Blood Shadows (17 page)

She stuck out her bottom lip in a pout. “I don’t fear you, Nachari!” She punctuated the words with a sudden lunge at the wizard; and with a harsh swipe from her hand, she left a trail of blood on his upper lip in the wake of a sharp talon.

Nachari closed his eyes, licked the blood from his lips, and chuckled. “Is that supposed to intimidate me?”

Her mouth fell open.

“Sit down,” he commanded, motioning to the mattress beside him.

Still stunned, Noiro took a step toward the bed and sat down—at the foot—where she could watch him guardedly in case he was up to something.

He looked her up and down and shook his head with disappointment. “This will never do.”

Noiro stomped her foot in frustration. “What do you mean?”

“This,” he repeated, gesturing toward her dress and shoes. He reached up to grab a lock of her blond hair, and she almost fell from the bed in surprise. “Touchy, are we?” he rasped.

“No, and how dare you insult my—”

“I don’t like it,” he said softly, cutting her off in midsentence. “This fake look. All these different appearances. One day, you’re a redhead, the next a brunette, the next a bleached blonde. To whom do you think you are engaging?”

Noiro stood up then.

She walked to the other side of the room and stared at him, incredulous. She would rip those raven locks from his scalp and shove them down his arrogant throat; she would choke him while she disemboweled him, and then she would detach his manhood from his body just to see him scream…before he grew it back. To whom did he think
he
was engaging?

“What do you know about Vampiric conception?” he asked, ignoring what had to be a feral look in her eyes.

“What!” she demanded.

“Conceiving—
a
child
—with a vampire. What do you know about it?”

Noiro huffed her indignation. “I know how to debase you…and torture you…like a little—”

He waved his hand in dismissal.

He
was dismissing
her
?

“So you know about speaking a pregnancy into being and focused intention, I assume?” Before she could respond, he continued: “The fact that a male vampire must
command
a pregnancy in a female?” He paused, possibly for effect. “The fact that his seed will never take root unless he wills it to do so?
Tells
it to do so?” He sat back on the bed and regarded her curiously. “You can torture me, I suppose. You can debase me like a little—what is it?
Bitch
?” He laughed then. “You can even dismember me for fun—isn’t that what you were thinking, my dear demoness?—but what you can never do is conceive my child…without my consent.”

For the first time since Nachari had come to the Valley of Death and Shadows, Noiro was speechless. She hadn’t considered this information. In fact, it hadn’t even occurred to her before that she actually needed him to
want
to get her pregnant.

And by all the demon lords, it changed everything.

Shit.

Shit!

“Now then,” he whispered, ignoring the look of bewilderment on her face. “The way I see it, perhaps we can assist each other.”

Noiro narrowed her gaze. She didn’t trust this wizard…at all. “Why would I help you—and risk Ademordna’s wrath?” She sneered. “If you think I would ever help you to escape this place, or do anything to undermine my king—then you’re as stupid as you are handsome.” She squawked in defiance. “Never, Wizard.
Never
.”

He sat quietly on the bed, just staring at her. After an extended period of time had passed, he sighed. “Way too much drama, Noiro: Males don’t really care for that. Are you finished?”

Noiro felt her face flush with heat.

“
Now then
…you will bring me four simple things in exchange for my favors: In exchange for a kiss, you will bring me a frog from the marsh and seas of the Eastern Province; in exchange for my touch, you will bring me a scorpion from the desert region of the Southern Province; you will provide a spider from the West, the mountain territory, in exchange for my embrace; and a snake from the North, the expansive jungles, will suffice for my…consent to a pregnancy.”

Noiro blanched. “Are you insane, Wizard? And just what type of magic will you employ with such powerful elements—from all four directions? Representing all four regions, no less?” She scowled in derision. “The soul of the underworld itself would be at your command. Such an act would be treason.”

“No,” he argued. “For one such as you, Noiro—a woman of your talent and ambition—such an act will be child’s play. If I’m going to give you a son, and you’re going to make him a king, you will need my magic to succeed. I suppose you haven’t considered that, either.”

Noiro considered his words…very carefully. Was it really possible—would he help her to achieve her aim? And how did he know what she wanted—well, outside of the fact that she was always trying to get him to take off his clothes and join her in bed.

Why not
, she wondered.

What else did the wizard have on his plate?

It wasn’t like he had something else to do, somewhere else to go… “Even if I could—”

“I’m not finished,” he barked in a harsh, clipped tone.

Noiro stood motionless, waiting to hear him out—and whatever he had to say had better be good, or she would kill him for his insolence. Wondering which it would be, she whispered, “What else?”

“I will need to trust you, just as you trust me. To know that we are—how should I say it?—in this together.”

She laughed, mocking him.
As if he would ever truly be on her side
. Not unless she had some kind of control over him, some way to keep him submissive and weak.

“You will share a secret with me—any secret—I don’t care what it is, but it must be important, something I would never otherwise discover .” He lowered his voice. “Something that Ademordna would never want me to know.”

“Why?” she asked.

“So that we are both…beholden…to each other. Less likely to betray one another.”

Noiro shook her head. The male was insane. Torture had taken his good sense as well as his reason. He was trying to get them both permanently…dead. “Why would I place myself in your—”

“And you will do it all in twenty-five days.”

This habit of interrupting was really getting old. “Twenty-five days? Fine, dear wizard, I’ll bite:
Why
?”

