Angel Unleashed
Angel Unleashed
Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
A fine line between vengeance and desire…As an immortal Blood Knight, Rhys de Troyes is familiar with quests. It's obvious that the ethereal beauty who just arrived in London is on one of her own. But Avery Arcadia Quinn seems intent on keeping her secrets, even as Rhys strips away all her defences.A grounded angel, Avery seeks to recover the wings stolen from her centuries ago when the Knights were created from her suffering and pain. She swore vengeance, but her burning connection with Rhys threatens to consume her anger, her mission…and even her vow to destroy him.
A fine line between vengeance and desire...
As an immortal Blood Knight, Rhys de Troyes is familiar with quests. It’s obvious that the ethereal beauty who just arrived in London is on one of her own. But Avery Arcadia Quinn seems intent on keeping her secrets, even as Rhys strips away all her defenses.
A grounded angel, Avery seeks to recover the wings stolen from her centuries ago when the Knights were created from her suffering and pain. She swore vengeance, but her burning connection with Rhys threatens to consume her anger, her mission...and even her vow to destroy him.
“Now what? You’ll disappear again?” Rhys asked.
“Disappearing is what I do best,” Avery said.
“I won’t let this go, you know,” he warned. “You’re far too intriguing.”
“You’ll have to,” she said. “I’m already gone.”
“And if I were to ask you to stay?”
As fun as this was, it was now clear to Rhys that this immortal wasn’t going to volunteer any real information about herself. He was going to have to get those details some other way.
Smile widening, he said, “I do love a challenge.”
Rhys took a firm hold on her shoulders and pulled her closer, so that she had to look up to see his face. She did not try to escape from what she had to know would come next.
All that fire...
All that heat...
He was so damn hungry for those things.
LINDA THOMAS-SUNDSTROM writes contemporary and paranormal romance novels for Harlequin. A teacher by day and a writer by night, Linda lives in the West, juggling teaching, writing, family and caring for a big stretch of land. She swears she has a resident muse who sings so loudly, she often wears earplugs in order to get anything else done. But she has big plans to eventually get to all those ideas. Visit Linda at lindathomas-sundstrom.com (http://www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com) or on Facebook.
Angel Unleashed
Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dear Reader (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af),
Welcome to another story in my lineup of immortals. This one is a twist on those guys.
Made immortal in the time of the Round Table, seven knights became known as the Blood Knight Brotherhood, or the Seven. My contemporary Blood Knights are the knights of old, much updated.
You might already have met some of these sexy immortals in and around my Vampire Moons series. In Golden Vampire, we met Lancelot, going by the name of Lance Van Baaren. In Guardian of the Night and Immortal Obsession we met two more dark, sexy Blood Knights. And in Immortal Redeemed we met a gloriously hunky, leather-clad Galahad, now calling himself Kellan and riding a Harley instead of a steed.
Now in Angel Unleashed, we find Rhys de Troyes, another Blood Knight, in London. This time another immortal with a quest of her own attracts his attention. What could bring an angel to London, and why is she hiding from the Blood Knights?
So if, like me, you adore magical words like danger, sexy and forever...this book is dedicated to you.
Oh, and by request, Weres always make guest appearances in my immortal books. So if you also love men with claws, dig in!
Cheers for now, and happy reading!
Linda
lindathomas-sundstrom.com (http://www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com)
To my family, those here and those gone,
who always believed I had a story to tell.
Contents
Cover (#u0fe8552e-30b9-5bcb-8d56-1a2c812d8a5a)
Back Cover Text (#ud472ec2d-75f2-5ad9-9289-949fc9b61dcb)
Introduction (#ufb56d5e3-6cc3-5481-ae0e-4fb7de2cf3e4)
About the Author (#u7da8cb00-db15-5ab3-a9e1-4c7ef87413fe)
Title Page (#u9d153b76-b0d7-5792-acd8-9d0de1bfa693)
Dear Reader (#u51135deb-2932-5c1f-9e7e-4635657dd955)
Dedication (#uf61559a2-4851-508f-adc0-180ab0511272)
Chapter 1 (#u8acb1bdf-b065-5683-b06f-9cb224c74509)
Chapter 2 (#u64034e05-effd-565c-8277-342cda86c71f)
Chapter 3 (#u729e1118-96bc-5db6-9978-825fe5e6ce3a)
Chapter 4 (#u5f2dc777-f642-57fd-a149-32c484b0b3f4)
Chapter 5 (#u3e8f1b7f-5792-5d35-ab24-16778f73687e)
Chapter 6 (#u6261784f-3d89-5440-9c71-9a10f741a501)
Chapter 7 (#u9e195df4-affc-5f24-a06f-f5bfd9796758)
Chapter 8 (#u8e8a0eaa-6829-5d74-9476-be2b2066b185)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
The night went wild and never looked back.
An explosion of color lit the dark. Brilliant flashes of blue, orange, green were there and gone in an instant. Bright enough to cause retinal damage, the light show left a lingering imprint in the darkness, much like the aftermath of a fireworks display.
From the rooftop above the alley, Rhys straightened from a crouched position, concerned about this strange phenomenon. Equally intriguing to him was the small, shadowy figure moving through the atmospheric residue.
To most eyes turned in that direction, the figure would have been indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness. Luckily, a Blood Knight’s vision was exceptional, and Rhys had a special gift for hunting anomalies like this one. It was his job, his gig. He was good at it. Better than good. He was lethal. A monster’s worst nightmare.
Problem was...the figure down in that alley wasn’t one of London’s usual monsters.
Although it was time for the city’s abominations to crawl out of their hidey-holes, the creature with the strange light display wasn’t a vampire or a werewolf. The scent accompanying the apparition didn’t ring in as blood or damp fur, but something altogether different.
Chances were slim that he had missed a species or two in his centuries of keeping watch on the ever-growing lists of them. However, it now seemed to Rhys as if there could have been a gap in his education.
He supposed mortal Londoners might have chalked up those brief seconds of flashy lights to having had one too many drams at the local pub after work. He knew better. If something new had touched down here tonight, he wanted to know what that creature was up to.
I wonder what you are...
Zeroing in on the alley, Rhys detected another surprise. An odor of power trailed in this stranger’s wake. Old power, with a scent reminiscent of an ancient library full of leather-bound books. With the unique fragrance came an atmospheric vibration similar to the hum of lightning striking the earth nearby.
Rhys looked up. No storm clouds.
The sigils covering his neck and shoulder blades rippled in reaction to the stranger’s otherworldly vibration. The inky symbols carved into his skin were issuing a warning he couldn’t ignore.
Was the newcomer dangerous?
Concern growing, Rhys refocused with another silent question.
Who are you?
He ticked off the rarer end of the species spectrum one by one. Shades and half-casts could be ruled out. A few ancient vampires could manipulate the atmosphere on occasion, but that wasn’t the case here.
What else, then? Demon? Some brand-new hybrid concoction designed to confuse the rules and subvert the senses?
Maybe not completely, though, because the vibes this creature gave off were familiar to him on an almost subliminal level, and they kicked his heart rate up a notch or two.
His nagging conscience provided reasonable assurances about having experienced similar physical responses a few times before this, in different time frames and in several places around the globe. Brief blips on his internal radar that came to nothing in the end. Now, though, wasn’t the time for pondering the parameters of déjà vu.
One thing was for sure. Tonight had just gotten a hell of a lot more interesting.
Enlisting the full resources of his extensive mental databanks, Rhys searched deeply for images to pinpoint this newcomer. Concentration brought him success. Beneath the noticeable wisp of old power lay another scent that was as different from the grimy London street odors as possible. Perfume, indicative of golden things. Sunrays on the clear water of a fountain. Morning dew on green grass. Fields of flowers.
Sure as hell, no monster he knew of smelled like that.
Shaking his head to clear his mind of images like grass and fountains, Rhys got back to the task at hand. Golden scents were always a distraction because they brought back memories of his days in the light, so very long ago, in another lifetime.
I see you, he wanted to say to test this stranger’s awareness levels. If you’re so strong, can you feel me watching?
Hunting monsters in the mortal world, finding and dealing with predators, had been his calling for as long as he could remember. Hell, with freaks and bloodsuckers increasing in numbers by the truckload, somebody had to take care of the problem so mortals could remain ignorant of what actually lurked in the shadows.
He stared at the alley, and the creature passing through it.
Are you a predator, my fine friend?
A fancy parasite, perhaps?
His inability to determine the answer to those questions was annoying and highly unusual.
“So, what are you, exactly?” Rhys whispered.
The only beings remotely as potent as this one in terms of presence were his brethren, and all six of the other Blood Knights were accounted for. He could touch their minds with his if he wanted to, just as they could touch his. None of them were anywhere near England at the moment.
You, newcomer, are a snag in my nightly rounds.
And it seemed that more surprises were in store.
Small flares, like a medley of tiny shooting stars, appeared to light this stranger’s path. Not the steady beam of a flashlight, but some other kind of source. Silvery sparkling particles swept steps ahead of their master as if clearing the way. The night itself seemed to hold its breath as the strange creature with the little fireflies journeyed through the alley.
You’re something tricky, then?
Uncomfortable with his ignorance in this matter, Rhys delved farther back into the landscape of his memory, searching for answers. Passing data regarding recent times, postmodern times, Edwardian years, he sailed backward, straining to place the interloper.
The detail he finally discovered was such a shock, he doubled back over it to make sure he’d gotten it right. The stranger in the alley had been flagged as an old soul hailing from a time prior to any of the centuries he had searched through.
Still more surprises were at hand.
This creature’s vibe now resonated as feminine. A richly layered female spirit.
By all that was holy, he was looking at a woman. One who was both basking in and shielding her presence from everyone other than a special kind of onlooker with a flair for tracking anomalies in the darkest places.
Impossible, was his initial response. He’d gotten those details wrong. No female immortals existed, as far as he knew. None without fangs and a nasty need to bite, anyway. Yet only true immortals, those with their souls intact and their chests filled with echoing heartbeats, left such an indelible imprint on the world.
Excitement drove Rhys toward the edge of the roof. In spite of everything he had seen and done over the centuries, and though he would have thought it impossible for him to be stunned by anything, that’s how he felt right that minute. Stunned.
In all the years since becoming immortal himself, how was it possible that he had never gotten wind of an immortal She?
Pulses of excitement pounded at his throat. He felt his blood pressure spike.
What are you doing here? he wanted to shout, to see if her hearing was as exceptional as his and if she possessed the kind of telepathy he and his brethren shared, a connection enhanced by the designs carved into their backs. Blood Knight sigils had been etched with the mingled black blood of all seven of them, fostering true closeness.
Are you friend, or foe?
He could jump down there to confront her with that question. His network of jangling nerves demanded that he did.
Find her. See her. Speak with her, those nerves seemed to whisper to him. Red flags waved in his mind. His sigils were scoring him raw, as if they knew whatever facts he was missing.
Then again, he had no real right to confront her if she wasn’t a beast. No universal agreement existed between species that directed them to announce their presence to those already in residence when entering any particular area. Out of necessity, immortals moved around. He had been in London for less than a year, and in many other cities before that. So many cities, he’d lost count.
Is it so with you, my fine bearer of light? Are you a nomad?
As the strange female wove through the alley on this dark fall night, an even stronger feeling of familiarity washed over Rhys. Like a hound dog on a scent, he followed her progress toward the closest street by moving soundlessly above her from roof to roof. At the corner, where the alley met the main boulevard, the woman’s accompanying lights winked out.
At least you show some sense.
Fascinated, Rhys watched her slip to the door of a storefront as if that had been her intended destination. When she opened the door, the thunder of loud music poured out.
Rhys saw her hesitate. His body rocked, mimicking the shiver that ran through her as she altered her shape enough to face the mortals inside the shop. Not a shape-shift, just a setting of her real power back to stealth mode.
Mortal was a game immortals often played.
How many times had he done that same thing when confronting the good people of London and elsewhere? Masking his identity, hiding his power, was the only way to walk among them.
The marks on his back throbbed with empathy. This female didn’t look forward to going inside. Four walls would make her feel trapped if she was in any way like him. Loud music would be sensory torture for an old soul.
I know, he wanted to tell her. I know how you feel.
No one that had come out of Castle Broceliande’s gates ever truly became used to extremes. Throughout time, the Blood Knights had been doomed to exist on the fringes of society, sharing the shadows with bad things that preyed on the people of those societies—keeping to themselves to avoid the hustle and bustle of mortals clumping too close together.
And you, my friend, are going to enter a building where mortals hang out. For that, my interest is piqued.
Anxious, Rhys shifted sideways for a better view of the doorway, eyeing the female down there, unable to keep from thinking back.
His Makers had offered no distractions to waylay the purpose of the Knights’ quests. There were no female Blood Knights. Finding this feminine soul was exhilarating for the very reason that such a thing was to have been avoided. Females would have been major distractions from the Knights’ quests, though they also would have provided a respite from the loneliness of existing endlessly through time alone.
The Knights had been created to serve a higher power. Personal needs had little to do with carrying out God’s will.
Who made you, woman?
Where have you come from?
He almost jumped. Nearly did, until patience stayed him. Distance had to be maintained, managed, until he knew more about what this visitor was up to. His brotherhood’s existence remained a secret to this day, to all but a chosen few. If this female sparkled her way through London’s side streets, what would happen to the secrecy surrounding immortals in general?
What if someone else gets wind of you, milady?
Plenty of creatures on this planet would like nothing more than to take down the immortal Guardians, and afterward enjoy a parasitic free-for-all. More than a few of them had tried.
Thoughts stalled there.
In the light of the doorway, the newcomer’s silhouette took shape. Reed-thin and narrow-shouldered, his new prey had the willowy body of an elf. Dressed from head to toe in black, she blended well with street shadows and had covered her head with a hood.
Black for camouflage was always wise. He was dressed similarly.
The desire to see her up close was overwhelming. However, Rhys knew better than to rush things. His hammering heart would have to wait a bit longer for a face-to-face with the enigma down there. The hunger gnawing at him was a none-too-subtle reminder that devils often resided in details, and that things were not always what they seemed.
He smiled sagely.
Giving in to the need to speak aloud, in a normal voice, since he so seldom did, Rhys said, “I will wait here, my immortal friend. I will be waiting for you.”
Chapter 2 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
The bells on the door of Shakespearean Ink, put there to announce the presence of visitors, couldn’t compete with the blaring music Avery Arcadia Quinn met when she stepped inside the tattoo parlor. The heavy metal recording made her hesitate just past the threshold.
One glance over her shoulder at the street suggested that she was okay for the time being. Her hope was that no other customers would be looking for a tattoo needle on a cold, foggy night like this one, and that she would be alone. Anonymity was the name of this game. She couldn’t afford to attract attention.
Stiff shoulders made her roll them back to ease the buildup of tension. Her black leather jacket creaked as she took stock of her surroundings.
The tat parlor was uncommonly tidy for such a dark, rather seedy, less than desirable location on the London outskirts. A metal counter ran the length of the store on one side. Several cheap chairs crowded the room. Pinned to the milky-blue walls were hundreds of photos of tattoo art, hanging in fairly neat, symmetrical rows.
Bad luck, though. She wasn’t the only customer.
In the center of the small space, a padded chair that had been patched one too many times was occupied by another client. Still, it could have been worse. The occupant of that chair was a young girl probably no more than sixteen years old.
Tears of discomfort dripped from the girl’s big brown eyes. Her thin hands white-knuckled the seat. No doubt this teen had snuck in here while in the midst of a rebellious streak with her allowance money. A sixteen-year-old’s tat of choice? Winnie-the-Pooh.
Avery didn’t bother to check the place for tidiness or proper hygiene since those things didn’t matter to her. The guy in the faded black T-shirt who was working on the girl’s ankle was her target. Rumor had it he was good at cover-ups, with a talent for making things look like something else. He was a fixer credited with being discreet.
“What are you in for?” he asked, addressing Avery without looking up from his work, and waving a small instrument that looked either like a miniature throwback to dark days in medieval dungeons or a super-sized electric toothbrush.
“Tattoo,” she said drily.
He did a double take once he’d focused on who had entered. Used to stares, Avery didn’t take this personally. She knew she presented a strange picture with her hood pulled up around her face and her mirrored sunglasses reflecting the neon signage...especially since it was after 9:00 p.m.
Snow-white hair, mostly hidden behind the black hood, didn’t often stay put. Several pale strands drifted now in the stale-smelling breeze from the open doorway. The sunglasses protecting her sensitive eyes from the lights, as well as the sneak peek of pale skin around them, had to seem freakish in a healthy blond and brunette world, even in the sun-challenged UK.
All in all, though, she fit in better here than she would have in Florida.
“Take a chair by the desk if you want to wait. Feel free to peruse the art on the walls,” the guy said. “Maybe you’d like to choose one of those designs.”
Peruse. Such a strange word for a century like this one, and odd when spoken with a Cockney accent.
Avery checked out the girl in the chair. The honey-colored bear on the girl’s left ankle was a decent rendering of the cartoon and almost finished. She wouldn’t have to wait long for a turn with the whirring needles. Still, she was antsy, and anxiously tossed another glance at the street through the front window, half expecting to see someone standing there.
No one was.
Short on square footage, the shop made her feel claustrophobic. Enclosed spaces didn’t suit her. Patience had never been her forte, which was odd since she’d had such a long time to try to perfect that skill. Because her energy was untrustworthy and came in wayward steaks and flashes, sitting down to wait her turn was out of the question.
For those reasons and more, it was never sensible to remain in any one place for too long. Nor was it smart to give anyone a good long look at her. Definitely no close-up.
Since she had picked the guy in this shop for his talent and stellar reputation, however, quelling her anxiety was paramount. So was maintaining her human-like persona for a while longer.
With that in mind, Avery headed for the counter.
As he got back to work, the artist barked, “More pictures are in the book on the desk.”
When she didn’t open the three-ring binder next to her, he looked up a third time. “Ah. The lady already knows what she wants.”
Seconds later, he added, “Five more minutes here, tops. There’s beer in the cooler.”
The girl in the chair spoke up. “You didn’t offer me a beer.”
Artist guy laughed. “Yeah. Right.”
Avery wasn’t up for polite banter or alcohol, or for reminding the young girl in that chair, who seemed to be missing parental guidance, about the dangers of being out alone, past her bedtime in a city full of shadows. Nowadays, she wasn’t anybody’s conscience. Those days were far behind her.
As for the room...
A more thorough scan showed closeable blinds on the front windows and an interior door leading to an adjacent private room, probably used for etching tattoos on a person’s backside. She perceived no heartbeats beyond those of the two people in front of her. Those beats were steady and rhythmic.
Just a normal night in the life of a tattoo parlor.
But hell...her shoulder blades were already aching more than usual, as if they knew what she was going to do and also that there would be pain involved. Muscles often retained memories of what had happened to them in the past, especially after experiencing the extremes of agony. And although pain was nothing new to her, Avery always dreaded having more of it voluntarily.
“Take a chair,” the artist suggested. “They’re more comfortable than they look.”
She didn’t heed his advice. The lingering odor of hot flesh was cloying. The ink used for the tattoos offered up another distinct scent that tripped more old memories best forgotten.
Nerves bristling, Avery glanced again to the front door, nixing the return of a hazy belief that someone was out there. Anxiousness was likely the cause of her nervousness. An artist in a rundown ink shop was going to see her scars. He was going to touch them—a crime so heinous that no one had ever managed it.
Hadn’t she dispensed with the last person who tried?
In order to provide this guy with his next canvas she’d have to take off her shirt. Predicting his reaction to the sight of the multitude of scars covering her body was a no-brainer. Very little space wasn’t crowded by the grid of crisscrossed white raised lines. Tat Guy would be fascinated by the old wounds and he’d be nosey, but the stories those grids told were none of his business or anyone else’s.
She wished they weren’t hers.
“Almost there,” he said to her while dabbing at the girl’s ankle with a cloth—a benign little bear on a girl’s youthful, otherwise unblemished skin.
What would this pubescent girl say if she were to witness Avery’s roadmap of scar tissue and the two deep six-inch grooves edging her spine? Humans were squeamish about marred flesh. Other species reacted differently. Werewolves, in particular, got turned on by battle scars and displayed them like jewelry.
So, if exhibiting or touching her old wounds was blasphemy of the highest order and against the rules, why was she chancing this?
She was here because it was her one shot, a last-ditch effort, at soul healing. If this artist could cover the two large wounds on her back with a design that would make her feel like her old self, maybe she’d regain some semblance of balance and a small modicum of peace.
That ever-elusive peace...
The transformation of something ugly into something better, at least superficially, would be an accomplishment terribly long overdue, and one less freakish thing to contend with in the long stretch of unending years to come...if she didn’t find what she had come to London to find.
“You still there?” the guy asked, speaking to her.
There was no need to answer him. He was acutely aware of her. She could feel how badly he wanted to take a closer look. The air between them vibrated with that need. He was struggling to keep his attention on the ankle in front of him, and eagerly awaiting the girl’s departure.
This was the reason she had to be so bloody careful. The uncanny attraction all humans felt when they saw her was due to the light of the Divine still being there...in her face, her body and her hair. Though the light had dimmed considerably over the years, there was no way to mask what was left of it completely. Throughout time, mortals had been mesmerized by its vibrant energy and lingering afterglow.
“Calm the hell down,” she silently sent to the guy to dim his growing interest. He obeyed that directive the way most humans did when she messed with their minds. She’d have to erase this guy’s thoughts completely once they were done.
Running a hand along the edge of the sleek metal counter’s iron and tin compounds served to sharpen her focus by making her fingertips burn. She blew on them, more for sport than comfort, long practiced in dealing with forbidden metals.
“Two minutes,” the artist announced.
Two minutes, and then what? Avery asked herself. Peace actually would descend? Did she actually expect that kind of outcome?
Sound...
Jolted by a sudden lash of nerve burn that instantly heated her face, Avery turned to the door.
“I will wait.”
A voice had seeped under the crack.
“I will be waiting for you.”
“Son of a...” Striding to the door, Avery rested her hand on the wood. She had been right. Someone was out there. Not just anyone, either. Somebody powerful enough to reach her with a threatening call.
All she had to do was open this door to find out who it was.
Or not.
The flush of volcanic heat and the staccato uptick in her pulse that followed that call paved the way for a streak of fiery intuition. Only one kind of presence in the world had the ability to affect her like this. Seven things, actually...which meant that one of Castle Broceliande’s Blood Knights was somewhere nearby. And he had found her.
Fired-up nerve endings were tingling en masse. Avery stifled wicked four-letter oaths. Imagining she could stride through the shadows of this city undetected had been foolish. London had always been overrun by monsters. At least one of those Knights could potentially have been on guard, protecting the city’s humans from things that went bump in the night.
While she...
She was a sitting duck in this small enclosed space, if she had indeed been made by one of them.
Damn Blood Knights.
Guardians. Overseers. Monster killers. That’s what the dangerous Seven had become. Seven physically perfect specimens of immortal manhood had been created to be as much like her as possible, and their Makers had outdone themselves. Due to their skill with alchemic machinations, the Blood Knights existed unchallenged to this day by any who stood against them—immortals unable to die by any normal means. Immortals unknowingly built on a foundation of pain.
Still, despite the agony the creation of the Knights had caused her, Avery yearned for their company with every fiber of her being, and always had. They alone, out of anyone on Earth, would come the closest to understanding her, and yet could never be allowed to. Misplaced longings for them were never to be addressed. Urges like want and need had to remain tucked inside her. Only when her mission had been fulfilled would she be strong enough to get what she required from them.
