Stunned, Angus grasped at his throat. He opened his mouth to scream, but all that came out was a gurgle as he choked.
Napolean did not prolong the end.
He drove his fist through Angus’s chest, extracted the still-beating heart, and held it up before him. “My name is Napolean.” He tossed the offensive organ aside and watched as Angus’s life slipped away. “But my enemies call me justice.”
As the heartless body toppled to the floor—a worthless heap of blood and flesh—Napolean withdrew his spirit from the room. He entered the same swirling vortex he had followed to get there and swiftly traveled back…
Back to his body.
Back to the SUV.
Back to the avenged destiny that awaited him.
six
Brooke held the steaming cup of tea in her hands and tried to control her trembling. The last thing she needed was to scald herself with a hot brew of chamomile, mint, and jasmine tea. She risked a glance at the imposing figure sitting across from her in a huge, dark blue chair—the size of a love seat—and quickly looked away.
He was just too intimidating. The entire situation was just too horrifying. Here she was, in the heart of the Dark Moon Forest, sitting in the living room of a fierce stranger’s mansion, afraid to speak…afraid to remain silent. She decided to distract herself by studying the details of the room...
The ceiling was an intricate dome of moldings, textures, and coffers, framing a hand-painted mural of Zeus and Apollo seamlessly crafted onto the grayish-blue canvas. The furniture was exquisite, plush, and clearly custom-made, no doubt costing more than her entire house, and there were tastefully placed art nooks as far as the eye could see, each one boasting a softly lit treasure from an evident time gone by, many of the possessions undoubtedly priceless artifacts.
The windows were made of frosted glass, also adorned with scenes from battlements and pictures of what appeared to be Greek or Roman gods, each depiction etched beautifully into the glass.
For a psychopathic lunatic—who thought he was a vampire—the man had incredible taste. And obviously, a shitload of money. Brooke cleared her throat and gathered her courage. “So…” The word came out hoarse, so she cleared her throat, steadied her hands, and tried again. “So.”
Her kidnapper, who called himself Napolean Mondragon, leaned forward in his chair, his every movement graceful and smooth like that of a predatory animal. “So?” he repeated.
Brooke forced a smile. So far, he hadn’t killed her, molested her…or tried to bite her neck. Rather, he had offered her a blanket, kindled a fire in the enormous hearth, and brought her a steamy cup of chamomile tea. Better to try and worm her way out of her predicament with words and niceties than confrontation and struggle. The mere thought of a physical altercation made her wince: The man was a Viking. Never mind his solid, six-foot-four frame, made of all hard muscle and impassive girth, his face—his eyes—said more than his body ever could…
Napolean Mondragon looked as if he could drop someone right where they stood with no more than the blink of an eye.
Like he could kill with his intention alone.
His features were wickedly handsome, and his smile was subtle and kind…but just beneath the surface—and not so deep that one would have to go very far to find it—there was something else, something absolute and harsh, something unforgiving and implacable. He was very much like the god he had painted on his ceiling, and Brooke half expected to see a bolt of lightning shoot out of his hand any moment now.
No, discretion was definitely the better part of valor now. She didn’t stand a chance in a physical struggle with this man.
“So?” Napolean repeated. His voice was infinitely gentle, like a soul who had practiced patience in a dozen lifetimes until he had mastered it as a mind-body-spirit art form, and he purred his words when he spoke in that characteristic deep, husky drawl.
Brooke swallowed hard and set her mug down on the coffee table. Then she quickly snatched it back up, replaced it on a coaster, and grimaced. “Sorry.”
Napolean smiled a devastating grin. He gestured toward the teacup and chuckled. “You need not worry about the furniture—or anything else around here, Brooke. Make yourself at home.”
Brooke blinked rapidly.
Okaaay.
She nodded. “Thanks…I think.”
He sat back, shifting in that sultry, animalistic way again. “You’re welcome.”
She cleared her throat…again. “So, let me get this straight: You think you come from an ancient race of people—celestial gods, is it? And humans who sacrificed all of their women—and I really don’t even want to know how—to the point of extinction, and then they were cursed?”
“Correct,” he said in a clear, matter-of-fact tone.
She laughed then, a humorless sound. What episode of The Twilight Zone had she landed in? “So, you don’t have anything to…clarify…about the ancient race of celestial people thing?”
He shook his head and held her gaze.
It was too unsettling. She had to fight the urge to get up and run. “Or the fact that your race was then punished and turned into…vampires?”
He sat quietly, impossibly still, just waiting—watching.
Brooke shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. They weren’t getting anywhere. “And now each of you has a destiny—a woman the gods have chosen for you, and over the last twenty-eight hundred years you have been waiting for…me?”
Napolean nodded and sat forward again, his eyes darkening with intensity, his forehead creased with seriousness. “Brooke…” He practically purred her name, and she had to catch herself from being swept up by the hypnotic cadence of his words. “You are unbelievably intelligent and have memorized all that I have told you impressively, but I think we are at an impasse…” He held out his hands, palms facing up, as if offering her…what? “Until you can merge your ability to memorize the information I give you with an even faint belief in its authenticity, we aren’t going to get anywhere.”
Brooke swallowed her fear.
Get anywhere?
That was just the point: She was not his long-awaited bride, and—God help her, please—he was not going to get anywhere with her.
Despite a valiant attempt to remain emotionless, her eyes began to fill with tears…again. If he was going to kill her, she almost wished he would just get it over with and end her suffering, because the not knowing, the anticipation, this whole insane hospitality routine was unbearable. God, where was Tiffany? Where were the police?
How was she ever going to get out of this?
Her eyes swept deftly around the room, measuring the windows, making note of the locks—judging the distance between Napolean and the front door. If she could just get to that door. If she could just scream loud enough. But then, where in the forest were they? Was there anyone close enough to hear?
Napolean stood up abruptly, and she almost jumped out of her skin. “Stop!” she cried, instinctively holding out her hand. “Sit back down. Let’s talk. Really—we should talk some more.”
Napolean ran his hands through his long hair and shook his head in what appeared to be frustration. He did not sit back down but very slowly, carefully, backed away from the sofa, leaving an even greater distance between the two of them in what appeared to be an effort to reassure her.
Brooke watched his every movement like a hawk. “Please, can you just…call me a cab…please.”
He sighed. “Brooke, look at the fireplace.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Look at the fireplace.”
Brooke slowly turned her head to the giant hearth situated on the other side of the living room; a roaring fire blazed in a large pit beneath a hefty marble mantel. Above the mantel was an ancient bronze statuette of a horse and rider, and it appeared to be watching over them.
Napolean waved his hand, and the dancing flames became shards of ice, cracking into a hundred little pieces before crumbling to the fire-pit floor.
&
nbsp; Brooke inhaled sharply and gawked at him. She looked back at the hearth—where the fire had just been—then back once more to Napolean. “What…what is this?…some kind of magic trick?”
He waved his hand again, and blue streams of fire shot forth from his fingers. The blaze roared back to life.
Brooke gasped and jumped back on the couch. “How did you do that?”
“Your teacup,” he said.
Despite her fear and revulsion, she quickly glanced downward, her eyes riveted on the simple clay mug, and she jolted when it began to rise from the coffee table and slowly move across the room, floating effortlessly into Napolean’s hands.
“Forgive me,” he said next, “but you must understand that my words are true.” She heard a sharp crack, like the sound of wood splintering, and a brilliant pair of enormous wings sprang forth from the center of his upper back and spread out behind him. When he turned to look at her, his eyes were glowing red once again—just as she remembered from the hotel parking lot—and his canine teeth began to grow.
Two sharp ivory fangs extended from his mouth, and he turned his head to soften the visage. And then he simply vanished out of thin air, only to reappear once again across the room, looking like an ordinary, handsome man in a pair of blue jeans and a black silk shirt.
Brooke had seen more than enough.
She leaped up from the couch and bashed her shin against the coffee table in a desperate attempt to hurdle it on her way to the front door. To hell with this! Her lungs burned from the sudden exertion even as her heart pounded in her chest.
Then just like that—he was there. Standing in front of her. Blocking the door.
Holy shit, she hadn’t even seen him move.
A shriek of unbridled terror escaped her throat, and she back-pedaled as fast as she could, heading for the other side of the room. She stopped abruptly. He was there, too. Once again, standing in front of her, blocking her path.
“Nooo!” She screamed like a madwoman, striking out wildly with a fist that landed somewhere between his chest and his right bicep.
A window. She had to get to a window.
Snatching an ornate glass vase from an art niche on her way to the window, she tossed the heavy object as hard as she could against the glass and ducked as it exploded outward, shards shooting in every direction. A sharp piece of glass embedded in her thigh, but she was too frantic to feel the pain. Yanking desperately on her jacket, she wriggled out of it, wrapped it around her fist, and began to punch out the remaining shards of glass.
Napolean was there in an instant. He grasped her by the shoulders and pulled her away from the window. “Brooke, don’t. You’ll cut yourself.”
Panic overwhelmed her. “Let go of me!” She spun around swinging violently, her eyes wide with fright. She reached for a jagged shard of glass and thrust it at him, lunging with all of her might. The sharp tip caught the inside of his forearm and instantly drew blood.
Now was her chance.
She kicked at his groin, and he instinctively flew backward…avoiding her foot and releasing her. To hell with the glass. It was now or never.
She climbed into the small window pane, praying she was small enough to wriggle through it, and started to shimmy out the hole, wincing in pain as the sharp, pointed edges sliced at her body, and then—as if a pair of invisible hands had grasped her—she was forcefully pulled out of the window…only Napolean stood several feet away.
Dear God, was he doing it with his mind?
Moving her with only a thought!
She didn’t stand a chance against this…thing.
Rage consumed her. She reached for a nearby brass candlestick and hurtled it at his head. Then she followed it with a set of stone coasters, tossing them one by one, screaming her defiance as they flew.
“You can’t just take a person!”
Crash!
“You can’t just have me because you want me!”
Boom!
