“Perfect,” she muttered archly.
Dismayed by her precarious situation, she automatically reached for her guns, only to find both holsters empty. Had Corvin disarmed her at the same time as he had so thoughtfully tended to her injured shoulder? Uncomfortable without a weapon in her hand, she searched the silty muck at her sides with her fingers, only to venture too near a caustic sunbeam.
Pfffttt! The beam touched the back of her hand, causing the exposed white flesh to sizzle instantaneously. She yanked the hand back, wincing in agony as thin gray tendrils of smoke arose from her scalded knuckles. She thrust the burned hand deep into the chilly muck, then exhaled loudly as the icy dampness did its best to cool her scorched skin. Dammit, she thought. I knew I should have worn gloves on this mission.
Having learned her lesson, she kept absolutely still, not moving a muscle as she cautiously eyed the luminous rays shooting down from above. The fragmented sunlight had her effectively pinned in; she could barely stir without running into one of the malevolent beams.
Not that she knew where she could escape to now that the sun had very obviously risen or how she could even leave this place in broad daylight. For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder what had become of her trusty Jaguar. I probably don’t want to know, she thought.
How long would she be trapped here? She risked a peek at her expensive waterproof wristwatch, which had survived whatever calamity had stranded her beneath the docks, and was chagrined to see that it was not even nine a.m. Sunset was a good ten hours away.
Selene groaned. It was going to be a long day.
Singe used a bulbed pipette to add five drops of Michael Corvin’s blood carefully to a glass beaker filled with a clear plasma solution. Lucian held his breath as he intently watched the brilliant scientist conduct his experiment.
Could it be, Lucian thought, that we are finally nearing the end of our quest? Was the hapless American the one they had been seeking for so long?
“It’s a shame we don’t have more,” Singe commented, regarding the depleted supply of blood in the tiny vial. He and his leader were alone in the lycans’ squalid infirmary.
Have no fear, my sagacious friend, Lucian thought, his eager gaze never leaving the beaker on the counter. He could still taste the human’s blood upon his tongue. If this sample tests true, then all the vampires in creation will not stop me from dragging Michael Corvin back to this laboratory, so that our ultimate destiny can be fulfilled at long last.
Singe set a timer, then stirred the contents of the beaker with a glass rod. The crimson droplets reacted with the catalyst immediately, much faster than either he or Lucian had expected. Violet swirls materialized within the solution, chasing the stirring rod like miniature contrails aglow in the setting sun. Unlike before, this mixture did not display the familiar black tint of failure.
“Positive,” Singe announced. His wrinkled face was positively beaming.
Lucian could scarcely believe his ears—or eyes. After so many defeats and disappointments, could this really be true? He knelt down in front of the counter, lowering himself so that he could stare directly into the swirling fluid; still there was no sign of the hated black transformation. His bearded face held a look of childish wonder as his rapt eyes tracked the swirling violet wisps. He had waited a very long time for this moment.
Victory is ours, he thought with certainty.
Once I retrieve Michael Corvin, that is.
Daylight chased Selene toward the sleeping human. As the sun slowly crossed the sky above the waterfront, the deadly sunbeams crept steadily nearer to Selene, forcing her to inch closer and closer to Corvin’s unconscious form in order to avoid being burned alive.
Along with the incandescent rays, the sounds of the day penetrated the massive timber dock above her head. Footsteps pounded on the wharf as teams of Hungarian longshoremen went about their business, loading and unloading the greedy freighters cruising up and down the Danube. Tugboat horns brayed, competing with the raucous cawing of the gulls. Selene pined for the silence and safety of her suite back at Ordoghaz, while counting on all the hustling activity to hide her presence beneath the pier.
The last thing I need is some well-meaning mortal stumbling onto me down here. She shuddered at the thought of a crew of would-be rescuers dragging her out into the lethal daylight. I’m in enough danger as it is.
Relentless in its approach, a merciless sunbeam glided toward her. Corvin’s body blocked her escape route, and, biting down on her lip, she realized that there was no other way to go.
