swept my tongue against his, then ended the kiss, enjoying the flare of red in his eyes. I ran a finger along his chin.
“But helping Remy would make me so very, very happy,” I said softly.
He leaned in to my throat, his mouth brushing against the skin just under my jaw. “How happy?” he growled against my neck.
I thought for a moment, curling my fingers into his short black hair, holding his mouth against my skin, feeling the brush of his fangs there. “So happy that I’d be willing to stay in bed for a week and do nothing but play biting games with my master. I think there’re one or two spots on my body that he hasn’t bit me at yet.” When his tongue brushed against the skin of my throat, I whimpered with need. “A few very specific, very naughty places.”
“Your master could just command you to let him taste those particular spots anyhow,” he said, running his mouth down the column of my neck in a tease. He loved the foreplay of the bite almost as much as the bite itself, knowing that it drove me insane as well. As my fingers twined in his hair, his hand reached up to cup my breast, thumb teasing the nipple and sending a rash of goose bumps over my skin.
“But my master never commands me,” I said softly and pulled my hair away from the one side of my neck and over the opposite shoulder. I tilted my head, giving him clear access to my throat, a physical acquiescence to his hunger. “My master loves me and wants to please me.”
“It’s going to be his downfall,” he murmured against my skin.
I felt the barest prick of fangs against my throat, just as I felt him pinch my nipple. It sent a shockwave of pleasure through my body. I sagged against him, feeling the rush of an orgasm beginning to set in. God, I loved a vampire bite. “Does this mean you’ll help me help Remy?”
He whirled and pushed me up against the wall, lifting my hips until both my legs were off the ground, and I wrapped them both around his hips, locking my ankles at his back. At this angle, his cock rubbed against my core, already slick with wanting him.
“Well?” I said breathlessly.
His hand curled in my hair and tilted my head back even further, and I felt his fangs scrape over my flesh once more. “If you try and leave me behind, I’m going to chain you to the bed.”
My smile of triumph turned into a cry of pleasure as he sank his teeth deep into my throat, the bite-induced orgasm crashing over me.
CHAPTER TWO
When I crept downstairs for a midnight snack, I saw Remy heading to the door, bag in hand. “Hey! Where are you going?”
She turned and gave me a guilty look. “Oh, nowhere.”
Seriously? She was such a bad liar. “That so? Where’s Ethan?”
“Upstairs,”
she said evasively, then added, “Napping.”
I gasped. Ethan’s kind didn’t have to sleep. “You put him under? Why, Remy?”
Her shoulders drooped. “Because that’s the only way I could think to get away from him. He’s going to flip out if he finds out I have to go bow and scrape to my master for the next hundred years.” Her eyes, currently silver, gave me a doleful look. “The last time I was with Isaiah, I had to pretend to be his wife. It sucked.”
I could see where Ethan might have problems with that scenario. “But who’s going to wake him up?”
“You are?”
I snorted. “Not if I’m with you.”
Remy’s eyes widened and then she pounced on me with a happy squeal of delight, knocking us both to the floor. “You’d go with me, Jackie? You are the best friend ever!”
I patted her on the shoulder. “Of course, Remy. Succubi stick together.”
“The next hundred years won’t be so bad if you’re with me! Isaiah’s a little kinky in the sack, but hey, you’ve seen one strap-on harness, you’ve seen them all—”
I pried her clinging arms off me. “Wait a minute,” I said, sitting up. “I’m not going to be this guy’s wife. I’m going with you to free you.”
“Oh.” She sat up and frowned at me. “Oh. Well, that won’t work.”
I sat up too. “How do you know it won’t work?”
She rolled her eyes. “Hello, Jackie, he’s a Serim. They’re not exactly the most open-minded immortals. My guess is that he’s still reeling from women’s lib. Only happened about a hundred years ago. He’s probably barely even begun to process it.”
“Well, if he’s not going to listen to us, then maybe he’ll listen to Zane.”
She groaned. “Jackie, you can’t bring your boyfriend to a slumber party.”
“This isn’t a slumber party! I’m not sleeping with anyone but Zane!”
“Not even if I ask nicely?” She stuck her lower lip out.
I reached out and pushed it back in with my finger. “No. Zane and I are a package deal.”
She rolled her eyes. “All right, but Isaiah’s a little touchy when it comes to vampires. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I’ll handle that,” I said. “Now, what about Ethan?”
“I could send him to Florida for oranges?”
“Or… you could just take him with you.”
She winced and bit her fingernail, thinking. “I don’t know how he’s going to react if I have to sleep with Isaiah again.”
I patted her arm. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
#
We woke Ethan after we had packed our bags and placed them in the car. He cast wounded looks at both Remy and myself, but he said nothing when Remy began to launch into a big story about how she’d accidentally put him to sleep. Like I said before, she was a shitty liar, and I knew that Ethan could tell she was lying. But he loved her, and I think it was just as obvious that there was something wrong, so he said nothing.
Remy continued to chatter in a too-light voice, spinning Ethan a big story about how her friend wanted her to come visit, and we were all going for a little while. I felt bad when he readily agreed, and he didn’t ask questions when we asked him to load the still-sleeping Zane into the back seat. I cradled my vampire’s head in my arms as we drove. Since Remy was fatalistic about her chances of escaping her master, I’d expected her to pack heavily, but her one bag was smaller than mine.
“How far is this place, Remy?”
“A few hours’ drive,” she said. “We’ll be there before sunset.”
I didn’t like that—Zane might still be asleep—but I didn’t have a choice.
