Dying to Date(20)

“But…do you have any idea how many vampires live and work in the city?”

“Do you have any idea how many necromancers are currently living on the fringes of society?” he replied.

“My father isn’t going to be able clear out an entire city of vampires. Not to mention the rest of the elder council won’t help support such a takeover. And certainly not over one vampire hostage.”

“For your sake, Melissa, I hope you are wrong.”

She looked away from the dead eyes staring at her. Dominic wasn’t the sort of man to be dissuaded from his plan by anything she said.

And her father wasn’t the sort to give in to threats. She had no doubt Lucian loved her utterly and completely, but he wouldn’t uproot hundreds of lives for her.

She was well and truly screwed.

I have to escape, she reasoned. That was the only way out of this. Their plan required a Redgrave hostage. If she could just get away, they would have nothing to bargain with.

But how?

She looked down the table at the necromancers eating. A little girl sat near the end with her mother and a drop of sympathy touched her heart. No doubt necromancer children led hard lives, but they grew up into the nightmares of her people. They didn’t deserve New York. Hell, they should be grateful the rest of the supernatural world didn’t hunt them down and eradicate their frightening powers.

Movement caught the corner of her eye, and she turned to see a man hurrying toward Dominic.

Dominic gestured him closer and listened while the man whispered in his ear.

“What do you mean he’s here?” Dominic demanded.

She arched a brow, wishing her sensitive hearing could pick up the other man’s words.

“I suppose there’s no help for it. Show him in, and set another place beside me.”

The nameless man bowed and hurried away as Dominic reached over to take her hand. Melissa forced herself not to recoil.

“My apologies, my dear, but it looks like your night is about to get worse.”

Worse than being kidnapped by monsters able to control my every move? she wanted to snap.

“What do you mean?” she asked instead.

“You’re in for a bit of a shock I’d imagine.” He patted her hand.

Shock? But the double doors at the end of the room were already opening.

A man strode forward, his face shadowed by the darker hall. When he stepped into the light, however, Melissa pushed to her feet, her jaw dropping.

“No,” she breathed.

Tarian stopped at the foot of the table, staring back at her with eyes as cold as ice.





Chapter Six


People were speaking all around her. The low buzz in her ears was proof of that. They didn’t matter, though. Not her captors or their mad leader. All that mattered was that Tarian had walked into a room full of necromancers.

Necromancers who didn’t seem surprised to see him.

There was no expression on Tarian’s face as he waited for her to come to grips with her new reality. Her brain felt frozen, her thoughts sluggish. She didn’t know how to process the idea of Tarian standing in this pit of vipers.

And when she did, she wished she hadn’t.

He was a necromancer. He’d known her from the first moment they’d met, and his people had been looking for a high profile vampire to use as leverage. How easy it must have been to flirt with her, a lonely vampire willing to jump at any chance that presented itself.

The pieces of this tragic puzzle fit together one after another. His resistance to the idea of a night spent in her apartment, instead of at a restaurant, made perfect sense. Changing locations would have screwed up her abduction.

What made everything worse was the realization that his “gentlemanly behavior” had probably been one more strategic act. He was her enemy. The odds that he’d actually wanted her were slim, but stringing her along had been a good way to ensure he’d be able to maneuver her as he wished while he waited for his chance to strike. Shame sliced through her. Here she’d been plotting to get him into bed and he’d neatly sidestepped her every attempt. The passion in his kiss had all been artifice. No one could touch a lover the way he had and then hand them over to kidnappers if their feelings had been even remotely engaged.

Which meant every word, every caress, had been a lie. He’d played her and she’d fallen for every bit of it.

Her eyes closed, blocking out the sight of him. Her father had warned her. She should have listened. Now she found that one of the last people to see her before her abduction was part of the scheme. Would her family ever track her down? Even for Lucian it’d be an impossible feat.

The hope that someone would be able to find her flickered and died in her chest. No doubt Tarian had already been questioned. It’d be child’s play for him to send the investigation in the wrong direction.