by Laken Cane
Jin snickered. “No,” he agreed.
“Which group?” Angus asked.
Alejandro’s expression didn’t change when he spoke, but his eyes did. “Mikhail Safin and his crew.”
“I thought they were chasing down a witch in Europe,” Angus said. And there was something in his voice that I could barely comprehend.
Fear. There was fear in my werebull’s voice.
“They were,” Alejandro told him. “For nearly two years. But they caught her, and they’re back.”
“Darkness,” Jin whispered, and his hissing voice made me shudder.
Rhys put his hands on his hips and turned up his lip. “I am the darkness,” he said. “My dragon will burn them all.”
And for a moment, Rhys’s inner assassin peeked out and I wasn’t the only stone-cold killer in the room.
I gave him a wink when he looked at me, and he took a step back.
I shook my head, disgusted.
Angus took out his cell and stared unseeingly down at it, and I understood why he was so very afraid.
His children.
They’d walked through hell. And it only ever got worse.
“They’re government sanctioned,” Leo said, his voice calm but concern in his eyes. “And somewhat leashed. They don’t come in to take out every supernatural they see.”
“One is too many,” I said.
And though I didn’t feel fear the way I once had, it was there, in the pit of my stomach. I was being affected by their dread, and I was suddenly afraid for all of them.
Darkness really was coming.
And we might not be able to stop it. Not this time.
“I’m afraid,” I whispered, with something close to amazement.
Angus pulled me into his arms. “I’ll protect you, Trin.”
“We all will.” Clayton caressed Blacklight’s hilt.
I didn’t explain to them that I wasn’t afraid for me, because I didn’t want them to think I saw them as weak and vulnerable.
I wanted Amias. I could have called to him. I could have opened my mind, reached through the distance of the dark night, and let him know I needed him.
Instead, I sighed and reached out a finger to touch Clayton’s mystical sword. To touch the demons’ magic. To touch Miriam.
And with that touch, something screamed to life inside me.
It was like an attack. It was like my legs had been hacked off and I was left bleeding and agonized on the floor. It was like someone cut open my chest and chopped my heart into hamburger with a sharp wooden stake.
Silverlight was waking up.
I reeled away from the men, blind to all but the redness of my pain, my cries guttural and unthinking as I was battered by my magical, beloved sword. Silverlight was a part of me I could not exist without—yet I was. Or had been.
“What’s happening?” one of the men shouted.
His voice was strange and distant and unfamiliar.
She was waking up inside me and she was…
She was everything.
I screamed, but the sound was only in my mind. And the awfulness was replaced by something worse—death. Hatred. Rage like I’d never known.
Those things battled themselves inside me, and it took me too long to understand the truth.
The vampire was battling the silver and the rifter was battling the vampire. I was tearing myself to pieces.
And Silverlight was coming.
She was transforming, rising from her death.
And surely I could not survive the resurrection.
Coldness surrounded me, suddenly and inexplicably, then sank inside me. I was frozen. I was ice.
I was dead.
I was dead.
But Silverlight was not. And she needed out of that death.
So she came. No matter what her return would do to me, she came.
When she finally expelled herself from the confines of my body and was no longer part of me, she blazed with a power so fierce that she blew out the living room windows.
She didn’t shrink and her light didn’t deaden, even when she finally quieted. She flew into my grip and I closed my fingers convulsively around her huge, warm hilt. My pain eased.
The vampire inside me had felt the agony of the silver, but the rifter had embraced it.
The rifter won.
Silver did not hurt me.
And Silverlight was once again mine.
I had a feeling I was going to need her to deal with Mikhail Safin and his executioners.
I opened my eyes to find myself on the floor and everyone gathered around me, their eyes a little wide, faces tight with concern.
I squeezed Silverlight. “I’m going to need a sheath.”
“Well,” Leo said. “Trinity’s back.”
Chapter Eleven
MINE
Rhys wouldn’t run, and he wouldn’t hide out until the executioners gave up and found another city to torment and another power to capture or extinguish. He wanted to be where he could help protect the city and the supernaturals.
We just had to make sure Safin didn’t discover his identity—and that meant Rhys would once again be forced not to shift into his dragon.
He could shift into anything else—literally—but he couldn’t call his dragon.
He wanted to. He wanted to shift and fly and burn. It was a longing that shone from him like the hidden beauty of Leo’s face.
We’d all moved into the kitchen to discuss the executioners, except for Clayton. He’d pulled his phone from his pocket and walked outside without a word to any of us.
It was almost as though I’d never left. The comforting familiarity of talks in the kitchen with my men warmed me. There was safety in the kitchen, and there was love.
A memory of my men surrounding me, touching me, filling me flashed into my mind and I shivered, then rubbed at the gooseflesh on my arms. Oh, if I could go back to that time…
I shook off the memory and put my attention on Rhys. “If the time comes when you need to run, you will run.”
We stared at each other silently, neither willing to back down.
“You can’t risk your life,” I said, finally, softly. “Even if they don’t kill you outright, they’ll capture you and hand you over to…” I shuddered. Covert government organizations were the deepest, darkest fear of supernaturals. “You can’t risk it.”
