Eternal Hunger (34 page)

“I love you, Alexander,” she said, her arms going around his neck, pulling him close.

“And I love you. My truest mate.” He thrust into her, going as far as her body would allow, and when Sara could no longer control her own need, her own hunger, she bit into the skin of his shoulder, the spot that belonged to her, that had called to her so many times, and when she tasted the eternal sweetness her new life’s blood, she drank deep.

C
hristmas had come to his old friend’s neighborhood. Lights glowed from rooftops and around white picket fences, and snow was piled in three-foot drifts atop the dead grass, easing the way for the five vampires who walked up the drive.

Alexander turned to Sara, keeper of his heart, blood of his blood, and grinned. “Are you ready, my love?”

“Yes.” The tense smile she flashed him showed her beauty, and the tips of a nearly mature set of retracted fangs that had come with the pleasure of feeding from her true mate.

Coming to stand beside his sister, Gray offered her a squeeze on the shoulder. “It’s all she ever wanted, Sara. You back home. There’s nothing to feel nervous about.”

Alexander reached for the brass knocker, but never made it. Didn’t have to. The door was pulled wide and there stood the female he’d escaped the
credenti
with so long ago. Celestine. She looked the same, her dark hair pulled into a knot at the top of her head, her heart-shaped face pale but shrewd. Her pale blue eyes went to her children first and she bit her lip. “Sarafena. Gray-son. You’re home. My life can be lived once again.”

Alexander looked down at his mate, smiled as he saw her eyes fill with tears and her hand reach out for the older female’s pale one. It would take time, as all things of value did, but he would help them both find happiness and forgiveness within their own hearts, as each, in their own ways, had helped him find a new life.

“Well, now ...” Celestine caught sight of the three men behind her children. “My old friends.”

“In the flesh,” Alexander said, taking the female’s other hand.

Celestine smiled, the tips of her canines showing. “Come in, all of you. There is much to say, much to explain.”

Alexander followed Sara and Gray into the house, Lucian and Nicholas trailing behind.

“Lose our number, eh, Celie?” the young albino quipped, stalking into the foyer.

Celestine snorted. “Still an asshole, I see, Luca.”

Everyone laughed, but the merry sound was short-lived. Before them on the foyer wall, the pale green paint had begun to move, sway, pulse.

“Oh God, no,” Sara muttered under her breath.

Alexander growled and blocked both females with his body. But nothing could stop what was happening, nothing could erase the two words that leaped out at him.

 

DARE LIVES.

 

“Alex.”

Alexander turned at the sound of Nicholas’s call. Still outside on the stoop, the middle brother was doubled over, panting, his hands shaking with a sensation that Alexander knew all too well. Soon the
paven
would be hit by a rod of pain so fierce and debilitating that the very breath would be ripped from his lungs.

Dare lived.

And Nicholas Roman had just been sent through morpho.

Don’t miss the next dark and exciting novel in the Mark of the Vampire series,

Coming from Signet Eclipse in April 2011.

A
s the blue light of day succumbed to the pale lavender of evening, a bitter cold moved over the land, shook the snow from the trees, and curled around the
veana
and the
balas
who sat on the front steps of the small
credenti
elementary school. The snow on the ground, which had been melting just a few hours earlier, now glistened under the rising moon as water quickly turned back to ice. It was nearing six p.m., and in accordance with the laws of the Order, it was time to end the labor of the day and begin the calm of night. Behind them, the school was dark and empty. Most residents of the
credenti
had left their work or schooling and had entered their homes for their family meal and reflection. Kate Everborne, however, had no family to go home to. What she did have was a belief that reflection was for unthinking drones and the unwelcome responsibility of a seven-year-old
balas
, who once again had to be watched until his mother showed up.

“She’s not coming.”

Kate glanced down at the boy. With his large black eyes and shock of white hair, he didn’t blend in well. She knew how that was. “She’s coming. She’s just late.”

“She’s always late,” he grumbled.

“Give her a break, kid. She’s doing the best she can.”

“She should work inside the
credenti
. Like you. Do what
veanas
are supposed to do.”

The smile on Kate’s face was false and forced. The last thing in the world she wanted to be doing was living inside the
credenti
, any
credenti
. And her work at the elementary school, passing out lentils and fruit during midmeal—Well, that was utter bullshit, a cover-up, a way to control her.

But she didn’t have a choice. Not yet.

“She dishonors my father’s memory by leaving the
credenti
,” the boy continued.

“You’re a good kid, Ladd, but right now you’re acting like a brat.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t care.”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

“I don’t care about me and I don’t care about her.” He puffed out his lips. “Maybe I wish she’d never come.”

“Maybe she wishes that, too,” Kate said dryly.

Ladd’s eyes grew wide and
balas
-wet as he stared up at her, took in what she’d just said, and molded it into the worst-possible abandonment scenario.

Ah, shit.
Kate released a weary breath. She could be a real asshole sometimes. “Listen, kid, I didn’t mean it like that. I was talking about the feeling of freedom some vampires feel when they step outside—”

“I’m here. I’m here.” Mirabelle Letts came running across the tree-littered play yard toward them, her feet sinking calf deep in the heavy snow. She was a pretty
veana
, small, curvy, with soft brown doe eyes that did their best to exude happiness. Slightly breathless, she called out, “Sorry, Kate.”

“No problem,” Kate returned, coming to her feet. She was just relieved the
veana
had shown up. She really sucked with kids, wasn’t sure what to say to them, how to comfort them. Sticking her in a school hadn’t been the Order’s smartest move, but hell, she hadn’t been about to complain—not with two months left on her work release.

“Mommy! I see you!” Ladd jumped to his feet and waved his arms like he was landing planes, all anger gone now.

Kate chuckled at the quick recovery. At Ladd’s age, it seemed that no matter what a parent did, said, or forgot, they were always a welcome sight.

No more than ten feet away, Mirabelle waved back at her child as she waded through the snow. “Training went over and there was a gardening demonstration—”

Something shot out of the shadows of the trees, cutting off Mirabelle’s words. A
paven
, tall and dark. In under a second, he was on Mirabelle. Kate opened her mouth to scream when she saw a silver flash. A knife! Oh, shit. No! Terror locked the scream in her chest, and she fought the dual pulls of running to help the
veana
and protecting the young
balas
at her side.

Before she could make her choice, the
paven
slashed both of Mirabelle’s thighs, then plunged the knife deep into her chest.

A piercing scream whipped through the night and jerked Kate from her horror.
Ladd.
He tried to run to his mother, but Kate caught him in her arms and held him back. Blood rushed river-quick from the wounds on Mirabelle’s legs, and as the attacker yanked the blade from her chest, she dropped to the ground.

The dark-haired male suddenly glanced up, locked eyes with Kate, and grinned.
Fuck.
It was there in his eyes, in his smile—hunger to spill blood. He was going to take out her and the kid. The town was a quarter mile away, on the other side of the forest and playfield. Could she get there with the boy? If not, she was going to have to fight off this
paven
herself or—

God, did she have it within her anymore? The power, the gift that had both saved and sent her to prison ten years ago? Or had the Order removed it for good?

The butcher
paven
started toward her and Ladd. Knowing she couldn’t outrun him, not with the boy, Kate delved inside her head, attempted to find and harness the power she’d been gifted as a
balas
.

But it was gone.

“Help!” she screamed, praying there was one soul disobeying the Order tonight, walking through the forest or meeting someone behind the school. “We need help over here!”

But she heard nothing. No one.

She shoved Ladd behind her back, opened her arms to the evil coming at her, and flashed her fangs.
Come and get it then, asshole.
His smile widened, the moonlight catching the tips of his fangs. Then suddenly he stopped, lifted his chin, and sniffed the air. With a growl of annoyance, he turned around and ran back across the field and into the trees.

Kate sucked in the bitterly cold air scented with blood and screamed again. “Help!” Hoping to God that Mirabelle was still alive, Kate raced to her side, Ladd behind her. The
veana
’s eyes were open, but her quick, shallow breaths signaled how close to death she was. Kate dropped down in the snow and pressed her hands to the gaping wound in the female’s chest. Forcing up the healing energy all Pureblood
veana
’s possessed, she blew on the wounds in Mirabelle’s thighs—back and forth, back and forth, each breath a show in pure determination and desperation. But the cuts were so deep, the femoral artery calculatedly severed. Red death seeped between her fingers, over the
veana
’s chest, spilling out onto the pure white powdered floor.

“Goddammit!” Kate screamed. “We need help here!” What a lost cause. They weren’t coming. No one was coming. All those selfless, community-first, pious bastards were huddled around a table in their homes
reflecting
while one of their own needed them.

Ladd laid his head on his mother’s belly and howled in misery.

Mirabelle’s eyes were glassy as she hovered somewhere between this world and the next. Her gaze flickered toward her son, then back up to Kate. “Take him,” she uttered through short gasps of breath.

“Shhh,” Kate said. “Don’t talk.”

“Take him. Please. He can’t be tested.”

Lifting her head again, Kate yelled one last time into the frigid air, “We need help!”

“No!” Mirabelle rasped. “Please. Don’t want them . . . Please, take the boy.”

She was delusional, had to be. Kate shook her head. “He’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

Mirabelle whispered something.

“I can’t hear you ...” Kate lowered her head, her ear to the female’s mouth.

“He will be . . . caged if they find out.”

“Find out what?” Kate uttered, keeping her ear close to the female’s lips.

And in the last seconds before her death, Mirabelle revealed not only her secrets, but her desperate plea to save her son’s life, all to the one vampire on earth who could do nothing for her.