Blood Deep (7 page)

No seasoned whore could clean up like that. This girl was genuine. Her spine was stiff, her fists clenched. “Do you want me to take off my dress, sir?”

She was doing this to save her family. That sent a rush of BLOOD DEEP / 49

blood to his rod. She thought she was going to nobly sacrifice herself.

“Let me undress you, love,” he said. “I’m very good and I’ll be gentle. This will be enjoyable for you.”

Her back twitched.

She looked nothing like Miranda Bond—who was blonde, with large blue eyes. Miss Bond was stunningly beautiful. But she was flawed. She was a creature of evil. Something he had to destroy.

This poor sweet angel was someone he would nurture for an hour. He could barely afford the money, but he would be giving her a wonderful experience—a night with him would be far better than being thrust into by a drunken earl.

He undid his cravat and tossed it aside. She was standing at the doorway, kneading her skirts in her fists. “Let’s undress you, love. That changes everything.”

She frowned at that. “I don’t want to be . . . undressed.”

“It seems strange to you now, but you’ll enjoy it. This is what you were meant to do—give yourself to a deserving man.”

The vicar’s daughter gave a half-laugh, half-sob at that.

She had no idea what he was saving her from.

The wench smelled of a heavily flower scented soap, the soap the whores of this place must use. On one of them it would be sickening—on her it was poignant.

He would rescue her in this small way. He had the money.

Why shouldn’t vampire slayers be as inventive as Bow Street Runners? He took private commissions, and for some vampires, he took payment to leave them alive. And to protect them, up to a point. Many vampires had amassed fortunes, using their power, strength, and the advantage of time, endless time, to become wealthy men.

What else would they do with their money than use it to keep cheating death?

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Ryder stripped to his shirt. She was watching him, with her plain bodice rising and falling. “Take down your hair for me.”

He wanted to watch the tresses fall as he kicked off his boots and took off his trousers.

She bent her head slowly, obediently. She pulled at the pins.

In a waft of sweet fragrance, her long brown hair fell down her back.

He sprawled back on the bed, but she didn’t join him.

“Don’t make me impatient,” he warned. “I’ve paid good money for you. I know you won’t see it—no matter what that bitch of a madam told you. Please me well and I’ll give you something special. Something for you to keep to yourself.”

She looked horror-struck, but she began to unfasten her dress.

This was how he wanted Miss Miranda Bond to be for him.

Taking her clothes off with shaking fingers. If he narrowed his eyes, he could imagine this pasty-faced wench was Miss Bond.

The Royal Society would not disbar him, or destroy him, if he went about killing Miss Bond in his own way. They needed him too much, needed him to do the dirty work. To carry out the secret assassinations, like this one. They needed him to do things like hunt down the seemingly innocent sisters of gentlemen and make their deaths look like accidents.

But he had seen what Miss Bond could do.

Two weeks ago, she had laid her hand on the chest of a child who had been run down by a carriage. The body had been mangled. The thing was dead.

But beneath her touch, the body healed. The lifeless eyes took in light once more. The child had been resurrected by just the
touch
of Miss Bond’s hand.

He hadn’t believed it.

But the gentlemen of the Society had assured him it was true.

The damned woman could raise the dead.

His mission was to kill her. Ryder understood what the old BLOOD DEEP / 51

men of the Society wanted to do—destroy that which they couldn’t understand.

And in return for murdering a lovely, twenty-three-year-old woman, he would have a mansion in the country. He would live better than his father, Hiltshire, whose estates were impoverished.

Hell, he would enjoy that.

All that stood between him and everything he’d always planned for was one little gently bred lady. One simple death and he would have it all.

His cock lurched against his belly at the thought. He reached out and clasped the hand of his vicar’s daughter, who now stood trembling in her shift. “Now, love,” he leered, “I’ll teach you how to suck me.” But first he pulled her to him, stuck his hand beneath her chemise, and gently worked his index finger up her tight, hot ass.