“I know you’re there, Knight. Leave here. Leave me. Honor my wishes.”
“What did you say?” The tattoo artist asked.
Hell, had she spoken those words aloud?
“Have you changed your mind?” he queried.
“No change,” Avery replied.
“Good. All done here.” To the girl in the chair, he said, “You remember what I told you about how to take care of this, right?”
The girl nodded and slid to her feet, careful to avoid putting too much pressure on her foot right away. She winced as she rolled down the hem of her jeans. After pulling on her jacket, she headed for the door without looking back.
“Will you look at that. No thank you at all,” the artist muttered. “Good thing she paid up front, but what’s the world coming to?”
Standing, he turned, careful to avoid meeting Avery’s eyes. “Now, what do you have in mind?”
“Wings,” she said.
Speaking the word produced a flutter deep inside her chest.
The guy nodded. He would have noted the husky voice she had taken decades to perfect and the slim, leather-encased body only partially hidden by the black leather hoodie. He had to be wondering about the sunglasses.
To his credit, he merely said, “Wings are popular.”
His eyes roamed over her—not in a sexual way, but as a painter might look for the best angle with which to fully see a model’s potential. Almost strictly business now that her silent directive had calmed him down.
“Lower back?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Upper.”
That disclosure interested him. His eyebrows quirked. “Shoulders?”
“A full span.”
His gaze shifted to the counter. “I can do up a design for you or show you some pictures so I can see what you have in mind.”
“No need. I can sketch what I’m looking for if you have a pencil and paper handy.”
Avery wasn’t sure which of the two beings in this room would be affected the most when she bared her skin for the needles. Her nerves were like white-hot pulses whispering along over-strung wires.
There was also the question of whether that Blood Knight outside would leave her alone, and if the ward she had set up at the door would protect her.
“Here.” She was handed paper and a blue felt-tipped pen. “Have a go at what you mean.”
Pen in hand, she began to draw from memory a rendering of the tattoo she wanted. Tonight’s session would actually be an act of camouflage, using art and color to disguise the ridges left over from where the real pair of wings had been cruelly cut from her back.
She was going to replace one set of wings with another.
Each stroke of her pen across the paper intensified the chest flutter. Tension balled in her stomach. How long would the Knight give her before figuring those protective wards out?
The artist nodded at the image she had drawn. “I can do this. When would you like to start?”
“Now.”
His shaggy-haired head shook. “This will take a long time. Two or three sessions, at least.”
Avery pulled out a wad of folded one-hundred dollar bills and laid them on the counter. “Now,” she repeated.
He looked at the money and back to her. “No one can handle all this ink at one time, not to mention the discomfort of so much coverage. That design will reach from shoulder to shoulder?”
“All the way across. And I’ll manage.”
He shook his head again. “I’m sorry...”
His voice trailed off because she had removed the sunglasses and lowered her hood...to give him a first look, a glimpse, a mere inkling of what one of God’s angels who had fallen to the Earth centuries ago, and stayed, looked like.
The poor sod’s wheeze of surprise was audible, but he quickly got hold of himself with a little mental nudge from her bag of tricks. He hadn’t asked any of the questions that had been crowding the tip of his tongue. She also had put a damper on that.
Following him to the back room of the shop, Avery glanced twice more at the front door. Wary, dealing with the craziness of being trapped, she knew that she had only postponed getting caught with her pants down by one of the only beings on Earth who knew what to do about it.
That damn Blood Knight.
Whichever one it turned out to be.
Chapter 3 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
Rhys’s anticipation had spread like wildfire. Nevertheless, he had to be careful.
At this late hour, people were coming and going, passing the entrance to the alley where he now stood. Predators of the horror movie kind hadn’t yet made an appearance, but for them the night was young.
It was 2:00 a.m.
She hadn’t come out of the tattoo parlor.
He couldn’t imagine what she was doing in there. To be touched by needles would mean exposure. An immortal’s blood would be a hefty giveaway of details no immortal could afford to let slip. His blood was black. Possibly hers was, too.
Rhys pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against, patience wearing thin.
“Time’s up,” he announced.
Three strides brought him close enough to the shop’s front door to feel the buzz of electricity outlining it. The trespassing vixen had set up a defensive ward.
“You did hear me, then,” he muttered.
Lips moving with a silent incantation, Rhys shattered the barrier she’d set in place and yanked the door open.
“Nice try,” he said aloud. “But I’m no amateur.”
Inside the shop, he waved off the burly man coming toward him from a back room with a muttered command. The female he sought wasn’t anywhere in sight, and yet her scent, already embedded in his lungs, led him to where she hid.
All those plans about what he would say to her fizzled when he stopped in the doorway of that back room. As if he’d been slammed by a battering ram, his breath hitched.
She was there, sitting on a cot with her back to him, naked from the waist up. Never once had he witnessed anything quite like this. Like her.
The woman on that bench was completely colorless. Pale to the point of being ghostly. White skin. Hair the color of freshly fallen snow. She was painfully thin, but also incredibly graceful in the way her angles converged. Slender shoulders sloped toward a spine where each bone stood out from the lean muscles surrounding it, as if they were pearls on a string.
Ethereal was the word that came to Rhys with that first glance. And breathtaking. She was also flawed. Damaged. That, too, was startling. Whitened scars covered her back and arms. Old scars, and plenty of them, proved that she had suffered abuse and had been hurt badly in the past.
She had come for tattoos. Those new tats were vivid, red and raw, adding an overlay of color that contrasted greatly with her skin. She’d chosen wings. Dark blue, light blue and gray feathers with blood-red tips spanned from one of her shoulders to the other, expertly filled in. The result was spectacular.
Rhys stared intently at this incredible apparition.
Strands of her white hair—long, straight, shiny—cascaded over one of her shoulders to partially cover the right side of the tattoo. Both shoulders quaked slightly, not from cold, but as if the violence of the needles used to create the wings had affected her. Her emotional turmoil was discernible from where he stood.
Although she was aware of him, the graceful creature on that cot didn’t turn around. Maybe she waited for him to make the first move. Unfortunately, that move didn’t include any of the demands he had planned on using for getting to the root of who she was and what she was up to. What bubbled up from him instead was a show of sympathy.
“Bloody hell,” he whispered hoarsely. “What have you done?”
* * *
Pain sliced through Avery’s back as her muscles stabilized; pain reminiscent of another time, only infinitely tamer by comparison and much more civilized.
She didn’t have time to try out the feel of her surrogate wings or catch her breath. He was here in the doorway, his reflection clear in the mirror across from her. Him. Not just any Blood Knight, but the one she had secretly coveted from among the Seven. The Knight she wasn’t ever supposed to see in person, face-to-face, was less than five feet away, leaving her breathless.
There was no mistaking this creature for any normal mortal male. No chance in hell. His incredibly handsome, aquiline-featured face had Blood Knight chiseled all over it.
There was no use trying to play dumb, either, when they were both far from the classification of mortal and knew it.
“What have you done?” he asked again, the deepness of his voice sending shockwaves of familiarity through Avery.
His question seemed intimate, spoken as if he knew her well and cared about what she did, when neither of those things was true. He hadn’t known she existed until this moment. She had promised herself things would stay that way until she found the right time to change it.
Slowly, and without answering the impertinent query, Avery reached for her shirt.
“You’ve been hurt,” he said.
It was too late to ask how he had found her, and the answer wouldn’t have helped. Like often called to like, and she had gotten too close. But the effect his presence had on her was as unwelcome as he was. Icy shivers crept up the back of her neck. Her insides churned. Blood Knights had been designed to lure the eye and tempt the soul, and angels weren’t immune to those things because those seven Knights carried in their souls some beauty of the heavens.
Get out! Avery wanted to shout, studying his image in the mirror. I don’t have time for this.
As handsome as these Knights had been as mortal men, their famous features had been further enhanced by the grace of the renewed blood in their veins and the importance of their golden Quest. They were, however, ignorant of the fact that some of the immortal blood pulsing through all of them had been hers, unwillingly shared. And that, like a butterfly, she had been captured, ensnared in a net.
This magnificent Knight was muscled, honed, taut, elegant and rugged in equal measures. He stood well over six feet tall, his appearance formidable in every sense of the word. An aura of crackling power surrounded him, announcing that this was a man who had broken from his mortal bonds by stepping into another realm of existence.
He spoke again. “Are you all right?”
His throaty voice sounded like a sweep of crushed velvet, and affected her more than she’d care to let on. They were measuring each other, and she needed time to calculate what might happen next.
She had seen this Blood Knight many times in the past, and always with the same kind of gut-clenching reaction. Frozen in the body of a twenty-something-year-old, he had matured since his inception. His face was more chiseled than she remembered. Bright blue expressive eyes were alight with a worldly, intelligent gleam.
She knew those features well.
In that doorway, too close for comfort, stood the sun-kissed immortal with golden streaks of light in his mane of brown hair whose piercing gaze usually saw through shadows without seeing her.
Perceval had been his mortal name, way back in time. This was one of Arthur’s knights, a warrior champion who’d had a coveted seat at Camelot’s Round Table and been a major player in the Grail Quest. The intense heat of his observation began to melt her chills.
“What’s it to you?” she finally asked, slipping her shirt over her head. “I don’t believe you were invited to this party.”
Speaking calmly was a chore when this Knight’s allure bordered on the mystical. Of all the Seven, he had always been special to her. Her attraction to him had both excited and repelled her from the beginning, and from afar, further complicating the fulfillment of the personal vows she had taken.
Because of that, he was the most dangerous Knight of them all to have found her. She had to be careful, remain calm, when her heart was thrashing. More time was necessary before she turned to face him.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Who’s asking?” Avery returned.
The energy circling the room was expanding, pressing against the walls, humming in her ears. She was trapped, and therefore had to speak to him. No alternative presented itself when he filled the doorway.
She saw in the mirror that he was staring at her back and at the damp towel beside her.
“What’s wrong with your blood?” he asked.
“Nothing’s wrong with it.”
“It has no color at all.”
“What’s that to you?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, or like you.”
“No,” Avery agreed, sliding her arms into her sleeves. “Other than your comment being incredibly rude, I’m sure you haven’t seen anything like me.”
Glossing over her feisty comeback, he tried again to engage her. “Where do you come from?”
She was fairly sure he didn’t mean the city or region of the world, but something deeper and having to do with her origins...as if she’d blow more of her cover and cough up her secrets because he asked her to.
Turning halfway around, she parried, “Is this an interrogation? Are you London’s supernatural sheriff?”
“Only an interested party.”
“Where I came from is none of your business.”
“Maybe it isn’t. What about your scars?”
“Rude again, and definitely not your concern.”
Persistence was another well-honed Blood Knight trait.
“Is there anything you can tell me about yourself that might help me to understand what you want here?” he asked in a lowered tone that caused Avery’s new tats to ache more than they already did.
“It’s late,” she said. “Maybe you have a job to do that doesn’t include wasting time in a tattoo parlor.”
“Not tonight. Everyone got a free pass in your honor.”
“Do you suppose the bad guys will thank me?”
Don’t let him in. Do not get close, Avery’s mind warned.
Remember who you are, and get away.
None of that was easy at the moment, however. She wasn’t just confronting a Blood Knight. She was confronting an old set of wishes long ago tamped down. This glorious creature had always made her want to forget her rage and her vows to keep clear of him and the others like him. The pressure she felt to fight her way out of the room was outrageous.
If she’d had her wings, the real ones, she could have bested this Knight in seconds. Although he was incredibly strong, she would have been the strongest. Wingless, she was unwhole, halved, severed from the rest of her kind with her strength vastly diminished.
“Go away,” Avery managed to say.
“Answers first,” he said.
Pursuing their prey is what Blood Knights did best, and she was now at the top of that list.
Want to know who I am, Knight?
What if I tell you that your inner light was stolen from me, tortured out of my veins? What then? Would you thank me for your light and for your agile prowess? Someone should.
Stopping the internal chatter was imperative. She felt him tuning in to her. Hers wasn’t the only pulse skyrocketing. The rapid beat of his heart added to the tension in the air.
The truth was that in this guy’s voice, and in his golden presence, Avery heard the far-off rattle of the chains that had bound her to the Earth in his honor.
“You’re immortal, and yet have no sigils,” the magnificent bastard noted with a focus hotter than the artist’s needles.
Avery hated how he unsettled her.
“I suppose the saving grace is that the new designs look like they belong there,” he added. “Somehow, the wings suit you.”
Too damn personal...
Avery whirled around. The creature in the doorway had seen the wings, her new talismans, when she hadn’t had the chance. He had viewed her bare skin, scars and all. And now that she had lost some of her hard-won control, he had seen her face.
Would she let him get away with that? She had wiped minds for less. She had killed to remain anonymous in a crowded modern world. But none of those things was an option here with someone whose strength so closely matched hers at the moment. She had been sloppy and had not covered her tracks well enough. This meeting was her fault. There was no do-over, only escape.
She did not meet that heated gaze.
“Sigils are in these days. Didn’t you know?” she remarked, reaching for her jacket.
“Sigils.” He repeated the word. “Was that what you were looking for here, in a place like this?”
“Actually, that would have been useless, don’t you think, when you have to be born with those kinds of marks, or be born because of them?”
She was getting warmer, catching the fever that came with speaking about forbidden things. Her shoulders were on fire. Real wings would have taken her away from this confrontation. An inked span was nothing more than make-believe.
Still, the inked wings were an added reminder that if she stopped looking for the missing pieces of herself now, she would never know a moment’s peace. If she became distracted after all this time, and after believing she was closing in on the very thing she sought...all the years of searching and hating and destruction that had gotten her to this point wouldn’t be worth one single breath.
She wanted to look at him, but didn’t dare.
“I wonder if you’ll tell me what you are if I ask nicely enough?” he said. “And also who made you.”
“I’m afraid you have taken up far too much of my time already.” That remark actually sounded breathless. The airless room was stifling.
“Places to go? People to see?” he asked.
Avery ignored the remark. She was in need of fresh air and alone time, and he was in the way.
“I’m leaving.” She got to her feet, meeting his gaze at last.
He leaned against the doorjamb as if he had suddenly experienced a moment of weakness. But he rallied quickly. The devastatingly handsome head shook. Blue eyes burned bright.
“They will be waiting for you. London’s monsters,” he warned.
“They won’t find me.”
“I did.”
“You don’t understand...” Avery began, without finishing what she had been about to say. This Knight wasn’t to know anything about her quest. The Perceval of old had died, losing his mortal flesh, and had been resurrected by a golden kiss from a holy relic. After feeling Death’s black breath, his path had been clear. That had not been the case for her. And by the way, she wanted to shout, monsters no longer concern me.
“I’m trying to be polite, and you’re not making it easy,” he said. “What if I came here to welcome you to London, or to warn you about what lurks here?”
“Have you honestly come here for either of those things?” Avery challenged.
“No,” he confessed. “I came because I was intrigued by the sudden appearance of a stranger I couldn’t place.”
The tractor-beam of his blue-eyed scrutiny left Avery feeling as though she were still half naked. She also felt vulnerable when vulnerable wasn’t in her vocabulary and never had been. She’d been in battles this Blood Knight couldn’t even dream of, and had emerged unscathed. Damn straight she could handle this unexpected meeting.
“I owe you nothing, Blood Knight,” she said.
As she watched a smile play on the corners of his full, sensuous mouth, Avery realized she had just made a grave mistake. In letting him know that she knew him, and about him, she had trespassed on his purpose for existing. Blood Knight, she had said.
That mistake was the mother of them all, and any second now the ramifications of such a slip-up were going to bite her on her leather-clad ass.
Chapter 4 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
“So you do know me,” Rhys said, refusing to let her get past him.
The female, though of an unknown species, was extraordinarily beautiful. She had delicate features and wide-set blue eyes the exact color of a summer sky. Those eyes were the only real color she possessed, other than the tattoo, and stood out dramatically from the flawless paleness of her face. Adding more drama to her features was the way she had rimmed both eyes with black paint, which lent her a modern, edgy look. Not one scar marred that face.
“What if I do know about you?” she asked.
Rhys shook his head. “I wonder if it’s possible to get a straight answer out of you.”
“Unless you actually are London’s sheriff, I doubt it. Even if you were, it’s unlikely I would oblige.”
Rhys held up his hands in a gesture of submission. “Fine. I get it. You enjoy being mysterious.”
He stepped aside. “Would one more question be too much to ask?”
“Yes.” Donning her leather jacket, she got to her feet.
Up close, this trespasser wasn’t as small as he had originally thought. It was the slightness of her frame that made her seem fragile, though her attitude more than made up for it. He could easily have held her there with brute strength alone. Since he was two heads taller and twice as broad, she wouldn’t stand a chance against him. But this strange female was right. She owed him nothing. She had done nothing wrong. Yet.
“How do you know about me? Your answer might be more important than you realize, at least to me,” Rhys persisted. “Not many creatures are privy to knowledge of the Seven.”
She wasn’t going to get close to him, whether or not the doorway was wide open. Don’t you trust me, pale one? Maybe you don’t trust yourself. After all, not all immortals are friendly.
Hell...and again...other than his brethren and a few ancient vampires, he had never encountered another immortal, so what did he really know?
“Blood Knight, you said,” he prompted.
She said nothing.
“Perhaps you’ve met one of my brothers somewhere in this wide world?”
When her eyes met his briefly, the room seemed to fade out of focus. Those eyes were unusually intense and probing. Contained in the blue was the flicker of a far-off light.
A feeling of being connected to her snapped into place as their gazes held. Rhys was sure she felt it, too. Swaying slightly on her feet, the pale mystery was quick to break eye contact.
Rhys caught and held a breath, wanting...no, needing to know more about her. He said the next thing on his mind, shoving aside the answers he most needed in favor of the wave of emotion careening through him.
“Does it hurt?”
She looked up again.
“What you did tonight, here. Does it hurt?” he asked.
“It’s nothing.” Breathy voice. Lowered tone. Hidden emotion.
“And the other marks you bear?”
“Far worse.”
This beautiful female, parchment pale, slight of bone and freshly tattooed, had admitted to being privy to his status as an immortal. She had spoken of his brethren as if she were well-versed in their business, when he remained in the dark about hers.
The situation was unacceptable and there wasn’t really much he could do about it. She was intriguing, exciting. Unusual sensations stirred in his chest.
And there was something else...
Something about her that he could not put his finger on, no matter how hard he tried.
The scars that marred her flesh were evidence of battles she had fought. When? Where? They were evidence that she was no wallflower, no innocent maiden or pushover. In contrast to her fragile appearance, she was a warrior of some kind. A fighter.
Her gaze again rose slowly to meet his. This time she didn’t back off. She made no move to push past him. Rhys detected in her expression a glimmer of interest that she quickly masked.
Are you as intrigued by me as I am by you?
It was likely going to be a standoff in the doorway until she gave him more information about herself, especially now that she had let on about knowing his purpose in London.
“Why wings?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Why not?” she returned.
“The tattoos must have been important for you to have come here,” Rhys suggested. “I noted your reticence in the doorway of the shop.”
“We’re talking in circles, Knight. Don’t presume to know anything about me. People usually come to a place like this to get their bodies inked. That’s what I did.”
“Yes, people do that,” he agreed.
“Are you prejudiced against those of us who don’t fit into that category?”
“That would be absurd, wouldn’t it, since I don’t fit, either.”
She continued to stare at him.
“If I step back again, you’ll go? Just like that?” Rhys said.
“What’s to hold me here?”
“I was hoping my appearance in this doorway might be enough to instigate a real dialogue. You know, immortal to immortal.”
“Circles,” she reiterated. “When your monsters are calling.”
He wasn’t going to let up, didn’t want to lose her quite yet. Touching her was not an option. Laying a hand on her would be out of the question. But he wanted to do those things and was driven by a strange inner impulse to get closer to her.
“Those monsters will sense your presence the way I did. By now, the news will have spread,” Rhys explained.
“Let them come.”
“We can fight them together, if you like,” he suggested. “Teamwork.”
“I fight alone, and only when I have to.”
He couldn’t keep her there much longer. The stink of death permeated the air, seeping through the seals of the closed windows. Several bloodsuckers were out there, and not too far away.
“Get out of my way,” the pale beauty said.
“All right,” Rhys conceded without moving.
He couldn’t stop staring at this mesmerizing mix of unknowns. She looked like an angel with a purpose. An angel with one foot down in a place not quite as fluffy as the clouds. Her little trailing lights weren’t in evidence. The black-rimmed blue eyes were unsettling.
Maybe the tattooed wings make you feel more like an angel. Maybe you imagine you’ll use them to fly away.
“Let me help you,” Rhys said.
When white lashes lowered over her eyes, he thought again about reaching out to detain her. He wanted those eyes back on him. He wanted to understand her. Nevertheless, he let her brush past him because he was not her keeper, her friend, an actual ally or her lover. With regret, he watched the enigmatic, ethereal immortal female walk out of the room, heading for the shop’s front door.
Rhys said, “The monsters will be out there, you know.”
She hesitated in the shop’s doorway to look back at him with a final word. “They always are.”
He had to let her go, let her leave, when his body urged him to bring her back. Once she walked out that door, he might never see her again. Odds for that were in her favor.
Now that he had seen her, spoken with her, having her disappear would leave a dent in his understanding and a hole in his hammering heart. That damn heart was acting like a schoolboy’s with a first crush. After just a few minutes, she had become an addiction.
Did he see sadness in her eyes when she gave him a final glance from the sidewalk? He was sure the light he had witnessed in the blue depths of those eyes now reflected regret. Probably he was wrong. Nevertheless, he was after her in a blur of speed.
On the sidewalk, he stopped. Two mortals passed by. A Night Shade slipped through the shadows and into the alley beside him. That Shade should have been of concern to him, but distraction was a hell of a thing. The female he’d just seen in that shop was gone, leaving no trace other than the lightest wisp of fragrance.
Whispering a litany of curse words, half of them in Latin, Rhys spun to face the next problem. Monsters were indeed rallying. Half a block away, and with the swiftness of an oncoming black tide, vampires were closing in.
Chapter 5 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
The black tide swept the two mortals who had just passed Rhys into the vampires’ vortex of flashing fangs and overruling hunger. One of those unlucky people had enough time to scream before they were on him.
And that was not acceptable to a Guardian.
There in seconds, Rhys joined the fray, pulling a silver-tipped dagger from his right boot and a sharpened wooden stake from his left.
The bloodsuckers were quick, but out of their league when facing a vamp-killing machine from a larger supernatural gene pool. Rhys swung his arms as fluidly as if he had been made for the intricacies of fighting. He had been created with the strength of ten men for just such a purpose.
“Go back to the same black breath that created you,” he said calmly, lunging sideways with deft strikes of the blade to take down the first vamp, whose yellow fangs were too near the throat of its young mortal prisoner.
“Rest in peace.”
The street exploded with a snowstorm of dark gray ash, which caught the attention of the remaining sharp-canined monsters and made them angry.
“Not what you were expecting?” Rhys quipped, waiting out the seconds until they released the two stunned, but as yet unharmed, mortals.
These vamps’ faces were gaunt, almost skeletal. As usual, Rhys regretted that their afterlives had been so cruelly tweaked. Dull black eyes, lacking all hint of their former color, were fixed on him. Grossly sharp teeth snapped with displeasure. All of these bloodsuckers were new to the walking undead status. Hunger ruled them. Feeding was everything. Common sense had departed with their dying breaths.
