Dark Embrace (Principatus) (9 page)

“I had her.” The flat calm in Ezryn unexpected statement made Jacob blink. “I tasted her.”

Jacob’s frown deepened. “Who did you taste? The woman from the club? Who was she?”

Ezryn’s nostrils flared again, his molten red eyes glowing darker. Angrier. “The Principatus I am to kill.”

The blood drained from Jacob’s face. “The Principatus?” He dragged his hand over his mouth, staring at his friend. “Dark Ones, Ezryn. Did you know that before or
after
you stuck your head between her thighs?”

A somehow tormented tension flashed over Ezryn’s stony expression, and he turned to look out the window.

Jacob raised his eyebrows. “Ah, I see.”

“That’s good,” Ezryn growled, his stare never wavering from the lightening skyline beyond the glass. “Because I don’t.” He clenched his fists and folded his arms across his chest, his eyes a deep red. “I smelt her. I knew what she was. I
knew
what I was there to do. And then I saw her, I
felt
her, and all I wanted to do was sink my fangs into her flesh and make her mine.”

Jacob studied his friend’s brooding profile, an uneasy itch awakening in his gut. “Make her yours?” Make her his. Not fuck her, or take her or even drain her. Sink his fangs into her flesh and make her his. What did that mean? What exactly did that mean?

To a vampire, there were four reasons for fang-to-flesh penetration. To feed, to kill, to change and to bind. The first two happened frequently—although neither Jacob nor Ezryn, nor any of those loyal to Ezryn had bitten to kill for over five centuries. The third reason—to change a human into a vampire—occurred less often.

The vampire race existed in a permanent state of tenacious control—those born vampires ruled over those changed. It was a relationship born on respect and loathing.
Lifers
, those born vampires, tolerated
bleeders
, vampires created by a lifer who didn’t rein in their blood lust during feeding. Occasionally, the odd bleeder rebelled against the natural order and suffered the consequences. Those consequences were not pretty. Far from it, in fact. A bleeder who forgot their place in the hierarchy soon found themselves pegged out naked and spread-eagle in a treeless field or shadowless rooftop, their flesh scored in ribbons of tiny lacerations, waiting for the sun to rise as their blood slowly oozed from their veins. A bleeder who fought to rise above their place and did so by challenging the power of a lifer soon discovered the true force of a born vampire. Unfortunately, it was the want of every bleeder to flex their new vampiric muscles, and many rarely survived beyond the first year of their new life. As a consequence, the changing bite occurred less frequently than in centuries past.

The only time a bite to change from human to vampire was condoned was when the two parties involved—vampire and human—consented to the transformation. Love or lust created bleeders, and the emotion behind the transformation tainted that new vampire’s state of psyche from the second of their resurrection—a fact that led to more than one joyous joining…or bloody reprisal. Those changed for love lived long. Those born from blood lust lived until their violent birth caught up with them.

The fourth reason—to bind—was permissible only between a master vampire and his human lover. The act required monumental power and endurance on the master’s behalf. Forging such a profound emotional, psychological and mental connection between a vampire and a human without the human transforming wasn’t easy. It drained and exhausted them. Depleted them of their
croi
, the life essence of all paranormal beings. But the payoff—a human bound in body and soul to their vampire master—was a thing of exquisite beauty and reverence.

Rarely did a binding bite occur anymore, and Jacob didn’t wonder why. In binding a soul, the master vampire created a self-weakness. If the bound lover were to be killed, the master vampire would suffer. Depending on how powerful the binding of their two existences, the suffering could range from agonizing headaches to insanity to destruction—incineration from the inside out. Never had a Principatus been bound to a vampire. To do so…

Jacob suppressed a sharp sigh.
“Make her mine”
fell into none of those criteria, but it sounded damn near close to binding.

He rubbed his hand over his mouth again, the points of his fangs pressing against the insides of his lips. That they were even extended showed him just how unsettled he was. This was not good.

