When Passion Lies: A Shadow Keepers Novel

France, 1720

The abandoned farmhouse stood in a clearing fifteen miles outside Marseilles. Inside, Caris and Tiberius waited for word from Richard, the hours passing so slowly that Caris feared she would pull her hair out in frustration.

“Something has happened to him,” she said to her lover’s back. “We were wrong about him. The sickness has taken him.” The thought ripped through her. It had been her suggestion to send one of Tiberius’s most trusted men into the port city where the plague was cutting through the population like wildfire. They’d believed that Richard was immune to the Black Death, as he’d already survived the plague twice, though many friends had died at his side. Vampires who’d become ill and then faded into dust as if they’d been staked.

Her worry kept her in motion, and she paced the small structure, moving in and out of the shafts of moonlight streaming down through the dilapidated roof.

At the window, Tiberius turned to face her. As always, she was struck by the unchanging beauty of his face. Not feminine, but rugged and strong, with dark eyes that saw everything and broad shoulders onto which he’d invited the weight of the world. Tonight, that weight was heavy indeed.

“He’ll be here,” Tiberius said. He held out his hand to
her, and she went to him, letting his arms engulf her, pressing her cheek against his chest. Even after more than two hundred years, it was his touch that calmed her best. His lips soothed her fears, and his body made her feel alive, even though life had slipped from her veins so long ago.

“And what if he couldn’t find it? We have to kill it.” The world had been tormented long enough by the vile creatures. The shadowers believed this to be the last surviving hybrid, and it needed to die. The horror had to end.

“We will find it. And
I
will kill it. That is not in question.” He tilted her chin up and looked into her eyes. “The only question for tonight is where that happy occasion will occur. Richard will bring us news of our destination.”

She nodded, grim. Humans might not understand the horrible illness that befell them century after century, but the shadowers did. Vampires like her and Tiberius. Werewolves. Jinns and para-daemons and all the other creatures that humans feared and prayed were only myths and nightmares.

They weren’t. They were real.

And the hybrids? Though rare, a mix of vampire and werewolf was truly a creature plucked from nightmares. Feared and reviled even among the shadow creatures themselves, a hybrid brought destruction with its touch and desolation with its breath. The Black Death. The plague. Whatever you called it, it always ended the same. Festering wounds. A hacking cough. And slow, torturous death that filled entire towns with doors marked in bold red X’s, silent reminders that the plague had come to those within.

Caris pressed her hand to Tiberius’s back. “Do you think this one changed form on purpose?” she asked. “Do you think it wanted to destroy Marseilles?”

Tiberius stroked her hair. “I don’t know. But I fear the answer is yes.”

“This time, I will fight at your side.” Whenever he stepped out in battle, she felt as if the birds ceased chirping and the tides stopped their eternal pull.

“No.”

“Am I not strong? Am I not capable? Even when I was human, you said that I had uncommon strength for a woman.” They’d met after she’d set out to rescue her brother Antonio from the clutches of a particularly vile werewolf, not realizing that Tiberius had already sworn allegiance to her family and had set out to do the same. He’d found her disguised as a boy, battling a singularly nasty clutch of humans.

His lips curved into a proud smile. “Whether human or vampire, you are exceptional.”

“Then why do you refuse me? Did you not train me as a warrior? Have I not already fought at your side many times?”

“We’ve spoken of this before, Caris. I made a mistake. You are my heart and my soul. You understand me more than any woman ever has or ever could. And I cannot lose you.” He clutched her hands tightly on these last words, his eyes boring so deeply into hers that she couldn’t help but see the fear—and the regret.

Less than fifty years prior they’d fought side by side in an abandoned palazzo. She’d been unaware that a moldering tapestry at her back hid a secret passage, and when a werewolf burst through with a stake, it was almost the
end of her. Fortunately, he missed her heart, but she’d fallen, blood gushing from her, her strength leaving her.