Blood Deep (32 page)

Miranda pointed to the window. “You’ve seen the fog that is settled on the village. It seems to be a living being. It can speak if it chooses. And it drains life and magical power. It thinks—

like an entity. Zayan says that it was that red mist that made him into a demon.”

“I know nothing of a red mist.” Althea crossed to a trunk that sat in the corner of her bedchamber. In a bassinet beside her bed, her baby slept. Miranda was pleased to see the bond between mother and child was so strong that Althea wanted her daughter with her. The drapes of the room were drawn, blankets had BLOOD DEEP / 261

been tacked up over the windows behind them, plunging them into the darkness of night.

The male vampire slayers were sleeping. Women vampires, it seemed, did not need as much sleep, and as long as the room was dark, they could move around in the day. Serena had ruefully rubbed her back and confided that apparently sleep was as hard to achieve for a pregnant vampire as for a mortal.

Althea gathered two leather-bound books—one in burgundy, the other royal blue—from the top of the clothes in the trunk and brought them to Miranda.

“I wrote these,” Althea said, “to gather all the information I could find on the fiercest, most evil vampires we had encountered. I brought the ones I wrote on Zayan and Lukos.”

“The things you told me about Zayan.” She told Althea about Zayan’s enemy, about what Zayan had told her. “It is logical, isn’t it? Gaius and the emperor invented those horrific stories to destroy the man they hated. They wanted to make Zayan appear to be a demon before he ever became one.”

“It makes sense, but—”

“Did you see him kill a child?

“In truth, no.” But sorrow radiated in Althea’s gaze. The words hung, unsaid but understood. Zayan had been a vampire for two millennia. Miranda could not wave her hand and turn him from predator to hero, no matter how much she wished to.

Miranda lifted the journal on top and put it to the side. She drew the one marked “Lukos” to her. It was like Pandora’s box—once opened she could not put things back. She would never forget what she would see. As with Zayan, whether she believed it or not, it would change forever how she felt about him. Once she knew the evil he was supposed to have committed, she would be always trying to disbelieve it—but it would never leave her.

Holding her breath, she opened the cover. But before she 262 /
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could read beyond the first few words, the room trembled. She jerked her head up—

Red light swirled in the center of the room.

Ready to attack, Miranda got to her feet.

“You have been asking about
Pravus Semper
,” called out a female voice. “You called it the red power.”

Miranda stared at the woman who had materialized in the room. She wore a gown of green silk, it clung to her perfect form; it was unfashionably tight at her waist and followed the generous curve of her hips. Her bosom was full and plump, barely restrained by the neckline. The woman settled herself in a seat. “Well, child, do not gape at me so foolishly. Sit.”

Serena frowned. “Mother? What do you know of this?”

They had wanted her to wait, but she knew she couldn’t.

And Miranda did not think vampire slayers would want to help Lukos and Zayan.

She knew so much more, she realized, as she rushed down the road away from the castle. She knew of the prophesy of Lukos, and she knew that he had believed Serena, Lady Sommersby, who had been Serena Lark before her marriage, had been his intended mate. She knew it had been Lukos’s plan to sire an army of demons and control the world. And she had read the last part of the prophesy, sent to Serena by Lord Denby of the Royal Society. She could remember the words:
If he does
not find his mate by the first spring equinox after he has risen, he
will be consumed by his own power and burned to ash. And the
one whom he loves most will also perish. She will die in a prison
of Satan . . .

She knew that Zayan had imprisoned Sebastien de Wynter, who could have destroyed him. She knew that Althea and Serena did not believe.

“They are tricking you,” Althea had said firmly. “There must be something they want from you.”

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In her heart, as much as she wanted to deny it, she knew what it was. Both vampires had both lost people they had cared about to death. Zayan had lost his children; Lukos had lost his sister. Zayan had told her that the power—the
Pravus Semper
—

had promised to give him his children in return for her magic.

Could Lukos also have wanted to gain control of her magic?

Was that why he had proposed sexual games in the carriage? To capture her—or her heart?

“Miss Bond.”

