Lothaire

17

Ellie’s hands flew to the vampire’s chest as his mouth descended to her neck. “What is wrong with you?”

“This body belongs to me now! It will never be touched by another.” Against her skin, he grated, “Damn you, allow Saroya to rise!” His lips parted, and his tongue flicked out.

“Oh! I-I can’t—she’s not even trying.” Is he gonna drink from me again?

His skin was warmer than it’d been earlier, growing hotter and hotter beneath her fingers.

Another wicked lick on her neck sent shivers coursing through her. Ellie’s nipples tightened into sensitive points, her breasts swelling.

“You’re in need of my touch. Fade back and make her come to me,” he commanded, his voice gravelly. “I’ll pleasure this body, and then you’ll be relieved of this ache when you wake.”

“I don’t know how to fade back,” she cried, her accent growing thicker. He was kissing her neck so greedily, not biting, but still with an urgent hunger. “Oh, God, I can’t think when you’re doin’ that.” Had she moaned the last?

She must have, because he broke away from her, gazing down to gauge her reaction. She was panting, eyes focused on his sexy mouth, those lips.

He unfastened the button on her slacks. “You hate me . . .”

She gulped with fear. And anticipation.

“. . . but you’ll still let me do whatever I want to you.” He pinched her zipper, rasping words in Russian to her as he slowly began to tug it down.

“I-I hate you more than anything! But that—that mouth of yourn feels so good. You probably got some kind of unnatural vampire control over me.” Something had to explain this animal craving she felt for him.

When he spread her slacks open and fingered the lace on her silk panties with a groan, Ellie bit her bottom lip, struggling to keep her eyes open. Would his fingers continue to dip down, discovering her wetness . . . ?

How much more could he control? Her life, her future, and now her desires? She was suffering from temporary insanity, understandable considering everything she’d been through.

Everything he had put her through.

At the thought, she hated him all over again. Ellie gave a hard shake of her head, then met his fiery eyes. “No, I won’t let you do whatever you want.” She grabbed his wrist, pulling his ever-descending hand from her panties. “Because I do not want you, will never want you.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw.

She didn’t know if he was going to kiss her more—or kill her.

He turned and punched the kitchen wall, sending up a plume of plaster. “As if I want you—I detest you so much it burns! And I can’t kill you!”

“Yet.”

He swung his gaze on her. “Not yet. But soon.” He vanished, reappearing seconds later, completely dressed.

His broad chest was still heaving under a dark gray sweater of some fine material, probably cashmere or something expensive. Whatever it was fitted over his muscles like a second skin. His black slacks were obviously tailored for him. He wore a sword belt and sword.

Staggeringly handsome.

“We’re going for a jaunt.”

A chance to escape? “Where?”

“To see a hag.”

Lothaire traced Elizabeth inside a seaside shack at the edge of a solitary beach on the Outer Banks.

He needed an emergency meeting with his oracle, a fey female known as the Hag in the Basement.

“Where are we?” Elizabeth whispered. “You said your enemies would find me outside of the apartment!”

“Not here. Her protections are identical to mine.” Elizabeth would be safe enough. Besides, he had no choice but to consult with Hag—his mind was growing more disordered.

Dangerously so.

Moments ago, he’d decided to yank Elizabeth’s pants to her ankles, then bend her over the table to fuck her right there. He’d briefly thought that a brilliant idea.

Making her moan my name before I allow her to come, plunging into her tight heat, feeling her grow slick around me . . .

No, no! Focus! Aside from the fact that he awaited Saroya’s rising this very night, he could kill Elizabeth. If he lost control, pounding into her with all his strength . . .

His nostrils flared and his fists clenched. Bloodlust warred with sexual need. He’d already come close to piercing her this morning.

Hag could help him find focus, could help him sort through his memories—so he could get rid of Elizabeth as soon as possible.

The oracle was the one person he even marginally trusted with his Endgame. She’d foreseen his Bride and had told him how to find her. She’d made sure Elizabeth’s body was safeguarded during her imprisonment.

For years, Hag had guarded his secrets. . . .

Her home’s shutters were closed against the last of the day’s sun. The oracle had been expecting him.

As Elizabeth surveyed the open living and cooking areas, Lothaire tried to see this place through her eyes.

Bat wings and skeins of herbs hung from the ceiling to dry. Animal carcasses lay on a butcher block in various states of slaughter.

Hag’s bubbling concoctions brewed on a modern gas stove, while lengthy work benches held an assortment of flasks on burners.

Her collection of demon skulls decorated a top shelf—they looked human except for the protruding horns and fangs. Ghoul heads lined another shelf, their putrid green faces frozen in horror. Preserved centaur phalli filled jars.

“Hag,” he called. The oracle was actually a young-looking fey who’d been transformed into a powerless crone for a few centuries before recently returning to her true form—that of a comely, pointed-eared brunette.

