Damien (25 page)

This would be easier to do and survive if that worthless son of his had not turned tail and run off like a weeping woman, he thought angrily. He had known that Cyril was going to make an attempt at the woman, just as he had known Cyril was haunting the edges of Damien’s territory for the past few days. The idiot child got grades for ambition, but that was just about all he had earned in his father’s eyes. The rest had been sloppy and stupid and far outside of Cyril’s capabilities. Nico had no idea what his son had been thinking, trying to find a way to take on Damien.

At least Nico was smart enough to admit that Damien had been the longest reigning Vampire Prince because he deserved it. The Prince was no slouching figurehead, that much was certain. But each battle taught Nico a little bit more. If he survived this one, he would be more than willing to gamble on his success at a third try.

“Do you need some help with that?”

Nico looked up with a start. He was in so much pain and so drained of essential fluids, he had not even heard the approach of the stranger who addressed him. He looked her over with sharp black eyes. She was tall, excessively so for a woman, and she had the longest blond hair he had seen in some time. She was young in appearance and extraordinarily beautiful. Her darkly tanned skin told him she was no Vampire, but her matter-of-fact attitude about finding a man stabbed through his heart and still alive in the middle of a desert told him that she was not unfamiliar with Nightwalkers.

She leaned forward, her hands braced on her knees as she looked at him with cold, clear blue eyes. He saw fierce intelligence there, as well as a palpable fearlessness that immediately piqued his interest. She was gowned in sheer lilac panels of something like silk or chiffon, but the moon easily back-dropped her figure through the material so that, in shadow, she might as well have been naked.

“I can help you,” she whispered to him, her eyes coasting over his wounded body with a sort of covetousness that, had he been a little healthier, would have delighted him no end.

“I expect you will want something in return,” he countered. “I can manage by myself.”

“I was not speaking only of this nonsense,” she said shortly, waving off his crucial injury as if it were merely a splinter in his finger.

“Then tell me what you were speaking of, and make it quick, will you, woman? There is a time issue to be considered here.”

“I meant that I could help you get what you want.” She smiled prettily when he arched a sarcastic brow at her. She leaned even closer, and he could smell the scent of clover, musk, and frankincense. Strangely, he found the mixture extremely pleasing. “I meant,” she purred softly as she touched his face with a hand as soft as kid gloves, “I can get you Damien’s head on a pretty platter. A silver platter, with a Lycanthrope heart sitting right next to it.”

Nico’s eyes narrowed on her and he looked her over once again. “Who are you?”

“I am the one who knows how Damien defeated you. I am the one who knows how to make you stronger than you ever imagined. I am your one true angel, Nicodemous.”

With that, she grasped the branch impaling him and jerked it clear of his body. Nico’s scream could be heard by every desert creature for miles. In agony and rage, he reached for the woman and dragged her down to her knees before him. Blood poured from his wounds and, since it was very likely that he would die no matter what, he was going to at least give her a good thrashing for taking him off guard like that.

She laughed at him even as his blood splashed across her dress. For a moment, he thought she was completely mad.

Then she laid her slim fingers over his torn flesh and began to whisper softly under her breath. The words were a mixture of Latin and Arabic and about three other languages that he could immediately identify. The rest of it was gibberish to him.

Gibberish or not, whatever she was doing, it was helping. It was as if he could feel his flesh knitting together on the spot, starting with his damaged heart and working its way outward.

“You are a Demon,” he accused her softly.

“Mmm,” she affirmed, those huge blue eyes of hers beautifully spooky with their depths and emptiness.

“You are using magic. A Demon who casts spells? How is it you are not censured for such a thing?”

Her response was a half-smile and pointed lift to her brow.

“Ahh,” he said with sudden clarity. “You would be censured…if they could catch you.”

Nicodemous was positively sucked in by this interesting bit of fortune. He realized from what she had said so far that she had some sort of vendetta against Damien or the Lycanthrope female. She had probably seen their earlier battle and had followed him this far in search of an ally. Apparently she had had no luck catching up with her target on her own either.