The masculine voice brought her to a stop. Foolishly, she had been thinking and watching the red-colored clouds amassing again over the village.

Two men had stepped out into the road, at the sharp turn ahead of her. They must have been behind the trees that crowded the road. One, with gray hair and a cane, bowed before her.

“Miss Bond. I am afraid you cannot be allowed to return to the vampires. It is obviously too dangerous for you.”

She seethed in exasperation. “And who are you?” She glanced to the second man to include him in her demand—he was a tall pale man with dark hair and cheekbones so prominent the shadows beneath them were black. He looked like a cadaver.

“I am Lord Denby,” the first man said. “Of the Royal Society.”

Miranda took a step backward, but she knew she could not escape. The cadaver put his hand in his coat and withdrew a pistol.

But Denby looked astonished as the man leveled the weapon at her, and she froze, waiting for the explosion of powder, and the pain that would be searing and brutal.

“Rothswell, what is the meaning of this?” Denby was waving his cane in anger.

“You are blind to what she is, my lord. How dangerous this demon is. We cannot continue to allow her to exist.”

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“She is not a demon, Rothswell.”

“She is not human!” Sweat broke out on the cadaver’s high, lined forehead. “Gone are the days where we can indulge ourselves with study and speculation. It is our task to rid the world of evil—”

“If that’s our role, then we should likely start in the Houses of Parliament or of the Lords. Probably much evil there.” Denby reached out with the cane to lower the pistol. “Our duty is to try to understand what we as yet cannot. Violence is no solution. Miss Bond gives life.”

Rothswell swung the pistol around to Lord Denby and the elderly man lowered his cane. “A travesty of God,” Rothswell spat. Then he looked down the road and became infinitely more at ease. Miranda twisted to see what he had spotted.

James Ryder had stepped out from the forest to the road.

Rothswell hailed him at once. “Mr. Ryder, we must work quickly—” The man’s voice died away in shock as Ryder lifted his arm. Miranda saw a black shape in his hand and she took a step forward. She wished she could throw magic as Zayan could. But Ryder’s arm arced and the black bar slammed down against Rothswell’s head.

He cried out, then fell hard to the ground.

Ryder laughed at Denby, who lifted his cane in a threatening arc. “I could snap your neck with my fingers,” the slayer laughed.

“Do not do this,” Denby begged. “You were one of us.”

“Shut it. You considered me to be nothing more than a lowly thug.” He pointed at Rothswell’s limp body. “He was a member of your precious Society also, and he wanted her dead more than I do. I’m doing this for the blunt—he and the others are doing it because you are a weak man, Denby. A weak man with a pitifully soft heart.”

Miranda vowed not to be taken easily. As Ryder approached, she spun and tried to run. He grabbed her around the waist.

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“I’m not waiting around to take the chance of your werewolf coming to your rescue now, love.”

“Where are you taking me?” To the Royal Society’s men, she guessed. Where they would swiftly kill her because they were afraid of what she was.

He grinned. “No, not to them. To my new master, angel.”

16

Battle

He parted her thighs and she moaned her welcome.

Golden, twinkling in sunlight, her hair fanned around her.

Laying on the grass, Miranda giggled, then gasped in need
as he bent to her cunny—wet, glistening, ready for him.

He tasted her, and at that—just one lick of her while
being bathed in warm sunshine—he lost control and climaxed. Scalding hot, his come shot out to his thigh. His
body jerked with it—almost as intensely as when he
shifted shape.

She had done this to him. Miranda had brought him to
his knees.

But she had done more than that—she’d opened his
heart to light . . .

Zayan jerked out of his deep vampiric sleep. It had claimed him at dawn against his will, and he blinked slowly. It took a few moments for all his senses to become alert, but he knew, instinctively, that Miranda was gone, even before his eyes could see the empty room in the house they had found.

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He remembered her whispering that the rooms, with the furniture draped in covers, looked to be filled with ghosts.

His heart was filled with ghosts, she had told him that too.

He’d felt the pain in her heart when she’d told him she wished she could bring his children back for him. But he did not think even her power could do that.

