Reaper's Dark Kiss (22 page)

Going past her into the room, Vandar saw the candles had been moved artfully, casting pools of light that hovered uncertainly. He let Maggie lead the way to the leather couch set before a square wooden table. On the table was the drawing she’d made of them together in moonlight. She’d obviously thrown it down when she sensed him at the door.

“I was sketching,” she said, nervously handing Vandar a glass of crimson wine. “I moved the candles. I wanted to see how the light shifted and made things look different.”

It was an odd feeling. In centuries, no one had moved anything of Vandar’s. Certainly nothing in his private rooms. It wasn’t, he thought, taking a sip of wine, an unpleasant feeling.

Maggie must have taken Vandar’s silence for disapproval. “I’m sorry, my lord,” she said, reverting to formality in her fear. “I’ll put them back the way they were.”

Before she could turn away, Vandar caught her wrist and gently—very gently—pulled her to him. “I’ve told you, you’re not to use formalities with me.” He kissed her soft parted lips. “Leave the candles. I like them where they are.”

The hunger for him that came to Maggie’s eyes stirred Vandar in a way he’d never felt. He was aroused. The goings-on between his legs left no doubt of that. But there was more. Something he’d never felt with any youngling he’d taken to his bed. He wanted Maggie to be his, but not just for a night. Perhaps a season. Perhaps many seasons. He stroked slow fingers through her pink hair. “Do you have things to draw with?”

“No,” Maggie said, and a wistful look came into her eyes. “There’s this pencil set I saw a long time ago.” She shook her head, as if shaking off a dream. “It’s gone by now.”

A long time ago, Vandar thought, charmed. He’d read works of literature written in more volumes than the years Maggie had spent on the face of this world.

“Perhaps we can find another set like it,” he said and looked to her empty hands. They were small, delicate, but her fingers were agile, nimble against his touch. “Where is your wine?”

She lowered her gaze. “I didn’t know if you’d be okay with that.”

There. Again. Inside Vandar, something shifted. A strange heat he’d never known blossomed into being. It reminded him of the flowers Maggie had drawn, how they seemed to bow before the naked heaving lovers, as though theirs was an act of love that could shake the stars from the skies. That was how she made him feel, as though his passion for her were a fire that burned without consuming him. What nonsense. “Come.” He took Maggie’s small hand. “I’ll pour you a glass.”

She stiffened. “You shouldn’t be serving me, my lord.” She stumbled over the last two words. “I mean, I can do it.”

“I am not the hero you think me to be, little Margaret,” Vandar said, taking her along as he followed the scent of wine to the bottle. “I’m not the gentle lover you’ve drawn. I am a creature outside of time, cheated of the sun. And I have cheated you as well.”

Maggie gave a light tug. Vandar loosened his hold. His ears, long since grown accustomed to hearing the smallest sounds, heard the sensual slide of Maggie’s shirt over her head, her jeans down her legs, her bare feet stepping free.

Naked, warm, and yielding—gods, so willing and yielding—Maggie pressed herself into him. “I didn’t draw a hero. I drew the man who made love to me,” she whispered, sliding her arms around Vandar. “Before the risen rite, no one gave a damn about me. But the way it feels when you’re inside me, it’s like you’ll never let me go. Maybe I’m wrong. But let me pretend for a while, okay?”

Vandar let go of the glass and used his mind to push it through the air to a low table. His mind tried to tell him the willing girl rubbing herself against him was a danger, a far greater danger than Oracle’s presence two floors down.

Maggie slid down Vandar’s body, pushing his vest aside as she went. Her hard nipples slid against his bare chest, then down his belly. His mind argued that he should push her away, allow no intimacy, simply take her and satisfy himself, as he’d done with the long line of young vampires before her.

By the time Maggie got to her knees, and he felt her stroking hands between his legs, Vandar’s beast had risen inside him, and the Lord of the Dominion ceased using his mind altogether.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Three brothers stood before Sky. One assassin, one bounty hunter, and God only knew what Marek’s job description was—King, Licensed to Kill? The air in the gardens had the feel of a bowstring drawn too tight. Sky felt beads of cold sweat on her temples.

Marek made a half bow and said to Viper, “Welcome, brother. It gladdens me to see your face.”