“It’s not your fault. I get that,” he said, stepping forward to meet the remaining crush of fang-snapping abominations. “However, you are cursed to be the bane of human existence. You must be aware of that.”
His body rocked as the awareness of other company came to him like a moving wall of heat. Without looking for the source, Rhys could venture a good guess as to who had returned. Not many creatures would have been close enough to sense trouble, with the ability to do something about it.
She had come back, as if he needed help with five malnourished fledglings.
“Damn you,” she said, appearing beside him from out of nowhere with the ease of having just dropped from the sky.
The sky thing wasn’t possible, of course, Rhys knew, since the wings on her back were fake.
He feinted to the right. Simultaneously, she moved left in a choreographed fighting pattern that split the oncoming vamp fledglings into two groups.
“Hell, do I now have to worry about you?” he silently griped.
“I was thinking the same thing. About you,” she returned in the same manner.
“You can hear me?”
“No need to shout, Knight.”
“You heard things I might have thought earlier?”
“Anyone within a five-mile radius could have heard you.”
She went for two of the bloodsuckers as if she had been born to the art of wielding a blade.
Rhys struck the sweet spot in one fledgling’s chest with his knife, and that fledgling went down in a flurry of musty-smelling gray ash. Spinning on his heels, he embedded the stake in the second vamp’s chest and left it there as the vamp staggered back a few steps before what was left of it became a funnel of ash.
His new fighting partner had taken the brunt of things, with another of the vamps going after what it incorrectly assumed might be the weaker link. Big mistake.
The woman beside him moved like lightning, like a storm in human guise, and with a fighting grace Rhys had never before seen in any but his brothers. Fast, sure, talented, she was all liquid motion. Prepared to jump to her aid, Rhys instead watched at a standstill, his body reacting to each move she made as if he’d made it.
His pulse was again racing. This immortal woman was fast, flexible, canny and dexterous. Tracking her movements roused emotions long compressed deep in his soul. How had he missed this creature’s existence? Who the hell was she, and why couldn’t he reach the answer to that question when it was buried somewhere inside his mind?
Like a white whirlwind, the female parried, spun and thrust her blade to victory over those ornery bloodsuckers. And when the street had been cleared of fanged parasites, and the two mortals had run off to safety with a story to tell that no one would believe unless they had seen such a thing for themselves, she turned to Rhys with a stern expression on her incredibly beautiful face.
Speaking with the same throaty voice that had caused his muscles to twitch in the shop behind them, she said, “The mortals won’t remember. I’ve seen to that, and you owe me one.”
She wiped her short silver blade on her leather-clad thigh and turned from him.
“You truly imagined I’d need help?” Rhys asked, amused and far too fascinated with the curve of that lean thigh for his own good.
“Well, maybe I just needed to exert some energy,” she admitted, turning back. “I was in that damn shop for far too long, and those needles were a bitch.”
She was feisty. Sexy. The black leather getup molded tightly to her body, showing off angles and curves Rhys hadn’t been able to see when she was sitting down. Her hood had been thrown back. Silky strands of platinum hair crossed her face in the night’s moist breeze, partially hiding the features Rhys wished he could see.
“Now what? You’ll disappear again?” he asked.
“Disappearing is what I do best,” she said.
“Why? Are you hiding from someone?”
“Good thing it wasn’t you. Look how that turned out.”
Rhys grinned, liking her quick-witted comebacks.
“You might want to can the light show if stealth is your objective. Your appearance in the alley was pretty flashy.”
She stared at him with her lips parted for a retort she didn’t make—lush lips nearly as pale as the rest of her. He wondered what those lips would taste like, and if she’d use her knife on him if he tried to find out.
When seconds passed and she hadn’t spoken or made her retreat, Rhys figured those things would have been points for him in the challenge game, if anyone had been keeping score. Then again, she had known about Blood Knights and had pegged him as one with a single glance, so maybe he’d have to concede some of those points.
Finally, when the silence had grown uncomfortable, the provocative white-haired enigma took a backward step, keeping her eyes on him, possibly afraid to turn her back.
“I won’t let this go, you know,” Rhys warned. “You’re far too intriguing.”
“You’ll have to,” she said. “I’m already here and gone.”
“And if I were to ask you to stay?”
The waist-length, silver-white tendrils of her hair had taken on a luminous sheen under the streetlight. Hell, Rhys thought, she looked more like an elf than anything else. Another impulse came to touch her, just to make sure she was real and not a mirage. She hadn’t addressed any of his questions, but didn’t really have to. What had she said? She owed him nothing.
“Ghosts can’t fight. Noncorporeal bodies and all that,” he said, thinking hard about which gene pool she might have sprung from and again coming up short. “But you are very good with a blade.”
“Hate ghosts.” She took another backward step.
“What about Blood Knights? Do you hate them, too?”
“Would you deserve it?”
“You know about us, about who we are. Was that by rumor?”
“Plenty of rumors,” she said.
“If you travel in the kind of company that would spread those rumors, why haven’t I heard about you?”
“Maybe I’m not rumor-worthy.”
“I’m fairly sure no one could forget you after a glimpse. If your soul had been around for a while, someone would have seen you.”
“You’re right,” she agreed. “They wouldn’t have forgotten someone like me, which is why I don’t allow them that glimpse.”
As fun as this was, it was now clear to Rhys that this immortal wasn’t going to volunteer any real information about herself at all, even after sharing in his fight with the vampires. He was going to have to get those details some other way.
Smile widening, he said, “I do love a challenge.”
“Good for you. Now, you must let me go.”
“Or?”
“It will be a regrettable mistake in judgment.”
“Really? When we seem to be on the same side?”
“I value privacy above all other things.”
Rhys nodded. “If you stay in London, I will be able to find you.”
“I didn’t realize Blood Knight was synonymous for bloodhound.”
“Scent has strong power,” Rhys said. “Smells create memories. I can smell the power in you. Though as yet nameless, what you are rolls in my mind like a misplaced vision, sparking images I can’t see clearly. It has to be obvious to you that I need to sort that out.”
“Quite obvious,” she said. “Which is why you followed me in the first place. You’re not sure what I am or who I am. For a Guardian, that kind of void in information would be regrettable.”
“You would be curious in my place, I think.”
The whittled animal-bone handle of the blade that she clenched in her fist was a further sign of her Otherness. Most supernatural species could not touch any kind of metal.
Rhys wondered if she might use that blade on him if he pursued this line of inquiry.
“I watch here, for now,” he said. “I discern friend from foe and try to keep the peace when that task gets harder with each passing year.”
She waved her blade at the dusting of fine gray ash covering the pavement. “Yet, aren’t you and these creatures you call monsters distant cousins? In which case, one might reason that you and your knightly brothers have an obligation to cull their numbers in order to protect the humans these vampires prey upon.”
“More rumors?” Rhys said.
“Aren’t rumors often sparked by truth?”
Before he had time to reply, she closed the distance between them. From only inches away, her scent was much stronger. Her next move was unexpected. She touched him.
No, it was her blade that had touched him. Its sharp tip pierced a coin-sized hole in his coat. Rhys looked down at the knife, then at her. He quirked an eyebrow.
She lowered the blade and placed her cool, bare fingertips on his mouth. Rhys swayed and swallowed a rising groan of surprise. He held his breath as she traced the outline of his lips before gently pressing them back. He knew what she searched for and what she saw hidden there. Fangs.
“It would seem some rumors actually are true,” he said.
Wickedly placed inside the mouths of each of the seven men who had accepted the vows issued by their Makers at Castle Broceliande, those fangs were, like this female’s inked tattoos, not really good for anything. They were merely reminders that blood sipped from a holy relic is what had resurrected the seven men and sent them on a quest.
“This is what the Grail Quest did to you,” she said.
“In return for preventing that Grail from falling into the hands of others who might use its power to bestow immortality for another purpose,” Rhys said. “Imagine a world where the bad guys couldn’t be harmed.”
“No rumor, then.” She drew her hand back.
Rhys watched this female closely. The effects of her company were incredibly rich for an immortal who had never beheld a female of similar kind. She was enough like him to threaten his moratorium on seeking the companionship of others. Her touch, like her earlier light show, left an imprint, not only on Rhys’s mouth, but on his soul, as if she had branded him with the same fire that flickered in her eyes.
Rhys took a firm hold on her shoulders and pulled her closer, so that she had to look up to see his face. She did not use the knife or try to escape from what she had to know would come next.
All that fire...
All that heat...
He was so damn hungry for those things.
Daringly, Rhys rested his mouth on hers lightly, testing his resolve and hers. He waited, expecting a slam of protective power from her in honor of his transgression. But nothing like that came.
Her lips were as cool as her fingertips, and soft. She didn’t encourage him. Nor did she pull away when he deepened the pressure, breathing her in, tasting the sweetness of what lay behind the lushness he was invading. She was so very appealing.
She leaned into him and made a sound that was part groan and part whisper. In that sound lay a silent command...not for release, but for more.
He gave her that. And when her lips parted, the uncanny sense of familiarity returned so strongly that Rhys echoed the sound she had made. He knew her, didn’t he?
As his mouth captured hers, his hunger raged. Her spirit seemed to capture his spirit. She bent him to her will, commanding him to forget that familiarity he sought and bury it deep.
But she kissed him back, and the intimacy of the physical connection spiraled Rhys into a world where nothing other than the two of them existed, and the past, present and future became one.
Hell, if she was a demon, someone on the other side knew too much about the longings of a Blood Knight.
A draft of cool air drifted over him when her lips left his. Rhys opened his eyes to find himself alone. In a totally unacceptable move that had to have involved some kind of mind trick, the woman whose lips had so moved him had, like liquid moonlight, just melted away.
He stood beneath the streetlight, looking around, surprised to have been bested by the pale stranger. That was a first.
“All right,” he said, retrieving the dagger from his boot. “This game point goes to you, but the game isn’t over.”
Then he turned to face the vampire watching him from the shadows.
Chapter 6 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
Avery fled the scene without looking back.
Taking that Knight’s mind off her imminent escape had worked a little too well. With his lips on hers and his warm breath in her lungs, she’d almost forgotten what she had planned for these guys, and had escaped only in the nick of time.
Dreams of getting close to him had been with her for so long, remnants of those dreams had nearly been her downfall. By now, she knew him well, although he knew nothing of the woman he had kissed. Still, having the upper hand didn’t make her feel better about that kind of closeness, and what a mistake it had been to allow it.
Bad plan. Pitiful timing.
While distracting the Knight had seemed her best way to escape, she now felt a new need to go back to him, have more of him and indulge in the very thing she had always craved.
Hadn’t she always craved him?
The line between hate and love, two things seemingly so opposite, was blurring. That had always been the danger of her special bond with Perceval. She was already inside him in an intimate way. Her blood ran in his veins alongside another’s, and yet the immediacy of this attraction to him seemed like so much more than blood calling to blood.
But now...
Him...
That kiss.
Avery glanced up at the sky, questioning the heavens. But it had been a long time since she’d had any help from there.
She had heard something, though. The Knight had spoken to her telepathically. She’d heard him clearly because she had left a channel to her mind open. Another slip-up.
“Damn it,” she would have returned if she had been able to join in that conversation. “This is no game.”
They weren’t players on some gigantic chessboard. There was so much more at stake here than who might gain or lose a point. This was life. Hers. She’d been a fool to have been so intent on tattooed wings that she hadn’t done enough research about which of the Knights she’d potentially encounter if things went wrong in London. Being secretly attracted to this one should have kept her more aware of his travels, even though she’d been loath to remain so close.
It had to be you...
Swinging herself up the side of a building was just one of her many talents. Surprisingly, that also turned out to be a mistake, because the Knight’s scent lingered on the rooftop, preventing her from moving on. He must have watched her from here. Below this roof, the alley curved toward the tattoo parlor.
Some new stealth trick of your own, Knight?
Now, she had to regroup. He had threatened to find her, and would if she remained in this city. Leaving London, however, was not an option. A culmination of the search that had tied up her whole earthly life lay within her grasp. The importance of that could not be forsaken because a Blood Knight was on her trail.
Leave here. Leave him, her instincts warned. Before...
Before what? Before she forgot her early hatred for the Seven and their Makers who had caused her so much agony? This Knight was one of them, even if the way things had gone down at that blasted castle wasn’t his fault. Still, the beautiful bastard she’d kissed was guilty by association.
Mixed feelings were scary, and she was experiencing plenty of them. Without old hatreds to guide her, what was left? Which direction would she take? She wanted so badly to trust someone, but could not confess her secrets to one of the seven golden Knights.
Leave him.
Must stay away.
“You will never find me,” she whispered to her glorious Blood Knight. But those words made her heart ache. They made her feel sick. She added soberly, “Not without an invitation.”
Possibly she liked him too much to share the hurt she had suffered. Even more telling than her new turn of conscience was how desperately she longed to have another shot at that kiss—an action that had apparently changed everything after so many years of avoiding him.
* * *
Hissing sounds, like static coming over the airwaves, forced Rhys to address the next untimely distraction. There was no mistaking the stink of stale blood permeating the area. Over the years, he’d grown sick of the stench.
“It’s rather early for you to be partying, isn’t it?” he said to the bloodsucker tucked into a dark corner behind him.
Guttural noises accompanied the vamp’s rebuttal, as if the creature wasn’t used to speaking through its fangs. “You do not own this city, freak.”
Rhys grinned dangerously. “Freak, is it? Me? That’s rich.”
“I do not fear you.”
“You haven’t heard the rumors?”
“I have heard them,” the vamp snarled.
“Maybe you missed the fight minutes ago?”
“I did not miss it.”
“Yet you’ll confront me here?”
“Do you imagine I came alone?”
“Yes, actually. I can sense your kind, you know. It’s a gift. Or a curse. You’re the last vamp crowding my space tonight.”
The vampire didn’t take the bait of that taunt and showed itself.
“I suppose you’re drawn to the scent of this place.” Rhys waved at the tattoo parlor.
“As were you,” the vampire returned, with far too much insight.
“I’m not attracted to blood, you know. It does not sustain me,” Rhys said.
“What does?”
“Current goals. Old vows.”
The vampire floated out of the shadows—a middle-aged bloodsucker, turned in his fifties, Rhys presumed. Tall, thin and dressed in a tattered black suit, this child of the night smelled like he’d been in the earth a few years too long. This was no fledgling, after all.
“One cannot thrive on old vows alone,” it observed.
Rhys nodded. “I have also cultivated a taste for wine over the past hundred years.”
The vampire had no sense of humor.
“You came to her aid,” it noted.
Rhys applied new energy to his voice. The vampire had been watching that fight, watching his white-haired companion.
“For reasons you would likely not understand or want to go into,” Rhys said.
“Perhaps I would understand. I followed her here, too. I am not immune to what she represents,” the vampire returned.
“Would that be dinner?”
“The pale one would be a veritable feast,” the vampire agreed. “Whipped cream on a blood-red cake.”
Rhys said calmly, “She isn’t human, you know.”
“All the better.”
This bloodsucker had also tuned in to the power the woman radiated. Did the creep believe he could sink his fangs into an immortal and get away with it, when that would have been impossible?
“Trying something like that would be a misuse of your energy,” Rhys warned. “Your fangs won’t penetrate her skin, you know.”
And even if they could, her blood would make this creature choke. White blood, underscoring the colorlessness of her skin.
“Can’t hurt to try,” the vamp remarked.
“Looking for what? The fountain of youth? You do realize that’s a false rumor, and that no such thing exists?”
Agitated, the bloodsucker moved sideways. “Can you tell me this truthfully?”
“No fountain of youth,” Rhys promised.
Although the Knights had been resurrected by a blood gift sipped from a golden chalice, they weren’t vampires. Though they had fangs, the Knights ate and drank only slightly less than the rest of the world’s population. Their blood wasn’t a restorative that could heal a reanimated corpse. He and his brethren weren’t gods. All seven had been human once.
“I don’t think you understand,” Rhys continued. “The point I’m making is that this woman is not for you. Not any of your concern.”
“Is that not so for you, as well?”
Rhys wasn’t entirely sure how to reply to that. Like the vampire, he had left his human existence behind and accepted the invitation to exist forever. But he had done so willingly. He doubted this vampire had chosen his afterlife’s direction, or that many would choose to live off the life force of others.
The Seven had been called back to life by a higher power than the black hand of Death. That beginning set them apart. His heart had been restarted for a golden purpose. Only through the miracle of a chalice often referred to as the Holy Grail had his heart and soul been retained.
“I suggest you take your hunger elsewhere,” Rhys warned. “Quite honestly, I’m not always this generous with your kind.”
The vampire bowed its head. “I find that I’d like to see her again. I will stay out of your way, however, for now, since you’ve asked so nicely.”
With a flurry of kicked-up street grime, followed by the sound of loose roof tiles creaking over Rhys’s head, the cheeky fanged bastard disappeared. The way they had of doing things like that was creepy, even to an immortal with equal abilities.
Nevertheless, Rhys’s interest in the pale immortal he’d kissed had just increased tenfold. Other creatures had found her twice, for some reason, when their usual MO was to avoid him and his kind. The creep he had spoken with was too interested in her, and that wasn’t right. If vampires spread the word that a pale immortal female had taken up residence, other monsters might come calling for reasons Rhys didn’t fully understand.
Did they honestly believe the snowy-haired female could help to reinstate their former lives? Change their fate? Too many vamps appearing at once to test that claim might not bode well for anyone on London’s streets after dark.
But it suited Rhys.
Taking out a bunch of vampires at once would help those unsuspecting mortal souls stay safe.
It was late. He had taken too much time here. Pulling his coat tighter, setting his intentions on a new course, Rhys followed the whiff of scent and the barely visible ribbon of light that were the angelic immortal female’s calling cards, which took him to the alley where she had first appeared.
Glancing up at the building beside him, hearing her warning about not finding her without an invitation, Rhys smiled and muttered, “Who can resist such a sweet-scented warrior?”
* * *
He was coming.
Either her powers of persuasion had dimmed considerably, or this Knight’s abilities had grown lately. Due to the strength of the feelings for him that she had sealed away, Avery couldn’t allow herself to be caught.
The choices were to run or face her dazzling nemesis one more time. Keep her secrets, or tell him the truth and see what he would do.
Roll of the dice. Which is it to be? Go or stay?
It wasn’t much of a choice, really. The Knight was right. After finding her, having his hands on her, there wouldn’t be anywhere for her to go in this city that he couldn’t find if he tried hard enough. One kiss and an old blood bond had seen to that.
But she could not leave London. Leaving would mean losing the opportunity to search for the things so important to her after exhausting her search elsewhere. The things that had been hidden from her, belonged to her, called out with a distant, elusive hum, as if they also craved a reunion. Caution was needed, though. She had been fooled before.
Avery was aware of every step toward her the Blood Knight took.
“You don’t own the city, Guardian,” she whispered. “You might be its keeper, but you’re not mine.”
Too late now.
One more time, she told herself. See him just once.
She could handle that.
In a ruffle of night air, he was there.
“You keep turning up,” she said as he climbed over the ledge.
His appearance on the rooftop might have upset her confidence somewhat, because when viewing the entirety of this guy from a distance, the effect on her system was elaborate.
The third Blood Knight to have ridden forth from Castle Broceliande’s massive iron gates no longer donned the golden armor he’d once worn in honor of his Quest. He didn’t bear the Knights’ red-striped ebony crest of the Grail protectors. But he was always mesmerizing.
The modern duster coat and dark jeans suited him. So did the shorn hair that now only brushed his collar. Where she was white, he was bronze. His luster hadn’t faded the way hers had. At times, over the years, she had envied his polished allure.
“Yes. About that,” he said, coming closer. “You did leave a trail.”
“Impossible,” she argued.
“Fortuitous,” he corrected. “Because I believe we have some unfinished business to talk over that rules out distance for the time being.”
“Misguided persistence will get you nowhere,” Avery warned. “Neither will flattery, so don’t bother. The fact is, you have followed me again.”
“I did warn you that until I know what and who you are, this city might be at risk and I would be responsible.”
“I’m no predator. I would have thought you’d have figured that out by now,” she said.
“I don’t believe you are a predator. I’m just not sure what you are or why my soul recognizes yours in some way. I’m not sure I can rest until I know why.”
Avery took a wide stance with both arms loose at her sides. Inside, she was fluttering again.
“That’s quite a line about souls. Do women usually fall for it?”
“Mortal women sometimes do.” His tone was light. The situation wasn’t.
Avery stopped short of asking him how many humans he’d tried that soul-to-soul business on. She wiped risqué images of him in bed with mortal females from her mind quickly. This bastard was charm incarnate when he wanted to be, and he was turning that charm her way. However, it had been many years since she’d trusted anyone.
“Then I suggest you find someone more amenable to bedroom talk,” she said. “The night isn’t over. If you hurry, you might find a taker.”
After a pause, he said, “Can we cut the crap? I’m not attacking you. I’m merely asking a few pertinent questions.”
“I told you I’m not in the habit of telling strangers anything about myself and made it clear I owe you nothing. What don’t you get, Blood Knight? Why can’t you honor my privacy?”
“I think you have some responsibility to come clean. There aren’t many of us, or beings much like us. I can feel the power you possess. What I can’t do is place it. I need to know if you’re in any way like me.”
“Nothing like you,” she replied to get him off her back. That was the truth. She couldn’t lie. Not outright. Neither of them could, because of that touch of the heavens they possessed.
Her answer clearly frustrated him. His hands opened and closed, forming and reforming fists as if he might wring the answers from her that he needed. Power meant danger in his world, and as he’d said, she was an unknown. Yet understanding how he felt and doing something to help him, at her own expense, were things on opposite shores of a vast ocean she dared not try to cross.
“Your soul resonates on a similar frequency to mine, which leads me to believe we have some things in common,” he said.
Yes. We have that damn castle in common.
We also have the vows that made us into what we are.
You know nothing of my part in that.
“I’ve seen you before,” he went on. “I’m sure I’ve felt your presence on the edges of my existence in the past.”
That news surprised Avery. If he knew of her presence, she hadn’t held up her end of the vow she’d taken to never allow the Knights to find her or the truth of their origins until she was ready to spill that news. They might not have accomplished the goals their Makers had set for them if they had known the truth about her and what their Makers had done to assure that the Knights had significant power of their own. As it turned out, the Knights’ goals had been good ones, and still were. She couldn’t argue with that.
“Your Makers are long gone, I assume,” she said, without the probing tone the remark deserved. “Nevertheless, you carry on as though still bound to the oaths you once took.”
The eyes studying her flashed with blue fire. “What do you know of the Makers?”
“Rumor. Legend. Fantasy lore,” Avery replied. “Legends say the Blood Knights were created by three magicians who were also the earliest form of what we know of today as vampires. If that’s true, it would explain a lot about you.”
“Rumor is it? What would a bunch of old untruths say about me?”
Avery wiped a finger across her mouth to remind him she had seen the fangs. He watched her carefully with the eyes of a hawk.
“Does the term fantasy also explain you?” he asked.
“I’m sure the parameters of fantasy lore cover us both.”
“You had a Maker?”
“Oh, yes. An extremely powerful one.”
“So why are you in pain?” he asked.
The several feet of distance separating them had not been enough. Somehow he had picked up on the wicked pain that underlined every damn day of her existence and was assailing her now. Seeing this man added to her discomfort, the way seeing him always had. Her heart was beating fast. Speaking was difficult.
