Dark Embrace (Principatus) (27 page)

The contempt left Inari’s face in a split second. Her eyes grew wide. Her full lips parted in a soft gasp. The potent aroma of her feminine juices flooded the air and her heartbeat doubled, the frantic sound almost a deafening thump for Jacob’s hypersensitive hearing. “Ezryn?” she whispered on a breath.

Something scalding hot and acrid punched into Jacob’s chest, making his nostrils flare. Jealousy?

He sank his nails into his palms, the unmistakable emotions catching him by surprise. Jealousy? Hell’s Pit. What the fuck was he doing experiencing jealousy?

Determined to deny his ridiculous reaction, he took a step closer to her only to be stopped by the invisible wall he knew would be there, a wall of no substance and no tactile composition but still capable of halting him cold in his tracks.

A low growl rumbled in his throat, and he punched his fist against the doorjamb. He let his stare turn hard, desperate for the Principatus to—
invite you in?—
to understand the situation. “Please, Ms. Chayse, we are running out of time.” He struggled to keep his voice calm and modulated. “When I left Ezryn he was—how shall I put this? Less than happy.”

She started a little her cheeks flushing, her breath growing rapid. His gaze strayed to the tiny pulse beating at the base of her neck, the whisper-loud roar of her blood journey through her veins mocking him. Saliva filled his mouth again. He felt his fangs stab at the inside of his lower lip, needle-point sharp and long, and his inner vampire growled for release.

He jerked his stare back up to her face, disgust surging through his lifeless veins. Dark Ones. Where was his control? His loyalty?

“If you do
anything
I don’t like, I
will
destroy you. Regardless of who your master is.”

Inari’s blunt statement, plus the deadly promise in her eyes, filled Jacob with perverse relief. She was coming with him. He gave her a sharp nod. “I understand.”

Inari studied him with an unwavering gaze before she too nodded. “Good. Now tell me why you would risk saving my life when others of your kind would want me dead?”

Jacob let out a sharp breath. “I need you to help me stop a senseless slaughter.” He shifted his feet, the passing minutes pressing down on him. On them both. Ezryn would not be far away. He couldn’t be. Curse it, he had to hurry up and get her out of her home. “There is a vampire here in Australia who needs to be destroyed,” he said, the struggle to keep his voice calm growing more damn near impossible, by the second. “I have sworn to my master I will not be the one to do so.” He stopped. Fixed her with a level stare. “I need you to do it for me.”

Inari’s eyebrows rose, her face effecting an incredulous expression of pointed surprise. “Oh, do you now? Who is this vampire?”

Jacob bit back a growl. “Dark Ones, I will tell you on the way, I promise. Please, Ms. Chayse, we must go now.”

She shook her head. “Tell me.”

“The overlord of the vampire race,” Jacob snarled, his nerves at snapping point. “And Ezryn’s brother.”

A soft intake of breath slipped through Inari’s lips, and for a split, irrational second, Jacob longed to feel their fullness pressed to his. “Ezryn is Ezryn
Navarr
?” she said, her voice as soft as her breath. “The twin son of the First Family? The
true
overlord of the vampire race?”

Jacob stiffened. “How do you know…?”

“Every Principatus knows of the unjust, moronic events that took place fifty years ago. It becomes part of our psyche the moment we are reborn.”

Jacob drove his nails into his palms. Anger coursed through his still veins, thick and hot. Of course a Principatus would know of Fat Harry’s lies. It was a given, wasn’t it? But if that was the case, why hadn’t the Powers ordered the treacherous, dangerous bastard disposed? “And yet,” he snapped, his tenuous composure fracturing, “nothing was done to stop it? Even when it was clear Haral was a power-drunk imbecile? ”

She flashed him an ambiguous smile. “We are assassins,
demon
, not political activists. What better way to weaken your enemy than to allow the rot to spread from within?”

Jacob studied her, unsure what to say. If she was shocked at discovering her lover was the true overlord of every vampire on the planet, she did not show it. Nor did she show any sign of how the information affected her. Did it change anything? Knowing who Ezryn was? Knowing he was, essentially, the ultimate vampire? How had she not already put the pieces together?