A ritual greeting, Sky noted, like what Julian did with Oracle. And a public gesture that would tell his subjects in the garden that the king was taking his brother back into the fold.

Obviously expecting anything but this, Viper said, “It heartens me to see you’re well, brother.” He gave a half bow.

Like the politician he was, Marek rolled on smoothly, as if he’d just graciously accepted an apology. To Julian, he said, “You shouldn’t be on your feet. I left you resting.”

“I had to come find Sky. Make sure she was okay,” Julian said. “I couldn’t remember what I did.” Then he told Marek everything, Oracle and the stone, breaking into the museum, then what happened after he drank from Sky.

“I was with Viper when he broke into the museum,” Julian said, finishing. “It was my fault. We were in a hurry.”

Another one of those long moments of quiet between the brothers came. Then Marek said to Viper, “You have my thanks. Julian would be lost to us without his life mate.”

His face showing nothing, Viper said, “It didn’t seem like a good time to play drain-the-mortal. Not in a sun hotel with the Creed’s king a few rooms away.”

This time Marek’s bow showed more respect than ritual. “Your show of duty to the Creed truly heartens me, brother.”

His quietly spoken words disarmed Viper the way a bomb whisperer would disarm a bomb. As Sky watched, Viper geared down. He’d been scanning the garden for danger. But now he grew calm and still, his attention focused, instead of watchful. His hands fell a fraction away from his knives, which Sky figured was like going from high alert to high readiness.

Marek, Sky thought, is a killer negotiator.

“I’m sure by now, SkyLynne, you’re wondering how many Furies can dance on the head of a pin,” Marek said.

Sky was taken aback, because she’d been thinking almost exactly that. She’d begun putting it together on the walk from Central Park. The mosaic in the old tunnel with falling angels who had silver swords with ivory hilts. Julian and Viper’s knives were antiques. They both had silver blades, ivory handles. Viper’s promise about gold wings. The picture of falling angels in his place.

“Are you angels?” Sky asked.

“Not precisely,” Marek said. “You will allow me to tell you of our history?”

There was something calculated in the way he asked, as though he were deciding how much Sky should be told. She nodded, unwilling to say more to Marek than she had to.

“There are angels who are warriors,” Marek began. “They are…” He looked at Sky. “What do mortals call it when you have soldiers who will commit unsavory acts to sustain peace and order?”

Sky thought about CJ and how he never talked about what he did. Ever. “Special Forces?” she said to Marek.

“Good enough,” he said. “They are angels of a high order, unquestioningly loyal and obedient.”

“But after a while,” Julian said, picking up the story, “the angels couldn’t do things that had to be done. They were too light. Too good.”

“Angels are creatures of unimaginable light,” Marek said, “but their shadows are blacker than the night between stars. We—”

“How can something made of light cast a shadow?” Sky asked.

“Cosmic laws,” Marek told her, “defy reason and logic. They simply are.”

He waited to see if Sky had more questions. When she didn’t, he went on. “The Furies were created from the shadows of warrior angels. Our purpose was to defend, enforce, fight. Nothing more. We went forth and did that which was necessary but which no other creature in creation could bear to do.”

“You were heaven’s Green Berets?” Sky asked, too caught up in the story to treat Marek like an interview.

After Julian told him what she meant, Marek laughed, a hard bitter sound. “Nothing so good as that. Even the most vicious mortal has far more light than we do. Furies have no light in us. We were created from darkness so black, it is a nameless void.”

“Who were you supposed to fight?” Sky asked. She had the feeling each question was being drawn from her, as if Marek were doing a weird kind of reverse interview, leading her where he wanted her to go.

“If any order of creature dared to violate the law of the Sublime Kingdom, the Furies fell upon them and brought utter annihilation,” Marek said. “We were the wrath whose very name meant mayhem and destruction.”

A strange breeze blew through the garden, bringing a haunting scent of wildflowers in sunshine. “What happened?” Sky asked.

“We got tired of being slaves,” Viper said. “We had legions who fought with us, but we could only fight who we were told, and we couldn’t build our own kingdom.”

“After eons,” Julian added, “we wanted to be free.”

“You have a story about a girl who slides down a very deep place,” Marek said.

“
Alice in Wonderland
,” Sky told him. “The rabbit hole.”

“We found such an opening,” Marek said. “It was a portal between realms. We thought we had found our way to freedom.”

