Night Game (52 page)

“I’m going to wear wigs so don’t get all hot and bothered thinking about my bald head.”

“Wigs?” He grinned at her. “I can think of a lot of fun we could have with wigs. Although, to be honest, I was thinking about other bald places just then.”

“My hair is going to grow back, you perv.”

“Aw, but in the meantime…”

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DARK DEMON

by

Christine Feehan

coming in April from Jove Books

Vikirnoff Von Shrieder knew the moment he entered the heavy woods that something evil waited there. The warning came in the silence of the forest, the way the earth shuddered and the trees cringed. Not a single living creature moved. It mattered little. He was a hunter and he expected danger to find him. It was his accepted way of life and had been for centuries.

He took a step and stopped abruptly as the grass shivered beneath his feet. He looked down, half expecting to see the stalks shrivel. Was the forest shrinking from direct contact with him? Had it sensed the darkness shadowing him with every step, with each breath he took? Nature could very well be naming him monster—vampire. A Carpathian male who had deliberately chosen to give up his soul for the momentary rush of power and emotion a kill while feeding brought.

It was a choice, wasn’t it? Had he made a decision and was no longer aware of whether he was good or evil? Was there even such a thing? The thought should have distressed him, but it didn’t. He felt nothing at all even as he contemplated the idea that he was no longer fully a Carpathian male; that the predator in him had consumed all but some small spark left in his soul.

He dropped to his knees, his hands digging through layers of leaves and twigs covering the forest floor and plunging deep into the rich, dark soil beneath. He lifted his face to the night sky. “
Susu
,” he whispered aloud.
I am home
. His native language rolled off his tongue naturally, his accent thicker than usual, as if somehow by just being in the Carpathian Mountains he could go back in time.

After so many centuries of exile in service to his people, he had finally returned to his birthplace. He knelt in utter silence, waiting for something. Anything. Some flicker of emotion, or remembrance. He expected the soil to bring peace, to bring him serenity, to bring him some thing, but there was the same barren void he woke to every rising.

Nothing. He felt absolutely nothing. He bowed his head and sank hack on his heels, looking around him. What he wanted or even needed, he didn’t know, but there was no flood of emotion. No elation. No disappointment. Not even despair. The forest looked bleak and gray with twisted, malevolent shadows waiting for him. The endless cycle of his life remained. Kill or be killed.

Hunger was ever present now, a soft seductive whisper in his mind. The call to power, to salvation, and false though he knew it to be, it had gained strength with every rising. He had fought battles, far too many to count, destroying old friends, men he respected and admired, watching the fall of his people, and all for what? “Tell me the reason,” he whispered to the night. “Let me understand the complete waste of my life.”

Had he fed this night? He tried to recall the occasion of his wakening, but it seemed too much trouble. Surely he hadn’t taken a life while feeding. Was this how it happened then? Was there no real choice, but a slow indifference pervading one’s mind until one kill ran into another? Until one feeding became mixed with a kill and his indifference became the weapon of his own destruction?

He looked toward the south, where he knew the prince of his people resided. The wind began to pick up speed and strength, rushing through the forest in a southerly direction. “Honor is a damnable trait and one that may not last eternity.” Vikirnoff murmured the words with a small sigh as he rose to his full height and drew back his long hair, securing it at the nape of his neck with a leather tie. Did he still have his honor? After centuries of battling to keep his word, had the crouching beast at last consumed him?

The leaves on the trees closest to him began to tremble and the branches swayed with alarm. He was a Carpathian male, born into an ancient race now on the brink of extinction. They had few women, so all-important to the males and the preservation of life. Two halves of the same whole, darkness ruled the males while light dwelt within the females. Without women to anchor them, the males were falling into the greedy jaws of their own demons.

Vikirnoff co-existed with humans, living among them, trying to maintain honor and discipline in a world where he no longer saw in color or felt even the slightest of emotions. After two hundred years, his feelings had faded, and over the long endless centuries the dark predator in him had grown strong and powerful. Only faded memories of laughter and love sustained him, and then only through his link with Nicolae, his brother. Now, that too was gone, with Nicolae an ocean away.

Vikirnoff had lived too long and become far too dangerous. His fighting skills were superb, honed and sharpened in the too-numerous encounters with those of his kind who had chosen to give up their souls for the momentary illusion of power, or more likely, more tragically, for a brief moment of feeling. He felt as if he were singlehandedly destroying his own race. So many deaths. So many lost friends. “For what?” He asked aloud.
“Möe’rt?”
He whispered again in his own language.

He deliberately used his own ancient tongue to recall his duty, his promises to his prince. He had volunteered to be sent out into the world. It was his choice. Always his choice. Free will. But he was no longer free. He was so close to being the very thing he hunted, he almost couldn’t separate the two.

