Nightbred: Lords of the Darkyn (19 page)

Jamys inspected the shelves. “There is one subject missing.”

“I read a lot of dark fantasy.” She looked for her favorite authors, and saw several who were not represented at all. A shiver ran through her as she realized why. “I don’t see any vampire books.”

“Nor do I.” He replaced the novel on the shelf. “Perhaps we should check the remainder of the premises.”

“Maybe he doesn’t like vampire fiction,” she reasoned as they walked through the rest of the rooms on the first floor. “Not everyone does. Sam can’t stand it.”

The open layout of the house flowed with soft tropical colors, airy spaces, and translucent fixtures fashioned from ordinary glass objects. As Chris admired the dining room table, made from a sheet of frosted, bubbled glass over a layer of vertically standing driftwood boughs fitted together like puzzle pieces, Jamys investigated the adjoining rooms. She looked over at the massive tapestry of intricately woven cloth hanging across from the table, which at first glance looked no more interesting than a bedsheet in need of ironing. When she moved closer, she discovered that what she had assumed was painted linen was actually made of metal.

Not metal.
She trailed her fingers over the tiny strands of the weave.
Gold.
She tried to lift the edge to see the back of it, but it weighed so much she could barely shift it. If it had been made from real gold, and she’d bet her next twelve paychecks that it had, the tapestry could be worth millions.

Jamys reappeared. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m not crazy about coconuts,” she admitted, “but I can get something from the boat later.”

He held out his hand. “Come and see the kitchen first.”

The brand-new kitchen, as it turned out, had been outfitted with every appliance and convenience Chris could want. The fridge had been stuffed with fresh vegetables, fruits, and meat, and more nonperishables crowded every shelf of the peroba cabinets.

There was enough food, Chris thought, to feed a houseful of guests until New Year’s. “Maybe this guy invited some people to stop by or something.”

Jamys shook his head. “He told me that he always came here alone.”

“Then how did this stuff get here? Why so much for just one man?” She hugged her waist as she looked around. “No one could have set this up as a trap. No one knew we were coming here but us.”

“There are no other humans on the island, and before we docked, I sailed around it to assure there were no other vessels.” He came up behind her and encircled her with his arms. “I should feel threatened, but I do not. I feel safe here. I believe someone is helping us, Christian. Someone who wants us to find the emeralds.”

“Well, they’re going to have to wait one more day.” She dropped her arms as she turned around to face him. “If I’m going to be your wife, then I want my wedding night. And it starts right here, right now.” She stood on her toes to press her mouth to his.

Kissing Jamys was like being drugged and electrified in his hands. He lifted her up in his strong arms, and carried her through the house, the lights dimming around them as he slipped into one of the back rooms.

A single bedside lamp came on, illuminating a white master suite. A massive oversize king dominated the room, and offered a simple retreat of sand-colored linens heaped with large pillows shaped like shells. When Jamys lowered her to the mattress, she looked up at a ceiling that shimmered and moved as brightly colored koi swam lazily across it.

“There are fish on the ceiling,” she murmured as Jamys stretched out beside her. “No, there’s an aquarium on the ceiling. Or the ceiling is an aquarium. How do you feed the fish if they’re all the way up there?”

His hands cupped her shoulders as he moved over her. “I imagine with great care.” He brushed her hair away from her throat. “And a ladder. Christian.”

“Jamys.” She lost interest in the fish, and shifted under him as a deep, pervasive throb spread through her pelvis and up into her breasts. “I have been thinking about this for so long . . . and now it’s happening, and I still don’t believe it.”

His voice went low and soft as he stretched her arms up and over her head, pinning them to the mattress. “You cannot have wanted this as much as I have.”

He brought her palm to his lips, using his tongue to trace the mound at the base of her thumb. It brought back the memory of him doing the same, and much more, between her thighs, and she lifted her hips, rubbing herself against him with the same sensual languor. “Keep doing that and you’ll never get rid of me,” she teased.

His long fingers found and traced the outline of her mother’s cross under her shirt. “I will never leave you, Christian. From now until the end, whatever may come, we will face it together.”

She put her hand over his. “And when it’s my time to die?”

“There is nothing in this world for me if you are gone from it.” He touched his brow to hers. “You will have to take me with you.”

“No argument here.” She curled her arms around his neck. “We’ll never have to be alone again, here or in the next place.”

They slowly unwrapped each other from their clothes, giving gifts of kisses to the skin they exposed. She could touch him anywhere she wanted, with her lips and hands and tongue, and there was so much of him she wanted to learn and know and pleasure: the elegant stretch of his back, the long muscles of his thighs, the sexy dent of his navel.