“Possibly I can help,” he suggested. “I’ve learned a thing or two about pain and healing.”
“You can help by leaving me alone to do what I came here to do.”
“Other than the tattoos, you mean?”
“Yes,” Avery warily admitted. “Other than that.”
She dropped the hand that again had automatically returned to her mouth to trace the lingering impression of their kiss, because this Knight missed little and was analyzing every move she made. She had to be more careful. That was a fact.
She didn’t press home the fact that he had fangs. Surely he would have wondered about that.
“We’re to pretend nothing happened?” he asked, confirming her fears about that kiss.
“Nothing did,” Avery said.
He walked into the light of a moon half covered by dark clouds. Shadows played on his features in an artistic tableau of light and dark. His vivid blue eyes were like searchlights.
Without having ever feared anyone, Avery stepped back. The pressure of being near this immortal was greater than she would have imagined. After circling these Knights for centuries, she had to stumble on this particular one.
Wanting to turn her anger into another kind of emotion wasn’t a good sign. Desiring what was forbidden between the two of them was the biggest surprise of all. She could see the outcome of this scenario if they remained in each other’s presence. She could taste it.
Avery liked to think she was better than this, stronger than the wayward urges pulsing through her that told her to walk straight toward this seductive male.
“I am no threat to you or anyone else,” she said. “I will promise you that.”
“You’re already a threat to me.” His tone was softer now, and much too convincing.
“Forget about me. Move on.”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s what I will have to do.”
Relief filled Avery, healing the cracks in her weakening resolve. Remorse was there, too, just as it had been from the start, after she had first set foot on the Earth’s hard surface.
Regret topped both of those emotions, coming at her in seismic jolts and due to the possibility of this guy actually fulfilling her wishes by letting her go when maybe he could have helped her, if she’d let him. If she trusted herself to let him. He might have understood what had been done to her, and want to correct old errors.
“More pain,” he observed with a keen, appraising gaze. “I can feel it overtaking you.”
“It’s nothing I can’t bear.”
He nodded. “Do I play a part in that pain?”
“Do you believe you’re so important?”
His head tilted to one side, as if in viewing her from a different angle he might discover something pertinent that would help him to read her. Damn if she’d let him.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll honor your request and be on my way. It’s a shame, though, when we were getting along so well.”
Wait, Avery almost cried out, biting her tongue to keep from repeating that ugly earlier show of vulnerability that had resulted in a kiss. For her, vulnerability was rare and dangerous.
When he turned from her, she let him. When he looked back at her over a broad shoulder she had seen many times in secret, from afar, Avery managed to keep her expression smooth. The look she gave him was the same thing as a lie, and also a cover-up. Things had changed. Meeting this Knight face-to-face had softened her stance on the future. Seeing him in person had affected them both.
There was no going back.
Wait, she wanted to say again, because he wasn’t the monster she had struggled to believe he was, while knowing better all along. Though he was intelligent and experienced, the man once known as Perceval knew very little about his immortal beginnings. He was continuing to honor Britain’s famous old king’s credo of using might to fight for what was right. His side was the epitome of doing good. How could she have hated any of that enough to have stayed away?
Damn you...
The desire to be near you threatens to outweigh all the rest.
She didn’t utter the curses that stuck in her throat. Not even the worst ones. Weren’t the two of them in the same boat, living on and on with no end in sight? Did this man wish his fate had been otherwise, just as she did?
We do have things in common.
Maybe some regrets also haunt you.
Perhaps pain is also your demon?
He had retreated to the edge of the roof and stopped there. “Name’s Rhys nowadays. Rhys de Troyes. If you need me, call.”
“I won’t need you,” she said.
He nodded. “One thing I’ve found in this crazy, overextended existence is that we never really know how to ask for what we need, even when we do need something. That’s the real curse we suffer from.”
In a shaft of moonlight, the flash of his golden-highlighted hair was the last Avery saw of the blazing-hot immortal she had wanted so badly to despise, but couldn’t. After all the arguing, he had complied with her demands and was going away...like the goddamn gentleman he had probably been before the word Blood had been tacked onto his knightly status.
Chapter 7 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
Moonlight, usually Rhys’s ally in his war against the monsters, seemed impossibly dull when she wasn’t standing in it. The overhead orb’s silvery shine didn’t matter to him at the moment. Neither did the possible return of the bloodsuckers.
Tonight, for the first time in a long while, he had experienced the kindling of a little thing called hope. And the reason at the core of this new emotion had sent him away. She had waved him off as inconsequential, perhaps too wrapped up in a mystery of her own to let a stranger share in that mystery.
He hadn’t gotten one straight answer from her, and he had so many questions.
Why the tattoo?
Why wings?
Chances were good that she wouldn’t help him out of this quandary, not if they met again, but when they did. Because he had every intention of seeing her again. In fact, he wasn’t going to let her out of his sight completely, in case she used some of that power to disappear.
“Why the kiss, and why would you allow it? Distraction? Moment of weakness? Attraction? Are you as interested in me, as I am in you?”
Given that she could hear at least some of his thoughts and remarks, maybe she’d hear those whispered words. She hadn’t gone away. Not yet. Weird as it was, he was able to see the light particles that stuck around this pale vision like the shadows stuck to the street. From where he stood, it was easy to see the faint glow on the roofline.
She was there, all right. She hadn’t gone away.
Other things that hid beneath the cover of darkness were moving in and around the square now, as predicted. Most of the creatures in the supernatural world that moved with unnatural speed left a noticeable residue behind in the infrared spectrum. Rhys supposed that he also left that kind of trail. Not the pure, shimmering white of starlight, like hers, though. Seems every damn thing about her was unique, as was his growing need to get to the bottom of her appearance in London.
He had no idea what caused the inner light she wielded and doubted if anyone else did, either. Not anyone living, anyway. As he had told her, some mention of it would have reached him if anyone had gotten wind of that.
The dead were another matter needing consideration. As he had feared, news of the woman he’d kissed under the streetlight must have spread. He sensed the creatures coming. London’s vampires might also have seen the light this newcomer projected and been attracted to it.
Being stuck underground most of the time, the dark side probably hungered for light of any kind, including the shine of the Divine. And in some small way, the woman he had met tonight did exhibit a few Divine qualities. Her fake wings might have made her believe she actually was Divine.
She hadn’t wanted to leave him back on that street. At least he knew that much.
Rhys’s awareness picked up a sudden foreshadowing of the future. His sigils were aching. Energy pulsed through the tentacles of inky symbols on the back of his neck, urging him to turn his head.
This was a sturdy reminder that there was a war on, and that more abominations prowled the area nearby. He was needed to help defray the aftereffects of that war and had to resume his post.
But he was torn.
The light on that rooftop was a heady draw and nearly impossible to resist. She, whose name he still didn’t know, was equally impossible to forget.
“Monsters first,” Rhys whispered, hoping he’d actually believe it, because chaos would rain down if humans became aware of what resided in the shadows. For them, ignorance was bliss, as long as somebody in those same shadows took the monsters to task.
He had been that somebody for a very long time.
“So, what do you use your power for?” he asked the empty space next to him, wishing the leather-clad angel wannabe was standing there. Her exemplary fighting skills, seen firsthand tonight, could have helped London’s mortal population. The sheer number of scars on her body told him she’d been in many skirmishes. She hadn’t shied away from facing vamps tonight.
Studying the roofline above him, Rhys felt more confused than ever. The light up there had dimmed.
“Maybe you’re a fallen star in human form? As if that were possible?”
Thoughts sputtered as he perceived another disturbance in the night.
He searched the roofline.
The slightest ripple in the dark suggested to him that her light had not faded on its own, and that his angel had company on that rooftop. Noticeable in the breeze rustling the hem of his coat was a sulfurous odor of rust and freshly overturned earth.
Growls of anger erupted from Rhys’s throat. Without considering how many times she had told him to go away, he reached for the ledge above him with both hands and put his boot to the brick.
* * *
“Come out,” Avery taunted, aware of what was heading her way. “I’m in no mood for playing hide-and-seek.”
Her company on the rooftop was a Shade, the ghostly leftover of a nasty human whose afterlife had never been set straight. Unlike true ghosts, Shades could do great harm to the unsuspecting. Like some kinds of Reapers, they sucked the life from their victims for revenge over their own damned fates. They were also cleanup crews for the vampires, picking at leftovers. Otherworldly vultures.
And they had pretty good hearing. As the shadowy form slithered over the lip of the roof tiles, Avery welcomed it with a wry smile.
Gliding on feet that didn’t actually touch the ground, the bugger kept to the dark areas cast over the rooftop by the higher floors of the building beside theirs. It was ironic that Shades preferred shade.
“What do you want here?” Avery fingered the blade that could do this creeper some damage if she found the right spot, despite the creature’s haziness.
“Speak up.”
“Come with me.” The response was high-pitched and could have been either a male or female voice.
“I’m busy at the moment. So, no, thanks.”
“Important,” the Shade suggested, halting where moonlight met the mildewed slate tiles.
“Everything is important these days,” Avery said.
“I know what you seek, pale one.”
“Doubtful, since it has nothing to do with your kind.”
“You speak folly and understand nothing about what’s been entrusted to us.”
Avery’s index finger slid along the razor-sharp edge of her blade. She closely observed the Shade’s reaction to the scent of blood. The thing wasn’t a vampire, and therefore not fueled by hemoglobin, but the odor it gave off told her it had been in a musty vampire den recently. Things like bloodlust tended to rub off on those who frequented dark places.
Drops of blood beaded on her skin, its whiteness nearly invisible to the naked eye. Smelling it, the shadowy creature leaned forward, nearly taking a step that would have solidified its outline in the moon’s light—bright light avoidance was one thing these guys had in common with the bloodsucker population. But it held back.
“We know what you seek,” the Shade said, teetering on the brink of pushing its luck with her. “We have news of such a thing. I can show you.”
“Really?” another voice called out in Avery’s place. “I wonder what that thing might be, Shade.”
Avery looked past the creature rapidly backing into the shadows. Her formidable Blood Knight, now calling himself Rhys, had returned and stood with his dagger in his hand, looking every bit like the legends of old had come to life. Formidable. Intimidating to all who might stand against him.
Avery’s nerves pinged. Her heart rate soared, as did her pounding pulse. She had known the Knight would find her if she didn’t get a move on. So why hadn’t she tried to lose him?
Her attention was divided. The Shade’s behavior had been more abnormal than the usual Shade bag of tricks. What it had said was interesting. Shades would know better than to attack an immortal, but had it been trying to tell her something that actually pertained to her very private search?
We know what you seek.
Unlike her, and unlike the Blood Knight across from her, most of the world’s other monsters lied through their teeth.
“What? No answer?” the Blood Knight said, taking one step toward the shadows the Shade had blended into.
Avery knew he wouldn’t pursue the damn thing and that he had come here for another reason. She was that reason. Still, she had to wonder how a Shade could have been aware of the fact that she searched for anything. Believing it had known something would also prove how desperate she was to be reunited with the missing pieces of herself.
All these speculations were moot points, though, since the Shade was gone.
“Saving the day, Knight? You scared that poor sucker,” Avery said thoughtfully.
He turned toward her. “Are you into self-mutilation these days, angel? That cut on your hand?”
His use of the word angel jump-started the nerve burn that followed. Avery stared back at him, reasoning that he knew nothing.
“Why didn’t you dispense with that no-good creature?” he asked, waving at the pool of darkness.
“I didn’t have to. You rode in on a white horse.”
Her companion grinned. “Would you have dispensed with it?”
“Probably not. It meant me no harm.”
“Said no mortal that had ever encountered one of them on a dark street and lived to tell about it.”
“We both know that kind of danger doesn’t necessarily apply to us,” she pointed out.
“The thing issued an invitation for you to follow it home, all cozy-like.”
“Yes, it did.”
“Are Shades famous for helping others?”
When she didn’t answer, he said, “I rest my case.”
He was right, of course. Yet, as Avery glanced to the shadows, she wondered why she had felt reasonably sure this Shade knew something that might have helped her quest. The awareness was a gut feeling, with no sound basis whatsoever, but what the hell? Gut feelings were often part of intuition.
Her Knight spoke again. “Was that creature right in the assumption that you’ve come to London looking for something? You’ve hinted at needing to be left alone to do what you came here to do. If you tell me what you’re looking for, I’ll help with your search.”
Her inner flutters persisted. At the base of her spine, chills were piling up. Avery had to hide her body’s quakes. Because of the amount of effort that took, she was close to telling this Knight what he wanted to hear. She was so very tired of keeping things to herself.
“Who would you rather trust with that information? That hazy black sucker or me?” he said.
When she didn’t answer that question, he said, “I see. And I’m sorry you feel threatened.”
“Nothing you could do would threaten me.”
That statement wasn’t entirely true, however, and even the partial falsehood stung Avery to her core. The handsome bastard’s looks alone posed a threat to her many lifetimes of isolation. His hand-picked existence had threatened hers by taking away her freedom. Plus, her heart was misbehaving by beating way too fast, as if all the time she’d spent cursing him didn’t amount to squat when facing the real deal.
Discomfort came with his continued scrutiny and from being the central focus of any Blood Knight’s attention.
That kiss didn’t mean anything.
“I know the closeness back there was meant as a distraction, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” he said.
Words failed her, even in thought, which was never a good sign. Strangely enough, she was weakening, caving to this guy’s well-practiced, bronzed allure. While she knew better than to give in, she just couldn’t seem to help herself.
This is why I’ve stayed away from you, Avery wanted to confess.
She kept her mouth shut.
“I will again offer you my assistance,” he said in that irritating way he had of sounding chivalrous. “One last offer. Take it or leave it.”
Avery considered his offer carefully. She didn’t have to like him. They didn’t have to be friends. The old vows could stand if she allowed this guy to help her this once. After finding her wings, she would hit the road and curse him all over again.
“If you know what I am, you must also know what I can do, and that I mean what I say,” he added.
I know your mission is to do good in this world, endlessly and forever. But can I forget the past long enough to accept your help in such a personal quest?
Major stumbling block. Could she bypass that damn kiss and how this Knight made her feel, when she hadn’t felt anything for countless years?
Maybe he could be trusted. But could she trust herself around him if a simple kiss had sent her running? Former prejudices weren’t worth much if they could be obliterated by a pretty face.
I’m not like you.
Not anything like you.
Sadly, that wasn’t quite true, either, since the Knight also carried in his immortal soul the light of the Divine. She had been a crucial link in passing that light to him. And damned if it wasn’t that same light that made her want to get closer to him now.
“In seeking you out, I wanted to make sure you were all right,” he explained. “That’s all.”
“Liar,” she said. Possibly he couldn’t lie straight out, but he wasn’t telling her everything.
His electric-blue gaze intensified, leaving Avery feeling naked and exposed.
“You’re right,” he conceded. “I wanted something else as well. Friendship.”
“A half truth, at best.”
Nodding, he started over. “All right. The truth is I want a lot more than that. So, shall I go, or will you dare to confide at least part of your story?”
Do not give in.
Look away if you have to.
Avery managed to hold to those two inner commands for a few seconds before she spoke again.
“I’ve lost something that I’ve been trying to find for decades. My search has been exhaustive and has finally brought me back to London.”
He waited for her to go on.
“I had all but given up before being called back to London. I feel close to my goal here and have to give this quest one last shot.”
Avery saw how the word quest affected the man across from her. For all his glorious Knightness, the guy wasn’t so difficult to read. His extended life span had been based on that same concept. Quest.
“How much do you know about me?” he asked. “How do you know about Blood Knights?”
“I was privy to that information early on, from a source I can’t disclose.”
“Can’t, or won’t disclose?”
“It’s the same thing, in the end.”
He took a step toward her. “You know my story, and I can’t know yours?”
“I doubt you’d want to help me if I told you my story.”
“It’s that bad?”
“To some.”
“Are you a demon?”
Avery shook her head. “That much I will swear to.”
“Then you have the advantage, I’m thinking,” he said.
“Can you live with that for a while longer and still help?”
He smiled. “I thought you said you knew me.”
His smile brought back the deep internal flutter she had experienced earlier. There was no hint of treachery in his expression and no sign of his fangs. Avery wanted to return the smile but wasn’t sure she remembered how. Pain had a tendency to darken even the lightest moments. Although this man was part of that pain, there was a chance he could help her rise above the agony of her existence, and at this late hour, set things straight.
If that wasn’t to happen, and things didn’t go that way, what would fill the empty space inside her that pain occupied? What would happen to the memories carved into her body and her mind? Without those memories, nothing would matter. He wouldn’t matter.
“You’ve gone quiet,” he noted when the silence stretched.
Don’t you see it, Blood Knight? See me?
What kind of creature has white blood in their veins?
How many beings walking this Earth have one boot on the ground and the other in the heavens?
Doesn’t my skin tell you something important?
Are you looking deep enough? Hard enough?
Do you not see yourself in me?
Her story? Until the twenty-first century, when whole sections of the human race had gone through phases with names like Goth and cyberpunk, she’d had to stay completely hidden. After that, when pretty much anything worked, fitting in was easier. Her white skin was even envied by a select few. Dressed in black leather, she could skate through crowds if she had to, if those crowds occupied the outskirts of places where normal people gathered.
Parts of her story encapsulated this Knight’s story, as well. Neither of them could ever really fit in. The magnificent Blood Knight was hugging the shadows, just as she was. They were freaks because of their unique kind of beauty.
When she looked up, he had raised a hand as if expecting her to take it. As if he was tossing her a lifeline to a better place.
Go to hell, was the response on the tip of her tongue. But that was overruled by another reaction. Because, God, yes, she wanted to take that hand, touch him, believe in him. She wanted those things badly enough to taste the sweet irony of her own stubborn objections. Way back, she had trusted in the power of good, and in those who wielded goodness like a weapon.
The Knight spoke again. “If you allow me to help with this quest of yours, you’ll be doing me a favor, you know. Things can get pretty boring around here. Same old fights. Endless hours. More and more monsters.”
Body rebelling, mind reeling with comebacks so indecent they’d send this Knight away forever... Avery took a breath and closed her eyes. Another surprise, one to top all of the others, was hearing herself say, “Yes. Okay. Help me.”
Afraid to see his reaction, she kept her eyes shut, figuring a thank-you would have been going too damn far, even if this Blood Knight expected it.
Chapter 8 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
“Good,” Rhys said, though he wasn’t sure his new companion wholeheartedly agreed with what she had just committed to. On the plus side, she didn’t run away. When her eyes reopened, she turned her head to listen to the sounds he also heard.
“Do we fight what’s coming our way first?” she asked. “That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? Keep the streets safe?”
“It’s what I choose to do,” Rhys corrected. “You feel the monsters coming?”
“Like a foul wave.”
“Maybe facing more of them isn’t what you choose to do.”
“I’ve had my moments with the monsters. Far too many.”
Was that the cause of her scars? Rhys wondered.
“So we turn back this tide and then we talk about your search,” he said.
“Yes. Then we talk.”
He walked to the edge of the roof and peered over, joined by this new, unlikely companion whose body language made it clear she wasn’t going to get too close to him.
Go ahead, Rhys thought. Keep your distance a while longer.
“Ten of them,” she noted, her attention fixed on the street. “Vampires. Not so young this time. The odor is fouler, stronger.”
“Ten is ten too many to be roaming the streets all at once,” Rhys said.
With her silhouette half hidden by her fall of fair hair, his companion gave him a sideways glance. “How many can you take?”
“All ten. How about you?”
“I could leave you one, if you like.”
Rhys grinned. “Very generous.” He waved at the street below them. “On the count of three?”
“Hell, why wait?” she said, and jumped.
They’d been three stories up. Rhys landed in a crouch on the pavement with one hand on the asphalt. She was beside him. Standing in unison, they looked both ways to make sure they hadn’t been seen and then took off at a jog toward the oncoming gang of vamps.
Lucky for Londoners, it was the wee hours of the night, or morning, depending on which way they looked at it. Most people would be tucked safely in their beds. The few roaming around at 3:00 a.m. would have a hard lesson to learn if they weren’t careful, and if a Guardian hadn’t been watching this particular area.
The woman next to him waved a hand upward, indicating that a couple of the fanged horde had climbed drainpipes to reach the higher floors of the building beside them. Nodding, Rhys headed after those beasts. Climbing as easily as the bloodsuckers had, he reached the roof in seconds, hoping his companion would be able to handle things on the ground until he returned.
Two bloodless faces peered at him speculatively as he approached. Older vampires, but not ancient. Experienced. Hungry. Dull black eyes showed no hint of recognition when fixed on him. Word had not yet spread to this nest about the Guardian in their midst, a being with fangs who came from a larger gene pool.
“Not a good night to be out in this part of town,” Rhys said. “Tonight there are two of us to welcome you.”
Neither of the bloodsuckers responded with an audible comeback. To Rhys, their thoughts were like waves of chatter. Too hungry to remain idle, both vampires rushed toward him with their fangs exposed. Their taloned hands slashed at the air.
Rhys had the first vamp on the ground before the second reached him, holding it firmly with a boot on the bloodsucker’s bony chest. The damn thing snapped and squirmed, struggling to free itself. In this state, the beast could have butchered any human in its path.
Rhys put the vampire out of its misery with a stake to the chest in time to face the second attacker. He was doing the people of London and these creatures a favor. No decent human being would have wanted this kind of fanged afterlife existence.
Vampire number two was wily and halted a few steps from Rhys, taking stock of its formidable opponent. Mouth opening and closing as if snapping at the air, it issued a shrill cry.
“Won’t help. The good folks around here need protection, and at the moment I’m their best bet.”
The vampire turned its attention from Rhys to the street below them, as if aware of some new threat. Beyond the echo of its cry, Rhys heard what the monster had heard—the sharp repeat of a weapon going off, followed closely by an echoing howl.
Recognizing the sound, the vampire took off in a smear of speed that would have rendered it invisible to any human that had been looking. Rhys caught the creature by its coattails near the roof’s rim and spun the bloodsucker around.
“How many more of you are there?” Rhys demanded, his face close to the death mask that was the vampire’s face.
Mad with bloodlust and the need to escape, the vamp lunged sideways, biting at Rhys’s right arm. With a swift motion born of decades of self-defense, Rhys flung the vampire over the edge of the roof and lunged after it.
He needn’t have bothered giving chase, as it turned out. Funnels of gray ash met him on the ground, all that was left of that particular monster.
Standing in a rainfall of ash stood his petite, blue-eyed warrior maiden, silver blade in hand. Rhys saw no other vampires. Their foul scent had dissipated to a faint, odorous stench.
The pale warrior’s dark-rimmed blue eyes met his.
“All eight?” Rhys asked, after a beat.
“Nine,” she corrected. “I’m assuming you got the other one?”
That was the moment—as Rhys faced the immortal who was looking more like an avenging angel than anything else—that he figured her story had to be one hell of a tale, and that he’d be damned if he’d let her go without hearing all of it.
And maybe he wouldn’t let her go, even then.
* * *
The way this Knight looked at her had changed, Avery noted with a flare of internal heat. Curiosity had been replaced with something else. His expression was unreadable.
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Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
A fine line between vengeance and desire…As an immortal Blood Knight, Rhys de Troyes is familiar with quests. It's obvious that the ethereal beauty who just arrived in London is on one of her own. But Avery Arcadia Quinn seems intent on keeping her secrets, even as Rhys strips away all her defences.A grounded angel, Avery seeks to recover the wings stolen from her centuries ago when the Knights were created from her suffering and pain. She swore vengeance, but her burning connection with Rhys threatens to consume her anger, her mission…and even her vow to destroy him.
