In that sense, it was not only her greatest weakness – but perhaps her greatest strength.
Rhiannon’s gaze became distant. The stranger had gotten under her skin, to say the least. She rubbed her face, looked out the window, and got lost in the lights and people going by. Several minutes later, her driver was pulling up to the red carpet of her hotel, and the footman was opening her door. She bid Frank goodnight, tipped the footman, and headed inside to her room.
The “Do Not Disturb” sign was still dangling from her door knob. She pushed it aside, slid the key into the door, waited for the red light to turn to green, and stepped into the clean, cool interior of her suite. As always, she’d left the lights on to avoid any uninvited surprises.
But this time, it hadn’t done any good.
Rhiannon stood in the entryway to the room and let the door loudly swing shut behind her. She couldn’t move. She was frozen to the spot – staring at the object at the center of the suite’s living room.
It was a treasure chest. An honest to goodness treasure chest. And from what Rhiannon could tell by the way the lid stood lodged open and shining, honey-colored objects balanced precariously over its ledge, it was brimming with honest to goodness gold coins.
Dangling from the open latch on the chest was a single, simple black object, stark and obvious and oh-so meaningful in its symbolism.
It was a mask.
As if in a dream, Rhiannon made her way to the chest and lifted the mask, turning it over in her fingers. Taped to the inside of that mask was a small, folded note. Rhiannon peeled the note off the soft material and unfolded it.
It read:
Two down.
Chapter Six
“No, Gabe, this case has me running laps here.” Michael paced restlessly back and forth across the thick, padded carpet of his newly leased luxury apartment. The extremely thick pile of the soft rug caressed his bare feet, but he barely noticed it. He was agitated.
He was hungry.
He ran a hand through his hair and pinched the bridge of his nose as his brother once again attempted to coax Michael back to the Mansion for whatever reason. Michael let the man’s brogue accented words slide in through one ear and right back out the other. I don’t have time for this, he thought. Then he sighed. Just tell him what he wants to hear.
“Listen, Gabe, the truth of the matter is, I need some time. Alone. To myself. To process all of this.” He knew his brothers were worried about him. He knew what they were thinking because only days ago, he’d been thinking the same things: If he was supposed to be the Old Man’s favorite, why was his archess the last to be found? Why was he the one who would have to worry about bringing on the Culmination if he mated with her? His brothers pitied him because of his seemingly tortured wait, the decision he was faced with, and more immediately, they worried about the fact that Michael’s healing ability had been stolen by Samael.
And that was fine. It was something Michael could play into right now in order to win the time he needed without interference.
Gabriel seemed to digest Michael’s words, paused for a long moment on his end of the line, and then said, “Fair enough. You know where we are.”
They hung up, and Michael tossed the phone onto the couch. He closed his eyes and let his mind expand.
He was learning things…. The thing about being both a vampire and an incubus was that some of the weaknesses of one were canceled out by the strengths of the other. As a newborn vampire, he would normally have had to contend with the inability to control the influx of powers and weaknesses that came with vampirism. He would not have been able to control the length of his fangs, he would have been so “allergic” to the sun that the slightest ray would have permanently scarred him, and powers that usually came to a vampire only much, much later in life would not have been available to him, such as the ability to read minds and to travel through the shadows.
However, Michael was no ordinary newborn vampire. He was also a Nightmare, and the strengths of the incubus were riding through him, softening the blow of vampire weaknesses and adding to the potency of his powers. In addition, Michael was not a mortal-turned-vampire or a mortal-turned-incubus. He was the Warrior Archangel. He was a supernatural being born to fight. Every neuron in his body faced the invasion of monster and tackled it.
The result was that he could make his fangs any length he wanted and even force them to disappear altogether. When he concentrated, he could hear the thoughts of human minds around him. He could travel though the shadows, just as Nightmares, black dragons, and Azrael could. And over the course of the few hours he’d been transformed, he’d gained the ability to stand full sunlight with nothing more than a small headache, even though at first it had caused him immense pain.
He was also experiencing effects he never would have attributed to any of the three classifications he now possessed: archangel, vampire, Nightmare. At the moment, Michael could close his eyes, expand his concentration, and “see” beyond the confines of the walls around him.
A few floors down, a bustling kitchen was preparing for a banquet. People in white milled about, pots steamed and boiled, and a head chef barked orders in French. Michael’s consciousness soared over this crowd as if he were flying. He moved through two double doors and into an enormous banquet hall beyond, where decorations were being applied and tables and chairs were being laid in their places.
Michael skipped a bit, moved out of the building altogether, and was hovering over a busy interstate. I-94 sparkled with red and white lights, sometimes shot through with blue. He soared over the street that took him from South Michigan Avenue, where he caught the faint sounds of an orchestra playing Bach, up north to the cracking of a bat and the roaring of a crowd at Cellular Field. Instinct guided him East, and Michael moved through space and time until he was floating over Chicago’s Four Seasons hotel.
There, he waited.
He could feel her inside, her heart pulsing like a second star. Her presence pulled at him. One thing he unfortunately could not fight in this new vampirism of his was the blood lust that indelibly came with it.