Everything about her seemed to fascinate him, too. He kissed every inch of her breasts, tracing their contours with his tongue and lavishing suckling tugs of his mouth on the peaks. He rolled onto his back so he could stroke her from shoulders to bottom with his palms; she spread her thighs to do the same with her slick folds against his shaft.

She couldn’t keep her hands away from his penis; the velvety texture of his foreskin excited her as much as the length and hardness of his erection. Playing with him as he touched her made her feel powerful and dizzy; she could taste her racing heartbeat when she put her mouth to his.

They came together on their sides, face-to-face as he draped her thigh over his hip and she guided him to her. She wanted to feel every inch of him coming into her, and kept her fingers curled around him as he pressed deep. The sensation made her eyelids droop and her lips part; she’d never felt more a part of anything than this, than with him. It shook her, it completed her.

He looked at her with the same astonished relief.
Now I know why it was you, why it was always you. This is where we belong.

Jamys moved, flexing and rubbing himself inside her as he tested this new symmetry they had discovered. The slick tightness of her body gloved every inch of him.

She could feel the nudge of his cockhead as he forged deeper, and the tiny, thrilling burst of sensation when he touched the mouth of her womb. Her clit pulsed as he drew out and the bulge of his shaft glanced it; his eyes burned into hers as he pulled her closer to work against it.

Chris felt her whole body tighten, and she clutched at him, rolling her hips as she tried to get more of him. “Jamys, please, please, I need . . .”

“What do you need?” he murmured as he splayed his hands over her bottom, and worked his cock in and out of her folds. “Tell me, my lovely one.”

Chris rolled over, dragging him with her, groaning as he held back. “I need you. Please. Give me more. Give me all of it.”

He pushed inside her in one long, slick motion, his hands easing her thighs back as he looked down at the junction of their bodies. “Look at how beautifully you take me.”

Chris glanced down, and the sight of his penis buried to the hilt in her pussy made her tremble on the verge of orgasm. “Oh, God, I’m going to come.”

“Yes, you are.” He put his thumb to her clit, circling it as he drew out, and then stroking it as he thrust back in. “Now you give it to me while I fuck you.”

Chris shattered around him, her body arching up from the mattress as the night became a soundless, endless whirlwind of sensation. She could hear him whispering into her hair, his hands playing over her as he plunged in and out of her, pushing her through the agonizing satisfaction to more hunger, more need.

She saw the narrow splinter of his pupils and the sharp glitter of his fangs before he turned his face away. He needed more than sex from her, and it felt completely natural to reach up to pull him to her throat.

“Take it,” she urged when he kept his mouth closed. “Show me how it feels. I want to know.”

Jamys muttered something before his lips parted and he struck, his fangs piercing her flesh as his mind opened to hers. She exploded with him, feeling the dark thrill of his satisfaction as he drank from her and filled her over and over with the cool rush of his semen.

Chris came back to herself to find her arms and legs entwined around him. “I don’t know about you, but I thought the grand tour of the stars was kind of unnecessary. I’d have been fine with orbiting the moon.”

“I did not think to consult you,” Jamys said gravely as he touched the curve of her throat. “We must try it again.”

“Okay, but I’m only giving you sixty or seventy years to get it right.” She tucked her chin in to see the two puncture wounds on the curve of her shoulder. “It doesn’t hurt. I thought it would.” She saw his frown, and added, “Oh, don’t. Honestly, I loved my first bite.”

“No Kyn has ever . . . ?” When she shook her head, he brought his thumb to his mouth, biting into it before pressing it to the marks he’d left on her. “We must take care, my beautiful girl. When I am inside you, I cannot think clearly. I cannot think at all.”

“Technically that’s my problem.” She offered him a prim smile. “According to proper protocol, when a
tresora
consents to provide her lord with intimate pleasures, she must first provide him with a sufficient quantity of stored blood so that the temptation of thrall and rapture may be avoided.”

He smiled a little. “That sounds like Burke.”

“You would not believe how red his face got while he was saying it.” She ran her hand down his arm, and linked her fingers with his. “So did I please you, my lord?”

“You know that you have already ruined me for all other females,” he chided.

“I know, I’m the most amazing chick in the universe, and you are so, so lucky to have me, and maybe one day I’ll even believe that.” And get over her need for constant reassurance, which had to be annoying. “Just tell me anyway.”