Time to get to know Mr. Corvin a bit better…
Rolling over onto her stomach, and away from the advancing sunlight, she pushed off from the muddy slope and slid her leather-encased body over onto Michael Corvin’s supine form. Her svelte legs straddled his waist as she rested her weight atop him, staring down at his upraised face.
“Pardon me,” she remarked wryly, faintly embarrassed by her intimate proximity to the comatose human. And to think we haven’t even been introduced! She couldn’t help noticing once again Corvin’s rugged good looks. Despite everything he had been through, and a purplish bruise on his forehead, his youthful features were undeniably appealing, while his soaking windbreaker and torn black T-shirt clung to a slender, athletic torso. If I had to spend a day on top of a strange human, she reflected, there are worse specimens I could have ended up with.
Selene squirmed awkwardly astride the mysterious Michael Corvin, trying to make herself more comfortable.
She felt the heat radiating off the man’s body and regretted that she had so little of her own to share. Her gaze was irresistibly drawn to the juicy vein pulsing at Corvin’s throat; it had been hours since she last fed, and Selene was sorely tempted to nip the stranger’s defenseless neck with her fangs. She licked her lips thirstily. Perhaps just a taste?
No, she resolved firmly, forcing herself to look away from the throbbing vein. Unlike some vampires, she did not take advantage of unwilling humans.
The questing sunbeam, heading northwest, missed her by centimeters, gliding instead across Corvin’s handsome cheekbones. Selene watched in unaccountable fascination as the traveling ray illuminated the mortal’s features, bathing his face in golden light. Sweat beaded on his forehead as his closed eyes squinted even more tightly against the intrusive radiance.
He stirred beneath her, moaning softly, but did not awaken. Selene shifted her weight slightly, unable to look away from the enigmatic stranger.
Who are you, Michael Corvin? she wondered. And why do the lycans want you so?
Chapter Twelve
Feverish images paraded backward across Michael’s mind:
Shards of black glass converged before his eyes, the shattered fragments flying through the void in reverse, converging into a pattern he couldn’t quite discern…
Severed iron chains snaked toward a dank granite floor, the broken links jangling loudly as they snapped back together, binding the chains tautly to the floor…
A beautiful dark-haired woman, clad in the torn remnants of a once-elegant gown, dangled in the fearsome clutches of a medieval torture device. A garbled scream pulled her jaws apart, exposing strangely pointed eyeteeth beneath her crimson lips. Steel and leather restraints obscured her body below the waist. Her eerie white eyes were tinged with streaks of red. Somehow Michael knew that the imprisoned damsel’s name was Sonja and that she was a princess of sorts, as well as the love of his life…
“Sonja,” he murmured, even as the woman’s face blurred before his eyes, becoming instead the woman from the Metro station, the one who had stolen him away from the madman with the knife and the bloodthirsty teeth. Who? he wondered. If anything, she was even more staggeringly beautiful than the captive princess. How?
“Lie still,” the woman—not Sonja—said. A gentle hand pushed firmly against his shoulder. “Your skull’s taken a good knock.”
Michael blinked his eyes in confusion as he awoke, sort of, to find himself reclinin
g upon a chaise longue. He looked around groggily gradually realizing that he was no longer washed up below the waterfront. Paneled oak walls and antique furnishings now surrounded him instead.
“Do you have any idea why those… men were after you?” the mystery woman asked, peering intently at his face. Michael was relieved to see her alive and well, even though he still had no idea who she was.
“Where are—?” Michael tried to sit up, but the motion sent his head spinning. Alternating chills and hot flashes washed over him. His vision wavered sickeningly.
“You’re safe,” the woman assured him. She loomed above him, her pale face only inches from his own. “I’m Selene.”
Selene. Michael clung to the name like a life preserver, even as darkness lapped again at his consciousness. He felt fatigued and queasy, as if his body were fighting against some kind of infection—and losing badly. His shoulder throbbed dully where that nutcase had bitten him, and a sliver of moonlight, entering the elegant chamber through an open window, sent a tremor through his entire frame. His skin tingled oddly, the hairs on his arms standing up as though electrified. A mournful howl echoed inside his skull, like a ringing in his ears.
