Dark Hunter 00 - Dark Bites (Novellas) (22 page)

“I won’t leave him,” she said, her voice firm. “And no one is going to make me.”

Erin found out those were famous last words as she came awake back in her office. When dealing with Greek gods, human will didn’t amount to much.

Heartbroken, she wept, thinking about V’Aidan in his hell and the fact that she was the cause of it.

Worst of all, there was absolutely nothing she could do to help him. Nothing.

“V’Aidan.”
 

V’Aidan clenched his teeth at Hypnos’s voice. He tucked Erin’s wreath under a nearby rock to keep the god from seeing it and taking it from him as he had done the pictures.

It was all V’Aidan had of her and he couldn’t bear the thought of losing it.

He forced himself upright and cleared his throat of the grief that choked him. “I didn’t realize it was time for more punishment.”

Hypnos snorted. “I can’t break you, can I?”

He sensed the god moving around him.

“You know,” Hypnos said irritably, “I have tried since the dawn of time to make you fear me. And you never have. Why is that?”

“I can’t feel emotion, remember?”

“No. What you are is disrespectful, irreverent, and sarcastic. You have never fit in with us. And the thing that has always made me maddest with you is that you never even tried to.”

V’Aidan gave a weak laugh. “A Skotos who is evil to the bone, imagine that.”

“Well, therein is your problem. Unlike the others, you never were. I never could kill that last tiny bit of goodness in you. That last bit that was capable of honor. Capable of sacrifice.”

V’Aidan frowned.

“M’Ordant told me what you did for Erin. Both on earth and here. As a result, Hades has informed me that he can’t keep you in Tartarus. Only souls who are completely incapable of love can stay here.”

A burning sensation started in V’Aidan’s body, and with every heartbeat that passed, he felt himself growing stronger.

“It seems to me, boy, you have a decision to make.”

Erin opened the
door to her apartment. The familiar hole in her heart burned as she imagined what it would be like to come home, just once, and have V’Aidan here.

She’d been doing that a lot lately. Daydreaming. She’d never really daydreamed before. And she’d been writing. But there was no one to share it with.

That hurt most of all.

Toeing her shoes off, she set her keys down on the mantel and happened to see a white rose petal on the carpet. She frowned as she noticed several more.

They seemed to form a trail leading to her bedroom. She followed them.

When she got to the doorway, her heart stopped.

V’Aidan was asleep in her bed. His sleek black hair was spread out over the pillows, the covers tangled in his long, tawny limbs.

He was the most gorgeous thing she’d ever seen in her life.

Erin laughed as tears welled in her eyes. How? How could he be here?

Rushing to her bed, she dropped to her knees and tried to wake him.

He didn’t budge.

No matter what she tried, he wouldn’t wake.

“V’Aidan?” she said, swallowing in fear. “Please, look at me.”

Nothing.

Terrified, she saw a small note card on the nightstand.

Picking it up, she read it:

It is through true love that all miracles are performed. If you really love me, Erin, kiss my lips and I will be born into your world as a mortal man. Otherwise, I shall be waiting for you only in your dreams.

You have until midnight to decide.

V

She didn’t need until midnight to decide. Cupping his face in her hands, she kissed him with all the love in her heart.

His chest rose sharply as his arms wrapped around her and held her tight.

Erin laughed happily as V’Aidan deepened their kiss. Her head swam from his warmth, his passion, and she never wanted to let him go.

Nipping her lips, he pulled back to smile at her. The love in his silvery-blue eyes scorched her. “I take it you want to keep me?”

“Buddy, you try and leave me and I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth and beyond to find you and bring you home.”

V’Aidan laughed. She’d already proven that to him.

Erin shivered as he unbuttoned her shirt. “I think I know what you want to do first as a mortal man.”

He ran his tongue over her throat, up to her ear, where his breath sent chills through her. “Believe me, love, you won’t be sleeping tonight.”