Perhaps together though…

Between her inborn skills, this magic she had acquired, and his own power…

Nico was dizzy with the possibilities.

“It is very likely blood loss,” she said dryly, responding to a thought he had not voiced aloud.

He chuckled. “I do not suppose hunting for blood would be another of your hidden talents, would it?”

“I have a better idea,” she whispered eagerly as her bloodstained hands fell away from his repaired body. “Would you like to know how Damien was able to trick you before?”

“Can it wait until after I eat?”

The beautiful blond moved forward suddenly, her hands diving into his fiery-colored hair and her mouth pressing to his. Nico was startled at first, but she was quite a warm and luscious handful of woman, so it did not take him long to get over it. He kissed the forward wench soundly, making damn sure she was gasping for breath by the time he finally released her. She pushed back into another kiss aggressively, her warm body wrapping around him with sinuous sensuality.

It was clear she knew her way around a man. It radiated in the way she moved against him, the way her hands roamed boldly over him. She was also assertive and brazen, which Nico very much liked in a woman.

“Okay, you win,” he growled at her, pulling her off his mouth by her hair. He wrapped a fistful of it around his hand and held her perfectly still while he appraised her face. “How did he do it?”

“Would you like to find out?” she asked breathlessly.

“I just said so, didn’t I?”

“Good.”

She reached to push back the remainder of her hair, baring her slender, appetizing neck to his starving eyes and craving body.

“Bon appetit,” Ruth murmured with a wicked smile.

Jasmine rubbed her chill arms absently as she walked around her room for the third time.

She was not one for material goods, so even though there was a small bag half filled with her clothing, she realized there was nothing else she truly wanted to take with her.

Beside the bag on her bed was the old book she had borrowed from the Nightwalker Library. She moved closer to it, touching its leather cover and the obscure title across its bottom.

It was in Vampyr, their most ancient language, and it simply said:
Reasoning.

So modest a title for so profound a topic, she thought with more than a little dejection. She had done nothing but examine and reexamine her reasoning these past forty-eight hours. No matter what she did, she seemed to think herself into circles, logic seeming illogical after a while and everything sounding whiny and emotional in her head if she thought on it long enough. Half the time she felt like a child throwing a tantrum because another child had stolen her favorite toy, and some adult somewhere looming above her was lecturing her on the reasons why she should share.

Share, or have it taken away from you forever. If you cannot share, you cannot play.

Jasmine stomped a foot against the floorboards, even if it did perpetuate the metaphorical image in her mind. She had shared Damien with his women before. Why was she having so much difficulty this time?

“Because she is not Vampire and she does not understand our ways,” she complained to the silent manse.

Did a Lycanthrope understand the way Vampires compensated for solitude and boredom with an intimacy of touch that had nothing to do with sex? What of the way Syreena had threatened her when all she had been doing was helping the male Syreena professed to care about? Would the little Princess be upset if Jasmine and Damien spent the entire day behind closed doors merely talking, as they often had before? Vampires were not insulted by being shut away from those who wanted privacy, just as they were not insulted when others behaved with explicitness in the presence of others.

Jasmine could imagine Syreena pitching a fit the first time she strolled in on someone having sex in the common room or saw someone walking naked through the house. The female Vampire was too angry to take into consideration that she had lived in the Lycanthrope court a few weeks here and there over the centuries, and it was a culture almost exactly like her own in that respect. Between the communal baths and the hot springs dotted through the castle, public nudity and sex were often just as frequent, if not more so.

After a few moments, Jasmine reconciled her irrational thinking. She turned and sat next to the compendium on her bed with a deep, dejected sigh.

Whose problem was this anyway?
she wondered.

