She wanted to laugh, but was afraid it was hysterics finally breaking free, and somehow she managed to keep it down.
And then, all at once, the laughter spilled out anyway.
Roman watched her as she doubled over and held her stomach. She couldn’t help it, and she could feel his eyes on her. But it was just so funny.
And then there was that gorgeous, amazing voice again – laughing right along with her. She looked up through the curtain of her hair to see him leaning against the wall, his hands on his hips, his head bent, his broad perfect shoulders shaking with his laughter. It was the most incredible vision. He was perfection, broken down – with a good sense of humor.
He looked up at her through his own thick wavy hair, and his dark eyes sparkled in the overhead lights. His chuckle wrapped around her, caressing her skin as if with tangible fingers.
Evie stopped laughing and straightened, shaking her head. “You know,” she said as she tucked her hair back behind her ears, “I once wrote a book about a vampire king with an amazing voice.”
“I know,” he said, his expression changing just a little. “I read it.”
She looked up at him with unblinking eyes. “Roman, this is gonna take some getting used to.”
“We have centuries.” He finally closed the distance between them and Evie hadn’t even realized he had been moving toward her the entire time.
“You do, Roman. Not me.”
Without hesitation, he reached down and took her hand in his. “I have never taken a queen, not in three thousand years. Do you know why?”
Evie shook her head. She seriously couldn’t speak. The feel of his skin on hers was exactly the way she’d always written it as feeling between her heroes and a heroines – electric. Magnetic. Powerful.
“Because I have never wanted one. I’ve never cared, Evie. Not until now.”
“Why now?” she whispered. “Why me?”
“I don’t know why it’s you, little one, but it is,” he said, smiling down at her. That smile felt like a punch to Evie’s gut. It took her breath away. He was too beautiful; she couldn’t concentrate. She looked away, lowering her head so that she could think.
But Roman’s free hand encircled her neck in a touch so personal, so intimate, Evie inhaled sharply. It was the way a lover would touch another. His fingers brushed lightly over her pulse points as he tilted her chin, raising her gaze and trapping it with his once more. “Don’t try to hide from me, Evie,” he told her. “I will always find you anyway.”
With that, he lowered his lips to hers. Evie’s instinct was to pull away, but his grip on her throat tightened ever so slightly, holding her in place. She heard her own breath hitch as his mouth touched upon hers. She closed her eyes.
His lips were soft and dry, his advance slow and incredibly tender. But his free hand slid around her waist, strong and secure as an iron band, and as he leaned over her and deepened the kiss, Evie’s nerve endings hummed to delicious life.
Warmth pooled in her midsection and began to spread. Thoughts of vampire kingdoms and murderers and mind reading flew from her consciousness like scattering leaves on the wind.
She heard someone moan and wondered if it was her. Then she heard someone growl and she knew it was Roman. The vibration moved through her, a deep treble that hardened her nipples against her shirt and made her head swim. His hand slid to the back of her head where he grasped a fist full of her hair and tilted her further into him.
He deepened the kiss, pushing harder and demanding more, stealing her breath from her as if he were drowning. The heat that coiled in her belly and between her legs began to throb, demanding something more with each passing second.
Open to me.
She heard his voice in her mind and was only marginally aware that it shouldn’t have been there. The command moved through her and she obeyed it, opening to him to allow him to taste of her and drink deep. He made another harsh animal sound, one of lust and hunger and the hand he had at her back found its way beneath her shirt. Skin on skin; the sensation was delirious.
More. I want more.
She didn’t know whether the thought were hers or his; it could have been a combination of voices, echoing through her mind, bouncing off of the walls of her desire like a kind of madness.
More.
Just as she was nearing the ledge of lascivious insanity, something sharp pricked her lip and Evie’s eyes flew open.
Roman stilled above her, and she was transfixed by the hard angles of stark need in his beautiful face. His incisors had once again extended, hard, dangerous evidence of what he was. He opened his eyes and Evie gasped. They burned as red as funeral pyres, scorching her to her core. She could feel her pulse run through her body, the ache beating between her legs in time with the rapid thud of her heart.
She wanted him. Life was insane and he was three thousand years old, but damn it all to hell, she wanted him like she’d never wanted anything.
Roman pulled slightly away from her, just enough for her to raise her fingers to her lips. They came away wet and she glanced down. Blood.
He’d bitten her. She somehow understood that he hadn’t meant to do it. But there it was. His teeth had pierced her flesh.
And now, as she gazed back up at him and saw the monstrous hunger blazing in his eyes and racking his tall, strong body, she realized something else as well. He wanted to eat her.
And she wanted the same.
Chapter Eighteen
There was a split second of indecision between the two of them, the kind where a person must make a choice between going past the point of no return or pulling back – and then the world exploded.
There was a brief flash, someone called out to them, and in the next split moment, the glass in the hall windows erupted inward, shattering into a dazzling display of shimmering glass that cascaded across the hall in all directions. At the same time, Roman’s body jerked in front of Evie. He released her, the red glow leaked from his eyes to leave them black, and he fell.
