RHYS HAWKES CLOSED the door behind Trystan and Lyric and turned into his wife’s embrace. Her frail limbs trembled against his body. It had been too much for her to see Vail. It tore his heart open that the two could not have a relationship.
Perhaps it needed time and patience. God knows, he had learned patience in this marriage. He’d once thought her dead, and to find her alive decades ago had put back together the pieces of his broken heart. He adored Viviane, even when she raged.
“You told me Constantine was no more,” she said, her voice warbling. “You told me, lover. Did you lie to me?”
Sometimes it had been easier to allow Viviane to believe what she wanted. He’d never told her as much, only that he had no idea where Constantine was—which was true.
“Never, my love.”
“Why has my dark prince only come to me now? Why so long?”
He swept the hair from her face and tilted up her chin to gaze into her lucid blue eyes. Lucid, but for how long, he could never know. “Remember when the faery Cressida chose one of your sons as payment for enchanting my werewolf?”
She nodded. “You promised your firstborn. She took him. We had the other. I know it broke your heart, lover. It did mine, too.”
“He’s always been in our hearts, even though he was gone. Vaillant wants to get to know you, Viviane. He needs a mother.”
“I like being a mother. Trystan was easy to raise. He takes after his father, so proud and kind. But my dark prince…he looks like him.”
Indeed, Vail had his father’s square facial features, and yet the dark hair and blue eyes had come from both his parents. Pray, he did not develop a malicious streak as Constantine had. And pray, the two boys, Trystan and Vail, could have a better relationship than Rhys and Constantine had.
“He is not his father, Viviane. Vail is quite new to the mortal realm. He needs guidance. But most of all, he needs family. Do you want to be his family, Viviane?”
“I could be. But my heart…” She pounded a fist to her breast.
“I know.” Rhys pulled her head to his shoulder. “Your heart bleeds for the travesties visited you by Constantine de Salignac.”
“I will kill him.”
Would that she could, and then perhaps Salignac would haunt her no longer.
Rhys had had opportunity when they’d been tracking Viviane after she’d been released from her centuries-long prison in the catacombs. He’d held Constantine by the neck, his talons emerging with anger. But no matter the evils Constantine had brought to Rhys and Viviane’s life, he could not kill his own brother. The past could never be erased.
In truth, Rhys did not desire a relationship with his brother, but neither would he be the hand to bring him down, as was, he suspected, Vail’s focus.
“You’re hungry?” he asked, but didn’t wait for her answer.
Sitting on the chair, Rhys drew Viviane onto his lap and tilted his head aside. She stroked his neck. Her touch always sent shivers through his system and ignited desire. As a half-breed, his werewolf could not abide being bitten by a vampire. But he was in vampire form now, and though his mind was all wolf, the vampire always won the insistent desire to have his blood drawn out by his wife. It was a sensual experience they both enjoyed.
He gave Viviane strength, and in turn, when he took blood from her, it calmed his raging vampire.
They could not survive without the other.
* * *
LYRIC CLUTCHED THE EDGES of the passenger seat. Trystan Hawkes drove exactly like his brother. Did no one take driver’s education classes anymore?
The brown SUV sported red and orange flames along the exterior sides and laughing skulls across the back. A gold skull capped the stick shift. The interior was pasted with graffiti of skater logo stickers. All very colorful. As was Trystan.
The man was tall and built like Vail, but where Vail’s muscles were streamlined, his brother’s were meaty and imposing. As she would expect from a werewolf. One of Lyric’s friends was a werewolf—Blu Masterson; she spent the summers in Paris with her husband, Creed Saint-Pierre—but the female wolves, while muscular, were often slender and athletic in form.
Trystan cast her a sideways glance. “I can smell your fear, Lyric.”
“Yeah? Who’da thought, a werewolf capable of scenting out fear.” She wasn’t afraid of him. Well, maybe a little. Lyric had never been this close to a male wolf.
“Don’t be afraid of me. I won’t bite. You, on the other hand…”
“Wouldn’t dream to bite a werewolf. You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
He shrugged, and turned onto a different road. “Vamps don’t scare me, though I am fearful of the blood hunger I could develop if one ever bit me. Keep your fangs locked and loaded, sweetie.”
“Will do. Surprised, though, you’d be offended by me.”
“I’m not offended. Hell, my mother is a vampire, and my dad is half-vamp. There’s nothing about you that offends me, sweet—”
“Enough with the sweetie. Your brother uses the same tired endearment. I’m no one’s sweetie.”
“I bet you’re not. So Vail got scared by Mother and left you behind?”
She twisted on the seat to face him, and noticed he instantly sat straighter, more alert. Who was more leery of whom?
“Why do you hate your brother?” she asked. “From what I’ve learned, you two don’t know each other enough to form an opinion worthy of hate.”
“My mother is insane because of him.”
“She is not, and you know it. It was Vail’s father who buried her alive. Vail had nothing to do with that.”
“He’s told you a lot in what—the few days you two have known each other?”
“Something like that. So? Are you going to blame the son for the father’s sins? Come on, Trystan, I suspect you’re a smart man. Don’t give me tired excuses.”
The werewolf whistled and gave her an appreciative nod. “I like you. Do you love my brother?”
She bowed her head and looked out at the long ditch grass that blurred as the SUV sped past. “Of course not. Love doesn’t come so easily.”
“Tell me about it.”
That made her smile. “A good friend of mine is a werewolf, but I’ve never been alone with a male wolf before. Well, I’ve never been around one at all.”
He waggled his brows. “Impressed?”
“I am. You’re a tough guy, but I think you want a relationship with Vail as much as he does with you.”
“Ch’yeah, right.”
Lyric swung her head around. “Make that noise again.”
