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“Remember Roag’s foray into the storeroom?” E asked, and yeah, Wraith remembered. Last year during Roag’s bid for revenge, he’d helped himself to E’s collection of rare artifacts and crap Wraith gathered for him. “One of the things he took was the mordlair necrotoxin. That’s what the assassin used.” E exhaled slowly. “There’s no antidote.”
No antidote? “Then a spell. Find a spell to cure it.” Panic started to fray the edges of his control, and Shade must have sensed it, because his grip grew firmer.
“Wraith, we’ve consulted every text, every shaman, every witch.… There’s nothing that can flush the poison from your system.”
“So, bottom line. What are you saying?”
E handed Wraith a mirror. “Take a look at your neck.” He brushed Wraith’s hair back to reveal his personal symbol at the top of his dermoire. The hourglass, which had always appeared full on the bottom, had emerged following his first maturation cycle at the age of twenty.
Wraith inhaled sharply at what he saw now: The hourglass had been inverted, the sand flowing from top to bottom, marking time.
“You’re dying,” Eidolon said. “You have a month, maybe six weeks, to live.”
Two
Serena Kelley was dying. Well, not literally, but it felt like it, what with the way the air was being sucked from her lungs by an extremely hot vampire who was kissing her senseless.
She wasn’t one to hang out in Goth clubs, but tonight’s nosebleed-Euro-Goth music at Alchemy had promised to bring in the vampires—both the wannabe’s of the human variety and the actual undead.
The music echoed off the walls of the old slaughterhouse so loudly it messed with her heart’s ability to beat, shocking her pulse into an uneven, chaotic rhythm. The smell of perfume, sweat, and sex was thick in the air, ratcheting up her libido. She moved with the crush of bodies on the dance floor, going with the tide as the vampire whose name she’d just learned guided her.
She sensed his hunger, his dark need, and yes, it was wrong of her to lead him on like this. Wrong to let him think he was going to get a meal and a notch in his coffin from her.
But what the hell. Every girl needed to flirt now and then.
Especially when flirting was as far as she could go with a guy.
“Come,” Marcus said, in that low whisper vampires could somehow make audible above any racket. “My table waits.”
Marcus was an old vamp, his formal, stiff speech part of his allure, and Serena’s hormones ran amok as he led her to a shadowed corner where several human groupies quivered like excited lapdogs at his approach.
Like so many older-generation vamps, he dressed in tasteful, conservative clothing beneath a midnight trench coat that helped him blend among the Goth and punk fashion in the bars. Glossy black, waist-length hair and ruby-red lips on a severe, pale face completed the look.
He waved his hand, and the lapdogs scattered, some of them cutting her jealous glares. She wondered how many knew he was a real vampire. Few who were deep into the vampire lifestyle actually believed in the undead. Those who did had a tendency to become Renfields—scraping, bowing hangers-ons who offered themselves up to be used in any way a vampire wanted.
Serena might have a thing for vamps, but she’d never stepped over the line to become a meal or a throwaway bedmate.
They sank into the booth, her black cargoes sliding across the faux-leather seats. Marcus wrapped his arm around her waist and tugged her into him.
Perfect. Because yes, she had a vampire fetish her boss, benefactor, and personal Aegis Guardian, Valeriu Macek, would have seizures over, and yes, she liked to live on the wild side. But she also liked to mix business with pleasure, and at this very moment, her business as a treasure hunter involved stealing Marcus’s very valuable, very antique bracelet off his wrist.
Slowly, carefully, she slid her hand over his so her fingers rested on the ancient Macedonian bauble. Marcus didn’t notice—his heavy-lidded gaze focused on her throat, and his erection prodded her hip.
“Shall we go outside, or stay here?” he asked, and she wondered if he knew she was fully aware of what he was.
The way he kept his fangs concealed told her he probably didn’t know. Then again, after hundreds of years of being undead, keeping them hidden had probably become second nature to him. And really, vampire canines weren’t all that obvious unless the vampire became excited, and then they’d erupt from the gums, elongating, growing… so erotic.
Serena tilted her jaw, exposing her throat enticingly. Distractingly. “Here,” she purred, working the bracelet with one hand, and running the other up his chest.
Powerful muscles flexed beneath her palm, and for the thousandth time, she wished she weren’t celibate. Wished she could let herself do all the stupid, risky things humans did when they were in their twenties.
Marcus’s smile revealed just the tips of his fangs as he leaned in, wincing when his chest crushed her pendant between them. He frowned at the grape-sized crystal. “That’s one hell of a jewel.”
