The blonde winced and stepped back, and then she rubbed her neck in relief. “Prietena mea loiala?”
“My loyal friend,” he said softly, and the words were almost touching.
The woman nodded. “Of course. I’m sorry if I wasn’t able to…read the situation better. I should’ve called Kagen. I should’ve known—”
“I compelled you, sweetheart,” Julien interrupted. “I…I was not in a good frame of mind. Again, my apologies.”
The blonde looked deep into the gladiator’s eyes, as if testing the truth of his words, and then she nodded. “I know. I do. I’m fine.” She bent over to pick up her shoes, smoothed her blouse with one hand, and inadvertently turned her head to the side; and that’s when she caught her first real glimpse of Rebecca, from the corner of her eye. She jerked in surprise and frowned, but before she could speak, Rebecca jumped in and tried to plead her own case.
“You have to help me!” she insisted. “Your friend—Julien—he took me from his front porch, and he’s forcing me to stay here with him. I don’t wanna be here! He’s a complete freakin’ stranger, and I’m scared half to death. Please; do something to help me!” Despite her desperation, she cut her eyes in anger, glaring at the other man.
The woman turned visibly pale, and the green-eyed man placed his hand on her shoulder. “While you were sleeping, Shelly, there was a Blood Moon. Julien’s. This woman is his destiny.”
The blonde gulped, and her mouth fell open as she appraised Rebecca from head to toe in what appeared to be fascination, and then she turned toward Julien and sighed. “Oh…gods…this has been some kind of night, hasn’t it?”
Rebecca threw her hands up in exasperation, utterly flabbergasted by the bizarre, unnatural conversation. She opened her mouth to protest—or to scream—but nothing came out.
She was beyond confusion.
“My Mustang’s parked outside,” the raven-haired stranger said with stunning indifference. “Go wait in the car, Shelly. I’ll be there in a moment.”
The woman paused, like she was thinking it over, and then she blinked her eyes several times, in quick succession, and started to walk away.
“Wait!” Rebecca cried frantically. “Wait! Shelly, wait!”
The woman paused in the doorway, just for a moment, but she didn’t turn around.
“Go,” Julien barked, returning to that deep, commanding voice, and the woman disappeared into the night.
Rebecca’s bottom lip quivered like she was a three-year-old child, nothing more than a mere, frightened babe who had been chastised—and dismissed—by the grown-ups. “Why are you doing this?” She directed the question at the dark-haired man, knowing that Julien was unmovable.
Unreachable.
And that’s when the gladiator snarled.
Just like a rabid dog.
His top lip twitched; his teeth flashed beneath his gums; and his throat virtually vibrated from the sound.
The dark-haired man took a cautious step back and averted his eyes, angling his body away from Rebecca’s. He held one hand up in a gesture of surrender, reached into the pocket of his cargo pants, and withdrew what looked like a pale blue crystal. “I’m outta here,” he said in a pacifying voice, “but before I go, Ramsey asked me to give this to you.”
“What the hell is it?” Julien barked.
The man raised one shoulder and cocked both brows. “A diary of sorts.” He wet his bottom lip and held up the crystal. “You can open it the same way you would unravel a holding cell, and then you can access the contents by channeling the same telepathic bandwidth, while focusing on the stone, that you would use to reach me on a private line.” He extended his graceful hand and thrust the object at Julien. “It contains my memories, warrior. Not all of them, but enough. From my time in hell. You need to take a look. You need to understand.”
Julien furrowed his brow and cocked his head to the side, glaring at the ominous offering. “You put your memories into that stone? How?”
The male smiled coyly, and when he did, his features were so luminous, they almost lit up the room. “I’m a wizard, my friend. Don’t hate. Just view it.”
Julien snorted, and Rebecca couldn’t tell whether he was offended or impressed. Either way, he didn’t join the playful banter. And why should he? He was a batshit-crazy serial killer; his friends were all his allies; and even the pitiful woman, the blond victim, who was probably his girlfriend, was quick to follow his orders. Hell, she didn’t even care that he was holding another woman hostage.
The entire world had gone insane.
Julien reached out, took the crystal from the green-eyed man, and nodded. “Don’t expect me to say thank you, Nachari. This is my life…my choice…my fate. I’ve served the house of Jadon for over nine hundred years, and I’ve served it well. It’s not your place, or anyone else’s, to tell me when I’ve had enough.”
The wizard took a bold step forward, placed his right hand on Julien’s shoulder, and regarded the gladiator with unconcealed concern…and affection. “And that’s just it, what you still don’t get, J. What you never seem to understand. Your life isn’t just your own. Your choices don’t exist in a vacuum. And your fate affects the entire house of Jadon. If you think for one moment that you can just step off the stage without completely screwing Ramsey, Santos, and Saxson—hell, even Saber Alexiares—then you’ve been sucking down that cocktail for way too long, and you have no idea how many sons of Jadon care for you. Believe in you. Honor you. Revere you. And I, for one, will tell you this much, now: You think it’s impressive to embed memories in a stone? Oh, you don’t know half of what I can do. Try skipping out on the Curse, skirting your way around this Blood Moon, offering yourself up like some suicidal sacrifice to the Blood at the end of these thirty days. Just try it, and see what happens.” He tightened his grip on the gladiator’s shoulder, and the grasp looked powerful…and painful. “No one is going to let you die, brother. And we don’t give a gods-damn about what you want or whether or not you’ve had enough.” He withdrew his hand from Julien’s shoulder, took an angry step back, and then simply…
Disappeared.
He didn’t storm out of the room or walk away.
He just…vanished.
And that’s when Rebecca Johnston passed out.
five
Ian Lacusta had spent the past six hours pacing the deck of his ship, pondering, thinking, remembering…dredging up the past.
He had recalled his early childhood, those impossible, rage-filled years, when his mother had tried to teach him how to be a man, a vampire with honor, whatever the hell that had meant. He had remembered how she’d drilled the laws and the customs of the house of Jadon into his mind, and his brother’s, as if Ian could have cared less. He’d remembered her endless nostalgia and her repetitive, fanciful tales, the stories she had told about Ian’s father—blah, blah, blah, blah—the male had been a weakling, and he had died because of it, shortly after Ian and Julien’s birth. Yet and still, Harietta Lacusta had spoken of him like he had been a god.
A legend.
A saint.
A hero.
Verily, Ian had hated them both.
He remembered the caustic feedings, being forced to latch onto her wrist, even as Julien had been allowed to hunt, to stalk his prey and feed at will, always faithful to discern the innocent from the evil, to only kill the latter. “But not you, Ian. ’Tis too much temptation for you to bear. I fear you will give in to your urges and kill at random; you must continue to feed from my vein.”
Grrrrrh! Ian snarled as the memory enraged him. He didn’t get it then, and he didn’t get it now. What the hell had the stupid cow been talking about? Good people, innocent people, pure souls, and guilty? There was no such thing. There were no such concepts. His head had been ready to explode! There are only two types of animals on this cursed planet! he had wanted to shout into her head. Predators and prey. Strong and weak. Lions and lambs. Those who obey their urges, and those who die at the lion??
?s command.
Devils, he had tried to tune her out!
And when that hadn’t worked, he had tried to listen…and to obey. To mimic the utter nonsense that never stopped coming his way: Watch your brother, Ian. Do as Julien does. See how he speaks, how he walks, how he smiles? Try that for me, son.
Try harder.
Try again.
Try more often.
Try—this!
He had ripped her annoying throat out on his tenth birthday just to make her shut up.
Silence…at last.
And then he had tried to kill Julien, because he hated that bastard too, but that hadn’t worked out so well. Julien wasn’t a mere misguided female. He wasn’t an endless nagging voice in a ruffled linen skirt. He was a growing, feeding, strapping young vampire, and he had fought for his life like a demon, virtually exploding with rage.
Ian had been lucky to escape the entire sordid event.
