The horse was holding his own, and damn, wasn’t that the understatement of the century? The Percheron was a magnificent sight to behold. But even the young, powerful steed was having a hard time keeping his footing on the gravelly trail, and Ramsey couldn’t help but consider what would happen if the 1,400-pound steed actually fell. He grit his teeth around the reed and focused his thoughts: There were more pressing matters to attend to.
Like how to retrieve his destiny before she encountered something she couldn’t defend against… before she led the horse to the edge of the waiting cliff.
He sighed, mentally preparing himself for the confrontation. No matter how he turned it, it wouldn’t be pleasant, and frankly, that wasn’t his foremost concern. Tiffany would come with him one way or the other; best to just go ahead and get it done.
He whistled low, mimicking the call of a native swallow, just to get her attention in the least abrasive way, and then he slowly stepped out from beneath the tree and began to make his way up the steep embankment, choosing his footing with ease.
Tiffany froze in the saddle. She pulled back on the reins to halt the horse and sat up straight to listen. A wisp of her harshly layered, short blond hair fell into her eyes as she turned her head from side to side, trying to home in on the sound.
“Over here, behind you,” Ramsey drawled, stepping into the moonlight.
Her eyes immediately darted to where he stood, and she took a quick intake of breath. For a moment, Ramsey thought she would fall out of the saddle in fright, but she quickly regained her composure and held out a hand in a gesture of stop. “Don’t come any closer, Mr. Olaru,” she warned.
Ramsey spat out the reed and smiled. “Now, you know that’s not going to happen, Miss Matthews.” He tried to keep his voice soft, but it came out as a rasp just the same. “Why don’t you come down from that horse, and let’s talk this over.”
To Ramsey’s utter surprise and horror, she kicked the Percheron in the flanks and tried to gallop up the mountain. Oh hell, he thought, putting a little urgency into his own step as he followed like a stalking raider behind them. Whoa, boy; he sent a telepathic call to Viking. The horse was clearly nervous, undoubtedly responding to the presence of a predator, and the animal’s tightly coiled power could be unleashed at any moment. He snorted, pranced in place, and then took a powerful leap up the mountain, nearly bounding to the top of the hill.
And that’s when Ramsey shifted into overdrive. He dematerialized from where he stood and instantly reappeared at the top of the bluff in front of the horse, holding both hands out in front of him. “Whoa, Viking!” His tone was deadly serious this time.
The horse reared up before settling into a restless stance, but Tiffany kept her seat. She tightened her hold on the reins, lifted them slightly upward, and glanced over her shoulder, noticing the cliff for the very first time. “You take one more step forward, and I’m going to back him up,” she said, her voice belying her resolve.
Ramsey frowned and assessed the situation. Hells bells, would she really take herself and the horse over the side of a cliff—just to get away from him? He held his arms out to the sides and whispered, “You don’t want to do that, baby girl. I can assure you; that’s not the better option.”
Tiffany raised her jaw in defiance and leveled a murderous glare his way. “Don’t test me, Mr. Olaru. I will do it.” The horse whinnied as if to say, what the hell are you people doing, and then he tossed his head in disobedience to create some slack in the reins. Tiffany gathered the slack and drew the leather taut, pulling back ever so slightly to regain control.
Ramsey regarded the massive beast with caution. He was much too close to the edge for Ramsey’s liking, and while the impressive stallion had grown up with vampires from a colt, he was like any other animal, any other person for that matter: There were just some souls he liked better than others. And Ramsey Olaru? Not so much.
He sent a warm, peaceful ray of comfort radiating in the horse’s direction and then turned his attention back to Tiffany. “Why don’t you call me Ramsey, baby girl, and let’s talk this over.”
Tiffany sneered. “Talk this over? Seriously?” She squared her jaw. “No, I don’t think so. Why don’t you just walk away?”
Ramsey shook his head slowly and frowned. “Not going to happen.” He relaxed his shoulders and tried to appear less threatening, however that worked. “What seems to be the impasse?”