Evie saw blood, heard strange thumping sounds, and as if in slow motion, she looked down to follow Roman’s progress as he hit the floor. What she witnessed, she processed with amazing speed, but a part of her mind could not accept it.
He’d been shot in the head; half of it was missing. Blood and bits of brain were smattered across the carpet and walls. Evie heard more thunking and felt something make contact with her leg. Her arm. The side of her neck.
She was falling as well, but as she did she raised her hand to the side of her throat. A dart? She pulled at it, ignoring the pain and the fact that blood now poured down her own neck.
She was going numb. There was no feeling in her any longer. The color disappeared from her vision, turning the dark red and brown and black carpet into dark gray. A tunnel took her vision next. She couldn’t see peripherally any longer, so she barely noticed when she hit the floor, her body half laying on top of Roman’s.
A few seconds later, the world went black. She could still hear, though, and she caught the sound of more breaking glass, but this time crunching to bits as if under the weight of boots.
And then there was nothing.
*****
“Sorry about the darts, sweet heart. I would have preferred a simple sleeping spell, but there was a chance it would have taken too long or alerted D’Angelo, and we had to move fast.”
Sound was the first thing to open up once again for Evie. The voice speaking to her was one she didn’t recognize. Her brain felt fuzzy, and his words left trails of echo along the walls of her mind. She tried to open her eyes and failed.
“Shh, take it slow and easy. We pumped you pretty full.”
Evie did as she was told, not because she thought it was a good idea, but because she had no choice. Her body wouldn’t respond to her mental commands.
“You’re a very unique individual, Evelynne Farrow,” the voice continued. It was deep and melodic, though not anything like Roman’s.
Roman….
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Roman! Evie’s heart hammered as adrenaline poured into her blood stream. He’d been shot in the head! Could a vampire come back from something like that? And who would do that? Who could do that?
The person talking to her right now.
“It appears you’re immune to every single vampire ability I have up my sleeve,” the voice continued. “I can’t read your mind or control your actions and I can’t help but wonder why that is.”
Evie tried to open her eyes again, and this time she was successful, though it did her little good. The world was one blurry blob of color.
“If I’d been able to control you as a vampire should, I would have had you awake an hour ago. But no matter,” the voice said and she could sense someone rising above her. The blurry shapes and colors moved. “You’re awake now.”
The world was clearing more quickly now, and Evie could feel her fingers and toes. They tingled a bit, as if coming back to life after falling asleep. She tried to move her legs. They twitched and jumped a little.
There was laughter beside her. “You’ll be fine,” the voice said. Evie felt hands lifting her under her arms until she was sitting up. It helped somehow. “Give it a few more seconds.”
He was right. Evie’s vision cleared the rest of the way and her body began to get its feeling back. The relief she felt at this development was short lived, however, because the man standing over her was none other than the man from the coffee shop. The one with the brown hair and beautiful blue eyes.
The vampire.
Who had killed that woman.
At once, Evie was trying to get her feet under her so that she could run, but her legs were wobbly and slow to react, and she fumbled on her knees for a moment and then fell back against whatever surface it was upon which she was leaning.
“I see you know who I am,” the man said. What was his name? Evie racked her brain.
Charles.
He was dressed in a white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his mid-forearms and a pair of dress slacks. He looked as though he was fresh from a meeting and had just stripped off his tie and relaxed a little.
Charles sighed heavily and paced away from her, giving Evie a chance to look around.
What the hell?
The “room” they were in was nothing more than a chamber that seemed to be constructed of multi-colored fog. The walls swirled and moved and coalesced like rainbows in a blender. The floor looked as though it was made of frosted glass, and those same swirls of color turned and churned beneath it, casting light across Evie’s skin and clothes.
The air was still, and as she breathed in, she could swear it was the cleanest breath of air she had ever inhaled.
“Your instinct now will be to run, but I feel I must inform you that such a thing isn’t an option for you, Evie,” Charles said as he stopped near the far “fog” wall and turned to face her.
“Don’t call me Evie,” she said. Her voice was weak, but workable. She felt her strength returning quickly.
Charles smiled, flashing the fangs she’d seen him use to kill the woman in her vision. Evie winced and looked away.
“The room you find yourself in at the moment does not exist on the Earth as you know it. This is the astral plane,” he told her. Evie looked up to find him gesturing to the rainbow fog walls. “It’s just you and me Evie, and nowhere to run to.”
Evie looked at the walls, strangely transfixed by the way they swirled and curled, and she wondered whether she were dreaming again. Maybe this was a vision? Or maybe she had died and this was actually Hell. She could believe that.
But there was a niggling at the back of her mind and everything felt very, very real. And she couldn’t stop thinking about Roman.
She knew this was real. Deep down, she knew that everything Roman had told her in the last few days, everything she’d witnessed with her own two eyes and processed with her own mind, was true. Roman was the Vampire King, Charles Ward was a vampire rogue murderer, and this really was the astral plane.
Whatever the hell that was.
“You mean like the place that you go if you have an out of body experience?” she found herself asking, truly wanting to understand.
Charles smiled again and nodded, his expression impressed. “Yes, in a way.”
“How are we here?”
“One of my abilities has always been to pull others into the astral plane along with me – so long as they are asleep when the attempt is made.”
Evie thought about this. She remembered the darts that had hit her legs and arms and embedded themselves in the side of her neck. “The darts,” she said. “They were poisoned with some kind of sleeping agent.”
Charles’ smile broadened, his wicked fangs ever threatening. Evie shivered. “On the money,” he admitted. “You’re incredibly astute, Evie –”
“Stop calling me that!” she yelled.
He ignored her and continued. “I’m going to enjoy having you around for a while.”
“Did you kill him?” she asked, her heart aching as she prayed he would answer her honestly – and then prayed it would be the answer she wanted to hear. She didn’t think Roman was dead. She felt that she would know if he was. But she had to hear it from Charles’ lips anyway.
“You mean the king?” His brows raised, his expression nonchalant. “Of course not. He’s a tough son of a bitch. It would take a hell of a lot more to kill the royal pain in the ass. But you have to admit that it was an effective way of taking him temporarily out of the picture.”
Evie closed her eyes, relief flooding her system. Then she tried to stand once again, and this time she was successful. She made it to her feet and leaned against the fog-filled wall. It was a strange sensation. It rippled beneath her touch as if she were laying against a vertical water bed.
“What do you want with me?”
“So many things,” Charles said, tilting his head to one side and appraising her from head to toe. She felt slightly sick. Ward was a handsome man, and in a normal world devoid of vampire rogue murderers, he would have seemed an impossible prospect. But at the moment, and in this current situation, she felt as if she were staring into the adoring eyes of a living nightmare. “But first and foremost, you will act as an instrument of vengeance, little Evie. And I believe you will do an amazing job of it.”
“I won’t do shit for you,” Evie hissed at him. That was stupid, was the thought that piggybacked on it. Why provoke the psychopath vampire? She closed her mouth and looked away once more, her heart hammering along as if it were content to just beat the shit out of the inside of her lungs.
Charles, for his part, seemed utterly unruffled. “Not at first, you won’t. Not willingly.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his dress slacks and began pacing around the strange astral room. “But no one can find us here, Evie. Like I said, it’s just you and me.” He looked up at her then, and Evie swallowed hard as his blue eyes began to glow with an eerie, hungry light. “And with no one else to feed from, I'm sure to get hungry.” He showed her those fangs again in a promising smile. “How many times do you think I’ll have to drink from you before you break?”
Evie felt a cold chill go through her. “You could pull anyone else in here,” she said. “As long as they’re asleep.” It’s what he’d told her, more or less, wasn’t it? He was just trying to scare her. And it was working.
“I have to be in close proximity with someone for the trick to work,” he told her, almost conversationally. He resumed pacing, but his gaze remained on her. “I have to be able to touch them. And it wouldn’t be wise for me to leave here. At first, D’Angelo will no doubt assume the attack was carried out by Hunters. I made certain to heavily shield our presence, after all. But before long, he’ll figure it out.” His gaze dropped to the ground, and his expression became contemplative. He turned his steps toward her, closing in on her. “And then he’ll come for you.” He looked up again, fixing her with an unwavering, decisive gaze. Evie felt her legs go to jelly agai
n and found herself desperately wanting to move back. But there was nowhere to go.
“We’ll need to be finished with our business by then,” he said, his voice having lowered conspiratorially. “So I won’t be leaving for any reason, Evie. In fact, I’m going to be doing everything within my power to speed things along.”
He stopped in front of her and Evie wondered whether he could hear her heart. It was deafening in her ear drums. “What do you want?” she asked again.
“I want you to say three little words, Evie. And I will take care of everything else.”
He braced his hand against the strange wall by her head and leaned in. Evie flinched when the glow in his eyes brightened, enveloping her in their blue topaz magic. “What three words?”
“Addo nox noctis,” he whispered, his breath fanning out across her cheek as he spoke. He was so close, she feared he might try to kiss her. His fangs peeked out from behind his lips, and she remembered that she had been kissing Roman only moments ago. His fangs had drawn her blood….
“Thousands of years ago, the new king created and enforced a law which prevented vampires from creating new vampires from mortals,” Charles explained, all the while gazing steadily into her eyes. “He was probably right to do so,” he said, his tone clearly disapproving, “as our kind were ripping through the human race without a care, creating slaves left and right. Those slaves did not possess the inherent powers of Offspring because they had no warlocks as parents, and hence the sun was as deadly to them as ever.”
Charles stopped and his gaze flicked to Evie’s lips. She held her breath and turned her head. All she could think about was the woman he had killed and the bullet that had taken off half of Roman’s brain.
Charles took her chin in his hand and forced her to face him once more. Evie tried not to wince with the pain of his cruel grip. “For three thousand years, our kind have lived without creating companions who could accompany us into immortality.” He roughly released her and stepped back, his expression going hard. “Even if he hadn’t hidden away the means with which to do it, we’re all too afraid of D’Angelo’s almighty wrath.”