Shadowfae (28 page)

I bit down and shook my head from side to side as he had, and more skin tore, blood vessels breaking. I sucked, and warmth spurted, splashing my tongue, running down my throat. I gagged, but Luna latched on to it, screeching. Reptilian claws scraped in my guts, frothing soul energy lurching up into my mouth, and the blood began to run of its own accord.

Rapture blossomed in me, flowing from my womb, wrapping Dante’s cock, caressing us both with flaming pleasure. His energy leached into me from our sex, black and icy but nourishing. Dante gulped, his chest heaving. “Enough.”

But Luna was pissed off and hungry, and he wasn’t letting go. I stretched my jaws apart, my teeth still embedded in Dante’s neck, pulling the ragged wound open. Sick vampire blood rushed down my gullet in a flood, burning, sucked away before it hit my stomach by Luna’s ravenous shade. The thing drank and drank and drank, insatiable, swelling inside me, and I just held on and let the blood flow.

“Enough. Stop.” Dante tried to yank my head away, his fingers curling in my hair. But I held on, my rapture sinking deadly claws into his strength and dragging him closer to the edge at the same time. His fist weakened in my hair, his essence sponging into us, and his muscles jerked beneath me as he fought it. His words slurred as he cursed me. “Bitch. You’re not alone.”

He plunged within me, helpless to stop his own death, and his cock rubbed over my sensitive flesh, too much, too fast. My rapture sighed and moaned, coiling tighter. My thighs tingled, my muscles juddering. I was going to come, but I didn’t care. Let him feel it as he died.

I gritted my teeth and let the pleasure take me, slow and delicious, rolling through my core, creeping along my limbs, sparkling my fingers. I groaned. My pelvic walls spasmed, hugging him, and he squeezed his eyes shut and jetted into me. A hot flood splashed my eager womb, drenched and alive with what was left of his poisonous soul.

Energy spurted into me, and my rapture consumed it, sucking back the life he’d stolen from me. My skin burned, my rejuvenated blood racing.

Luna’s shade clenched its teeth, whooping with delight, and a thick fleshy lump sucked into my mouth as the last of Dante’s consciousness tore free. His scarlet aura bubbled in fury as it faded, dying. His fingers dug into my hips, jerking, and then fell slack.

The bastard was dead. We’d killed a vampire, the only way you could. The fucker bled to death, and now his soul was mine.

22

I
tore my mouth away, my teeth squelching out of his mangled flesh. I pushed away, ripping him from me, and stumbled onto the floor, panting. My breath hurt my lungs, the horrid salty taste of blood bubbling in my guts. Hot bloodstained liquid dribbled down my thighs. Lust seethed in my womb as my rapture snarled, voracious, ready to consume what I’d stolen.

But Luna snapped sharp teeth, fighting it off.
Mine. Get your own.

My heart had slowed, but now my pulse leapt, urgent. If he consumed Dante’s soul, it was all for nothing.

I swept my gaze around the room, and lighted on a swan-necked glass vase on the coffee table. I crawled over and grasped it, cold and heavy in my burning fingers.
Give it up, Vorenus. Let me have it.

Luna coiled tight like a snake, possessive.
No. Hungry.

I roasted him with rapture, my flesh throbbing.
Give it up, or you can’t have yourself back, and you’ll stay there forever. That what you want?

He sulked, vitriol seething, but he did uncoil, and angry soul energy burst in my stomach, frothing.
Should have known better than to bargain with you.

I barely heard him through the sudden spear of agony in my belly. Acid rammed up my throat, choking me, and I cracked my teeth against the vase’s glass lip in haste. Hot ruby spew splattered into the vase, clotted and disgusting, dribbling down the sides. Heat scorched my cheeks, my eyes pouring, but I didn’t flinch until I’d choked up the last of it, spitting to clear my mouth of filth.

Dante’s soul spat like boiling scarlet soup, and I jammed my hand over the vase’s mouth lest it escape. Acid burned my palm, and swiftly I stuffed the neck with a handful of Dante’s shirt, blood staining the black linen. It’d do for an hour or two, until I could tip it into a soultrap. I ripped off the rest of the shirt and prodded the plug in tighter.

At last, I fell on my backside on the carpet, exhausted. My rapture hissed at me, disappointed, but I had no sympathy.

I licked sore lips.
Vorenus?

Luna sniffed, still pissed off with me.
What?

You’re a very sick man. But thanks.

At last, I felt him smile. Grudging, but the same handsome smile he’d had while he was still alive.
You’re welcome, wildcat. He tasted pretty fine, eh?

I wiped blood from my legs, rubbing my hand on the carpet to clean it. Fatigue dulled me, even though I’d just gotten a fix. I should go home, stash this soul properly next to Quinn’s, go to bed so I could wake up and worry about finding
animus,
whatever the hell that meant. I should have been triumphant, full of hope and determination.

But I wasn’t. I didn’t feel like getting up. I didn’t feel like doing anything. Without someone to share it with, all the excitement was taken out of it. And I didn’t mean the vicious double-thinking shade of my murdered ex-lover.

Idly I rolled the vase between my palms, watching Dante’s soul struggle and seethe. We’d have laughed together, Rajah and I. Clinked glasses over our soultraps—wine for me, lemon squash for him—and stuffed ourselves silly on chicken tikka and aloo paratha. Walked home in the dark, holding hands, wrapped in each other’s scent and sweat. Fallen breathless onto his bed and made love, with the windows open to soft summer breeze and moonlight. Slept in each other’s embrace, sharing warmth, skin, breath.

