A Blood Seduction (21 page)

Grant watched her as if not entirely pleased. “What did you feel?”

“It hurt.”

“It shouldn’t have. Not if you’re a sorceress.” He glanced at his brother, but Sheridan just shook his head, his expression mirroring Grant’s. “The magic let you in. You’re one of us, or it wouldn’t have.”

Sheridan held his hand out to her. “Shall we continue?” The hard edge of his tone challenged her to man up.
Asshole.

She glanced behind her at Arturo and Cristoff standing side by side, watching her, Arturo with concern, Cristoff with a sharp look that had her pulse ratcheting as she turned back. She did not like that man . . . vampire . . . whatever.

Taking a deep breath, she once more placed her hands in those of the brothers Blackstone. Like before, the magic stung, but she clamped her teeth together and rode it out, praying that the ritual didn’t take long.

Beside her, Sheridan began to whisper words, a running chant so low and quick, she barely caught half of it. As he chanted, the stinging spread from her hands into her arms, and up, like a slow, acidic burn. The pain moved into one of her shoulders a second before the other, sliding into her chest, making her gasp as it traveled down her body, through painfully sensitive parts, and into her legs and feet even as it rose up her neck into her head until she was rigid with misery. Still, the chanting continued, over and over, until her forehead was damp, her body shaking.

“I can’t take much more of this,” she managed between gritted teeth, realizing belatedly that she was squeezing the bejeezus out of their hands.

Abruptly, Sheridan’s chanting ended. Both men released their grips and pulled their hands from hers. Slowly, the pain began to ease and die.

Grant looked at her with concern. “What happened?”

“I was going to ask you that.”

“Cristoff will not be pleased,” Sheridan warned.

Grant took Quinn’s arm. “Does it hurt when I touch you like this?”

“No.”

Grant led her back out of the aurora, and suddenly Cristoff was in her face, grabbing her jaw with a cruel hand. “The magic attacked you. What did you do to make it attack you?”

“I don’t know. Believe me, I didn’t enjoy it.”

He smiled. “I did.” He released her suddenly and swung away. “Perhaps you need a bit more persuasion to accept the magic and save our world. I believe you have a brother?” He grabbed Grant’s left hand and lifted the three-fingered appendage. “It’s extraordinary what a bit of familial persuasion can do.”

His meaning slammed into her, draining the blood from her face. Zack. He’d hurt him, maim him just to force her to cooperate. And she didn’t know how! Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Arturo staring off into the distance, his expression closed. He’d told her he’d never come between her and Cristoff.

Grant was the one who came to her aid, jerking his hand free of Cristoff’s hold. “Her magic is untapped. Trying to call it forth on a null day was precisely as successful as I predicted it would be.”

Cristoff glared at the Slava with ill-disguised dislike, but he turned and started back for the horses without another word.

Quinn turned to Grant, gratitude in her eyes, but he walked past her without a glance. Sheridan met her gaze, his own cool, before turning to follow his brother. She felt like a first-class failure. If only she had some idea of how to do what they asked. It was one thing to refuse, another entirely to be inept. Heaven help her if Cristoff got his hands on Zack.

With a shuddering breath, she started after them. Arturo fell into step behind her, but cold fury had her turning away. She longed to tell him to go to hell and leave her alone, but she needed his help to get out of this place in one piece, and she knew it.
Damn him.
If Cristoff ordered Arturo to find Zack and cut off his fingers in front of her, he’d do it. He’d do it!

Arturo said nothing, not even bothering to attempt an apology. In silence, he helped her mount, then led her horse back the way they’d come, following the others, as before. Several of the vampire guard in front turned toward the west, and she followed their gazes. Her breath caught at the sight of six large wolves sitting on the rise beneath the trees, watching them depart. Holy shit. From this distance, they looked just like wolves, if big ones.
Werewolves.

Quinn shivered, but the wolves made no move to attack, and the vampire procession passed them without incident. She ought to feel relieved, she supposed. Instead, she felt beaten and bruised from the magic’s attack, and cold in the pit of her soul at the thought that her love for her brother might end up destroying them both.

The one vampire who could possibly help her would never do so. He’d turn his back on her, betraying the strange connection between them all over again.

Chapter Thirteen

A
rturo’s temper simmered the entire ride back from the Crux, frustration like an itch beneath his skin he couldn’t scratch. When they reached Gonzaga Castle’s courtyard, he swung the sorceress off her mount, gripped her arm, and hauled her inside and downstairs, back to her room before Cristoff demanded her attendance . . . and subjugation. Before he himself lost control and began railing at her for all to see and hear.

She quaked beneath his hand, her fear not a sweet bright burst in his mouth but a cold, tasteless misery he wanted nothing to do with because the fear wasn’t for herself. Not an ounce of it. It was all for that damnable brother of hers.

He unlocked her door and shoved her inside, keeping hold of her so she wouldn’t fall. Honey hair swung, sending sunshine warmth into the air even as frosty green eyes turned to glare at him, accusatory. Hurt.