3

Touched

Chamber of the Scholomance

875 A.D.

Lukos awoke to find that he lay on a smooth stone floor in a lake of his own blood. It was encrusted on his neck, smeared on his freshly shaved scalp. The great gaping wound in his throat had somehow knitted together. It was still spongy and painful, but as he gingerly explored with his fingers, there was no longer a wide, open, bleeding gash.

Was he dead now?

His strength almost faded again as he struggled up to his knees, and he fought the lure of unconsciousness. Darkness surrounded him. It clung to him like grasping hands. Raw and cold, panic swept over him. Ever since he’d been a child, he has always awoken in the dark like this—sweating, frightened, terrified enough to run. He had hid these fears because it was his destiny to be a great warrior, but they rose up now, and made him whimper.

He was too old to make such sounds, like a child. And in the 54 /
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blackness, he looked around for the demoness. Had she left him for dead?

Slowly, he grew accustomed to the dark. And he saw her, curled up on a shelf of stone, watching him. A robe of dark crimson swathed her, and she stared at him with sorrowful eyes. “I am sorry, Lukos. But your eyes are next.”

He threw up his hands, but a sharp, searing-hot point slammed into his right palm. Instinctively, he pulled his hand away. This time the red-hot poker went into his eye. As he screamed in pain, something grabbed his arms and restrained him. He howled.

He tried to fight. Some monster in the shadows had hold of him. He was raging against the grip, throwing his head wildly.

The pain. God above, the pain—

But despite his wild struggles, the poker drove into his left eye, completely blinding him.

This would kill him.

Unless he was already dead.

Did the dead still feel pain?

He would have cried, but the searing heat had taken away his tear ducts along with his eye.

He smelled her. Over the stench of his own flesh, over the excruciating agony, he knew she had come to his side. She knelt by him. Her hands went around his bare shoulders, and in her sultry voice, she chanted. The soft, lovely sound flowed around him like a vivid light and took away the pain.

“You cannot see him, Lukos. It is not for you to see him until you have completed your apprenticeship.”

He laughed in anger and bitterness. “I’m blinded. I’ll never see.”

“You will. Lukos, he can give you ultimate power. He can easily give you sight.”

“What do you do now? Cut off my cock so I can’t fuck?”

“No.” The demoness’s voice was soft and soothing. “You have endured all that you must for now. I will take you to the BLOOD DEEP / 55

chamber, and you will rest there. Tomorrow, you will begin to learn.”

Learn. With his eyes gouged out? His throat slit? Each breath was a torture, and he was rasping and wheezing like an old man.

He’d run over corpses on the battlefield less wounded than this. “Am I dead?”

“You will be reborn, Lukos.”

She had opened his robe then and had taken hold of his cock. He had lost his eyes; he’d had his throat cut, but somehow she made his organ stand up. She straddled him, took him inside, and rode him. He could feel her slick heat engulfing his cock. He could smell her, smell the ripeness of their joining. He could feel her full buttocks slamming his groin. God, yes . . .

“You’re having sex with me—”

“No, I’m not. You are dreaming this, Lukos.” She slapped him. The sudden jolt of pain made his fantasy disappear. Instead of her creamy juices, he smelled the dankness of wet stone. Instead of warmth and pleasure, he felt sharp rocks beneath his knees.

“Sometimes men go mad from the fear and the pain, Lukos.

They lose themselves in a world of darkly erotic fantasy. They believe they are always having sex, but they are trapped in the fantasy. They starve to death because they no longer know to eat. They are sometimes killed. Those who go among the mortals are killed or committed to asylums. But in their own minds, they are in a world of constant orgy.” Her laugh was wry and cold.

“But you are too strong to seek that kind of escape, Lukos. I would not have chosen to be the one to guide you if I did not believe so.” She took his arm. “Come with me now. For you are soon to be a demon born. And I know that you will be the strongest yet. You will make me proud, Lukos. You will give me the world.”

As she led him, he clung to her, the only thing he could trust in his newly dark world.

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He would have given her anything she asked for. If she’d wanted to cut out his heart, he would have let her.