Rhys’s dark stare softened. “They will never take me, love.”
“They have ways.” I told him. I looked at Angus. “Tell him, Angus.”
But Angus shook his head. “No, Trin. If Rhys doesn’t want to run, he won’t run. We won’t let the bastards force him out of his home. We’ll fight them. We’ll always fight.”
“I hate this.” My voice was sharp and I clenched my fists hard to keep myself from punching—and breaking—the table. Silverlight lay gleaming and deadly in front of me and I wanted to snatch her up, run to meet the executioners, and slice them all to pieces.
The urge to kill was as intense as my urge to feed, and I was still not strong when it came to self-control. The need battered my brain, overwhelming me with its sudden fierceness. Eat and kill. That’s what a rifter was created to do.
I trembled with dark bloodlust and deep hunger and slid my fingers around Silverlight’s hilt. I would find them, and I would destroy them.
I would eat them.
Al’s calm voice pulled me back from the edge.
“You don’t want to go after them, Trinity. They’ll be coming to you soon enough. Right now there’s a chance they’ll nose around, smash a few heads, find nothing, and leave again.”
None of us believed that. The executioners’ reputation preceded them.
I squeezed Silverlight and forced down my need to kill something evil. To kill something.
Control.
I would maintain control. Build it, strengthen it, own it.
And for that moment, I succeeded.
“No one saw who became the dragon,” I said,
finally. “He wasn’t here for long. He left, and we haven’t seen him since.”
They nodded. It was a simple story we’d all stick to when the executioners came with their questions.
Clayton walked into the kitchen and sat down across from me. “Tonight, rumors will begin that the dragon was sighted in China. It’ll be glimpsed in a dozen other places over the next week. The executioners will hear.”
I nodded. “Good. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll kill them all.”
They watched me silently, and it took me a minute to realize they were a little shocked at my coldness. And maybe they were a little sad, but that couldn’t be helped. I wasn’t their little bloodhunter princess anymore. They might as well get used to it.
I stood. “I’m going to talk with the elder, then stand inside Willow-Wisp and watch the sun arrive before I sleep.” Oh, God, how I wanted to see the sun. For three months I’d lived in darkness, and now I wanted the sun. I wanted it more than just about anything.
Angus stood as well. “We built you a protected room in the basement. It’s shielded from the sun and requires a code to enter. It’s also as hidden as we could make it. Unless someone knows what to look for, they won’t find it.”
Sleeping was the most vulnerable time for a vampire. Hunters could stake a girl while she slept, and she’d only know she was dead when she woke up in the despair.
I put my hand to my chest. “You knew I’d come back.”
He stared down at me, unsmiling. “Of course we knew, Trin.”
And something other than hunger or the cold blackness of evil flared to life inside me. It was weak, but it was there. And the more I thought about it, the stronger it grew. It wasn’t just the fierce protectiveness I naturally felt for my men. It was the connection we’d had from the very beginning.
It was deep, true love.
Confusing to a rifter, but completely consuming to a vampire. People thought vampires had no heart. But that was wrong. They were all heart.
Poor bastards.
And I felt love. True fucking love.
I was a rifter, and I would need that coldness, that power, but I was also a vampire. And I could love.
“God,” I whispered, and reached up to touch his face. “I love you, Angus Stark. I love you.”
He did smile then, a tiny smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I know, girl.”
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I murmured. “But I know I love you.” I looked around, grabbing them all in my hungry gaze. “All of you.”
When I looked at Leo, his stare was on the floor.
Al cleared his throat, then headed for the door. “We’ll be watching the way station.”
“Al,” I said. “When do you think they’ll arrive?”
“Maybe a week.” He didn’t stop walking. “I’ll let you know when they’re spotted. Rhys, Jade wanted a few words.”
Rhys nodded, then gave me a quick kiss. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re back, Trinity.”
“Me, too,” I murmured, and watched him follow Al from the room.
“You have a couple of hours before dawn.” Clayton stood and walked to me. He ran his fingers down my arm, then took my hand. I was caught for a second on an immediate sting of lust, but my body must have been confused, because my fangs dropped into position. I ran my tongue over the sharp edges, shuddering with hunger.
Leo’s blood was still inside me so it wasn’t really that kind of hunger. It was just the hunger to taste my men. The hunger for sex. For warm, hard cocks and eager tongues and familiar touches.
The seductive scent of arousal hit my nostrils, slid into my brain, and dropped to the suddenly wet and ready place between my legs.
Not the scent of my own arousal, but the scent of theirs.
“Shit,” I whispered. I closed my eyes as my fingers tightened convulsively around Clayton’s. Unable to resist, I took my hand from his and pressed my palm against the front of his pants. I gripped and rubbed the bulge straining beneath the fabric.
“Mine,” I murmured. “Mine.”
His body jerked and he groaned, a sound that bumped up my excitement to a whole other level. I wanted to devour him. I wanted to devour all of them.