Epilogue

Two years later

V’Aidan lay on the sofa with his infant daughter asleep on his chest. He stared at her mop of chestnut curls, curious about what she was dreaming.

He felt his wife standing over them.

Looking up, he caught Erin’s gorgeous smile. “Hi,” he said, wondering what she was up to. There was a gleam in her eye much like the one she’d had the day she’d told him she was pregnant.

“Guess what?” she asked, her voice rife with excitement.

“You’re pregnant again?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “It’s only been three months since we had Emma.”

“It happens.”

She blew him a raspberry, then brought her arm from around her back and shoved a book into his hands.

V’Aidan stared at it blankly until the name on the cover registered. “Oh my God,” he breathed, “it’s your novel.”

“I know,” she said, jumping up and down. “My editor sent me the first copy of it! They’ll be shipped to the stores next week.”

Careful not to wake the baby, V’Aidan shot off the couch to grab Erin into his arms.

Erin sighed at the feel of his lips on hers. Even now, those lips could incinerate her. And his smell… Goodness, how she loved the scent of his skin.

“Thank you, V’Aidan,” she said, pulling back to stare into those hauntingly silver eyes. “I would never have written it without you.”

“And I would never have lived without you.”

Erin held him close, delighting in the feel of him and her daughter. The two of them were the greatest gift Erin had ever known.

And it was then she realized that even out of the darkest nightmare, something good could come. It had taken strength and courage, but in the end, it had been worth the battle.

“I love you, Erin,” he whispered against her hair.

“I love you, V’Aidan, and I always will.”

WINTER BORN

Prologue

It was hard to find an all-powerful, mythical being in a crowd of thirty thousand.

Or at least it was in theory.

At the yearly Dragon*Con science fiction convention in Atlanta, Georgia, however, it was another story entirely. There were two Yodas and a Dragon Rider from Pern checking in at the hotel’s front desk while a full regiment of Storm Troopers walked by. There were gods and goddesses, all manner of aliens, warriors, and ladies gathered there. Pandora had even seen the Wicked Witch of the West cruise by on her motorized broomstick.

Since she’d sat down ten minutes ago, Pandora had counted nine Gandalfs, and if she didn’t miss her guess, there were at least two dozen elves, fairies, orcs, goblins, and assorted others gathered around, talking on cell phones, or smoking just outside the hotel doors.

And one mustn’t forget the entire cabal of vampires and demons walking around handing out fliers for people to come to their room for a “blood party” and Buffy film fest.

Not to mention she’d already been invited twice to the Klingon Homeworld in Room 316 at the Hyatt Regency across the street. Meanwhile a group of supposedly androgynous Borg men had tried to “assimilate” her as soon as she entered the lobby of the Marriott Marquis.

This had to be the strangest gathering she’d ever seen, and when given the fact that she was a Were-Panther who up until three days ago had lived solely among her own preternatural kind, that said something.

“I’m never going to find him,” she murmured to herself as an extremely tall, gorgeous Goth man stopped in front of her.

Good glory, the man was sinfully delectable!

And he was the last thing she needed to be staring at, yet she couldn’t seem to help herself. He was utterly compelling.

He wore a pair of dark sunglasses even inside the hotel while he scanned the motley crowd as if looking for someone. Something about the man commanded attention and respect. Of course, it didn’t help that her hormones were currently elevated by the change going on inside her as she came into full womanhood. Her entire body was humming from hormonal overload which, up until his appearance, she’d been keeping under very careful control.

Now she sizzled for a taste of him and it was all she could do to stay seated.

He had to be at least seven feet tall, augmented by the flame biker boots that added at least three inches to his height. He had long black hair that flowed around his broad shoulders, and wore an old, faded motorcycle jacket with a skull and crossbones painted on the back. The worst part was that he wore
nothing
underneath that jacket and every time he moved, she glimpsed more of his tanned, ripped body.

