Adam (20 page)

“What do you mean, not the type?” he demanded, the fine hairs on the back of his neck ruffling with pique.

“Mine are the ways of a sensualist,” she told him as she sidled up to him, her tight body skimming against his, “and you don’t strike me as the sort to give in to your feelings.”

The remark was smug and teasing and he wished he could reach out and throttle her. Instead he found himself flushing at her boldness in front of his King and, apparently, his Queen. Or maybe it was because if she’d rubbed him just a little more firmly, he would have grabbed her and ended up giving her a lesson in sex even a centuries-old Vampire could use. That was how out of control he felt every time she came too close.

Hell, just setting eyes on her ...

“A guide is an excellent idea, Jasmine. I will take you as a volunteer?”

Jasmine’s body went stiff along the length of his, all her teasing washed away under what she saw as a threat to herself. That struck Adam curiously. Why would someone so bold and confident as she perceive a displaced Demon like him as a threat?

“I have more important things to do,” she said, her voice snapping cold like the sudden rush of winter. “His brother would be—”

“Jacob has to care for Bella and his daughter. Not to mention his duties as Enforcer. What is it you have to do?” Noah asked archly.

“What I always do. Maintain my connections with our circuit of guardians who are out there protecting Nightwalkers and humans alike from rogue Vampires, Demons, and others. I had actually planned on tracking Ruth. She needs to be dealt with now, before she grows any stronger. It may already be too late.”

“Ruth is not a creature you ought to be hunting on your own, Jasmine. No one faces Ruth one-on-one. It would be a death sentence. Between the magic she now uses so adroitly and the natural power of her Demon abilities, no one creature could confront her and expect to survive. Not even me or Damien. She has already killed Gideon.” Noah saw Adam react with a choke of sound, and he amended it. “We were lucky enough to get him back, thanks be to Destiny.”

“Clearly,” Adam said in a strangled voice.

“But she is on her own now. Nicodemous has been destroyed. It is just the opportunity we have needed, just the weakness we have wanted to exploit. And we must do it quickly, before she initiates someone else into Nico’s place.”

“This is also true,” Noah conceded. “So as I see it, you can best kill all your birds if you take Adam with you. As Enforcer, he can sense the Transformed, track them down. Ruth is always surrounded by them. It makes sense that he will lead you to her eventually. Also, he is an exceptional hunter and killer. He has proven that time and again. Being displaced out of time will not change his ability to fight. If you wish to hunt Ruth down, these are my conditions. Take Adam with you. While you search, use the time to introduce Adam to the world as it is now.”

“Oh brother,” she huffed with a sharp rolling of her eyes. She moved away from Adam, marching up to face off with the King, her body warmth instantly missed by a perturbed Water Demon. “I am not taking him! I do not work with a partner. You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to babysit this anachronism for you!”

“I do not need a governess!” Adam boomed, his voice like a thunderstorm in the echoing Great Hall. “And I certainly do not need this saucy chit of a Vampire to show me around!”

“Quiet! Both of you!” Noah roared back, making both of them startle. Neither was used to Noah using that tone of voice. Noah had always been able to control his temper, always speaking moderately. Clearly the Demon King was losing patience with the tumult of his life in that moment. “Jasmine, either you work with Adam or I will assign a Mind Demon to your ass and have you teleported to Damien’s stronghold, where you will stay, like it or not! And Adam,” he said, turning to the bigger man, “you realize you need a guide, do you not? And I remember enough about you to know you will not be happy sitting still here in this castle learning about automobiles and computers. Ruth can and will kill you, given half a chance. She is much stronger than you know. I thought a challenge like that would be right up your alley.”

“Noah, it is too dangerous,” Jacob protested. “Even the two of them together would not have a chance.”

“I fear that, too,” Noah agreed. “That is why I only want them to find her. Then they can come and retrieve us and a sufficient fighting force. As we all know, just the act of finding her is dangerous enough. But she must be found. This cannot continue any longer. I will send other teams as well, spreading them out as fast and wide as I can.”