She would taste like heaven.
Though he knew could choose another woman that night to satisfy his hunger, he refrained. The Warrior Archangel in him wanted one woman only. Now that he’d set eyes on her, touched her – held her, no other woman would suffice, not for anything. His transformation into a vampire had not made that part of him weaker as Samael had undoubtedly hoped. If anything, it had made it stronger. He was part incubus as well, but despite the Nightmare within him, he possessed absolutely no desire to seduce half of the female population of the planet.
Rhiannon. Only her.
He didn’t only desire her body or her blood. He craved more than the feel of her hair against his fingers and the scent of her in his head. He wanted her soul. He longed for her smile.
He needed her love.
He’d slipped up on the dance floor with her earlier that night. He’d come too close to damning himself.
She’d overwhelmed him. A fiery goddess, all flame and righteousness and incredible warrior strength, she’d enthralled him and subjugated his will. He’d been more her slave than she’d been his as he’d pulled her into his arms and felt her melt against his body. So hot….
Her scent surrounded him, from the shampoo in her hair to the maddening rush of her blood just beneath the surface of that porcelain skin.
And when he’d bent to whisper in her ear, a tendril of his control had come unraveled and he’d momentarily struggled with the darker natures warring within him, natures that assured him he could have what he wanted and there would be no consequences. He could sink his teeth into his archess and drink of her deeply; he could block the minds of the patrons around him, shielding them from their consciousness. He could take her – right then, right there, on the floor of that cathedral, in front of hundreds of unsuspecting revelers. He could do it all, and it would be divine, and she would be his.
Bu
t the warrior in him had won out, and as he’d placed a tender kiss upon her pulse and her lightning had sliced through the night to reign havoc on the festivities, he’d found the strength he needed to retreat from her and allow her to escape her fate. For now.
Lightning.
He smiled as he pulled back from his mental trip and opened his eyes. He’d been the cause of that lightning that she’d unconsciously called down upon them. Oh, she would fight it. She would undoubtedly deny it. She was a battle he knew he was going to have to fight hard and long. But deep down inside, she knew that he’d gotten to her. She didn’t know how and she didn’t know why, but there was an archess inside Rhiannon Dante that damn well recognized Michael for her other half.
She knew he was the one.
He just needed to remind her.
*****
“They’re pennies,” she said numbly into the phone.
“Pennies?”
“Yes, I swear. Each one has Lincoln on the front and his memorial on the back. Mr. Verdigri, these are pennies, and they’ve all been turned into pure gold.”
“You’re positive they weren’t just spray painted or something similar?”
Rhiannon shook her head even though her employer couldn’t see the gesture. She’d done the old trick with the teeth to see whether one of them would bend, and it had. Besides. She was a woman. She knew real gold when she saw it.
“I’m positive.”
There was a long pause on the phone before her employer finally asked, “Well… what creatures that you’ve come across have the ability to turn objects into gold?”
“Alchemy? None, honestly. I’ve been running this around in my head since I walked into the room.” She’d come up against creatures who could melt or cool objects, but never any that could change the molecular composition of an item. This was new to her.
“But that’s not the strangest thing,” she said. Or the scariest. She bent and lifted the black velvet mask from where she’d set it on the bed earlier and turned it over in her hands. Whoever had done this had actually had her in his arms that night. He’d appeared out of nowhere, seduced and teased her, moved her to the music as if he’d been dancing centuries, and then disappeared into the shadows.
But not before he’d kissed her throat….
Rhiannon flushed hot, her skin prickling with the blood of an oncoming fever. She touched her forehead and took a shaky breath, closing her eyes in an attempt to center her thoughts.
The feel of the satin mask against the skin of her fingertips and across the back of her hand felt sensual, forbidden somehow. It reminded her of the touch of his lips.
“Oh?” Verdigri replied, jolting her back to the moment. Her eyes flew open.
“Uh,” she said, clearing her throat and blinking rapidly. “No,” she continued, “It’s not.”
The strangest thing, she thought, is that whoever did this knows me and I have no idea who he is or why he would do this for us. There was enough gold there to pay for any assignment she would ever need to go on for the rest of her life, at the very least for the rest of her employment with Verdigri. Her employer’s future financial situation was hereby secured. He would never have to do any fundraising ever again.
It was as if the stranger in black had known that this was exactly what she’d been wishing for. This was one of her weaknesses.
Two down.
Now she understood. He’d known about her desire to end suffering when and where she saw fit. He’d known about her desire to do the right thing without financial constraints, and that she’d wanted Verdigri to be able to do the same thing. And with this much money on their side, they probably wouldn’t even have to worry about legal constraints either. Because everyone had a price.
Apparently, even her.
Rhiannon looked over at the chest, which would weigh more than anyone could lift filled with gold as it was. She thought of the man in the mask and the powers he must have possessed, not only to create it, but to get it into her room past security and her locks. To that end, how had he known where she was staying? He’d known her name, and that had been strange enough. This was so much more.
