The female voice that came over Throe’s shoulder was that of a petulant child, even though it emerged from the luscious lips of a thirty-six-year-old vampire who had natural DD breasts, a stomach so flat he could have used it as a dinner plate, and a set of legs that were long enough to wrap twice around his waist.
Ordinarily, he would have enjoyed an interruption from the likes of her.
“Throe! I will not be ignored.”
Not tonight.
As he straightened from the ancient tome he’d brought home from that psychic’s, his back cracked, and he was annoyed to find that his neck was so stiff he couldn’t look over his shoulder. Instead, he had to turn his entire torso to make eye contact.
“I am studying,” he heard himself say.
Odd, he thought. It didn’t feel as though he’d had a conscious thought to speak those particular words.
They were correct, however. He had indeed been studying what was written upon the parchment all day long and into the—was it night already? He felt as though he had just sat down.
“Forgive me.” He cleared his throat. “But what time is it?”
“Nine o’clock! You promised me we would go out.”
Yes, he recalled that. He had done so to get her off his back and into her hellren’s bed at dawn in order that he should have privacy with the book.
Or The Book, as he had begun to think of it.
And she clearly had taken him at his word, her outfit one that was both revealing and expensive. Roberto Cavalli, given the animal print. And she had on enough gold Bulgari jewelry to make the eighties file a police report.
“Well?” she demanded. “When are you getting ready?”
Throe looked down at himself, an odd disassociation taking root as he noted that he had on pants, a shirt, and shoes. “I am dressed.”
“In the same clothes you were wearing last night!”
“Indeed.”
Throe shook his head a little and looked around. The guest room he recognized, and that was a bit of a relief. Yes, this was where he had been staying since that fire that had destroyed his previous mistress’s hellren’s mansion. A month he had spent in this navy blue and mahogany suite, with its grand canopied bed, its paintings of hunting scenes, and its highboy and writing desk.
He had moved in here and promptly assumed a sexual relationship with this under-fucked female, much in the way he had done with his previous mistress: This one was, likewise, mated unto an older male who was incapable of servicing her in bed—and thus Throe, as a “gentlemale of fine bloodline,” had been welcomed unto the household, held in esteem and sheltered without any end date.
Clearly, they knew not the gossip of where he had ended up with the Band of Bastards. Or they were aware of it and had low standards. In any event, it was unwritten that provided he took care of the shellan, he could expect his room, board, and wardrobe needs to be met nicely, and in this case—which had not been true in the previous one—he rather suspected that her mate knew and approved.
Perhaps the older male was aware that she would stray, and was afraid she would leave him entirely.
In the glymera, that would be an embarrassment one would not like to endure right before one’s grave.
“Are you unwell?” she asked with a frown.
He turned back around slowly. He was seated at the writing desk, the one in between the two long windows with their regal drapes and their bubbly old glass. The mansion was large and rambling, filled with antiques and furnishings far, far too old and distinguished for the likes of its current chatelaine. And one could rather suspect that she would have preferred to be down at the Commodore, in a penthouse overlooking the river that was filled with white leather couches and Mapplethorpe reproductions.
She rather liked sex. And she was good at it—
“Throe. Seriously, like, what is the problem here?”
What had she asked him previously? Oh … right. And he had pivoted in this direction to regard himself in the mirrored upper doors of the desk.
Though the old glass’s mercury backing was pitted and scratched, there was enough of a reflection to verify that, yes, he did look the same as he had before he’d gone unto that psychic’s lair. Still with the thick, blond hair, and the classically handsome jaw, and the heavily lashed eyes that he used with quite a lot of success on the females.
He didn’t feel the same, however.
Something had changed.
As a ripple of anxiety went through him, he put his palm on the open book, and instantly he was calmed, sure as if the tome were a drug. Like red smoke, perhaps. Or mayhap quite a lot of fine port.