He scratched behind his ear, drawing blood with a pointed claw. He didn’t want those early memories. He didn’t want to revisit the past. He didn’t want to revisit New Orleans. But then…where?
Where could his mind go that might bring solace?
Paris, France?
London, England?
Port Sudan?
The horn of Africa or Greece?
He had lived in them all.
There wasn’t a city, a town, or a country that Ian Lacusta had not called home over the past 950 years. He had roamed the earth like a gypsy, living in hovels and caves, sneaking into palaces and mansions, slaughtering in brothels and dens.
He could mimic humans and live among them; he could round them up and force them to worship him; he could capture, torture, and dispose of them at will. The only thing Ian couldn’t do was walk in the sun. That gods-forsaken orb had been his nemesis since the day he was born; that, and the fact that he had no clan, no people, no one to teach him…anything.
Ever.
He had learned to do everything on his own.
Ah, but he had learned well.
And now, he had slaughtered a sailor, pirated a yacht, and lived on the Mediterranean Sea for the past seven years, hunting, exploring, and bringing his prey back home, oftentimes from Greece. He glanced down at the sun-bleached deck beneath his feet and ran a moistened tongue along his thin, taut lips. How many bodies were buried in this ocean? How many worthless humans—men, women, and children—had Ian drained and tossed overboard, never to be seen again? How many females had he ravaged, just to feel the high of the erotic release, and then murdered before they could begin to swell with his children, sons he couldn’t even imagine rearing? After all, what the hell would they be? Dark, light, a mixture of both? What manner of atrocity would the ancient Curse of his kind visit upon his offspring?
Ian didn’t know, and he didn’t care to find out.
As it stood, he remembered only what his mother had taught him about the Curse and the two archaic houses: the house of Jadon and the house of Jaegar.
He remembered that he didn’t belong to either.
He stood eerily still and drew a deep breath, before his sanity began to wane. He couldn’t afford to go into a memory-induced stupor, not tonight, at least not right now.
Daybreak was much too near.
Ian needed to think.
He needed to reason, to analyze his options, and to figure out his next steps.
Julien’s Blood Moon had brought so much turmoil to the surface that he hardly knew which way was up. There was a buzzing in his head, like in the days of the old transition radios, when one simply couldn’t get any good reception—his dial was permanently stuck between two opposing channels: one, discordant, abrasive, and tinged with static; and another, distantly familiar but oddly faint.
Forbidden?
Somehow, Ian just knew that the channels in his head were links to those of his own kind, whatever that truly meant. He had spent a dozen lifetimes shutting them out, keeping the dial turned off. Only now, he was tempted to tune in briefly…just to try it out.
What if?
What if someone, who was like him, was actually there?
Ian grasped the railing before him, above the stern of the boat, and rolled his head back in a lazy, languid stretch, allowing his long, black-and-red mane to fall to his waist—normally, it fell to the middle of his back in wild, unkempt waves—and he luxuriated in the heavy feeling, all that thick, silken weight. He closed his eyes and reached for the static, the ever-present void, and tried to picture a radial dial in his mind.
Red. Black. Small.
Exact.
He could almost see miniature slashes along the edges of the knob, and he began to turn them back and forth, to the left, and then the right: listening, tuning, aligning his psychic energy.
And then, just like that, the dial clicked in place.
It hummed, then opened, and settled into space.
Ian gasped at the dark, errant energy that flooded his mind, swirled throughout his body, and settled in his heart. It was so deliciously evil and soothing to his mind.
He shivered.
And then he heard a shadowed, resonant purr, a deep, almost baritone voice. “Who the devil is this?”
Ian shot upright, but he was careful to hold the connection. He squinted, squeezing his eyelids together, even tighter, and strained to hear with his ears. But this wasn’t an audible sound; it wasn’t a tangible voice. It was a thin, chiming wave, pulsing in his head. “Ian.” He tried out his cognitive voice.
“Ian who?” the baritone shot back.