“Do you hear me?”
Thud.
One at a time, Napolean blocked each object in midair, side-stepping as they crashed to the floor. He took a step toward Brooke, and this time, he didn’t just look like a fierce, dangerous predator. She knew, unequivocally, that he was one.
“No!” she shrieked, shuffling backward and tripping over a pile of glass. He caught her before she hit the hardwood floor, and she beat at his chest. “Let me go!”
He restrained her arms effortlessly. “Brooke, stop! You’re hurt.”
“No!” She struggled valiantly, twisting this way and that—kicking, turning, dropping to the floor—and trying desperately to crawl away.
“You’re bleeding,” he whispered. He pitched his voice in a soft, sultry lilt that clouded her head. “Please, stop.”
“No,” she whimpered as he knelt down on the floor beside her and reached for her hands. “No.” Tears ran down her face in rivers, and her shoulders shook from the weight of her frustration—the overwhelming helplessness she felt. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this…again.”
He turned her hands over and studied all of her wounds. As she shook from the pain, frustration, and exhaustion, he began to pull thin shards of glass from her palms, her arms, and her legs…removing each one with exquisite gentleness and care.
She blinked up at him, confused by the compassion in his eyes, but desperate to make him understand. “Don’t you get it? I can’t fight you. I can’t! I can’t struggle to keep you away…and lose. I can’t be a victim again—only to have to tell the whole world what happened someday in a courtroom. I’d rather die.” She sobbed. “I can’t do this.”
Napolean reached out and cupped her face in his hands. “Brooke, look at me.”
She shook her head and tried to pull away.
He tightened his grip and tilted her head upward. “Look at me.”
Her eyes met his, and she shuddered. “Please—”
“I am not your stepfather.”
She grew pale. “What?” Her voice was a mere whisper, sounding foreign even to her own ears.
“I am not your stepfather. And I am not going to harm you. Ever.”
How in heaven’s name did he know about her stepfather? She had never said anything. Well, she had thought about it in the truck, but—
Did this creature read minds?
Could he possibly hear her thoughts?
“Yes…and yes,” he whispered.
“How? How is that even possible?” she asked, dumbfounded.
“Shh.” He caressed the side of her cheek with his thumb. “Be at ease.”
Before she could panic anew, his incisors elongated in his mouth; he lifted her hands and dripped a clear fluid into her palms. It was then that she realized the mind-reading was not going to be a problem—she would die of a heart attack before she had time to process that latest bit of information. The man had just dripped…saliva…on her hands. On purpose!
She watched in rapt fascination, and more than a little terror, as his fangs receded and he began to rub the saliva—no, venom—into her wounds.
The cuts healed as she watched.
She sniffled and sat extraordinarily still as he repeated the process, healing one wound at a time…easily. Effortlessly. And then all at once, it occurred to her: Napolean was a vampire. And she was a human being—who was clearly bleeding in front of him.
Why wasn’t he biting her?
“I’ve already told you. Because I will not hurt you.”
Brooke looked up at him then—really stared—assessed the sincerity in his eyes. They were soft with compassion, heavy with concern. Genuine. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.
He smiled then, faintly. “I know you don’t, but you will…in time.”
She shook her head absently. “But I want to go home.”
Napolean grasped her hand in his, raised it slowly, and held it to his cheek. “This is your home now, Brooke. I am sorry this is so hard on you. It is what the gods have chosen—for both of us.”
She sighed in exasperation. “Well, why can’t you—why can’t we—just choose something else? I mean, you could let me go. I won’t tell anyone.”
Napolean shook his head. “You don’t understand. I cannot. To do such a thing would cost me my life, and it would cost you yours as well.”
“Mine?” She drew back like he had burned her. “How would your letting me go endanger my life?”
Napolean seemed to weigh his words carefully. “I have powerful enemies, Brooke. Now that I have claimed you, you must remain under my protection.”
Brooke’s head was spinning. Claimed her? What did he mean by claimed her? And what kind of enemies could this…vampire…possibly have? What in God’s name could be a threat to him? She reached up and grasped her head with her hands as if she could simply will the thoughts—the reality of the situation—out of her mind. “No.” She shuddered. “No, no, no…” She shut her eyes and began to rock slowly back and forth, displaying the soothing behavior of a child. She was beyond all adult reasoning—this just wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.
Vampires didn’t exist.
Napolean didn’t exist.
None of this was real.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity—Brooke rocking back and forth while Napolean lightly caressed her shoulders, her arms, her cheeks—she finally opened her eyes and spoke timidly: “And what if I would rather die than be your…hostage? Will you deny me that choice, too?”
Napolean did not dismiss her words, nor did he frown at them or try to argue with her reasoning. He actually considered her feelings. “I have many warriors in my care, and all are strong, valiant males who would die for their families, for the house of Jadon…for me. And it is a nobility I respect infinitely, but I do not live for myself alone. My death would have enormous consequences—just as your life does now. So no, I could not allow such a thing.”
Brooke shook her head. “I still don’t understand.”
“I am not just a vampire, Brooke.”