A fine line between vengeance and desire...
As an immortal Blood Knight, Rhys de Troyes is familiar with quests. It’s obvious that the ethereal beauty who just arrived in London is on one of her own. But Avery Arcadia Quinn seems intent on keeping her secrets, even as Rhys strips away all her defenses.
A grounded angel, Avery seeks to recover the wings stolen from her centuries ago when the Knights were created from her suffering and pain. She swore vengeance, but her burning connection with Rhys threatens to consume her anger, her mission...and even her vow to destroy him.
“Now what? You’ll disappear again?” Rhys asked.
“Disappearing is what I do best,” Avery said.
“I won’t let this go, you know,” he warned. “You’re far too intriguing.”
“You’ll have to,” she said. “I’m already gone.”
“And if I were to ask you to stay?”
As fun as this was, it was now clear to Rhys that this immortal wasn’t going to volunteer any real information about herself. He was going to have to get those details some other way.
Smile widening, he said, “I do love a challenge.”
Rhys took a firm hold on her shoulders and pulled her closer, so that she had to look up to see his face. She did not try to escape from what she had to know would come next.
All that fire...
All that heat...
He was so damn hungry for those things.
LINDA THOMAS-SUNDSTROM writes contemporary and paranormal romance novels for Harlequin. A teacher by day and a writer by night, Linda lives in the West, juggling teaching, writing, family and caring for a big stretch of land. She swears she has a resident muse who sings so loudly, she often wears earplugs in order to get anything else done. But she has big plans to eventually get to all those ideas. Visit Linda at lindathomas-sundstrom.com (http://www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com) or on Facebook.
Angel Unleashed
Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dear Reader (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af),
Welcome to another story in my lineup of immortals. This one is a twist on those guys.
Made immortal in the time of the Round Table, seven knights became known as the Blood Knight Brotherhood, or the Seven. My contemporary Blood Knights are the knights of old, much updated.
You might already have met some of these sexy immortals in and around my Vampire Moons series. In Golden Vampire, we met Lancelot, going by the name of Lance Van Baaren. In Guardian of the Night and Immortal Obsession we met two more dark, sexy Blood Knights. And in Immortal Redeemed we met a gloriously hunky, leather-clad Galahad, now calling himself Kellan and riding a Harley instead of a steed.
Now in Angel Unleashed, we find Rhys de Troyes, another Blood Knight, in London. This time another immortal with a quest of her own attracts his attention. What could bring an angel to London, and why is she hiding from the Blood Knights?
So if, like me, you adore magical words like danger, sexy and forever...this book is dedicated to you.
Oh, and by request, Weres always make guest appearances in my immortal books. So if you also love men with claws, dig in!
Cheers for now, and happy reading!
Linda
lindathomas-sundstrom.com (http://www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com)
To my family, those here and those gone,
who always believed I had a story to tell.
Contents
Cover (#u0fe8552e-30b9-5bcb-8d56-1a2c812d8a5a)
Back Cover Text (#ud472ec2d-75f2-5ad9-9289-949fc9b61dcb)
Introduction (#ufb56d5e3-6cc3-5481-ae0e-4fb7de2cf3e4)
About the Author (#u7da8cb00-db15-5ab3-a9e1-4c7ef87413fe)
Title Page (#u9d153b76-b0d7-5792-acd8-9d0de1bfa693)
Dear Reader (#u51135deb-2932-5c1f-9e7e-4635657dd955)
Dedication (#uf61559a2-4851-508f-adc0-180ab0511272)
Chapter 1 (#u8acb1bdf-b065-5683-b06f-9cb224c74509)
Chapter 2 (#u64034e05-effd-565c-8277-342cda86c71f)
Chapter 3 (#u729e1118-96bc-5db6-9978-825fe5e6ce3a)
Chapter 4 (#u5f2dc777-f642-57fd-a149-32c484b0b3f4)
Chapter 5 (#u3e8f1b7f-5792-5d35-ab24-16778f73687e)
Chapter 6 (#u6261784f-3d89-5440-9c71-9a10f741a501)
Chapter 7 (#u9e195df4-affc-5f24-a06f-f5bfd9796758)
Chapter 8 (#u8e8a0eaa-6829-5d74-9476-be2b2066b185)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
The night went wild and never looked back.
An explosion of color lit the dark. Brilliant flashes of blue, orange, green were there and gone in an instant. Bright enough to cause retinal damage, the light show left a lingering imprint in the darkness, much like the aftermath of a fireworks display.
From the rooftop above the alley, Rhys straightened from a crouched position, concerned about this strange phenomenon. Equally intriguing to him was the small, shadowy figure moving through the atmospheric residue.
To most eyes turned in that direction, the figure would have been indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness. Luckily, a Blood Knight’s vision was exceptional, and Rhys had a special gift for hunting anomalies like this one. It was his job, his gig. He was good at it. Better than good. He was lethal. A monster’s worst nightmare.
Problem was...the figure down in that alley wasn’t one of London’s usual monsters.
Although it was time for the city’s abominations to crawl out of their hidey-holes, the creature with the strange light display wasn’t a vampire or a werewolf. The scent accompanying the apparition didn’t ring in as blood or damp fur, but something altogether different.
Chances were slim that he had missed a species or two in his centuries of keeping watch on the ever-growing lists of them. However, it now seemed to Rhys as if there could have been a gap in his education.
He supposed mortal Londoners might have chalked up those brief seconds of flashy lights to having had one too many drams at the local pub after work. He knew better. If something new had touched down here tonight, he wanted to know what that creature was up to.
I wonder what you are...
Zeroing in on the alley, Rhys detected another surprise. An odor of power trailed in this stranger’s wake. Old power, with a scent reminiscent of an ancient library full of leather-bound books. With the unique fragrance came an atmospheric vibration similar to the hum of lightning striking the earth nearby.
Rhys looked up. No storm clouds.
The sigils covering his neck and shoulder blades rippled in reaction to the stranger’s otherworldly vibration. The inky symbols carved into his skin were issuing a warning he couldn’t ignore.
Was the newcomer dangerous?
Concern growing, Rhys refocused with another silent question.
Who are you?
He ticked off the rarer end of the species spectrum one by one. Shades and half-casts could be ruled out. A few ancient vampires could manipulate the atmosphere on occasion, but that wasn’t the case here.
What else, then? Demon? Some brand-new hybrid concoction designed to confuse the rules and subvert the senses?
Maybe not completely, though, because the vibes this creature gave off were familiar to him on an almost subliminal level, and they kicked his heart rate up a notch or two.
His nagging conscience provided reasonable assurances about having experienced similar physical responses a few times before this, in different time frames and in several places around the globe. Brief blips on his internal radar that came to nothing in the end. Now, though, wasn’t the time for pondering the parameters of déjà vu.
One thing was for sure. Tonight had just gotten a hell of a lot more interesting.
Enlisting the full resources of his extensive mental databanks, Rhys searched deeply for images to pinpoint this newcomer. Concentration brought him success. Beneath the noticeable wisp of old power lay another scent that was as different from the grimy London street odors as possible. Perfume, indicative of golden things. Sunrays on the clear water of a fountain. Morning dew on green grass. Fields of flowers.
Sure as hell, no monster he knew of smelled like that.
Shaking his head to clear his mind of images like grass and fountains, Rhys got back to the task at hand. Golden scents were always a distraction because they brought back memories of his days in the light, so very long ago, in another lifetime.
I see you, he wanted to say to test this stranger’s awareness levels. If you’re so strong, can you feel me watching?
Hunting monsters in the mortal world, finding and dealing with predators, had been his calling for as long as he could remember. Hell, with freaks and bloodsuckers increasing in numbers by the truckload, somebody had to take care of the problem so mortals could remain ignorant of what actually lurked in the shadows.
He stared at the alley, and the creature passing through it.
Are you a predator, my fine friend?
A fancy parasite, perhaps?
His inability to determine the answer to those questions was annoying and highly unusual.
“So, what are you, exactly?” Rhys whispered.
The only beings remotely as potent as this one in terms of presence were his brethren, and all six of the other Blood Knights were accounted for. He could touch their minds with his if he wanted to, just as they could touch his. None of them were anywhere near England at the moment.
You, newcomer, are a snag in my nightly rounds.
And it seemed that more surprises were in store.
Small flares, like a medley of tiny shooting stars, appeared to light this stranger’s path. Not the steady beam of a flashlight, but some other kind of source. Silvery sparkling particles swept steps ahead of their master as if clearing the way. The night itself seemed to hold its breath as the strange creature with the little fireflies journeyed through the alley.
You’re something tricky, then?
Uncomfortable with his ignorance in this matter, Rhys delved farther back into the landscape of his memory, searching for answers. Passing data regarding recent times, postmodern times, Edwardian years, he sailed backward, straining to place the interloper.
The detail he finally discovered was such a shock, he doubled back over it to make sure he’d gotten it right. The stranger in the alley had been flagged as an old soul hailing from a time prior to any of the centuries he had searched through.
Still more surprises were at hand.
This creature’s vibe now resonated as feminine. A richly layered female spirit.
By all that was holy, he was looking at a woman. One who was both basking in and shielding her presence from everyone other than a special kind of onlooker with a flair for tracking anomalies in the darkest places.
Impossible, was his initial response. He’d gotten those details wrong. No female immortals existed, as far as he knew. None without fangs and a nasty need to bite, anyway. Yet only true immortals, those with their souls intact and their chests filled with echoing heartbeats, left such an indelible imprint on the world.
Excitement drove Rhys toward the edge of the roof. In spite of everything he had seen and done over the centuries, and though he would have thought it impossible for him to be stunned by anything, that’s how he felt right that minute. Stunned.
In all the years since becoming immortal himself, how was it possible that he had never gotten wind of an immortal She?
Pulses of excitement pounded at his throat. He felt his blood pressure spike.
What are you doing here? he wanted to shout, to see if her hearing was as exceptional as his and if she possessed the kind of telepathy he and his brethren shared, a connection enhanced by the designs carved into their backs. Blood Knight sigils had been etched with the mingled black blood of all seven of them, fostering true closeness.
Are you friend, or foe?
He could jump down there to confront her with that question. His network of jangling nerves demanded that he did.
Find her. See her. Speak with her, those nerves seemed to whisper to him. Red flags waved in his mind. His sigils were scoring him raw, as if they knew whatever facts he was missing.
Then again, he had no real right to confront her if she wasn’t a beast. No universal agreement existed between species that directed them to announce their presence to those already in residence when entering any particular area. Out of necessity, immortals moved around. He had been in London for less than a year, and in many other cities before that. So many cities, he’d lost count.
Is it so with you, my fine bearer of light? Are you a nomad?
As the strange female wove through the alley on this dark fall night, an even stronger feeling of familiarity washed over Rhys. Like a hound dog on a scent, he followed her progress toward the closest street by moving soundlessly above her from roof to roof. At the corner, where the alley met the main boulevard, the woman’s accompanying lights winked out.
At least you show some sense.
Fascinated, Rhys watched her slip to the door of a storefront as if that had been her intended destination. When she opened the door, the thunder of loud music poured out.
Rhys saw her hesitate. His body rocked, mimicking the shiver that ran through her as she altered her shape enough to face the mortals inside the shop. Not a shape-shift, just a setting of her real power back to stealth mode.
Mortal was a game immortals often played.
How many times had he done that same thing when confronting the good people of London and elsewhere? Masking his identity, hiding his power, was the only way to walk among them.
The marks on his back throbbed with empathy. This female didn’t look forward to going inside. Four walls would make her feel trapped if she was in any way like him. Loud music would be sensory torture for an old soul.
I know, he wanted to tell her. I know how you feel.
No one that had come out of Castle Broceliande’s gates ever truly became used to extremes. Throughout time, the Blood Knights had been doomed to exist on the fringes of society, sharing the shadows with bad things that preyed on the people of those societies—keeping to themselves to avoid the hustle and bustle of mortals clumping too close together.
And you, my friend, are going to enter a building where mortals hang out. For that, my interest is piqued.
Anxious, Rhys shifted sideways for a better view of the doorway, eyeing the female down there, unable to keep from thinking back.
His Makers had offered no distractions to waylay the purpose of the Knights’ quests. There were no female Blood Knights. Finding this feminine soul was exhilarating for the very reason that such a thing was to have been avoided. Females would have been major distractions from the Knights’ quests, though they also would have provided a respite from the loneliness of existing endlessly through time alone.
The Knights had been created to serve a higher power. Personal needs had little to do with carrying out God’s will.
Who made you, woman?
Where have you come from?
He almost jumped. Nearly did, until patience stayed him. Distance had to be maintained, managed, until he knew more about what this visitor was up to. His brotherhood’s existence remained a secret to this day, to all but a chosen few. If this female sparkled her way through London’s side streets, what would happen to the secrecy surrounding immortals in general?
What if someone else gets wind of you, milady?
Plenty of creatures on this planet would like nothing more than to take down the immortal Guardians, and afterward enjoy a parasitic free-for-all. More than a few of them had tried.
Thoughts stalled there.
In the light of the doorway, the newcomer’s silhouette took shape. Reed-thin and narrow-shouldered, his new prey had the willowy body of an elf. Dressed from head to toe in black, she blended well with street shadows and had covered her head with a hood.
Black for camouflage was always wise. He was dressed similarly.
The desire to see her up close was overwhelming. However, Rhys knew better than to rush things. His hammering heart would have to wait a bit longer for a face-to-face with the enigma down there. The hunger gnawing at him was a none-too-subtle reminder that devils often resided in details, and that things were not always what they seemed.
He smiled sagely.
Giving in to the need to speak aloud, in a normal voice, since he so seldom did, Rhys said, “I will wait here, my immortal friend. I will be waiting for you.”
Chapter 2 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
The bells on the door of Shakespearean Ink, put there to announce the presence of visitors, couldn’t compete with the blaring music Avery Arcadia Quinn met when she stepped inside the tattoo parlor. The heavy metal recording made her hesitate just past the threshold.
One glance over her shoulder at the street suggested that she was okay for the time being. Her hope was that no other customers would be looking for a tattoo needle on a cold, foggy night like this one, and that she would be alone. Anonymity was the name of this game. She couldn’t afford to attract attention.
Stiff shoulders made her roll them back to ease the buildup of tension. Her black leather jacket creaked as she took stock of her surroundings.
The tat parlor was uncommonly tidy for such a dark, rather seedy, less than desirable location on the London outskirts. A metal counter ran the length of the store on one side. Several cheap chairs crowded the room. Pinned to the milky-blue walls were hundreds of photos of tattoo art, hanging in fairly neat, symmetrical rows.
Bad luck, though. She wasn’t the only customer.
In the center of the small space, a padded chair that had been patched one too many times was occupied by another client. Still, it could have been worse. The occupant of that chair was a young girl probably no more than sixteen years old.
Tears of discomfort dripped from the girl’s big brown eyes. Her thin hands white-knuckled the seat. No doubt this teen had snuck in here while in the midst of a rebellious streak with her allowance money. A sixteen-year-old’s tat of choice? Winnie-the-Pooh.
Avery didn’t bother to check the place for tidiness or proper hygiene since those things didn’t matter to her. The guy in the faded black T-shirt who was working on the girl’s ankle was her target. Rumor had it he was good at cover-ups, with a talent for making things look like something else. He was a fixer credited with being discreet.
“What are you in for?” he asked, addressing Avery without looking up from his work, and waving a small instrument that looked either like a miniature throwback to dark days in medieval dungeons or a super-sized electric toothbrush.
“Tattoo,” she said drily.
He did a double take once he’d focused on who had entered. Used to stares, Avery didn’t take this personally. She knew she presented a strange picture with her hood pulled up around her face and her mirrored sunglasses reflecting the neon signage...especially since it was after 9:00 p.m.
Snow-white hair, mostly hidden behind the black hood, didn’t often stay put. Several pale strands drifted now in the stale-smelling breeze from the open doorway. The sunglasses protecting her sensitive eyes from the lights, as well as the sneak peek of pale skin around them, had to seem freakish in a healthy blond and brunette world, even in the sun-challenged UK.
All in all, though, she fit in better here than she would have in Florida.
“Take a chair by the desk if you want to wait. Feel free to peruse the art on the walls,” the guy said. “Maybe you’d like to choose one of those designs.”
Peruse. Such a strange word for a century like this one, and odd when spoken with a Cockney accent.
Avery checked out the girl in the chair. The honey-colored bear on the girl’s left ankle was a decent rendering of the cartoon and almost finished. She wouldn’t have to wait long for a turn with the whirring needles. Still, she was antsy, and anxiously tossed another glance at the street through the front window, half expecting to see someone standing there.
No one was.
Short on square footage, the shop made her feel claustrophobic. Enclosed spaces didn’t suit her. Patience had never been her forte, which was odd since she’d had such a long time to try to perfect that skill. Because her energy was untrustworthy and came in wayward steaks and flashes, sitting down to wait her turn was out of the question.
For those reasons and more, it was never sensible to remain in any one place for too long. Nor was it smart to give anyone a good long look at her. Definitely no close-up.
Since she had picked the guy in this shop for his talent and stellar reputation, however, quelling her anxiety was paramount. So was maintaining her human-like persona for a while longer.
With that in mind, Avery headed for the counter.
As he got back to work, the artist barked, “More pictures are in the book on the desk.”
When she didn’t open the three-ring binder next to her, he looked up a third time. “Ah. The lady already knows what she wants.”
Seconds later, he added, “Five more minutes here, tops. There’s beer in the cooler.”
The girl in the chair spoke up. “You didn’t offer me a beer.”
Artist guy laughed. “Yeah. Right.”
Avery wasn’t up for polite banter or alcohol, or for reminding the young girl in that chair, who seemed to be missing parental guidance, about the dangers of being out alone, past her bedtime in a city full of shadows. Nowadays, she wasn’t anybody’s conscience. Those days were far behind her.
As for the room...
A more thorough scan showed closeable blinds on the front windows and an interior door leading to an adjacent private room, probably used for etching tattoos on a person’s backside. She perceived no heartbeats beyond those of the two people in front of her. Those beats were steady and rhythmic.
Just a normal night in the life of a tattoo parlor.
But hell...her shoulder blades were already aching more than usual, as if they knew what she was going to do and also that there would be pain involved. Muscles often retained memories of what had happened to them in the past, especially after experiencing the extremes of agony. And although pain was nothing new to her, Avery always dreaded having more of it voluntarily.
“Take a chair,” the artist suggested. “They’re more comfortable than they look.”
She didn’t heed his advice. The lingering odor of hot flesh was cloying. The ink used for the tattoos offered up another distinct scent that tripped more old memories best forgotten.
Nerves bristling, Avery glanced again to the front door, nixing the return of a hazy belief that someone was out there. Anxiousness was likely the cause of her nervousness. An artist in a rundown ink shop was going to see her scars. He was going to touch them—a crime so heinous that no one had ever managed it.
Hadn’t she dispensed with the last person who tried?
In order to provide this guy with his next canvas she’d have to take off her shirt. Predicting his reaction to the sight of the multitude of scars covering her body was a no-brainer. Very little space wasn’t crowded by the grid of crisscrossed white raised lines. Tat Guy would be fascinated by the old wounds and he’d be nosey, but the stories those grids told were none of his business or anyone else’s.
She wished they weren’t hers.
“Almost there,” he said to her while dabbing at the girl’s ankle with a cloth—a benign little bear on a girl’s youthful, otherwise unblemished skin.
What would this pubescent girl say if she were to witness Avery’s roadmap of scar tissue and the two deep six-inch grooves edging her spine? Humans were squeamish about marred flesh. Other species reacted differently. Werewolves, in particular, got turned on by battle scars and displayed them like jewelry.
So, if exhibiting or touching her old wounds was blasphemy of the highest order and against the rules, why was she chancing this?
She was here because it was her one shot, a last-ditch effort, at soul healing. If this artist could cover the two large wounds on her back with a design that would make her feel like her old self, maybe she’d regain some semblance of balance and a small modicum of peace.
That ever-elusive peace...
The transformation of something ugly into something better, at least superficially, would be an accomplishment terribly long overdue, and one less freakish thing to contend with in the long stretch of unending years to come...if she didn’t find what she had come to London to find.
“You still there?” the guy asked, speaking to her.
There was no need to answer him. He was acutely aware of her. She could feel how badly he wanted to take a closer look. The air between them vibrated with that need. He was struggling to keep his attention on the ankle in front of him, and eagerly awaiting the girl’s departure.
This was the reason she had to be so bloody careful. The uncanny attraction all humans felt when they saw her was due to the light of the Divine still being there...in her face, her body and her hair. Though the light had dimmed considerably over the years, there was no way to mask what was left of it completely. Throughout time, mortals had been mesmerized by its vibrant energy and lingering afterglow.
“Calm the hell down,” she silently sent to the guy to dim his growing interest. He obeyed that directive the way most humans did when she messed with their minds. She’d have to erase this guy’s thoughts completely once they were done.
Running a hand along the edge of the sleek metal counter’s iron and tin compounds served to sharpen her focus by making her fingertips burn. She blew on them, more for sport than comfort, long practiced in dealing with forbidden metals.
“Two minutes,” the artist announced.
Two minutes, and then what? Avery asked herself. Peace actually would descend? Did she actually expect that kind of outcome?
Sound...
Jolted by a sudden lash of nerve burn that instantly heated her face, Avery turned to the door.
“I will wait.”
A voice had seeped under the crack.
“I will be waiting for you.”
“Son of a...” Striding to the door, Avery rested her hand on the wood. She had been right. Someone was out there. Not just anyone, either. Somebody powerful enough to reach her with a threatening call.
All she had to do was open this door to find out who it was.
Or not.
The flush of volcanic heat and the staccato uptick in her pulse that followed that call paved the way for a streak of fiery intuition. Only one kind of presence in the world had the ability to affect her like this. Seven things, actually...which meant that one of Castle Broceliande’s Blood Knights was somewhere nearby. And he had found her.
Fired-up nerve endings were tingling en masse. Avery stifled wicked four-letter oaths. Imagining she could stride through the shadows of this city undetected had been foolish. London had always been overrun by monsters. At least one of those Knights could potentially have been on guard, protecting the city’s humans from things that went bump in the night.
While she...
She was a sitting duck in this small enclosed space, if she had indeed been made by one of them.
Damn Blood Knights.
Guardians. Overseers. Monster killers. That’s what the dangerous Seven had become. Seven physically perfect specimens of immortal manhood had been created to be as much like her as possible, and their Makers had outdone themselves. Due to their skill with alchemic machinations, the Blood Knights existed unchallenged to this day by any who stood against them—immortals unable to die by any normal means. Immortals unknowingly built on a foundation of pain.
Still, despite the agony the creation of the Knights had caused her, Avery yearned for their company with every fiber of her being, and always had. They alone, out of anyone on Earth, would come the closest to understanding her, and yet could never be allowed to. Misplaced longings for them were never to be addressed. Urges like want and need had to remain tucked inside her. Only when her mission had been fulfilled would she be strong enough to get what she required from them.
“I know you’re there, Knight. Leave here. Leave me. Honor my wishes.”
“What did you say?” The tattoo artist asked.
Hell, had she spoken those words aloud?
