Harlequin Nocturne September 2014 Bundle: Beyond the Moon\Immortal Obsession (21 page)

Chapter 20

V
erity woke in a standing position. Head bowed forward, her neck muscles twanged. Something was banded across her chest. Her arms were wrenched behind her, her wrists bound together. She wriggled but couldn't move much. The air around her was musty with a thick chemical smell.

Blinking completely awake, and wincing at the ache in her jaw, she realized she was tied to a wood column. Perhaps a structural beam similar to the others she saw here and there in the vast, hazy room.

She'd been tied to the post in what looked to have once been a grand ballroom. to judge by the elaborate flocked wallpaper, tattered velvet curtains and dusty chandeliers. Real candles were lit in the massive fixture just overhead and off to her side, casting a dull glow over her predicament.

The floorboards were dusty and scratched, and some kind of liquid had been poured before her in an arc. Looking as far as she could over her shoulder, she saw it formed a circle around her. And twenty feet beyond the inner circle traced another wet circle.

“Gas,” she whispered.

Dreadful images of her mother standing within the blazing pyre churned her gut. A reedy moan stirred in her throat.

Slater was not stupid. No witch who could command fire would purposefully use that magic when surrounded by a substance that promised her doom. If the gas caught, she'd be surrounded by flame. She was helpless.

“Mother,” she whispered. “Blessed goddess, please help me.”

Panicking, she wriggled at the ropes binding her wrists. The post she was tied to seemed solid, so she assumed it was a main load-bearing column that would not be moved. She had no weapons on her and no magic that could cut through the rope. Though she might try to loosen the knot with some focused concentration.

Closing her eyes, she searched her memory for a spell that would perform as she needed, but her heartbeats challenged her focus and she couldn't manage to come up with anything save a jittery stomach. Add to that the hunger pangs that clawed at her gut, and she almost screamed.

The measured click of a man's dress shoes echoed up beside her, distracting her from the pain. Verity would not give the bastard the pleasure of turning to look at him. Instead, she closed her eyes, but that only enhanced her sense of smell. The gasoline was strong, but she also picked up a foppish lavender scent, of which Slater was inordinately fond.

“This has been an interesting week,” the vampire said. The footsteps stopped in front of her. He stood outside the inner ring of gasoline. “I'm losing tribe members left and right to a rather industrious knight of the Order, and then, when I had thought my ex-girlfriend dead and buried, I discover she's very much alive and quite possibly on the path to becoming vampire.”

“You sent Clas to kill me, didn't you?” She opened her eyes. Slater's smug smirk was too familiar. He nodded at her. “Why? We broke up. We weren't compatible. Get over it. Go steal magic from some other witch.”

“But I wanted your fire magic, lover.”

“Don't call me that. It disgusts me to think I let you touch me.”

“Fucked you well and good, if I recall correctly. And I do.”

She wouldn't reply. He wanted to see her outrage, her begging protests. It fueled his malicious need for power. Frederick Slater corrupted control; Rook mastered it and made it his own.

Where was her knight? She should have never gone against his order to remain safe at home.

“You are rare, Verity. Not many witches—that I'd be willing to fuck—practice fire magic.”

Asshole.

“So you've hooked up with a hunter? That should be interesting in oh, say…a day?”

She was so close to the soul. The compass had pointed her to this location. Clas must be in the building somewhere. If only she'd been smarter and called Rook to let him know she'd be going out to track the vampire. Kaz would catch hell for this. Thomas might never forgive her.

“I can't wait.” Slater clapped his hands loudly and bent toward her. “Hungry yet?”

Yes, she was. Her insides twisted, seeking sustenance. But she'd never drink the bastard's blood, no matter how desperate she got. “Not for anything you could offer me.”

“We'll see about that. You were tracking Clas, weren't you? Think you can stake him before the full moon and win your freedom from the inevitable?”

Slater reached into his inner jacket pocket and drew out a wooden stake. The weapon looked vulgar in the hands of a vampire. He tossed it onto the floor , and it rolled to a stop at the toe of her shoe. “Don't say I didn't give you opportunity. Clas!”