“Then let us go first,” Jasmine said quickly. “We’ll start at the caverns where she attacked Bella and Jacob and track her down from there. And give us a head start so others aren’t tromping over our path and confusing her trail. I want her, Noah. And I am done playing games.”

“You are just to find her, Jasmine,” Noah warned her as she turned to stride off with the long-legged grace of a gazelle. The perfection of her posture and the pent-up fury inside her was stunning to behold. Adam would have loved to continue watching her, but he realized he had to move or risk being left behind. “Adam, try to keep a rein on her,” Noah said wearily. “And remember she will trick you the first chance she gets if it suits her purpose.”

“I will remember that,” Adam said grimly. It just went to show that not much about Vampires had changed after all.

“Find me?” Ruth laughed, the amusement only for herself as it filled her room. “Oh, please
do
find me. I would love that. Love it!” Ruth dashed her hand into the bowl of scrying water she had been using, dissolving the images of Noah, Jacob, and the new male named Adam who had murdered her lover.

For the time being, anyway.

Ruth turned to her bed, a delicate float of silk following behind her as she moved in a flowing soft dress with a pretty rose coloring. She sat down beside her lover’s corpse, reaching to smooth back his hair as she slowly wrapped her free hand around the handle of the bejeweled dagger thrust through the back of his mouth. His body was rigid in death, so she had to struggle as she yanked hard to remove it. Luckily for her, unluckily for Nicodemous, the blade was kept very, very sharp. It only took a few tries before it ripped free of the skull and jaws of its victim.

Ruth waited for several beats. In the past when Nico had been wounded in a critical way, it had taken only the removal of the offending object before he had started to heal. Then he would return to life as usual.

But this time was different and she knew it. This time he’d been run through the back of his brain, the crucial connection that he couldn’t repair on his own.

But still she waited. She ignored the gruesomeness of his death mask, the coldness of his skin. He’d felt like cold death before when he’d been in need of a hunt. They’d even made love while all his extremities had felt like pure ice. It had been a chilling and erotic experience.

This was not. She had to find some way, some kind of miracle to bring him back, or he would stay dead forever. Now that she knew what Noah and his cohorts were up to, she could focus on finding that miracle for him.

Ruth hurried to the table filled with compendium after compendium of spells, some hundreds of years old, others she had handwritten herself. That was the beauty of magic, she had learned. If you couldn’t find the spell you wanted, you could make it up using components of other spells. It might not always work the way you wanted it to, but it was always fun to discover what a new spell would do. And sometimes it worked perfectly.

She opened to a death animation spell, but shook her head. Not just yet. It would do only if nothing else worked, but the spell had a time period of only forty-eight hours; then the corpse would burn up into dust never to be used again ... except perhaps as a component for other more complex spells.

“Either way you will help me, darling,” she sang out as she rifled through page after ancient page. “But I much prefer you alive and at full strength. And since they think you are dead, that will give us all the advantage.”

She slowed as a seeping anger threatened to creep through her. She was really quite blinded by the rages that touched her, so she tried to fight it off. Yes, she thought, they had taken everything from her. The high-and-mighty Noah and his fretting little Demons. And all the while they had each taken on an extra burden, some creature to catch at their hearts and make them a thousand times more vulnerable. She knew that this was where she had to strike if she was going to rid herself of her enemies once and for all. She and Nico had been trying to get to Isabella and her brat this evening, knowing that to rip them away from Jacob would utterly destroy him. Well, that and the added benefit of having Nico feast on their precious precocious child of Time. True, she was far too young yet, but there was a danger in waiting. What if she developed the ability to jump into the past? Noah could pick his time to attack Ruth, a time she least expected it, and destroy her.

That simply would not do. Ruth wouldn’t allow it.