“Have you changed your mind?” he queried.
“No change,” Avery replied.
“Good. All done here.” To the girl in the chair, he said, “You remember what I told you about how to take care of this, right?”
The girl nodded and slid to her feet, careful to avoid putting too much pressure on her foot right away. She winced as she rolled down the hem of her jeans. After pulling on her jacket, she headed for the door without looking back.
“Will you look at that. No thank you at all,” the artist muttered. “Good thing she paid up front, but what’s the world coming to?”
Standing, he turned, careful to avoid meeting Avery’s eyes. “Now, what do you have in mind?”
“Wings,” she said.
Speaking the word produced a flutter deep inside her chest.
The guy nodded. He would have noted the husky voice she had taken decades to perfect and the slim, leather-encased body only partially hidden by the black leather hoodie. He had to be wondering about the sunglasses.
To his credit, he merely said, “Wings are popular.”
His eyes roamed over her—not in a sexual way, but as a painter might look for the best angle with which to fully see a model’s potential. Almost strictly business now that her silent directive had calmed him down.
“Lower back?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Upper.”
That disclosure interested him. His eyebrows quirked. “Shoulders?”
“A full span.”
His gaze shifted to the counter. “I can do up a design for you or show you some pictures so I can see what you have in mind.”
“No need. I can sketch what I’m looking for if you have a pencil and paper handy.”
Avery wasn’t sure which of the two beings in this room would be affected the most when she bared her skin for the needles. Her nerves were like white-hot pulses whispering along over-strung wires.
There was also the question of whether that Blood Knight outside would leave her alone, and if the ward she had set up at the door would protect her.
“Here.” She was handed paper and a blue felt-tipped pen. “Have a go at what you mean.”
Pen in hand, she began to draw from memory a rendering of the tattoo she wanted. Tonight’s session would actually be an act of camouflage, using art and color to disguise the ridges left over from where the real pair of wings had been cruelly cut from her back.
She was going to replace one set of wings with another.
Each stroke of her pen across the paper intensified the chest flutter. Tension balled in her stomach. How long would the Knight give her before figuring those protective wards out?
The artist nodded at the image she had drawn. “I can do this. When would you like to start?”
“Now.”
His shaggy-haired head shook. “This will take a long time. Two or three sessions, at least.”
Avery pulled out a wad of folded one-hundred dollar bills and laid them on the counter. “Now,” she repeated.
He looked at the money and back to her. “No one can handle all this ink at one time, not to mention the discomfort of so much coverage. That design will reach from shoulder to shoulder?”
“All the way across. And I’ll manage.”
He shook his head again. “I’m sorry...”
His voice trailed off because she had removed the sunglasses and lowered her hood...to give him a first look, a glimpse, a mere inkling of what one of God’s angels who had fallen to the Earth centuries ago, and stayed, looked like.
The poor sod’s wheeze of surprise was audible, but he quickly got hold of himself with a little mental nudge from her bag of tricks. He hadn’t asked any of the questions that had been crowding the tip of his tongue. She also had put a damper on that.
Following him to the back room of the shop, Avery glanced twice more at the front door. Wary, dealing with the craziness of being trapped, she knew that she had only postponed getting caught with her pants down by one of the only beings on Earth who knew what to do about it.
That damn Blood Knight.
Whichever one it turned out to be.
Chapter 3 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
Rhys’s anticipation had spread like wildfire. Nevertheless, he had to be careful.
At this late hour, people were coming and going, passing the entrance to the alley where he now stood. Predators of the horror movie kind hadn’t yet made an appearance, but for them the night was young.
It was 2:00 a.m.
She hadn’t come out of the tattoo parlor.
He couldn’t imagine what she was doing in there. To be touched by needles would mean exposure. An immortal’s blood would be a hefty giveaway of details no immortal could afford to let slip. His blood was black. Possibly hers was, too.
Rhys pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against, patience wearing thin.
“Time’s up,” he announced.
Three strides brought him close enough to the shop’s front door to feel the buzz of electricity outlining it. The trespassing vixen had set up a defensive ward.
“You did hear me, then,” he muttered.
Lips moving with a silent incantation, Rhys shattered the barrier she’d set in place and yanked the door open.
“Nice try,” he said aloud. “But I’m no amateur.”
Inside the shop, he waved off the burly man coming toward him from a back room with a muttered command. The female he sought wasn’t anywhere in sight, and yet her scent, already embedded in his lungs, led him to where she hid.
All those plans about what he would say to her fizzled when he stopped in the doorway of that back room. As if he’d been slammed by a battering ram, his breath hitched.
She was there, sitting on a cot with her back to him, naked from the waist up. Never once had he witnessed anything quite like this. Like her.
The woman on that bench was completely colorless. Pale to the point of being ghostly. White skin. Hair the color of freshly fallen snow. She was painfully thin, but also incredibly graceful in the way her angles converged. Slender shoulders sloped toward a spine where each bone stood out from the lean muscles surrounding it, as if they were pearls on a string.
Ethereal was the word that came to Rhys with that first glance. And breathtaking. She was also flawed. Damaged. That, too, was startling. Whitened scars covered her back and arms. Old scars, and plenty of them, proved that she had suffered abuse and had been hurt badly in the past.
She had come for tattoos. Those new tats were vivid, red and raw, adding an overlay of color that contrasted greatly with her skin. She’d chosen wings. Dark blue, light blue and gray feathers with blood-red tips spanned from one of her shoulders to the other, expertly filled in. The result was spectacular.
Rhys stared intently at this incredible apparition.
Strands of her white hair—long, straight, shiny—cascaded over one of her shoulders to partially cover the right side of the tattoo. Both shoulders quaked slightly, not from cold, but as if the violence of the needles used to create the wings had affected her. Her emotional turmoil was discernible from where he stood.
Although she was aware of him, the graceful creature on that cot didn’t turn around. Maybe she waited for him to make the first move. Unfortunately, that move didn’t include any of the demands he had planned on using for getting to the root of who she was and what she was up to. What bubbled up from him instead was a show of sympathy.
“Bloody hell,” he whispered hoarsely. “What have you done?”
* * *
Pain sliced through Avery’s back as her muscles stabilized; pain reminiscent of another time, only infinitely tamer by comparison and much more civilized.
She didn’t have time to try out the feel of her surrogate wings or catch her breath. He was here in the doorway, his reflection clear in the mirror across from her. Him. Not just any Blood Knight, but the one she had secretly coveted from among the Seven. The Knight she wasn’t ever supposed to see in person, face-to-face, was less than five feet away, leaving her breathless.
There was no mistaking this creature for any normal mortal male. No chance in hell. His incredibly handsome, aquiline-featured face had Blood Knight chiseled all over it.
There was no use trying to play dumb, either, when they were both far from the classification of mortal and knew it.
“What have you done?” he asked again, the deepness of his voice sending shockwaves of familiarity through Avery.
His question seemed intimate, spoken as if he knew her well and cared about what she did, when neither of those things was true. He hadn’t known she existed until this moment. She had promised herself things would stay that way until she found the right time to change it.
Slowly, and without answering the impertinent query, Avery reached for her shirt.
“You’ve been hurt,” he said.
It was too late to ask how he had found her, and the answer wouldn’t have helped. Like often called to like, and she had gotten too close. But the effect his presence had on her was as unwelcome as he was. Icy shivers crept up the back of her neck. Her insides churned. Blood Knights had been designed to lure the eye and tempt the soul, and angels weren’t immune to those things because those seven Knights carried in their souls some beauty of the heavens.
Get out! Avery wanted to shout, studying his image in the mirror. I don’t have time for this.
As handsome as these Knights had been as mortal men, their famous features had been further enhanced by the grace of the renewed blood in their veins and the importance of their golden Quest. They were, however, ignorant of the fact that some of the immortal blood pulsing through all of them had been hers, unwillingly shared. And that, like a butterfly, she had been captured, ensnared in a net.
This magnificent Knight was muscled, honed, taut, elegant and rugged in equal measures. He stood well over six feet tall, his appearance formidable in every sense of the word. An aura of crackling power surrounded him, announcing that this was a man who had broken from his mortal bonds by stepping into another realm of existence.
He spoke again. “Are you all right?”
His throaty voice sounded like a sweep of crushed velvet, and affected her more than she’d care to let on. They were measuring each other, and she needed time to calculate what might happen next.
She had seen this Blood Knight many times in the past, and always with the same kind of gut-clenching reaction. Frozen in the body of a twenty-something-year-old, he had matured since his inception. His face was more chiseled than she remembered. Bright blue expressive eyes were alight with a worldly, intelligent gleam.
She knew those features well.
In that doorway, too close for comfort, stood the sun-kissed immortal with golden streaks of light in his mane of brown hair whose piercing gaze usually saw through shadows without seeing her.
Perceval had been his mortal name, way back in time. This was one of Arthur’s knights, a warrior champion who’d had a coveted seat at Camelot’s Round Table and been a major player in the Grail Quest. The intense heat of his observation began to melt her chills.
“What’s it to you?” she finally asked, slipping her shirt over her head. “I don’t believe you were invited to this party.”
Speaking calmly was a chore when this Knight’s allure bordered on the mystical. Of all the Seven, he had always been special to her. Her attraction to him had both excited and repelled her from the beginning, and from afar, further complicating the fulfillment of the personal vows she had taken.
Because of that, he was the most dangerous Knight of them all to have found her. She had to be careful, remain calm, when her heart was thrashing. More time was necessary before she turned to face him.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Who’s asking?” Avery returned.
The energy circling the room was expanding, pressing against the walls, humming in her ears. She was trapped, and therefore had to speak to him. No alternative presented itself when he filled the doorway.
She saw in the mirror that he was staring at her back and at the damp towel beside her.
“What’s wrong with your blood?” he asked.
“Nothing’s wrong with it.”
“It has no color at all.”
“What’s that to you?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, or like you.”
“No,” Avery agreed, sliding her arms into her sleeves. “Other than your comment being incredibly rude, I’m sure you haven’t seen anything like me.”
Glossing over her feisty comeback, he tried again to engage her. “Where do you come from?”
She was fairly sure he didn’t mean the city or region of the world, but something deeper and having to do with her origins...as if she’d blow more of her cover and cough up her secrets because he asked her to.
Turning halfway around, she parried, “Is this an interrogation? Are you London’s supernatural sheriff?”
“Only an interested party.”
“Where I came from is none of your business.”
“Maybe it isn’t. What about your scars?”
“Rude again, and definitely not your concern.”
Persistence was another well-honed Blood Knight trait.
“Is there anything you can tell me about yourself that might help me to understand what you want here?” he asked in a lowered tone that caused Avery’s new tats to ache more than they already did.
“It’s late,” she said. “Maybe you have a job to do that doesn’t include wasting time in a tattoo parlor.”
“Not tonight. Everyone got a free pass in your honor.”
“Do you suppose the bad guys will thank me?”
Don’t let him in. Do not get close, Avery’s mind warned.
Remember who you are, and get away.
None of that was easy at the moment, however. She wasn’t just confronting a Blood Knight. She was confronting an old set of wishes long ago tamped down. This glorious creature had always made her want to forget her rage and her vows to keep clear of him and the others like him. The pressure she felt to fight her way out of the room was outrageous.
If she’d had her wings, the real ones, she could have bested this Knight in seconds. Although he was incredibly strong, she would have been the strongest. Wingless, she was unwhole, halved, severed from the rest of her kind with her strength vastly diminished.
“Go away,” Avery managed to say.
“Answers first,” he said.
Pursuing their prey is what Blood Knights did best, and she was now at the top of that list.
Want to know who I am, Knight?
What if I tell you that your inner light was stolen from me, tortured out of my veins? What then? Would you thank me for your light and for your agile prowess? Someone should.
Stopping the internal chatter was imperative. She felt him tuning in to her. Hers wasn’t the only pulse skyrocketing. The rapid beat of his heart added to the tension in the air.
The truth was that in this guy’s voice, and in his golden presence, Avery heard the far-off rattle of the chains that had bound her to the Earth in his honor.
“You’re immortal, and yet have no sigils,” the magnificent bastard noted with a focus hotter than the artist’s needles.
Avery hated how he unsettled her.
“I suppose the saving grace is that the new designs look like they belong there,” he added. “Somehow, the wings suit you.”
Too damn personal...
Avery whirled around. The creature in the doorway had seen the wings, her new talismans, when she hadn’t had the chance. He had viewed her bare skin, scars and all. And now that she had lost some of her hard-won control, he had seen her face.
Would she let him get away with that? She had wiped minds for less. She had killed to remain anonymous in a crowded modern world. But none of those things was an option here with someone whose strength so closely matched hers at the moment. She had been sloppy and had not covered her tracks well enough. This meeting was her fault. There was no do-over, only escape.
She did not meet that heated gaze.
“Sigils are in these days. Didn’t you know?” she remarked, reaching for her jacket.
“Sigils.” He repeated the word. “Was that what you were looking for here, in a place like this?”
“Actually, that would have been useless, don’t you think, when you have to be born with those kinds of marks, or be born because of them?”
She was getting warmer, catching the fever that came with speaking about forbidden things. Her shoulders were on fire. Real wings would have taken her away from this confrontation. An inked span was nothing more than make-believe.
Still, the inked wings were an added reminder that if she stopped looking for the missing pieces of herself now, she would never know a moment’s peace. If she became distracted after all this time, and after believing she was closing in on the very thing she sought...all the years of searching and hating and destruction that had gotten her to this point wouldn’t be worth one single breath.
She wanted to look at him, but didn’t dare.
“I wonder if you’ll tell me what you are if I ask nicely enough?” he said. “And also who made you.”
“I’m afraid you have taken up far too much of my time already.” That remark actually sounded breathless. The airless room was stifling.
“Places to go? People to see?” he asked.
Avery ignored the remark. She was in need of fresh air and alone time, and he was in the way.
“I’m leaving.” She got to her feet, meeting his gaze at last.
He leaned against the doorjamb as if he had suddenly experienced a moment of weakness. But he rallied quickly. The devastatingly handsome head shook. Blue eyes burned bright.
“They will be waiting for you. London’s monsters,” he warned.
“They won’t find me.”
“I did.”
“You don’t understand...” Avery began, without finishing what she had been about to say. This Knight wasn’t to know anything about her quest. The Perceval of old had died, losing his mortal flesh, and had been resurrected by a golden kiss from a holy relic. After feeling Death’s black breath, his path had been clear. That had not been the case for her. And by the way, she wanted to shout, monsters no longer concern me.
“I’m trying to be polite, and you’re not making it easy,” he said. “What if I came here to welcome you to London, or to warn you about what lurks here?”
“Have you honestly come here for either of those things?” Avery challenged.
“No,” he confessed. “I came because I was intrigued by the sudden appearance of a stranger I couldn’t place.”
The tractor-beam of his blue-eyed scrutiny left Avery feeling as though she were still half naked. She also felt vulnerable when vulnerable wasn’t in her vocabulary and never had been. She’d been in battles this Blood Knight couldn’t even dream of, and had emerged unscathed. Damn straight she could handle this unexpected meeting.
“I owe you nothing, Blood Knight,” she said.
As she watched a smile play on the corners of his full, sensuous mouth, Avery realized she had just made a grave mistake. In letting him know that she knew him, and about him, she had trespassed on his purpose for existing. Blood Knight, she had said.
That mistake was the mother of them all, and any second now the ramifications of such a slip-up were going to bite her on her leather-clad ass.
Chapter 4 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
“So you do know me,” Rhys said, refusing to let her get past him.
The female, though of an unknown species, was extraordinarily beautiful. She had delicate features and wide-set blue eyes the exact color of a summer sky. Those eyes were the only real color she possessed, other than the tattoo, and stood out dramatically from the flawless paleness of her face. Adding more drama to her features was the way she had rimmed both eyes with black paint, which lent her a modern, edgy look. Not one scar marred that face.
“What if I do know about you?” she asked.
Rhys shook his head. “I wonder if it’s possible to get a straight answer out of you.”
“Unless you actually are London’s sheriff, I doubt it. Even if you were, it’s unlikely I would oblige.”
Rhys held up his hands in a gesture of submission. “Fine. I get it. You enjoy being mysterious.”
He stepped aside. “Would one more question be too much to ask?”
“Yes.” Donning her leather jacket, she got to her feet.
Up close, this trespasser wasn’t as small as he had originally thought. It was the slightness of her frame that made her seem fragile, though her attitude more than made up for it. He could easily have held her there with brute strength alone. Since he was two heads taller and twice as broad, she wouldn’t stand a chance against him. But this strange female was right. She owed him nothing. She had done nothing wrong. Yet.
“How do you know about me? Your answer might be more important than you realize, at least to me,” Rhys persisted. “Not many creatures are privy to knowledge of the Seven.”
She wasn’t going to get close to him, whether or not the doorway was wide open. Don’t you trust me, pale one? Maybe you don’t trust yourself. After all, not all immortals are friendly.
Hell...and again...other than his brethren and a few ancient vampires, he had never encountered another immortal, so what did he really know?
“Blood Knight, you said,” he prompted.
She said nothing.
“Perhaps you’ve met one of my brothers somewhere in this wide world?”
When her eyes met his briefly, the room seemed to fade out of focus. Those eyes were unusually intense and probing. Contained in the blue was the flicker of a far-off light.
A feeling of being connected to her snapped into place as their gazes held. Rhys was sure she felt it, too. Swaying slightly on her feet, the pale mystery was quick to break eye contact.
Rhys caught and held a breath, wanting...no, needing to know more about her. He said the next thing on his mind, shoving aside the answers he most needed in favor of the wave of emotion careening through him.
“Does it hurt?”
She looked up again.
“What you did tonight, here. Does it hurt?” he asked.
“It’s nothing.” Breathy voice. Lowered tone. Hidden emotion.
“And the other marks you bear?”
“Far worse.”
This beautiful female, parchment pale, slight of bone and freshly tattooed, had admitted to being privy to his status as an immortal. She had spoken of his brethren as if she were well-versed in their business, when he remained in the dark about hers.
The situation was unacceptable and there wasn’t really much he could do about it. She was intriguing, exciting. Unusual sensations stirred in his chest.
And there was something else...
Something about her that he could not put his finger on, no matter how hard he tried.
The scars that marred her flesh were evidence of battles she had fought. When? Where? They were evidence that she was no wallflower, no innocent maiden or pushover. In contrast to her fragile appearance, she was a warrior of some kind. A fighter.
Her gaze again rose slowly to meet his. This time she didn’t back off. She made no move to push past him. Rhys detected in her expression a glimmer of interest that she quickly masked.
Are you as intrigued by me as I am by you?
It was likely going to be a standoff in the doorway until she gave him more information about herself, especially now that she had let on about knowing his purpose in London.
“Why wings?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Why not?” she returned.
“The tattoos must have been important for you to have come here,” Rhys suggested. “I noted your reticence in the doorway of the shop.”
“We’re talking in circles, Knight. Don’t presume to know anything about me. People usually come to a place like this to get their bodies inked. That’s what I did.”
“Yes, people do that,” he agreed.
“Are you prejudiced against those of us who don’t fit into that category?”
“That would be absurd, wouldn’t it, since I don’t fit, either.”
She continued to stare at him.
“If I step back again, you’ll go? Just like that?” Rhys said.
“What’s to hold me here?”
“I was hoping my appearance in this doorway might be enough to instigate a real dialogue. You know, immortal to immortal.”
“Circles,” she reiterated. “When your monsters are calling.”
He wasn’t going to let up, didn’t want to lose her quite yet. Touching her was not an option. Laying a hand on her would be out of the question. But he wanted to do those things and was driven by a strange inner impulse to get closer to her.
“Those monsters will sense your presence the way I did. By now, the news will have spread,” Rhys explained.
“Let them come.”
“We can fight them together, if you like,” he suggested. “Teamwork.”
“I fight alone, and only when I have to.”
He couldn’t keep her there much longer. The stink of death permeated the air, seeping through the seals of the closed windows. Several bloodsuckers were out there, and not too far away.
“Get out of my way,” the pale beauty said.
“All right,” Rhys conceded without moving.
He couldn’t stop staring at this mesmerizing mix of unknowns. She looked like an angel with a purpose. An angel with one foot down in a place not quite as fluffy as the clouds. Her little trailing lights weren’t in evidence. The black-rimmed blue eyes were unsettling.
Maybe the tattooed wings make you feel more like an angel. Maybe you imagine you’ll use them to fly away.
“Let me help you,” Rhys said.
When white lashes lowered over her eyes, he thought again about reaching out to detain her. He wanted those eyes back on him. He wanted to understand her. Nevertheless, he let her brush past him because he was not her keeper, her friend, an actual ally or her lover. With regret, he watched the enigmatic, ethereal immortal female walk out of the room, heading for the shop’s front door.
Rhys said, “The monsters will be out there, you know.”
She hesitated in the shop’s doorway to look back at him with a final word. “They always are.”
He had to let her go, let her leave, when his body urged him to bring her back. Once she walked out that door, he might never see her again. Odds for that were in her favor.
Now that he had seen her, spoken with her, having her disappear would leave a dent in his understanding and a hole in his hammering heart. That damn heart was acting like a schoolboy’s with a first crush. After just a few minutes, she had become an addiction.
Did he see sadness in her eyes when she gave him a final glance from the sidewalk? He was sure the light he had witnessed in the blue depths of those eyes now reflected regret. Probably he was wrong. Nevertheless, he was after her in a blur of speed.
On the sidewalk, he stopped. Two mortals passed by. A Night Shade slipped through the shadows and into the alley beside him. That Shade should have been of concern to him, but distraction was a hell of a thing. The female he’d just seen in that shop was gone, leaving no trace other than the lightest wisp of fragrance.
Whispering a litany of curse words, half of them in Latin, Rhys spun to face the next problem. Monsters were indeed rallying. Half a block away, and with the swiftness of an oncoming black tide, vampires were closing in.
Chapter 5 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
The black tide swept the two mortals who had just passed Rhys into the vampires’ vortex of flashing fangs and overruling hunger. One of those unlucky people had enough time to scream before they were on him.
And that was not acceptable to a Guardian.
There in seconds, Rhys joined the fray, pulling a silver-tipped dagger from his right boot and a sharpened wooden stake from his left.
The bloodsuckers were quick, but out of their league when facing a vamp-killing machine from a larger supernatural gene pool. Rhys swung his arms as fluidly as if he had been made for the intricacies of fighting. He had been created with the strength of ten men for just such a purpose.
“Go back to the same black breath that created you,” he said calmly, lunging sideways with deft strikes of the blade to take down the first vamp, whose yellow fangs were too near the throat of its young mortal prisoner.
“Rest in peace.”
The street exploded with a snowstorm of dark gray ash, which caught the attention of the remaining sharp-canined monsters and made them angry.
“Not what you were expecting?” Rhys quipped, waiting out the seconds until they released the two stunned, but as yet unharmed, mortals.
These vamps’ faces were gaunt, almost skeletal. As usual, Rhys regretted that their afterlives had been so cruelly tweaked. Dull black eyes, lacking all hint of their former color, were fixed on him. Grossly sharp teeth snapped with displeasure. All of these bloodsuckers were new to the walking undead status. Hunger ruled them. Feeding was everything. Common sense had departed with their dying breaths.
“It’s not your fault. I get that,” he said, stepping forward to meet the remaining crush of fang-snapping abominations. “However, you are cursed to be the bane of human existence. You must be aware of that.”