“And this is why he is coming for me?” she asked suddenly, her voice composed. “To save his twin brother’s undead life? The brother who sits in his position through fallacy and deceit?”

 
“No.” He forced his voice to be as level as hers. “He comes for you because he now knows what you are.”

Inari cocked one dark eyebrow. “Principatus? Come now, bloodsucker, I think he already knows I’m an assassin of God, don’t—”

“Not Principatus, Inari Chayse,” Jacob cut her off, dread feeding his impatience. “Succubus.”

Inari’s face went pale. The word hung on the air between them, its meaning not lost on Jacob. She stared at him, but whatever thoughts went through her mind did not form as words on her tongue.

“Ezryn is coming for you, assassin,” he said, the statement blunt and spoken with desperate haste, “and I don’t know what he plans to do when he gets here, but I need you to come with me to destroy his brother before we are all condemned to a bloody war by that fat fuck’s egomaniacal actions.”

She still didn’t say a word, her face a pale mask of perfect beauty.

“The overlord has commanded Ezryn to kill you,” Jacob continued, deciding now was not the time to pull punches. “If he doesn’t, as of tomorrow night the overlord will begin systematically butchering every vampire who opposed his ascension. I don’t need to tell you what will happen if he does.”

Inari’s expression didn’t change, but Jacob could feel the tension rolling from her in heady waves. She knew, all right. How could she not? She was a Principatus, after all.

“So he is on his way to kill me then.”

It wasn’t a question.

He swallowed, not just his throat thick, but his blood as well. His response to her nearness was stirring the base creature he was with such alacrity he could barely think. “Until Ezryn discovered what you are,” he said, holding her gaze, “I genuinely believed my master was not going to do it. Now…” He let the threat hang on his unfinished sentence.

“But now he knows what kind of demon I was before my rebirth…” An expression of lost torment etched her face and she closed her eyes, her straight eyebrows pulling into a slight frown. “Now he knows why he can’t stop fucking me…and thinking about me…” She let out a soft sigh, her shoulders slumping.

Jacob suppressed a low groan, his chest heavy. Damn Haral for the nightmare he’d thrown them all into. Damn the bastard prick to the lowest pit in Hell.

He stood motionless, watching her, waiting, willing her to move. To open her eyes and see his desperation. The situation was beyond any he could fear, but if he could just see Fat Harry destroyed, everything else would right itself, including whatever was going on between Ezryn and the woman standing before him. Of that, he was certain. “Please, Ms. Chayse. Time is our enemy.”

She didn’t respond, nor open her eyes to look at him.

“Do you understand, Ms. Chayse?”

“Understand what, General Ford?”

The deep male voice behind him turned Jacob’s cold blood to ice. He froze, his stare locked on Inari’s face, his throat squeezing tight as her eyes snapped open and flooded with fear.

“Ezryn,” she whispered, taking a step backward.

“I have told you repeatedly, Inari Chayse,” Ezryn said, “to call me Master.” There was a dark blur of mass, a surge of displaced air, and suddenly Jacob was staring at Ezryn’s back, his master towering over Inari in the middle of her apartment, his right hand cupping her throat. “And you are wearing far too many clothes.”

With barely a flex of his shoulders, Ezryn threw her against the sofa. Her ass hit the cushioned armrest. The knife in her hand clattered to the floor. Before she could regain balance, he crossed to her in another blur, curling the fingers of his left hand around her upper arm and hauling her against his body. She slammed into him, and Jacob could only watch from the threshold, stunned and painfully aroused as she smashed her knee upward, aiming for his master’s groin.

Yet Ezryn seemed to predict her move. He snatched at her leg, grabbing her high on the thigh and yanking her knee beside his body. “Now, now.” Ezryn’s guttural murmur reached Jacob across Inari’s living room, and Jacob felt his stomach knot at the molten fury in each word. “Anyone would think you don’t like me…succubus.”

He spun her about, his arms and hands encircling her, imprisoning her with impossible speed to jerk her back against his body. He flattened one hand over the plane of her belly, skimmed his fingertips across the curve between her thighs while snaking the other hand up her ribcage to capture one satin-covered breast. Two pairs of eyes stared at Jacob from within the small room—Ezryn’s black and smoldering cold fire and Inari’s green and wide with…with…

Fear? Expectation? Excitement?

