Sweet Ruin (16 page)

Killing her was the most logical option. Especially once he’d extracted any information about Nïx.

Yet the demon in him rebelled. Even his rational fey side demanded he first explore why Josephine could drink him. And why she affected him so viscerally.

Everything about her was different. When she’d pointed out his solitary chair, he’d barely stopped himself from explaining that he had allies he’d die for. That they lived communally, and he came here only for respite.

Damn it, information flowed
to
him.

He’d had no impulse to tell the lovely shopkeeper Loa his secrets. Never in all his lifetimes had he divulged one. So why the urge to with Josephine?

He had little appetite, had never been so eager to interrogate a subject.
Get focused, Rune.
He dug in his pocket for his talisman. He rolled it in his hand, contemplating those indecipherable symbols yet again.

He’d received the talisman the day his sire had died, the day Magh had made her decree about Rune’s future. He’d pointed out the flaw in her plan to make him an assassin. . . .

“I can’t trace.” If he could, he would have long escaped.

“You possess demon blood; you can learn from my guards.”

Excellent. He would learn to teleport, then use that ability to get free. He hadn’t thought Magh the “Canny” would be so stupid—

“I might reunite you with your dam, should you serve me well.”

As if struck, he swayed on his feet. “She still . . . lives?” For years, he’d believed her dead, the most likely fate for a slave who’d disappeared in the night. He pictured his dam’s lively blue eyes. She’d always had a ready smile for Rune, striving so hard to mask her misery from him. “You or your henchmen killed her.”

“As much as I would have enjoyed that, she lives.”

“I-I don’t believe you.”
Gods give me the power . . .

“No?” Magh snapped her fingers. One of the guards traced to Rune, handing him a small bag. The homespun material carried traces of his dam’s scent—tinged with fear.

He ripped into the bag. Parchment had been folded around his mother’s talisman, her sole possession. He opened the note, scanning the familiar handwriting and the language of demons, but some of the script was smudged, illegible:

Rune swallowed, dragging his gaze from the letter to Magh. “ Where is my dam?”

The queen raised her blond brows. “I cannot tell you, else forfeit my leverage.”

“The letter is smudged.” He held it up accusingly. “I can’t read all of it.”

“The poor dear wept as she wrote it. I said she lives—I didn’t say she was glad of that fact. There are some fates worse than death.”

His breath left him. He would do whatever this evil bitch asked of him to free his mother.

And Rune had.

The old queen had been right about his prospects as an assassin, about the value of his seductive nature. His first target had sneaked Rune into her sanctuary, lowering all her protections. A fatal mistake.

He’d been more poisonous than anyone could’ve dreamed.

With the deed done, Rune had returned to Magh like a trained dog, leaving behind a contorted corpse and a puddle of his own vomit.

But after years of his faithful service, Magh had the last laugh, selling him to a brothel—

A sudden chill overtook him. He glanced around, getting the impression he wasn’t alone.

Moments passed. Another chill skittered up his back; then the feeling was gone. Odd. What could have affected him like that?

Josephine returned not long after, distracting him from his thoughts. She wore a white robe and her necklace. Her small feet were bare. A minuscule silver ring circled one of her tiny toes.

His attention roamed upward. None of her makeup had washed off. Those shadows still highlighted her eyes and cheekbones, and her translucent skin remained as pale as alabaster. She must have a glamour in place.

His gaze locked on the helix rings at the top of one ear. Alluring female. “You don’t see many immortals with piercings. At least, not freeborn ones.” He’d been spared because no one relished drawing his blood.

“Why?”

“Long ago, they were used to mark slaves.”

“That so, huh.” She sat at the table across from him, meeting his eyes with an unexpected directness—as if she were
challenging
him. Did he detect a hint of superiority?

Strange. He held all the cards. “How was your bath?”

“Water pressure was good. Always a bonus.” Steam rose from her wet hair and the fire blazed, yet she rubbed her arms for warmth. Must be thirsty.

He frowned. She’d taken her fill from him just a day ago, and older vampires could go long stretches without feeding. “Did you lose blood over the day? Feeding another, perhaps?” He’d never considered that she might have a mate or a child—because these things had never mattered with his interrogation subjects before.

Now he found himself wondering if she’d rocked a babe to sleep with a warm bottle of her blood. A mother would do anything to get back to her offspring.

Mothers made sacrifices. His own certainly had.

And a child would mean a mate.

“I’ve never fed someone else.” So no child. Why should that relieve him so much?

He pressed a rune carved into the table, and the dishes began to disappear. Another rune materialized a wine service.

She jerked back and stared like a rustic. Did she live magick-free? Primitive.

“You don’t get out of the mortal realm much, do you?” He poured a goblet, offering it to her.

“Wine’s not really my scene.”

“I could sweeten it with my blood.” A statement he’d never thought to say.

She tilted her head, as if unfamiliar with the concept.

“I have a vampire ally who lives on blood wine and mead.”

“Vampire?”

Why would that mention make her heart speed up? Most of her kind could regulate their heartbeats. Perhaps she was younger than he’d thought.

Then how had she traced with such control? He’d find out all her secrets soon.

“Isn’t mead from way back when?” she asked.

Rune had to check a grin. “Blace is a very, very old vampire.” The oldest.

“Does he ever visit you here?”

“No. Never.” Rune had hidden knowledge of this place from even his allies.

“Oh.” She looked disappointed.

What was her interest in another vampire? “Perhaps if you and I can become friends, I’ll introduce you to him.”

“And what would it take for us to become friends?”

“We’d need to establish some measure of trust between us. Sharing information about ourselves.”

“That sounds okay. I’m curious about a lot. Like those symbols everywhere. What are they?”

He could give a little to get a little. “Runes. My mother’s people were Runic demons. They had the power to harness and intensify magicks with these symbols. I happen to have fey magicks innate within me.”

