The war. The fight. Or whatever the fuck was coming for them had been triggered. And he had a feeling Leo had been the key.
His anger rose. He’d been deceived.
Leo was not who he claimed to be.
And once he woke and told him what he wanted to hear, he would find a way to end this obsession once and for all.
Ancient Greece—47 BC
LEO'S HEART WAS going to give out. He was positive. With as many jolts as it had been getting, it was going to give the fuck out. He stood as still as he possibly could as the stunning vampire behind Alasdair held his gaze.
Maybe he's not looking at me, he thought, and then he looked over his shoulder. But there was no one behind him. So he turned back, wondering if he was about to be maimed right there in his vision, but when he glanced beyond Alasdair's shoulder, Vasilios was gone.
Where the…
Leo spun around to see if he'd missed him or if he was going to appear somewhere to ravage his throat, but instead of finding Alasdair and Vasilios, he was somewhere else entirely.
ALASDAIR PICKED LEO up and slung him over his shoulder. He really didn't want to do this. Not now, and not with Thanos. But he didn't have a choice. He couldn't leave Leo behind, and he had to go to his cousin’s aid.
Holding on to the backs of Leo's thighs, he faded back to the office where he'd left Isadora and Thanos, and what he saw when he appeared made his knees want to buckle. Thanos was on his ass, his back against the wall, clutching his neck. Blood oozed between his fingers and trailed down his arm in rivers of crimson liquid, and when his blue eyes found his, they appeared lackluster compared to the usual twinkle the vampire sported.
What the fuck is the matter with him?
Alasdair crouched by his cousin's side and put Leo on the ground. Then he looked at Thanos's disturbingly sallow complexion. He was in trouble.
“Show me,” Alasdair demanded, gesturing to the wound his cousin was covering with his hand. When he refused to let go, Alasdair repeated himself. “Show me.”
“I can’t,” Thanos managed to say between grim lips.
“Why not? Just take your hand away. I’ll heal you.”
Thanos grimaced. “My hand. It’s fused to the silver.”
Alasdair shifted closer and saw exactly what Thanos meant. His left arm was across his chest, and his palm was flat against the side of his neck as though he’d reached to remove the weapon that’d been used. But it appeared that, when he’d taken hold of it, the metal had melted into his fingers and his hand, melding it with the wound and making it impossible to directly heal.
The silver was pressed between Thanos’s neck and hand, and tiny little bubbles boiled there. The pain must’ve been excruciating, not only from the poison, but also from the burn. Silver only melted when it reached 1763.2° F, a little factoid Alasdair had picked up through many years manning the torture chair of the Adjudication Room. So it was a fucking miracle Thanos could still speak.
The ghastly grey veins traveling up his neck to his ear were straining out against his skin, which was paper thin where the poison was coursing through him.
“Who did this?”
Thanos tried to straighten up but hissed and slumped back down. “Some fucker Isa knows—”
“What do you mean Isa knows?”
“Some tall bastard in a preppy-ass suit and tie. Gotta say, cousin. Didn’t think this is how I’d die.”
“You are not going to die,” Alasdair swore as he tried to find a way to stop the toxic liquid from spreading.
“There’s no way to heal this shit without direct contact, and you know it. It’s too deep in the blood. I’d figured a dagger would be it for me, or maybe you ripping my head off in annoyance, but not a fucking letter opener by some goddamn human.”
So that’s what was now nothing more than an adhesive between his neck and his palm.
“You need to go find Isa.”
“If you think I’m leaving here—”
“Go!” Thanos roared.
Alasdair reached for the hand lying limp by his cousin’s side. “No. Now, shut the fuck up and give me your hand.”
Thanos opened his mouth to protest but must’ve thought better of it and decided to do as he’d been told. Instead of his palm being cool to the touch, it was close to scorching.
Like all cold-blooded creatures, their variable body temperature adjusted to their surroundings—or emotions. In this case, Thanos’s skin was heating due to severe pain. But Alasdair tightened his fingers around his cousin’s limp ones and gnashed his back teeth together to fight the pain off.
Mine is nothing compared to his.
He clamped his other hand around Leo's wrist, and as he was about to fade them all from the room, a photograph fell from the wall and landed by them.
When Alasdair glanced at it, the bathhouses were staring back at him. The ones that had set him on his quest for answers when he’d last been in this room alone with Leo.
That was when the world he had always known began to fall apart. And that made him wonder as his eyes shifted to the human who was still eerily unconscious, Is that where he is now?
Ancient Athens—47 BC
IT WAS AS if someone had changed the channel on the TV.
Leo scrubbed his eyes, and when he reopened them, he recognized his new location.
He was back at the bathhouse.
It was nighttime.
And there was a definite tension in the air—of the sexual kind.
Then he heard it. A shout of uninhibited ecstasy.
Leo's pulse thumped and his cock twitched. Then, as if he couldn't stop his feet from moving, he started walking in the direction of the sound. Gooseflesh covered his skin, but it wasn't borne out of fear.
It was anticipation.
A cool breeze whipped through the open roof of the house and swirled down around his feet, brushing his pants against his thighs.
“You really should not walk alone in the night, omorfo mou agóri.”
Leo recognized the voice. Vasilios.
Oh God. God…
He stopped walking and curled his fingers into his palms. Did he really want to keep going? He knew exactly who that groan belonged to, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to see Alasdair with his vampire again.
And why is that, he asked himself. Probably because he was always interrupted every time he thought he'd finally—
What? Have sex with a vampire who wants to kill me? Jesus, I have lost my mind.
“A lot can happen when the sun dips down and the moon come out to play…”
Fucking hell—Vasilios was convincing. His words were drawing him closer, and the moan that tore through the empty bathhouse was full of raw arousal.