Lympia stood beside her. Her body was taut as a bowstring from the fight. “Let’s get going,” she echoed.
As if he had all the time in the world, he pushed a hand through his hair. The action showed the curves of perfect biceps. “Why do you think to order me? Who are you?” he asked.
Cerian’s gaze snapped to his. She motioned the Ystani. “Looks like I’m your savior.”
“You’re the one I was supposed to meet. Cerian, leader of the lost faction of Tuatha Dé Danaan. The
Scarlet
.” It was more statement than question.
She nodded curtly. “We’re not lost. You found us, more or less.” She gestured at her friend. “This is Lympia. She’s a Zaenian, but an adopted member of the Danaan.”
Lympia bowed slightly, her black, ringleted hair falling over one slim shoulder.
Cerian headed toward the door. “Can we please leave now?”
They exited the tavern. The rain still came down hard. Cerian led the way toward the rover. She threw an angry glance over her shoulder at Rhys. “Were you the only Vampir the Council of the Embraced would send? Do we rank so low on the scale that they’d send a lush—”
He moved so fast it astounded her. With his free hand, he grabbed her by the upper arm firmly, yet he did not hurt her at all. “I told you once already, I wasn’t drunk. I’ve been followed since I landed, but I didn’t know by whom. I bluffed, that’s all, trying to get them to attack me while I was ready for them and they believed me vulnerable.
Better then than while I slept at night.” He flashed white teeth in a smile that was far more feral than friendly. “Understand? I was drawing them out.”
The man looked like a predator, long, sleek and dark. Like a huge cat slipped out of midnight to ambush her. He didn’t look anything like she thought he’d looked. Hadn’t expected the man to make places low in her body go tight and sensitive with sexual awareness. Although, after she’d received word that the Council of the Embraced would send someone, she hadn’t thought much at all. She’d simply been relieved she’d have a way to stave off the Sarthes.
She fought the urge to twist from his grip like a child. “Yes, fine. I understand.”
He released her and walked to the rover. “Alcohol doesn’t affect the Embraced, only large quantities of blood inebriate the Vampir.”
“I didn’t know that.”
He flicked her a darkened glance. “Better start learning.”
Unease flickered through her. She masked it and stepped into the beat-up silver rover with Rhys and Lympia behind her.
37
Anya Bast
* * * * *
Rhys sat down in the right seat and watched Cerian sink into the left and push a series of buttons that lit when she touched them. The ancient, dented vehicle revved to life. Raindrops hit the huge windshield in a relentless rat-a-tat-tat. She flicked the wipers on.
She was beautiful, even more beautiful when that sour look was wiped clean of her face in the heat of battle. Thanks to some odd coupling in the line of her ancestors, she was a unique marked Tuatha Dé Danaan. Marked meant she was predestined to be Embraced—fated to become Vampir. Soon she would be a Vampir sidhe—the first of her kind.
He’d been sent to Embrace her.
The Embraced fell into two categories. The Vampir were those who were born at birth with a caul,
marking
them to one day be located by their
pere de sang
or
mere de sang
and be Embraced. Or they were unmarked humans who were Embraced and were strong enough to pass through the ordeal and attain fully Embraced status.
Those not strong enough to pass all the way through the transformation made up the second category—the Demi. The Demi fed from lust and sex, not blood.
He shifted his gaze to Cerian. She was smaller than he thought she’d be, small and curved in the nicest ways possible. Though it was clear enough the woman could fight.
Leather cupped her shapely ass and tight, worn fabric stretched across her full breasts.
The strap of the scabbard fastened across her back, like his, and was pulled between her breasts, offering him an exceptional view.
Her hair was a riot of different hues of brown, light as Ursi sugar, dark as deep turned earth and every shade in between. It fell past her waist in a series of tiny braids.
He’d noticed earlier how the secured ends brushed her ass when she moved.
She flicked a glance at him and jutted her jaw slightly as she guided the vehicle into the forest. “What are looking at?”
He smiled slowly. “You.”
She gave him a sidelong look and flushed. He knew he wasn’t the only one feeling the flare of sexual awareness between them.
Cerian stiffened visibly. “Well, stop it. Look at Lympia,” she snapped.
