Shadow of the Vampire (2 page)

         
Silver-tipped arrows. He groaned.

         
Not good.

         
The fine metal acted like a poison on his kind, eating their flesh and siphoning their power from the inside out. Gritting his jaw against the pain, he slashed the knapsack from around his neck and tossed it at Tallon. She caught it in one clawed hand.

         
"Take it and go."

         
She looked up. The fear in her eyes eating at his soul. Tonight was not supposed to have gone down like this. They'd gotten what they came for. But he'd be damned if it ended with her getting hurt.

         
A second arrow ate through his thigh.

         
"Dammit, Tallon. You promised." He growled. "Get out of here. Now!"

         
A breath of relief sawed out of his lungs when she nodded. After she disappeared in the darkness, he turned his focus on the vamp with the bow gun. Snapping his wings wide, Declan arced into a kamikaze dive. Fire licked the back of his throat. Smoke curled out of his nostrils.

         
The vampire saw him coming and turned to run, but he was too late. Declan opened his jowls, raining a torrent of dragonfire on the soldier. Pale flesh melted off his face and hands, pooling on the stones below.

         
Before Declan could close his jaw, another blitz of gunshots saturated the sky. Blazing heat ripped through his veins with the same burning efficiency as the bullets had torn his flesh. His wings faltered and folded behind him. His elongated muzzle shrunk until cool night air whipped his human face, tossing strands of hair into his eyes.

         
"Shit," he muttered as he began plummeting toward the ground, human from the waist up. Unable to stop, he twisted in midair and tucked his chin, waiting for impact. His body smacked the dirt, bouncing and skidding, his flesh eating the small rocks and granules. He slid to a halt. A cloud of dust rose and then settled over him like a blanket, coating his lungs.

         
Coughing, he rolled to his stomach and opened his eyes to peek. Two soldiers were rushing him. Fast. Their black trench coats billowed behind them, showing off an assortment of weapons strapped to gun belts around their thick waists.

         
At least six more, all decked out like G.I. Joe on crack, were closing in not ten paces behind them.

         
Great.

         
The first two almost on him, Declan crouched and sideswiped his leg in an arc, knocking them down. Springing to his feet, he reared his tail. Blood splattered across his face and neck as he lodged the club-shaped ball at the end of it into the nearest vamp's chest. Spinning, he caught the second one by the throat. He snapped the soldier's thick neck around until a sickening crunch reverberated through his arms. Discarding the lifeless heap on the ground, Declan wrenched his tail out of what was left of the other vamp's torso, and turned to face the second wave of soldiers bearing down on him.

         
"Come on," he said, motioning to the approaching horde. His blood-soaked tail lashed and bit like a whip behind him.

         
The pack stepped closer. Their teeth were bared and their black claws extended. Not caring if he died tonight as long he took a few of these bastards with him, Declan stepped forward to meet them head-on. He stumbled over heavy feet. Frowning, he looked down. The remaining armor scales on his lower body receded. Then his tail, the only weapon left in his arsenal, shrank back into his body.

         
The silver, he realized. Its poison was draining his dragon power.

         
As soon as the thought came, his body screamed in pain, his side and back burning as if someone held a blowtorch to his skin. Cupping the wound, he pulled back a bloody hand.

         
Another shot fired. Instead of more silver bullets, a heavy net collapsed atop him, dragging him to the ground. The instant his cheek hit the dirt, feet and fists rained down on him. With the net tying him up, all he could do was shield his head with his forearms and wait.

         
"Enough!" At a female's order, the soldiers backed up a step.

         
The Queen.

         
It had to be her. At the thought, an icy shiver passed through him. A rational part of his brain had known she would come for him if he didn't kill her first. Knew she would take her vengeance against his kind out on his flesh--his soul.

         
Well, he thought, grabbing a fistful of net. He wasn't going without a fight.

         
With a roar, Declan looped the thick cord around his wrist and pulled, taking several of the horde to their knees. Jabbing a fist through the mesh, he seized the nearest soldier by the throat and squeezed.

         
"Dammit, Ivan. Hold him," a strong female voice ordered.

         
At her command, a boot rammed his jaw. Declan flew back, his chin kicking the ground in a teeth-shattering blow. Groaning, he spit out a mouthful of blood and pushed himself up, his head lolling in the direction he'd last heard the woman's voice.

         
The first thing he focused on were boots--spike-heeled, patent-leather, knee-high stripper boots, wrapped around a pair of slender legs that seemed to go for days. Declan lifted his chin and wrenched his swollen eye wider.

         
The female stood with one hand propped on black-leather-clad hips. The wind whipped thin blond hair around her--a delicately framed waist, bound in a leather corset that would have given any fetish kink an instant hard-on.

         
When his gaze finally reached her face, he noted she examined him with black eyes as cold and immortal as his soul. And that she was much too young to be the Queen.

         
"Where is the crystal?" Her smooth words held a faint trace of a Russian accent.

         
Not the Queen, but definitely of a noble caste. Declan grinned through bloodied lips.

         
At his smile, a dainty line furrowed her brow, and she cocked her head to the side. For a moment, she reminded Declan of a confused puppy. Until she raised a sawed-off 12 gauge and one black eye stared down the barrel at him.

         
"Tell me where it is and I might let you live, Derkein."

