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Dominique scrambled out of easy reach. How foolish not to bring his blades. By the time he went to fetch them, Kambyses would be long gone.
Of course, Kambyses could have been long gone before Dominique ever got here to dig him up.
The withered body lay still in the dappled shadows cast by the moon. Fingers of wind teased at his thick hair and torn clothing. He seemed to listen, entranced, to the crashing waves.
Alive.
Dangerous, Dominique corrected himself, but there was no conviction behind the thought. Stealing over him was the same serenity he felt earlier, freedom from all doubt and struggle…and complete certainty about what he intended to do.
No, that wasn’t quite right either. He tipped his head as though he could hear what he suddenly knew had always been there, just beneath his conscious mind. The heart of the beast, his vampire soul. It was this that now surrendered to peace.
Exactly like the living corpse lying before him did.
Know me. You hear my call every time you pierce a vein…
“It is your will we obey when the beast takes control,” Dominique murmured as he comprehended the mind-numbing true extent of that fact. “Your will, your…soul. These are what we are. You are…the beast in us all.”
No reaction.
Dominique reached for the duct tape still stuck across the mouth, pried up an edge, and pulled. There was nothing Kambyses could do with his voice now that he couldn’t already do without it. His mouth opened a little, and his wasted ribcage rose in a deep, savoring inhalation of the salty-wet air, but he didn’t speak.
The eyes of the beast met Dominique’s, but not as he had ever seen them. The desperate hunger receded. In its place, something like gratitude emerged. It hummed in the telepathic web holding them bound to each other—and all their kind. A web Dominique noticed only now that it was changing.
One of those bony arms extended across toward him. Kambyses’s mouth moved. The voice that emerged was as dusty and strained as the wrappings of a mummy and sounded just as foreign. The words bore no resemblance to any language Dominique could name. Yet, he felt their meaning as if they were his own thoughts.
You are the chosen one, Nico. You always have been.
With a small shock, he realized Kambyses no longer blocked him from his mind. The one-way link established when Dominique fed from him over a week ago was weak, but it was far from gone.
“To be your eternal companion?” Dominique could summon no rancor. Only curiosity.
Companion. Lover. Prodigy… Heir.
Heir? The implication of that one word flat-lined his mind.
A thousand years of searching has brought me to you. You are the most worthy, my ultimate champion. You are…my better.
He said nothing, trusting neither his voice nor his thoughts as he experienced what Kambyses had felt the previous night. Dismembered and pinned beneath his youngling’s heel, he was outmaneuvered and more thoroughly defeated than he had ever been. Defeated, but not defenseless. Spinning illusions that would have tricked them into restoring him would have taken little effort. Ending them all after that, no effort at all.
But after that first attempt, he knew there was no point.
Nothing would have changed.
Nothing ever…changed.
Kambyses inhaled again, savoring the air, the moment, in utter contentment. This time, he spoke in French. “I would have liked more time with you, Nico. I would have liked to become the man you would have been proud to call your sire.” Another breath. A smile weighted with regret. “But I am so very tired of the darkness. I can bear it no more.” Switching to English, he finished, “Dominique, you never accepted me as your master because you have none. You bow down to no one, and you never will. My brave young one. I cede you my kingdom. It is yours to tear from my body at will.”
Dominique’s mouth was dry as the sand flying over the ground in ribbons. In his mind, Kambyses showed him exactly how this incredible thing was to be done—the way it had been done before, so long ago. He felt the fire-blood burn through him just thinking about it. Not merely in his gut this time, but in the deepest caverns of his being. His canines lengthened at the very idea of drinking such blood to the death.
“I want nothing of yours,” he said, though he couldn’t deny the horrified anticipation stealing over him. It belonged to the beast. It belonged to Kambyses. “I never did.”
“But it will not be mine once you claim it, will it? It can be anything you want it to be.”
The words were a lightning strike down Dominique’s spine. Without Kambyses at its center, the world of night would no longer thrum with the fear and desolation of his insatiable, lonely spirit. Without Kambyses, the world of night could truly be anything Dominique wanted it to be—anything he and Cassidy wanted it to be. It would be changed as Serge had prophesied.
Forever.
He moved closer. His hands shook. If he was compelled, he didn’t care. “What if what I want is for it not to exist?”
