Trinity Blue

• Prologue
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Books by Eve Silver
  

“Eve Silver’s talent always shines.”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Lara Adrian

"Hot romance and truly cool paranormal world-building make Eve Silver a welcome addition to the genre."

—
New York Times
bestselling author Kelley Armstrong

"Top pick! This author rocks! Silver fills her tale with conflict, danger and passion."

—
Romantic Times
BOOKreviews
Magazine
on Demon’s Kiss

“Eve Silver makes magic in this novel about sorcerers, demons, and dangerous desires."

—Cheyenne McCray,
USA Today
bestselling author

Trinity Blue

A Revised Version

Eve Silver

Revised edition copyright © 2011 by Eve Silver

First edition copyright © 2009 by Eve Silver

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This book may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others.

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Ten miles north of Fort Vancouver, Oregon Country, 1834

Night settled, dark and wet, the air smelling of damp earth and blood and death. Daemon Alexander knelt in the dirt, a woman cradled in his arms. Her long hair fell across his sleeve and tumbled to the ground in a riot of guinea-gold waves. She shifted in his embrace as though trying to pull free of him, her breath rattling in her chest.

“Do you want to live forever?” he whispered, wiping away the thin trickle of blood that slid from the corner of her mouth.
Say yes. Ask me. Only say the words
. He could do nothing if she did not say the words. Her gaze flicked to his, then away. He knew then that she could not bear to look at him now that she had seen the truth. Seen what he was.

“Would you rather die?” Daemon rasped. He rested his fingers lightly on her throat and felt her pulse slow, the pace stuttering as her blood leaked out to pool beneath them.

“No... I do not want... to die,” she whispered, a tear tracing a path along the pale skin of her cheek. “But... I cannot bear to live. Not like... you.”

Not like him.
A monster.
A dark creature that played host to even darker creatures.
He had no reassurance for her because he had none for himself. There was no name for the vile thing he was, at least, not that he knew. He had forgotten that for a brief time as he basked in the illusion of their life together.

“I love you.” His declaration hung in the air, pallid and weak. It meant nothing in the face of his betrayal. He had come to her as a man, made her believe he was a man. He had almost believed it himself. He had brought her here, to a place wild and untamed.
Dangerous.
The responsibility for the attack on her was his and his alone. “Let me save you, Alma. Only say it. Ask me. I beg you.”

She turned her head and looked at him then.

“I love you,” he whispered again, desperate.

“I despise you.” Her words were so faint he might have made himself believe he had misheard.
But no.
He would not allow himself that reprieve. He deserved her hate.

“I—” His arguments, his pleas locked in his throat as her chest deflated on a final breath.
Too late.
She was gone. And he was left with her broken shell in his arms.

All around him the shadows shifted. Dark forms rose from the bodies of the men who had come here to steal and rape and kill. They were dead. His will—and the things he harbored within—had seen them ripped limb from limb. But he had returned from his scouting mission too late. They had done their vile deeds before he made his way back and so she was dead, as well.
His love, his wife.
Dead.

His fault.

Rising, he held his arms wide, calling home the trinity. Again the shadows moved and three raced toward him, sleek in the night. They were part of him. He let his pain feed them, his rage and agony. They wound about him and through him, less than substance, more than shadow. Together, they burst into clear blue flame that spread and grew until every
body,
every drop of blood in the clearing was burned away in an icy inferno of smokeless blue fire.

Present day

Freetown, New York

Jen
Cassaday
pushed aside her grandmother’s yellowed lace curtains and stared out at the stranger in her front yard. He stood, legs apart, arms hanging easy by his sides, head tipped back as he studied the house. Faded jeans, scuffed leather jacket over a dark brown T-shirt, dark hair,
hanging
in long, ragged layers. From this distance she could see great bone structure and a frown. Maybe it was the frown that kept him from being pretty. Or maybe it was the scar that ran across his chin, an angry white line against tanned skin. Either way, he was something to look at.

In one hand he held a newspaper, and the sight of it made Jen’s pulse twitch. He was not at all what she’d meant to attract when she placed an ad for a handyman. And with any luck, he wasn’t here about that.

“Make your own luck,” she muttered, automatically quoting one of her mother’s favorite phrases. Then she snorted. What else besides the promise of work would bring him all the way out here? She was miles from town.