         
"It's gone," he said with a chuckle. "You have nothing to take back to her. You're as dead as I am."

         
The vixen's onyx eyes flashed silver before she drove the butt of the gun down to his face. He was still smiling when she pistol-whipped his nose and the world plunged into darkness.

         
ALEXIA F EODOROVNA stood in the catacombs, staring into the stone cell. Although the beast lay sound asleep on the floor and chained to the wall, his size and strength still managed to unsettle her.

         
Big. Dark. Dangerous.

         
She had never seen anything like him. The dragon lords never shifted into human form during battle, and were said to be all but extinct, or so she'd assumed until tonight. After seeing him fight, she wondered how she'd ever believed the lie.

         
He'd fought like a warrior of auld.

         
The way he'd protected that female of his kind, battled until he couldn't stand and yet met death with a smile on his face, affected her strangely. Not because she knew she would have met her own death like the coward her mother had called her. But because in the deepest part of her heart, she yearned to experience that kind of love, yet knew she would die without it.

         
The prisoner shifted. The metal cuffs around his wrists caught the moonlight filtering in through the rectangular window in his cell.

         
Alexia leaned her forehead on the cool iron bars and watched the play of light on the dark wall. Tipping her chin, she took in a breath of salty ocean air, wafting in the window, purifying the rancid odor of her horde's dungeon. Funny. She'd always thought that tiny window to be the cruelest torture in the cavern. The vibrant ocean, the alive taste of freedom danced on the tips of their prisoners' tongues, taunting their spirits from the other side of the dungeon wall. A small flavor of a salvation that for most never came.

         
At least they died having tasted hope.

         
Footsteps ascended the spiral staircase behind her. Sliding her eyes from the prisoner, she adjusted the tray in her arms and turned toward the guard.

         
"It's about time, soldier." She nodded into the cell. "Are you certain he sleeps?"

         
The guard stepped into the light from a wall sconce. Like every one of her mother's soldiers, he had crew-cut blond hair, a thick pit-bull-size head and dark sunglasses he wore even in the inky-black pits of their cavern dwelling.

         
"I drugged that Derkein myself," he said, unlocking the cell door and propping it open. "He'll be out for hours, if he wakes at all."

         
"Good. You may leave us."

         
A dark brow cocked over the rim of his shades. "But, Lotharus ordered--"

         
She hissed at the name, and stepped up to him. "Lotharus does not make the orders around here. I do. And I said, leave us."

         
Though disapproval radiated off the grunt, he clamped his lips together and bowed.

         
Alexia watched him leave under narrowed lids. She didn't trust those genetically enhanced soldiers. Sure, they were efficient, strong and practically unbeatable in combat. However, their increasing intolerance of showing her the respect befitting her station was troubling. Naturally, her mother blamed her for a lack of dominance over the horde.

         
Once the soldier disappeared around the corner, Alexia stepped through the iron threshold, slamming the door with more force than necessary.

         
Goddess! Just once she'd like to prove to her horde she was capable of leading them, capable of succeeding on the throne when her mother stepped down. Alexia knew if she retrieved the Crystal of the Draco, no one, not even Lotharus, would question her or the horde's centuries-old matriarchal way of life again.

         
She stopped beside the slumbering beast, realizing the only one who knew where the crystal might be lay bleeding to death on the floor by her feet.

         
With a sigh, Alexia settled on the ground, unwound a measure of coarse thread and nipped it with her fangs. Wetting the tip with her tongue, she threaded the needle and shifted onto her knees above the prisoner. Since he faced the outer wall, she decided to start by stitching the gash on his shoulder blade.

         
Alexia set her fingers to his flesh. At the contact, he moaned, rolled to his back and took a deep breath. Alexia held hers. Every dip, ridge and contour of his naked, bronzed body rose and flexed with the movement, beckoning her gaze.

         
What few noble men of her horde she'd seen unclothed had been tall and thin. Gaunt, when she compared them to this dragon lord. He was thick. Her gaze slid between his thighs. Everywhere. He had long muscled thighs and calves, solid arms and a broad, sculpted chest, not bones protruding beneath translucent skin like Lotharus.

         
Intrigued, she leaned closer.

         
Rich sable waves of shoulder-length hair curled around his neck. Her eyes fixed lower, on the pulse beating beneath his golden skin. A primal thrum tingled through her body. The air around her thickened, and her fangs burned.

         
Alexia sat back on her heels and gave herself a mental shake.

         
Just stitch him up and leave.

         
Bending, she set the needle to the torn flesh by his ribs. Before she could push it through his skin, long fingers dug into her wrists.

         
Her gasp stuck in her throat as the prisoner hauled her down. A pop, like sails unfurling, rent the air. One massive black wing tucked beneath her, cocooning her against his hard flesh and cushioning her fall to the floor. The cool scales glided against her shoulders, a contrast to the hot breath feathering against her face.

         
"Did you like what you saw, vixen?" he said in a smoky voice.

         
Embarrassment flooded her face. She wriggled beneath his hold on her and barely moved an inch. "Let me go."

         
The dragon propped himself up on an elbow. His electric-blue eyes slid from hers, to the flesh her leather bodice failed to conceal. "No."

         
Her jaw slackened. "Release me or--"