“Gift from my mom,” she said easily, even though the necklace was far more than that.
The bracelet slid free. She slipped it inside a leg pocket in her pants and glanced at her watch. “Oh, would you look at the time! I’d better go. Don’t want to turn into a pumpkin.”
Marcus’s hand squeezed her biceps. “I am not finished with you.”
She smiled sweetly. “Oh, but you are. I’m no swan,” she said, using the term for humans who offered up their blood or psychic energy to vampires, though they usually believed the vampires were of the breathing, human variety—what true undead jokingly called fakires.
Rage iced over his dark eyes, and his lips peeled back to reveal daggerlike canines. Any sane human would be terrified, but not Serena.
She had a little secret. She’d been protected by a divine charm for eighteen years, since the day it was bestowed upon her at the age of seven, and no harm could come to her.
Not so long as she remained a virgin.
Marcus lunged for her throat. Serena angled away, and for no apparent reason, the vampire lost his balance, slipped off the seat, and landed in a heap on the floor. The groupies hovering nearby either backed away or rushed in to help him up, but he came to his feet in an explosion of anger.
His eyes narrowed and his fists clenched, but he hadn’t avoided being slain by Aegis Guardians for centuries by causing scenes. Wisely, he did nothing more threatening than curse at her, and then he whirled away in dramatic vampire fashion, the crowd swallowing him and his Renfields as they followed on his heels.
Before Marcus figured out she’d lifted his bracelet, she needed to haul ass—
Something flashed in front of her. No… inside her. A crisp pop burst in her ears, echoing from somewhere in her head. A wash of nausea made her break out in a cold sweat. Instinctively, she reached for her pendant, let the cool, smooth orb comfort her.
Except, the comfort was short-lived. The pendant glowed. A warning. Her cloak… compromised. She was exposed.
Jerking to her feet, she stumbled toward the exit on wobbly legs. She needed to get home. Back to Val’s mansion.
Because for the first time in eighteen years of living a carefree, sheltered life, Serena was afraid.
Byzamoth fell back in his seat, panting, body shuddering. Orgasmic waves of power pumped through him, the name he’d just learned breaking softly from his lips.
Serena Kelley.
He hadn’t known the identity of the human he’d been seeking, but everything about her was now as clear as a witch’s crystal ball.
Too quickly, the power fizzled, leaving him weak, but no less ecstatic. His palm burned, but it was a lovely pain, easily endured. He opened his fist, where the cause of the discomfort, a golf-ball-sized orb known as Eth’s Eye, glowed red. Red instead of gold, because it had been used for evil rather than good.
Exhausted, he let his head fall against the seat rest and gazed up at the ceiling of the Israeli house he’d commandeered this morning. The family who’d inhabited it lay at various angles around him, dead eyes staring blindly. The youngest female virgin had volunteered herself as the blood sacrifice Byzamoth had needed to activate the evil capabilities of Eth’s Eye.
“Volunteered” was probably too strong a word, but in any case, Byzamoth had gotten what he wanted. He’d found the most important human in the universe, the one who would be instrumental in kicking off the most significant event in demon history.
“It’s started,” he said to the demon standing in the living room entrance.
Lore entered, a massive male covered from neck to toe, including his hands, in black leather that matched his short hair. He was one of the most efficient killers Byzamoth had come across, a male whose touch killed everything his bare hand came into contact with.
Byzamoth might be immortal, but even he gave Lore a wide berth.
“I don’t give a shit about your war. I want my money.”
“Why the rush?”
“My partner failed to kill the Vampire demon. I need to finish the job.”
Byzamoth waved his hand. “You’ll get your payment, but it won’t matter. Soon, money will be worthless. Pain will be the new currency.”
“Yeah, well, right now cash buys beer, so hand it over.”
Byzamoth smiled. Even now, the underworld would begin to stir with the sense that something was coming, even if that something was still a mystery to them. Few would understand the significance of what Byzamoth had just done, which was to lift the divine cloak of invisibility that had shielded Serena from demon eyes for so long.
For years she had walked the Earth disguised as a normal human, and few, if any, were the wiser. Until now.
Fortunately for her, she was still charmed and still the keeper of the necklace, Heofon, and no one could take either away from her—not against her will.
No one but a select few individuals. Like Byzamoth.
He had every intention of taking them against her will.
And when he was done with her, he’d be in possession of the most powerful weapon imaginable, and demons would finally rule the world.
