I was so busted, not only for hiding those initial slashes today, but also the other times. The glint in Vlad’s eyes warned me that he’d figured that out, too.
“About six times that you don’t know about, but Mircea never did anything this serious before, I swear.”
“Six times,” he repeated. His hand grew hotter, until I was surprised that my dress didn’t catch fire beneath it. “And you decided to hide this from me why?”
“I can’t stop Mircea from using our link this way,” I replied, frustration leaking into my tone. “Nor can I stop him from mentally taunting me when he does it, which is something else I hadn’t told you about. But I can stop him from hurting you.” My voice caught. “I told you before, I am sick of being the weapon your enemies use to bludgeon you. Every time I didn’t tell you about Mircea’s attacks, I was thwarting him from hurting you. I might not be able to stop him yet, but I can damn sure not play into his hands.”
Vlad closed his eyes. For nearly six hundred years, he’d built up his power, abilities, and brutal reputation to ensure that neither he nor his people would be at an enemy’s mercy again, and he’d been successful . . . until me.
Admitting that he loved me had done everything Vlad had warned me about. In his enemies’ eyes, I was now the ultimate tool to use against him, and Mircea had hardly been the first to exploit that. As a result, I’d been through hell and back over the past year, yet every wound that others had inflicted on me had hurt Vlad worse because he blamed himself.
When he opened his eyes again, their color had changed from coppery green to bright, vampiric emerald. “I understand why you did it,” he said through gritted teeth. “But promise me that you will never hide such a thing from me again.”
If Mircea hadn’t nearly killed me several minutes ago, I might have refused. But the stakes had just been substantially raised. “I promise,” I said, holding his gaze. “Vlad, I—”
Razorlike pain hit me in multiple places, stopping me from saying anything more. I clutched my abdomen, which did nothing to protect me from blades that were magical instead of tangible.
Vlad let out a vicious curse as fresh blood leaked out between my hands. His shields dropped and his emotions once more smashed through mine. Amidst the blasts of rage, I caught barely controlled panic as he watched Mircea magically cut into me. Would he stab us both in the heart again, finishing the job this time? Had my reprieve been a cruel trick?
If so, there was nothing I could do, so I tried to calm both Vlad and myself in case the worst wasn’t about to happen.
“It’s not that bad,” I said in a tight voice. Thank God our sire tie went only one way and Vlad couldn’t feel that I was lying. “He’s not going near my heart,” I added.
The new cuts were all well below my chest, and I fought not to wince at each fresh slice. These weren’t the long, deep slices Mircea normally went for. They were short, shallow, and connected. What was Mircea doing? Trying the famed death-of-a-thousand-cuts torture on me?
“I am going to break my brain thinking up ways to make him suffer,” Vlad swore, his fists clenching. Then his gaze narrowed and he leaned closer, ripping my now-sodden dress off me.
“Stay still,” Vlad ordered, surprising me by grabbing the vase of flowers from the nightstand and dumping the water it contained all over me. Then, he stretched a dry sheet over me.
When I saw the new bloodstains mar it, I thought, First my dress, now the sheets. Mircea has been hell on the white fabrics today. Then a loud voice in my mind broke through the pain. It was Mircea, and he sounded panicked.
Respond back through your flesh or they’ll kill me!
Chapter 4
“What?” I said out loud. “Who are ‘they’?”
Vlad looked around. “Who are you talking to?”
“Mircea,” I said through gritted teeth, trying to focus, but I only heard silence in my mind now. What do you mean? I mentally shouted back, yet still heard nothing in response.
Vlad gripped my shoulders. “Mircea? What did he say?”
I shook my head, wincing at the continued slashes that I now realized were the words Who is there? carved over and over. “He said, ‘Reply back through your flesh or they’ll kill me.’ I don’t know who he means and I can’t ask. He’s gone now.”
“They?” Vlad repeated, his mouth tightening into a steely line. “If this isn’t Mircea’s doing, who is it?”
With a glance at me that managed to be both ruthless and apologetic, he drew a scorching finger across my thigh. It left a thin trail of burned flesh that read as clear as ink. Even as I gritted my teeth against the pain, I noted with ironic appreciation that Vlad’s handwriting was flawless.
I need Mircea alive. Name your price—Vlad Dracul
The other mystical cuts on my stomach ceased at once. Vlad dumped the rest of the water from the flower vase over me, washing away the old blood so that any new reply would be easily seen. We both waited in tense silence. If I’d still been human, I would have been holding my breath.
Minutes ticked by, and nothing happened. I never thought I’d be disappointed over not being sliced up, but I was almost twitching from agitation as my skin remained unbroken.
“Try sending them something else,” I urged. I might not enjoy this, but I needed to know what was going on.
Vlad flashed me another cruelly tender glance, then started burning out his new message. It was much longer this time, so he needed my entire abdomen to write it out.
Bring me Mircea and be richly rewarded. Kill him, and I will destroy you and everyone you care about.
“Way to butter up whoever this is,” I muttered.
This time, there wasn’t a hint of softness in his gaze as he looked at me. “It’s the truth.”
I didn’t need to feel his emotions to know he’d meant every word. Vlad’s brutal side was my least favorite part of him, yet it was part of him nonetheless. When he’d been a human prince of Romania, he hadn’t held off a far larger invading empire with flowery rhetoric. He’d done it with sheer ferocity, and his centuries as a vampire after that had only hardened him more.
“What if this is Mircea and he’s toying with us?”
Vlad touched the spot over my heart. “One faulty flick of that blade, and both you and Mircea would have perished. I didn’t think it through earlier, but it makes sense that it wasn’t Mircea. He hates me, but he wouldn’t risk his own life so recklessly. That means someone else did it, and Mircea must have told that person about his connection to you—and thus me—in order to save himself.”
Made sense, especially considering the odd What? I’d caught from Mircea right before that happened. He had sounded as if someone had surprised him, and not in a good way. Still . . .
“Mircea is a vampire-turned-necromancer who can disappear into thin air,” I pointed out. “How could someone even manage to hold him down long enough to stab him with silver, if Mircea can dematerialize at will?”
“Only one way,” Vlad said, and his caressing tone reminded me of the sound knives made when they pierced flesh. “Mircea is being held by people even more powerful than he.”
Magic sucks! I thought again, with far more vehemence this time. It wasn’t enough that we’d finally defeated the vampire who’d allied with Mircea in a centuries-long attempt to kill Vlad. Now, we had to worry about a group of mysterious sorcerers, too. And how would we find them when we didn’t even know who “they” were?
I closed my eyes. I hadn’t been afraid of my tie to Mircea before because he couldn’t kill me without taking himself out. Now, my life was in the hands of people I knew nothing about, except that they were powerful sorcerers and they appeared to want the person I was magically tethered to dead.
“We need to break the spell that’s tying me to Mircea,” I said, opening my eyes. “One way or another.”
“Oh, we will. Never doubt that.”
Vlad’s gaze was so bright, it resembled burning emeralds as he stroked my face. Then his
hand descended, flattening when it reached the spot where that invisible, magic-fueled knife had stabbed me.
“Mere moments from losing you.”
His emotions remained locked down, but the muscle flexing in his jaw along with his elevated temperature was enough to let me know that inside, he was still incendiary. I reached out and twined my fingers through his, until our clasped hands rested over my heart.
“You didn’t lose me.”
And I hadn’t lost him. Less than an hour ago, I thought I had. I stared at Vlad, remembering how I’d tried to memorize his face because I thought I wouldn’t see it again. Now, I wanted something more tangible than a long stare to remind me that we both still had each other.
I pulled his head down and kissed him. It only took the brush of my lips on his for him to respond. He muttered something wordless, then pulled me out of the soaked, bloodstained bed to lay me in front of the fireplace. The fire rose higher as he stared at me, until those orange and blue flames looked as if they were trying to claw their way past the grate to reach us.
“No one is taking you away from me,” Vlad growled, his shirt tearing away after a single swipe. His pants met the same fate, then his molten body covered mine and he kissed me.
I couldn’t stop the currents that pulsed into him when I clutched his back, and from the low, darkly erotic sounds he made, he didn’t want me to. His hands moved over me with the ruthless knowledge of a lover who wouldn’t settle for anything less than my total, uninhibited surrender. Then his fingers taunted me with strokes that matched the sensual flicks of his tongue. After that, I was more than ready to give him everything he wanted . . . and to take everything I needed.
I reached down, grasping his cock while I arched beneath him. His groan vibrated against my lips as he rubbed that thick, hard length against me, sending a starburst of sensation into my loins. Instead of thrusting forward the way I desperately wanted him to, he grabbed both my hands and pinned them above my head.
“Not yet,” he said in a throaty voice.
My sound of protest turned into an extended moan as he slid down, burying his mouth between my legs. His tongue was a sinuous, fiery brand that had me half sobbing from pleasure, and my right hand shot ever-increasing bolts of electricity into him as my passion reached the breaking point.
“Please,” I found myself gasping.
His low laugh teased my aching flesh. “You know that word doesn’t work on me.”
I was too frenzied with desire to let him draw this out. I flipped over, crying out when my abrupt move slammed his mouth against me and he grabbed my hips to hold himself there. Then, even as I was shuddering from the beginnings of an orgasm, I forced his head up and slid down at the same time, until our hips were lined up and I could stare into his now-emerald-colored eyes.
“Since you hate the word please,” I said, voice ragged from passion. “What about now?”
His mouth claimed mine at the same time that he thrust deeply inside me.
Chapter 5
Several hours later, we landed at a private airport in London, England. When Vlad’s new, sleek Learjet rolled to a complete stop, I let out the breath I’d inadvertently sucked in.
He glanced at me, his lips curling. “With everything else going on, you’re nervous about flying?”
“It’s not the flying part I mind,” I responded tartly. “It’s the crashing part I have issues with.”
This plane was new because Mircea had magically compelled Vlad’s pilots to crash the old one. We’d only survived because Vlad had torn open the side door and flown us away moments before impact. Vampires could survive a lot, but no one could live through a plane hitting the ground at maximum velocity.
“We tested everyone to make sure they’re not bound by one of Mircea’s spells,” Vlad reminded me. “Plus, he would never attempt to crash our plane while you’re still linked to him.”
“Hopefully, that won’t be for much longer,” I muttered.
There had been no new “messages” during the time it had taken us to fly to London from Romania. Not knowing what Mircea’s captors intended was sawing at my nerves. On the plus side, I wasn’t dead, so the mysterious sorcerers had to be taking Vlad’s threat against them seriously. On the negative side, we hadn’t been contacted to say that Mircea was being delivered with a big red bow, so whoever “they” were, they didn’t seem in a hurry to give Mircea up, either.
“Where are we meeting Mencheres?” I asked when Vlad opened the interior door that converted into stairs.
“Here,” an accented voice replied from beyond that doorway. Before I had time to recover from my surprise, a Middle Eastern man with waist-length black hair vaulted up the staircase.
Vlad embraced Mencheres, a show of affection he reserved for only a few people in the world. But Vlad had often referred to Mencheres as his “honorary sire,” so I wasn’t surprised when he also accepted a kiss on each cheek from Mencheres.
Then Mencheres turned his charcoal-colored gaze my way, and I wondered why he’d bothered to tamp down his aura to undetectable levels. Mencheres looked like an attractive man in his early twenties, but looking into his eyes was like staring through a time portal into the ancient past. He was so old; one of the famed pyramids in the Giza plateau had been his.
“Leila,” he said, extending his hand. I shook it because I was wearing my current-repelling gloves and thus couldn’t shock him from the simple contact.