His black leather pants hugged a perfect bottom that would rival any of her Were brethren. Every part of her wanted to stand up, cross the small distance between them, and pull his tall, lean body against hers until the vicious, needful hunger in her blood was fully sated. But even as she felt that primal sexual hunger, the animal part of herself sensed an air of lethal danger from him.

He wasn’t the kind of man a woman approached without an invitation.

“Akri!”
 

The man turned as a woman around his age came running up to him. Cute as she could be, she was dressed like a demon, complete with a set of black wings that looked spookily real as they twitched and flapped. Her skin was red and black, and her hair matched his. She even sported a pair of glowing red horns on her head. Her short purple skirt was flared and she wore a black leather bustier with three large silver buckles on the front. Black and purple striped leggings and a pair of six-inch platform combat boots completed her odd outfit.

The tall “demon” handed the man a credit card. “It’s broke again,
akri,
” she said, pouting around a pair of vampirelike fangs. “The man downstairs done said that the Simi can’t charge nothing else until I’m not over my limit no more. I don’t know what that means, but I don’t like it. Fix it,
akri,
or else I might eat him. The Simi gots needs and I needs my plastic to work.”

The man laughed as he took it from her and pulled out his wallet. He handed her three more credit cards.

The “demon” squealed in delight and pulled him into a hug. She put the credit cards into her coffin-shaped purse, then handed him a small shiny red nylon bag. “By the way, I boughts those for you before I broke my plastic. Since you don’t got your real hornays, these are some fake ones to tide you over until we go home.”

“Thanks, Sim,” he said in an incredibly deep, evocative voice as he took the bag from her.

She smiled, kissed his cheek, then dashed off into the crowd with her wings flapping behind her.

The man looked at Pandora then and gave her a half-grin that could only be called wicked, and yet it seemed somehow knowing. He inclined his head to her, then headed off after the woman who’d just left him.

Every instinct in her body told her to follow him, but she didn’t listen.

She was here to find the legendary Acheron Parthenopaeus – an ancient, immortal Atlantean her sister had hoped would help hide Pandora from those who were hunting her. Not chase after some hot, young human who looked stunning in leather.

Acheron was her last hope.

Unfortunately, neither she nor her sister had any idea what he looked like. All they knew was that he came to Dragon*Con every year with his daughter.

He was older than time and more powerful than any other of his kind. She scanned the older men in the crowd who were dressed as wizards, warriors, or other creatures, but none of them seemed to be particularly wise or powerful, nor were they with a daughter.

Just what would an eleven-thousand-year-old man look like anyway?

Sighing, Pandora stood up and went to the bannister so that she could look down to the lower levels of the hotel and scan the crowd.

He had to be here.

But where? How could she find anyone in this thronging mass of people… er, aliens.

Chewing her lip, she debated where to go look for him. Suddenly, a tall man in an elegant black suit caught her eye. He wasn’t particularly old, probably in his mid-thirties, but she sensed an unmistakable air of power from him.

Maybe he was the mysterious Acheron. And he was heading for the bank of elevators.

Pandora rushed after him, and barely made it before the door closed them inside the small compartment with a Renaissance drummer, a green-fleshed alien, and Darth Vader.

But that wasn’t what made her heart stop. As she glanced out through the glass wall of the elevator, she saw four things that terrified her.

It was a group of devastatingly gorgeous men. The two shortest of the group were identical in looks and they had to be at least six feet four. They all had jet-black hair and were dressed in black Goth clothes.

The four men stood in a specific formation that she knew all too well, with their backs to each other as they scanned the crowd hungrily, intently, as if seeking something in particular. They were fierce. Animalistic.

It was as if they had literally caught wind of something, and in one heartbeat she knew what that something was.

Her.

“Oh no,” she said under her breath. By their build and beauty and actions, she would know their breed anywhere. No group of humans could be that handsome or that intense. Nor would any other species be so alerted by her scent.

They, like her, were Were-Panthers, and by the look of them, they were young and virile.

And she was in heat…