Kiss Me Deadly (2 page)

M
aking a deal with the devil Himself is always a bad idea.

Three obligations had been set to her, in exchange for the valued skill of the Sight.

When offered the deal months earlier, it had been a nobrainer. To gain the ability to actually see her enemies—and rule out the possible mistake of killing a mortal—Ravin had jumped at the offer.

Jump
wasn’t exactly the word. A guarded “sure” had sealed the deal. For her soul was no longer her own. She hadn’t so much sold it to the devil as loaned it.

Marked across the chest with a palpable tally, she had then set to obligation number one. So easy, she almost had to wonder why she’d lost sleep about making the deal. To merely locate a sin eater and shut down his protection wards, seemed to have pleased Himself immensely, so Ravin wasn’t about to question whether or not she had gotten off easy. When the devil was happy there could be no doubt as to who was the winner of that round.

There remained two obligations to repay her debt—and to see her soul returned. Right now, she focused on the second—another deceptively simple request.

Bent before the cupboard between her refrigerator and the stainless-steel sink, Ravin looked at a six-inch glass vial, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth.

All week she had gathered ingredients for a love spell—a child’s innocence and a cat’s seventh life being the most difficult to come by. After careful measuring and summoning, she’d brought the whole batch to a boil, and then let it cool for an hour.

Now she hefted the copper brewing pot over the vial and poured. Spiced-pear air freshener scented the room, overwhelming the stench of the pot’s contents. She was careful to ensure not a single drop was wasted.

Unless the entire contents were consumed, spells could prove less than effective. In this case, six ounces of liquid could either be drunk or spread over the skin like a moisturizer; it wasn’t particular, as long as the ingredients were absorbed into the bloodstream. Magic would render the absorption rate instantaneous.

“A freakin’ love spell,” she muttered.

Setting the pot back on the cool burner with a clang, she straightened and searched the counter for the little square of plastic wrap she’d cut out earlier. Overhead, a jungle of hanging spider plants tendriled down, some tickling her head. Plants gave her vital energy and kept the apartment’s balance.

She sighed wistfully and shook her head. “This is so not what I should be doing right now.”

On the other hand, the occasional dabbling in actual spell craft and mixing kept her skills from fading. And it helped to tilt the balance back in her favor—or so she hoped.

Ravin was a witch, had been for more than two centuries. Though she had mastered earth and water magic, air still eluded her—and she had no intention of touching fire.

She didn’t spend much of her time sitting about, brewing up spells or chanting. In fact, it was rare she indulged in her own magic for any purpose other than to ward her home against intruders. Which is why her life was dangerously misbalanced right now. A witch wasn’t a real witch without consistent practice of spell craft.

So where had her focus gone over the years? Ravin strived to make a mark on the world. As a slayer, Ravin’s job required she destroy vampires. The only good vampire was a pile of ash.

Out in the living room on the rosewood coffee table, a row of empty shotgun cartridges waited to be injected with her own blood before she went on patrol this evening. The Kila tribe had been stalking the suburbs, stirring up the wolves. Ravin had nothing against werewolves, so their enemies were hers.

Not that she needed a shove to go after a bloodsucking longtooth.

But by slaying, as opposed to using her craft, she pushed her life balance far to the dark side.

“And I am the light,” she murmured, though the declaration was absent of all the belief her ancestors had instilled in her since an early age.

Witches were
the light
. Vampires were
the dark
. And while they were just terms used by the witches for centuries, it was the rare witch who abandoned the light of the craft to surrender her soul to darkness. And those who did?

In the eighteenth century, after she had mastered earth magic, Ravin had watched a fellow witch take revenge against a farmer for raping her by blighting his crops. That revenge was not so singular as it should have been. The farmer’s entire family starved to death that winter. And the witch, drawn to the dark by her act of vengeance, continued to wreak havoc against any slight. She became a hag with a grotesque aura all creatures could see, and all chose to avoid. Eventually she was consumed by darkness.

Since witnessing that fall to darkness, Ravin had vowed that she would strive for balance. While slaying was necessary, it also marked her soul darkly. So she would always use her magic for good to keep the balance.

Of course, if she didn’t practice magic, her balance angled out of whack. And, having dealt with the devil, she was now quite desperate to begin bringing light back to her out-on-loan soul.

Which is why she’d bargained for the Sight in the first place. Sacrifices had been made, but ultimately, it would be for the greater good.

Referring with a glance to the instructions from the dusty old grimoire she’d dug out of grandmama’s trunk, the potion now had to sit high and loosely covered overnight. A courier would arrive at daybreak for pickup.

What happened after the potion left her hands should concern her. Ravin suspected Himself wished a certain mark to fall in love with another certain mark of opposing forces for reasons that would summon a demented thrill in Himself. The playing of enemies against one another? Right up the devil’s sinister alley.

Ravin looked the other way. It did not serve to poke one’s nose into this type of business.

Standing on tiptoes—though some would label her short, Ravin liked to think of herself as average for a seventeenth-century woman—she carefully placed the vial on top of the refrigerator. The plastic wrap fluttered over the circular opening, but she didn’t press it to seal over the glass lip.

