Immortal Craving (Dark Dynasties) (31 page)

The demon chuckled, a wet, burbling sound. “I am no stupid lesser demon, Sammael the Watcher. My purposes are my own.” His lip curled. “She thinks to rise above her station. Her greed has made her a fool. But she has secrets that should not die with her. I have questions for the bitch. I will have them answered. She said little when last we met… apart from the gloating.”

Sammael’s eyes glinted, violet and strange in the dim light. “Ah. So
she
trapped you here.”

“Trapped. Made to sleep,” the demon spat. “Missing years of feasting in this sack of flesh. And now that it
wakes, it won’t let me have my way. There are many pleasures it denies itself that I would not. And some I would enjoy… differently,” he said, casting a sly smile at Bay. She felt sick.

Tasmin had warned her it was not unaware of their relationship.

“Then leave, or let us cast you out,” Sammael said. “Go on about your way. Find a new body to inhabit. Deny Arsinöe whatever she still wants with you.”

The demon laughed, a harsh, hoarse sound that made the hair on Bay’s arms stand up.

“Don’t you think I would have if I could? I am bound to this man’s soul, his body by a magic given to Arsinöe by Sekhmet herself. Blood magic. Death magic. Neither can live without the other… not until she gets what she wants.” He laughed, then spat out a string of curses in several languages, his head rolling backward, eyes rolling up. He groaned, and it was an awful sound.

“The lion fights me… No, it’s
mine
!”

Tasmin’s head snapped back and forth, and Bay cringed in horror as she heard bones break like twigs. He stiffened suddenly, then crashed to the floor, collapsing as though boneless.

Bay crouched beside him, forcibly reminded of the very first time she’d met him. It hadn’t been nearly as bad that time. It had gotten much worse very quickly. She felt sick at the realization that she hadn’t know what was happening to him, how much stronger the demon had become. There would be no more rallying because of her presence. He must have known. And he’d hidden it.

Tasmin groaned softly, and Bay stroked his neck as the abused bones knit themselves back together. It was
only then that she noticed the other vampires had circled around them. She could feel their eyes on her, no doubt full of sympathy.

It infuriated her. She didn’t want sympathy. She wanted a way out of this that didn’t entail one or both of them dying or permanently sacrificing their souls to a demon.

The only one she could look at, finally, was Sammael, only because she didn’t think he was capable of sympathy. True to form, his face was impassive, impossible to read.

“What can I do?” she asked, feeling panic pressing in all around her. It made it difficult to breathe, threatened to send her running until she finally found a place to curl into a ball and shake until something changed. As she feared, he shook his head.

“Your man harbors Hunger,” Sammael said. “A strong demon. My blood brothers and I searched for him in the days we hunted the Dark Fallen to ground and chained my brother, Chaos.” To himself, he muttered, “Clever Arsinöe, binding him to a sleeping Rakshasa. Strong enough to hold the demon, too weak to fend him off.” He shook his head. “No wonder she wants Tasmin so badly. Without one of his demons, she has nothing with which to bargain. She’d be no different from the rest of us. She would align with Chaos, if she can find a way to make him want her… and she has always been good at such things. But in this case, what she thinks Chaos will want is her magic… and Hunger, freed and ready to fight.”

“Damn it,” Lily growled. “I knew. I knew when I saw the look on her face after Chaos had gotten loose. She’d rather have a demon as an ally than stoop to the rest of us.”

“She’s lived too long,” Sammael said. “There’s nothing left for her but power now. She wasn’t so hollow once.
But the years have made her empty, brittle. The time of the Ptolemy is ending. Whether it lasts in some form will be up to whoever is left.”

Bay saw the look on Lily’s face and knew she was wondering the same thing as she was: did every vampire hit that point, where they’d lived so long that they became just an empty shell of what they had been? She hoped not. And she hoped it would be a long time before she even came close to finding out.

“We need to move now,” Ty said quietly. “Lyra and Jaden are right. She doesn’t have her bargaining chip yet. Whatever she has waiting out there, now is the right time. We’re only prolonging the inevitable.”

“But what about Anura?” Bay asked, looking at the steely expressions of her friends.

