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She heard the wolf howl, and the sound was hunger.
They were everywhere she was, and she had nothing but her empty hands and pounding heart. Still she ran blindly, the scream trapped in her burning throat.
She burst out of the trees and onto a cliff above a raging sea. Below her, waves lashed at rocks that rose up, sharp as razors. Somehow in her terror she’d run in a circle, and was back above the cave that held something even death feared.
The wind whipped at her, and power sang in it. His power, the hot, clean power of the sorcerer. She reached for it, strained toward it. But it slipped through her shaking fingers and left her nothing but herself.
When she turned, Lilith stood, regal in red, her beauty luminous against the velvet black. At each side was a black wolf, quivering for the kill. Lilith stroked her hands over their backs, hands that glittered with rings.
And when she smiled, Glenna felt a terrible pull inside her own belly. A deep and terrible yearning.
“The devil or the deep blue.” With a laugh, Lilith snapped her fingers for the wolves to sit. “The gods never give their servants decent choices, do they? I have better.”
“You’re death.”
“No, no, no. I’m life. That’s where they lie. They’re death, flesh and bone moldering in the dirt. What do they give you these days? Seventy-five, eighty years? How small, how limiting.”
“I’ll take what I’m given.”
“Then you’d be a fool. I think you’re smarte
r than that, more practical. You know you can’t win. You’re already tired, already weary, already questioning. I’ll offer you a way out, and more. So much more.”
“To be like you? To hunt and kill? To drink blood?”
“Like champagne. Oh, the first taste of it. I envy you that. That first heady taste, that moment when everything falls away but the dark.”
“I like the sun.”
“With that complexion?” Lilith said with a gay laugh. “You’d fry like bacon after an hour on the beach. I’ll show you the coolness. The cool, cool dark. It’s inside you already, just waiting to be wakened. Can you feel it?”
Because she could, Glenna only shook her head.
“Liar. If you come to me, Glenna, you’ll stand by my side. I’ll give you life, eternal life. Eternal youth and beauty. Power so beyond what they’ve given you. You’ll rule your own world. I would give you that, a world of your own.”
“Why would you?”
“Why not? I’ll have so many. And I’d enjoy the company of a woman such as yourself. What are men, really, but tools to us? If you want them, you’ll take them. This is a great gift I offer you.”
“It’s damnation you offer me.”
Her laugh was lilting and seductive. “Gods frighten children with talk of hell and damnation. They use it to keep you bound. Ask Cian if he would trade his existence, his eternity, his handsome youth and lithe body for the chains and traps of mortality. Never, I promise you. Come. Come with me, and I’ll give you pleasure beyond pleasure.”
When she stepped closer, Glenna held up both hands, drew what she could out of her chilled blood and struggled to cast a protective circle.
Lilith simply struck out a hand. The tender blue of her irises began to redden. “Do you think such puny magic will hold me? I’ve drunk the blood of sorcerers, feasted on witches. They’re in me, as you will be. Come willing, and take life. Fight, and take death.”
She moved closer, and the wolves rose to stalk.
Glenna felt the pull, mesmerizing, glorious and dark, a drawing up in the belly that was elemental. It seemed the beat of her blood answered that call. Eternity and power, beauty, youth. All for one moment.
She had only to reach for it.
Triumph lit Lilith’s eyes, burned them to red. Fangs flashed as she smiled.
Tears slid down Glenna’s cheeks as she turned, as she leaped toward the sea and the rocks. As she chose death.
There was a scream ripping through her head when she shot up in bed. But it wasn’t her own, she knew it wasn’t her own. It was Lilith’s, a scream of fury.
