Reaper's Dark Kiss (17 page)

“You can’t—”

But Oracle stopped Julian with a bone-white hand held up as if to stop traffic. “This is my game. You shall play by my rules, Prince. Your alternative is to leave with nothing.” He bent his head, hands folded into his sleeves, the monk in contemplation again.

Sky felt Julian tense for a fight. Afraid to say anything that Oracle would interpret as consulting, she took Julian’s face in both hands and kissed his lips once, twice, then ran slow fingers through his hair. She turned her back, leaned into him, and drew Julian’s arms around her hips. Little by little, she felt him calm down, and that was good because Sky had to do the hardest thinking of her life.

“Well done,” Oracle whispered in his scratchy voice. “Grace has always calmed the beast.” His hood leaned to one side, a silent question mark. “Do you agree to my terms?”

“Yes,” Sky said, heart thudding. “Three questions. All at the same time. Wait for your answers.”

“Excellent.”

Oracle bowed his head, waiting, patient.

Drawing comfort from Julian’s cool bulk behind her, Sky whipped through a hundred questions and discarded them all. Panic crowded the edges of her mind. She pushed it back and forced herself to gather the few facts she had.

Vandar was the drainer? Fact.

A sub D blood was valuable like gold? Fact.

“Don’t turn crow.”

Stained-glass angels.

What else?

Nothing that mattered.

She was overthinking it. She was going to question an oracle. They gave crooked answers. She had to ask crooked questions.

Sky made herself relax into Julian’s arms, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m ready.”

“Proceed,” Oracle said.

Closing her eyes, Sky let the facts and half facts flow freely through her mind in a kind of rushing river, took a short breath, and said, “What would turn my blood from gold to lead? Where do we look?” She paused. One more question. Names. It had to be about names because…she didn’t know why. She went with her instinct. “What is Vandar’s true name?”

“Well thought, young one,” Oracle said. “Here follow my answers.”

Julian tensed around Sky, as if Oracle had made a threat.

“In chaos is found the seed of dominion.” Oracle paused, as if to say,
answer number one
. “You will need to show Julian the forever bridge. What you need lies on the near side.” Another pause. “The life-giving elixir which we most desire can become a fatal brew, swift annihilation to any but the one whose love is pure and everlasting. To mix the brew, you must taste of the heart stone.”

“Breathe,” Julian whispered.

Sky realized she’d been holding her breath and let it out.

Oracle turned his back on them. “I grow tired,” he whispered. “Leave me.”

Julian unwrapped himself from Sky and gave a ritual response. “Your gift of wisdom is accepted.”

Sky was too shaken to say anything at all. She let Julian lead her out of the enclosure to the terrace and pressed into him for the drop down.

The forever bridge. She’d seen it in her nightmares for almost two years.

She didn’t want to go back to those years. She’d thought she could leave them behind.

But secrets had a way of unearthing themselves from the deepest graves and rising until they blotted out the sun and nothing remained but darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Four

As they made their way through the park, Julian thought over Oracle’s answers. Only one meant anything, the one about chaos. Geography was tough over Julian’s long life. Mortals changed names of places every few decades. He’d never heard of a bridge named Forever.

Sky was walking with her head hanging way down, as if she had to inspect the dirt on the path. Julian sensed Dominion and Creed keeping an uneasy distance in the park. Word must have spread that he would be there. No one wanted to draw a reaper’s attention. Julian’s role as executioner made his people uneasy around him.

Viper and Harli were where Julian had left them. Harli was pacing, breathing hard. The vampire scent in the park was strong. It would be bringing memories of gorging, brutal feedings. Memories of things he still wanted but couldn’t have anymore. It was dangerous. He had to get Harli out of the park.

“What did he say?” Viper asked, coming up to them.

Julian told them Sky’s questions and Oracle’s answers as best as he could remember. Neither Viper nor Harli made any sign that they understood the answer about chaos.

Viper looked at Sky with the respect he’d give a battle-proved veteran. “You give mortals a good name.”

Sky rubbed her palms over the legs of her jeans. Her hands were trembling. “Do I?” Her tone was distracted, confused, as if she were caught somewhere between asleep and awake.