The bald vampire thunked into the ballroom on
rubber-soled biker boots. Hands shoved in the pockets of his loose, baggy jeans, he stopped behind Verity, opposite from where Slater stood.

“This little witch wants to shove wood through your heart,” Slater said.

At first Clas's laughter was a simple chuckle, then he let loose into a loud and roiling rumble.

“I need the heart necklace he stole from me!” Verity yelled. “There's a soul in it.”

Slater tilted his head at her. She'd said too much. They would keep her tied here through the next twenty-four hours, most likely taunting her with blood, and eventually force her to transform. She could deal with that. But she mustn't let them keep Rook's soul.

“A soul? In a heart?” Slater paced before her. “Elaborate.”

Verity shook her head.

“Wait, boss,” Clas said from behind her. “The necklace I gave you. Wasn't that a heart?”

“Ah, yes.” Slater snapped his fingers. “In my office desk. Run and fetch it, Clas.”

Boot steps clomped out of the ballroom.

Slater dipped his head to study her gaze from below her line of sight.

“Whose soul would be in that little piece of wood, my fickle witch? Wait. You don't have to tell me. It must be someone you care about very much to risk going out on your own like this. Is the hunter
sans
soul?”

She shook her head furiously.

“You never were a good liar, Verity. Your chest flushes red, even when you don't speak a word. Yes, like that. So pretty.”

Lavender choked the wanting hunger within her.

“Tonight is going to be special. Not only will I claim a hunter kill, but I'll also gain another tribe member. We'll take good care of you, lover. Real good care of my pretty vamp witch.”

* * *

Rook peeled off his leather coat and thrust it toward the naked man, who stood in front of him and King, cupping his private parts with both hands. “What the hell, man?”

“I'm Thomas,” he said, slipping on the coat and buttoning up.

“Be careful of the collar,” Rook warned. “You're the cat that visits Verity?”

He nodded. “No time for chatter. She went out tonight—”

“What? She was supposed to stay put. Where was Kaz?” He tugged out his cell phone. Damn it. He shouldn't have turned it off so early.

“If you're asking about the hunter, erm, I may have distracted him,” the cat offered.

A text message from Kaz told of Verity's escape. Rook clenched the phone, cursing both the witch and the hunter he'd trusted to keep her closely guarded.

“She told me you'd turned against her and she was under house arrest,” Thomas offered.

“What?”

The familiar shrugged. “Sounded good to me. But also suspicious. That witch is not a very good liar. You ever notice how her chest flushes when she lies? No? Right. But now that I see you here, all suited up and ready for action—hell. I shouldn't have helped her.”

The knight's look cut Thomas across his little cat heart.

“Anyway, I had a weird feeling about it, so I followed her. To around the corner.”

Rook pushed past the familiar, but King reined him in. “I don't think she's standing around waiting for you.”

“Well, she was,” Thomas said. He preened a hand over his thick black and gold calico hair. “I'm all sweaty. All worked up.”

“Thomas! What's going on? Where is Verity?”

“She was around the corner, standing in front of that mansion.”

“The one we've staked out,” King said.

Thomas gave him a long look and showed his teeth with a growl. King cast him a
what the hell
look.

“If you are both knights sworn to slay vampires, then I am confused,” Thomas said, drawing his gaze sharply up and down King. “But that's for later. Verity was using a spell to track something. At least that's what I could figure.”

“My soul,” Rook said.

“Whatever she was tracking, it led her to the mansion. But she was taken.”

“By whom?” King asked.

“Doesn't matter.” Rook stepped out onto the sidewalk and studied the mansion's second floor, where the single light glowed. “They've got her. We go in now. You stay out here, Thomas.”

“Right. But don't punish the knight who was supposed to guard her. I led him into the stinging nettles. He didn't stand a chance after that.”

Then, behind Rook, a cat meowed and stepped out from the puddle of his leather coat. Rook grabbed it, and as he was pulling it on, he raced across the street and toward the mansion.

“I'll go around back,” King called.