The ground rolled gently beneath his feet and the night sky rumbled a menacing warning. Somewhere ahead of him was his quarry—a green-eyed woman he had pursued across an ocean. Between the woman and Vikirnoff was a vampire—or perhaps more than one.

Vikirnoff pulled the photograph of his quarry from its place close to his heart. He saw only in shades of gray, yet he had known she had green eyes. Green. Like the nearly forgotten fields and meadows of his homeland. The various shades of green in the forest.

He had thought—hoped—that perhaps knowing instinctively that small detail meant he was pursuing his lifemate. The other half of his soul, light to his darkness, the one woman who could restore the lost colors and most of all, his ability to feel something. Anything at all. That hope, too, had faded over time, leaving the world a bleak, ugly place.

The air charged with electricity, crackling and snap ping along with the building thunder. Cloud formations built in the sky, great towers churning upward. He drew the pad of his thumb in a small unconscious caress over the picture of the woman as he had done so many times before. He had dreams, of course, of the perfect Carpathian lifemate. A woman with his face, those eyes, a woman who would do as he bid, see to his happiness while he ensured hers. Life would be peaceful and serene and filled with joy and, most of all, emotion. He slipped the photograph back inside his shirt, over his heart, where it would be protected He couldn’t even sigh with regret He didn’t feel regret, or despair Just the endless emptiness.

You have to stop!
The words swirled in his mind, a telepathic link of unexpected strength.
Your emotions are so incredibly strong I can’t imagine how you don’t recognize they exist. You’re devastating me, ripping my heart out. I can’t afford this right now. Control your emotions or get the hell far away from me!

The feminine voice swirled in his mind, slid over and into his body, invaded his heart and lungs and rushed through his bloodstream with the raging force of a firestorm. For nearly two thousand years he had existed in the gray shadows feeling nothing at all. He had lived in an endless, starkly barren world without desire or rage or affection. In that one moment everything changed. His mind was instant chaos.

Colors blinded him, running together in vivid, dazzling streaks his eyes and mind could barely accept. His stomach churned and roiled as he fought to maintain alertness when the very ground beneath his feet swelled and buckled. A floodgate opened and where before there had been nothing, now there was everything, a wild jumble of every emotion with his tremendous strength and power feeding the chaos.

The trees nearest him split in two, the sound horrendous as trunks hit the ground, shaking the earth. A rift opened in the ground close to him, followed by a second jagged tear and then another. The rocks shifted and buck led and another row of trees split and flattened.

The demon in him lifted its head and roared for release, tearing at him with great claws, fighting for the freedom to abandon honor and go after the one thing that belonged solely to him. His savior. Or maybe she was his damnation. His incisors lengthened and his blood was so hot he feared he might burst into flame.

Oh my God! You’re one of them
. Terror made her voice tremble.

Just as he had shared his loneliness, pain, and sorrow with her, he shared his darkness and the terrible intensity of overwhelming emotions. She felt his edgy need for violence. The rush the kill provided. The primitive, raw sexual hunger that ruled his body and mixed with the possessive lust to claim her. She shared it all with him, not only the wild elation, but every fierce need and desire pouring into his body. Every questioning of his life, the gradual need to hunt and kill. The madness of his beast rising and fighting to get loose, to be unleashed for the sole purpose of
getting to her
.

Fear hit him, great waves nearly amounting to terror, just as quickly building into resolve. The emotions were so strong his stomach rolled. It took a moment before he realized her feelings were pouring into him with every bit as much strength as his own. He touched the stream of feminine passion and found power. She would fight. Surrounded, she had no choice but to fight and win. The fear was banished. The terror gone. She would defeat whatever, whoever came at her because it was the only way left to her to survive.

Vikirnoff closed himself off from her, abruptly halting the sharing of the storm of emotions breaking through him. He searched for a mental path, a trail that d lead him back to the woman. She belonged to him. No other. Not another Carpathian. Not the vampires on her trail. She was
his
. He would have her, or many, human and Carpathian alike, would die.

Taking a deep breath to restore his control, Vikirnoff lifted his head slowly and looked around him. The forest seemed to expand and grow and glitter with brilliance. even in the dark of night, as if he had taken a strong hallucinogenic. Above his head the clouds were black with wrath, edged with flickering white-hot lightning. Twisting tendrils of fog snaked through the trees and gathered along the ground.

Vikirnoff remained still, allowing his experience as a hunter to guide him, rather than following the dictates of his chaotic mind. He waited, sorting through the frenzied sensations, waiting for calm before taking action.

All the while he savored the sound of her voice. The path leading back to her was subtle, almost too subtle to follow. It was puzzling. She was Carpathian, yet not Carpathian. She was human, yet not human. He felt the whisper of power in her voice, the subtle “push” when she tried to force obedience. She had tried to force
his
obedience. He took another deep breath, inhaling to take air deep into his lungs, but most of all to find her scent.

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