I’m Michael, he thought, over the cacophonous howl. He opened his lips to introduce himself, but the effort exhausted him, and he sank back against the velvet cushions of the couch. He struggled to keep his eyes open, to stay awake, but the tidal pull of the encroaching darkness was too powerful to resist. Selene’s face dimmed, and her voice receded into the distance, as he succumbed to oblivion once more. “Selene,” he whispered, taking her name with him into the darkness.
She sighed impatiently as Corvin lost consciousness again. The blow to his head, which had left an ugly scab surrounded by a dark purple bruise, obviously had done a number on him. He had been dead to the world for at least eleven hours, long enough for the sun finally to sink below the horizon, freeing Selene from her enforced captivity beneath the waterfront.
Corvin had remained oblivious even while she had gone to the trouble of renting a car to replace her vanished Jaguar, then he’d slept like a corpse during the entire drive back to Ordoghaz. Selene regretted not being able to take the injured human straight to an emergency room, but with the lycans hunting him so relentlessly, he was safer here in her quarters.
But why are they after you? she wondered again. What makes you so special, besides your rugged face and good Samaritan tendencies, that is. Clearly, interrogating the depleted human was going to have to wait until he had recovered more from his ordeal the night before. With luck, perhaps he would be able to answer a few questions by sunrise.
She mopped his forehead with a damp cloth, taking extra care around the area of the bruise. I probably should examine him more carefully, she thought. She had only just arrived at the mansion with her insensate charge, so there had not yet been time to check beneath Corvin’s bloodstained jacket for any additional injuries. It occurred to her that she had no memory of exactly how Corvin had hurt his head. Must have happened while I was out cold myself.
Although her wounded shoulder was largely healed, she still felt a phantom pain where that unidentified lycan had stabbed her. A glimpse of a metal pendant flashed across her memory, and she wondered once more who that lycan in the lobby had been. She had not recognized his face from any of the Death Dealers’ copious surveillance files on their enemies.
“So,” a pert voice interrupted her musings, “for once the rumors are true.”
Selene turned away from the chaise to see Erika strolling blithely across the suite. She frowned, annoyed. The pert blond servant girl was invading Selene’s quarters so regularly that the older vampiress was starting to feel as if she had an unwanted roommate. Besides, this was none of Erika’s business.
“The whole house is absolutely buzzing about your new pet,” Erika chirped enthusiastically. She approached the chaise longue, examining Corvin with open curiosity. “Oh, my God. You’re going to try to turn him, aren’t you?”
Selene rolled her eyes. “Of course not.” She had never converted a human into a vampire, voluntarily or otherwise, in all of her long years among the undead. Killing lycans was her life’s work, not seducing the innocent. And she couldn’t care less what Kraven and his crowd of ageless dilettantes said about her.
Erika nodded, as if she understood where Selene was coming from. The sylphlike vampiress made a slow circle around the chaise longue, dragging her painted fingernails along the edge of the burgundy-colored velvet pillows. “Your stance on humans is a matter of record,” she acknowledged.
As far as Selene was concerned, mortals were strictly innocent bystanders in the war against the lycans, but beyond that, she had always given them little thought. “I have no stance,” she insisted, perhaps a little defensively. “I have nothing to do with them.”
“Exactly,” Erika pointed out with a mischievous gleam in her eyes. Her white shoulders spilled from the top of her frilly black frock. “So why bring him here?”
Touch�, Selene thought. The silly girl had a point, as much as Selene was loath to concede it. Why had she gone to such lengths for this human, aside from a natural instinct to deprive the lycans of their prey? Mystified, she searched her own soul as she stared down at Corvin’s attractively tanned face. If thwarting the lycans were her only goal, why was she here nursing the comatose human like some sort of vampiric Florence Nightingale? Why did she care if he lived or died?
“He saved my life,” she said softly, after a moment’s thought. She did not know exactly what had happened after she had passed out behind the wheel of the Jaguar, but she felt certain that she would not have made it safely to the shore without Corvin’s assistance. And who else could have bandaged her lacerated shoulder?