“See you in the morning—”

Arms still raised high, Ravin averted her attention from the vial and focused her senses in all directions of her periphery.

A nonmortal being was close. She always felt such a presence as an intuitive clamp tightening her scalp. Who or what…?

A discernible wave shuddered through her apartment, as if it were a frisson moving the air. She could actually see the air molecules and walls and furniture be displaced in a wavery movielike shiver.

Her heart dropped two inches. Her mouth grew dry.

Couldn’t be.

“My wards are breeched?”

Impossible. The entire block was warded to warn her of impending danger. The apartment building was cloaked and set to alarm should an enemy cross the threshold to the first-floor foyer. And if anyone, creature or being, got past all that, the repulse ward she’d set up to span twenty feet about her property should have alerted her like a punch to the gut.

“Something must have glitched.”

Again, impossible. But Ravin felt the intrusion like a blade to her side.

Wood creaked. Heavy metal bolts tore from hinges.

Weapons
. She needed to protect herself.

A loud slam echoed from around the corner of the kitchen. The crash of the front door to the floor made Ravin jump.

Chaotic commotion vibrated throughout the apartment.

Ravin spun around, but her elbow hit hard against the refrigerator door handle. Splattered with an officious rain of potion, she scrambled to right the vial, but swallowed and gasped at the dripping mess.

“Screw it!” She didn’t have time to deal with the nonessentials.

Someone—or something—had invaded her home. And her closest weapon was in the artillery closet across the living room.

Ravin took two steps and slammed into a force so substantial it set her back and thumped her shoulders against the fridge.

A man stood in her kitchen. Big and imposing. Dark, so dark. Coal-black hair flowed about his head and broad shoulders like a wicked flag warning against cutthroats. Black leather creaked as he fisted his fingers. And he snorted like a bull for the red cape.

Droplets of the spell dribbled down her forehead. Ravin spat at the liquid.

She saw the intruder for his truth—a vampire. Their kind wore an aura like glittering rubies shadowed with ash. Indeed, the Sight was valuable. She’d never regret making a deal with the devil.

But that this creature had permeated her wards and stood in her home staring her down as if she were his next meal, infuriated her. How had he entered without verbal permission? A vampire could not cross a private threshold uninvited.

Whatever the glitch that had allowed him entrance, Ravin wasn’t about to bemoan her privacy, or her safety. She didn’t need weapons. This one she could battle with her hands tied behind her back.

Ravin bit the inside of her cheek, tasting the blood and sucking it into her saliva. The longtooth would be ash in no time.

S
tupid, brave little witch. Standing there with fists raised and defiance shining about her like diamonds dipped in oil. He’d waited a long time for this moment. The road back from ash and bone had been difficult, if not impossible at times. And it was all because of Ravin Crosse, vigilante vampire hunter.

Nikolaus crossed the kitchen floor in three strides. Fitting his hand up under her chin, he slammed her against the refrigerator. The room reeked of herbs and smoke and a spiced sweetness. Witch smells. No doubt she’d been brewing a wicked spell.

He lifted her petite frame with ease, crushing his fingers about her windpipe. And yet, she struggled. She was feisty. Her bare feet hit every part of his thighs and even glanced across his groin.

He felt nothing, so long as he kept his eyes burned onto hers. Brown, they were, like mud. She slashed at his chest and arms with fingernails that would have drawn blood had he been wearing anything but leather.

And then she spat on him, hitting him directly on the cheek.

She stopped struggling then. Nikolaus supported her fey weight completely. Wide, enraged eyes took in his reaction.

Or rather, his nonreaction.

“That’s right, witch.” With his free hand, he swiped away the spittle and showed his fingers to her. The blood sat upon his flesh as if nothing more than mud kicked up in a fight. “Your blood is like water to me now.”

The risk had been worth it. He’d not doubted for a moment her blood could have harmed him further than it already had.

“Impossible,” she croaked. “You’re a vamp! Who—who are you?”

Moving his hand from her throat and slamming his other palm against her shoulder, he held her pinned. As he lunged into her, her foul witch smell laced with herbs and a piquant citrus scurried up his nostrils and into his sinuses. The essence of witch disgusted him. He should be done with her right now.

But he’d waited for this moment too long. Not once had he rushed anything important. He would make his suffering mean something for the entire tribe.

“My name,” he said, “is Nikolaus Drake. I am lord of tribe Kila.”

“Oh, yeah? Last I checked, Truvin Stone was leading those infidels,” she said.

“Stone merely fills in while I have been away.”

“Yeah? Nikolaus Drake is dead.”

The nerve of her. And he stood right before her!

She clutched his forearms with both hands, but he did not relent his grip. “I killed Drake, I know it. A stinking vamp!” Again she spat, landing on his chin. “You smell like one. You look like one. But—”

“But your damned poisonous blood has no power over me now.”

Twice now she’d spat upon him. Any other vampire would have been a sizzling pile of ash right now. Nikolaus knew the feeling. Too well.

