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  A little breathless and apparently beyond words, she nodded trustingly, wrapping her arms tighter around him.

  He put a large, long-fingered hand on each of her hips and brought her core tight against his erection, making her gasp at the exquisite pressure.

  He tilted his head slightly so that his lips hovered next to her ear.

  “Imagine this inside you, deep and hard inside you, when I penetrate your vein,” he rasped, making her shudder all over with pleasure, as if she already experienced the feelings his words evoked.

  He moved her hips up and down against him just once, sliding the thick ridge of his penis against her sex.

  Even through the layers of their clothes, the friction set off a stunning orgasm in Clara, and she clung to him as she moaned with abandon.

  The sound spiked through his bloodstream like a shot of pure lightning, torching his lust into a white-hot inferno.

  Instinctively, he struck, biting into her jugular vein.

  She jerked at the small pain, but quickly melted against him as he sucked and swallowed her blood.

  “Oh my God!” she moaned helplessly as wave after wave of pleasure crashed upon her. As her core released in orgasmic bliss in sync with his voluptuous draw and swallow of her blood.

  Unconsciously, she ground her lower body against him, needfully dragging her crotch along the steely column of his arousal.

  Keeping his mouth sealed at her vein, he deftly opened and pushed her pants and panties down her hips and released his pulsing erection.

  The next time he brought her core against his, it was naked, silky, soft, wet flesh against naked, satiny, hard, hot rod.

  She groaned deeply at the gorgeous contact and ground upon him with increasing urgency even as she continued to shudder in one string of explosive orgasm after another.

  “Please, please, please, please…”

  She didn’t know what she was begging for precisely, but she wanted, needed him desperately.

  She was so frenzied with pleasure, yet hungry for more—much more—that her fingers clawed his back through his shirt, leaving angry red streaks in his skin.

  He hesitated only a moment before lifting her slightly the same time he undulated beneath her.

  Aaaahhhhhhh.

  He was finally, gloriously, tremendously inside of her, buried to the hilt.

  Her sex immediately spasmed and clenched around his turgid flesh, as if she’d waited forever just for him to fill her.

  Fulfill her.

  Inexplicably, he felt the same. As if he’d waited an eternity to be inside of her, and take her inside of him.

  For the first time in the bewildering days and nights since he’d woken up with amnesia, everything made sense. As if he were meant to be here, with Clara.

  As if he were created specifically for the purpose of giving her pleasure and joy.

  And she was created for the specific purpose of feeding his needs.

  His insatiable, voracious needs.

  He continued to draw upon her vein, his hold on her unbreakable, like a large predator pinning down his prey, gorging on its bounty.

  Below, he rolled his hips in time with the swallows of her blood, stroking unceasingly the greedy core of pleasure within her.

  She tried to ride him harder, faster, deeper, but his strong hands controlled her hips, forcing her to endure the slow pace he led with, the mind-numbing drag and glide of his hot, unyielding flesh within hers.

  She came and came and came. In a never ending chain of explosions. Until she was so exhausted and replete she almost passed out.

  But just when her eyelids closed almost all the way down, he pulled his fangs (for, what else would you call them at this point?) out of her throat and licked the puncture wounds closed.

  “Thank you,” he murmured against her skin, pressing a kiss there.

  “You’re very welcome,” she rasped groggily, and wanted to add, “please do come again,” but didn’t.

  She noticed that he hadn’t come at all, and some part of her knew with certainty that he’d filled her because she desperately wanted it, needed it, because he wanted to make her feel good.

  So, sooooo, goooood.

  Stalker, serial killer, shadow-demon-vampire, where, oh where, have you been all my life? Clara’s sex-deprived self lamented.

  He easily lifted her off of him and pulled her clothes back into place. She stopped him when he was about to pull his trousers over his still throbbing, stone-hard erection.

  “Can I…um…help you with that?”

  She licked her lips and bit down on the lower one, staring at his magnificent, naked maleness unblinkingly.

  She desperately wanted to help him with that. And help herself aplenty at the same time.

  As if he heard her thoughts, a corner of his mouth tipped up in a rare half smile that was so beautiful it nearly short-circuited her brain.

  “Next time,” he said, covering himself up, and she didn’t know if he meant it or was just saying it to appease her.

  “You should go before you’re missed. Take care of your charge.”

  Right. She had cleaning up to do and Annie to see to.

  “What about you? Will you be all right?” her worry for him cut through the drugging haze of post-coital bliss.

  “Just keep the other residents away from here,” he said. “I should be well enough to leave before dawn with the strength your blood gave me.”

  She frowned. “But how will you leave unnoticed?”

  As stealthy as she was sure he could be, no one in this mostly-female establishment was going to miss the coming and going of a male like him.

  He shifted his eyes upwards at the clerestory window, and she remembered that he could turn himself into smoke or air.

  “Oh,” she said, understanding his wordless gesture.

  “Go,” he commanded quietly, willing her to obey him.

  Because if she didn’t leave right now, he might not be able to stop himself from taking all of her.

  Including her life and soul.

  Chapter Three

  “Sergei Antonov is on the move again.”