But where had she gone?

At his side, Lukos groaned and rolled out of the bed. Zayan saw the flash of surprise, then irritation on Lukos’s face as he realized he had slept beside Zayan. Miranda had been between them at first, when they had first fallen asleep.

Panic flared in Lukos’s eyes. He cocked his head, listening in stillness as a wolf would do. “I can hear her, Zayan.” His voice was hoarse. “I can hear Miranda’s thoughts, and she is terrified.

She speaks of the red power—”

Ice-cold fear swamped Zayan. Sending out his thoughts, he tried to find Miranda, but he could not. His panic ramped higher.

Miranda, where are you? Where in the blue blazes are you?

Aloud, he rasped to Lukos, in desperation, “Where is she? Can you find her?”

Another fear took root in his heart. What did it mean that Lukos could communicate with her and he could not? Was it just the red power blocking his mind, or was it more? Could it be proof that Miranda was closer to Lukos than he? That Lukos was the man she loved?

Was it really possible for a woman to share? To love two men equally?

By the gods, did it matter? All that mattered was to have Miranda safe, even if he lost her to Lukos . . .

“Christ Jesus!” Lukos shouted as the air in front of them began to ripple. It moved faster, then spun in a maelstrom. A red vortex appeared before them, turning at fierce speed. The coverlets lifted off the bed, and flew into the eye of it. In a flash of light, the fluttering blankets vanished.

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“Bloody hell,” Lukos shouted. He clutched the bedpost. Zayan gripped the one on his side, willing his preternatural strength to hold him. The force was sucking at him, pulling him backward.

His fingernails drove into the wood, scratching it.

On a howl, Lukos was pulled from the post and drawn into the vortex. The bedpost he had been holding snapped free of the canopy and fell. Distracted for the moment, Zayan loosened his grip.

The force yanked him free, pulled him through the air, and he hit the swirling red lights feetfirst. It was like having his body torn apart—

“Marius Praetonius.”

At the shout of his mortal name, Zayan turned slowly. The wind threw his hair around his face, and suddenly, in his mind, he was again standing on a rocky ridge in Gaul, two thousand years ago. His legions were massed behind him, a valley stretched out before him—a valley filled with the soldiers and armaments of the Gauls.

He had that moment of pause before he commanded his army to attack with a sweep of his sword. That moment when he could choose life or death, simply by either surging forward or turning back. He could savor the power of the choice, even though he knew his choice had already been made.

An unnatural stillness would settle on the thousands of men in that moment.

That stillness settled around him now.

The red vortex had brought him here. The force of it had sent him hurtling through the fog-drenched night and had thrown him into the standing stone circle. He had risen, disorientated and battered . . .

Now he slowly met eyes of the man who had shouted his name.

He had hungered for this for two thousand years. The chance 270 /
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to cut out his enemy’s heart and eat it before the man’s dying eyes. The heat of rage set Zayan’s blood on fire as he met the triumphant dark eyes of Mucius Gaius, the man who had stolen his wife’s heart and had killed his children. Thanks to Miranda, he knew the truth.

What he was about to do was not murder—it was justice.

Gaius stepped forward. A broadsword sat comfortably in his meaty hand. Blond hair fluttered around his face, and he wore armor that gleamed in the moonlight. “I’ll slice you in half where you stand, Praetonius.”

A snarl twisted Zayan’s lips. He sent a bolt of magic to his hand. At once a sword appeared there, and he held his weapon up to the sky. It almost hummed in his hand.

Blue-white moonlight slanted along the beautiful swirling pattern of the forger’s work. This weapon had been imbued by the magic of the hand of a mortal craftsman, a man who lived for his metal, his flame, and his art.

Zayan had used it in every battle two thousand years ago. In all those conflicts, after all the bones it had cleaved, the blood it had spilled, it did not bear even so much as a nick or a crack. He had conjured it perfectly from memory, but now, it did not feel as it once had done. It no longer seemed an extension of his arm.

It felt as though it was another man’s weapon that he had picked up, foreign, awkward, cold.