Nightbred(3)

The top floor served as his private retreat, the one place in the stronghold where he felt completely at ease. Here he had installed a compact computer array and entertainment center, although lately he had been interested only in researching those areas of America that had not yet been assigned to a lord paramount as official jardin territories. With all the refugees fleeing from Europe to the States, the land available had begun to dwindle rapidly. In less than a year there would be only deserts and wastelands left unclaimed.

The rapid dispersal of the territories still open to rule was not the only obstacle Jamys had to overcome. Michael Cyprien, the seigneur who ruled over North America, decided all matters of suzerainty.

The Durands owed everything to Cyprien, who had provided them with sanctuary after they had been freed from the Brethren’s torture chambers. His sygkenis, Dr. Alexandra Keller, had used her healing skills to repair their broken bodies. And while both Thierry and Jamys had been out of their minds with grief and rage, Cyprien had not exercised his right to end their misery, but had instead gone to great lengths to bring them both back to sanity.

Throughout their mortal and immortal lives Cyprien and Thierry had been as close as brothers; even during the worst of times that affection had never wavered. If Thierry asked Cyprien to deny Jamys the chance to rule his own jardin, Michael would not hesitate to do so.

The south-facing window gave Jamys a direct view of the lists, which were now empty, and the line of mountains that lay against the horizon like great storm clouds fallen to earth.

Beyond the mountains lay seven territories, six occupied by the finest of Cyprien’s lords paramount. The seventh and most southern belonged to Lucan, once master assassin to High Lord Richard Tremayne, formerly Cyprien’s bitterest adversary, and still one of the deadliest Kyn lords in the world.

Lucan commanded a garrison of highly trained, utterly lethal warriors as well as a small army of clever and resourceful human servants, and lived with his sygkenis, Samantha Brown, a homicide detective and one of the handful of modern females who had survived the transition from mortal to Darkyn. Yet each night only one among his household occupied Jamys’s thoughts.

Christian.

He closed the shutters as her name resonated through his bones.

It was no mystery to him that he needed a woman, and there were certainly enough at hand to be had. As long as he was careful with them, he could use any mortal female within his father’s household for blood or pleasure or both. Nearly every one of the unattached women servants had made it clear they would not object to his attentions.

An ample supply for an impossible demand, for while he appreciated the warmth and generosity offered, none of them were the girl he wanted.

Jamys went to the computer, where he pulled up the file he had begun compiling a year ago.

He knew some facts about Chris Lang. The mortal female had been born in Fort Lauderdale in 1990, and was now twenty-one years old. After her mother’s death six years past, she had been made a ward of the state and placed in foster care. She had escaped it four months later and disappeared, resurfacing three years later when she had sublet an apartment next to Samantha Brown’s.

A year after that, Chris officially took employ as assistant manager of Infusion, a Goth nightclub that served as the public facade of Lucan’s stronghold. Unofficially she served as Samantha Brown’s personal assistant. She did not belong to a tresoran family, but she was trusted as much as one of the mortal allies who for generations had provided loyal, unwavering service to the Kyn.

After Thierry sent him to Lucan three years ago to recover from his final surgery, Jamys had spent a few precious days in Chris’s company. At one point during his stay he had been implicated in the murders of several humans, and from the beginning only Chris had refused to believe him responsible.

You think you don’t need help, fine. But I’m the only person who knows for real that you’re innocent.

While Samantha and even Lucan had viewed Jamys with suspicion, Chris had instead allied herself with him, following and then rescuing him when he was attacked by one of the real murderer’s revenants. To help heal his wounds, she had even fed him her own blood.

No pictures of Christian Lang existed on the Internet; not that Jamys required an image to remind him of her gamine features. Beneath a cap of fine hair she dyed in the most outlandish shades, she had large, bright eyes the color of a midnight sapphire, a pert nose, and a mouth that readily curved into the most dazzling and fetching of smiles.

Jamys remembered everything about her: the touch of her hand, the shimmer of her laugh, the taste of her lips. Every word she had said to him remained in his heart, especially those she had used for a final, mocking warning.