Not good? This is a fucking nightmare. A master vampire marking a Principatus his property? Hell’s pit. Killing her would be better.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

Ezryn’s growl made Jacob jump. His master never tuned into his thoughts anymore—a privilege all master vampires held over their loyalist network—which meant Jacob’s expression revealed way too much. He shook his head and bit back a curse. “Am I that transparent?”

“No,” Ezryn replied. “I’ve just known you for a very long time.”

Jacob gave his friend a level look, trying to calm the disquiet knotting in his chest. “So I don’t have to tell you I think you’re treading dangerous territory?”

Ezryn’s jaw bunched.

“Or that you should let me take care of the situation?”

Ezryn turned his head, regarding Jacob with cold red eyes. “And how would you do that, General Ford? Destroy my brother?”

The ice in Ezryn’s voice made Jacob swallow. “No,” he answered, keeping his own voice steady. “You have strictly forbidden me to do so, and as such I will abide by your command.”

Ezryn’s eyes glowed a deeper red. He said nothing. He waited for Jacob to continue.

Ah, shit, Jake. You’re the one treading dangerous territory now.

He swallowed again. “I would destroy the Principatus.”

Ezryn’s nostrils flared. He stared at Jacob, face expressionless. “You will not.” He turned back to the window, the purple glow of pre-dawn casting his pale skin in a soft light.

Jacob studied his profile. “Because?”

Ezryn didn’t answer. He just watched the sky grow lighter, each second passing with oppressive silence before he turned from the window and left the room, fists clenched and jaw bunched.

Jacob let out an entirely redundant but utterly ragged sigh. Dark Ones. What the hell did he do next?

Disobey Ezryn’s command not to kill the Principatus?

He pictured the woman he’d seen stretched out on the bench back in the Pleasure Pussy. She was tiny, the top of her head unlikely to reach his chin. How easy would she be to defeat?

He’d never faced a Principatus before. By vampire standards, he was fairly formidable, but were his own strength and power enough to destroy one of the Highest’s assassins?

If it means preventing a war? If it means stopping Ezryn from doing something stupid?

Jacob’s gut clenched. He had no idea what his master had planned, but something told him it was more than Ezryn had revealed. He’d seen the set expression on the master vampire’s face before, the night Ezryn had stepped aside for his twin’s joke of an ascension. It was an expression that preceded a bleak future. Whatever Ezryn had in his mind to handle Fat Harry’s order, it didn’t bode well for Ezryn. Which in Jacob’s opinion
was
stupid.

Take out the Principatus before Ezryn does. Follow her, engage her in battle and destroy her.

His stomach clenched again. Easier said than done. Now he knew what she looked like, finding her wasn’t the problem, but engaging her in battle? How? Unless there was a reason for their confrontation, if he attacked her without provocation he was achieving nothing, just a senseless slaughter leading to the very bloodbath he sought to prevent.

The only way he could possibly conceive to entice the Principatus to attack him was to go on a violent feeding frenzy of the local humans, and he really, really didn’t want to do that. To save Ezryn’s life, however…

So what
did
he do now?

He didn’t know.

Dragging his hands through his hair, he gave the lightening sky a frazzled scowl. Daybreak, and he was nowhere near his own penthouse.

With one last look at the fading night, he crossed to the bar, filled Ezryn’s empty glass with blood and downed it in one swallow. The warm liquid hit the back of his throat, his gullet, and he closed his eyes for a moment, letting the life of the blood fill his existence. The buzz lasted but a second. He placed the empty glass in the bar’s sink, walked to the other side of the room and punched in a complicated sequence of numbers on a control panel.

Instantly, the floor-to-ceiling windows turned black, plunging Ezryn’s living room into pitch darkness.

With a nod of satisfaction, Jacob moved to the long, leather lounge in the middle of the room and dropped onto it, his gut churning, his throat tight. Toeing off his shoes, he raked his fingers through his hair and then stretched out along the luxurious piece of furniture. “Looks like you’re having a sleepover, General Ford,” he muttered, crossing his ankles as he closed his eyes. “And here you are without your toothbrush.”