“I have no words for it. I have never felt such love.” Jamys brought her hand up to his heart to press her palm over the slow, steady beat. “You please me with but one look, and arouse me with but a single touch. Tonight I felt you in my very soul.” He bent his head to say the rest against her lips. “I love you, Christian.”

As he kissed her, Chris looked up to see the koi swirling through the water overhead, their brilliant white and orange scales flashing with their movements. The blue water shimmered, darkening to a haunting emerald green as a shadow stretched across the ceiling, and the fish darted away.

Jamys stiffened, rolling away from her to grab his head with his hands. Through clenched teeth he said, “No. You cannot. I
will
not.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Chris sat up and reached for him, only to feel him go limp under her hands. “Jamys?” He didn’t move, not even when she shook him.

She grabbed her clothes, pulling them on as she tried to think of what could have caused this. It wasn’t thrall; he hadn’t taken enough blood from her for that. He wasn’t injured, either.

“I don’t know what to do,” she told him, more terrified than she’d ever felt. “I’m going to see if there’s a phone and call Burke.”

A woman stepped into the bedroom. For a split second she looked like a frizzy-haired witch wearing a potato sack, and then she changed into Lucan.

She’s some kind of shape-shifter.
Chris smelled a strange, sharp honey scent that wasn’t jasmine, and felt confused as she stepped backward. “Leave him alone.”

“He is not our concern.” Lucan smiled sadly as two men flanked him, both holding pistols and copper-clad knives. “We came to find you.”

Chapter 17

L
ucan opened his eyes to his own face, and slowly turned his head to see the mirror-world around him. His form and features appeared in glass walls fashioned to resemble the interior of his stronghold: a silent army of himself. The only difference between them appeared to be the fact they all wore gloves while his own hands lay bare.

A frigid breath of air and a tinkling sound made him glance up. Overhead silk threads held suspended a thousand jagged crystal blades, each sharp edge clad in a honed ribbon of copper.

The nightlands were ever an enigma, but for once the message they delivered was quite plain: If he made one wrong move, if he lost his temper, he would be cut to pieces.

“But I am so easily persuaded to violence,” one of his images mentioned.

“Too many have died beneath my hand,” another said.

“Or it may be that I am dead already,” a third offered. “And this is my hell.”

“Hell indeed,” Lucan murmured, “if I must listen to myself prattle on for all eternity.”

A fourth twin offered him a benign smile. “For all your icy wit, cunning schemes, and razor tongue, my lord, you are a simple soul.” He gestured to one of the mirrors, where the image melted into Lucan as a boy, cowering before his mother, Gwynyth, in a rage. “Unwanted.” Gwynyth’s golden charms darkened into the remote beauty of Frances, the first mortal he had loved. “Unloved.” Frances grew younger and tougher, her gown shrinking into one of Samantha’s ugly suits. “Unworthy.”

Lucan saw a flash of light in front of his nose, and glanced down as the falling crystal dagger smashed between his feet. “And now, unbelievably bored. Is this pathetic hothouse truly the best you can do?”

Another shimmering blade fell, but before it could bury itself in Lucan’s arm, a towering figure dressed as a monk lifted a heavily scarred hand and caught it. “You will attend to me now, boy.”

Lucan laughed, and the sound sent a shock wave through the crystal hanging over them. “I am neither a boy nor your attendant.”

A dark-haired woman he had never before seen appeared in the mirror closest to him.

“You were my son.” Grave dirt fell from her lips as she spoke, and ghosts danced in her gray eyes. “But I sent you away, and died alone and frightened.”

At least this apparition had it wrong. “You are not my mother.”

“The lady Blanche did give birth to you, my son.” The priest held the woman’s hand as she stepped out of the mirror. “For your safety and her own, she convinced her cousin Gwynyth to hide you at court while she used your existence to blackmail several lovers. Unfortunately she went too far by demanding marriage from a duke.” The priest paused to brush some of the cobwebs from her shoulders. “He buried her alive in one of his family tombs.”

One of the few things impossible to do in the nightlands was lie, and this impossible truth outraged Lucan. “Do you know what Gwynyth did to me? The hell she made of my boyhood?”

“Gwynyth saved your life by naming you
her
son,” the priest told him. “Had she not, the duke would have seen to it that you joined your mother permanently.”

Lucan watched the dark woman fade away. “I did well enough without a mother.”

“So you did. You with your killing touch and your cold heart.” The priest made the sign of the cross over him. “You who were to become Death. Darkness has no need, my son.”

“I am a man,” Lucan said, “not darkness or death, or your son.”