  Grace Darling, a.k.a. Mrs. Sinclair if her vampire husband had anything to say about it, looked across the conference room table at the leader of the Dark Queen, Jade Cicada’s, personal guard, Maximus Justus Copernicus.

  Beside his long legs crouched the black panther Simca. She was never far from Maximus as a rule, and showed almost jealous possessiveness whenever others were near, especially toward females. She was both Maximus’ trusted companion as well as an extension of the warrior’s strength and battle prowess, for they often went into combat together, so coordinated and lethal they seemed liked an extension of one another.

  “Who is Sergei Antonov?” Grace asked.

  As a newly-made and just-mated vampire, she was not formally part of the New England vampire queen’s inner circle, not in so many words. But because of her unique cyber skills and because her Blooded Mate happened to be the Dark Ones’ Hunter, Devlin Sinclair, Grace was included in meetings that discussed and problem-solved the brewing war between Pure Ones, Dark Ones and humans.

  “A well-connected Russian mob boss,” Devlin answered. “We encountered him a couple of years ago when the fight clubs I told you about started here in New York City, then quickly escalated across populous cities globally. We managed to contain further expansion, and Antonov went deep into hiding. We always seem to be one step behind him.”

  “That’s because I covered his tracks,” Grace said sheepishly.

  Her Mate’s head went back in both admiration of her skills and chagrin that those skills trumped his, which had prevented the Dark Ones from making progress against Antonov and his associates.

  “I didn’t know what I was doing,” she explained. “I mean, I obviously knew how to cover his digital signatures, but I didn’t know what it was for, that I was helping Medusa.”

  This was very true, because their nemesis, Medusa’s, empi
re was so vast and far-reaching, tens of thousands of people went about their day, working for her companies and organizations, without realizing that they were unwittingly contributing to her Machiavellian schemes.

  Exactly what she wanted to accomplish, besides mass chaos, violence and destruction, was not clear. They just knew she had to be stopped.

  “Well, now you’re on our side,” Devlin reassured her, letting her know that no one held her to blame.

  “Probably why we’re able to finally pin Antonov down,” Anastasia Zima, the queen’s head of security, deduced.

  “Do we know why he’s on the move again?” she asked Maximus. “Trying to start up more fight clubs?”

  The Commander shook his head once.

  “The clubs are on a slow burn, still alive and growing, though at a much slower pace. There’s only so much we can do to stop them, given our and our Pure allies’ limited numbers. Antonov started them and moved on to the next task—he seems to be focusing on an illegal arms trade between the Russians, the Chinese, and, of course, Americans.”

  “Do the human authorities know about this?” Alend Ramses, the newest member of the Chosen, asked.

  “They do,” Maximus answered, “but they haven’t made much progress against Antonov. Goods exchanged hands successfully on more than one occasion, the various human agency infiltrators killed or MIA.”

  “Arms deals happen all the time,” Devlin noted, his air of nonchalance belying the focused intensity of his gaze, “why do we need to worry about Antonov’s involvement in this one? We can’t control all human criminal activities in the world.”

  “Because the weapons they’re trading are specifically designed to kill our Kind,” Maximus replied grimly.

  At those ominous words, the entire room went still. The danger of the situation they faced just went from blinking yellow to code red.

  “Say more,” Ramses ground out.

  Maximus typed a few keys on the air keyboard in front of him and brought up holographic 3-D images of a series of weapons, so detailed and life-sized they looked real enough to grab right off the conference table.

  “Auto-loading array of guns that are virtually silent when shot, with bullets that explode upon target entry.”

  “That’s nothing new,” Ana said, crossing her arms. As the resident weapons expert, she made it her business to keep up to date about the latest developments in all man-made instruments that killed.

  “HEIAP and SAPHEI shells are used in machine guns and anti-material rifles already. The only thing those bullets can’t do is to be silent. How do we know these weapons are targeted for our Kind?”

  Maximus zoomed in on a military-issue hand gun’s barrel, in which sat a benign looking little bullet encased in a copper jacket.

  “Besides the silencing part, these bullets are designed to be heat-seeking. If shot at a human, it’s almost like an empty shell—the bullet doesn’t fully penetrate. If shot at one of us, it becomes a heat-seeking missile, its mission to drill into our flesh and bones to explode our hearts.”

  Because a vampire’s body heat was higher than that of humans and Pure Ones.

  Well. That effectively silenced the room, as each member of the Chosen mulled on the ramifications.

  Grace shared a look with Ramses, recalling their earlier conversation about the most effective way to kill vampires.

  For the most part, Dark and Pure Ones were protected against humans, despite being overwhelmingly outnumbered in population. They were stronger, faster, and healed rapidly, the basis of their eternal youth and apparent immortality.

  Thousands of years ago, vampires ruled the earth, humans were their livestock, and Pure Ones their slaves. They were able to hold dominion over all other races and were all but invincible because of their strength and savagery, their predatory instincts and power.

  Since the Great War and the Purge of the aftermath, few Dark Ones, especially the ancient True Bloods, remained. In this modern era, at least for the New England hive, they’d formed a truce of sorts with the Pure Ones and the humans they lived amongst.

