Masters of the Night (22 page)

“Ah.
You’re wanting
me,” he said in a tender,
taunting smile

His fingertips began moving easily, pleasurably, pressing hot currents
of excitement into her.

“I will not hurt you, Angie,” he whispered. “Let my touch please you.
Do you not like this?
And this?
And
this?”

“Henri,” she moaned. She placed her hand over his, to make him stop—

Her hand was guiding his, urging him on. She became responsive to him,
to the melting softness he was creating, pangs of molten sweetness.

Pure pleasure, unwrapped.

Lifting her against him, he eased her to the couch to let her yield to
the physical yearnings she could no longer repress.

Trembling, excited, she guided his hands pleasurably along her body.

Lost in him, she barely knew when his clothes joined hers on the floor,
only that she felt a muscular chest freed from buttons and cloth, then hard,
needing flesh suddenly pressing, moving, rubbing against her, preparing for her
as his strong legs urged hers apart.

“Enjoy this night with me, Angie,” he said. “Night is always long for
my kind, yet not long enough.”

“Let the clock chime. We won’t hear it,” she murmured, kissing him.

“I do not want to take your memory of this, Angie,” he said. “When I
penetrate you with my body and my being, I want you to remember the penetration
of fire, the pleasure with me. But when the sun rises and I sleep, the morning
will bring
an emptiness
within you, and you will yearn
painfully but not be able to come to me. The day will be long, unbearable. Are
you strong enough?”

“I will never be strong enough,” she said as he lowered his body
against hers. “I don’t want to be strong enough. I want to be forever
devastated by desire for you. Why do you want me? You must have devastated
hundreds of far more beautiful women with your touch than me.”

“I love you,” he said simply.

He immersed her into his being, and into consummation with him.

22.

As the clock
slipped into twilight, Henri placed a gold band inset with a sparkling bezel of
black sapphires onto Angie’s ring finger. “
Vampyres
are very casual about these things. ‘
Til
death do us
part’ doesn’t exactly work for us or the mortals we join with.” He paused. “No
other can take you as long as I claim you, Angie. But I can release or divorce
you, whatever you want to call it, when the sun comes up if you do not want
me.”

“I do,” she laughed lightly, kissing him.

He rose, and moving to the living room window that extended from the
ceiling to the floor, used an automatic opener to open the blinds.

The mists were gone. A panoramic view of the city sparkling with lights
below the mountain in the last trails of night filled the room. It was
breathtaking.

Angie’s eyes traveled over every centimeter of Henri De
LaCroix
, memorizing him as he stood in front of the window
naked, looking out at the twinkling city.

Broad shoulders, strong legs, muscular chest, strong …
other attributes.
“Breathtaking,” she murmured.

He stood silently in front of the window for several minutes,
then
said slowly, choosing his words carefully, “She was
beautiful. The most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”

“The Lady Jane?”

“She would meet me every night at a stone bridge, and I would drown in
her laughter, her fragrance, her smile. We would talk until just before
sunrise. Then, laughing, she would flee from me into the woods. Everything
inside me told me I should flee from her, but the danger in her smile was an
enticement within itself. I burned with so much desire for
her,
I could not see the lightning in my own soul. So I became hers.
And traveled with her for decades.
Then Nicholas became her
obsession. Fearing his holy companion’s interference and influence, she killed
the priest. Then the siren’s song called to Nicholas relentlessly every night,
and he weakened. She told him he would have to leave his cross on the stone
ledge of the bridge beyond the abbey before he could have her, so he left it on
the bridge. When he tried to put it back on the next morning, he thought it was
going to burn a hole in his heart. But the only holes were in his neck.
From the Lady of the Night.
And—one other.
Do you want me to go on, Angie?”

“He became an immortal with Jane,” Angie said under her breath.

“We are not immortals. We—just—can’t—die. Have you forgotten your
nightmare so soon?”

He turned to her and the sapphires in his eyes were penetrating. “I
shared the House of a Hundred Rooms with her.”

“Why aren’t you still with her?”

“She’s a witch,” he said simply, with a shrug.

