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My three vamps, the devil, Cleo, and I stood in front of the Senate mansion, its gray stone structure looking so much colder and more foreboding than it had just a couple nights ago. Then it had almost seemed warm and inviting with the large fountain bubbling happily behind my back, welcoming candlelight warming the window, and the fireflies dancing in the bushes lining the front steps. Now, a winter breeze snapped through the air, and the fireflies didn’t stand a chance underneath the thick darkness that literally felt like it was crushing down on top of us. The fountain stayed quiet, the water inside it all gone, and every window inside the house was midnight black.
Though the outside swept cold unease down my back, I knew the inside would be ten times worse. It had been the sight of a mass murder, every little detail of which had wormed behind my eyelids and took root in shocking detail whenever I tried to sleep.
And now, Paul might be here to add his special kind of horror to the house. Plus, his Lake of Truths. Why couldn’t the lake behave like a normal one and live outside the murder house?
Even Cleo shifted nervously by my side, giving me those droopy red eyes and whining softly as if she couldn’t believe we were even standing here.
“I know, girl.” I reached down to rub her ears as much to soothe me as her. “After this, get ready. It’ll be pie for days.”
Her butt wiggled at that. Mine did too.
The only reason she was here and not safe and belly up on the couch was because the devil said she knew how to find Night’s Fall. When I asked how, both of them had shared a look. Clearly, I didn’t understand the relationship between my dog and the devil.
“This lake isn’t made out of holy water, is it?” Jacek asked.
“No,” the devil said.
Eddie shot him a withering look. “Are you lying?”
The devil smiled. “I just might be.”
Jacek rolled his eyes. “Slayer, if it is, I’m afraid we can’t get too near. If we’re completely submerged in holy water, that’s it. We’re done.”
“Noted.” I took his hand and squeezed. “But you can get near me since I’ve conveniently forgotten to wear my Holy Bra.”
“Or any bra, for that matter,” the devil muttered with a grin.
My vampires lunged at him, but I leaped in front of him with my hands up. We had more important battles to fight.
“Keep your eyes off my chest, perv,” I told him, but he just laughed, a rich sound that gave the night life.
Sawyer settled his hand at the small of my back, an instant source of strength. “Are you ready?”
“No.” I shrugged. “Maybe that’s why I’m still alive. Because I’m not afraid to admit that, you know?”
“There are very few thing you are afraid of, Slayer.” Jacek nudged my hip with his, his face losing some of the rage he’d aimed at the devil. “I’m surprised you don’t walk funny with the size of your balls.”
I winked. “Oh, I do walk funny, but not because the size of my balls.”
“Comparatively speaking, vaginas are stronger than balls,” Eddie said, his blond hair standing in all directions. He must’ve recently raked his hand through it. “There’s really no contest between them. I mean you do know where babies come from, right? I would very much prefer a vagina in terms of strength, in terms of feel, in terms of anatomy of my favorite Sunshine.”
Jacek nodded. “Thank you, Doctor Smiley.”
“Yes. Thank you.” I grinned at Eddie, but the weight of our stalling to take our next steps slipped it right off my face. “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”
With a deep, shuddering breath, I started up the stone steps, my three vamps and my dog flanking my sides. Sawyer grasped the handle, and the doors swung open to the entryway, crowded with darkness. I braced myself for the stink of dead bodies to roll out, but it was just normal-scented air.
“Can we go—” Jacek started.
Eddie walked into the house.
“I guess we can,” Jacek said, and followed.
Before, when he and Sawyer had come here, they hadn’t been allowed to enter the house, their being vampires and all. I supposed the devil had something to do with that since he’d known we were coming. So did that make this his house, then, since he was technically the slayer Senate? It seemed much too normal to have the devil as its owner since the house had a distinct lack of pitchfork decorations. But that might explain how he knew Cleo so well since she used to live here.
The house swallowed Sawyer, too, then the swish of Cleo’s tail as she hesitantly stepped inside.
“Wait! Cleo, watch your feet,” I cried. The crystal chandelier hanging above the entryway had exploded all over the floor last time we were here, and I’d had to lug the heavy dog across so she didn’t hurt her paws.
But as I neared the inside, I didn’t hear the snap of glass underfoot. I couldn’t see a thing, either. My steps slowed at the doorway as the darkness from inside crept down my throat and choked me.
“Hey, guys,” I whispered over the thrum of my heartbeat.
“Even your fear smells divine.” The dark, sensual voice brushed at the back of my neck, triggering a sinful tremor down to my nipples, and then lower, giving rise to an intense ache in my pussy that crushed my thighs together. I barely held back a moan.
The prickly bastard’s desire magnifier was back in full force.
“Why are you here?” I forced out.
His fingers slid over my wrist like heated silk and tightened, drawing my hand back toward him to scrape against his jeans. I gasped and glanced backward at where he held my hand, so close to the warm press of his rigid cock against his zipper. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there within stroking distance. Thick and hot. Waiting.