I’d expected her to head south, into Colorado, but she took the highway heading southeast. When we hit the border for Nebraska, I said nothing, but my curiosity grew. Exactly where did this Isaiah live?
After a few hours of highway driving, we pulled off on an unmarked gravel road and drove quite a ways until the highway was out of sight. Corn fields lined my vision as far as the eye could see. So weird. We turned down a second gravel path, and I saw a sign—the Sanctuary for the Angel of Eternal Life. My skin prickled. This was going from bad to worse.
We stopped in front of a massive wooden gate in the middle of nowhere. At the gate, Remy turned off the car, parked it, and looked over at me. “We’re here.”
“Uh, where exactly is here?” I saw nothing but corn. Corn and the gate.
“This is where we have to take our shoes off and change.”
“Change into what?”
“Our penitent gowns,” she said, tugging off one tall, leopard-spotted Louboutin. She hesitated, then kissed the shoe. “God, I’m going to miss you.”
Ethan gave her an odd look. “Do you wish new shoes, Remiza?”
She shook her head, then looked over at me. “Better take yours off, too.”
“We don’t get to wear shoes?”
“Isaiah believes women should remain closer to the earth at all times. Footwear just gives them airs.”
“This Isaiah sounds like a real prize,” I muttered, stripping off my own ballet flats and tossing them into the back of the car. “What about Zane and Ethan?”
She frowned over at Ethan, as if just now remembering him. “You’ll have to stay back here with Zane. Jackie and I will go in first. Okay?”
His eyes flashed and he placed a hand over his heart, then bowed. “It shall be as you wish, Remiza.”
She softened, her eyes going watery. Her lower lip trembled, and I thought she’d burst into tears again.
So I pinched her.
Remy looked over at me, then nodded. She pulled out a white pile of fabric and handed it to me. “Here’s yours. Isaiah mailed me these a few weeks ago. That’s how I knew it was time.”
It looked like a plain white shift. “What’s this for?”
“You cannot approach Isaiah or his followers unless dressed all in white. He feels that women need extra steps to maintain their purity.”
Gee, I already loved this Isaiah guy. “I bet he’s not thinking about purity when it comes to the strap-ons,” I muttered.
But still, because we were in this far, we hovered next to the car and changed into the weird white robes. Ethan cast Remy and me disapproving looks but didn’t comment. When we were changed, she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, very tenderly. “Stay here for me?”
“For you,” he said in a deep, bass voice. He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it.
I gazed down at Zane, still caught in day-slumber due to his vampire nature. His beautiful face was smooth with sleep, and I brushed my fingers over his forehead, sending a quick ‘I love you’ into his dreams. He wouldn’t remember it when he awoke, but it still made me feel better. “And Zane? You’ll stay with him, Ethan? While he’s vulnerable?”
The enforcer’s eyes flashed and he gave me a stiff bow. “I will watch over him for you, Jackie Brighton.”
“All right then,” I said, and took Remy by the arm. I could feel her trembling. “Let’s go face the music. Together.”
I have to admit, I was expecting all kinds of weird, kinky shit from what Remy had said. But so far… nothing odd. The exterior of the house was a plain, white two-story house with little décor. An enormous garden stretched out behind the house and farm animals dotted a nearby pasture.
We went to the door and Remy raised her hand to knock, then hesitated. Another full-body tremble swept over her.
I squeezed her arm, aching for my friend. “He’s a cruel master, isn’t he?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking,” she said with a wry twist of her mouth. “I am nothing to him but a slave. I have no wants and needs of my own in his eyes. I’m just an object. A thing. A brainless thing with boobs.” She shrugged. “I should be grateful that I’ve had my hundred years of freedom. I’m just not feeling so grateful at the moment.”
“Can’t say I blame you for that.”
A woman answered the door a few moments later. She was very young, her face clean of makeup and freckled. Her hair was parted down the middle of her scalp and braided tightly into a circle. She wore the same white shift we did, and when I looked down, I noticed her feet were bare. Her eyes widened at the sight of us. “I—I greet you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Remy said, waving a hand. “Tell Isaiah I’m here already, okay? Let’s get this over with.”
The woman stared at the two of us for a moment and then dropped into a slight curtsy. “Please wait here.”
A moment later she returned, not with Isaiah, but with another woman. This one was older, garbed the same, with her hair pulled back in the same severe style. Her plain face was disapproving as she stared at Remy and me. “Isaiah told us that Penitence would arrive alone.”
“Her BFF tagged along for the ride,” I said dryly.
“Then you are not here to be Isaiah’s wife?”
“Um, no. Are you both his wives?” Remy pinched my arm but I ignored it.
Both women’s faces curved into small, satisfied little smiles. “All of us at the Sanctuary for the Eternal Angel are brides to Isaiah.”
Remy was silent at my side.
“How lovely,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else.
“You cannot stay here if you are not to serve as a bride.”
I raised my hands up in protest. “Just visiting, I promise.”
That seemed to mollify them, and they exchanged a look. “Very well.”
“Are there many women living here?” I couldn’t help but ask, the bright smile still plastered to my face.
“Only thirty,” the younger one said, then waved us forward. “Please follow me.”
As they began to walk down the long, undecorated hall, I slowed my steps and leaned in close to Remy. “You didn’t tell me he was running a cult, Remy.”
“I think that’s pretty new,” she whispered back. “Though I’m not surprised. He was always a little too cheap to pay for servants.” She gave me an uncertain look. “You can still go, Jackie. I understand.”