“So if I carved those symbols, they wouldn’t wash my dishes?”

“No. Magick must fuel them.” Strong magick. He’d been into his seventies before he could depend on his powers.

“How many runes are there? How’d you learn them?”

“Before she died, my mother taught me as many as she could remember. But there were thousands more.” Each consisted of fairly basic shapes layered or connected in various, intricate ways.

He’d memorized every one, had been able to draw them in such meticulous detail that she’d started calling him Rune. He didn’t even remember his given name. She’d also taught him reading and languages. By the age of nine, he’d mastered both Fey and Demonish.

“There
were
thousands more? Where’d all the symbols go?”

“Runic demons have gone extinct.” Old fury seethed. By the time he’d gotten free of Magh and had gone to search for any Runics, they’d been stamped out. He would never know his people.

A thought arose, like a balm in his mind.
The Møriør are my people.

Josephine asked, “Couldn’t you use runes to neutralize your poison?”

Theoretically, the runes could do anything. “If I knew the correct symbols and combinations.”

“Tell me more about them.”

Now he knew she was stalling. Most people’s eyes glazed over when he started talking about this subject—one he alone loved.

“You have some on your body, don’t you?”

“I do.” As she’d soon see. “A few are protection symbols, and a couple help with tracing.”

“Why would you need help?”

Landing on a moving target like Tenebrous was challenging for any being. Plus . . . “I didn’t grow up with that talent.” Magh’s demons had taught him to teleport—by repeatedly throwing him off a mountain into rapids. In time, he’d figured out how to avoid the fall. “I use some runes for communication.” Whenever someone drew Rune’s contact symbols, the tattooed band around his right wrist would light up. A blue glow meant the Møriør needed him back at the castle; white meant his nymph spies were alerting him about Nïx’s return to Val Hall. “The link can stretch as far as the Elserealms.”

“The whatta who?”

“Else, as in uncanny and strange. Those dimensions are exceedingly so. My official home is Perdishian Castle in Tenebrous. It’s the capital of the Elserealms and the base of my alliance.” Not a secret.

“What does it look like? Is your place there better than this one?”

Better than . . . ?
Vexing female! “Perhaps I’ll tell you more—when you start talking about yourself. For instance, do you have a mate or family?”

A hint of sadness flashed over her face. “Neither. I’m all by my lonesome.”

A lone vampire without even a coven? Maybe that was how Nïx had recruited her. Two could play at that game. If Rune turned Josephine to their side, he could bring Orion a powerful female vampire, an asset.

“Do you have a Mrs. Rune you routinely cheat on?” she asked.

He gave her a thin smile. “I’m all by my lonesome.”

“No little Runes running around? Would that take another dark fey?”

There was no possibility of his siring offspring. He hedged. “My kind is very rare in the Elserealms. In Gaia, it’s more accepted for different species to breed. Even fey and demons.”

“Have you been with a dark fey?”

“I haven’t.” But he’d once gotten so close. His first brothel master, a sadistic pig, had bought two rare females, promising one to Rune if he satisfied a particularly perverse client over an entire season.
The things I did . . .

Rune had been moments from kissing the dark fey female—before he’d been yanked away, his bargain ignored. How the master had laughed.

The prick had sold off the pair. When freed, Rune had searched for them in vain.

Yet as much as he’d burned for that kiss, he craved Josephine’s
more
. The thought made him uncomfortable, so he said, “I have a lead on a dark fey female in your very city.”

The vampire seemed to mull this information. “So you’ve never been able to do whatever you want in bed?”

“Correct.” He longed to twine his tongue with another’s as they traded moans of pleasure. He hungered to go down on a female for the first time, to taste her warm honey, straight from the source. He swallowed. He could with this one. “But you learn not to miss what you can’t have.” A lie.

She gave a bitter laugh. “Bullshit.”

“You sound like you speak from experience. What do you miss that you can’t have?”

She studied the sash on her robe. A dead end.

For now. “Tell me about Nïx.”

Josephine raised her face. “Why are you hunting her?”

“I’m an assassin by trade.” He’d been a killer for longer than he’d been a whore. “She’s my target because she seeks to bring down me and my allies.” She’d bring down the entire Gaia realm and all its connected planes if she continued unchecked.

“Who are your allies?”

“Brothers. Not by blood, but by choice. We’ve banded together for most of my life.”

“But they’re not dark fey?”

“They’re immortals of all different species.” Though they had little in common on the surface, each Møriør sought something in Gaia.

When asked what he desired, Blace had cryptically told Rune, “I want my blood.” Typical for a vampire, he supposed.

Allixta intended to find and punish the rebellious witches who’d settled there.

Sian refused to specify, would only say, “In Gaia lies my future.”

Before she’d been recruited into the Møriør, Allixta had cursed Sian with a spell that caused unbearable agony. Delirious, the demon had muttered about a treacherous fey girl with one amber eye and one violet.

Maybe Sian yearned for vengeance. He was the only being Rune had ever met who despised the fey as much as he did.

And Orion? Their liege intended to stop an apocalypse. . . .

“Enough about me, Josephine. I don’t even know where you hail from.”

“Earth,” she said. “Texas initially.”

That explained her drawl. “You’re not afraid of the vampire plague in the mortal realm?” She was probably immune; she’d withstood his poison easily enough.

Yet she looked as if she’d never heard of the sickness that had wiped out females of her kind. “Very little frightens me.” She rubbed that necklace.

“Those are bullets.”

She dropped her hand. “So?”

Did she keep them because she’d been shot? Rune’s fangs sharpened, the demon in him rousing protectively. His fey half was quick to point out that Rune himself had contemplated beheading her—and still hadn’t decided Josephine’s future. “Who shot you?”