Ian jolted from the pain in his temples and started to close the connection. He had been alone too long. He had been safe, in control, the master of his own domain—and the entire earth was Ian’s domain—why risk that now?
“Wait!” The male must have sensed his hesitation. “Where the hell are you? I’m picking up a shit-ton of static, a crap-heap of…water?...and the first phase of the sun. You’re in another time zone. What? Eight? No, nine hours ahead. Where the hell are you? Who the hell are you?”
“I am no one of concern,” Ian snarled, feeling curiously irate.
The dark male chuckled, raspy, cruel, and deep in his throat. “Not my problem,” he grunted, settling into the supernatural conversation. “But you reached out to me, not the other way around. Why, brother? What the hell do you need?”
Brother?
The male had called Ian brother?
Ian’s ears perked up, and he leaned forward into the railing as if leaning into the curious exchange. “I…seek…others of my kind.”
Now this got the male’s attention. “Shit,” he drawled. “What the hell are you on?”
Ian opened his eyes and glanced around. “A yacht,” he said matter-of-factly. He wasn’t much for innuendo.
The guy—no, the vampire—grunted with disdain. “And what kind would you be?”
“Vampyr.” Ian drawled the word in a thick Romanian accent as if summoning an ancient memory. “Undead. Nosferatu. Sired of a curse.”
The male grew gravely quiet for what felt like a day and one-half, and then he finally sighed, long and heavy, and murmured, “Brother, you need to tell me something I can make sense of, before you end up with a shitload of trouble on your…yacht. I’ve already got a bead on you—you’re fourteen nautical miles off the coast of Greece, and about 6,012 miles, as the crow flies, from here. So I suggest you start talking.”
“How?” Ian asked, more curious than afraid. “You have never taken my blood.” Even without the benefit of training, Ian understood that an exchange of crimson power was necessary for that level of accuracy, for tracking another’s precise whereabouts from such a great distance.
The male snorted again, this time with annoyance. “Are you lacking some basic cerebral functioning?” he mocked. “You opened a telepathic line. Your thoughts are my GPS, brother. All I have to do is follow them to—”
“What is your name?” Ian insisted, cutting the Dark One off. He had just abo
ut had enough of this condescending banter.
The male’s voice grew five times harder, rougher, and far more cruel. “Achilles Zahora, the one they call The Executioner, a soldier in the Colony’s formal guard.”
Ian listened attentively, wondering about this colony, wondering about the guard. And then, making an instant decision, he chose to tell the truth. “I was born in Dark Moon Vale in 1044 AD, the twelfth day of April, beneath a Hercules Birth Moon. My father was Micah Lacusta; my mother was Harietta Noel; and my twin, the one who shared my mother’s womb, was a vampire christened as Julien Zechariah. I know not where he is. I have lived as a wanderer, a male with no clan, for 957 years, and now…and now…I am speaking to you.”
Achilles Zahora inhaled a harsh, deep breath, and then he either grunted or growled across the connection—Ian wasn’t sure—before sending a powerful jolt of electricity through the bandwidth, rattling Ian’s inner ear, and leaving a high-pitched hum in the air. “You were born to the house of Jadon?” he nearly gasped.
Ian snarled. “I was born to no house! I was born to no family! I am no one of concern.” He repeated his initial assertion.
“Oh,” Achilles echoed, “I beg to disagree. You were born to a male in the house of Jadon, conceived from the four mercies and a Light One’s Blood Moon. But”—his voice grew thick with conviction—“you are not one of them. You’re one of us. Son-of-a-demon’s-bitch!” He pitched his voice an octave lower in an effort to convey a command. “Ian!”
Ian drew back in alarm.
“Ian!”
“What do you want, Soldier Zahora?”
“Do you…esteem…your father’s memory?”
“I abhor my father’s memory, Achilles.”
“Did you…bond…with your mother?”
“I murdered my mother when I was ten years old. I loathed her.”
“Do you feed?”
“I’m alive, am I not?”
Achilles chuckled. “Do you kill your prey?”