She looked down at her bag and then the book again, taking measure of both. If she packed the rest of her bag and left, who would that be hurting? Only Damien and herself. Syreena could not comprehend the depth of drama in such a change in the household dynamic, so how could it hurt her in any way? Unless she hurt because Damien would hurt. Which would mean she truly did have a serious concern for him.

Which Jasmine did not want to accept.

Jasmine groaned pitifully as she came full circle in her own mind yet again. She flopped back onto her mattress with a bounce. Her hand fell on the book again, bringing immediately to mind her second dilemma of action and consequence. Within the book lay the proof Damien had asked her to seek: the reasoning and consequences behind Vampires feeding on, or rather being inherently
against
feeding on, other Nightwalkers. Some of what she had read supported everything Damien had suspected and concurred with everything he wanted to hear. It would bind him all the tighter to the Lycanthrope, if such a thing were possible.

Some of it was also frighteningly deadly in consequence and, in her opinion, conveyed very supportable logic for why feeding on other Nightwalkers had evolved into the taboo it now was. In truth, it was such a cold and deadly piece of logic that it had the potential to drive Damien away from his supposed love and, with any luck, back into their normal, quiet routine.

Jasmine, however, was forced to remind herself how much she hated normalcy and quiet routine. A couple of weeks ago she had been ready to lie down in the ground for a century. Today, she was reeling with thoughts and choices and, she had to admit, the potential for adventure and the future risk of existence that so many Vampires like herself thrived on. But should she risk Damien’s well-being, possibly his life, for the sake of entertaining herself? Not that the danger was a definite. If it were, she would not hesitate to act. Because however she felt, whatever happened, she knew she would always put Damien first.

She would die for him.

These long-buried truths and dangerous consequences could die as well, Jasmine considered. Say, for instance, if the Library were to suddenly burn to the ground, the cursed book on her bed included. Was it so far-fetched an idea that a torch might come too close to one book, accelerating a catastrophic obliteration of all these secrets that should have stayed in their musty tomb? What would they really be missing out on if such a thing happened? They had survived this long…

Merely survived.

Jasmine never would have thought herself capable of it, but she could not turn her back on the tempting idea that this volume, so full of information, could lead to something so much more vital and beautiful than bare survival alone could ever compare to.

Bang. She was back at the beginning again. Circle complete.

Jasmine took her hand off the book so she could slap herself on her aching forehead. This was ridiculous! For all her age, wisdom, and experience, she could not sort out what to do with a stupid book and one short woman? If Damien married Syreena, she would become Jasmine’s
Queen
! Jasmine would become the subject of a twit who had no clue as to what benefited the Vampire race!

And, if Damien did marry her, he would need Jasmine more than ever. Leaving him would make him domestically vulnerable. Stephan, head of Damien’s organized fighting forces, was fine when it came to dealing with other races and human hunters, but Jasmine didn’t think he had what it took to kill his own en masse should a civil war break out. And even if they managed to avoid internal strife of that magnitude, it would still invite a wave of challengers to his throne. There was no way Damien could ever survive such an onslaught. Not alone. Not without someone who did not care who she killed for the sake of protecting him.

Someone who would not get their little twiggy arm broken at the first flick of an enemy finger, then lie around crying about it. If Jasmine stayed, though, it would mean she would have to give them both her support, including Miss Twiggy.

She would rather run across a desert naked at noon on a bright, sunny day.

And once more, back to her own start she went.

Why was this so hard? Why couldn’t she just kill the bitch and end it all?

It was just then that Jasmine felt an acute, throbbing sparkle skip across her senses so suddenly that her head and sinuses flared with sharp pain. She sat up quickly, gaining her feet and becoming instantly alert to the fact that there was an intruder in the house.

It was no one she knew, and not a Vampire. She would have felt a Vampire coming the moment they crossed into the territory, no matter how distracted by her own thoughts she had been. Besides, Damien was the one who attracted that sort of trouble, not her. Anyone who wanted to challenge the Prince would not want to come up against her first. The wisest thing would be to wait until Damien was on the premises without her being present.