Shadow Rising (10 page)

“
Mordente!
The blades of death, they come for you!” Camille’s voice severed the air, slicing through the chill. She and Morio were on the move, hand in hand, coming our way.

The ghosts halted and turned toward them, and for a brief moment I caught a flicker of their nebulous faces—greed, and hunger. Envy. They spiraled toward the pair, but as Camille and Morio reached out—her left arm and his right—a circle of glowing purple light began to whirl around them, like the blade of a circular saw.

The energy flickered faster and faster. Morio and Camille looked like feral creatures, their eyes gleaming in the night. Camille’s violet eyes were almost silver, and Morio’s were a glowing topaz, and the wind whipped her cape and his kimono into a frenzy. This wind wasn’t coming from Smoky or the air around us, but from the magic itself. The wheel of light began to keen, wailing louder as they pushed it forward.

The spirits paused, as if they were uncertain, and then one tentatively dove forward toward the pair. The moment it came in contact with the whirling blades of energy, it flared, screamed, and was gone.

Camille laughed, wild and throaty, and Morio joined in. They were enjoying the hunt, reveling in the energy that whipped around them. The spirits tried to withdraw, but they wouldn’t allow it. They drove forward faster, herding the ghosts, and then Shade was there to meet the spirits with his flames.

That was when I realized that Shade’s purple flames ran on the same wavelength as Morio and Camille’s magic.

Together they boxed in the spirits between them, and before the ghostly figures could head to the sides in an attempt to get away, they pushed their magic together, taking our enemies from both sides. The carnage was an energetic gorefest. Sparks flew as the spirits exploded, and the screams that filled the air hurt even my ears, they were so sharp and pained and full of fury.

And then, we were standing there, alone, with not a body in sight except for the guards, who were still terribly dead. I stared at them, then glanced back at Camille and Morio, whose eyes were still glimmering even though they’d lowered their ring of energy.

Shade was still in his dragon form and Camille stared up at him, a look of awe on her face. Morio grinned at him and I had this weird feeling that the three of them were in some secret club the rest of us couldn’t access.

A noise through the trees startled me, and I whirled around as Delilah came rushing down the path. She skidded to a halt, staring openmouthed up at Shade. I froze, waiting for her cue.

But instead of panicking, she began to laugh and rushed
over to his side. He towered above her, though he was only about two-thirds Smoky’s size. As she walked around him, marveling at his form, my sister—who only a year ago would probably have run shrieking—reached out and began to touch the bones of her lover’s body.

Roz cleared his throat. “You win.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think she’d be so delighted. I give up,” I whispered under my breath. “I have no clue of what to expect next.”

“The unexpected, love. The unexpected.” Roz was shaking his head, leaning against a nearby tree.

I was about to answer him when my phone rang. Yugi was on the line.

“Menolly?”

“Yes. What’s going down? Did you find out anything?”

“Yeah. A Corpse Talker will come to your house. But, and this is the interesting catch, she’ll only allow Shade to bring her through the Ionyc Seas. Not Smoky. If you want her there, you’d better hurry. And Chase said he’s on his way back to your place.”

“Yeah, I doubt that will be a problem. Call you back in a moment.” As I hung up and turned back to the others, it occurred to me that we were in for a long, terrible fight. If Gulakah was truly back in town, and this was an example of what he was bringing with him, I wondered if there was any way we could defeat the next onslaught.

But all I said was, “Shade, get your ass down to the Faerie-Human Crime Scene Investigation’s headquarters now. You need to bring back a Corpse Talker
stat
. Because I need to head inside in forty-five or fifty minutes. And I want to be here when she talks to the dead.”

The next moment, Shade was back to his usual form, and then gone with barely a word. I looked at Delilah. “So what do you think of your boyfriend now?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Fiancé. And he’s cute. Like a living fossil. I think I should nickname him Spot when he’s in his natural form. In honor of the Munsters’ pet dragon.”

And with that, I dropped to the ground, laughing until my stomach hurt.

