The Warlord Wants Forever (2 page)

He glowered at her.

“Which is why I want you to take me with you. I don’t eat much.”

The dungeon erupted with laughter again.

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“Certainly not like you, Forbearer.”

“How do you know what I am?”

“I know everything.”

Then, if true, she had a wealth they didn’t.

“Leave her,” Murdoch caled at the gateway of the dungeon. His brows were drawn, no doubt puzzled by his brother’s interest. Wroth had never pursued women. As a human, they’d either come to him or he’d gone without. He’d had no time in wartime. As a vampire he had no such need. Not until he could find his Bride.

He shook his head at the insane, fey creature, then forced himself to walk on, though he thought he heard her whisper, “Cal for me, General,” making the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

He folowed his brother to Kristoff’s new antechamber and found their king gazing out into the clear night from a generous window—that would be shuttered in the few hours til dawn. When he turned to them, his gaunt face looked weary.

Wroth suspected it had been difficult kiling other natural born vampires, his own kindred, no matter how crazed they’d become, and no matter that they folowed his uncle Demestriu, who’d stolen his crown centuries ago. Wroth had no such compunctions. He was weary but only from injury and his sword arm being overworked as he hacked through them.

“Were any of the records salvageable?” Wroth asked with little hope. If the vampires of this castle had spent as much energy fighting as burning, they might have kept Oblak. To his disgust, they’d fled. He didn’t understand it. When defending your home, you defend to the death.

He had.

Kristoff answered, “None.”

Without the records, their own ignorance would kil them. Kristoff, the rightful king, had been raised by humans far from Demestriu’s reach. For centuries, he had lived among them, hiding his true nature yet learning little of the Lore. His army consisted of human warriors he’d turned as they died on the battlefield, so they knew nothing. Before Wroth had seen Kristoff standing over him like an angel of death, offering eternal life for eternal fealty, Wroth had thought vampires were mere myths.

The rules of this new world were complex and often counterintuitive, and their order knew little more than conjecture and what had been learned by painful trial over centuries. They were trapped in a kind of twilight—not human and yet universaly shunned by al the factions of the Lore. Those beings hid in the shadows, fleeing from whatever land Kristoff’s army occupied, working together to always be one step ahead. Wroth’s human experience said they should have been able to get information by now, but the reality was that this was a different plane altogether. The same effort that went into hiding the Lore from humans for ages went into keeping Kristoff’s soldiers in the dark as wel.

“Any sign of Conrad or Sebastian?” Kristoff asked.

Wroth shook his head. He hadn’t seen his brothers since shortly after they’d been turned, but he’d heard they’d been in a skirmish with natural born vampires. Though he and Murdoch hadn’t expected to find their brothers here, they had hoped the two might be in the dungeons of the castle they’d strategicaly needed to take.

“Perhaps the next Horde stronghold.”

Wroth nodded, though he doubted it. He sensed his youngest brother Bastian was dead and suspected the mind of the next oldest, Conrad, was unreachable even if he could be found. The two had not appreciated the eternal life their older brothers had forced on them.

Murdoch examined a gouge in his arm, seeming unconcerned with this blow, but then he generaly seemed unconcerned about everything. Though they shared similar looks, he and Wroth couldn’t be more different in personality. Wroth believed in Kristoff’s cause, seeing many paralels to his own past, and wanted to continue to fight. Murdoch didn’t particularly care. Wroth suspected his brother fought only as a favor to him—or because they had nothing else now.

“Wroth found a being in the dungeon,” Murdoch said. “She seems to have extensive knowledge of the Lore.”

“What kind of being?”

Wroth answered, “I have no idea. She appears fey, delicate, with sharply pointed ears. But she has these smal fangs and her fingernails were more like…claws. She’s not vampire.”

Kristoff frowned at that. “Perhaps she’s born of more than one species?”

“Perhaps.” More speculation. Wroth was sick of it. He wanted to know the rules of the game so he could dominate it.

“Find out everything you can from her.”

“She won’t talk. I’ve interrogated enough to know she’l hint but never truly divulge. And she hates vampires.”