Balery was her real name, but he liked Hag better. Lothaire wanted to remind the fey of her be-croned past as often as possible.

Because he was the one who’d saved her from it. Another name in my book.

Hag emerged from a back room. “Lothaire, I can’t say this is a surprise.” She wiped her blood-soaked hands on a stained apron.

Though she wore modern clothes under the apron—a short skirt, boots, a T-shirt—she had a decidedly unmodern black pouch of seer bones affixed to her belt.

Aside from her talents as an oracle—which had weakened from involuntary disuse—Hag was also a concoctioness, specializing in poisons and potions.

Elizabeth gaped at the fey’s bloody hands, sidling closer to him as if for protection. The vampire who intended to destroy her very soul.

He heard her whispering to herself, “Open mind, open mind,” and thought she had her finger curled through one of his belt loops.

“Staying close to the bloodsucker now?” Elizabeth’s fear was so mortal, so unqueenly. Another example of how inferior she was to courageous Saroya.

Elizabeth’s attempted blaze of glory five years ago? Her joining him in the shadows earlier? Mere feeblemindedness, Lothaire decided.

“At present, I’m figuring you’re the lesser of two evils.”

He gave a mirthless laugh. “You couldn’t be more mistaken.”

“She’s the hag?” Elizabeth murmured. “She doesn’t look like one. Does she turn into one at night or something?”

Hag sighed at her ignorance. In a disdainful tone, she said, “And you brought human company.”

“My enemies already know she’s in my keeping.”

“Within mere hours?”

“Nïx.” He didn’t need to say more.

“We should update our encryption keys every hour.”

He nodded.

The fey circled Elizabeth, her pointed ears twitching. “She’s even prettier than in my visions.”

“Did you expect anything less from my Bride?”

“Visions?” Elizabeth’s timid stance disappeared, and she pushed away from him to glare at Hag. “You’re the one who told this freak how to find me?”

Hag ignored her as she might a yapping dog. “Her body will breed well, even after you turn her,” she remarked to Lothaire.

He’d been so preoccupied with the act of breeding that he’d never thought about the result.

What would his offspring be like, when gotten upon this body? Though vampires reproduced sparingly, he pictured numerous towheaded children with determined gray eyes. “I’ll require many heirs.”

Comprehension—and horror—dawned in Elizabeth’s expression.

How bizarre to realize that one’s body would go on, Lothaire mused, would produce young for others.

“My children.” Elizabeth balled her fists. “Raised by you and your disgusting bitch.” If she struck him as she so longed to do, she’d break the bones in her hand.

When Hag gave an assessing squeeze of Elizabeth’s hip, the girl whirled around, swinging one of those fists. He traced between them, catching it with his palm. “Never touch this fey. Never. Her skin is poisonous.”

Hag was a Venefican, a poisoned lady. As a girl, she’d been fed small amounts of poison until her skin had grown permanently lethal. She’d also been trained as a courtesan—put those traits together, and she was a perfect weapon.

“And before you get any suicidal ideas,” Lothaire told Elizabeth, “know that she’ll heal you before you could die. But you’d experience agony as never before.”

Elizabeth yanked her hand away from him, chin raised.

“She’s a feral little human, isn’t she?” Hag said.

“Elizabeth has not yet comprehended her place in the grand scheme of things.” He gave the girl a measured shove toward the kitchen counter. “Sit down, shut up, and touch nothing.”

She hesitated before sitting on a barstool, still bristling.

“What brings you here today?” Hag asked.

“I’ve come for a potion. I need to clear my mind to get to my memories.” My Endgame is so close. Then he’d have everything he’d always wanted.

Then I’ll finally understand the incomprehensible. . . .

“I need to focus.” On something other than Elizabeth’s allure.

Hag slanted doe-brown eyes at him. “Do you wish to discuss business in front of her?”

He shrugged. “She’ll be gone soon. But she does need to eat until then.”

Hag told her, “Go into the back room and look for a green chest decorated with leafy vines. Open the top and tell it whatever you wish to eat. Do not open the black chest decorated with spiderwebs.”

When Elizabeth merely narrowed her eyes, Lothaire said, “Do as she commands. You should follow her orders just as you will mine.”

Elizabeth rose with a huff, then sauntered into the back room. He heard a creaking hinge, then her enunciating, “Fun-yuns.”

A second later in that country drawl: “Get the hell out!”

Over his shoulder, he ordered, “Eat something nourishing.”

After a rebellious pause, she said, “Blo-berry waff-els. May-pole see-rup.” Then she cried, “Hoo!” Excellent.

She returned with a laden plate and silverware, sitting at the nearby dining table. Now that she’d regained her equilibrium, she acted unconcerned by all this, but he knew the wheels were turning, could see that calculating glint to her eyes.