He turned his head and watched the Zaenian woman. She dropped her exotically colored lashes and then looked up with heat in her beautiful light eyes. It was a blatant invitation. Her chocolate-colored skin gleamed soft and supple in the dim light within the rover. He watched the rise and fall of her full breasts.
She was a rare breed, too, on this war-ravaged planet. Gaman was a dumping ground for various races across the universe. They all vied for a piece of this place and fought tooth and nail to get it. Only strict laws, backed up by the threat of unforgiving violence by the Union of Gaman, maintained any peace at all. The Union, the governing 38
Scarlet Sweet
body set up by the strongest of the tribes in order to end the Thirty Year War, ruled with an iron fist and showed no mercy to those who flouted their decrees.
“I haven’t seen a Zaenian in a long time, Lympia.” commented Rhys.
Her pale blue eyes clouded like a storm on a summer’s day and filled with as much volatility. “I am one of the last of my kind,” she answered. “The Thirty Year War decimated us.”
“What tribe waged war on you?”
Lympia focused her gaze past the windshield of the rover and into the darkness-swathed forest. “All of them.” Her gaze flicked back to his. “But I have a special interest in seeing the Sarthes fail in their conquest of the Danaan.”
Still in sitting position, he bowed from his waist in deference to her and her people.
“That is why I am here,” he answered.
He turned back to Cerian. “Why does Ta’bat want you so badly?”
Cerian glanced at him. “Crystals, very rare ones. My people mine them under the mountains where we live. We’ve had several tribes try and take them from us, but the Union has ruled that none can do it by force. However, the Sarthian ruler, Ta’bat, can take me as his consort. That’s the only way they’ll ever get their hands on what we mine.”
“Why didn’t those Sarthes just try and take you back there? Why doesn’t Ta’bat press you into it?”
She shook her head and her braids made a susurrus of sound as they brushed.
“Can’t. The Union won’t let them force me physically, but they will let them cut off our food supply to compel my hand.” She turned to him with desperation in her eyes. “My people are starving, Rhys.”
It was the first time she’d said his name in a nonformal way and it took him aback for a moment. “Why is my Embracing you going to save your people?”
She smiled. “You
must
know the answer to that. The Sarthes hate the Embraced.
Ta’bat’s people will never allow their leader take one as consort. There’d be a bloody civil war. If I’m Embraced he’ll be forced to leave us alone, at least until he figures something else out. It will depend on how badly he wants our crystal, in the end.”
The lights flickered on and off in the rover as they crashed through the forest. The whole vehicle sounded as if it would fall apart at any moment, creaking and banging and shivering beneath them. Although he didn’t need the bright headlights of the rover to see them, the high beams revealed many large, felled trees. Their upturned roots rotted in a tangle against the riven ground of the old forest. Victims of the long and bloody Thirty Year War, he surmised.
They cleared the trees and Rhys saw a mountain in their path. They seemed to be on a direct collision course with it.
“
Caerli vey ia se
,” Cerian muttered beside him.
39
Anya Bast
A boulder on the road in front of the rover rolled away and the vehicle entered a cave. She mumbled more foreign words and the boulder slid back in place behind them.
They bumped and jounced down and down into what felt like the heart of Gaman itself, and finally entered a huge room with rough-hewn stone walls and a high ceiling.
Beautiful crystal dripped from all sides of the cavern. The floor was made of a smooth, opaque crystal. There had been splendor here once, Rhys could tell. It was obvious in the worn wooden tables and chairs scattered through the main residence of the Tuatha Dé Danaan that the wars had taken their toll. Danaan, all dressed in thread-worn clothing, milled the large cavern-room.
They climbed out of the rover and Cerian turned sad eyes on him. “This place used to be teeming with laughter and music.” Her gaze hardened. “I’d have it that way again. On our own terms. Not by the leave of the Sarthes.”
For just a fleeting moment, Rhys loved her. Loved that hard resolve in her eyes and the passion she had for her people. This was a good leader. She had his respect.
He watched her take her pack from the rover’s baggage hold and walk away.
And by the all gods above and beyond, how he wanted her. Images of her fine body moving over his like silk, her skin sheened with the perspiration of their coupling, flooded his mind. How would her cries sound as he thrust into her, holding her wrists captive over her head? Would her hair spread in an earthy riot of color across the pillow?