Kristoff pinched his forehead. “Then tomorrow night if we haven’t gotten information from the rest of the prisoners, we treat her as the Horde she hates would. Torture her for the information if you can’t get it any other way.”

Wroth nodded, but the idea sat il with him. As a human he’d been merciless to his enemies, but he’d never tortured a woman. She wasn’t truly a woman, he reminded himself. She was a female among the Lore, and their army’s survival could depend on the knowledge she held.

Perhaps he’d never tortured a woman because he’d never needed to.

The creature had been right, Wroth thought as a guard showed him to his new chambers. He was going to cal her up to him.

To do what with her, he didn’t know.

D id you miss me? Because I missed you,” she said when the guard escorted her inside his bedroom. Out of habit, he stood when a lady entered, and she flashed him a briliant smile. “A gentleman warrior. Who cleans up very wel.” She fanned herself with her hand. “I think I’m in love.”

He didn’t answer, and she didn’t seem to mind as she casualy scanned the room. “Retro Dracula. Not necessarily what I would have done, but then I’m not married to sun-proof shutters like you might be….” She shrugged, then headed for the bathroom. “Taking a shower if you don’t mind,” she said airily over her shoulder, making him raise his brows.

At the doorway, she unbuttoned her tight blouse and shrugged from it, leaving only a transparent black bra. She turned to him, revealing her scarcely covered breasts, he knew, just so he could see the creamy flesh spiling from the lace when she bent over to remove her boots. What he didn’t know was why.

Was she truly mad? Most people who were mad didn’t think they were, but she seemed to be proud of it. He was usualy quick to determine people’s motives. Yes, she wanted her freedom, but for some reason he knew she wouldn’t sleep with him to receive it.

If he had to guess, he would say that she simply didn’t see stripping in front of him and making herself completely at home in a stranger’s bedroom as odd. In fact, he suspected she didn’t see them as strangers at al.

As he stood, concealing his surprise, she untied the fastening of her silky skirt at her hip, and it too fel to the ground.

A fine gold chain around her tiny waist caught his attention. It was unusual, the design appearing very old, but it glinted like new when she moved. Once he could take his eyes from it, he found her in only that wispy bra and scanty, black underwear so intricate he was shocked anew. They were like a work of art—or a like a ribbon decorating one.

She gave him a teasing smile. “Vampire like?” she purred, unclasping the front of her bra to toss it with her other clothes. He scowled because he did like. Very much. He ran a hand over his mouth, wondering if her high, plump breasts could be any more beautiful. She had coral pink nipples that he could spend hours tonguing and alabaster flesh he wanted to cup and palm. He began to speak, then had to cough in his fist to continue. “You’l strip in front of a vampire when you don’t even know his name?”

She gasped with mock horror and covered her breasts with her hands. “You’re right! So what’s your name?”

“My answer wil be as forthcoming as yours. What do you want it to be?”

She smiled at that but then replied to the question, “Some kind of name that fits a battle-scarred, overgrown vampire warlord.”

Battle-scarred? Overgrown? He wondered why in the hel he cared how she saw him. She was divinely wrought, but mad. He’d take his scars with his sanity. “Nikolai Wroth,” he grated.

For the briefest second he thought he saw recognition flicker. But then she eyed him archly and breathed, “Oh, you are good. Wroth, the old word for rage? That’s a bingo idea for a name.” Her hands dropped. “I’l just cal you by that,” she said, then gave him a second look, shaking her head with a rueful smile as if she couldn’t believe he was so clever.

…as a hatter.

She leaned back against the doorway, raising her bent arms above her head to grasp her elbows. Displaying her mouthwatering breasts and flashing a flirtatious smile that would’ve dropped most men to their knees, she asked in her whiskey voice, “Care to join me, Wroth?” She winked when she said his name and roled her hips up off the doorframe.

“No,” he bit out the word with difficulty. He didn’t want her to know how his body didn’t respond to her. His mind did, his vague memories of being human did. But not his body. He was the walking dead. No respiration, no heartbeat, no sexual need—or ability. Not until he found his predestined Bride and she “blooded” him fuly. With his blooding, something inside him, some essence—maybe even his soul—would recognize her as his. He would see her as the one he was meant to spend eternity with, the woman he could love without measure, if one believed in that, and his body would wake for her.