Viper glanced at Julian, who shook his head…
Don’t know.

“The heart stone, it’s been around for centuries,” Harli said. “There’s only one Shade who ever found it.”

“Tariq,” Julian said.

“He left it in Anya’s tomb. Buried it under the stone with her,” Harli said. “It would take years to dig it out.”

Julian expected a reaction from Sky, but she just went on standing there, lost to her thoughts.

“Let’s go,” Julian said. “All this vampire stink is making me itch.”

Harli looked relieved. Julian let him lead them out. Sky was behind Harli. Viper was watching their backs.

Beyond the park, the city was at low ebb. Lone cars crept through the streets. The telltale blue-white of televisions glowed against windows.

Sky’s steady silence made Julian nervous. No questions from her was like no rain in monsoon season. Pushing for answers would be a mistake. Instead, he told her the story of Tariq, the first Shade to ever take a mortal for a mate.

Tariq took Anya for his lover around the time Vandar first started his talk about the Dominion. It was one thing, the thinking went back then, for a Shadow Worlder to have a mortal in his bed. It was something else to take her for a mate. But Tariq defied the council.

He courted Anya as if he could take her for his mate. When he did the forbidden and revealed what he was to her, Anya consented to give up the sun and her life aboveground. By then, the Dominion War had begun. Tariq was a ruthless warrior. He hunted vampires and slaughtered them without mercy.

“What happened?” Sky asked in a distant voice.

“Dominion warriors ambushed her,” Harli said. “It was revenge against Tariq. They fed on her. A whole lot of them. She died.”

After that, different legends told different stories. But everyone agreed that Tariq went to Oracle.

“What did Oracle tell him?” Sky asked, slightly interested.

“The answer that got written down is, ‘Find the heart stone, then follow your heart,’” Harli said.

After that, Tariq burned himself nearly to a crisp hunting vampires. He tortured them, staking them in the shade so they would burn inches at a time. When he wasn’t fighting, he was building Anya’s tomb and searching for the stone.

“The Sun World has a place like her tomb,” Harli said, “a hall.”

“Taj Mahal,” Julian said.

Tariq finally found the heart stone in what mortals used to call Sumeria. He brought it back, added it to Anya’s sarcophagus, sealed her in, and laid a red rose on top.

Harli said, “The legends say his last words were, ‘A rose for you, my love.’ Then he pushed at the central column of the tomb. Tons and tons of stone crashed down on him. He died.”

“Romeo and Juliet,” Sky said in her strangely flat voice.

“Who?” Julian asked.

“Love story about two mortals who fell in love a long time ago. He poisoned himself. She stabbed herself with his dagger in her tomb so she could die with him.”

“That’s a love story?”

“Tragedy,” Sky said and sank into silence again.

“Some people say if you visit the tomb, you can hear Tariq and Anya laughing and talking, and everything smells like roses.” Harli looked at Sky’s hanging head and asked, “Did I make you sad?”

A faint smile came and went on Sky’s face. “No,” she said. “It’s a good story. Sometimes we have to be careful what we wish for.”

They were at Viper’s door. He let them in. Harli and Viper let Julian fly up with Sky first. She settled on the long couch, hands between her legs, fingers laced together, shoulders hunched. She could have been the captain on the
Titanic
—sinking fast.

In the uncertain candlelight of Viper’s place, Julian sat beside Sky. She slid one hand into his. It was cold, trembling.

“I never heard of a bridge called Forever,” Viper said to Julian. “You?”

A burst of adrenaline scent came from Sky. It was so strong it nearly stung Julian’s eyes.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“Later.” Sky’s heart kicked up to double time. She swallowed. “I’ll tell you later.”

“No,” Julian said to Viper. “I don’t think it’s in New York.”

“What about the heart stone?” Viper said. “Does it exist except for that story?”

“No one ever heard of it after Tariq and Anya,” Julian said.

“Or maybe no one needed it,” Harli said softly.

“Do we even know what it looks like?” Viper asked.

“It’s black, like jet,” Sky said.

They all turned to her.

“Red veins run through it,” she went on. “It’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.”

This wasn’t the time to ask how Sky knew that. “Where is it?” Julian asked.