“You don’t remember me, witch?”

He slammed her hard to get her to stop struggling. Dark liquid spattered her forehead, nose and cheeks. Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. The sight tempted him. Gabriel’s reminder that he should take some of her magic distracted him momentarily.

“Two months ago you attacked tribe Kila. Why? Without provocation? That night, I became another notch on your gun. Well, erase that notch. I didn’t die.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I am a phoenix.” To recite the word filled him with pride. Any vampire who survived the death cocktail was termed a phoenix, for the vampire literally did rise from char and ash to struggle back to life.

“Bloody hell,” she marveled. “No, it’s impossible to—You’re a phoenix? But that means you would have had to—”

“Kill me once,” he growled. “Never again.”

Wheezing as he drew in a breath, he ignored the ache in his lung and dug his fingers into her shoulders. The blue T-shirt she wore stretched under the pressure. Slamming his hips against her torso, Nikolaus pinned her effectively.

A mist of something rained down from above the fridge, splattering the witch’s angry red face.

“Now it’s my turn, witch. I’ve waited two months for this day. You don’t know how I struggled to come back from a half-burned walking hunk of flesh. A vampire can never completely heal from your death cocktail—”

“Cry me another one,” she said. “Let me go, asshole, and we’ll handle this with blades and stakes.”

“And another of your blood bullets? Go ahead,” he hissed against her cheek. “Drown me in your crimson poison. I will bathe in your taint, and wear it proudly as a warrior displays his victories to the world.”

He glared into her eyes, so dark, almost black. “I intend to drain you dry, witch. It’ll be the sweetest drink I’ve ever tasted.”

As he slammed against her, her head fell back against the stainless-steel door, exposing the pulsing carotid—breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Opening his jaw wide, Nikolaus clamped on to the witch’s neck. He fought to wrangle her slashing legs with his own. Holding her with his jaw, he gripped her wrists with each hand and spread them out from her body.

He would not put her into reverie by using his innate persuasion—he wanted her to feel every moment of terror.

Canines pierced flesh and artery. As he’d predicted, the first gush of blood tasted awful. Witch blood. Reeking of rosemary and salt and something inexplicable he couldn’t name but felt as a sour tingle at the back of his throat. It brought back memories best left to the grave. A grave he’d once walked across, but had no intention of lying in.

“No!”

Her protest spurred him on. Wrenching her head down and to the side, Nikolaus drew out his sharp teeth from her neck and drank the warm blood that spilled to the surface. It grew much tastier as he swallowed. Hot, rich and spiced with the forbidden. Also, laced with adrenaline, an addictive drug to all vampires.

“This can’t…” she murmured, “…not right. The…the spell…”

No remorse surfaced as he drank. The witch’s death would fulfill a craving no amount of blood could ever match—that of revenge.

It was a crime Nikolaus had to commit to ensure the safety of his men.

As her muscles slackened and her protests ceased, he supported her upper body across his left arm. Want had been served. Yet he could drink all day and never fill up his need.

The swoon fell upon him with a startling attack. Tossing back his head, Nikolaus gasped out a cry of pleasure. The high of blood extraction dizzied his brain and swirled his thoughts. He must have dropped the witch to the floor, because his hands moved before him, grasping and searching.

He turned, lifting his feet from the heap that held him weighted to the ground. The room wavered in black and white, darkening, and then brightening so that he winced. Yet he did not reel in pain.

Breathing deeply, he felt each inhale and exhale as a sensual attack that heated the very molecules of his body. The air caressed his pores and shimmied brightly down his throat in the wake of the life-giving elixir. He grew hard with desire—a usual reaction to drinking blood but entirely unexpected in this situation.

This swoon—it was different. It had come on too suddenly. It lasted too long. And he hadn’t even begun to drain her.

The witch must die. Pick her up. Finish the task.

Something wasn’t right. And yet, it was all very right. The crazy heat gush of orgasm filled his veins and thickened his erection. Similar to sex, and yet more intense, for it traveled his entire system. Poisonous witch’s blood tracked his extremities and staked claim to his soul.

She filled him. She sweetened him. She possessed him.

She…claimed him.

“R-Ravin?” Nikolaus gasped in searching wonder. “Where? Ravin?”

Landing on his knees, he crept across the tiled floor. Blood spotted the white and black kitchen tiles. Fine, fragile glass shards
clicked
beneath his knees, protected by his leather jeans. His fingers dove into the thick black pool of her hair.

Salvation. Here is where you belong.

This is wrong. Why did you…? How could you?

She lay in a heap, her head tilted to the right to expose the deep wounds he had inflicted. Blood streamed down her neck and across her chest, staining the blue T-shirt stretched tight across her breasts.

No anger. No fight. Utterly silenced, his gorgeous witch.

Hurt? Had he…?

Nikolaus scooped Ravin into his arms. He pressed his lips to her forehead. She didn’t feel inordinately cold. A steady pulse beat against his palm where he slapped it over her neck.

“What have I done to you, my love?”