He rued the day he’d found her. No, he didn’t. If he hadn’t shown up when he did, Quinn Lennox would be dead, and he didn’t wish that. But he could heartily regret that he’d been the one to save her, to become entangled in her fate. To become enchanted by her beauty and strength, and heartily exasperated by her obstinate, unbending, single-minded insistence on finding her brother.

Slamming the door behind him, he grabbed her by the shoulders, resisting . . . barely . . . the urge to shake her. “You are strong,
cara.
Strong as steel, yet you allow your feelings for another to make you
weak.
”

“He’s my brother!”

“He has no future!” The words were harsh, but she had to understand. “He is dead, Quinn. Perhaps already. Perhaps in the Games this week. Both would be a blessing, for if Cristoff brings him here to use against you, he will suffer more than you can possibly imagine. And it will destroy you.”

Her face paled. Her trembling grew worse, and he hated it.

His fingers tightened, then gentled on her shoulders. “You must let him go,
cara.
Say good-bye to him in your heart.”

“Never!”

Arturo released her. Just as he urged her to cease to care about her brother’s fate, so, too, he must cease to care about hers. She was nothing to him but his charge and the potential savior of Vamp City. A thorn in his side, for all that she intrigued him. But that was the way of a sorceress, was it not? To enchant and enthrall, even if she did so unintentionally with her spirit, with her smile, which appeared all too rarely, and with the unaccountable sunshine that lived in her hair, her touch, her kiss. Were she just a human, he would keep her for his slave, but this sorceress was becoming far too much trouble. Cristoff had made him responsible for the woman’s safety, but once the magic was renewed, he was done with her. What became of her then was not his concern.

His mind told him to turn away, to leave her to her obsessive thoughts of freeing her brother, but his own obsession reared its head, and he was helpless to deny himself one more taste. He took her face in his hands, her skin like silk beneath his palms, warm, fragrant, seductive. Green eyes snapped, but within the temper rose tendrils of a need that matched his own. Lush lips parted in an invitation he’d no intention of denying.

The moment his lips touched hers, he warmed, feeling the sun on his shoulders and back, and he sighed with pleasure at the way she met his kiss, at the way her arms slipped around his neck. He hauled her into his arms until their bodies molded together, a perfect fit—hard and soft, cool and warm, male and female—as his tongue swept inside her mouth, deepening the kiss, tasting sun-warmed peaches.

He longed to take her. His body throbbed with the need to part her thighs and make them one. His fangs ached to drop, to lengthen, to prepare for penetration of a different kind. His hand cupped her derrière, pulling her against his erection, arching against her as he fought the hunger tugging at his fangs. They still frightened her, as adept as she was at hiding it. And he hated that fear. He would not take her so long as she feared him. But his hunger for her was becoming more and more fierce, more and more difficult to control.

Wrenching away from her, from the temptation he was nearly helpless to resist, he released her and stepped back, his fangs and cock throbbing in equal measure. Her lips were damp and swollen from his kiss, her eyes dark with desire, and he had to fist his hands to keep from reaching for her and finishing what they’d begun. Would she welcome him without fear this time? Was she ready to take him into her body?

With Herculean effort, he turned away. The last thing he needed was to fall even further under the sorceress’s spell. And he had a very bad feeling that once they’d become one, he’d find it impossible ever to turn away from her again.

Q
uinn stared at the door Arturo had just closed, feeling hot and chilled, such a tangle of conflicting emotions. His kiss melted and soothed even as it made her tense and trembling with wanting, a desire that was far from gone. But she was so angry with him, so disappointed that he refused to help her against Cristoff.

Dear God, what
have I
done?
She should never have told them about her brother, never told any of them. Her only remaining hope was that Arturo had been telling her the truth when he’d claimed that snatching Zack from a rival vamp master could lead to war. That alone might give Cristoff pause. Then again, she got the strong feeling that Cristoff wouldn’t let anything hold him back if he wanted something. And if he thought snatching Zack would force her to give him what he wanted, he wouldn’t hesitate.

She pulled off her boots and sank down onto the soft bed, lying back, her fists to her eyes as she struggled to block out the image of Zack’s being hauled before her, his fingers cut off one by one as she was forced to watch. Bile rose in the back of her throat, her stomach clenching, her eyes stinging. Hatred burned inside her for the monster who could threaten such an atrocity with such ease, one who’d done it before and so much worse. So much worse.

In that moment, she hated Arturo,
hated
him for his loyalty to such a man, such a creature. He would stand there and watch his master torture her brother and refuse to say one word to stop him. She knew it, and she couldn’t forgive him for that. Why did she keep letting him kiss her?

Swiping at the tears that were slipping down into her hair, she blinked, staring up at the ceiling. She let him because she liked it. She liked
him,
dammit. The lesser of a hundred evils, and all that, she supposed. Compared to Cristoff, he was a certified saint. But he was also a manipulator. A liar, when it suited him. And he was utterly loyal to a monster.

Rolling onto her side, she curled into the fetal position and let misery and, finally, sleep, carry her away.