“I would have been your father, but for your mother, who told me that you were Tremayne’s get.” His mirror image swelled and reshaped its form into a broader, older version of himself with glowing green eyes. “When he brought damnation to me, he denied being your sire, and told me you had been changed. On that night I lost the last remnant of my faith.”

Lucan knew the nightlands made the priest’s words the truth . . . or he believed what he said to be true.

“If by this tedious babbling you are attempting some manner of apology, you are seven centuries too late.” Lucan ignored a sharp crack that shifted the glass floor beneath him. “I have no need for a father.”

“Darkness has no need.” The priest moved his gloved hand over the face of one of the standing mirrors, which darkened to show Samantha shackled inside a small cage. “Your woman has been taken prisoner by your nameless enemy.” He reversed his hand, and Christian appeared, hurled to the deck before Samantha, who assumed a protective position over the girl. “So, too, the child she loves as a sister. Do you know what he does to women, your enemy?”

“Release me.” When the priest said nothing, Lucan seized him by the throat, and a shower of crystal death rained down around them. “Goddamn you, let me out of here.”

Dark metal oozed out of the older man’s pores, covering his skin and robe until he became a copper statue of himself. Lucan held on, snarling as more crystal fell and sliced through his flesh, and the hand he had wrapped around the priest’s throat became engulfed in flame and blackened.

“You are spellbound here by the one who means to take your kingdom from you,” the priest said, his voice grinding over the words like rusted metal. “It is not within my power to free you.”

“So you are as useless to me here as you were in life. How astonishing.” Lucan flung the priest from him as his rage boiled over, pulverizing the crystal blades embedded in his flesh. His images on wall after wall exploded, filling the air with clouds of sparkling shards and stripping the copper facade from the priest.

Lucan destroyed the world around them, until the gray void descended, obliterating everything but him and the priest, their wounds erased, their garments restored.

“You believe I am useless, and perhaps I am,” the priest said. “But this I can tell you, my son: I, too, have terrible powers, and for the love of a woman used them to destroy myself. You will come to a moment when you know these things, and only then will you understand me.”

The priest vanished.

“If that preposterous idiot is punishment for my sins, then I salute your genius at torture.” He was talking out loud to a God he no longer worshipped; surely madness had already begun to set in. Bespelled or not, he had to fight his way back to consciousness, find the women, and attend to his enemy.

Endless as the void seemed, Lucan knew it to be but a veil between worlds. He tempered his anger, gathering himself and focusing his thoughts on one objective: to awaken.

Centuries of self-discipline permitted him to move through that which was immovable, and gradually emerge from the clinging nothingness into a distant sense of his physical body. He could feel all around him his stronghold, his men, the club. With a final surge of will, he came to awareness, although he still remained outside his body, only hovering near it.

The enemy had taken him over, mind and body, and had draped him over an armchair sitting in the center of the dance floor. A bottle of bloodwine dangled from his right fist; in his left gleamed a copper-clad sword. Lucan recognized the weapon as Turner’s finest work: a gift the weapons master had presented to him when he had joined the
jardin
. He swiped it through the air and drank from the bottle as twenty of his men stood in defensive positions around him.

Aldan glanced back at the impostor. “Someone has broken through the front line, my lord.”

“It is the boy, I wager. Disarm him, but do not kill him,” Lucan heard himself command. “He has knowledge I must have.”

The doors to the club flung open, and Jamys Durand stepped inside, the daggers in his hands wet with fresh blood. The boy turned briefly to bar the door before he moved forward and inspected the interior of the club. He then leveled his gaze on the impostor.

“Where is she?”

* * *

When Thierry Durand had gone mad, Jamys had understood the reason for it. The hideous tortures inflicted on his father by the Brethren were nothing compared with the agony of believing Angelica was dead. The bond between Darkyn lord and
sygkenis
was absolute; severing it resulted in insanity. That his father in his deranged state had somehow bonded a second time, with Jema, had been a miracle, and the saving of him.

Jamys had known he was doomed from the moment the voice of the same Kyn he had contacted through Gifford had come into his head.
You will not interfere, boy.
He had struggled even as he felt his limbs growing numb and leaden. To his shame, he could do nothing but watch as Lucan dragged Christian out of the room.

Not even at the mercy of the Brethren inquisitors had he felt so helpless—or enraged.

It didn’t matter to Jamys that Christian was mortal, and the bond between them imperfect. She was his woman, his wife, his love. And for taking her from him, Lucan would die.

The Kyn held Jamys captive in his own body until the sound of the speedboat faded from the air, and then released him as suddenly as he had taken him over.