What had they been discussing—
“Whatever, I’m going out without you.” She pirouetted away in disapproval, her stilettos cursing their way over the carpet as she headed back for the exit. “If you’re going to be basic, I’m not going to—”
Throe blinked and rubbed his eyes. Glancing around, he got to his feet, and then fell back down as his leg muscles cramped. On the second try, he managed to sustain both verticality and ambulation, although the latter was with a herky-jerky step as he went across the fine Oriental carpet to the door his lover had just walked through.
Opening the way out for himself, he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to say to her, but there was no sense in propagating an argument. He was quite in need of her the now, this roof over his head and the sustenance in his belly necessary for him to be free to pursue his true ambitions.
Hooking a grip on the ornate jamb of his suite, he leaned into the finely appointed corridor and looked left and right. There was no sign of her, so he went down four doors and knocked softly. When there was no reply, he checked again to make sure there was no one else around, and then he entered her peach and cream boudoir.
There were several lights on. A couple of outfits strewn on the bed. A lingering whiff of her perfume.
“Corra?” he said. “Corra, my darling, I apologize.”
He went into her huge white and cream bath. Over at the hair and makeup chair, there was all manner of Chanel compacts, tubes, pots, and brushes on the counter. But no Corra.
Throe left things as he had found them and returned to his room. Just as he was shutting his own door, his eyes happened to pass over the clock on the bureau—and he froze.
Ten o’clock. Actually, a little after.
Throe frowned and went across to the ormolu masterpiece. But proximity did not change the fact that the hands proclaimed the time to be ten.
Corra had just told him it was nine, however. Hadn’t she?
Throe glanced over at The Book.
In the recesses of his mind, he noted that it was odd that although he had been reading for how many hours now—Fates, had it really been almost twenty-four?—he nonetheless hadn’t made it past the first page he’d turned—
Throe felt a tricking sense of vertigo tease his mind with the impression that the world was spinning around him.
Stumbling over to the desk, he sat down in the hard chair again, his knees pressed together, his head bent, his eyes on the open tome.
Funny, he was unaware that he had made any conscious instruction unto his body to resume his position here—
Wait, what had he been—
Why was he—
Thoughts went in and out of his mind, moving as clouds across a vacant sky, nothing staying with him nor finding any traction at all. He had some consideration that he was hollowing out, that parts of him were being drained, but he was hard-pressed to say what exactly had departed from him or where it had gone.
For a moment, fear struck him and he looked away from The Book.
Rubbing his eyes so hard he made them water, he realized that he had no idea what he had read. All of those hours spent sitting before the open book … and he had no clue what had been printed on any of the pages.
He needed to close the cover and burn the thing.
Yes, that was what he would do. He would keep his eyes averted, not regard the pages, and slam the cover shut. After which, he would pick up the evil volume and carry it downstairs. There was a hearth constantly lit in the library and he would …
Throe’s eyes returned to the parchment and the ink, a pair of dogs summoned by their master, coming to a heel.
And he focused on the symbols, on the text.
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Attempted to remember why he had gone looking for that psychic in the first place.
As his fear sharpened anew, he tried to force himself to concentrate on getting free—and indeed, he was reminded of those dreams one had from time to time, where one was awake, but stuck in a body that was frozen, a sense of rising panic causing one to struggle to wake up.
Moving a hand or a foot was often enough to pull oneself from the brink, and he sensed that now, if only he could have one solid, claiming conception, he could rescue himself from a peril he would otherwise ne’er escape.
Why had he gone to that psychic … what had been the impetus … what had he been after …
And then it came to him.
In a voice that didn’t sound like his own, he said aloud, “I need an army. I need an army with which to defeat the King.”
Something like a lightning bolt snapped o’erhead, and yes, an electrical current burst through him, bringing with it a clarity and a purpose that wiped away all of his previous confusion.
“I seek to defeat the King and assume power o’er both my race and the race of all the humans. I desire to be lord and master o’er all the earth and its inhabitants.”
All at once, pages started flipping, the dry, dusty smell entering his nose and threatening to make him sneeze.
When the mad dash to whate’er stopped, he felt himself bending down, sure as if there were a hand on the back of his neck that was pushing his torso thus.
Abruptly … the words made sense.
And Throe began to smile.