  For the most part, only their own Kind and Pure warriors, should they choose to, could threaten vampire lives, because it was very, very difficult for humans to kill vampires, given the latter’s strength, speed and power. And for some of the Dark Ones, millennia of training and experience in combat.

  The only way to end a vampire’s life was to sever his head from his body or puncture his heart so badly he couldn’t heal before his soul departed his corporeal form.

  These new weapons just gave anyone who held them a license to kill vampires without quarter.

  “How widespread are these things?” Ana asked in a low growl.

  “I’ve traced only a couple of shipments thus far,” Maximus answered. “They are prototypes. Unclear whether they’re fully tested and operational. But we have to stop the trades from happening, because once they become fully operational and exchange hands…”

  “Humans are going to mass produce them all around the world,” Devlin finished grimly.

  “And we, the most powerful natural predators on earth,” Ramses said, his brow furrowed in a rare considering scowl, “just became the prey.”

  *** *** *** ***

  Eli leaned back against a smooth facing of the old bookshelves in the basement of the Little Flower Orphanage and closed his eyes.

  The taste of Clara still sweet and tangy on his tongue, he realized what it was he’d been starving for all this time, so parched for nourishment his stomach gnawed upon itself for days, filling his abdominal cavity with fiery pain.

  Blood.

  That was what he’d needed.

  Craved.

  Apparently, he was a vampire. Unless there was another term to describe a being who drank the blood of others to survive.

  Clara seemed to be taking in all this drama remarkably well. She didn’t hesitate to offer him her vein, as if it had been the most natural thing for her to do.

  As natural an imperative as taking him inside her body, clenching tight around his sex as if she never intended to release him.

  Perhaps she was still in shock from the events of the past hour. Perhaps, when she looked at things in the cold light of dawn, she’d recoil from the memories of their time together with horror.

  He’d rather she was beset with short-term memory loss if that were the case. He couldn’t bear it if she feared him, hated him. If she regretted what they’d done together.

  Because he didn’t regret any of it.

  He wanted to do it again and again. Until he lost himself in the sweetness of her blood, the silky embrace of her body.

  As Eli entered a deep, healing slumber, long-lost memories bloomed in the dark recesses of his unconscious mind, as elusive as smoke.

  Third millennium BC. Principality of Anatolia. Royal Palace training grounds.

  The boy tensed his entire body again as the spiked paddle wacked mightily against his back, digging dozens of sharp points into his tattered skin, already slick with blood.

  Better, he, than the younger boy who’d collapsed of exhaustion from the grueling training. If the other boy bore the punishment, he might not live through the night.

  The boy did not utter any sound at the incredible pain, for giving it voice would only make the paddle wielder hit him harder.

  “Six summers and you still can’t transform,” the Prince spat at the boy with disgust, watching the paddle hit him again and again.

  “You are a disgrace to our lineage. A failure to our noble house. I was only three when I first turned to shadow. Well, I’ll beat it out of you. You will either dissolve your corporeal form by your will or with your death. I could care less one way or the other.”

  The boy knew this to be truth. The Prince cared not one whit for his only son. If the boy died, his father would rut upon another vampire female and beget more offspring until he got another son.

  He had no use for girls. The Royal House of Anatolia never passed
the shadow arts to the weaker sex. One of the oddities of the Prince’s line was that male vampires dominated over females, which was not the norm in Dark society.

  Odder still, the male—at least the Prince himself and the male offspring of his line—did not need to Mate in order to impregnate a female vampire. In contrast, for the vast majority of their Kind, only Mated True Bloods could produce progeny.

  The irony was that, despite the male’s freedom to copulate with and impregnate as many females as he wanted, very rarely, as in every few hundred years, did he produce a son to carry on the shadow arts and his line.

  So perhaps the Prince cared just a smidgeon for the boy, given the inconvenience he would suffer to wait a few hundred years more for another son should this one die.

  “Hit him harder,” the Prince barked to the paddle wielder. “Rip the flesh off his back. He obviously lacks the incentive to transform.”

  The boy hunched his shoulders to make himself a smaller target as the spiked paddle dug deeper into his back with tremendous force.

  Thwack.

  Thwack.

  Thwack.

  The pain was starting to overload the boy’s brain, for he hardly felt it any more. Or perhaps his nerve endings had become too damaged to transmit the screaming signal to his brain to register the pain.

  He felt like he was outside of his body looking down at himself.

  Was his soul departing from his physical self? Was he dying?

  He wouldn’t mind if he was. It wasn’t as if he had anything to live for. Anything to look forward to.

  He’d killed the female who birthed him when he came out of her, which the Prince had taken to be an auspicious sign of the warrior the boy would grow up to become.

  The boy never knew who the female was, not even her name. The Prince said he didn’t recall it when the boy was old enough to ask. And then he was beaten for his curiosity, for why would he waste breath to inquire after a brood mare? As if he cared?

  Anatolian males were taught from birth never to care for anything but honing their unrivaled skills as warriors. Though their numbers were few, a hundred shadow warriors could take down an entire legion of battle-hardened soldiers from any other principality across the vast Akkadian empire.