“All we had to do,” Viper said, “was kill the portal guardians. We got legions to follow us, told them they’d fight for us and we’d build our own kingdom and we’d be free.”

“We planned the assault. We believed that if we fought our way free, others would follow, and we would change the order of things. The battle began,” Marek said. “But in the Sublime Kingdom, there are no secrets. We were caught draining off the light of the portal guardians, slaughtering our way to freedom.” He turned to Sky, a sort of plea for her to understand on his face. “It was our only way out of slavery. I regret now the light we spilled.”

“It was an uprising,” Sky said.

“Very much.” Marek was thoughtful a few moments before he said to Sky, “You know what a veil is?”

“Like a wedding veil?”

“Not quite,” Marek said. “In mortals, it is called conscience. There are things you want to do, but you don’t. You understand?”

Sky told him she did.

“I have told you,” Marek said, “that we were created to defend, to fight, to enforce. We craved the kill all the time, but the veil—our conscience—kept us from mindless butchery. Our punishment began with the ripping away of our veil.”

Imagining an immortal warrior with absolutely no conscience, doing exactly what he wanted, with nothing to hold him back, gave Sky a real moment of horror.

“We went on a rampage,” Marek said. “We massacred the guardians, their mates. We laid waste to their entire world before it was over.” He was silent, not breathing, not moving for endless seconds before he said, “And only when we fell into this world did we feel regret at the life we had so thoughtlessly taken without mercy.”

A whole world? Sky thought. Dead?

“And then you fell through the hole?” Sky asked, keeping her voice as steady as she could.

“You needn’t fear us. Our veils are very much with us in this world.” Marek gave a rueful smile. “We are now warriors with a conscience.”

Julian slipped his arms around Sky. She leaned into his solidly hard body and felt her fear melt away.

“The Furies,” Marek went on, “were gathered around the portal and bound in chains. It had been redirected. We were exiled for all eternity to this place of flesh and stone. Our men fell with us. We were cursed so that light would rob us of our immortality and only mortal blood would sustain our lives.”

“How many?” Sky asked, blown away by what she was hearing. Julian, Marek, Viper—slaves?

“There were thirteen Furies,” Marek said. “The fall has driven some of our brethren mad.”

“We fell all over your world. Like falling stars,” Viper said. “We don’t know how many warriors are left. Some smashed their swords and walked away. They’re civilians. They live quiet lives, go by the Creed. They don’t want anything to do with us. Look how they ended up because of us.”

“Many burned up in the fall,” Marek said. “Those who landed on the night side of this world fared better.”

“The chains,” Sky said. “Is that what made you brothers?”

“It’s good to have you in our family, SkyLynne,” Marek said with a pleased smile. “Your mind is quick, sharp. Yes. Myself, Julian, Viper, and the other Furies are brothers in your world.”

It was a politician’s smile. He was hiding something. Right. It was so obvious. How could she have missed it? “Vandar’s your brother?” Sky asked in a shaken whisper.

“We are bound by the bond of brotherhood in this world,” Marek said stiffly.

“And you’re going to issue a death warrant on your
brother
?”

“Death scroll,” Viper murmured.

“I have no choice,” Marek said.

“We’re stronger than mortals,” Viper said. “Faster. Deadly fighters. But in sunlight, we’re done. We can’t have Vandar doing what he’s doing.”

“As ruler of the Creed,” Marek said, “I must take action. If I do not act, my brother Furies will. If Vandar’s crimes expose us, mortals would soon wipe us from the face of your world in fear.”

Sky thought of the wars started over nothing more than a different name for God, and knew Marek was right.

“My true name,” Viper said into the silence, “is Zahaab, Furie of the Abyss.”

“Belayth,” Marek said with a small bow to Sky. “Furie of War.”

“Azryal,” Julian said, moving beside her to take her hand. “Furie of Death.” He gave Sky an uncertain look. “Also known as the Destroyer.”

“Is that what you’ve been scared to tell me?” Sky asked him.

“I wasn’t sure how you’d take knowing what I really am,” Julian said.

Sky rolled her eyes at him. “You’re made of darkness. You carry the sharpest knives I’ve ever seen. You risk your life to protect your people in a world that could kill all of you.” She shrugged. “I guess you’re pretty okay.”