She joined him at the window and he held her wrapped in his arms until
dawn approached, two bodies clinging to the last threads of night, clinging to
the only safety net they had—each other.

At dawn’s breaking, Henri became restless. Night was waning, yet he was
reluctant to yield to the dark sleep.
The sleep that would
take him from her.
He was as desolate as death itself.

He glanced at the cross on the coffee table and looked away. “I release
you. You are an innocent.”

“Well, that was the shortest marriage I’ve ever been in,” she said in
dismay,
then
looked up at him unhappily. “And how do I
dismiss the longings I will forever feel for you, Henri? What do I do with each
empty night now?”

“It’s the empty days that worry me,
chéri
,”
he said. Then he gave her a sudden, hopeful smile. “We could catch a red eye
across the U.S. and be in Connecticut by tomorrow night. I have a—secret
place.”

“Works for me,” she smiled. “What’s in Connecticut?”

“Just a damned village,” he said.

Her smile erased. “That doesn’t exactly sound like the Sandals, if
you’re cussing it.”

“No, no,” he said, laughing. “It’s really considered damned.
Cursed.
Haunted.
It’s the ruins of
a town supposedly built by early settlers in trees so thick it’s barely
visible, and closed in by the hills around it, filled with their shadows,
creating perpetual shade. Only a few building foundations here and there
remain. It’s off limits to the public now, and only a few trespassers ever venture
in—if they can even find it. Mostly just occasional ghost hunters and such try
to make their way through the trees. The dark entry road is dim and hazy,
sunless, uninviting. We would be secluded, safe. Strange stories haunt the
town’s history, discouraging visitors.
Stories of settlers
who went missing, women who eventually became hysterical—insane—or killed
themselves.
People who saw strange creatures and red, glowing eyes
peering through the thick trees, and were also declared insane. Dead animals,
missing animals, mostly cows, hysterical women, men who burned down their
homes—the stories do not report the reasons, but let’s suffice it to say I had
a few friends who fell victim to house fires. Historians say the ruins of
certain large holes in the rocky ground are root cellars, some with sod grass
tops that could be pulled over them—”

“You can stop there,” she said. She was getting the picture.
Clearly.

He closed the window and nodded toward his bedroom door. “I have to
sleep now, Angie. Don’t go in there, and don’t take that cross in there. If it
touches the room, I will suffer each time I have to return.”

He went into the room, closed the door and locked it.

Angie stared wistfully at the door for some minutes. She was already
lonely. Her gaze fell on his goblet, tranquilly shimmering on the breakfast bar
counter.

Glimmering in the light from a pale dawn graying the horizon, the cup
was beautiful.
Heavy crystal in forest green, bejeweled and
rimmed with gold.
A goblet that she knew was for his use and his alone.

A few drops of residual wine left in the bottom sparkled in the day’s
first touch of pale light. Slowly, she circled the golden rim with her
fingertip.

Strange pleasure pelted her.

“You know what it would do to you if you drank from that, don’t you?”
she heard a woman’s voice say in soft surprise, directly behind her. “Where his
lips have touched?”

Natalia moved slowly around to Angie’s left side. “Drink from it,” she
enticed in a whisper with a twisty smile. “You’ll remember what
it’s
like—forever.”

She laughed tauntingly, lightly, so lightly it was no more than a
tinkle of a tiny chime on a night breeze. Light—and wicked, and delighted as
she also remarked in deeper surprise, “You want to, don’t you?”

“Isn’t it a little past your bedtime?” Angie said, unafraid of the
saucy vamp but terrified of the truth in her words.

The
vampiress
moved closer, her eyes on
Angie’s carotid artery.

Angie’s eyes narrowed. “Touch my neck and I’ll take you out, Natalia.
And I won’t need a stake to do it.”

“I believe you could, couldn’t you?” she responded, and backed away a
little.

Then her voice became acrid, bitter as quinine as she swiftly left the
subject of the goblet behind and revealed her purpose. “Do you know what you’ve
done? They will kill him.”

