Then they would be at her mercy.
A fate worse than death.
Still she continued her desperate attempt to drain the bitch, swallowing the poisonous blood until the Dark Lord reached up to grasp her by the ponytail, yanking her away despite the fangs that ripped through her flesh. Then, with a contemptuous motion, the Dark Lord was tossing Jaelyn through the air.
She landed next to Ariyal, who was making a heroic effort to rise to his feet, a sharp pain drilling through her heart as the Dark Lord pointed a finger directly at her.
Oh ... gods.
Lifting a hand, Jaelyn pressed it to her chest. It felt like someone had reached inside her and was attempting to rip her unbeating heart in half.
She couldn’t bear it.
Lost in the searing pain, Jaelyn dismissed the faint sound of her name being called. It seemed reasonable that she would be going mad.
No one could survive such torture with their sanity intact.
Then it came again. This time with all the arrogant command of the King of Vampires.
“Jaelyn.” There was the sound of muted curses. “Dammit, hurry up, mage. Jaelyn, can you hear me?”
At her side, Ariyal went rigid in shock. “What the hell?”
“Styx,” she choked out, barely able to speak past the sensation of her heart being slowly shredded. “Hold on.”
Wrapping her arms around her, Ariyal angled his body to shield her from the Dark Lord just as the mists behind them thinned.
There was the strange sensation of the world melting around her before there was a female shriek of fury and the feel of a hand reaching to grasp her arm.
“No. You’ll never escape me.”
Ariyal cursed, reaching for his sword and swinging it to slice deep into the slender arm. Jaelyn wasn’t sure if the Dark Lord could feel the wound, but the fingers digging into her arm abruptly released and they were tumbling backward.
For a disorienting moment it felt as though they were falling through the air, the pain in her heart thankfully easing, although there remained enough pressure to warn they weren’t completely free of the psycho bitch.
Then a prickle of electricity raced over her skin and she was landing on a hard surface with jarring force.
She had a vague impression of Styx leaning over her as well as a silver-eyed vampire. More distant was the scent of Were and Sylvermyst and ... mage.
Sergei.
She turned her head to discover him lying on the ground next to her and Ariyal, as if they’d knocked him down during their abrupt return to the caves. But oddly he appeared almost oblivious to her presence, his horrified gaze focused on the air directly above her.
She didn’t want to look.
It was going to be bad. And she was tired of bad.
But of course she did.
Not knowing what was coming was the only thing worse than knowing what was coming.
Slowly she shifted to follow the mage’s gaze, her entire body clenching with fear as she watched the outline of a slender young female becoming visible in the shimmering mist.
Oh ... no. Not again.
Ariyal cursed, pulling her tightly against his chest, but there seemed nothing that could be done to halt the Dark Lord from passing through the barrier.
Then, astonishingly, the shimmering air began to thicken.
Something that might have been shock widened the china-blue eyes and the pretty young female lifted a hand to bang it against a seemingly impenetrable barrier.
The mage whimpered beside her, and Jaelyn might have done a bit of whimpering of her own as the air became so heavy it threatened to crush them all. Suddenly she wondered if she’d escaped the endless white fog only to die on the stone floor of the caverns.
But even as she rolled onto her side to say a final farewell to her mate, the pressure was abruptly gone. Along with the shimmering mist.
She held herself perfectly still, terrified if she moved that the air would split open and the Dark Lord would reappear.
Not that far-fetched a fear considering the past few days.
Only after she had counted to a hundred did she cautiously sit up, her body aching from head to toe. She groaned, but didn’t protest when Ariyal wrapped an arm around her waist and assisted her to her feet.
The mage remained on the floor, passed out cold and still bleeding from a wound to his arm. Beyond him stood the King of Weres and a handful of vampires. Farther back the Sylvermysts hurried to get closer to their prince. But her attention was commanded by the six-foot-five vampire who stood with his hands on his hips.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded, his dark eyes revealing a rare disquiet.
Very few things scared the Anasso.
“The Dark Lord,” she said, leaning heavily against Ariyal.
Salvatore made a sound of choked disbelief. “That ... girl?”
“He was resurrected in the child.” She grimaced at the memory. “One minute he was a babe and the next he stepped out of the mist looking like a young girl. It was creepy as hell.”
“Yeah, understatement of the century,” the Were muttered.
Ariyal tugged her even closer, his cheek resting on the top of her head.
“Can we do this later?” he growled. “Jaelyn’s been through enough.”
“In a minute.” Styx pointed a finger toward the spot where the Dark Lord had appeared. “If he was resurrected then why didn’t he ... or she ... come through the barrier?”
Jaelyn parted her lips to admit she didn’t have a clue when Ariyal beat her to the punch.
“Because Jaelyn took her blood.”
“Blood?” Styx regarded her as with a hint of wonder. “From the Dark Lord?”
Jaelyn shuddered, only now realizing that she could still feel the echoes of power from the blood.
“Trust me, it was an act of desperation.”
“An act of incredible courage,” the Anasso corrected with a faint dip of his head.
“So why would taking her blood keep the Dark Lord from passing into this world?” Salvatore asked the question on everyone’s lips.
Including Jaelyn’s.
“The child was created to hold the soul of the Dark Lord, but to have a unique enough essence so that the Phoenix wouldn’t recognize it when it moved through the barrier.” He shrugged. “After all, that’s what keeps the Dark Lord on the other side. So long as the Chalice holds the goddess of light, the darkness remains banished.”