Tiffany practically snorted then, her vivid sea-green eyes darkening with contempt. “The impasse? Oh my gosh; you have got to be kidding.” She looked up at the moon and then glanced at her wrist, all the while still holding the reins, and then she almost snarled. “The impasse is you. And me. That moon and my wrist. It’s not going to happen, Ramsey. I’m sorry to tell you… and I hate to do this… but I’m not like Brooke, and it’s… it’s just… not going to happen.” Her voice rose in proportion to her angst, and for a moment, Ramsey thought she might start hyperventilating. Damn, was he really that scary, just on the face of things?
He grimaced, already knowing the answer: Yeah, he was.
Ramsey Olaru was known as one cruel and ruthless son of a viper, and he had a reputation for being an unforgiving hard-ass, even when it was easier to take another route. But heck, what could he say? It was part of the job, being a sentinel. He was a guardian, an executioner, and an enforcer all at once; and one didn’t do that well without drawing a hard line somewhere along the way. “I’m not so bad with females,” he offered in an attempt to soften the truth.
Tiffany laughed, yet the sound was curiously hollow. “Females?” she mimicked him again. “You don’t even live in the twenty-first century, Ramsey.” When he started to object, she immediately spoke over him. “Hell, you still fight with a pitchfork.”
“It’s a trident,” he said nonchalantly, “an archaic weapon that—”
“Oh, hell, you sound just like Brooke!” She rotated her wrists, seizing up on the reins. “It’s a farm utensil, Mr. Olaru! And it’s barbaric.”
The horse responded to the barest hint of pressure on his bit and took a nervous step backward, toward the cliff. “Whoa!” Ramsey said, speaking once again to the horse. “Tiffany, you need to watch what you’re doing.”
Her eyes glistened with tears, and she shivered, for the first time displaying some healthy fear of the bluff. “I know exactly what I’m doing, Ramsey, and I’m sorry.” She bent her head to look over her shoulder, to stare down at the perilous drop-off, and in that brief, telltale moment, something dangerous flashed in her eyes: decision, determination… resolution. The willingness to end her life.
Ramsey licked his lips and took a measured step forward, not far enough to frighten the horse, but close enough to lunge if he had to. “You would kill that beautiful animal?” he asked, appealing to her conscience. “What would Phoenix think of that?”
Tiffany blinked back her tears and steadied her resolve. “Phoenix is only thirteen and a half months old.”
“And you’re what? Twenty-nine or thirty? You would end it all right here, right now?” He glanced up at the sky and gestured with his chin. “Over that moon?”
Tiffany’s features grew strained. “It’s not the moon, Ramsey, and you know it. It’s the Curse and all the blood. The violence and the endless threats. It’s the sacrifice and the fangs. You’re a vampire, Ramsey, one that can hunt and maim and kill without hesitation, and I don’t want to be what you are. I like being human, and I still have a soul… as well as free will. So, don’t speak to me like I’m an idiot or a newbie. I’m neither.”
Ramsey nodded slowly, acknowledging the fact that he had heard her words. “You took on this entire world when you stayed in Dark Moon Vale, baby girl,” he said without mincing words. “When you chose to keep your memories and serve our king. You knew the deal back then, and you knew you could never go back—but you stayed. So, what’s changed?”
Tiffany sighed deeply. “That was for Brooke… and Phoenix… for me.” She shrugged,
almost apologetically. “But that’s not the same as giving up my humanity, giving myself to you.”
Ramsey considered her words carefully—way too deep of a subject to get into at this juncture—there was no point in having this discussion now, not here, not while they were balancing on the edge of a cliff, quite literally. He chose to take another tactic. “Okay, well, look at it this way, then: If you back that horse off that cliff, I’ll just have to jump over and catch you.” He raised his shoulders in a matching gesture. “But the real question is: Could I catch both you and the horse?” He toggled his hands up and down as if pondering the possibility. “Possibly… probably… ” He sniffed. “It’s not so much the weight as the size that might be difficult, trying to hold you and the horse at the same time. More than likely, you would have to go back and tell Phoenix that Viking didn’t make it—that you killed his pony.”
“Would you shut up!”
Ramsey chuckled low in his throat, and the corner of his mouth turned up in what he knew was a wicked smile.
“Is this funny to you?” Tiffany asked, her voice filled with anguish and maybe even a little regret.