I craved blood with an incomprehensible need, but at that moment, neither my longing for the sun nor my thirst for blood could compete with my hunger for scorching hot supernatural sex.
My control was gone.
“Trin,” Angus said, his voice soft and caressing. “God, I missed you.”
The half-giant strode from the room, his footsteps heavy and somehow grim as Angus and Clayton began to give me a proper welcome home.
Chapter Twelve
BONDING
I wanted to call Leo back. I wanted to taste his blood while I fucked Angus. I wanted to bite him as I sank down onto Clayton’s hardness. I wanted to lap up his sweet, strange power while Rhys showed me what he’d dreamed of doing to me.
But Leo wasn’t ready to come to me and Rhys was occupied with Alejandro and Jade.
And Shane was gone.
I made a quick mental note right then and there. I was done waiting for Shane Copas. I was going after my hunter, and I was bringing him home.
Whether he wanted me to or not.
Later, though. Much later. Right now, there were two men about to make my brain explode with pleasure, and there was no room for anything else.
I couldn’t get enough of touching them, tasting them. I wanted to devour them even as I wanted to stretch out on the floor, close my eyes, and lie like the dead as they swarmed over my body.
They took me to the basement, to the secure room they’d created for me, because before we were finished, dawn would come. And I would rather not have burst into flames with one of them inside me.
I wasn’t the only one whose need was extreme.
We’d been deprived of each other for too long, and a connection such as ours was never meant to be severed. Not even for a little while.
Angus was right—no one would find the hidden room if they didn’t know to look for it. Clayton kicked a switch hidden behind a panel near the floor, then pressed his palm against the wall at waist level. A numerical pad was hidden behind that small section, and he punched in what seemed like a dozen numbers.
“Derry’s birthday,” Angus took time to murmur, then went back to kissing my neck.
Derry was his daughter, and I knew well her birthday, but his lips were distracting me so much I couldn’t remember.
After Clayton put in the code, another panel slid open, and I had to duck to get through it. Once we were inside, Angus pressed a button beside the door, and it shut with a quiet, solid thunk.
The room contained a huge bed, a mini fridge, a desk, and a small, doorless alcove which held a shower and a toilet. There were no windows. A tall floor lamp shoved back the darkness and a thick area rug relieved the cold hardness of the concrete floor.
It was perfect. I’d be safe there.
I placed Silverlight on the desk and turned eagerly to Clayton and Angus.
Angus lifted me and placed me on the platform bed, and then my two hot, passionate, sexy men climbed into bed with me.
When I’d been human, no matter how much sex I had or with how many men I’d had it, there was always some sort of low-level hang up. A subtle feeling, even if I hadn’t really been aware of it, that the type of sex I was having was sort of…wrong.
That feeling was gone. And it was only because of its complete absence that I realized it’d been there at all.
In its place was heat and eagerness.
I wanted to do every bad thing I could think of.
Mostly, I wanted it done to me.
In the dark distance of my mind, I felt the master’s sorrow.
I kicked off my boots as I ripped Clayton’s shirt open, unable to wait to feel his smooth skin against my palms. Angus took my lips and I kissed him with greedy abandon, licking off the blood when my fangs cut his lip.
None of us were in the mood for foreplay.
I wrapped my fingers around Angus’s rock-hard cock and squeezed, and he groaned into my mouth.
Blood and sex.
There was absolutely nothing else.
Not for me. Not then.
Clayton snaked an arm around my waist from behind me, then grabbed my hair and pulled my mouth from Angus’s so he could kiss me, and the second he did, Angus lay down, grabbed my hips, and set me atop him. He speared me with his hardness and for a second I thought that maybe he was too big, maybe I couldn’t take him, maybe it was going to hurt a little.
I gasped into Clayton’s mouth at the exquisite pain, and then Angus was thrusting up into me and I shuddered at the almost unbearable pleasure of it.
I needed more, always more—more feeling, more pain, more pleasure, and Clayton seemed to sense it. As Angus held my hips in a punishing grip and shoved his hugeness into me, Clayton bit my shoulder.
At the sharp pain of the bite my body went limp. I liked it rough. Oh, so much. Clayton muttered, “Fangs,” and I had a millisecond to retract those damaging teeth before he grabbed my head and yanked me forward, shoving his dick past my lips and into my mouth.
If Angus hadn’t held me so fiercely, pinning me in place with his thrusting cock, Clayton might have yanked me off the hot mountain of the werebull’s body.
I gobbled Clayton’s dick like I was starving, but I needed him to come. I needed to taste him, to drink him, to get him off, because more than I wanted to suck him, I wanted to bite him.
He climaxed abruptly, ejaculating with such force that I could barely swallow fast enough. Even before the last groan was out of his mouth, I tore myself from Angus, flipped Clayton to his back, and fell upon him with a hunger I had no way of controlling.
On my knees, I leaned over Clayton’s body, wiggled my ass in invitation to Angus, and bit into Clayton’s groin.
I knew what it would do to him. The ecstasy of that bite would linger, making him come when he touched it. The same thing had happened to me the first time Amias had bitten me.