And she had come so close. Adam had spoiled her plans. Adam. A perfect example of the power Leah would wield in the future. She remembered the great disappearance of the former Enforcer, how they had turned the world upside down in search of him. Only to have him turn up here, hundreds of years in the future, and murder Ruth’s greatest power resource ... and her mate. She and Nico had completed the Exchange together, bonding to each other. He had fed on her and gained her ability to teleport. She had drunk of his blood and gained the ability to fly. It had taken her some time to realize that, then to master the ability. It was a delight to be able to travel long distances without being limited to jumps of teleportation that required great concentration and heavily drained her energy.

But power wasn’t all they had shared. True, that had been her motive in the beginning, but more than just power had come with the Exchange. It was something she’d never known before. Something quite connective. Nothing like the Imprinting, to be sure. A Vampire could never feel something as powerful as an Imprinting.

And a good thing, too. The Imprinting made a Demon weak. All of them, Noah, Elijah, and Jacob, all of them were weak. Ruth knew the best place to strike the Demons was through their weaker mates. Or even better, their would-be mates. All of those Demons who had yet to meet their simpering little Druids. All those vulnerable humans with no power yet ... until that fateful touch. One little touch and power would be born.

So many things to do, she thought with a sigh.

“And it would be better if you were here to do them, dearest,” she murmured in her dead lover’s ear. “It is already begun. Isabella lies blackly poisoned and in a coma, struggling to survive. They cannot watch over her every moment. And while I am waiting to take care of her, your little friends can begin elsewhere.”

She moved off the bed, her fingers drifting across one of her older spell compendiums.

“Let us see ... perhaps something complex for Noah’s new Queen. We will strike at the serpent’s head. If we destroy Kestra, Noah will die of a broken heart within a year. You see how Imprinting weakens them? He is the center of what holds the Demons together. I would never battle him head-on; after all, he is the most powerful Fire Demon ever to live. Or so they say. Ideally I would have liked for you to feed from him, obtaining an aspect of him. Can you imagine what you could do with the power of Fire? Or manipulating energy? Even a single aspect of a Demon like Noah could make you unbelievably powerful, dearest.”

She sighed as she thumbed slowly through her spells. She had wanted to attack the Demons through their Druid mates for some time, but Nico had forced her to focus on the children of Time and Space. They had determined it was impossible to get to the child of Space, what with the entire Lycanthrope populace, his Mind Demon mother, and the Ancient Gideon, his father, near him at all times. Besides, the brat was powerless at present, having shown no signs of ability as yet. But Leah ...

“Damn the little bitch. I must remember to destroy her as soon as possible. She has already used her power to defeat us. I will not let her reach an age where she can do it again.”

Ruth turned the page, and the colorful imagery of the spell caught her attention even before the hieroglyphs were interpreted in her mind. She was no scholar, the grasp of various languages not her best suit, but she knew enough to muddle through and had attachés who were flawless interpreters. But the beauty of hieroglyphs was that they told a vivid story that even a child could get the gist of.

“Mmm, now, is this not precious?” she whispered eagerly. “If this does what I think it does, it might be very appropriate for our needs. And this reminds me, I ought to look in the Egyptian tomes for a resurrection spell, dearest. They did so have a way with the dead.”

She smiled, unable to help herself, and hurried to her door, rushing out of her loft workroom and leaning over the rail. Below her, lazing over the furniture, was her own little nest of corrupted Vampires. There were ten of them visually present. Beneath the loft in another room would be the Demons she had lured her way, who were fast becoming the most powerful collection of necromancers she had ever gathered. She had made errors in the past, using human spell-casters and hunters, but they had proved weak and useless. It wasn’t until she had connected with Damien’s enemy, Nicodemous, that she had come to understand the most powerful necromancer would be a Nightwalker necromancer. Now she was the most powerful living Nightwalker necromancer on earth. She had had high hopes that Nicodemous would be her second, but he didn’t have a head for spellcasting as she did. He preferred to steal his power through blood and learn how to use that instead. Just the same, when they finally defeated Noah and his center circle of Demons, they would be unstoppable.