The thought of riding him, touching him, fucking him just about tipped me over as it crashed into my head. The painful throb between my legs stole my breath and seeped deeper, deeper until it threatened to blot out everything else. Until I acted on it. Until I turned around and faced him, climbed on top of him, and eased the ache, no matter how many times it took.
But hello? That’s not why I was here.
I yanked my hand away and reduced him to mush with my glare. Tried to anyway. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Those sapphires of his sparked in the moonlight, so beautiful and dangerous. “Don’t you want to know where the lake is?”
“You said it’s here. A lake inside a house can’t be that hard to find.” My body both tensed and delighted when he climbed to the step just below mine, the columns of his muscles sliding against me. “So...I don’t need you. You may go now.”
“Oh, may I?” His gaze searched my face, snagging on my lips repeatedly while his curled in a devastating smile. “That sharp tongue of yours... Is that how you would talk to me as the queen of hell if we were married?”
He really couldn’t just let that whole marriage thing go, could he? I shook out of his grip and backed up the steps so that I towered over him. It was a long ways up to get to that point. “If we were married, I can assure you my tongue and its sharpness would be much, much worse. You could have millions of women who would sell their souls to you in a second, and yet you can’t take my no answer as final. For someone who chose me as a slayer, you don’t know me for shit.”
Something flickered across his face, something I didn’t care enough to read because I whirled around and marched into the house. As soon as I crossed the threshold, it was as if a veil had been lifted, a veil that had been purposefully draped across the doorway to keep my vamps in, and me outside with the devil.
Eddie, Jacek, and Sawyer stood just inside the brightly lit entryway, an intact, candlelit crystal chandelier dripping rainbows over their heads, and Cleo sitting at their feet with her adorable head tilted in question.
“Where were you?” Eddie asked, but it wasn’t an accusation. Though when his amber eyes flicked behind me, it turned into an accusation, burning with fury and multiplied by three.
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “Talking to the jackass.”
The devil’s sigh filled the immaculately clean entryway. “Lovely...”
At the familiar start to Paul’s nightmare phrase, a prickle slithered up my back, cold and vicious. He was here—or he might be—and the devil was trying to distract me from that fact by trying to make me play on his sexual playground.
I turned and glared at him, but he was facing off with my vamps. Again. Whatever. I would let them whip out their tape measures, but I had a lake to find.
The entryway looked as it had appeared when I’d first come here, with no sign of the bloody smears along the floors and stairs or the great battle that had occurred. My gaze strayed to the second-floor landing and then left toward the bedroom, now closed, but it didn’t stick there. I didn’t want to remember that the bloody trail had ended there, yet another life I hadn’t been able to save.
Cleo trotted up to me, a low whine in her throat as if thinking my same thoughts. Was Cleo’s friend still there, a servant girl named Lolly, lying dead, or had someone cleaned her up too? And what about the Senate who weren’t really the Senate with their faces in their plates in the dining room, also dead?
Somehow I doubted they were still there. Whoever had cleaned up must’ve moved the bodies. Plus, the air inside the house didn’t reek of death. Or feel heavy and dark with the presence of Paul for that matter. Odd. Maybe he wasn’t playing with his lake after all.
Except...
I took a few steps closer to the slightly curved staircase, Cleo locked at my side, snatches of conversation behind me filtering through.
“We got it from here,” Jacek was snapping at the devil.
“You don’t have anything,” the devil said, his voice like a punishing whip.
Craning my neck to peer closer at the steps, I froze. Blinked. Stared harder.
Jacek chuckled, a humorless sound that didn’t belong to his usual cheerful self. “You sure about that? It seems to me we have exactly what you want.”
“Jacek,” Sawyer hissed. “Here is hardly the place. We need to help Belle find this—”
“Found it,” I announced, pointing.
A trickle of water was slowly making its way down the right side of the stairs from the top, just a thin line, now about halfway down.
“The lake’s on the second floor, isn’t it?” At the devil’s silence, I looked over my shoulder at him. “Isn’t it?”
He dropped his startling sapphire gaze to meet mine with a frown. “No.”
Well, that wasn’t good.
My three vampires looked to me, their faces mirroring the doubt uncurling inside my gut. Something was wrong. Lots of somethings. If that wasn’t the lake up there slowly leaking down the stairs, then where was that water coming from?
The high ceiling creaked like a great weight had just been placed on top of it. All of us looked up.
“Guys...” I started, touching my fingertips to Cleo’s fur to make sure she was close. “I’m not so sure about this whole lake thing.”
“Agreed,” Eddie whispered. “But—”
Cleo cut him off with a loud bark and streaked to the left at a sprint, nearly knocking me down in the process.
“Cleo!” I shouted, but she was already nosing her way through the double doors on the left, the ones that led to the smoking room and the library beyond.
Just as her tail swished through, a scream ripped through the air. Female. Not in the direction of Cleo but from the right, the direction of the dining room.
With my heart banging its way to my throat, I whirled on the devil. “Are there people here? Now?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but a deep tremble shook down the house’s walls, strong enough to rip the floor out from under my feet. I lurched toward the stair banister and held on tight. My gaze locked on the water streaming down the stairs, faster now, and I briefly wondered if I was starring in a Titanic movie, but no one had bothered to tell me. If so, my vamps and I would all fit on one slab of wood at the end. I’d damn well make sure of it.