He lay back on the bed, folded his arms behind his head—chains and all—and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Because you, my sweet, are not the only female in the underworld that has approached me…for a child. You are not the only demoness that wants my offspring. In other words—you’re not my only option. If you choose to be the one who bears my son, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine, too. However, whatever you decide, it will be done within twenty-five days, or I swear on my brothers’ souls that I will do everything within my power to plant a son in someone else’s womb.”

That was it. Noiro had finally heard enough.

The vampire was beyond insane.

He was insolent, indefensibly arrogant, and just plain delusional. And she would not put up with it a moment longer. Launching herself across the room, she shed her buxom blond persona, released her fangs, and dove at his neck, talons ready to rip him to shreds.

As she descended upon his prone body, he twisted to the right. Huge, black-and-emerald wings shot forth from his back as arms of molten steel locked around her back, and she instantly found herself beneath him, rather than above him, rotated and pressed into the mattress.

As the air left her lungs, a powerful thigh shot between her legs and pinned her to the bed.

Where was this sudden strength coming from?

He was in the Valley of Death and Shadows.

Her domain.

Her world.

The laws of physics favored her dominance and strength—not his—so why then was he manhandling her so easily?

Noiro felt the not-so-subtle taint of magic permeate the air, and she knew he had invoked some sort of spell. Dear Dark Lords, what kind of power did this male possess?

She wriggled and writhed beneath him, bucking like a wild animal, prepared to scream for Lord Ademordna; but before she could cry out, he placed his forearm against her larynx and thrust it deep into her throat, cutting off her airway. It felt like a thousand pounds of pressure grinding against her throat as he rendered her defenseless. And then he did the most unexpected thing possible: He rotated his hips in a slow, exaggerated grind against her core; and he growled the words: “Be still.”

Noiro froze, caught between rage, terror, and spiraling desire. She simply lay beneath the arousing wizard and waited to see what he would say or do next.

He was glaring down at her now, and his eyes were like two radiating jewels heated with fire. They were burning holes through her reason, and Hades help her, she knew in that moment that she would trade her soul, if not her immortality, to have this male inside her. She would commit treason for this inferior being, whose very gaze wielded more power than all the inhabitants of hell.

And then, she also realized that she had dropped her persona, that the female staring back at him was not a beautiful blonde but a hideous demon with distorted features and beady yellow eyes. She started to correct it, but he let up on her throat and slowly shook his head. “No,” he insisted. “Do not.”

Noiro froze. “But, you…you are from another realm…where males prefer—”

“What?” He scowled. “You know
nothing
about me. Or my preferences.” With that, he slowly lowered his head, pressed his lips to hers, and
kissed
her, passionate and hard.

His lips teased her senses, his tongue threatened her sanity, and his breath infused her debased soul with a living, breathing power unlike anything she had ever felt before. Her body was literally humming beneath him.

When at last he pulled away, she felt abandoned and empty, like a corpse reaching out to reclaim its soul.
So that’s what a being of light
is
infused with
. The very idea left her reeling with both disgust and intrigue…confusion. She hated what he was, yet the taste of him was beyond enticing. It was animating. Intoxicating.

Life-giving.

Sustaining.

“Nachari.” She breathed out his name in a breathless whisper.

He rolled off her then, propped his weight on one arm, and looked down into her eyes. “If I am to feel anything for you, Noiro—and in order to sire a child with you, I must feel
something
—then I need to see your true face, know the real demoness. No false appearances.”

Noiro hissed her confusion until, at last, all the air drained out of her body. Her forked tongue lolled out of her mouth and draped to the side as she struggled for breath.

He didn’t blink.

He didn’t even flinch at the sight.

He just continued to stare into her eyes—which had to appear as twin balls of fire—and waited for her acquiescence.

Noiro stretched her neck up to kiss him again, and he backed away.

“Four gifts,” he whispered, “and one secret. The deadline is twenty-five days. That is my price.”

She held his gaze and nodded. “You swear…” She licked her bottom lip. “If I bring you these things, and it will take a tremendous amount of risk and time to get them, you will—”

“Twenty-five days,” he reiterated. “And I swear to you, I will give you…all that you are asking for.” He sat up abruptly then and motioned toward the door.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice sounding frantic, distressed.

“Ademordna comes early…for my torture.”

She jumped up and smoothed herself out—afraid that somehow the Dark Lord would know what they’d been up to.

“You will not participate in my torture today, understood?” he warned her. “
That
I will not abide.”

She nodded. “A frog from the East, a scorpion from the desert, a spider from the mountains, and a snake from the North. This is what you ask?”

“And a secret…from your soul.”

Noiro hissed and drew back, not sure if she should oblige him, kill him, or report him. “Anything else?” she asked sarcastically, feeling all at once insubstantial and resentful.

Nachari smiled. “Yes, my love.” His voice was scarcely audible.

She leaned forward and tilted her head, literally offering an ear. “What?”

“Get out of my room.”

Deanna Dubois toweled off from her recent shower, put on a pair of warm, hip-hugging pajamas, and gathered a basket of her belongings. As she padded down the stairs and through the hall to Nachari’s room, she made a mental note of the basket’s contents, all things she had purchased earlier that day with Jocelyn: There were healing massage oils—not that she would actually have the courage to massage a sleeping vampire—but the scents were known to be therapeutic in their own right; she had soft, soothing music—Native flute, Celtic guitar, and Gregorian chants; and she had a copy of Nachari’s favorite work of fiction, according to his brother Kagen,
A
Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens.