Immortal Craving (Dark Dynasties) (25 page)

“Come on, Bailey. Take it. It’s all I have to give you now. Drink,
meri jaan
.”

She was so still, her skin translucent in the dark. For a few terrible seconds, he thought he was too late, that her spirit had left her while he haggled with the demon to let her live. But then he felt the faint pressure of her lips against his wrist, the first tentative swallow.

Tasmin nearly sobbed with relief.

“That’s it,” he encouraged her, stroking the back of her head where he cradled it. “Drink. As much as you need.”

He heard a hoarse shout and looked up to see Lily, her clothes torn and bloodied, racing through the trees toward him. The look on her face was murderous, and her hands glowed with white fire. With a sense of calm that had long escaped him, Tasmin reached for his power the way he once had, without fear.

Golden light whipped around him, spiraling out of him and stopping Lily in her tracks. She paused, puzzled, and watched things that weren’t really there, forgetting her fury of only a second before.

Deftly, Tasmin wove his energy around himself and Bailey, a protective cocoon while she revived. Beyond, he saw Ty, even more battered than his wife, limp into view. He went to her side, silver eyes going blurry as the ancient magic rippled through him, keeping him from seeing what was really happening.

And still Bailey drank, pulling hungrily at him now.
He could feel the first faint pricks of her fangs, and sagged against her in his relief.

He no longer had a heart worth giving, but this was one gift he could leave her with, this woman who had started to heal him with her gentle touch and lively tongue.

Soon, she would be the last of his kind… and she would do the Rakshasa proud.

S
HE AWAKENED WITH A GASP
, sitting bolt upright and tensing to run from—

What had she been running from? Bay blinked rapidly, unable to remember. Had she been dreaming?

She forced herself to stay put, waiting for logic to calm instinct. She was in bed. She’d been having a nightmare. A really, really bad nightmare.

And now she was in a bedroom she absolutely did not recognize.

With a creeping sense of dread, Bay took in her surroundings slowly as she woke the rest of the way up. She was in a big, beautiful bed, in a big, beautiful room decorated with gleaming mahogany furniture and oil paintings in heavy, ornate frames. Ahead of her, a set of double doors opened onto a sitting room, and to her right, another door led into a darkened bathroom. Wherever she was, the owner had old money.

Memory trickled back slowly. It was fuzzy at first. She clearly remembered being at Lily’s. And then…

Oh God.
Oh God.

Images collided with one another, each one worse than the next. The trip. The attack. Grimm. That
bastard
, dragging her into the woods and then… then…

There had been a roar. Tasmin? But she didn’t remember if Tasmin had ever gotten to her. She didn’t remember anything past seeing the Ptolemy with her blood dripping from his mouth, looking into the distance.

Which meant she could be anywhere. Including in the Ptolemy court.

Because her “gift” had been becoming one of them, a slap in the face to Lily, a mark that could never be removed. A human life that could never be given back.

Carefully, panic tickling the back of her throat, Bay held out her arms and examined them. Normal enough. She wasn’t wearing her clothes anymore—someone had put her in a silky nightgown, the kind she’d often admired but never bothered to buy for herself. She patted at her legs beneath the covers. They seemed to still be there, so that was something. Bay moved back up, skimming her hands over her breasts, her stomach and chest.

Nothing
felt
different.

Then she realized that the room was pitch-dark, and she could see everything as plain as day.

Bay sucked in a breath, the only way she managed not to scream. That was when she felt the other changes. She ran her tongue over incisors that had grown longer and sharp, ran her hands through hair that now fell in soft, silken waves that were an ideal version of what she’d been
born with. Even her skin felt different, smoother, softer… cooler.

She sat there a moment in the dark, trying to let it sink in.

She’d been attacked. Her friends and dog were very possibly dead. And she’d been made a vampire without ever having had the choice, just as Lily had feared.

“I—I need to know where I am,” she stammered to herself, mostly to hear the sound of her own voice. That, at least, hadn’t changed, and was reassuring in some small way. Bay steeled herself, pulled off the thick burgundy comforter, and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her feet sank into a plush rug when she stood and walked toward the bathroom.

Movement was a strange sensation. She felt strong and graceful in a way she never had before—and she hadn’t exactly been a slug. Out of habit, she reached out, her hand hunting for the light switch on her way into the room. She never flipped the switch, though. Bay caught sight of herself in the mirror first, crying out in shock before she could stop herself.

Her eyes… her eyes were the same glowing, burning gold as Tasmin’s, lion’s eyes in the dark. Bay dropped her gaze to her collarbone and saw the paw formed of curling flames, then came back up to stare into the alien eyes that somehow now belonged to her.

Nothing made sense. Nothing.

She heard a door open, the whisper of running feet barely touching the rug. Then Lily was there, very much alive, and somehow more vibrant than she’d ever seemed before. They stood staring at one another for a moment, Lily stopping just inside the door.

Bay tried to ask all the questions she had, but all she could see were a Ptolemy’s burning green eyes in her memory, with all the desperate terror he had brought with him. That had been real, hadn’t it?

“How?” she asked, beginning to shake. “What happened to me?”

“Oh, honey,” Lily sighed, and opened her arms. “Come here. Just… come here.”

Bay slid into her friend’s arms and wept.

Tasmin sat stiffly in the library, one hand on his knee, the other on the dog that hadn’t left his side since the disaster of two nights ago. He sympathized with the beast—Grimm was as traumatized as most of the Lilim were by the battles fought on the way out of Tipton. If a band of them hadn’t joined up with Ty and Lily when they had, the dynasty would have ended that night. Arsinöe might not have counted on stopping them in their tracks, but she had certainly put enough effort behind this.

Surprisingly few had been lost in the fighting… but he guessed that was because most of the focus had been on Lily, and she was a formidable opponent even when hideously outnumbered. Arsinöe underestimated her.

Or maybe not. She’d intended for Lily to live and see how she’d marked Bailey, claiming the woman closest to her for the Ptolemy. A living reminder of Arsinöe’s dominion over the world of night. And over her.

The door to the library opened, and Tasmin looked up, his jaw set. Lily walked in, looking first at her husband and Vlad Dracul, who stood at a long table poring over some dusty tome together. This was the Dracul’s library,
and would have been a fascinating place if Tasmin had been able to concentrate.

Instead, it was nothing but another cage.

“She’s awake,” Lily said to the two men. She studiously ignored him, much as she had since they’d arrived. Though he’d tried to explain, and though the remains of Bailey’s true attacker had littered the ground around them, Tasmin didn’t think she was ready to fully believe him. More, he wasn’t sure she would ever forgive him for weaving the magic that had kept her and Ty from pulling Bailey from his arms as she drank from him.

Lily might be kind, but he was still an outsider with some serious problems… and he had claimed something that, in her eyes, he had no business claiming. She was probably right. But he couldn’t regret it. Not when Bailey still breathed.

Vlad frowned, coming around the table toward her. “How is she? Does she need another sedative draught? I hate to keep her under any longer, but sometimes, if the siring is too traumatic…”

He trailed off, and Tasmin flexed his claws, feeling the tips of them slide through his jeans and prick his knee. He knew what Vlad meant and wouldn’t say. A violent siring could change a person permanently, could make them violent themselves… or just drive them mad. He’d hoped that taking over the process and being the one to turn her would make the difference, along with Bailey’s strength. But he didn’t know.

It was a great relief when Lily shook her head. “No, she’s doing all right. Shaken, upset, but all right.”

It was a surprise when Lily turned to address him, managing to meet his eyes with something less than a
murderous glare. It wasn’t a friendly look, but much of the heat had gone out of it since he’d seen her early in the day.

“She wants to see you.”

He’d wanted this and feared it since they’d arrived here in Chicago. It might have been better if he’d left by now. The demon within’s silence was deafening. It seemed to have retreated from his consciousness completely, but for the strange sense he had that it was simply waiting.

Waiting for the time when it would extract its price from him. Tasmin knew, somehow, that it wouldn’t be long.

He stood slowly, never taking his eyes off of the queen of the Lilim. She stared back warily.

“You’re… sure?” he asked. He’d had visions of being told that Bailey wanted him out of her life, wanted him dead. A part of him insisted it would be easier for her if that were the case. But more of him wanted desperately to see her again. He had done this, Tasmin reminded himself. This had been his choice, to tie himself to her this way, though a true mate bond hadn’t been forged. Nor would it be, unless she bit him of her own volition, and he had no intention of allowing that.

But he could still taste her on his lips, would swear that her blood still mingled with his. His need for her had only grown.

And he had no way of knowing whether that was his own folly, the sadistic torment of the demon… or something else.

For the thousandth time since that awful night, he wished for his pride brothers. He was weary of standing
on his own in this unfamiliar world, feeling his way in the dark.

“I’m sure,” Lily said. “I’ll walk you up.”

It wasn’t a question, but a command. She wanted to speak with him alone. Tasmin crossed the room to her, sharing a look with Ty. The queen’s consort hadn’t said much, but what he had said had indicated a surprising amount of sympathy. It was the last place he’d expected it to come from. But then, doing what needed to be done in order to protect someone… He thought Ty might know quite a lot about that.

Lily glided out into the hallway, as regal as she always was even in casual clothes. Tasmin followed, bracing himself for her to finally unleash her anger on him. Instead, she surprised him.

“Walk with me. Please,” she qualified. “I won’t try to fry you.”

He gave her a sidelong glance. That wasn’t nearly as comforting as he thought she’d meant it to be.

“Very well.” Tasmin moved into step alongside her as they walked slowly through the cavernous first floor of the Dracul’s mansion. Lily was silent a moment, and when she finally spoke, she looked dead ahead, not meeting his curious eyes.

“I owe you an apology.”

Tasmin arched an eyebrow, waiting for the catch. When she remained silent, he was forced to consider that she might be serious.

“You didn’t chain me up and throw me in a dungeon,” Tasmin offered. “No apology is necessary.”

“Oh, bull,” Lily said, an irritated edge to her voice that he found faintly amusing despite the situation. “You
know very well I was on the fence about believing you.” She glanced at him as she walked. “Bay remembers the Ptolemy attacking her… and what Arsinöe’s message was for me. She doesn’t even remember you showing up. When you said you got there just in time, you really meant it.”

“He was about to feed her from himself,” Tasmin said, filling in details no one had seemed to want from him before. “He’d drained her so well that there was very little left for me to use. She was nearly dead when I got finished with the Ptolemy.”

He curled his lip, letting a little of his self-directed anger show through.

“I wasted time killing him. I should have taken off his head and been done with it. But seeing him on her…”

Lily’s mouth tightened. “What’s done is done. And I can hardly blame you. Maybe Arsinöe got a message of her own. The woman hates to lose.” She sighed heavily then, shaking her head. “In any case, I realize I haven’t exactly been gracious since you showed up.”

The assessment caught him off guard.

“You’ve been very helpful,” Tasmin said. “What more could I expect? You never knew my kind. You don’t know me.”

Lily stopped at the foot of the ornate front staircase and turned to face him. Tasmin was surprised to see how troubled she looked. There were plenty of reasons she and Bailey were so close, he realized. One seemed to be that they were both prone to attacks of conscience.

It was an interesting issue for a dynasty queen to have.

“No, I don’t,” Lily said. “I don’t know you any better than I did the night I met you, and that’s my fault. I
wouldn’t expect you to get this, since you don’t know me either, but I’m usually a little friendlier when descending from on high to help people.” Her smile was thin, self-deprecating. “I swore I wouldn’t be a bloodline snob.”

Tasmin shrugged. “I expected to be looked down upon. That’s how the dynasties work with one another—poorly.”

She pressed her lips together. “You’re not helping me here.”

“I—”

“No, forget it.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Despite your problems, you haven’t done anything to hurt my people. Or Bay. And still the first thing I thought of when I saw you on the ground with her was that you’d lost control and… well, you know. Instead, you were doing what you could to keep her alive.” She breathed in deeply. “So. I was wrong about you. And I’m sorry.”