“It’s a little bit funny,” Ramsey retorted, though his voice was as serious as a heart attack, “in a tragic sort of way.” He narrowed his gaze, and he felt his eyes flush with heat. He knew they had flashed crimson before settling back into their normal hazel hues. “But I’ll tell you what isn’t funny, Miss Matthews… ” He drew a deep breath and practically growled the words. “Underneath us right now, about two to three miles beneath the surface, is a colony of vampires from a very different house, and if they could get to you, they would, just to eliminate me. And I’ll tell you something else, baby doll: The shit they would do to you if they caught you would make jumping off a cliff look like a real good option. And while I can jump over the side of this mountain and catch you before you die, I don’t know if I can fight more than a couple of Dark Ones at a time. So I’m going to ask you once more, nicely, to get off that horse and back away from that cliff. And then, I’m gonna come get you.”
*
Ramsey’s chilling words brushed over Tiffany’s skin like a pair of skeletal hands reaching from the grave. The wind was beginning to howl, the thick scent of pine was wafting to her nostrils, and the moment seemed utterly surreal.
She gulped, and then she shivered. The dangerous sentinel was not playing around. He was not offering her an olive branch or a half-dozen roses, and he was not trying to gently romance her into his arms. And somehow, in that terrifying moment, she knew that all of her fears were warranted: Ramsey Olaru was not Napolean Mondragon. He was not one of the Silivasi brothers or even the former Dark One, Saber Alexiares. He was a feeding, hunting, killing machine; and he would offer her no quarter, make no allowances, spare her no indignity just to make it easier.
Despite his uncanny, model-worthy good looks, his somewhat civilized mannerisms, and his obvious keen intelligence, he may as well have been a Viking himself, a relic from a time gone by. Ramsey Olaru was all hard muscle and grit, stout bearing and implacable resolve. He was six feet five inches of stunning, almost unnatural beauty, and he was hard as granite, inside and out.
What was worse, he believed without hesitation that Tiffany belonged to him, and he wasn’t about to let her walk away. Not that she could blame him—his very life depended upon her acquiescence—but still, he could have at least tried to ease her mind, perhaps assuage her fears, or even appeal to her heart. Yet he had done none of the above. He had ordered her to get down off the horse and laced it inside of a threat.
Tiffany struggled to swallow her fear, as impossible as that was, and then she tried a different approach. “You’re really kind of scaring me, Ramsey,” she whispered.
He frowned. “Yeah, and you’re really kind of starting to tick me off.” He drew up to his full, imposing height. “Get down off that horse, Tiffany. I’m not going to ask you again.”
She knew that he meant it, and she couldn’t win this battle.
Not here.
Not now.
Not today.
She kicked the horse a few paces forward—away from the cliff—placed her hand around the horn, and slowly dismounted from the saddle. As Ramsey sidled up beside her to take the Percheron’s reins, she sidestepped out of his way and hugged her arms to her chest. “Do you even have a conscience?” she muttered in a surly tone.
He led the enormous animal away from the cliff, while she took slow, hesitant steps behind him, and then he glanced over his shoulder to meet her questioning gaze. “You ever listen to ‘Blaze of Glory’ by Bon Jovi? The lyrics?”
Tiffany drew back in surprise. “What?” He was asking her about a retro rock song? Now? “Yeah, I’ve heard it a time or two,” she said. And then she tried to recall some of the words: I’m a devil on the run, a six gun lover, a candle in the wind… Seemed appropriate enough, in a disturbing kind of way, but what in the world was he trying to tell her?
Ramsey suddenly stopped walking and turned to face her. He reached out with a surprisingly gentle hand, cupped the side of her face with his fingers, and brushed his thumb ever so softly against the warmth of her cheek. “You ask about my conscience, and I offer you my soul.” The words were a mere whisper of sound as he held her gaze with his, his stunning hazel eyes revealing the barest glimpse of vulnerability, the soul inside the sentinel.
Tiffany drew in a sharp intake of breath and tried not to shiver, even as chills shot down her spine and settled in her toes.
He knew he had nothing refined to offer.
He knew he was a hardened vampire, all rough, jagged edges and hard-lined planes.
Yet, he offered her…
His soul?