He stifled a groan. He wanted her long, strong legs wrapped around his waist as he shafted her toward climax. His body thrummed with the awareness of her, attuned to her every breath and movement.
* * * * *
“Go ahead, find yourself quarters. We’ve got enough vacant ones since two-thirds of our people are dead. Choose one.” Cerian slung her pack over her shoulder and headed toward her own room. “Guess you won’t need a ration of herbed flat bread and gruel, will you?”
“No,” Rhys answered. “A willing donor is all I need.”
“I’ll let you feed from me, and you can share my quarters anytime.” Cerian heard Lympia purr.
She chuckled at her friend’s boldness. “Go ahead,” called Cerian over her shoulder as she walked away. “Share Lympia’s quarters.” The sex-starved Danaan females would be all over the Vampir. Funny how that thought made her stomach clench just the slightest bit.
He was at her side the moment she stepped into the shadowed corridor leading to her room. He pressed her up against the wall, his hooded gaze roving almost 40
Scarlet Sweet
territorially over her body. A sexual growl trickled from between his lips. “I’d rather share yours, Cerian.”
Her name on his lips was like a seductive spell that wove itself around her breasts and her sex. She took a careful breath. This was a dangerous man. Very dangerous indeed.
Cerian had been alone for too long, had wanted and needed a consort for too many years. She didn’t have the ability to sleep with this man and not hope for…
more
. At one time, she could’ve done it without a backward glance, but not now.
That left him with the capability to ravage her body with pleasures and her heart with an elusive, illusory promise of companionship, support…things she wanted so very badly. Then he would leave her with nothing but an increase of the bitterness in her heart after the centuries of the war her people had already endured.
She wanted him badly, but the cost was too high. She needed to stay strong, her emotions unfettered. There would be no way she could take this man to her bed and maintain the cold aloofness she needed to survive and be a leader to her people.
She swallowed hard, masking as best she could the hammering of her heart, the heaviness of her breasts and the slickness coating her sex at the thought of him strong and lean between the sheets of her bed.
“Get off me, Rhys,” she commanded evenly. “Your attentions are unwanted.”
He slid a finger over the plump of her breast, up to trace her collarbone and let it come to a rest on her chin. He tipped her face to his. When he spoke, she could see the sharp points of his fangs flashing within his mouth. “Oh, I disagree, though you’re a good liar.”
There was an accent to his words, spoken in a thick, aroused voice. Welsh, she supposed. She knew enough about the Vampir to know he was old…very old. The Council had sent a little information on him before he’d arrived. He’d been Embraced in Wales sometime around 1100 A.D. Earth reckoning. Cerian was centuries old, but the Vampir was far older. Cerian wondered if he’d always exuded this confident sexuality, or if he’d honed it over all that time.
“I will have you,
cariad
.” His voice was like velvet against her skin. “Once I’ve decided to seduce,
I seduce
.” The dark threat hung in the air between them, pregnant with erotic possibility.
And arrogant presumption.
It was that last that really annoyed her. She brought her knee up and he twisted out of her way at the last possible moment.
She drew a shaky breath and turned on her heel. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a date with a hot shower.” She threw a pointed look at him. “
Alone
.”
Cerian walked down the corridor to her room. The glow of three lanterns lighted the large chamber. One of the women must’ve flamed them in anticipation of her arrival. The crystals they mined emitted a natural radiance, which was why they were 41
Anya Bast
so coveted. In the bedchambers constant light was not a desirable thing, so regular oil lanterns scattered the rooms.
Flame threw flickering light over the rough-hewn walls and rug-covered floor. It was a simple chamber, furnished with a large bed, a table, some chairs and a wardrobe.
A door off to the left of the room in the back led to her private bathroom. That’s where she was headed. She couldn’t wait to wash the Sarthian blood from her skin.
She threw her pack down on her bed, stripped her rain and blood-soaked clothes off, and headed into the bathroom. She stepped into the shower, turning the knob that let the water from the hot spring deep in the mountain travel down the conduit and pour out of the showerhead. They might be lacking in food, but not water. The mountain was filled with it, both in cool, secret lakes and hot springs.