Delilah went back to the house to check on everybody there while the rest of us speculated over what kind of spirits the ghosts could have been.

A sour tang rang through the air—the scent of overturned soil and mold and fungus. I glanced at Morio. His eyes were still glowing, and a sudden hunger ran through me. We’d formed a bond, an unasked-for, unwanted one. He’d been given a transfusion of my blood to save his life. Ever since then, we’d been pulled toward one another, though I was dealing with it a lot more easily than he was. Camille knew about it, and while she wasn’t thrilled, she tried to ignore it.

His gaze latched onto mine and he licked his lips, his long, black nails digging into his hands as he made a fist. I could feel the slow breath as his chest rose and fell, and the sound of his pulsing blood stirred my hunger. I turned, pulling myself away, before I did something we’d all regret.

“I need to feed,” I whispered. “I need to drink deep.” I had bottled blood in the refrigerator, but the thought of it sounded gross. I wanted hot blood, fresh, spurting from the
vein onto my tongue. I wanted Roman here with me, but there wasn’t time to call him.

Roz was suddenly beside me, pulling me off to one side. He pressed me against one of the trees. “I know what you need. You can drink from me. I can handle it.”

“I don’t drink from friends.”

“And you don’t want to drink from your sister’s husband, either. Menolly, listen to me.” He forced me to focus on his face. The usually serene good-natured look he wore was replaced by an intensity I couldn’t ignore. “I’m a demon—an incubus. You know I can handle it. You can drink from me and I doubt if you can do anything worse than leave a hickey.”

“But…
you know
I’m pledged to Nerissa and consort to Roman—” I’d fucked Roz once, but though it had been fun and good, it wasn’t meant to be a long-term thing. I knew it in my heart.

He shook his head. “I’m not asking for sex. I want to help you get out of the bloodlust before that Corpse Talker comes back. Before the sun rises and you go to bed hungry.”

I bit my lip, one of my fangs piercing the skin. A few drops of blood trickled down my chin. A glance over my shoulder told me that the others were busy, wrapped up in speculation about the spirits. I hated being at the mercy of my bloodlust, but it was no different from Camille’s pull to the Hunt and Delilah’s inability to withstand the lure of the moon when it was full.

“What the fuck,” I moaned, suddenly so horny and thirsty that I could have fucked an ogre. Roz bared his neck and I licked my lips, eyeing the beating pulse of his jugular. “I’ll make it feel good…I promise. I won’t drink much.”

“Just fucking do me.”
Roz sounded excited, and as I pressed against him, I could feel his erection through the front of his tight black jeans. His long curly brown hair tickled my face as he leaned down for me to get a good angle, but I pushed him back against the tree, hovering at eye level. I could make my victims feel every single pain tenfold, or I could take them to ecstasy. And this…this was
not
the time for pain. As I lowered my fangs to his creamy skin, they
slid in effortlessly, slicing through the flesh with one, seamless, movement.

Roz moaned and I turned on the glamour. Even though he was an incubus, he was geared for sex so my glamour played off his and I suddenly found myself in thrall to him, so hot my pussy was burning up. I wanted Nerissa. I wanted Roman. I wanted both of them. At once.

Roz’s blood tasted sweet and rich and thick in my mouth and it flowed down my throat, making me ache for more. I coaxed it out with my tongue, drop by drop, the crimson nectar pulsing with his life, with his energy. And then, I could feel it—his sensuality rushing over me. I moaned, biting deeper, sucking harder, wrapping my legs around him as I pinned him to the tree. He gasped, his hands cradling my ass, and began to whisper things, dirty things, hot, sexy, wanton things, into my ear.

“Take it in baby, take it in. I want to fuck you, to lay you down and drive my cock deep into your cunt, you delicious, redheaded wench. I want to fuck you till you scream, till you come…” His voice was ragged.

I ground harder against his crotch, reaching down with one hand to unzip him. I wasn’t going to fuck him here, not right now, but I grabbed hold of his cock and fisted my hand around it, holding it tighter than he’d probably ever felt in his life. Even than when we’d fucked the one time before.