Haral Lynwood Navarr, proclaimed first born of the First Family, overlord of the vampire race, sank his long, perfectly manicured fingernails into the young female kneeling before him. Her blood trickled from the puncture wounds in her throat, oozed over his fingers and down his wrist, dripping onto the cold marble floor beneath his feet in perfect crimson beads. He stared into her eyes, reveling in the pain and terror he saw there. The sight of her fear and the smell of her blood made his prick jerk in eager attention. When he was done with her, he would wake his new wife and fuck her until she sobbed for mercy.

At the moment he had other more pressing needs. “What do you mean, he didn’t kill her?”

The female at his knees flinched at his question, as if each word caused her pain. Which they probably did. She knew nothing she said would save her. It was just a matter of time.

Her short, stubby fangs flashed at him from behind lips wet with both snot and spittle. “He…he didn’t…he didn’t…” The quivering vampire choked back a strangled sob, the pathetic action causing fresh blood to squeeze past Haral’s fingers. “He didn’t kill her.”

Haral drove his claws deeper into her throat, bending slightly at the waist to bring his face closer to hers. “You told me you followed him. You told me he’d found her. If he didn’t kill her, what did he do to her?”

The bleeder’s stare flicked around the room.

“Well?” Haral snapped, giving her a sharp shake. Tiny drops of blood splattered his pajama legs, seeping into the expensive gold silk to become large, crimson blossoms. He glared at the sniveling bitch at his feet. He liked these pajamas. They were his favorite, and she’d ruined them. “What did he do to her? Fuck her?”

The vampire nodded, her blood-soaked chin slapping against his hand. “Yes. Yes, sort…sort of.”

Haral narrowed his eyes, an icy shard of furious disbelief pushing into his chest. “Sort of? He fucked the Principatus…sort of? Where?”

“In…in a strip club called the Pleasure Pussy…in…” bright-red blood bubbled past the female’s lips in a hiccupping gasp, “
…
in one of the back booths.” Her wild eyes rolled, fear excreting from her pores in sickening waves. “He shoved his…head between her legs…then his hand down her pants…they kissed, she said…something I couldn’t hear and then he left.”

“And then he left,” Haral repeated. The icy fury in his chest grew colder. His brother fucking a Principatus? He released his grip on the whimpering excuse for a vampire and straightened, her sobs and blubbered “thank you, sire, thank you, sire, thank you” fading to silence in his head.

Ezryn Navarr, the prodigal son, fucking a Principatus? Defying a direct command from his lord? Condemning hundreds to bloody slaughter? Haral had given Ezzie four nights to kill the bitch Principatus before the carnage began, and this was how his holier-than-thou twin brother spent the first one? Tongue deep in the assassin’s cunt?

He stared at the shuttered windows of the compound he’d commandeered for his stay in Australia, the candelabrum casting the expansive ballroom in a warm, orange glow. Outside, the sun was almost above the horizon. Sleep called him with urgent insistence, but he ignored the pull. He lifted his hand to his mouth and flicked his tongue along his fingers, the vampire’s blood tingling over his taste buds.

What did it mean that his brother, the moralistic bastard, would send so many to their deaths? A vampire who’d left his home country and everything he knew behind to prevent that very thing happening? For the life of a Principatus, no less?

And how did he, overlord of the vampire race, capitalize on it?

What did he do with this unexpected news to bring about Ezryn’s utter and complete humiliation and defeat?

What did he…

A smile pulled at the corners of Haral’s mouth and he laughed, the sound bouncing around the cavernous room. Of course. He knew exactly what to do.

Holding out his hand, he turned his smile on the cowering bleeder sobbing at his feet. “Hush, child.” He stretched his smile wider. Softened it. Made it reach his eyes. “There is no need for tears. You have made your lord pleased.”

The female hiccupped, wiping at her blood-laced snot with the back of her hand, her eyes wide. Hope flooded her face. Hope and disbelief and relief. She smiled, a toothy expression as incredulous as the light in her eyes. “Oh, thank you, sire, thank you, thank you, thank you.” She took his offered hand, her trembling, snot-smeared fingers sliding over his. “Forgive me. I will do better. I will make you so pleased.”