Q
uinn stood in the frozen food aisle of the grocery store, staring at the door of the ice-cream section, which had begun to bulge strangely. Light suddenly burst out around the edges. Quinn gasped and lunged, pressing against it. No! The light pushed to escape, screaming in her ears, fighting against her until the door pulsed and groaned, threatening to shatter. But she held on tight, turning to push her back against the freezing glass. No! If the light escaped, something terrible would happen. Terrible!

Across the aisle, twelve-year-old Zack sat, leaning back against the frozen-orange-juice door, his legs crossed, head bent low over his GameBoy.

Don’t look, Zack.

She struggled against the troublesome, stubborn light until she was panting from exertion, her arms weak with strain. But she couldn’t stop fighting. If she pushed hard enough and long enough, the light would die and go away. No one would ever know.

Zack would never know.

Quinn woke with a start, sitting up, groggy and confused.

A sound. At the door.

She tensed as the door opened, then frowned as a woman she’d never seen before slipped inside. A woman with the faintly glowing hair of a Slava.

Quinn struggled out of the pit of the bed and onto her feet, brushing her tangled hair out of her face.

The woman, as tall as Quinn and dressed in black pants and a black T-shirt that had been turned inside out, clasped her hands nervously in front of her. “I’m here to help you escape.”

Quinn’s flesh tingled. “Why?” She shook her head, trying to clear it. Was she still dreaming?

Impatience crossed plain, sharp features, lightning-fast. “Grant sent me. Do you want to leave Vamp City or not?” With that, she opened the door, looked both ways, and slipped outside.

Crap.
Give a girl a minute to wake up before you spring something like that.
But . . . hell, yes,
I
want
to escape.

Quinn grabbed her boots and slipped out the door, closing it behind her, then, on silent feet, ran after the woman. She caught up to her just as the woman stopped in front of a door four down from Quinn’s own and clicked her fingernails against it, one after the other, in a careful rhythm. A moment later, the door opened.

The woman slipped inside, and Quinn followed, nodding to the man holding the door, a tall, dark-skinned male dressed in the same all-black clothing as the woman, an impressive dragon tattoo curling around his forearm. But his close-cropped curls were lacking that Slava shine. Holy hell.

As he closed the door behind him, she whirled on him. “You’re a vampire.”

“No way.” He turned and lifted his shirt, showing her a back sporting fresh, ugly welts that probably looked a lot like the ones decorating her own back now. “New slave, just like you. Hopefully, a soon-to-be ex-slave. Move,” he said stiffly.

Quinn turned back to the room—one identical to her own except for the manhole in the center of the floor. And the ladder leading down.

Escape.
If this was a dream, she was going to be thoroughly pissed.

The woman grabbed a flashlight off the washstand as the man started down the ladder. Quinn shoved her feet in her boots and tied the laces with fast, excited fingers.

“Quickly.” At the woman’s silent urging to precede her down, Quinn hurried to the hole, grabbed the top rail, and swung herself onto the ladder. As she started down, she heard the woman follow, accompanied by the soft squeak of hinges and the click of the hatch. The room’s light disappeared, to be replaced by the flashlight beam. How was such an obvious manhole hidden from the vampires’ eyes?

Down and down she climbed, damp rock on every side. She knew nothing about these people, whether they were really sent by Grant, whether Grant was even friend or foe. But any risk was worth the chance of escape and the possibility of finding Zack before Cristoff went after him.

She heard booted feet hit the stone floor below her and knew that the man must have landed. A second flashlight erupted behind her, allowing her to see the last few rungs. The man said nothing as she joined him, but his eyes gleamed with excitement. Why? Had these two been sent by another of Cristoff’s rivals to kidnap her? Was this guy looking for some kind of reward for bringing her in?

It didn’t matter. One way or another, she’d make this work to her advantage.

The woman completed her descent, then led the way down a long tunnel deep beneath the castle as Quinn followed, the man bringing up the rear.

Finally, the woman stopped, rapping softly on what appeared to be solid rock. How were there tunnels in the rock this far below D.C. . . . and no water? She thought this part of D.C. had been built on a swamp. Then again, this wasn’t D.C., was it?

To her surprise, a narrow, short strip of rock swung open. A door. For midgets.

The woman bent low and swept under. Quinn hesitated only a moment before doing the same.
In for a penny, in for a pound.

On the other side, she straightened, taking in a cave easily three times the size of her apartment back home, the walls unadorned except for the three lanterns sitting on various natural shelves, their light flickering over the damp walls. Around the cave, close to a dozen people stood watching her, as many men as women, all dressed similarly to the first two in varying shades of black and navy, some with shoes or boots, others barefoot. None of them had hair with that phosphorescent glow except the woman who’d come for her.

And Grant Blackstone.

He stepped forward, the only one still dressed in nineteenth-century landowner garb, his expression no more friendly than it had been any other time she’d met him. “I have a proposition for you, sorceress.”

Nice to see you, too, Grant.
“What’s the proposition?” And really, was she likely to say no? Even if she wanted to, she probably couldn’t find her way back to her jail cell. And she certainly didn’t want to.

“I want you to free these slaves.” His hand waved to encompass the entire lot.

“And how am I supposed to do that?”

“Send them through a sunbeam.”