Stupid tears swelled my eyes, and I let them blur. I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to move. What for?

Jade?

Uh-huh.

Don’t you have somewhere to be?

Sure. At home, alone. For eight hundred years, with you and Kane fighting in my guts. Can’t wait.

Luna sniffed again, his dissatisfaction sour on my tongue.
Bullshit. You just found a reason to live. You really going to let him get away?

Sorrow pierced me like a hot wire, stinging. “Yeah, right,” I muttered. “Give it a rest.”

Oh, sure. Be like that if you want to. Could have sworn I heard him say something about love.

I laughed, and it caught on the swelling in my throat, choking me. “Like he meant it? That’s just perfect, coming from you.”

I meant it.
He sounded distant, bruised.
For a while. How long do you need to make it worth living for, anyway?

I opened my mouth for a cutting reply, but it shriveled and died on my tongue. Just how long was worth it, when it came to love? How much happiness did I need? A year? A day? An hour?

Cherish the small pleasures, wildcat. Only thing that makes immortality worth the effort.
Luna tossed his head with a haughty shrug.
Not that you give a shit what I think, right?

If I could have just another five minutes with Rajah before he left me, would I take it? Would I dare to ask the questions that branded my soul? Or would I rather live out my miserable thousand years and die without ever knowing what was really in his heart for those few precious hours we spent?

I scrambled up, my legs quivering. “Vorenus?”

You still here?

“Thank you.”

23

V
ine leaves drip dew onto the pavement from the canopy in front of Valentino’s, shining in the morning sun. The smell of wet asphalt rises, puddles reflecting in the street after the rain, and

Lygon Street

bustles with the sounds of shoppers, clinking coffee cups, traffic.

Tony LaFaro shrugs skinny shoulders and slithers his spiked blue tongue into his latte, collecting a blob of white froth. “Don’t know nothin’.”

“Can I see Angelo, then? I just need to know if she—”

“Ange ain’t here. Sorry.” Tony’s second set of eyelids flicker, mocking.

Rajah rakes frustrated fingers through damp hair. “Look, I’ve tried everywhere. She could be in trouble. If you’ve—”

“Ain’t seen her.” Tony unfolds a newspaper, ignoring him.

Rajah spins away before he can break his knuckles on the prick’s snarky brown face. He stalks off, the damp pavement slick, fury and worry seething together in his guts like boiling oil. He’s tried the clubs, the pubs, the whole of King Street and South-bank, where the DiLucas hang, but no one will admit to seeing them or knowing where Dante’s hiding. DiLuca’s fae just smile and murmur, their eyes glazed. He even tried the house in Richmond where old Sal used to live, but Antonia DiLuca just hissed at him and told him to mind his own fucking business, hate flashing in her indigo eyes.

He jogs across the street in front of a slow-moving car and ducks down the side alley, half-running the few blocks to her place. Unlikely she’ll be home, but Dante is cunning, delighting in the unexpected.

A stray cat meows on her doorstep, its skinny gray body tense, and it darts away as he approaches. Remnants of his fingermarks still show in the rain-speckled dust on the glass, half-erased digits fading. The door’s locked, unbroken, both a good and a bad sign. He jams her key in, shoves the door open, and dashes into her grimy living room, tripping in his haste.

A stuffed couch, bookshelves thick with dust, last week’s TV listings creased on the table. A rust-stained fridge, dishes and plastic takeaway containers piled dirty on the sink.

“Princess?” But the smell is all wrong—stale, not fresh like she is—and he already knows she’s not here.

He wipes a weary hand over his face with a sorrowful sigh. He can’t think of anywhere else to look. He’s got only one option left. Sunlight brightens the room, slanting in through open blinds, but it doesn’t lighten his mood, and a chill crawls to his fingertips at the thought of making the call. Slowly he pulls his phone from her bag and keys through the address book, but he can’t bear to dial just yet and he slouches against the table’s edge, bitter anguish awash in his heart. On the table, red roses in a silver box grow crispy at the edges, and he sniffs them, the perfume soft and rich like her skin, but she doesn’t smell of roses. She smells of woman, fresh and natural like sunshine.

On the table, her bag shifts, rocking. Luna’s soul is restless, and Rajah wonders about her other soultrap, the one with Killian Quinn. If Dante gets his hands on that . . .

Swiftly he searches, opening drawers, lifting cushions, flipping back cupboard doors in the gritty kitchen. A row of brass bottles gleams under the dull steel sink, but they’re all empty. He tries the fridge. Chocolate biscuits, yogurt, a stalk of celery. In the bedroom her sheets lie stripped in a pile on the floor, a faint blue stain marking the mattress. He wants to pick them up, slide his face into them, smell her. Instead he tries her drawers, and there’s the soultrap, nestling in amongst slips and T-shirts.

He plucks it out, satin sliding over his sweat-damp hands. It teeters, whispering black curses, and he slips it carefully into her bag next to Luna. Taking it where he’s going is a risk. He could lose it forever with a careless word. But he can’t bear to leave it for Dante. He’d rather take his chances.

Back in the living room, he swallows, dread shredding his nerves. He clenches his hand to steady it, picks up his phone, and presses Call.

After three rings, Kane picks up, his voice light and pleasant. “Rajah. How sweet of you.”

Rajah closes his eyes, warm tears leaking onto his cheek. “I need your help.”

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