Eternal Beast: Mark of the Vampire (37 page)

“Perhaps this male you have sold me to will appreciate my hunting skills.”

There was a flicker in his gaze, a momentary flash of fury, but he contained it. “I allow you to hunt the rogue demons for me because, frankly, you are far superior a shot than any of the male hunters I possess, but it stops the moment you leave my underworld. Do you understand that?”

Hellen nodded.

“You will not shame me.”

“I am rather good at it though, Father.”

Again the flash of fury clouded his already pale eyes. “Yes,” he hissed. “But after today, the consequences will be dire.”

Hellen’s muscles tensed. “Today?”

The Devil’s grin made the black, scorched earth below her feet tremble. “The time has come, daughter. You will leave us and take your place aboveground—”

“With the bloodsucker,” Hellen finished for him.

Abbadon’s nostrils flared, and he coiled over her like a snake. The air went silent and the rain ceased to fall. It was his attempt at intimidation. There was nothing the Demon King appreciated more than fear in his offspring. Especially in the one before him.

But Hellen remained cool under his taut, red-faced glare. This was never the way to get her to cower, get her on her knees, eyes down and shoulders trembling. Unfortunately, over the past few years, Abbadon had found the way into her fear center.

He cocked his head to one side. “Is that your sisters’ carefree laughter I hear?”

Hellen heard nothing but the deadly silence and the threat that hovered next on her father’s thin, reptilian-like lips.

“I will do as I am instructed,” she said in a quiet voice.

In a shock of movement and hot wind, he rushed toward her. Matching her height now, his face the color of rich, thick blood, he placed one long finger under her chin and lifted. “You had better.”

Or the two lovely demon females on the bank of the Rain Fields back there will feel my true wrath, he didn’t say.

He didn’t have to say it.

Hellen pulled her chin from his touch and said in a firm voice, “I will be the perfect little demon.”

Abbadon grinned and gave a wave of his hand to the fields around them. “You will be the perfect little female.”

The clouds instantly released a torrent of hot rain, sound returned to the air, and out of the corner of her eye, Hellen saw a flash of blue light.

“Now,” Abbadon said, his gaze sweeping over her. “Get back to the Dwelling. You leave within the hour, and you must be bathed, combed, dressed, and prepared.”

Prepared
.

Hellen clung to the word as the Devil turned and dissolved into the hot, misty air. She had sacrificed herself, would give herself to this bloodsucker who her father had sold her to, but that’s where it would end. And her most important bit of preparation would make it so.

The flash of demon blue hit her peripheral once more, and without taking another breath, she had stretched her bow back and released. The arrow hit the target, and Hellen reveled in her final kill as she walked out of the Rain Fields and toward her sisters for the last time.

Erion’s lip curled as beneath his feet, the earth rumbled. It was a soft, uncomplicated movement, just a hint of warning to the animals thereabouts.
Flee, little ones. Get out of the way before you’re run down by an ill-fated traveling party.

And a mutore paven who would kill anything and anyone who gets in his way.

The earth’s easy shudder intensified. Was this it? he mused, his fangs descending. The parcel he’d come to steal?

The
bride
.

Cruen’s bride.

For a moment, Erion stood his ground, his gaze narrowing on the length of dirt road ahead. But when the shudder escalated to a shake, reverberating up through his feet and calves to his gut, into his chest and all the way to his jaw, making his teeth rattle inside his mouth, Erion dropped into a fighting stance and unsheathed his blade.

This was no wedding party approaching, he thought blackly, circling slowly so he could see in every direction. This wasn’t Cruen’s bride. Couldn’t be. This was nature’s doing, inconvenient though it was, a cry of—

The thought died inside his mind. Before him the earth suddenly cracked in one long seam, splitting apart with a jarring lurch.
Christ!
Erion jumped back as the plaintive wail of breaking rock and shifting plates stole the forest’s air. What the hell was happening? An earthquake? He was on California land after all.

A few feet away, a megablast of dirt shot into the air, raining down sharp black pellets onto his face and body. He should flash. Get out of this particular line of fire. Return to France and demand a new location from the shifter who’d given him this disastrous one.

He was on his way, his cells nearly transferred when, suddenly, from inside the dust geyser came a wail, a shriek so intense Erion felt it deep within his bones. Like a wave crashing against the shore, he heard it again and again. The sound boomed through the forest, pinging against trees, then slamming back into Erion’s ears. He shook his head, attempting to clear the sound. As he did, his gaze caught on the crack in the earth. The
sound seemed to emanate from the very center. Though any sane
paven
would’ve drawn back at that point, Erion moved closer. He saw something.

What was it? What the hell was he seeing?

His blood pounded in his veins, every muscle inside him tense and ready.

But for what?

Then he saw it fully, saw
them
fully—two horses, pale as paper, with see-through skin, emerging from the ground. They were snorting and sighing. They were pulling something.