Rook rounded the corner cordoned off by a wrought-iron fence overgrown with white flowers that gave off an intense odor. Thomas careened past him and padded up to the gate that Rook might not have noticed for the mass of green vines that tumbled over it.

“Thanks,” he muttered. “Now stay out—”

The cat dashed through the gate's iron bars, fitting its not-so-sleek body easily through the greenery.

“—of the way,” Rook finished his request. “Cats.”

Perhaps the feline could prove useful. He did have the skill to outwit an Order knight.

Rook pulled open the gate and slipped in, breaking off leaves and stumbling over a low ground shrub but managing to step high and land on a cobblestone pathway that he followed toward the side of the mansion. The night was dark and sheltered amid the vines and overgrowth, but the moon was too bright. If he stepped out into the open, he'd be seen.

With a stake in one hand, Rook dashed aside a long, hanging vine heavy with flowers and crept close to the brick-sided house. If King entered through the back, they'd find each other inside. Tilting his head, Rook listened, honing his senses toward the mansion and beyond the walls.

A meow alerted him. The cat sat on a windowsill, its tail wagging and its ears back. Rook cast looks all about in case the cat was signaling danger. He didn't see anyone, but vamps were like shadows and could still manage to surprise him no matter how attuned his senses were to sound and smell.

He crept closer to the window and saw the panes were cracked open inward. The cat was good.

“I suppose I can't ask you to stay outside?” He stepped over the hedge and then wedged a toe into the base of it to lever himself up to the sill.

Using its head, the cat nudged the window open further and leapt inside.

“Very well. But don't think this means you deserve an honorary knighthood.”

King would laugh at him for talking to a cat, even if it was a familiar. Could they understand human speech when in cat form?

No time to muddle over that one. He entered what looked like a boiler room for the old, rusting metal pipes that hugged the ceiling and floor. Brooms and buckets were piled against a wall, so he corrected that it had probably been a utility or servant's quarters. For the amount of dust, no one had likely been in here for years.

The cat went about his own way, and Rook was inclined to follow the paw prints. As he slunk down a dark narrow hallway, he noted the closed doors and ran his fingers over the knobs. All were dusty. No one behind those doors. Thomas darted left. Moonlight filled an open foyer tiled in black and white. The stairs leading upward in a grand spiral were not dusty.

Rook pressed his back to the wall and listened.

It is here
.

Yes, but how many vampires lay in wait? he wondered. And where was Verity?

Oz hadn't the ability to determine things like that. He was only as sentient as Rook could be. The soul must be what allowed him to know it was here. Oz had once felt Rook's soul when he'd first gone into his body, so surely he would recognize it now.

Something swung around the corner, and Rook raised the stake in defense. King thrust up a staying palm. Rook signaled they take the stairs and took the lead on quiet steps that quickly brought him to the second floor. Foot trails through the dust verified that guess. They split up, Rook going right and King left.

Pressing an ear to the door, he heard something on the other side. Not footsteps, but low speech. When the doorknob turned beneath his fingers, he stepped back and to the side, stake at the ready.

A man walked through the doorway. Rook didn't pause to gauge threat level because moonlight glinted on the fang exposed with the man's yawn. He slammed his fist against the vampire's chest and compressed the paddles. The stake pinioned out, pulsing his fist with the force. It pierced hard bone. Muscle tore, and the heart burst. Before the vampire could scream, his body disintegrated into a cloud of man-shaped ash, the clothing burning slowly.

The ash dropped. Rook jumped over the dusty pile and entered the room the same time King appeared from the other door.

Assessing the situation, he was suddenly fisted in the gut. Not literally, but what he saw reduced him to a shaking, trembling man who had once owned a soul and who had stood before the pyre as he'd witnessed his wife burn. His mouth went dry. The stake slipped in his loosened grip.

Tied up below a grand chandelier that provided the only light stood Verity. The image was horribly similar to that night outside his cottage as he'd been forced to watch the vampires erect a pyre and string up his wife.

“Marianne,” Rook murmured. “No. I can't stop it. I…tried.”