His body rocked as the awareness of other company came to him like a moving wall of heat. Without looking for the source, Rhys could venture a good guess as to who had returned. Not many creatures would have been close enough to sense trouble, with the ability to do something about it.
She had come back, as if he needed help with five malnourished fledglings.
“Damn you,” she said, appearing beside him from out of nowhere with the ease of having just dropped from the sky.
The sky thing wasn’t possible, of course, Rhys knew, since the wings on her back were fake.
He feinted to the right. Simultaneously, she moved left in a choreographed fighting pattern that split the oncoming vamp fledglings into two groups.
“Hell, do I now have to worry about you?” he silently griped.
“I was thinking the same thing. About you,” she returned in the same manner.
“You can hear me?”
“No need to shout, Knight.”
“You heard things I might have thought earlier?”
“Anyone within a five-mile radius could have heard you.”
She went for two of the bloodsuckers as if she had been born to the art of wielding a blade.
Rhys struck the sweet spot in one fledgling’s chest with his knife, and that fledgling went down in a flurry of musty-smelling gray ash. Spinning on his heels, he embedded the stake in the second vamp’s chest and left it there as the vamp staggered back a few steps before what was left of it became a funnel of ash.
His new fighting partner had taken the brunt of things, with another of the vamps going after what it incorrectly assumed might be the weaker link. Big mistake.
The woman beside him moved like lightning, like a storm in human guise, and with a fighting grace Rhys had never before seen in any but his brothers. Fast, sure, talented, she was all liquid motion. Prepared to jump to her aid, Rhys instead watched at a standstill, his body reacting to each move she made as if he’d made it.
His pulse was again racing. This immortal woman was fast, flexible, canny and dexterous. Tracking her movements roused emotions long compressed deep in his soul. How had he missed this creature’s existence? Who the hell was she, and why couldn’t he reach the answer to that question when it was buried somewhere inside his mind?
Like a white whirlwind, the female parried, spun and thrust her blade to victory over those ornery bloodsuckers. And when the street had been cleared of fanged parasites, and the two mortals had run off to safety with a story to tell that no one would believe unless they had seen such a thing for themselves, she turned to Rhys with a stern expression on her incredibly beautiful face.
Speaking with the same throaty voice that had caused his muscles to twitch in the shop behind them, she said, “The mortals won’t remember. I’ve seen to that, and you owe me one.”
She wiped her short silver blade on her leather-clad thigh and turned from him.
“You truly imagined I’d need help?” Rhys asked, amused and far too fascinated with the curve of that lean thigh for his own good.
“Well, maybe I just needed to exert some energy,” she admitted, turning back. “I was in that damn shop for far too long, and those needles were a bitch.”
She was feisty. Sexy. The black leather getup molded tightly to her body, showing off angles and curves Rhys hadn’t been able to see when she was sitting down. Her hood had been thrown back. Silky strands of platinum hair crossed her face in the night’s moist breeze, partially hiding the features Rhys wished he could see.
“Now what? You’ll disappear again?” he asked.
“Disappearing is what I do best,” she said.
“Why? Are you hiding from someone?”
“Good thing it wasn’t you. Look how that turned out.”
Rhys grinned, liking her quick-witted comebacks.
“You might want to can the light show if stealth is your objective. Your appearance in the alley was pretty flashy.”
She stared at him with her lips parted for a retort she didn’t make—lush lips nearly as pale as the rest of her. He wondered what those lips would taste like, and if she’d use her knife on him if he tried to find out.
When seconds passed and she hadn’t spoken or made her retreat, Rhys figured those things would have been points for him in the challenge game, if anyone had been keeping score. Then again, she had known about Blood Knights and had pegged him as one with a single glance, so maybe he’d have to concede some of those points.
Finally, when the silence had grown uncomfortable, the provocative white-haired enigma took a backward step, keeping her eyes on him, possibly afraid to turn her back.
“I won’t let this go, you know,” Rhys warned. “You’re far too intriguing.”
“You’ll have to,” she said. “I’m already here and gone.”
“And if I were to ask you to stay?”
The waist-length, silver-white tendrils of her hair had taken on a luminous sheen under the streetlight. Hell, Rhys thought, she looked more like an elf than anything else. Another impulse came to touch her, just to make sure she was real and not a mirage. She hadn’t addressed any of his questions, but didn’t really have to. What had she said? She owed him nothing.
“Ghosts can’t fight. Noncorporeal bodies and all that,” he said, thinking hard about which gene pool she might have sprung from and again coming up short. “But you are very good with a blade.”
“Hate ghosts.” She took another backward step.
“What about Blood Knights? Do you hate them, too?”
“Would you deserve it?”
“You know about us, about who we are. Was that by rumor?”
“Plenty of rumors,” she said.
“If you travel in the kind of company that would spread those rumors, why haven’t I heard about you?”
“Maybe I’m not rumor-worthy.”
“I’m fairly sure no one could forget you after a glimpse. If your soul had been around for a while, someone would have seen you.”
“You’re right,” she agreed. “They wouldn’t have forgotten someone like me, which is why I don’t allow them that glimpse.”
As fun as this was, it was now clear to Rhys that this immortal wasn’t going to volunteer any real information about herself at all, even after sharing in his fight with the vampires. He was going to have to get those details some other way.
Smile widening, he said, “I do love a challenge.”
“Good for you. Now, you must let me go.”
“Or?”
“It will be a regrettable mistake in judgment.”
“Really? When we seem to be on the same side?”
“I value privacy above all other things.”
Rhys nodded. “If you stay in London, I will be able to find you.”
“I didn’t realize Blood Knight was synonymous for bloodhound.”
“Scent has strong power,” Rhys said. “Smells create memories. I can smell the power in you. Though as yet nameless, what you are rolls in my mind like a misplaced vision, sparking images I can’t see clearly. It has to be obvious to you that I need to sort that out.”
“Quite obvious,” she said. “Which is why you followed me in the first place. You’re not sure what I am or who I am. For a Guardian, that kind of void in information would be regrettable.”
“You would be curious in my place, I think.”
The whittled animal-bone handle of the blade that she clenched in her fist was a further sign of her Otherness. Most supernatural species could not touch any kind of metal.
Rhys wondered if she might use that blade on him if he pursued this line of inquiry.
“I watch here, for now,” he said. “I discern friend from foe and try to keep the peace when that task gets harder with each passing year.”
She waved her blade at the dusting of fine gray ash covering the pavement. “Yet, aren’t you and these creatures you call monsters distant cousins? In which case, one might reason that you and your knightly brothers have an obligation to cull their numbers in order to protect the humans these vampires prey upon.”
“More rumors?” Rhys said.
“Aren’t rumors often sparked by truth?”
Before he had time to reply, she closed the distance between them. From only inches away, her scent was much stronger. Her next move was unexpected. She touched him.
No, it was her blade that had touched him. Its sharp tip pierced a coin-sized hole in his coat. Rhys looked down at the knife, then at her. He quirked an eyebrow.
She lowered the blade and placed her cool, bare fingertips on his mouth. Rhys swayed and swallowed a rising groan of surprise. He held his breath as she traced the outline of his lips before gently pressing them back. He knew what she searched for and what she saw hidden there. Fangs.
“It would seem some rumors actually are true,” he said.
Wickedly placed inside the mouths of each of the seven men who had accepted the vows issued by their Makers at Castle Broceliande, those fangs were, like this female’s inked tattoos, not really good for anything. They were merely reminders that blood sipped from a holy relic is what had resurrected the seven men and sent them on a quest.
“This is what the Grail Quest did to you,” she said.
“In return for preventing that Grail from falling into the hands of others who might use its power to bestow immortality for another purpose,” Rhys said. “Imagine a world where the bad guys couldn’t be harmed.”
“No rumor, then.” She drew her hand back.
Rhys watched this female closely. The effects of her company were incredibly rich for an immortal who had never beheld a female of similar kind. She was enough like him to threaten his moratorium on seeking the companionship of others. Her touch, like her earlier light show, left an imprint, not only on Rhys’s mouth, but on his soul, as if she had branded him with the same fire that flickered in her eyes.
Rhys took a firm hold on her shoulders and pulled her closer, so that she had to look up to see his face. She did not use the knife or try to escape from what she had to know would come next.
All that fire...
All that heat...
He was so damn hungry for those things.
Daringly, Rhys rested his mouth on hers lightly, testing his resolve and hers. He waited, expecting a slam of protective power from her in honor of his transgression. But nothing like that came.
Her lips were as cool as her fingertips, and soft. She didn’t encourage him. Nor did she pull away when he deepened the pressure, breathing her in, tasting the sweetness of what lay behind the lushness he was invading. She was so very appealing.
She leaned into him and made a sound that was part groan and part whisper. In that sound lay a silent command...not for release, but for more.
He gave her that. And when her lips parted, the uncanny sense of familiarity returned so strongly that Rhys echoed the sound she had made. He knew her, didn’t he?
As his mouth captured hers, his hunger raged. Her spirit seemed to capture his spirit. She bent him to her will, commanding him to forget that familiarity he sought and bury it deep.
But she kissed him back, and the intimacy of the physical connection spiraled Rhys into a world where nothing other than the two of them existed, and the past, present and future became one.
Hell, if she was a demon, someone on the other side knew too much about the longings of a Blood Knight.
A draft of cool air drifted over him when her lips left his. Rhys opened his eyes to find himself alone. In a totally unacceptable move that had to have involved some kind of mind trick, the woman whose lips had so moved him had, like liquid moonlight, just melted away.
He stood beneath the streetlight, looking around, surprised to have been bested by the pale stranger. That was a first.
“All right,” he said, retrieving the dagger from his boot. “This game point goes to you, but the game isn’t over.”
Then he turned to face the vampire watching him from the shadows.
Chapter 6 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
Avery fled the scene without looking back.
Taking that Knight’s mind off her imminent escape had worked a little too well. With his lips on hers and his warm breath in her lungs, she’d almost forgotten what she had planned for these guys, and had escaped only in the nick of time.
Dreams of getting close to him had been with her for so long, remnants of those dreams had nearly been her downfall. By now, she knew him well, although he knew nothing of the woman he had kissed. Still, having the upper hand didn’t make her feel better about that kind of closeness, and what a mistake it had been to allow it.
Bad plan. Pitiful timing.
While distracting the Knight had seemed her best way to escape, she now felt a new need to go back to him, have more of him and indulge in the very thing she had always craved.
Hadn’t she always craved him?
The line between hate and love, two things seemingly so opposite, was blurring. That had always been the danger of her special bond with Perceval. She was already inside him in an intimate way. Her blood ran in his veins alongside another’s, and yet the immediacy of this attraction to him seemed like so much more than blood calling to blood.
But now...
Him...
That kiss.
Avery glanced up at the sky, questioning the heavens. But it had been a long time since she’d had any help from there.
She had heard something, though. The Knight had spoken to her telepathically. She’d heard him clearly because she had left a channel to her mind open. Another slip-up.
“Damn it,” she would have returned if she had been able to join in that conversation. “This is no game.”
They weren’t players on some gigantic chessboard. There was so much more at stake here than who might gain or lose a point. This was life. Hers. She’d been a fool to have been so intent on tattooed wings that she hadn’t done enough research about which of the Knights she’d potentially encounter if things went wrong in London. Being secretly attracted to this one should have kept her more aware of his travels, even though she’d been loath to remain so close.
It had to be you...
Swinging herself up the side of a building was just one of her many talents. Surprisingly, that also turned out to be a mistake, because the Knight’s scent lingered on the rooftop, preventing her from moving on. He must have watched her from here. Below this roof, the alley curved toward the tattoo parlor.
Some new stealth trick of your own, Knight?
Now, she had to regroup. He had threatened to find her, and would if she remained in this city. Leaving London, however, was not an option. A culmination of the search that had tied up her whole earthly life lay within her grasp. The importance of that could not be forsaken because a Blood Knight was on her trail.
Leave here. Leave him, her instincts warned. Before...
Before what? Before she forgot her early hatred for the Seven and their Makers who had caused her so much agony? This Knight was one of them, even if the way things had gone down at that blasted castle wasn’t his fault. Still, the beautiful bastard she’d kissed was guilty by association.
Mixed feelings were scary, and she was experiencing plenty of them. Without old hatreds to guide her, what was left? Which direction would she take? She wanted so badly to trust someone, but could not confess her secrets to one of the seven golden Knights.
Leave him.
Must stay away.
“You will never find me,” she whispered to her glorious Blood Knight. But those words made her heart ache. They made her feel sick. She added soberly, “Not without an invitation.”
Possibly she liked him too much to share the hurt she had suffered. Even more telling than her new turn of conscience was how desperately she longed to have another shot at that kiss—an action that had apparently changed everything after so many years of avoiding him.
* * *
Hissing sounds, like static coming over the airwaves, forced Rhys to address the next untimely distraction. There was no mistaking the stink of stale blood permeating the area. Over the years, he’d grown sick of the stench.
“It’s rather early for you to be partying, isn’t it?” he said to the bloodsucker tucked into a dark corner behind him.
Guttural noises accompanied the vamp’s rebuttal, as if the creature wasn’t used to speaking through its fangs. “You do not own this city, freak.”
Rhys grinned dangerously. “Freak, is it? Me? That’s rich.”
“I do not fear you.”
“You haven’t heard the rumors?”
“I have heard them,” the vamp snarled.
“Maybe you missed the fight minutes ago?”
“I did not miss it.”
“Yet you’ll confront me here?”
“Do you imagine I came alone?”
“Yes, actually. I can sense your kind, you know. It’s a gift. Or a curse. You’re the last vamp crowding my space tonight.”
The vampire didn’t take the bait of that taunt and showed itself.
“I suppose you’re drawn to the scent of this place.” Rhys waved at the tattoo parlor.
“As were you,” the vampire returned, with far too much insight.
“I’m not attracted to blood, you know. It does not sustain me,” Rhys said.
“What does?”
“Current goals. Old vows.”
The vampire floated out of the shadows—a middle-aged bloodsucker, turned in his fifties, Rhys presumed. Tall, thin and dressed in a tattered black suit, this child of the night smelled like he’d been in the earth a few years too long. This was no fledgling, after all.
“One cannot thrive on old vows alone,” it observed.
Rhys nodded. “I have also cultivated a taste for wine over the past hundred years.”
The vampire had no sense of humor.
“You came to her aid,” it noted.
Rhys applied new energy to his voice. The vampire had been watching that fight, watching his white-haired companion.
“For reasons you would likely not understand or want to go into,” Rhys said.
“Perhaps I would understand. I followed her here, too. I am not immune to what she represents,” the vampire returned.
“Would that be dinner?”
“The pale one would be a veritable feast,” the vampire agreed. “Whipped cream on a blood-red cake.”
Rhys said calmly, “She isn’t human, you know.”
“All the better.”
This bloodsucker had also tuned in to the power the woman radiated. Did the creep believe he could sink his fangs into an immortal and get away with it, when that would have been impossible?
“Trying something like that would be a misuse of your energy,” Rhys warned. “Your fangs won’t penetrate her skin, you know.”
And even if they could, her blood would make this creature choke. White blood, underscoring the colorlessness of her skin.
“Can’t hurt to try,” the vamp remarked.
“Looking for what? The fountain of youth? You do realize that’s a false rumor, and that no such thing exists?”
Agitated, the bloodsucker moved sideways. “Can you tell me this truthfully?”
“No fountain of youth,” Rhys promised.
Although the Knights had been resurrected by a blood gift sipped from a golden chalice, they weren’t vampires. Though they had fangs, the Knights ate and drank only slightly less than the rest of the world’s population. Their blood wasn’t a restorative that could heal a reanimated corpse. He and his brethren weren’t gods. All seven had been human once.
“I don’t think you understand,” Rhys continued. “The point I’m making is that this woman is not for you. Not any of your concern.”
“Is that not so for you, as well?”
Rhys wasn’t entirely sure how to reply to that. Like the vampire, he had left his human existence behind and accepted the invitation to exist forever. But he had done so willingly. He doubted this vampire had chosen his afterlife’s direction, or that many would choose to live off the life force of others.
The Seven had been called back to life by a higher power than the black hand of Death. That beginning set them apart. His heart had been restarted for a golden purpose. Only through the miracle of a chalice often referred to as the Holy Grail had his heart and soul been retained.
“I suggest you take your hunger elsewhere,” Rhys warned. “Quite honestly, I’m not always this generous with your kind.”
The vampire bowed its head. “I find that I’d like to see her again. I will stay out of your way, however, for now, since you’ve asked so nicely.”
With a flurry of kicked-up street grime, followed by the sound of loose roof tiles creaking over Rhys’s head, the cheeky fanged bastard disappeared. The way they had of doing things like that was creepy, even to an immortal with equal abilities.
Nevertheless, Rhys’s interest in the pale immortal he’d kissed had just increased tenfold. Other creatures had found her twice, for some reason, when their usual MO was to avoid him and his kind. The creep he had spoken with was too interested in her, and that wasn’t right. If vampires spread the word that a pale immortal female had taken up residence, other monsters might come calling for reasons Rhys didn’t fully understand.
Did they honestly believe the snowy-haired female could help to reinstate their former lives? Change their fate? Too many vamps appearing at once to test that claim might not bode well for anyone on London’s streets after dark.
But it suited Rhys.
Taking out a bunch of vampires at once would help those unsuspecting mortal souls stay safe.
It was late. He had taken too much time here. Pulling his coat tighter, setting his intentions on a new course, Rhys followed the whiff of scent and the barely visible ribbon of light that were the angelic immortal female’s calling cards, which took him to the alley where she had first appeared.
Glancing up at the building beside him, hearing her warning about not finding her without an invitation, Rhys smiled and muttered, “Who can resist such a sweet-scented warrior?”
* * *
He was coming.
Either her powers of persuasion had dimmed considerably, or this Knight’s abilities had grown lately. Due to the strength of the feelings for him that she had sealed away, Avery couldn’t allow herself to be caught.
The choices were to run or face her dazzling nemesis one more time. Keep her secrets, or tell him the truth and see what he would do.
Roll of the dice. Which is it to be? Go or stay?
It wasn’t much of a choice, really. The Knight was right. After finding her, having his hands on her, there wouldn’t be anywhere for her to go in this city that he couldn’t find if he tried hard enough. One kiss and an old blood bond had seen to that.
But she could not leave London. Leaving would mean losing the opportunity to search for the things so important to her after exhausting her search elsewhere. The things that had been hidden from her, belonged to her, called out with a distant, elusive hum, as if they also craved a reunion. Caution was needed, though. She had been fooled before.
Avery was aware of every step toward her the Blood Knight took.
“You don’t own the city, Guardian,” she whispered. “You might be its keeper, but you’re not mine.”
Too late now.
One more time, she told herself. See him just once.
She could handle that.
In a ruffle of night air, he was there.
“You keep turning up,” she said as he climbed over the ledge.
His appearance on the rooftop might have upset her confidence somewhat, because when viewing the entirety of this guy from a distance, the effect on her system was elaborate.
The third Blood Knight to have ridden forth from Castle Broceliande’s massive iron gates no longer donned the golden armor he’d once worn in honor of his Quest. He didn’t bear the Knights’ red-striped ebony crest of the Grail protectors. But he was always mesmerizing.
The modern duster coat and dark jeans suited him. So did the shorn hair that now only brushed his collar. Where she was white, he was bronze. His luster hadn’t faded the way hers had. At times, over the years, she had envied his polished allure.
“Yes. About that,” he said, coming closer. “You did leave a trail.”
“Impossible,” she argued.
“Fortuitous,” he corrected. “Because I believe we have some unfinished business to talk over that rules out distance for the time being.”
“Misguided persistence will get you nowhere,” Avery warned. “Neither will flattery, so don’t bother. The fact is, you have followed me again.”
“I did warn you that until I know what and who you are, this city might be at risk and I would be responsible.”
“I’m no predator. I would have thought you’d have figured that out by now,” she said.
“I don’t believe you are a predator. I’m just not sure what you are or why my soul recognizes yours in some way. I’m not sure I can rest until I know why.”
Avery took a wide stance with both arms loose at her sides. Inside, she was fluttering again.
“That’s quite a line about souls. Do women usually fall for it?”
“Mortal women sometimes do.” His tone was light. The situation wasn’t.
Avery stopped short of asking him how many humans he’d tried that soul-to-soul business on. She wiped risqué images of him in bed with mortal females from her mind quickly. This bastard was charm incarnate when he wanted to be, and he was turning that charm her way. However, it had been many years since she’d trusted anyone.
“Then I suggest you find someone more amenable to bedroom talk,” she said. “The night isn’t over. If you hurry, you might find a taker.”
After a pause, he said, “Can we cut the crap? I’m not attacking you. I’m merely asking a few pertinent questions.”
“I told you I’m not in the habit of telling strangers anything about myself and made it clear I owe you nothing. What don’t you get, Blood Knight? Why can’t you honor my privacy?”
“I think you have some responsibility to come clean. There aren’t many of us, or beings much like us. I can feel the power you possess. What I can’t do is place it. I need to know if you’re in any way like me.”
“Nothing like you,” she replied to get him off her back. That was the truth. She couldn’t lie. Not outright. Neither of them could, because of that touch of the heavens they possessed.
Her answer clearly frustrated him. His hands opened and closed, forming and reforming fists as if he might wring the answers from her that he needed. Power meant danger in his world, and as he’d said, she was an unknown. Yet understanding how he felt and doing something to help him, at her own expense, were things on opposite shores of a vast ocean she dared not try to cross.
“Your soul resonates on a similar frequency to mine, which leads me to believe we have some things in common,” he said.
Yes. We have that damn castle in common.
We also have the vows that made us into what we are.
You know nothing of my part in that.
“I’ve seen you before,” he went on. “I’m sure I’ve felt your presence on the edges of my existence in the past.”
That news surprised Avery. If he knew of her presence, she hadn’t held up her end of the vow she’d taken to never allow the Knights to find her or the truth of their origins until she was ready to spill that news. They might not have accomplished the goals their Makers had set for them if they had known the truth about her and what their Makers had done to assure that the Knights had significant power of their own. As it turned out, the Knights’ goals had been good ones, and still were. She couldn’t argue with that.
“Your Makers are long gone, I assume,” she said, without the probing tone the remark deserved. “Nevertheless, you carry on as though still bound to the oaths you once took.”
The eyes studying her flashed with blue fire. “What do you know of the Makers?”
“Rumor. Legend. Fantasy lore,” Avery replied. “Legends say the Blood Knights were created by three magicians who were also the earliest form of what we know of today as vampires. If that’s true, it would explain a lot about you.”
“Rumor is it? What would a bunch of old untruths say about me?”
Avery wiped a finger across her mouth to remind him she had seen the fangs. He watched her carefully with the eyes of a hawk.
“Does the term fantasy also explain you?” he asked.
“I’m sure the parameters of fantasy lore cover us both.”
“You had a Maker?”
“Oh, yes. An extremely powerful one.”
“So why are you in pain?” he asked.
The several feet of distance separating them had not been enough. Somehow he had picked up on the wicked pain that underlined every damn day of her existence and was assailing her now. Seeing this man added to her discomfort, the way seeing him always had. Her heart was beating fast. Speaking was difficult.
“Possibly I can help,” he suggested. “I’ve learned a thing or two about pain and healing.”
“You can help by leaving me alone to do what I came here to do.”
“Other than the tattoos, you mean?”
“Yes,” Avery warily admitted. “Other than that.”
