Nightbred(83)

“No Kyn has ever . . . ?” When she shook her head, he brought his thumb to his mouth, biting into it before pressing it to the marks he’d left on her. “We must take care, my beautiful girl. When I am inside you, I cannot think clearly. I cannot think at all.”

“Technically that’s my problem.” She offered him a prim smile. “According to proper protocol, when a tresora consents to provide her lord with intimate pleasures, she must first provide him with a sufficient quantity of stored blood so that the temptation of thrall and rapture may be avoided.”

He smiled a little. “That sounds like Burke.”

“You would not believe how red his face got while he was saying it.” She ran her hand down his arm, and linked her fingers with his. “So did I please you, my lord?”

“You know that you have already ruined me for all other females,” he chided.

“I know, I’m the most amazing chick in the universe, and you are so, so lucky to have me, and maybe one day I’ll even believe that.” And get over her need for constant reassurance, which had to be annoying. “Just tell me anyway.”

“I have no words for it. I have never felt such love.” Jamys brought her hand up to his heart to press her palm over the slow, steady beat. “You please me with but one look, and arouse me with but a single touch. Tonight I felt you in my very soul.” He bent his head to say the rest against her lips. “I love you, Christian.”

As he kissed her, Chris looked up to see the koi swirling through the water overhead, their brilliant white and orange scales flashing with their movements. The blue water shimmered, darkening to a haunting emerald green as a shadow stretched across the ceiling, and the fish darted away.

Jamys stiffened, rolling away from her to grab his head with his hands. Through clenched teeth he said, “No. You cannot. I will not.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Chris sat up and reached for him, only to feel him go limp under her hands. “Jamys?” He didn’t move, not even when she shook him.

She grabbed her clothes, pulling them on as she tried to think of what could have caused this. It wasn’t thrall; he hadn’t taken enough blood from her for that. He wasn’t injured, either.

“I don’t know what to do,” she told him, more terrified than she’d ever felt. “I’m going to see if there’s a phone and call Burke.”

A woman stepped into the bedroom. For a split second she looked like a frizzy-haired witch wearing a potato sack, and then she changed into Lucan.

She’s some kind of shape-shifter. Chris smelled a strange, sharp honey scent that wasn’t jasmine, and felt confused as she stepped backward. “Leave him alone.”

“He is not our concern.” Lucan smiled sadly as two men flanked him, both holding pistols and copper-clad knives. “We came to find you.”





Chapter 17

Lucan opened his eyes to his own face, and slowly turned his head to see the mirror-world around him. His form and features appeared in glass walls fashioned to resemble the interior of his stronghold: a silent army of himself. The only difference between them appeared to be the fact they all wore gloves while his own hands lay bare.

A frigid breath of air and a tinkling sound made him glance up. Overhead silk threads held suspended a thousand jagged crystal blades, each sharp edge clad in a honed ribbon of copper.

The nightlands were ever an enigma, but for once the message they delivered was quite plain: If he made one wrong move, if he lost his temper, he would be cut to pieces.

“But I am so easily persuaded to violence,” one of his images mentioned.

“Too many have died beneath my hand,” another said.

“Or it may be that I am dead already,” a third offered. “And this is my hell.”

“Hell indeed,” Lucan murmured, “if I must listen to myself prattle on for all eternity.”

A fourth twin offered him a benign smile. “For all your icy wit, cunning schemes, and razor tongue, my lord, you are a simple soul.” He gestured to one of the mirrors, where the image melted into Lucan as a boy, cowering before his mother, Gwynyth, in a rage. “Unwanted.” Gwynyth’s golden charms darkened into the remote beauty of Frances, the first mortal he had loved. “Unloved.” Frances grew younger and tougher, her gown shrinking into one of Samantha’s ugly suits. “Unworthy.”

Lucan saw a flash of light in front of his nose, and glanced down as the falling crystal dagger smashed between his feet. “And now, unbelievably bored. Is this pathetic hothouse truly the best you can do?”

Another shimmering blade fell, but before it could bury itself in Lucan’s arm, a towering figure dressed as a monk lifted a heavily scarred hand and caught it. “You will attend to me now, boy.”