Styx furrowed his brow. “So when Jaelyn drained her of blood?” he prompted.
“She stole the life of the symbiont.”
“No.” Salvatore shook his head. “From what I could see it was very much alive and very pissed off.”
“The Dark Lord survives,” Ariyal agreed, “but now he has no more than an empty shell that is incapable of travel from world to world.”
Styx studied Ariyal with a searching gaze. “So that’s the end?”
Ariyal shrugged. “For now.”
Jaelyn studied him in amazement.
Gorgeous, lethal, and now brilliant.
Suddenly her aching desire for a hot bath and a soft bed evaporated.
All she wanted was to get this Sylvermyst alone so she could ravish him in private.
“We’ll finish this later,” she announced, sending her mate a smile that had him scooping her off her feet and heading toward the nearest exit.
Styx growled in annoyance. .“But ...”
“Later,” Ariyal snapped. “Much, much later.”
A week later
In a lair south of Chicago
The two-story brick farmhouse with white shutters and a wraparound porch was as picturesque as it was isolated.
Perched on a bluff that overlooked the Mississippi River, it was surrounded by acres of meadows filled with wildflowers and patches of woods that were as necessary to fey as plenty of fresh air to breathe. And far enough from the main road to prevent all but the most determined trespassers.
Inside, the house had been modified to please the most demanding vampire. The tinted windows allowed the sun-challenged to move around the house no matter what time of day or night. The rooms were large and the furniture a charming mixture of antiques and modern that was chosen for comfort rather than fashion. And of course reinforced to withstand the love play between a newly mated vampire and Sylvermyst.
It was, as far as Ariyal and Jaelyn were concerned, a little slice of heaven.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t entirely ignore the world outside their secluded lair.
Ariyal’s tribe was settled throughout the countryside, often bringing their squabbles to Ariyal to settle or just stopping by to request his opinion on various decisions they were about to make.
Jaelyn never complained. Not even when they interrupted a romantic evening she’d planned, down to his favorite dinner ... a pair of edible undies.
His people were slowly healing beneath his patient leadership, and for the first time since Jaelyn had met Ariyal, he wasn’t burdened by the guilt that had been slowly destroying him.
And then there had been the visits from Styx and Salvatore.
The two kings had been impervious to Ariyal’s distinct lack of welcome as they had grilled him and Jaelyn on their time in the mists, as if telling the story over and over would somehow reveal what the Dark Lord might be plotting.
Not that she blamed them.
She was as anxious as anyone to find a way to rescue Cassandra and Caine from the mists. Not just because she wouldn’t leave anyone to the tender mercies of the Dark Lord, even if they were Weres. But because it was too dangerous to leave a true prophet in the hands of their enemy.
And of course, there had been the disturbing news that Gaius, the vampire who’d given his loyalty to the Dark Lord, was an Immortal One who was able to travel through the veils separating worlds.
Which meant that even if the Dark Lord was prevented from entering this dimension for now, he was able to send his minion to do his bidding.
Not the most comforting thought.
It all combined to keep them from having the private honeymoon that they had once hoped to enjoy.
A damned shame, she acknowledged, wanting nothing more than to spend the rest of the night in bed with her delectable fey.
Instead she was forced to pull on a pair of jeans and a dark T-shirt as she watched Ariyal finish buttoning the loud red Hawaiian shirt with yellow flowers. In the past few days they’d come to a hard-fought agreement that when they were in mixed company she would put aside her stretchy pants and sports bra, while he would cover that magnificent chest.
Mating, she was swiftly discovering, was all about compromise.
They braided each other’s hair. Then as his hands began to roam in a manner that warned his thoughts weren’t on their impending meeting with Styx and Salvatore, she firmly took his arm and steered him out of their private bedroom.
“We can play later, Sylvermyst,” she promised, leading him down the carved oak staircase that glowed in the light from the small crystal chandelier hanging from the open beamed ceiling. “Styx and Salvatore are already here.”
He grimaced, his hand flexing as if he was considering the comfort of calling for his bow and arrow.
The truce between the three powerful leaders was uneasy, at best.
“What if I tell them to go?”
“They’ll just come back later,” she warned, a smile curving her lips at the large bouquet of wildflowers that was arranged on a table in the small foyer.
Ariyal’s love for nature could be seen in crystal vases all over the house, perfuming the air and adding splashes of color that Jaelyn was rapidly becoming addicted to.
She’d had no idea how bleak her life had been until it was filled with Ariyal’s vibrant warmth.
He tugged on her braid, his expression rueful. “Didn’t you make me promise that if we survived we were done saving the world?”
“All we’re doing is meeting with Styx and Salvatore.”
He grimaced. “I’d rather meet with the Dark Lord.”
“Ssh.” She pressed a finger to his lips. “That’s still a possibility, you know.”
He heaved a sigh. Although he was convinced that the Dark Lord couldn’t use his new body to travel into the world, there was no doubt that the bastard was on the other side plotting a means to return.
So long as he existed, there would be danger.
“Fine,” he said, “but spending time with the Royal High-nesses gives me a rash.”
She chuckled, studying the elegant beauty of her mate’s face. “I thought you blue bloods like to hang together, Prince Ariyal?”