“We’ll get her,” Jaden said quickly. “She could still be in the city for all we know. If it really was one of her blood sisters who got her, she may be either here or headed to Charlotte, where the seat of the Empusae is. Out of the way, out of the Ptolemy’s way. We’ll call Drake, get the Shades on it. It seems like the most important thing was removing her from the equation in case she really did manage to do something about Tasmin being tied to this demon. Arsinöe may be pretty sure we can’t do it, but we’ve proven her wrong enough times before that she’ll be that much more careful.”

“It’s a good thing we’ve got Tasmin here,” Ty said. “Your place is locked up tight, Vlad. Still, she’ll be looking for an opening. She has to know where he is.”

“How soon can we start moving on her?” Lily asked Vlad. “I don’t even want to give her that opening. It’s time for this to be finished.”

Bay listened to the general agreement and then tuned them out. She’d been kneeling by Tasmin, and even though he seemed to be coming out of the state the demon had put him in, he seemed much the worse for wear this time. He’d broken out in a cold sweat, and his complexion was ashen, his breathing shallow.

At least the eyes focused on her were his.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“Don’t be,” Bay replied. “It wasn’t you.”

He nodded, eyes drooping shut.

Sammael’s deep voice sounded in her ear. “He should rest now. That will have taken a lot out of him. I had hoped seeing me would bring out the demon—the Dark Fallen could never resist showing themselves to us. We’re kin, of a sort. But I can’t pretend the answers he gave were ones that pleased me. The demon spoke true… This is no weakling spirit. Hunger is a demanding parasite.”

Bay nodded, numbness stealing over her. “There’s really nothing you can do for him?”

Even saying the words, it was hard to believe it.

He didn’t answer her, which was answer enough. “Go with him. Make sure he rests.”

“And what then?” Bay asked hollowly. “Hunger wants out and can’t get it, and Tasmin can’t fight it forever, so…”

Sammael sighed, and finally Bay saw a hint of understanding.

“Hunger has no physical form of his own. If he must keep this one, he’ll make sure it belongs to him alone. Tasmin must stay alive… but soon, it won’t be a true life.”

Somehow, she managed to block out everything else as she roused Tasmin and helped him to his feet. She tried to console herself that no matter how bad he looked this
time, he would bounce back. He had before; he would again.

For now.

But unless she could make some kind of miracle, that was about all they had left.

S
HE WOKE UP
with a start when a hand dropped on her shoulder.

Bay yelped and jerked upright, for a moment unsure about where she was. It took her a minute, but eventually, it came together—the walls of books, the comfortable leather furniture… the dog on his back snoring on the couch. She was in Vlad’s library. And from the looks of things, she’d fallen asleep facedown in a book on demonology.

Maybe she’d found an answer to this mess by osmosis.

She turned, and found Tasmin looking at her. He’d slept for hours, and his color was better now. A glance at the clock told her that it was 5:00 a.m. Most of the vampires would be turning in now, sliding into their beds to sleep the day away. Her own sleep schedule was so out of whack at this point, Bay didn’t really know which end was up, and didn’t really care.

“What are you doing?” he asked gently.

Bay offered a small, rueful smile. She knew he could see the twisted creatures dancing across the pages of the heavy, leather-bound book.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” she asked. “I’m trying to figure out how to get in touch with the inner you. So I can beat the shit out of it and send it packing.”

He laughed softly, but there was a wistful quality to it that made her sad all over again.

“I think we’re past that.”

“Well, I don’t,” Bay said, frowning. “We have a saying: It’s not over ’til the fat lady sings. She isn’t singing yet.”

Tasmin shook his head, bemused. “Who is the fat woman?”

“I’m teaching you to speak American English. Think of it as a crash course,” Bay said, then looked down at the pages of her book and heaved a heavy, agitated sigh. She had twisted her hair up and secured it with a clip, but it was lopsided from sleep and trying to fall over one eye. She shoved at it.

Tasmin leaned over her shoulder and looked at what she’d been studying. The feel of his chest, solid and real behind her, was both comfort and torment. How much longer would she have him?

“I don’t think it’s physically possible for me to do that with my head,” he said.