Yet I can’t predict what she’ll do.

She cautiously took a bite of her breakfast, murmuring, “Oh, my God, that’s good.”

Another bite, and another. She relished her meal in an almost sensual way. He wondered if she’d be like that in bed, savoring the taste of his skin. As I’d savor hers.

Hag was telling him something and he wanted to concentrate, but he kept hearing Elizabeth’s fork on that plate, her little noises of enjoyment. He found himself rapt as she twirled a bite of waffle in syrup.

“Are you enjoying your vittles?” he grated to her.

“Prison grub tastes like trench foot. So, yeah, you could say I’m liking this.” With a smug air, she added, “Plus, I’m enjoying the fact that I can do something you can’t.”

“Can’t I?” He traced to the seat beside her.

With a challenging lift of her brow, Elizabeth held up a forkful of waffle. “Wanna bite?”

“You have no idea.”

“Of waffle. Oh, but you’re a bloodsucker.” She gave an exaggerated frown.

He found it imperative to wipe that look off the mortal’s face. Though he knew Hag was gazing at him in bafflement, he didn’t give a damn. He grasped Elizabeth’s wrist and took the bite.

At once, his taste buds screamed wrong! He hadn’t masticated in ages and was clumsy with it, but eventually he could swallow the food.

Elizabeth cast him a surprised half-grin. “You’ve got syrup on your lip. Here.” She licked her thumb and reached forward to smooth the syrup away.

The air between them was electric as he debated tapping her wrist for a drink to wash it all down—

Hag cleared her throat. “The ring, Lothaire?”

Reluctantly, he rose. “You still haven’t seen it in visions?”

She made room for him to sit at the counter, stowing a pile of what looked like bird skulls. “I’ve had no more luck than you. It’s hidden, with some very strong magics. Every time I try to uncover its location, I weaken my ability.”

I can feel the mortal’s gaze still on me. Which meant he was having difficulty keeping his eyes off her. He shoved his fingers through his hair. “Can you aid my concentration?”

“Possibly. But we have other concerns as well. La Dorada.”

The Sorceri Queen of Evil. A few weeks ago, he’d located her slumbering in a hidden Amazonian tomb. She’d been half-dead, mummified for centuries in a sarcophagus, with the Ring of Sums on her thumb.

Though she’d had protection spells attached to her, including one guaranteed to wake her, Lothaire had ripped off her crusty thumb and stolen the ring.

And possibly he’d flooded her tomb with a tidal wave.

Perhaps I oughtn’t to have brazenly stolen her most beloved possession off her body, waking her and potentially heralding the apocalypse?

I might’ve left her thumb. . . .

“I’ve seen Dorada in visions, have sensed her,” Hag continued. “The Queen of Evil will stop at nothing to punish you.”

A “Queen” was a sorceress who wielded more control over something than any other sorceress. When Dorada was fully regenerated, she could control evil beings—including Lothaire.

But he hadn’t been concerned about her power, figuring that with the ring he could defeat her easily enough. Yet just when he’d been about to slip it on his finger, he’d been captured by Declan Chase.

“I’ll deal with her once I’ve found the ring,” Lothaire said. “We’ve got some time. Just seven days ago, I managed to cast her into a fiery chasm.” When all hell had broken loose—or rather, when all the immortal prisoners had broken loose from the Order’s holding cells—her zombie Wendigos had attacked him as a pack.

He’d defeated all of them, a particularly noteworthy feat considering he’d been starving, recovering from torture, mystically weakened, and unable to trace. Then he’d turned his hate-filled gaze to Dorada. . . .

Hag fiddled with a smoking flask. “The sorceress is already coming for you.”

“Risen so quickly, has she?” After dispatching the Wendigos, he’d leapt over a crevasse to reach Dorada, casting her down. But she’d caught his leg. As they’d dangled, he’d done what anyone would in his situation—booted her in the face until her skull caved in and an eye popped out.

In the end, she’d plummeted into an abyss hundreds of feet deep.

“Yes, Dorada is rebounding from the injuries you inflicted—and from her mummified state. Lothaire, if you barely prevailed against her last time, and she is regenerating now . . . ? Her control over all evil creatures will be absolute in a matter of weeks, maybe even days.”

Then she could command him to greet a noonday sun in an equatorial desert, which would kill even him.

Elizabeth coughed, hiding a grin behind her fist.

“Why are you amused?” he demanded.

“Sounds to me like you almost got your ass spanked by a chick. I don’t know who this Dorada is, but I’m wishing her all the luck in the world.”

Hag gasped. Lothaire slammed his fist onto the stool beside him, smashing it, splinters flying.

As he and Hag watched in astonishment, the mortal calmly picked them off her plate and out of her hair, then ate another bite of waffle.