Instinctively, she looked beyond him to the dark woods that flanked the field across the highway. Her skin tingled and her belly twisted in a tight little knot. The sensation had repeated itself over and over in the past few days, becoming stronger and more frequent. The sixth sense that was her legacy warned her; something bad was coming. She glanced back at the guy in her yard, watched him fold the newspaper and tuck it into his coat pocket, and she wondered if he was the source of her unease.

With a sigh, she let the curtain fall back in place. Angling on her crutches, she headed down the stairs just as his knock sounded, hard and bold. She took her time. No sense rushing. It was haste that had landed her in this mess in the first place. She’d taken a tumble down the stairs and ended up with the terrible triad: two torn ligaments and a torn meniscus in her knee. And in Jen’s opinion, they were taking their sweet time about healing, though her specialist disagreed.

“Your recovery is remarkable, Jen. I’ve never seen damage like this heal without surgery.
Certainly not this quickly.
It’s something for the medical journals.” His comments had made her laugh. Her capacity to heal was nothing compared to some of her relatives’. Of course, that was because they’d gone through their transitions, while Jen was still human.

Setting the rubber tips of her crutches, she leaned her weight forward and dragged open the front door. The sun was at her visitor’s back, and for a second Jen blinked against the glare. Then her pupils adjusted and she raised her gaze to meet his. She was 5’10”, and she had to tip her head back to look in his face. It was an unfamiliar experience.

Up close, she saw the dangerous edge to him. It was in the way he held himself, the tightness at the corners of his mouth, the way his eyes—a blue so clear and bright she’d never seen the like—took in every nuance of his surroundings in a glance.

He wasn’t from town; she’d have recognized him if he was. In a place this small, you got to know faces if not names, particularly a face like his. He was a stranger passing through, most likely in need of cash. Her gaze slid to the rusted out clunker in the driveway. Cars weren’t her thing, but she guessed it for something American-built and decades old.

“You here about the job?” she asked, wanting him to say no, knowing he’d say—

“Yes. Name’s Daemon Alexander.” He offered his hand.

“Jen
Cassaday
.” She didn’t see a way around it, so she shook briefly. His palm was callused, his grip pleasantly firm. Something inside her yawned and
stretched,
an unwanted awareness of him as a man. As though in silent response, his grip tightened ever so slightly. She pulled her hand away as quickly as she could without seeming rude.

For weeks she’d had that ad in the paper, and he was the first person to apply. No surprise there. Everyone in town whispered about the haunted
Cassaday
place, and they were halfway right, except what haunted these walls wasn’t the spirits of the dead, but a different power.

Daemon Alexander either hadn’t heard the talk of
hauntings
, or he didn’t care.

Part of her wanted to send him on his way, but she needed the help and given the lack of applicants for the position, she couldn’t justify that course. “You have painting experience?” she asked grudgingly.

“I do.”

“It’s an old house. Some of the walls need repair and I’d like to go with plaster to match the original rather than drywall. I don’t suppose you have experience with plastering old houses?”

“I do,” he said again. Then, “You look surprised.”

“I am. It isn’t a common skill.”

“I like old things.” He sounded amused.

Still, she hesitated, though she couldn’t say why.

“I have references,” he offered, angling his body so that she’d catch his arm in the door if she decided to slam it, as though he sensed that possibility and wanted to hedge his bets. But he didn’t infringe on her space, didn’t step inside. She caught the faint scents of leather and citrus shaving cream. They lured her to lean a little closer, breathe a little deeper. “I spruced up Mrs. Bailey’s porch last week,” he continued. “And Doc Hamilton had me paint his office the week before that. You can give them a call.”

“I will. How long have you been in town?”

“Two weeks.”

And he’d found work both of those weeks.
Interesting.
“How long are you planning to stay?”

His eyes narrowed.
“Till the job’s done.”

For a second, she had the odd thought that he wasn’t referring to a job working for her. He was talking about something else entirely.

She let her senses reach for him. Not sight or smell, but her inner senses, the ones that allowed her to know things most people didn’t. The air between them crackled, an electric sizzle, but she didn’t get any sense that he was evil and she knew that if he were, she’d spot it. She always spotted it. Though her magic had never fully bloomed, her built-in early warning system had never failed her.