anyone
could understand him. “You lost your soul many centuries ago, dead one, and you yearn for the freedom of the final death. Go now. Your breath is no longer able to sustain you; your heart shall cease beating.” He raised his hand into the air and slowly began to close his fingers into a fist.
Francesca watched in horrified fascination as the undead obeyed the compulsion in that sweetly lethal voice. The vampire gasped for air, and as the fist closed tighter, his face began to turn color as he choked and strangled before her eyes. The vampire clutched at his chest as his heart stuttered, but he made no attempt to fight the order, so powerful was that voice. Francesca could scarcely take her eyes from her lifemate’s twin; she, too, was caught in the spell of his power, mesmerized by the true beauty of his voice. It was only when he plunged his fist deep within the cavity of the vampire’s chest and extracted the heart, when lightning slammed to earth in a jagged bolt of blue white and incinerated the already dead organ and its host, that she managed to jerk herself awake, once again aware of her own very precarious situation.
Francesca waited in silence, one hand over her stomach to protect her unborn daughter, the other holding on to Brice, who was still under her mind control, unable to comprehend anything going on around him.
Lucian was a thousand times more powerful, more deadly, than the vampire she had just faced. She stood watching him with her dark eyes, her small teeth biting down on her lower lip, betraying her nervousness. He moved then, a flowing of grace and timeless beauty, a two-edged sword more destructive than anything she had ever known. Gabriel was right to hunt this monster. Nothing could stop him, nothing the humans had would slow him down if he should decide to give up the murderous game he played with his brother and turn to something even more vicious.
Francesca swallowed the tight knot of fear blocking her throat and lifted her chin defiantly. “I must thank you for coming to my aid, dark one.”
“To my brother’s aid,” he corrected softly, moving around her with a flowing grace. He seemed not to touch the ground, but to glide through the air itself. He moved so softly there was no sound, no disturbance in the air. Lucian’s black eyes moved over her face, and he seemed to see right into her soul. “My brother is the only one able to provide me with diversion. Life is tedious when one is so much more intelligent than all others.”
“Why have you come to his aid?” Francesca asked softly, puzzled that he did not appear as foul to her as the other vampires she had encountered over the centuries. Was he so good at illusion that even an ancient such as she could not recognize what was foul and wholly evil? His power was very disturbing to her.
The broad shoulders shrugged in a lazy ripple. “I do not allow others to interfere in our game. You are an anchor he weighs himself down with. A pawn I can use against him when I so desire. What is between my brother and me shall remain so always. Any who dares to interfere, hunter or vampire or woman, will die at my choosing.”
She tilted her chin. “What are you going to do with me?”
The perfect mouth slanted into a brief, humorless smile. “Call him to your aid. You would not want me to make you my slave. Call him.” His voice was pleasing and subtle, an insidious whisper of purity. He seemed not to move, yet he was so close she could smell his scent, clean, not foul. She could feel his power.
Francesca swallowed hard and took a step backward, shaking her head to be sure she wasn’t under compulsion. “Never. There is nothing you can do to make me betray him, not of my own free will. Gabriel is a great man and my lifemate. I willingly exchange my life for his.” She waited to be struck down. There was a silence, long and empty. She couldn’t hear him breathing, couldn’t hear his heart beating, if he had a heart.
Her long lashes fluttered as she regarded the master vampire standing so motionless, looking like the statue of an ancient god. It took a moment to realize there was no entrapment in his voice, just plain black magic. His voice simply made one want to comply with his every wish. “Why aren’t you forcing me to do your bidding?” she asked curiously, sweeping one hand nervously through her long blue-black hair.
“I do not need the aid of women in my battle.” She felt a whip of contempt in his words. “I find it rather astonishing that my brother has grown so weak he has allowed this mortal you guard to remain alive. What do you see in this mortal that you would prefer his company to that of one of your own people? He is self-seeking; his mind is filled with plans of revenge. His main purpose in life seems to be to get at my brother.” His black eyes were steady on her face. “But you know that, Francesca.”
She shivered, running her hands up and down her arms. She was suddenly cold. It was his voice again. The tone was exactly the same. Soft. Pure. Beautiful. Yet somehow she felt threatened now. And worse than being threatened, she felt the heavy weight of his rebuke. It shouldn’t have meant anything to her. He was the undead. Yet she felt as if she were a young girl censured by the Prince of their people. It hurt and it was humiliating. Francesca could not meet those empty black eyes. Instead she found herself looking down at the toes of her shoes. She wanted to make him understand, yet she didn’t understand her own feelings. How could she possibly explain them to someone who had no emotions at all?
“I would stay and play longer, but the foolish one is forgetting all that was taught him.” Lucian said the words softly as he shimmered for a moment, his once-solid form transparent so that she could see the trees right through him. There was a peculiar prism effect she had never seen before right before he dissolved into droplets of mist and streamed through the fog-filled terrain away from her.
Francesca let out her breath slowly and relaxed muscles she hadn’t realized were cramped and taut. At once she reached for Gabriel to warn him. He was in a desperate battle, whirling among the three lesser vampires, all minions of the one Lucian had destroyed. They were darting in, seeking to wear him down with long, razor-sharp talons, attempting to slice small, deep cuts in his flesh to weaken him.
“Lucian is here.”
Soft laughter echoed through her mind. At first she thought Lucian had somehow managed to get into her head, but then she realized he was in Gabriel’s mind. Because she shared Gabriel’s thoughts and memories, she could “hear” their strange conversation.
“You have forgotten all that I taught you, brother. Why would you allow these lesser vampires to surround you this way?”
Lucian shimmered into solid form between Gabriel and the largest and most aggressive of the three undead.
Gabriel launched himself at the smallest vampire, the one directly behind him, moving so quickly he had plunged his fist into the chest and extracted the pulsing heart while the vampire was still staring in shock at Lucian. Gabriel was on the second vampire before he had dropped the heart of the first one. The creature screamed his defiance, lashing out, but was far too late. Gabriel had taken his heart and whirled away, even as bolt after bolt of jagged lightning beat at the earth, incinerating the two bodies and their tainted hearts.
It happened so quickly, Francesca was unable to comprehend how Gabriel had done it. There was no thought, no plan in his mind that she could read, not even a communication between the twin brothers, yet even as Gabriel had used Lucian as a distraction, so had Lucian used Gabriel. He had attacked the largest of the undead while it was gaping in horror at Gabriel. The third body was lying shriveled and lifeless on the ground while Lucian tossed the tainted heart into the fiery ball of energy Gabriel was using to destroy the other two.