Steeled and ready for a fight, Erion stared unblinking at the scene before him, nearly thinking himself mad as a gleaming, bride white, pumpkin-shaped carriage crawled out of the hole in the earth, its legs moving like a gigantic white spider.

Erion’s mind squeezed.

No.

Impossible. Perhaps even insane. This couldn’t be Cruen’s bride. Inside this Cinderella’s carriage from hell?

As the ghostly team cleared the split in the earth and found solid ground, the carriage came to a halt. One of the horses turned its head and eyed Erion. Its nostrils flared in warning and it pawed the ground.

Erion’s hand tightened around his blade, and in that moment he remembered what he was doing there.

Who he came to steal—and why.

As if they sensed it too, the transparent beasts shifted their gazes and took off, bolting into the woods, dirt kicking up around them.

Erion followed, his blood fueling his pace. This female,
whatever she was, belonged to him. She was his bargaining chip—the ransom he would keep at his side until Ladd, the
balas
he’d created and had not known existed for so long, was returned. Returned to the ones who knew how to love.

He ran through the cool black woods, keeping pace with the carriage until it burst forth into an open field. Moonlight poured down from overhead, spreading its ethereal glow over the overgrown expanse.

In a burst of speed, Erion shot forward, made a quick right, and stopped dead in front of the horses. The beasts screamed as they came to a halt, rearing up, nearly braining him with their massive hooves. The demon inside of Erion pulsed to get out, to tame what was snorting and hissing in front of him—muzzle what was letting loose a cacophony of terrified screams inside the bride white carriage.

He smiled grimly. The terror was only beginning for his parcel.

He leapt onto the footrest near the carriage door and gripped the handle. A flexible wall of dark magic pushed at him, tried to buck him off, tried to convince his mind that he was seeing a mirage, but Erion mentally shoved back at the sensation and yanked at the door.

It wouldn’t budge.

Not a problem. He enjoyed tearing off the gift wrap on a parcel.

Reaching up, he grabbed the metal bar on the roof of the carriage, swung back, and crashed his feet into the carriage door. It went down with a thud. Another feminine scream, and the horses panicked and took off
across the field. Erion’s gaze was razor-sharp now, but all he saw was a blur with electric green eyes before he was hit in the chest and thrown backward.

He landed on the ground with a teeth-shattering slam, something fierce and flooded with layers of skirt on top of him. He heard the horses scream and snort, saw out of his peripheral vision the coach clattering past, leaving the meadow for the dark woods beyond.

“Before I kill you, I want to know just who the hell you are!”

The Layers of Skirt spoke.

Erion’s brows descended over his narrowed gaze. The female sat astride him, had his arms pinned to his sides as though she were under the impression she had some kind of control in the situation. In truth, he could not only flick her off like a bothersome fly, but stretch her arms over her head and slit her throat with one fang all within a breath. But then he wouldn’t be able to feel her weight atop him. So, for a moment, he let her remain where she was.

Miles and miles of pale red hair, illuminated by the moon overhead, draped either side of his shoulders, and those inhuman eyes, the color of emeralds in the brightest sunlight, gazed down at him with equal parts scorn and I-want-to-rip-your-head-off.

This female, Erion mused, the organ between his legs pulsing with curiosity, may be sixty-five inches of soft, round, sexual pleasure wrapped up in a hundred irritating layers of creamy white wedding costume, but she was clearly one fierce bitch.

He had no doubt that she would kill him if he gave her the chance.

If he gave her even an inch.

With one smooth, swift roll, Erion reversed their positions. On her back, her arms now pinned above her head, her hair splayed like a sunrise around her face, and her eyes flashing in the moon’s light, she hissed at him—struggled against him like a caged animal.

“You have made a grave mistake, male,” she said, her voice as deathly as her gaze.

“We shall see,” Erion answered, his tone smooth and resolute as he slipped his free hand around her waist.

She kicked at him, tried to get her knee up between his legs. “I am to be mated this night, you fool!”

“I know.”

“My betrothed will not look kindly on having his bride accosted,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I am counting on it,” Erion said, tightening his hold on her, his gaze traversing the landscape one last time. “Let us hope that Cruen cares enough to come after you. For if he does not…well, we are both dead.”

And from the cold, moonlit ground, Erion flashed away, his parcel still struggling like a feral cat at his side.

Also available from

LAURA WRIGHT

Eternal Captive

Mark of the Vampire

Since feeding her his blood, Lucian Roman has
struggled with his obsession with Bronwyn Kettler—fighting
an uncontrollable desire to kill her, if he has
to, and the vampire she has sworn to wed. But when
a dangerous enemy threatens Bronwyn, only Lucian
can save her life. Even if it means sacrificing
his own…

“Dark, delicious, and sinfully good.”

—New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh

Available wherever books are sold or at
penguin.com

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