In the past he’d yearned for his Bride because of the power she would bring him—he would finaly be as strong as blooded vampires, his senses as acute as theirs—but he’d never missed the sex before this. And Wroth knew after this display that she was not his. For this should’ve blooded any vampire.

She shrugged, the simple movement a sight to behold, then turned the corner to the bathroom. When she emerged fifteen minutes later clad in a towel, she crossed to his closet. He was almost certain she’d used his toothbrush.

Which…charmed him for some reason—

The towel dropped, leaving her with only her chain and him with a view of her perfect ass.

He swalowed. “Have you no modesty?” Never in his life had he encountered a female so quick to be naked. Of course, he’d never in his life encountered a female who should so utterly be naked at any chance.

“Not at my age,” she said as she began exploring his recently unpacked clothing. How strange to hear her say that when she looked so young. He found his head tilting to keep his gaze on her as she moved and bent. The chain swayed at her waist, and her long, damp hair cascaded down over her breasts. He stifled a groan at a particularly fruitful glance. A true redhead. He closed his eyes. And he couldn’t have her.

“How old are you?” he grated, opening his eyes.

“Physiologicaly, I’m twenty-five. Chronologicaly, I’m…not.”

“So you are an immortal?”

An amused smile played about her lips. “I am.” She puled on one of his shirts though it fel far off one shoulder and wel down her legs.

“Why did you stop aging at twenty-five?”

“When I was strongest. Not for the same reason you were frozen at…”—she trailed off, eyeing him—“thirty-four?”

“Thirty-five. And why do you think I stopped aging then?”

She ignored him to continue digging. After a few moments, she plucked out an old bejeweled cross from his bag. She pinched the relic, holding it away from her, keeping her gaze from it. “You’re Catholic?”

“Yes. It was a gift from my father.” To help keep him alive in wartime. Wroth shook his head at the irony of just how wel it had worked. “I thought I was the one who should be repeled by it.”

“Only a turned human would say that. Besides I’m in no way repeled. With jewels like that? If I look at it, I’l want it.”

“So you wouldn’t want it because you’re Catholic, I take it?”

“My family was very orthodox pagan. Can I have?” She held it forward, stil not looking at it. “Can I, can I, Wroth?”

“Put it back,” he said, fighting the unfamiliar urge to grin. With a pouty expression, she returned it, mumbling something about tightfisted vampires, then dipped her feet into his boots. When she turned to him with her hands on her hips, his lips almost curled at the sight of her, a mad pagan immortal swalowed by his boots.

“What did your mother feed you?” she teased. “Renaissance anabolics?”

His urge to smile faded. “My mother died young.”

“So did mine.” He thought he heard her murmur, “The first time.”

“And I was born after the Renaissance.”

She drew her feet from his boots and sauntered past him. “But not by much.”

“That’s true. And why do you think I stopped aging at thirty-five?” he asked again.

She frowned as if she didn’t know where his question had come from, then said, “Because naughty Kristoff found you dying on a battlefield, decided you’d make a fine recruit, then made you drink his blood. Bit a wrist open, perhaps? Then with his vampiric hoo-doo blood in your veins, he let you die. Unless he was in a hurry, then he would’ve kiled you. One to three nights later and voilà, you rise from the dead—most likely with a frown on your face as you think ‘Holy shite, it worked!’”

He ignored the last and asked, “How do you know the blood ritual?” He’d thought that only vampires knew the true way to turn a human. In movies and books, the

change always came as a consequence of a vampire’s bite, when in fact a human had more chance of turning if he bit a vampire.

“Like I said, I know everything.”

Yes, but he was learning, if sporadicaly. She was an immortal, who’d been frozen physiologicaly at twenty-five. If she was pagan she was at least a few hundred years old. She knew of the blood ritual and that Kristoff “recruited” his soldiers straight from the battlefield.

When she scooped up her clothes, opened his door, then snapped her fingers for a guard down the hal, Wroth merely watched like a bystander.

“Pssst. Minion. I need these laundered. Very little starch. Don’t just stand there gawking or you’l anger my good frenemy General Wroth. We’re like this.”