She looked down, blinked at the graphic illustration, and flushed. “Um, I don’t think this section has anything to do with casting out demons. I think that’s a demonstration of… You know what, let’s just close it; this isn’t helping.”

She shut the book and rose from the seat, turning toward Tasmin. He stood there, looking only slightly
worse for wear, in rumpled jeans and a T-shirt. She’d never seen anything look so good in all her life. Emotion rose in her throat, swelling her heart until she felt like it might burst. How had she ended up here? Everything felt like it was falling apart.

“I want to show you something,” he said. “Will you come with me?”

Bay started to move toward him, then hesitated, looking back at the book, along with the stack of other things she’d pulled from Vlad’s shelves.

“I had some other ideas…”

He reached out and caught her hand in his, and even that small connection had her drinking in a quick breath. He made it easy to forget herself, since all she really seemed to want to do was be with him.

“Bay,” he said, and she tilted her head, surprised he was finally using her nickname. The little intimacy meant even more to her than she’d expected it would. “Come with me. Please.”

There was no way she could refuse him. She slid a look at Grimm, who was prone to wake up and follow her no matter how deeply asleep he seemed, and Tasmin followed her gaze.

“He’ll stay asleep.”

She pursed her lips. “You made sure of that, I guess.” She still wasn’t crazy about his willingness to essentially knock people—and now animals—out just so he didn’t have to deal with them.

“It’s been a difficult week for him too, Bay. The rest will do him good. And… I wanted to have you alone.”

“Well. Okay,” she said, though something about his tone made her think this wasn’t going to be a conversation
she wanted to have. Silently, he led her from the library, and Bay noticed the eerie quiet that had descended over the mansion. It seemed like she really was the last one up. The two of them made their way through the downstairs, past closed doors and empty rooms, until Tasmin reached a set of ornate French doors leading out to the back of the house. He picked up a pair of coats draped over the back of a nearby chair, handing her one.

Bay took it and slipped it on, confused. He wanted to go for a walk at this hour of the morning?

Tasmin slipped out one of the doors, and she followed him into Vlad’s garden.

Bay stopped, stunned, as Tasmin shut the door behind her. The week had been so disjointed, so confusing, that her exploring had been confined to inside the mansion for the most part. She’d walked by these doors plenty of times, but there had always been extra people, distractions. Somehow, she hadn’t paid them much attention.

Now she wished she had.

The large, circular patio of stamped concrete on which she stood had been meticulously brushed off. What was doubtless a lush paradise in summer was now covered in a thin layer of fresh snow, turning it into a twilit fairyland as the sky turned silvery gray. Stone paths wound beneath the bare and arching branches of trees, curving around sleeping flowerbeds and partially hidden fountains, glittering stone benches, and iced-over ponds.

It was a beautiful surprise, and another clue to the nature of the enigmatic man who ruled over this place. Vlad Dracul was a puzzle, helpful but reserved, managing to be both warm and slightly aloof all at the same time. But he couldn’t be truly cold. Anyone who would commission
a place like this had a lot going on beneath the surface.

Tasmin held out his hand, and Bay slipped hers into it. Together, they walked slowly down one of the paths. The lot wasn’t huge, but it seemed that way, not an ounce of space wasted. It was a woodland transported to the city, and Bay let her eyes wander over every tiny detail.

“So,” she finally asked as the silence spun out between them, “what’s on your mind?”

“A lot of things,” he said, his breath rising in the cold air. Then he slide her a warm glance that made the air feel almost balmy. “Mostly you.”

She managed a smile. “Good to know.”

“What will you do, when the Lilim crush the Ptolemy and things start to settle down again?” he asked.

“You sound pretty sure we’ll win. And what do you mean, what will
I
do? You planning on going somewhere?”

She tried to keep her tone light, but she had a sudden, horrible sinking sensation that he’d brought her out here to say good-bye. She didn’t know why… Had the demon’s appearance earlier shaken him up that badly? And where did he think he was going? If he left, it would be with her claws hooked into his backside hanging on for dear life. She wouldn’t let him accept some miserable fate. She’d fight even if she didn’t know what the hell she was doing yet. For him, she would fight with everything she had.