“You better just take me to Vandar,” Sky said. “Get it over with.”

Julian’s beast snarled. It twisted in his gut, struggling for a way to get at Vandar.

Viper slid off his stool and motioned to Harli. “Let’s you and me take a walk,” he said. The sound of them landing below was faint to Julian. He barely heard the door lock.

“Talk to me, Sky.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The hunger was more urgent than Vandar had ever felt it. Agony pierced him unceasingly, stalking his reason, making his beast rage. Thirst pounded through him. He didn’t want merely to feed. He wanted to drain, to feel a mortal’s heart stop as their life’s blood rushed across his lips.

He was strolling the narrow ways of Light Town with Maggie, who walked in silence, her hand in his. With each step, it was an effort to restrain himself from barging into Night Crypt and demanding custody of the mortal female. After all, what could be done to alter the terms of the contract between now and the noon hour?

Sometime near the end of the sandbox fight mortals called World War II, the most daring of Vandar’s new vampires had begun Light Town with strings of colored bulbs hung on the unrelieved black stone walls of the tunnels underneath his brownstone. They spread year to year, like creeping vines.

After the lights came shops built into niches in the stone. They sold books, music, things to play music on, coffee. The buying and selling was done on a complex bartering system Vandar had never bothered to learn.

Now, many decades later, Light Town was a meeting place for younglings where they gathered in their favorite shops. Vandar ruthlessly enforced his one-hour-before-dawn curfew. This morning, with sunrise just hours away, the young were returning from the hunt. Light Town was coming to life.

He thought back on the long hours he’d spent with Maggie, having her. He was an inconsiderate lover at the best of times, but the urge to drain made him brutal. He wasn’t used to a bedmate exploding in orgasm the way Maggie had, desperate, panting, almost begging him not to stop. She’d more than let Vandar have his way. She’d surrendered to him, holding back nothing, not even when he’d brought her within a few breaths of screaming. That intoxicated him, tempted him to repeat past sins Maggie was far too young and too innocent to imagine.

When he’d finished with her, she asked for paper and a pencil. After he gave it to her, Vandar sat enthralled, watching Maggie draw naked by candlelight.

Her cheeks still glowed warm with sated desire as she sketched their naked bodies tangled amid a ground of flowers, his muscled form on top of her, she on her knees, her face in the blossoms, a full moon shining down on them. He’d seen his own face through her eyes and saw not the monster that looked back from the eyes of others, but a man who held his lover with tender hands while driving her to ecstasy. The sketch seemed to come straight from her heart, as though her fingers were directed by some brilliant inner light pouring itself forth onto the cheap writing paper through a common lead pencil. He would have to get her art supplies. Perhaps he would take her to shop for them himself.

He let his gaze drift over Maggie’s purple half T-shirt, down her smooth belly, to her low-riding jeans. They molded to her body, sensually outlining the cleft between her legs. The emerald in her navel had scratched his belly when she was naked and bucking under him. He reached out and touched it. She shivered and smiled up at him. There was no scent of fear.

“Did you enjoy our time together?” Vandar asked, mildly astonished to find himself so curious.

“You make love like a beast,” Maggie said. “But it’s nothing like they say about you.”

Vandar was surprised at what Maggie said, but surprised still more that she had said it.

She eyed him carefully. “Did I offend you, sir?”

They were passing through a part of Light Town hung with curtains of tiny bulbs in greens and blues. Their soft glow gave the narrow winding passage the feel of being underwater. From somewhere came the recorded sound of ocean waves. There were no shops. He knew from the scents this was a popular place for the young to satisfy their heightened sexual desires with one another. But with his presence, the way was empty.

Vandar stopped and pressed Maggie against a wall, being gentle, as he should have been earlier. “You have done nothing to offend me.” He ran his fingers over her naked belly to the emerald in her navel, then up over her breasts, feeling her nipples rise to his touch.

“It’s said you only have a woman in your bed for as long as she pleases you.” Maggie slipped her slender arms around Vandar’s thick neck. “I hope I can make that a long time.”

He’d sent many from his bed, most of them in tears, with barely a thought. But something was different about Maggie. He didn’t want to hear her say that. He wanted her to…what? Be there at the end of the night when the sun came up?