She brushed his hand away. The touch was too intimate to bear. And then she fell into a silent step beside him as she followed him back to the vale.
two
Deep in the bowels of the Dark Ones’ colony, Salvatore Nistor glared at the infernal cube beside his bed. Earlier that night, it had revealed a Gemini Blood Moon, another male in the house of Jadon receiving his undeserved due. As far as which male the gods were blessing, the cube didn’t say. Now, the crazy, inconsistent thing was glowing luminescent blue and pastel purple, which meant something entirely different: It meant she was at it again: the idiotic, confused human female.
The one with dyed red-and-black hair—peculiar choice, to put it mildly. The more she tried to conjure spirits in her piteous attempt to engage her idea of the underworld—the more she tried to summon a dark entity with her dangerously limited knowledge of what she was doing—the more her errant vibrations appeared in the globe’s murky depths.
He sighed and grasped the familiar cube in both palms: What to do? What to do? Should he oblige the silly human in her misplaced fantasies, appear as the dark, mysterious entity she so desired to conjure, or should he command the crystal to never… ever… show him this vile human female again?
He lifted the cube from its perch on his bedside table and cradled it in his lap, lovingly, trying to reason the whole thing out: On one hand, Derrian was not getting any younger. Salvatore’s nephew was now sixteen months old and some change, and the sorcerer could certainly use another full-time nanny, considering what had happened to the last one: such an unpleasant business involving chains, a test tube, and a dull knife. Salvatore cringed. On the other hand, he was hardly ready to father a dark offspring of his own, to take on a lifetime of responsibility and obligation. Not to mention, destroying such an uncommon woman by using her as a disposable breed mate would certainly be a waste of a rare opportunity, a dark, malleable human soul.
He had to admit, this was a rare and exquisite opportunity to say the least.
The confused woman was ripe for the picking.
She was dabbling in energy she couldn’t possibly comprehend, and she was committing abhorrent acts of wantonness and vulgarity in her endless attempts to attract a malicious spirit: slaughtering chickens and kittens and b
irds; drawing bizarre chalk diagrams on her kitchen floor in an attempt to summon a demonic entity; and sleeping with as many human men as she could bring home, offering her body wantonly to please these elusive shadowy beings, whoever she thought they might be.
And, most recently, in a moment of pure desperation, she had offered her immortal soul in trade for a lifetime of truly depraved power.
And this had grabbed Salvatore’s attention. It had grabbed the attention of his cube.
It was well known that the males in the house of Jaegar had been cursed without the benefit of the four mercies afforded their self-righteous cousins who lived above the surface: The males in the house of Jaegar had no destinies; they could never walk in the sun; they took the lives of the innocent at will in order to feed their bloodlust… and both their children were born wholly evil.
Evil.
Well, wasn’t that just a relative term?
Relative and preposterous.
The Dark Ones simply preferred… and enjoyed… a different lifestyle.
Still, the starkest difference between the Dark Ones and the house of Jadon was the presence of females in their daily lives, mates who shared in the duty and responsibility of rearing the young, and bedfellows who warmed the sheets at night, as if Salvatore could ever be truly content with only one partner.
Once again, partner was such a relative word: Salvatore Nistor had no equal, and women were mere objects of temporary pleasure, never partners.
He sighed, feeling overwhelmed by the quandary. “What shall I do about you, Miss Tawni Duvall? Do you have any idea how close you are standing to an eternal edge of darkness? An utterly hellish precipice? Ready and willing to careen into the depths of the abyss?” He laughed, a low, maniacal sound that reverberated in the dark underground lair, shaking the magnificent antique chandelier above him. “While the only way a human can be converted to Vampyr is to be born to the privilege, a female destiny marked by the gods—and only for the males in the house of Jadon—there are two exceptions my dear, Miss Duvall: a child, like Braden Bratianu, born to a human destiny, who already possesses celestial DNA; and a human stupid enough to trade his or her immortal soul for the glorious opportunity, which makes you fair game for all.” He licked his lips as if he had just partaken of a delicacy. “And you are just such a human, are you not, Miss Duvall?” He cradled the cube to his heart and moaned in pleasure, considering the possibilities.