He began to pant as I drank deep, spiraling into the energy, catching the pre-cum on my hand to lubricate his penis.

But then, something—I don’t know what it was—perhaps a voice of reason, or maybe just my conscience, whispered, “Stop…you can’t drink him down…he’s your friend.”

I realized Roz was becoming too pale, even in the moonlight splashing between the clouds, so I pulled my fangs out, but the energy was riding us and he kept hold of me, pulling behind the tree so the others couldn’t see us. My mind was warning me—there might still be ghosts lingering, but they didn’t seem to be bothering us if they were, and I was pretty sure that the death magic Camille and Morio had been running had wiped them out, Shade taking
out the rest. Rationalizing my desire any way I could, I let Roz take me down to the ground, on a bed of wet and molding leaves.

He slid off his duster, revealing a mesh tank top over rippling abs and gorgeously toned pecs and biceps. The man was gorgeous, like a long-haired Hugh Jackman, and he knew it and used it.

The next moment, my jeans were down around my knees and he was plunging into me, his cock filling me up as he groaned with delight. I rolled him over, riding him like a bucking bronco, pulling up my sweater to cup my breasts as he watched, his eyes growing wider. I leaned forward, rubbing my clit against his cock, feeling so full of his blood that I might burst, and the warmth of it made me feel alive again, like I might have some shred of my mortal self left.

As we rose and fell in the dark night, I looked up and there, I saw my sweet Nerissa coming toward us, her eyes glowing with lust. She licked her lips and I held out my arms to her, beckoning her in. She dropped her robe and, naked, stepped toward us, a dangerous and wild gleam in her eye. I wondered if she was about to shift into her werepuma form when she let out a low laugh and the ground seemed to shake beneath us, everything rippling like rings on a pond.

As she knelt beside me, cocking her head to the side, her shoulder-length blond hair coiled out toward me. And that was when it began to filter through my lust-crazed brain that something was deathly wrong. I did not make a habit of fucking my friends in the woods when we were in danger. Nor did I drink from my friends—I’d broken one of my sacred oaths to myself.

I looked up into my lover’s golden eyes, only to see them darken and sink into pits, deep sockets of emptiness. And within that void, I could see shadows flying, shades moving, as her hunger reached out to encompass both Roz and me.

Roz began to scream and I leaped off him. I yanked up my jeans and aimed for the creature’s head. This wasn’t my betrothed. This wasn’t her at all. And the moment I hit her, I could see only a gray, alien figure with a rounded mouth filled with a row of sharp teeth, and dark eyes with no pupils.

Rolling away, Roz staggered to his feet, looking weak. I’d drunk too deeply and he was having a hard time recovering quickly.

“Help! Camille!” I might be small but my lungs could rattle the house. Even as I shouted for help, I landed a kick in the creature’s stomach. My foot slammed into it, knocking it back against a cedar.

If it had actually been my lover, I would have killed it with that kick, but the creature shook off the blow and grinned, a dark, filthy, tainted smile. I whirled again and slammed the other foot into its face, fully expecting my stiletto heel to pierce the nose. But it was like kicking solid stone. My heel didn’t survive, though I wasn’t hurt.

“Fuck! What the fuck are you?” Furious now, Roz’s blood pumping through me, giving me strength, I launched myself at it, knocking it to the ground.

The thing let out a garbled laugh but said nothing, merely reaching up to wrap its bony hands around my throat. It couldn’t choke me to death, but it could break my neck and put me out of commission for a while. As I struggled to free myself from the iron grip, Smoky appeared, along with Camille. They took one look at the situation and Smoky rushed over to help me out while Camille supported the struggling Roz, guiding him out of the area as he leaned on her shoulder.

Smoky motioned for me to move and I tried to roll away, but the creature held tight and I couldn’t free myself. Smoky flexed his fingers as his talons sprang forth. With one quick swipe, he sliced through one of the creature’s arms. As it let out a garbled roar and let go of me, I took the opportunity to get my ass out of the way.