“What is it you know about all this, Natalia?” Angie demanded.

The dawn became tinged with pink. Natalia fled.

As she returned to the couch, Angie began to feel strange, odd,
bombarded by perceptions within her that felt like hands reaching out from a
mirror, and it frightened her.

Yanking on the jeans and blue top Christa had brought her, and her
cross, Angie wrote Henri a quick note and hurried to the door to jump in her
car and beat it back to the city.
To get help for him from
the Shadows.

Before her hand had even touched the doorknob, Henri was beside her.

“You can’t go out there. Not alone. The
Lammergeier
has only one purpose here, Angie.
To kill me.
And take
you prisoner. And Nicholas also, in the end, will have only one purpose.
His own preservation.”

“He was helping the school teacher, Kara
Milstead
…”

“Ah, yes. Kara. Sweet little minion, I’ll wager she became, after
meeting the mighty Nicholas.”

“Minion?
But she wasn’t a
vampyre
!”

“Minions can also be mortal.
Slaves.
To do the
master’s bidding.”

“But Nicholas saved me from the phantoms,” she stammered.

“Did he? Are you sure? Are you sure the holy water he just happened to
be carrying in his cape pocket at that moment was so holy?” He paused. “We are
masters of illusion, Angie.”

Angie looked into his eyes reflecting things that needed to be said,
but fear he would lose her love if those things found a voice.

“Nicholas is here at Jane’s bidding, Angie,” he began reluctantly. “And
she is here at the Realm’s bidding. She is here, with the help of her paramour,
Nicholas, to abduct you and sell you to the Realm—if the
Lammergeier
doesn’t beat her to it.”

“Sell me?” Angie cried, horror-struck.

His eyes became piercingly sad. “The Realm wants you.
But not to kill you, Angie.
They want you because you are a
Black Rose.”

Angie felt sick.

The flower on her pillow …

“You have royal blood in your veins,” he admitted slowly. “They want to
join you to a descendent royal—who is destined to become a
vampyre
Royal. And the firstborn male child of your blade union, when he comes of age,
will follow. And you, Angie, they consider a very special Rose. They plan to
establish a lineage of mystical
vampyres
with you.
Royal mystical
vampyres
.
Powerful.”

She shook her head as though trying to shake away a terrible, horrible
dream. The vision of the caves deep in the earth with her as their singular dweller
swam in her thoughts.

“No,” she said, stepping back, numbed,
refusing
to accept what he was saying. “My birth mother’s name was
Wessin
.
There’s no real proof yet.”

“Your grandmother changed her name to protect you, and your mother,” he
returned. “You know in your heart of hearts it’s true. And it appears a slayer
may have killed Allison.”

A slayer had killed her mother. “How do you know it wasn’t Nicholas?”
she tried.

“Do you seriously think Nicholas would use a nail instead of fangs?” he
countered drily.

A sob rose up in her throat and spilled out through her eyes. “My
grandmother said my parents were killed in a car crash.”

“Or your grandmother invented that story to keep your true past in
darkness, hidden from the Realm.”

“How did Jane find me?” she sobbed openly, agonies of sorrow now
ripping at her.

“Your cross,” he answered. “There is only one like it in existence.
Your mother had it made—to protect you specifically.”

“We have to make a plan, fight them. Help me, Henri,” she pleaded.
“Empower me.”

He pulled her brusquely onto the couch with him. “Sit down beside me
and listen, Angie. I bit you, and not just a pinprick, remember? I carried you
into my world. Jane is my—master. She could know your every move—through me.”

“Then you have to fight her and the
Lamm
-whatever
it’s called—through me.”

His brow furrowed, perplexed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Sweeping her hair behind her shoulders, he pressed her against the back
of the couch and bared his fangs. He bit her hard on the neck before she could
even comprehend what was happening—

Until she felt something warm and wet flowing down her neck and seeping
onto her blouse and her arm.

“You bastard.
Did you play me?”
she said weakly, collapsing under his spell as his being began to immerse
deeply, powerfully, into hers. “I’d like to kick your sorry ash and dirt back
to France.”