The house settled and stilled, the sudden silence like a cleansing breath that snapped me into action.
“Eddie, please. Go find Cleo.”
He looked at me for only a moment, reading from my face that yes, it was a terrible idea to separate, but it was a dog, so common sense flew out the window, and then nodded and blurred through the double doors anyway.
“Sawyer, go see about that scream. Get them out of this house.”
He went, no questions asked, but I had at least five dozen. Whoever had screamed surely hadn’t just stumbled across the bodies of the Senate in the dining room, because they were most likely gone. Why, then? And why now? I had a feeling we were already falling off the Titanic into an abyss that looked an awful lot like a lake.
The house shuddered again. Frigid water from the stairs hit my feet and began to spread.
“Jacek—”
“You want me upstairs to check on the water.” He nodded at the devil. “Leaving him all alone with you to show you this lake. Is this all your doing?”
The devil glowered at him, the chandelier above him spotlighting him with rainbows. “This is all Paul’s doing. And that’s the last time you’ll question me.”
Jacek turned to me. “I don’t like this, Slayer.”
“Seconded wholeheartedly.”
To his credit, Jacek peeled away his mistrust enough to take to the stairs, the left side in case it was holy water. “You know what to do if you need us.”
“I do.” I glanced at the devil. “Show me the lake.”
He nodded once and strode around the staircase to the back, his movements rigid and tight as if these last few moments made him just as uncomfortable as me. Unless it was all an act. Maybe he knew exactly what role he was playing in all this, and it involved hand delivering me to Paul. But I kept up with him anyway because I couldn’t come up with a good enough reason to explain why he’d do that.
At the back of the staircase, there was a door with no knob, just the vague lines of a rectangle, invisible unless you were looking for a lake. Or a door, apparently.
The devil pushed at one side of it, and it clicked open onto a five-foot-wide sandy beach. Three guesses as to what was beyond it. Yep, a lake, large and eerily still, its surface like black, uncut glass. Where there should’ve been sky above a normal lake, a domed gray ceiling existed, with a single bulb in the middle and a dangling chain. Gray walls contained it in what I guessed had once been a closet, now stretched out to accommodate a lake about a hundred feet wide. Frankly, looking at it made me dizzy because now my spatial sense was all jacked up.
The devil gestured me in front of him onto the beach, either as a gentleman or a gentleman dressed as a hungry crocodile. With him, it was so hard to tell.
The rest of the house shook violently, echoing the trembles rushing up and down my spine, but the lake didn’t move.
Neither did I. I planted my feet and stared down the devil because we had some things to discuss quickly. “Why did you choose me when I was just a kid?”
He lifted his hands as if it were obvious. “So you’d have more time to figure out how to survive the battle.”
That was a lame excuse, even for him. “I didn’t even know Paul then.”
“Not just Paul. Vampires. Life. All stepping stones to where you are now.”
“Yeah, about to face off with a lake that belongs to the guy who wants me dead. That’s some life.”
He posted his arm on the doorframe and leaned in, his sensual lips just a kiss away. “If you don’t like your life, my offer still stands.” His breath touched my neck, his heat curling off of him like smoke. He smelled like leather and brimstone, an intoxicating mix.
If I liked that kind of thing.
I pulled away. “Oh, fuck you and your marriage proposal.”
He pressed his body closer, trapping me against him and the doorframe, both of which were equally unforgiving. His eyes locked with mine, lit from within like a shiny, sexual beacon. My pussy throbbed, and I dug my fingernails into the wall behind me so I wouldn’t massage the steady ache from myself. Or worse, make him do it.
“I put you into this situation.” He leaned in and skimmed his lips over the seam in mine. “I can take you out of it. Instantly. I already have the next slayer picked out.”
I narrowed my eyes, just barely catching the breathy moan that wanted to escape and then swallowing it down. “Because you think I can’t handle this, right?”
“Far from it. I never said that.” The hard edges in his face softened some. “Only one other slayer in the history of Paul has gotten to this point.”
“And he changed by looking into this lake. He tortured Jacek. He became a monster to defeat the monster named Paul.”
“You’re not Roseff.” The devil reached up to trace my jaw with his finger and followed its path with his gaze, a troubled crease forming briefly between his eyebrows. “Not even close.”
“Well, I’m about to find out, aren’t I? Just as soon as you stop trying to get down my pants.”
He stepped away, the troubled crease never quite disappearing, and gestured toward the lake. “Look into the Lake of Truths, Belle. Or don’t and come rule hell with me.”
I shivered, but not all because of the sudden loss of his body heat tempting its way underneath my skin. He made everything sound so simple when it was anything but. My mind and my life balanced on this moment. No pressure or anything. But if the Lake of Truths helped me somehow, helped me prepare for what Paul had planned for me, then I couldn’t just stand here with my thumbs up my ass.
I firmed my mouth into a thin line of resolve, stiffened my spine, and took a step onto the beach.