She swallowed hard. “I think you need to send some men over as soon as possible,” she told her boss, thinking mostly of the gold and how they were going to deal with it.
“It’s already been done, Rhiannon,” Verdigri told her. His tone spoke of concern, and she realized that he could tell she was a little freaked out. “And I will be there in ten.”
Chapter Seven
“If you don’t mind my confirming sir, we will bide our time now, am I correct?” John Smith took off his glasses, cleaned them with the cleaning cloth he kept in his front pocket, and then slid them back on his nose before looking up at his… employer.
The man he spoke to, a very tall, very handsome, very imposing figure in a white suit, continued to gaze into the flames of a fireplace a few feet away from his massive, leather, wing-backed chair. Popping and crackling filled the long pause of silence.
“Yes, Mr. Smith. We wait,” said Gregori.
Mr. Smith, who for all intents and purposes appeared to be the most ordinary, plain individual on the planet, smiled a wholly un-ordinary smile. It was filled with a malice that lit up the brown in his eyes like candlelight behind citrine.
“There is no specific reason for us to interfere at this juncture,” continued his employer, whose deep, unnaturally beautiful voice filled the gracious space of the massive living room with ease. “It would appear fate is on our side just now. The final of the Four Favored has been cursed.” Gregori paused here, and Smith could feel the ancient man thinking. “He’s been made a monster. With any luck, his archess will not accept him. The Culmination will not come to pass. And we will have the time we need to locate the Old Man.”
John Smith nodded to himself, just once. But he remained where he was. “It does bear keeping in mind, however,” he said softly, “that the Angel of Death was a monster once as well. But vampires are not entirely monstrous to the thinking of some.”
“Mmm,” agreed Gregori. His expression remained the same, and his distant gaze unchanged. “Yes, the thought occurred to me. Azrael’s archess accepted him despite this apparent obstacle.”
John Smith smiled. “The young Miss Bryce was not at all averse to the archangel’s darker tendencies.”
“No, she wasn’t. She reminded me much of Amara.”
There was another pause here, in which Smith was certain his employer was reminiscing. Somewhere outside, on the plane of endless white, clouds began to gather. They often did when Gregori reminisced.
The man in white sighed heavily. “We will monitor the situation. If it appears the curse is not enough of a deterrent, we will take matters into our own hands. But until and unless it comes to such a point, we will allow nature to take its course.”
“Wise decision, sir.” John Smith nodded once, then left his employer’s side and stepped out into the hall. The ice beneath his feet cracked just a bit as he moved through the hallway and past several other doors that led to separate areas in the palace.
It was a palace constructed of ice, built into a glacier some millions of years old. Magic, of course, kept the fire from the hearths separate from the ice, and allowed for the mechanical workings of technology throughout the intricate structure. This was where Gregori had made his home long, long ago.
Mr. Smith stopped in front of a massive portrait that hung on the wall at the end of the long hall. It depicted a woman with long, thick caramel brown hair, soft brown eyes, luxurious lashes, rosy cheeks, and a winsome smile. She wore a white robe, loosely clasped and exceedingly simple. In her folded hands rested a small bunch of wild picked dandelions. Her favorite.
Her name had been Amara.
When she died, Gregori moved here, to this desolate and uninhabitable place at the top of the world. He’d wanted to be somewhere as frozen on the outside as he had become on the inside. As cold and unyielding. As dead.
>
Mr. Smith moved away from the painting and into the study, with its bookshelves of ice and its floor to ceiling windows that peeked out over an underground – under ice – lake of clear, pure blue. Nothing swam in the lake. It was as beautiful and dead as was everything in Gregori’s world.
On the banks of the lake, however, there was life. It was the only sign of such for miles in every direction. Dandelions grew thick and plush there, as grass or moss would have grown in forest or jungle. But in stark contrast to the white ice and light bright, impossible blue of the lake, these dandelions were not yellow. They were black.
*****
Rhiannon stopped when she reached the next alley, rounded the corner like a slingshot, and hit the adjacent wall with a numb thud. Her body slid to the ground between a dumpster and a pile of empty cardboard boxes to rest against the cold, hard bricks. Her heart beat bruisingly against the inside of her ribs, pounding out an erratic, maniacal rhythm of fear. Her breaths were coming hard and fast, but she struggled with the need to control them, forcing them to quiet. Her life could depend upon it.
The effort to still her breathing caused her pulse to quicken even further, and began a terrible pressure behind her eyes. She covered her face with her hands, hoping to drown out any sounds she might be making. And there, under the cover of shadow and night, hidden from the street and headlights of passing cars, she shook uncontrollably and wondered how the hell it had come to this.
They’d only returned to New York when she’d been given this assignment. Which had gone horribly wrong.
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut against the pain riding up her left leg, where four even gashes had been carved into her thigh. She needed to heal the wound. She could feel some sort of poison from it seeping into her bloodstream and moving already through her system. But she’d used up so much of her power, so much of her strength just trying to hide her presence and then get away with her life. And she had no idea how much more of it she would need before the night was out.