She dropped the hand that again had automatically returned to her mouth to trace the lingering impression of their kiss, because this Knight missed little and was analyzing every move she made. She had to be more careful. That was a fact.
She didn’t press home the fact that he had fangs. Surely he would have wondered about that.
“We’re to pretend nothing happened?” he asked, confirming her fears about that kiss.
“Nothing did,” Avery said.
He walked into the light of a moon half covered by dark clouds. Shadows played on his features in an artistic tableau of light and dark. His vivid blue eyes were like searchlights.
Without having ever feared anyone, Avery stepped back. The pressure of being near this immortal was greater than she would have imagined. After circling these Knights for centuries, she had to stumble on this particular one.
Wanting to turn her anger into another kind of emotion wasn’t a good sign. Desiring what was forbidden between the two of them was the biggest surprise of all. She could see the outcome of this scenario if they remained in each other’s presence. She could taste it.
Avery liked to think she was better than this, stronger than the wayward urges pulsing through her that told her to walk straight toward this seductive male.
“I am no threat to you or anyone else,” she said. “I will promise you that.”
“You’re already a threat to me.” His tone was softer now, and much too convincing.
“Forget about me. Move on.”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s what I will have to do.”
Relief filled Avery, healing the cracks in her weakening resolve. Remorse was there, too, just as it had been from the start, after she had first set foot on the Earth’s hard surface.
Regret topped both of those emotions, coming at her in seismic jolts and due to the possibility of this guy actually fulfilling her wishes by letting her go when maybe he could have helped her, if she’d let him. If she trusted herself to let him. He might have understood what had been done to her, and want to correct old errors.
“More pain,” he observed with a keen, appraising gaze. “I can feel it overtaking you.”
“It’s nothing I can’t bear.”
He nodded. “Do I play a part in that pain?”
“Do you believe you’re so important?”
His head tilted to one side, as if in viewing her from a different angle he might discover something pertinent that would help him to read her. Damn if she’d let him.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll honor your request and be on my way. It’s a shame, though, when we were getting along so well.”
Wait, Avery almost cried out, biting her tongue to keep from repeating that ugly earlier show of vulnerability that had resulted in a kiss. For her, vulnerability was rare and dangerous.
When he turned from her, she let him. When he looked back at her over a broad shoulder she had seen many times in secret, from afar, Avery managed to keep her expression smooth. The look she gave him was the same thing as a lie, and also a cover-up. Things had changed. Meeting this Knight face-to-face had softened her stance on the future. Seeing him in person had affected them both.
There was no going back.
Wait, she wanted to say again, because he wasn’t the monster she had struggled to believe he was, while knowing better all along. Though he was intelligent and experienced, the man once known as Perceval knew very little about his immortal beginnings. He was continuing to honor Britain’s famous old king’s credo of using might to fight for what was right. His side was the epitome of doing good. How could she have hated any of that enough to have stayed away?
Damn you...
The desire to be near you threatens to outweigh all the rest.
She didn’t utter the curses that stuck in her throat. Not even the worst ones. Weren’t the two of them in the same boat, living on and on with no end in sight? Did this man wish his fate had been otherwise, just as she did?
We do have things in common.
Maybe some regrets also haunt you.
Perhaps pain is also your demon?
He had retreated to the edge of the roof and stopped there. “Name’s Rhys nowadays. Rhys de Troyes. If you need me, call.”
“I won’t need you,” she said.
He nodded. “One thing I’ve found in this crazy, overextended existence is that we never really know how to ask for what we need, even when we do need something. That’s the real curse we suffer from.”
In a shaft of moonlight, the flash of his golden-highlighted hair was the last Avery saw of the blazing-hot immortal she had wanted so badly to despise, but couldn’t. After all the arguing, he had complied with her demands and was going away...like the goddamn gentleman he had probably been before the word Blood had been tacked onto his knightly status.
Chapter 7 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
Moonlight, usually Rhys’s ally in his war against the monsters, seemed impossibly dull when she wasn’t standing in it. The overhead orb’s silvery shine didn’t matter to him at the moment. Neither did the possible return of the bloodsuckers.
Tonight, for the first time in a long while, he had experienced the kindling of a little thing called hope. And the reason at the core of this new emotion had sent him away. She had waved him off as inconsequential, perhaps too wrapped up in a mystery of her own to let a stranger share in that mystery.
He hadn’t gotten one straight answer from her, and he had so many questions.
Why the tattoo?
Why wings?
Chances were good that she wouldn’t help him out of this quandary, not if they met again, but when they did. Because he had every intention of seeing her again. In fact, he wasn’t going to let her out of his sight completely, in case she used some of that power to disappear.
“Why the kiss, and why would you allow it? Distraction? Moment of weakness? Attraction? Are you as interested in me, as I am in you?”
Given that she could hear at least some of his thoughts and remarks, maybe she’d hear those whispered words. She hadn’t gone away. Not yet. Weird as it was, he was able to see the light particles that stuck around this pale vision like the shadows stuck to the street. From where he stood, it was easy to see the faint glow on the roofline.
She was there, all right. She hadn’t gone away.
Other things that hid beneath the cover of darkness were moving in and around the square now, as predicted. Most of the creatures in the supernatural world that moved with unnatural speed left a noticeable residue behind in the infrared spectrum. Rhys supposed that he also left that kind of trail. Not the pure, shimmering white of starlight, like hers, though. Seems every damn thing about her was unique, as was his growing need to get to the bottom of her appearance in London.
He had no idea what caused the inner light she wielded and doubted if anyone else did, either. Not anyone living, anyway. As he had told her, some mention of it would have reached him if anyone had gotten wind of that.
The dead were another matter needing consideration. As he had feared, news of the woman he’d kissed under the streetlight must have spread. He sensed the creatures coming. London’s vampires might also have seen the light this newcomer projected and been attracted to it.
Being stuck underground most of the time, the dark side probably hungered for light of any kind, including the shine of the Divine. And in some small way, the woman he had met tonight did exhibit a few Divine qualities. Her fake wings might have made her believe she actually was Divine.
She hadn’t wanted to leave him back on that street. At least he knew that much.
Rhys’s awareness picked up a sudden foreshadowing of the future. His sigils were aching. Energy pulsed through the tentacles of inky symbols on the back of his neck, urging him to turn his head.
This was a sturdy reminder that there was a war on, and that more abominations prowled the area nearby. He was needed to help defray the aftereffects of that war and had to resume his post.
But he was torn.
The light on that rooftop was a heady draw and nearly impossible to resist. She, whose name he still didn’t know, was equally impossible to forget.
“Monsters first,” Rhys whispered, hoping he’d actually believe it, because chaos would rain down if humans became aware of what resided in the shadows. For them, ignorance was bliss, as long as somebody in those same shadows took the monsters to task.
He had been that somebody for a very long time.
“So, what do you use your power for?” he asked the empty space next to him, wishing the leather-clad angel wannabe was standing there. Her exemplary fighting skills, seen firsthand tonight, could have helped London’s mortal population. The sheer number of scars on her body told him she’d been in many skirmishes. She hadn’t shied away from facing vamps tonight.
Studying the roofline above him, Rhys felt more confused than ever. The light up there had dimmed.
“Maybe you’re a fallen star in human form? As if that were possible?”
Thoughts sputtered as he perceived another disturbance in the night.
He searched the roofline.
The slightest ripple in the dark suggested to him that her light had not faded on its own, and that his angel had company on that rooftop. Noticeable in the breeze rustling the hem of his coat was a sulfurous odor of rust and freshly overturned earth.
Growls of anger erupted from Rhys’s throat. Without considering how many times she had told him to go away, he reached for the ledge above him with both hands and put his boot to the brick.
* * *
“Come out,” Avery taunted, aware of what was heading her way. “I’m in no mood for playing hide-and-seek.”
Her company on the rooftop was a Shade, the ghostly leftover of a nasty human whose afterlife had never been set straight. Unlike true ghosts, Shades could do great harm to the unsuspecting. Like some kinds of Reapers, they sucked the life from their victims for revenge over their own damned fates. They were also cleanup crews for the vampires, picking at leftovers. Otherworldly vultures.
And they had pretty good hearing. As the shadowy form slithered over the lip of the roof tiles, Avery welcomed it with a wry smile.
Gliding on feet that didn’t actually touch the ground, the bugger kept to the dark areas cast over the rooftop by the higher floors of the building beside theirs. It was ironic that Shades preferred shade.
“What do you want here?” Avery fingered the blade that could do this creeper some damage if she found the right spot, despite the creature’s haziness.
“Speak up.”
“Come with me.” The response was high-pitched and could have been either a male or female voice.
“I’m busy at the moment. So, no, thanks.”
“Important,” the Shade suggested, halting where moonlight met the mildewed slate tiles.
“Everything is important these days,” Avery said.
“I know what you seek, pale one.”
“Doubtful, since it has nothing to do with your kind.”
“You speak folly and understand nothing about what’s been entrusted to us.”
Avery’s index finger slid along the razor-sharp edge of her blade. She closely observed the Shade’s reaction to the scent of blood. The thing wasn’t a vampire, and therefore not fueled by hemoglobin, but the odor it gave off told her it had been in a musty vampire den recently. Things like bloodlust tended to rub off on those who frequented dark places.
Drops of blood beaded on her skin, its whiteness nearly invisible to the naked eye. Smelling it, the shadowy creature leaned forward, nearly taking a step that would have solidified its outline in the moon’s light—bright light avoidance was one thing these guys had in common with the bloodsucker population. But it held back.
“We know what you seek,” the Shade said, teetering on the brink of pushing its luck with her. “We have news of such a thing. I can show you.”
“Really?” another voice called out in Avery’s place. “I wonder what that thing might be, Shade.”
Avery looked past the creature rapidly backing into the shadows. Her formidable Blood Knight, now calling himself Rhys, had returned and stood with his dagger in his hand, looking every bit like the legends of old had come to life. Formidable. Intimidating to all who might stand against him.
Avery’s nerves pinged. Her heart rate soared, as did her pounding pulse. She had known the Knight would find her if she didn’t get a move on. So why hadn’t she tried to lose him?
Her attention was divided. The Shade’s behavior had been more abnormal than the usual Shade bag of tricks. What it had said was interesting. Shades would know better than to attack an immortal, but had it been trying to tell her something that actually pertained to her very private search?
We know what you seek.
Unlike her, and unlike the Blood Knight across from her, most of the world’s other monsters lied through their teeth.
“What? No answer?” the Blood Knight said, taking one step toward the shadows the Shade had blended into.
Avery knew he wouldn’t pursue the damn thing and that he had come here for another reason. She was that reason. Still, she had to wonder how a Shade could have been aware of the fact that she searched for anything. Believing it had known something would also prove how desperate she was to be reunited with the missing pieces of herself.
All these speculations were moot points, though, since the Shade was gone.
“Saving the day, Knight? You scared that poor sucker,” Avery said thoughtfully.
He turned toward her. “Are you into self-mutilation these days, angel? That cut on your hand?”
His use of the word angel jump-started the nerve burn that followed. Avery stared back at him, reasoning that he knew nothing.
“Why didn’t you dispense with that no-good creature?” he asked, waving at the pool of darkness.
“I didn’t have to. You rode in on a white horse.”
Her companion grinned. “Would you have dispensed with it?”
“Probably not. It meant me no harm.”
“Said no mortal that had ever encountered one of them on a dark street and lived to tell about it.”
“We both know that kind of danger doesn’t necessarily apply to us,” she pointed out.
“The thing issued an invitation for you to follow it home, all cozy-like.”
“Yes, it did.”
“Are Shades famous for helping others?”
When she didn’t answer, he said, “I rest my case.”
He was right, of course. Yet, as Avery glanced to the shadows, she wondered why she had felt reasonably sure this Shade knew something that might have helped her quest. The awareness was a gut feeling, with no sound basis whatsoever, but what the hell? Gut feelings were often part of intuition.
Her Knight spoke again. “Was that creature right in the assumption that you’ve come to London looking for something? You’ve hinted at needing to be left alone to do what you came here to do. If you tell me what you’re looking for, I’ll help with your search.”
Her inner flutters persisted. At the base of her spine, chills were piling up. Avery had to hide her body’s quakes. Because of the amount of effort that took, she was close to telling this Knight what he wanted to hear. She was so very tired of keeping things to herself.
“Who would you rather trust with that information? That hazy black sucker or me?” he said.
When she didn’t answer that question, he said, “I see. And I’m sorry you feel threatened.”
“Nothing you could do would threaten me.”
That statement wasn’t entirely true, however, and even the partial falsehood stung Avery to her core. The handsome bastard’s looks alone posed a threat to her many lifetimes of isolation. His hand-picked existence had threatened hers by taking away her freedom. Plus, her heart was misbehaving by beating way too fast, as if all the time she’d spent cursing him didn’t amount to squat when facing the real deal.
Discomfort came with his continued scrutiny and from being the central focus of any Blood Knight’s attention.
That kiss didn’t mean anything.
“I know the closeness back there was meant as a distraction, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” he said.
Words failed her, even in thought, which was never a good sign. Strangely enough, she was weakening, caving to this guy’s well-practiced, bronzed allure. While she knew better than to give in, she just couldn’t seem to help herself.
This is why I’ve stayed away from you, Avery wanted to confess.
She kept her mouth shut.
“I will again offer you my assistance,” he said in that irritating way he had of sounding chivalrous. “One last offer. Take it or leave it.”
Avery considered his offer carefully. She didn’t have to like him. They didn’t have to be friends. The old vows could stand if she allowed this guy to help her this once. After finding her wings, she would hit the road and curse him all over again.
“If you know what I am, you must also know what I can do, and that I mean what I say,” he added.
I know your mission is to do good in this world, endlessly and forever. But can I forget the past long enough to accept your help in such a personal quest?
Major stumbling block. Could she bypass that damn kiss and how this Knight made her feel, when she hadn’t felt anything for countless years?
Maybe he could be trusted. But could she trust herself around him if a simple kiss had sent her running? Former prejudices weren’t worth much if they could be obliterated by a pretty face.
I’m not like you.
Not anything like you.
Sadly, that wasn’t quite true, either, since the Knight also carried in his immortal soul the light of the Divine. She had been a crucial link in passing that light to him. And damned if it wasn’t that same light that made her want to get closer to him now.
“In seeking you out, I wanted to make sure you were all right,” he explained. “That’s all.”
“Liar,” she said. Possibly he couldn’t lie straight out, but he wasn’t telling her everything.
His electric-blue gaze intensified, leaving Avery feeling naked and exposed.
“You’re right,” he conceded. “I wanted something else as well. Friendship.”
“A half truth, at best.”
Nodding, he started over. “All right. The truth is I want a lot more than that. So, shall I go, or will you dare to confide at least part of your story?”
Do not give in.
Look away if you have to.
Avery managed to hold to those two inner commands for a few seconds before she spoke again.
“I’ve lost something that I’ve been trying to find for decades. My search has been exhaustive and has finally brought me back to London.”
He waited for her to go on.
“I had all but given up before being called back to London. I feel close to my goal here and have to give this quest one last shot.”
Avery saw how the word quest affected the man across from her. For all his glorious Knightness, the guy wasn’t so difficult to read. His extended life span had been based on that same concept. Quest.
“How much do you know about me?” he asked. “How do you know about Blood Knights?”
“I was privy to that information early on, from a source I can’t disclose.”
“Can’t, or won’t disclose?”
“It’s the same thing, in the end.”
He took a step toward her. “You know my story, and I can’t know yours?”
“I doubt you’d want to help me if I told you my story.”
“It’s that bad?”
“To some.”
“Are you a demon?”
Avery shook her head. “That much I will swear to.”
“Then you have the advantage, I’m thinking,” he said.
“Can you live with that for a while longer and still help?”
He smiled. “I thought you said you knew me.”
His smile brought back the deep internal flutter she had experienced earlier. There was no hint of treachery in his expression and no sign of his fangs. Avery wanted to return the smile but wasn’t sure she remembered how. Pain had a tendency to darken even the lightest moments. Although this man was part of that pain, there was a chance he could help her rise above the agony of her existence, and at this late hour, set things straight.
If that wasn’t to happen, and things didn’t go that way, what would fill the empty space inside her that pain occupied? What would happen to the memories carved into her body and her mind? Without those memories, nothing would matter. He wouldn’t matter.
“You’ve gone quiet,” he noted when the silence stretched.
Don’t you see it, Blood Knight? See me?
What kind of creature has white blood in their veins?
How many beings walking this Earth have one boot on the ground and the other in the heavens?
Doesn’t my skin tell you something important?
Are you looking deep enough? Hard enough?
Do you not see yourself in me?
Her story? Until the twenty-first century, when whole sections of the human race had gone through phases with names like Goth and cyberpunk, she’d had to stay completely hidden. After that, when pretty much anything worked, fitting in was easier. Her white skin was even envied by a select few. Dressed in black leather, she could skate through crowds if she had to, if those crowds occupied the outskirts of places where normal people gathered.
Parts of her story encapsulated this Knight’s story, as well. Neither of them could ever really fit in. The magnificent Blood Knight was hugging the shadows, just as she was. They were freaks because of their unique kind of beauty.
When she looked up, he had raised a hand as if expecting her to take it. As if he was tossing her a lifeline to a better place.
Go to hell, was the response on the tip of her tongue. But that was overruled by another reaction. Because, God, yes, she wanted to take that hand, touch him, believe in him. She wanted those things badly enough to taste the sweet irony of her own stubborn objections. Way back, she had trusted in the power of good, and in those who wielded goodness like a weapon.
The Knight spoke again. “If you allow me to help with this quest of yours, you’ll be doing me a favor, you know. Things can get pretty boring around here. Same old fights. Endless hours. More and more monsters.”
Body rebelling, mind reeling with comebacks so indecent they’d send this Knight away forever... Avery took a breath and closed her eyes. Another surprise, one to top all of the others, was hearing herself say, “Yes. Okay. Help me.”
Afraid to see his reaction, she kept her eyes shut, figuring a thank-you would have been going too damn far, even if this Blood Knight expected it.
Chapter 8 (#ua3d311ad-0a04-5da5-9b86-fc2d79ecf8af)
“Good,” Rhys said, though he wasn’t sure his new companion wholeheartedly agreed with what she had just committed to. On the plus side, she didn’t run away. When her eyes reopened, she turned her head to listen to the sounds he also heard.
“Do we fight what’s coming our way first?” she asked. “That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? Keep the streets safe?”
“It’s what I choose to do,” Rhys corrected. “You feel the monsters coming?”
“Like a foul wave.”
“Maybe facing more of them isn’t what you choose to do.”
“I’ve had my moments with the monsters. Far too many.”
Was that the cause of her scars? Rhys wondered.
“So we turn back this tide and then we talk about your search,” he said.
“Yes. Then we talk.”
He walked to the edge of the roof and peered over, joined by this new, unlikely companion whose body language made it clear she wasn’t going to get too close to him.
Go ahead, Rhys thought. Keep your distance a while longer.
“Ten of them,” she noted, her attention fixed on the street. “Vampires. Not so young this time. The odor is fouler, stronger.”
“Ten is ten too many to be roaming the streets all at once,” Rhys said.
With her silhouette half hidden by her fall of fair hair, his companion gave him a sideways glance. “How many can you take?”
“All ten. How about you?”
“I could leave you one, if you like.”
Rhys grinned. “Very generous.” He waved at the street below them. “On the count of three?”
“Hell, why wait?” she said, and jumped.
They’d been three stories up. Rhys landed in a crouch on the pavement with one hand on the asphalt. She was beside him. Standing in unison, they looked both ways to make sure they hadn’t been seen and then took off at a jog toward the oncoming gang of vamps.
Lucky for Londoners, it was the wee hours of the night, or morning, depending on which way they looked at it. Most people would be tucked safely in their beds. The few roaming around at 3:00 a.m. would have a hard lesson to learn if they weren’t careful, and if a Guardian hadn’t been watching this particular area.
The woman next to him waved a hand upward, indicating that a couple of the fanged horde had climbed drainpipes to reach the higher floors of the building beside them. Nodding, Rhys headed after those beasts. Climbing as easily as the bloodsuckers had, he reached the roof in seconds, hoping his companion would be able to handle things on the ground until he returned.
Two bloodless faces peered at him speculatively as he approached. Older vampires, but not ancient. Experienced. Hungry. Dull black eyes showed no hint of recognition when fixed on him. Word had not yet spread to this nest about the Guardian in their midst, a being with fangs who came from a larger gene pool.
“Not a good night to be out in this part of town,” Rhys said. “Tonight there are two of us to welcome you.”
Neither of the bloodsuckers responded with an audible comeback. To Rhys, their thoughts were like waves of chatter. Too hungry to remain idle, both vampires rushed toward him with their fangs exposed. Their taloned hands slashed at the air.
Rhys had the first vamp on the ground before the second reached him, holding it firmly with a boot on the bloodsucker’s bony chest. The damn thing snapped and squirmed, struggling to free itself. In this state, the beast could have butchered any human in its path.
Rhys put the vampire out of its misery with a stake to the chest in time to face the second attacker. He was doing the people of London and these creatures a favor. No decent human being would have wanted this kind of fanged afterlife existence.
Vampire number two was wily and halted a few steps from Rhys, taking stock of its formidable opponent. Mouth opening and closing as if snapping at the air, it issued a shrill cry.
“Won’t help. The good folks around here need protection, and at the moment I’m their best bet.”
The vampire turned its attention from Rhys to the street below them, as if aware of some new threat. Beyond the echo of its cry, Rhys heard what the monster had heard—the sharp repeat of a weapon going off, followed closely by an echoing howl.
Recognizing the sound, the vampire took off in a smear of speed that would have rendered it invisible to any human that had been looking. Rhys caught the creature by its coattails near the roof’s rim and spun the bloodsucker around.
“How many more of you are there?” Rhys demanded, his face close to the death mask that was the vampire’s face.
Mad with bloodlust and the need to escape, the vamp lunged sideways, biting at Rhys’s right arm. With a swift motion born of decades of self-defense, Rhys flung the vampire over the edge of the roof and lunged after it.
He needn’t have bothered giving chase, as it turned out. Funnels of gray ash met him on the ground, all that was left of that particular monster.
Standing in a rainfall of ash stood his petite, blue-eyed warrior maiden, silver blade in hand. Rhys saw no other vampires. Their foul scent had dissipated to a faint, odorous stench.
The pale warrior’s dark-rimmed blue eyes met his.
“All eight?” Rhys asked, after a beat.
“Nine,” she corrected. “I’m assuming you got the other one?”
That was the moment—as Rhys faced the immortal who was looking more like an avenging angel than anything else—that he figured her story had to be one hell of a tale, and that he’d be damned if he’d let her go without hearing all of it.
And maybe he wouldn’t let her go, even then.
* * *
The way this Knight looked at her had changed, Avery noted with a flare of internal heat. Curiosity had been replaced with something else. His expression was unreadable.
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Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A fine line between vengeance and desire…As an immortal Blood Knight, Rhys de Troyes is familiar with quests. It′s obvious that the ethereal beauty who just arrived in London is on one of her own. But Avery Arcadia Quinn seems intent on keeping her secrets, even as Rhys strips away all her defences.A grounded angel, Avery seeks to recover the wings stolen from her centuries ago when the Knights were created from her suffering and pain. She swore vengeance, but her burning connection with Rhys threatens to consume her anger, her mission…and even her vow to destroy him.