He could taste the magic through her skin.

Zayan pressed his mouth to the Englishwoman’s delicate hand.

Magic thrummed through her, snapping within her, raging inside her. He could sense she was resisting it. She was not willing to accept the unearthly power within her. It frightened her.

Through the contact between his lips and her silky skin, he could sense all these things. He’d had one glimpse into her thoughts before she had somehow shuttered them to him. He had seen a lavish bedroom, filled with white silks and fluttering lace curtains. Another young woman, a brunette, lay in the bed, pale and drawn, smiling a weak smile.
Miranda,
the fragile inhabitant of the bed had whispered,
I feel so much better today, and I
think it is because of you.

He felt in Miranda, the woman whose hand he was kissing, a love he had almost forgotten—a feeling of tenderness heightened by the need to nurture.

In an instant, the image had vanished. But now he knew the name of the dainty innocent-looking woman who possessed the strongest magic power he had felt in decades—in centuries.

Miranda.

He turned her hand and kissed her palm. Miss Miranda rewarded him with an unwilling shiver of pleasure. Now he understood what had intrigued Sebastien de Wynter about Althea Yates, the vampire slayer—it was all that sensuality trapped behind such rigid propriety.

As much as he hated Lukos, he had agreed to the game of seduction as an amusement, something to pass the time with their pretty captive. Something to distract him from the urge to kill the vampire who had once tried to destroy him.

Now he knew Miranda was much more to him than just a game. All that magic in her could be his last hope.

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He needed it.

Which meant he had to dominate her. And now that he knew she was no an ordinary mortal, he would have to find a different way to do that. Even now, she was staring at him with narrowed blue eyes, and he felt her resistance to his seduction. She was fighting him with everything she had. And at the moment, she was winning.

Zayan admired her strength, though strong women could not be trusted. If they chose to be deceitful, they were more destructive than any army. More vicious. By the gods, he had seen women cut down their own men with axes when the males had retreated from battle.

If he wanted to control this woman and her magic, he would have to try harder.

Expertly, he dabbed his tongue in the center of her palm and made her whimper. Slowly, teasingly, he flicked his tongue over her wrist. He sucked her skin and felt the magic throb beneath his lips, along with her pulse.

Miranda moaned. He felt a surge in her power as she struggled against the desire he ignited. Suddenly, he realized how incredible she would be in his bed, in a bout of resistance and magic and surrender.

Years ago, he made a bargain with the red power. To bring his children back to life, it had demanded magic—it devoured every kind of power. It wanted the magic of youth. The energy released in sex. It had demanded the power of other magical beings. In that decade, before he had been banished into imprisonment by Elizabeth, one of the vampire queens, he had drained the energy of some foolish angels and a few demons, and like a slave, he had turned that energy over and waited obediently for his dream to be realized.

What a damned fool he’d been.

He had quickly understood what the red power intended to do. It would always hold his children as a prize, as a lure to 58 /
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make him serve it. But it would never give him what it had promised.

But now he knew a way to take control of the red power. He could take Miranda’s magic and use it to first tempt the red power, then blackmail the red power into giving him what he longed for—his children.

He ached to see them. He yearned to hold them again.

But to claim her power, he had to bring three words to her lips:
I love you.
It would open her heart and break through her defenses. In that moment, he could take her magic force and make it his own.

This was more than just a physical seduction, more than a game. He had to break through to her heart.

Miranda kicked out wildly. “Y-you can force me to feel pleasure, but you will never seduce me!”

Zayan jerked his attention upward to see Lukos stroking his fingers along the neckline of her pelisse. Miranda opened her eyes wide. They locked with his. Hers were vivid blue—the brilliant shining blue of the waves that lapped at the southern shores of Italy.

She didn’t look frightened. She looked . . . hopeful. It shocked Zayan so much, he straightened from her wrist. Strangely, he could not draw away from her steady, determined gaze.

“You
won’t
seduce me,” she said again. “No matter what you do. But I want to touch you. I believe I can return your soul, Zayan.”