Careful. Remember what he wants. Don’t let him win.
Hands cupped possessively beneath her breasts, Christos lifted his head, his eyes filled with crimson fire as he breathed deeply of the pulse point at her throat. “It’s no wonder your Paladin was able to fuck you. Monster or not, you are one sweet bit of ass.”
And just like that, the bonds snapped. She lunged, her fangs sinking deep in his neck. The first heady mouthful of warmth slid down the back of her tongue. He stiffened, but then sank a hand into her hair, pulling her closer so she had to swallow hard and fast to keep from drowning on his blood.
“Yes, my daughter. Drink. Let my blood heal all your pains.”
No! He tricks you! He poisons your soul with his evil.
For one heady second she continued to drink before the truth caught up with her battered and bruised mind that had been locked in nightmarish reality. She gagged and jerked away, her throat working convulsively around the last drop of toxin coating it. What had she done? Son of Lilith, favored child of Lucifer, Christos had been evil before the abomination of his hell-born resurrection, but now?
Pure evil. And you’ve invited him into your body with his blood.
She screamed, but no sound came from her lips. Only in the distant recesses of her mind could her death cry be heard. For it was not her body that died, but something far worse. She, the Gabby she might have been, the child she’d fought to protect for seventy-nine long horrid years, was dying with each pulse that distributed Christos’s poison blood in her veins.
Above the sound of her own silent screams came another—a malevolent chuckle that in no way matched the tenderness of the hands lowering her to the floor. “Ah, Gabby, Gabby, Gabby. Where is your savior now?”
Christos twisted his head to the side, studying his child as she arched her wet dream of a body up toward his hovering hand. It mattered not to him that her action was an unconscious one driven by the call of like to like as his blood forged a path through her system, completely and irrevocably binding her to him.
Finally, he thought as he allowed himself the pleasure of caressing the full swell of her offered breasts. His cock immediately sprung to attention, need pulsing through his groin and echoing in the throb of his fangs. Remarkable. He’d touched her before, but never had it elicited such a reaction. Possibly because she’d been nothing but a task to him them. A work in progress to be shaped and molded. But now that he’d achieved his goal?
Is this what Lucifer felt at my own rebirth? The pride that comes with knowing you’ve created perfection?
Christos had been like a harbinger of evil before, but now? Now he was a plague. One drop of his blood and he’d achieved in Gabby what years of transfusions had failed to do. Gabby was his. Her body. Her mind…her soul.
The door creaked open behind him, the coppery scent of the null’s dried-on blood announcing the man’s identity. “My king?”
“Cyrus, is our guest properly indisposed?”
“Yes, my king. I doubt she will wake for hours yet.”
“Very good then,” he replied absently, his attention fixated once more on Gabriella and the writhing convulsions her body had started going through. How long would they last? How long before she woke?
“My king?”
“What is it?” he snapped, eager to be rid of the voyeur. He couldn’t even count the number of years he’d waited for this. Centuries he’d worked to set up the situation in which the conception of a child of light and dark could occur. And decades more before he’d finally found the key to her conversion. But he’d done it. And Gabriella would be the one to earn him his rightful place to the right of his father’s throne. That joke of a general, Ganelon, was wrong. Gabriella was the prophecy. They’d simply misinterpreted the signs before. But the prophecy was now on the eve of its fulfillment. Fueled by the potency of his blood and the gift of her Paladin heritage, Gabriella could walk into the depths of Haven and begin the spread of the contagion that would burn like a swath of evil through their ranks. The child of his blood. His soon-to-be lover. His future queen.
He touched her cheek, undisturbed by the grayish cast to her face. The blood of the master that ran through his veins would now run through hers as well. <<Hurry, my love. I’ve waited long enough to find one worthy enough to be my queen.>>
“They approach,” Cyrus said, dousing Christos’s good mood.
They’d found them more quickly than he anticipated.
He sighed, reluctantly removing his hand. The consummation of the binding would have to wait until later. After she’d fulfilled her purpose. She would come to him then, having bathed in their blood: the perfect match to his evil soul.
“You may lead those I’ve chosen through the tunnel.”
“And the others?”
His mouth twisted up at the corners, his fangs scraping more flecks of Gabriella’s drying blood from his bottom lip. The others: those that had readily embraced Stephan’s leadership and even now would prefer to align themselves with his second. They would never get the chance to share his blood. They were unworthy. Unless…“I think, perhaps, it is time for them to prove the mettle of their faith, don’t you?”
“My king?”
“Yes, they shall stay. Martyrs for our cause.”
Reluctantly he stood, his eyes dragging one last time over the yellowing bruises and already scabbed wounds covering his bride-to-be’s luscious curves. <<Wake, my love. Then stand. Stand and fight and kill the bastards who did this to you. Kill them all…>>
Chapter 20
Valin shifted from one leg to the other, fighting back the lethargy that threatened his muscles. He was tired of waiting. Weary of staring at the eerily still exterior of the run-down mansion. And sick to death of the endless strategizing going on around him. He’d already put in his opinion: Barge in through those thick wood doors, let loose on any fuckers in his way, and get his mate back. But the others insisted they needed some sort of plan of action. As if killing vampires was really all that difficult.
Crouched by him on his right, Karissa reached over, placing a hand on his forearm. “It’s okay, Valin. Bennett, Jacob, and their team are almost in place.”
Valin nodded at Karissa to show that he heard her, though he personally considered the flanking technique a waste of time. Both his own scouting and Karissa and Bennett’s radar screens had shown no one outside, which meant the chances of a merker force being present were pretty damn slim. First, those factions didn’t normally hang together and second, if they were, then why wouldn’t the merkers be out here monitoring the property for potential breaches?
Unless Lucifer’s minions were really so egotistical as to believe they would not be attacked in their own home.
Or if getting your asses inside is part of the trap.
Valin grunted, figuring that was the most likely. Either way, the action was all going to occur on the inside, not out here, which meant all the sneaking around to the back Bennett, Jacob, and his team had done was nothing more than a waste of time. No merkers to alert outside and no vampires were running out the back door on this one. Not with the sun breaking through the low-lying fog.
“Do you know what this place is?” Roland asked from his other side, breaking into his thoughts.
“You mean besides a coven’s stronghold?” he answered with the obvious, figuring that, like his mate Karissa, Roland was trying to distract Valin enough to curb his impatience. Yeah, good luck with that.