He takes her to his stronghold,
his voice purred.
She belongs to Death now.

She is mine.
At the instant he regained control of his body, Jamys flung himself out of the bed and dragged on his garments. He ran from the house to the pier, searching the dark, empty waters. As he climbed onto the boat and cast off, he could smell her in the air, her scent permeated with love and terror.

He engaged the engine, and sailed from the island to the mainland, dropping anchor just beyond the shallows and diving from the deck into the chilly waters. He swam to the beach, emerging at a flat run for the nearest vehicle he saw, a sedan sitting at a traffic light.

The driver’s eyes widened as Jamys wrenched open the locked door. “What do you think you’re—” His voice cut off as soon as Jamys clamped a hand on his shoulder.

You want to give me the car and walk to your destination.

“Here, take it,” the man said as he unfastened his seat belt and climbed out. “I’m going to walk home.”

Jamys got in, slammed the door, and drove, swerving between two cars turning in front of him. As brakes screeched and angry voices shouted, he pressed the accelerator to the floor, speeding away.

Lights, cars, and buildings became a blur as Jamys drove north. Dimly he felt the seawater dripping from his clothes to soak the seat beneath him. He carried but two daggers, and as a mortal with an annoying voice crooned a holiday song from the dashboard, he clenched his fist and rammed it into the console, silencing the radio.

Lucan had a stronghold, a garrison, and the most dangerous weapon of all, his killing hands. Jamys had a car, two daggers, and a power that affected only mortals. He could almost hear his father’s voice:
Be rational, my son. This is suicide.

The voice was his father’s, but not the sentiments. More than any other warrior, his father would understand this.

Should by some narrow chance you save the girl, she will never be yours,
his mother whispered.
You are destined to live forever. She was born to die. Forget her. Save yourself.

By betrayal his mother had saved herself when she had been captured by the Brethren. She’d won her freedom by becoming their agent and luring countless Kyn into the hands of the enemy. Knowing they would die slow, hideous deaths by torture, she’d done the same to her entire family. How easy it had been for her to tear apart the bonds of marriage and motherhood. . . .

The car slowed as Jamys recalled how his mother had changed after the trip to Italy. The separation from his
sygkenis
had driven Thierry to the brink of madness; being reunited with her had brought him back to sanity. Angelica had seemed equally relieved, and in the celebrations that followed, no one questioned what they might have under more ordinary circumstances.

Before the journey to Italy, Angelica had been cool and reserved; after returning, she had lavished her attentions on Thierry, often embarrassing the entire household with her wanton behavior. She began to berate the mortal servants she had always treated well, and took to punishing them for even the slightest mistakes—but never in front of Thierry.

Jamys had been alarmed by the changes in his mother’s character, but when he spoke to his father about them, Thierry had dismissed them as temporary, the lingering effects of the separation.

Jamys remembered several chambermaids who had vanished; Angelica claimed they’d run off with their lovers, or had left to take better positions in other households. Yet none of them had ever been seen again, and now he suspected that his mother had killed them in one of her rages.

The Brethren hadn’t simply turned Angelica into a traitor, he realized. They had broken her bond with Thierry, and had driven her mad in the process.

Everyone had assumed that, like Thierry, Angelica had recovered from being separated from her life companion as soon as they had been reunited. She had been clever enough to act the part of a
sygkenis
and prevent anyone from suspecting her insanity.

I knew I had gone mad long before I found Jema,
his father had once said.
Had I been rational, I might have put an end to myself. But madness is its own purpose, and has its own beauties and desires.

Years of guilt sifted away, their impossible weight turning to dust. The monster of Angelica’s insanity had betrayed them to the Brethren. The mother Jamys had always loved, the beloved wife who had devoted herself to him and his father, had in fact never returned to them. She had died in Italy.

A memory of Angelica’s face, now serene, drifted into his mind. As if she knew his thoughts, she nodded and smiled, and then she was gone.

Peace and determination entwined inside Jamys, eradicating his anger and fear as he drove the last miles to Fort Lauderdale. When he came to the barricades and detour signs directing traffic away from the stronghold, and saw the warriors who had taken discreet defensive positions, he turned off the road and parked in front of a crowded restaurant.

Inside the maître d’ met him at the door. “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t offer valet parking.”

Jamys touched his shoulder, issued his instructions, and then entered the restaurant. There were more than a hundred mortals dining, but the windows were closed and the ventilation minimal. Curious eyes turned drowsy, and voices fell silent as the scent of sandalwood spread through the dining room.