Erika’s jaw dropped, revealing dainty white fangs. She was clearly flabbergasted at the notion of a mere human coming to the aid of a vampire—and a Death Dealer, no less! She glanced down at Corvin with greater interest, and perhaps a flicker of jealousy. Did she envy Selene her human Prince Charming?
Selene watched over Corvin protectively. It dawned on her that Erika had offered no explanation for her arrival. Selene’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why are you here?”
Erika wilted somewhat before Selene’s forbidding gaze, backing away from the chaise and its slumbering occupant. “Kraven sent me,” she said with a gulp. “He wants to see you. Now.”
* * *
Thunder boomed outside, and rain slashed the windows, as Kraven and Selene argued within his palatial suite. The two high-ranking vampires were at each others throats, figuratively if not literally.
“Completely unacceptable,” Kraven railed indignantly, stalking back and forth across the handmade Persian carpet. His furious gestures sliced the air. As usual, he was dressed to the nines, in a tailored black suit. “You go against my orders and spend the daylight hours away from the shelter of the mansion—with a human? A human you have since brought back into my house!”
Selene did not back down. Unlike Kraven, she neither paced nor waved her arms as she spoke, remaining as still and composed as a hibernating Elder. “As far as I’m concerned, this is still Viktor’s house.”
Kraven shot her a poisonous look; he didn’t like being reminded that he was only the master of the manor in Viktor’s absence. Growling in anger, he stomped over to the window and peered out into the stormy night. Selene glimpsed a bright gibbous moon peeking out from behind the churning thunderclouds.
“Look,” she said, lowering her voice. Her tight-fitting leathers were still streaked with blood and mud; there had been no time to change since returning to Ordoghaz. “I don’t want to argue. I just need you to understand that Michael is somehow important to the lycans.”
He spun around to confront her, his dark eyes smoldering with suspicion. “So, now it’s Michael,” he mocked her in an accusing tone.
Selene repressed an impatient sigh. The last thing she needed right now was Kraven’s adolescent jealousy. Too m
uch was at stake. “Kraven, would you just hear me out?”
She took a deep breath before trying to enlighten him once more. “There’s something—”
He cut her off abruptly. “It’s beyond me why you’re still obsessing over this ridiculous theory.” He dismissed her concerns with an airy wave of his hand. “Lucian wouldn’t be the slightest bit interested in a human!”
Lucian? Selene could not conceal her surprise. Why was Kraven invoking a long-dead lycan? The infamous Lucian had been killed centuries ago. I don’t understand, Selene thought, her brain struggling to process Kraven’s peculiar remark.
Fortunately, he mistook her baffled expression for something entirely different. “Wait,” he said dramatically, like a prosecutor playing to a jury. “You’re infatuated with him. Admit it.”
“Now, there’s a ridiculous theory,” she retorted, although somewhat less forcefully than she had intended. Her words rang oddly false even to her own ears.
Kraven seized on the hint of indecision in her voice. Sneering, he surged toward her, her face flushed with frustration and resentment. “Is it?” he demanded.
A flash of lightning outside was followed by a booming thunderclap that rattled the glass in the window panes.
The storm was building.
Left alone in Selene’s private quarters, which were ever so much finer than her own, Erika considered the unconscious human collapsed upon the chaise longue. He really was quite handsome, if not quite the Greek god that Lord Kraven was. Not bad for a human, she decided, if you like that sort of thing…
Bored, she cuddled beside him, enjoying the warmth of his mortal body against her cool flesh. She playfully tickled his neck, running a teasing nail along his jugular, and twirled his tousled brown hair around her fingers. All the while, she tried not to think about the fact that Selene was alone with Kraven in his opulent suite. Don’t be silly, she scolded herself, driving away the jealous fantasies bedeviling her mind. Kraven had been positively incensed by Selene’s antics when he’d dispatched Erika to find her. Judging from the irate look on his face, he was more likely to horsewhip Selene than make love to her.