“Thanks for coming,” I said, not adding, but I don’t know why you’re here. Mencheres hadn’t been able to break Mircea’s spell before, although he’d given it his best shot. Unless Mencheres had had a breakthrough since then, I didn’t know why Vlad wanted to meet with him.
“I was in New York, so it was a short flight,” Mencheres said, dismissing how he’d dropped everything to meet us here.
“Where’s Kira?” I asked when Vlad hit the button that caused the staircase to fold back into a door.
“Still there,” he replied, waving a casual hand. “I saw no need to interrupt her time with her sister.”
At the word sister, a pang shot through me. I’d promised my own sister, Gretchen, that once Vlad’s enemy Szilagyi was dead, she and my dad could return to a normal life. Then I’d had to go back on that promise as soon as Vlad had killed Szilagyi. Gretchen had not been pleased about having to stay in hiding indefinitely, and neither had my father.
I was distracted from thoughts of my family when Vlad ordered his pilots to take off. “Where are we going?” I asked, grabbing a chair as the engines roared back to life.
“Nowhere,” Vlad replied. “Just far enough off the ground that no one can overhear us.”
Mencheres settled into one of the plush seats. I sat down, too. This plane could hustle when Vlad wanted it to, and his pilots could obviously guess that Vlad was in a hurry.
“Want a drink?” I asked Mencheres, gesturing to the mini bar protected by a clear glass panel. Just because vampires needed blood to survive didn’t mean we skipped other libations.
He inclined his head. “Whisky, if you have it.”
Vlad gave him a sardonic smile. “From that provincial choice, I can tell you’ve been spending time with Bones.”
A smile ghosted across Mencheres’s lips. “If you two weren’t so similar, you’d likely be friends.”
I stifled a snort as I handed Mencheres a glass of whisky. I didn’t know why Vlad disliked Mencheres’s co-ruler so much, but I didn’t see him getting over it anytime soon.
“Enough about that,” Vlad said, dismissing Bones with a swipe of his hand. “Magic is one of the few things forbidden under vampire law, but like Mircea, there are those who still practice it in secret. I need a guide into that world, at once.”
Mencheres leaned forward, his expression turning very serious. “You are too well-known to slip in and out unnoticed, and vampires who practice magic will kill to keep their identities from reaching the Law Guardians.”
I agreed, and felt gu
ilty over telling Vlad we had to break Mircea’s spell at all costs. “There has to be another way—”
“There isn’t,” he interrupted. Despite his hard tone, the hand he laid on my arm was gentle. “If the sorcerers holding Mircea had any intention of returning him, they would have accepted my offer. Their silence means that they’re either still intending to kill him, or they’re thinking of the best way to use him against me.”
I wasn’t a fan of either option, but I didn’t want Vlad to throw himself into even more dangerous circumstances. His abilities would protect him from almost anyone in the vampire world, but in a secret underworld where magic reigned? Not even his feared pyrokinesis was a match for that.
“We’ll see the voodoo queen again,” I said. “Maybe there’s something she didn’t think of before.”
“Her previous leads came to naught, and if she’d thought of anything new, she would have told me.” His tone became flat. “Marie Laveau would love to have me owe her such a stunning debt. She amasses favors the way the greedy amass fortunes.”
“Who are these sorcerers, and how do they have Mircea?” Mencheres asked quietly.
Vlad let out a frustrated sound. “If I knew either, I would be on my way to kill them instead of sitting here with you.”
I filled in the blanks that Vlad’s frustration had left out. “Whoever they are, they were going to kill Mircea until he proved his connection to me. Vlad offered them a bounty if they returned Mircea to him alive. That was several hours ago, and we haven’t heard anything since.”
Mencheres closed his eyes. After an extended silence, he opened them and looked at Vlad. “I left that world more than three millennia ago when magic became outlawed, but I know one person with recent ties to it, and I trust him to act as your guide. First, however, I need your promise that you will not kill him.”
I felt Vlad’s surprise as his shields dropped and he considered this. “I can’t promise that of anyone who betrays me or Leila,” he finally said. “Aside from that, you have my word.”