“Tell him to leave, Inari.”

Jacob’s body flooded with grim foreboding at Ezryn’s murmured command. If he left the Principatus alone with his master and friend it was unlikely she’d survive the night. He’d never seen Ezryn so furious. Ever. He couldn’t let Inari Chayse be killed, however, no matter how angry Ezryn was. How would he rid the world of Fat Harry if she was—

“Tell General Ford he’s not needed here, Inari,” Ezryn repeated. He slid his hand lower down her belly, dipping his fingers between her tightly pressed thighs. “Now.”

Inari shook her head. “No.”

The fingers between her thighs moved, a slow, short, stroking motion that made Jacob’s groin throb and his fangs extend. Ezryn lowered his head to Inari’s, brushing his lips over her cheek as the hand on her breast began to inch higher on her chest. “Tell my general to leave, Inari, or I will deny you what the wet heat between your legs tells me you so desperately want.”

She whimpered, the sound sending a surge of hot hunger through Jacob.

Hunger for what? The Principatus’s blood or the succubus’s sex?

Ezryn’s black eyes glinted red power and he cupped her chin with firm fingers, holding her head motionless as he feathered a row of kisses down the column of her neck. “Tell him to leave, Principatus, so I can make you scream.”

Jacob held Inari’s stare, his body on fire, his chest constricting. This was bad. Very bad.

“Tell him to leave us,” Ezryn ordered against her neck, his fangs scraping her flesh. “Now.”

“Leave us, General Ford.” The command fell from Inari in a whispered breath.

Jacob’s nostrils flared. He pressed his fist to the doorjamb, gazing hard into Inari’s eyes. “Ms. Chayse,” he said, ignoring Ezryn’s heavy stare. “Please. I need—”

“Go home, Jacob,” Ezryn’s low voice silenced him, and he stiffened as a faint pressure brushed at his mind. “You are not needed here.”

The overlord moved through his commandeered compound, grinding his molars together. Fucking Sydney. The level of loyalty for his brother in the shit-hole of a city pissed him off. Finding a vampire willing to act against the
venerated
Ezryn Navarr in this backwater dump was harder than finding a bleeder willing to step into the sun.

He stormed along the corridor, heading for the ballroom. The only thing he’d found remotely pleasurable about his sojourn
down under
was the feeding. Something about the summer sun in the southern hemisphere seemed to permeate the females from which he’d fed. Their warm flesh tasted fresh and crisp under his tongue, their blood different in an indefinable way from the humans in the northern hemisphere, as if the very essence of the place infused the elixir flowing through their delicate veins.

A dry snort escaped him and he shook his head. It was both delicious and jarring, and he wanted no more of it. He wanted to go home. He’d had enough of Sydney and Australia. There was too much sun, too much heat. He liked the bitter cold of Denmark. He liked the subservient minions of his home as well, groveling vampires who dared not make mention of his brother. Lifers who knew better than to balk at his commands, who accepted his position of authority without question or doubt. Bleeders who wanted nothing more than to please the overlord, the supreme ruler of the vampire race.

During his time in Sydney so far, he’d had to slaughter five of his own kind. Five lifers he’d thought his own loyalists who were more willing to face his wrath to follow the great and reverent Ezryn.
Lifers
.

Five
born
vampires who should have known better.

You know there are more. You know Ezryn’s followers are beginning to outnumber your own. Not just here in the ass of the world, but everywhere. It’s why you came to Sydney in the first place. Your rule is being questioned more every night, and not just by lifers but by bleeders as well. The doubt of your position is spreading like a pathetic human disease, and if you don’t do something soon, Ezryn’s loyalists will see you overthrown.

Haral curled his hands into fists and bared his teeth in a hiss. The moment he ascended to overlord, the vampire world should have bowed to his authority. The position allowed no dissension and came with immediate deference. It was the way it was and the way it would always fucking be. But it
wasn’t
the fucking way, was it? Instead of respect and grateful servitude, he’d spent every night dealing with uprisings, dissidents and revolts. Instead, he’d destroyed more than one doubter of the oracle’s proclamation. Instead, he’d killed one after another after another of his brother’s loyalists. And still Ezryn’s devotees grew stronger. Louder.