“What? I didn’t do anything.”
“That sound you just made.”
“Ch’yeah?”
“Vail says the same thing.”
The werewolf cocked a goofy look at her. “No kidding? Huh.”
The brothers had more than a few things in common. It gave Lyric hope that the family she sensed Vail needed was only a few heartfelt conversations and an open-minded understanding away.
“So where we headed?” Tryst asked. “You hungry? No, that was a stupid question. Mind if I get a burger? There’s a great little cafe at city’s edge just ahead.”
“Go for it. My brother’s apartment is in the eighteenth. But maybe…”
Maybe she should go to Vail’s place. He wouldn’t return to Leo’s apartment. And much as he thought he needed to be alone, she didn’t want the vampire to sit and stew about things too long.
* * *
VAIL WALKED FOR HOURS to get into the city. He entered Montmartre around three in the morning. The skitter of wings across his ankles reminded him he’d not worn the necessary ointment to see what he desperately wanted to see.
Didn’t matter. This was as close to home as he’d ever get. And they knew him here.
“FaeryTown,” he said with a drunken smile.
He wasn’t drunk. He was out of sorts and still riding the wicked high of crashing the car. Easier to destroy than to face reality.
His mother didn’t love him? Screw her. He didn’t need a mad vampiress mother.
And soon enough he’d plunge a stake through his father’s heart, obliterating all ties to anything remotely family.
And what about that werewolf brother of his? The cocky wolf was too busy with his own life to give a crap about Vail. And yet he managed to make Vail feel as though it was his fault Viviane was insane.
Maybe it was. Had he never been born, had he never gone to see her today, she would not have been reminded of that awful night in the eighteenth century when Constantine de Salignac consigned her to hell.
“She said I looked like him,” Vail said, and stumbled through the arched stone doorway to an ichor den. “Figures.”
Pushing past an overgrown fern frond, he navigated the bright darkness. A tacky replacement for the real Faery, the decor was similar to the Lizard Lounge with wild, verdant plants and bright colors. The colors tended to attack when he was high on ichor—which was the cool part.
It smelled like forest after a sun shower, with a hint of the spices, cinnamon and clove, that faeries loved so much. A low rhythm pulsed, yet it wasn’t exactly music, but perhaps the combined beat of the inhabitants’ heartbeats. The atmosphere hummed in Vail’s senses, pleading he succumb to decadent pleasures.
Beyond the delicate silver chains spilling like rainfall before various rooms and lounges, Vail heard the satisfied moans of vampires enchanted to a macabre supplication.
It was said after the first taste of ichor the vampire was powerless to stop taking more. Like meth to humans, the drug became the vampire, changed his thinking and made him weak and unpredictable. A vampire could fight real demons barehanded, yet after a hit of ichor, could never defeat the inner demons that occupied his soul.
If Charish Santiago had made a deal with Zett, it would be for the faery women and men who serviced these addicts.
“Monsieur Vaillant.” A sweet, heart-faced sprite fluttered before him. She was small enough to fit into Vail’s fist, which also made it easy for her to dash when a client got out of control. “Your usual?”
Nodding, he followed her into the azure room. The domed ceiling was painted with cheesy clouds and cupids. He’d come here weekly since his arrival in the mortal realm. It was a home like no other, a reminder of what he could never again be a part of, of the lie that had been his life. And still was.
But he didn’t need ichor like the dust freaks did. It was something he’d been born to; it was simply a part of him he must replenish and sustain.
Ch’yeah, right. Tell yourself another one, dark prince.
Viviane had called him her dark prince. It was difficult not to want to clutch that endearment and make it something it could never be. A declaration of love and acceptance.
It was a silly name. Like the names he gave Lyric.
The sprite fluttered off, leaving Vail staring at a pretty faery sprawled on an orange sofa. Her wings were pale, and one looked broken, though it could have been tucked at an odd angle against the velvet sofa. She was half-drained and smiled weakly at him as she patted the cushion for him to sit next to her.
He peered into her violet eyes and heard Lyric’s voice. What if you got clean? Why do you need to maintain?
It was what he knew. It was easy. And he did need this. Because if he ever stopped, he wasn’t sure how to live. On mortal blood? The idea of it disgusted him not so much as it usually did. And why was that? Vail toyed with the May bells circling his wrist. Protection.
Home.
“Monsieur?” Her thin fingers grasped for his hand, but he slipped from her frail touch.
“I changed my mind.”
“Tut-tut.” A cool breath tickled his ear.
Vail did not turn to see who stood beside him. Her presence always lowered any room’s temperature by a few degrees. Faery gossamers slipped about his leg and she walked her fingers up his spine.
“My pretty vampire child doesn’t want what makes him strong?”
“Get the hell away from me, Cressida.”
“You are using mortal oaths now? Oh, Vaillant.” The disappointment in her voice was nothing new to him. “You are in tatters. What’s happened?”
“I like to drive fast.” He lifted his head defiantly and turned his back to the weak faery sprawled on the couch.
Tiny and seeming frail, though Vail knew otherwise, the Mistress of Winter’s Edge hugged him from the side and tilted her head onto his shoulder. Rare had she shown him affection in Faery. It was as if she could not be emotional there, and in the mortal realm she was released from a binding spell.
It was possible. But it mattered little.
She touched the lily bracelet. “Only a few bells left. Poor child.”
“Bring me a new one,” he demanded.
“I will.”
So easy as that? Without asking a boon in return? “Why would you do anything for me, Cressida?”
“I do everything for you, Vaillant. You won’t see what you don’t want to see. Was your life in Faery so awful?”
“You damned me because I was bloodborn. I was not the child you would have chosen. You wanted my brother Trystan. Everyone loves Trystan.”
“I’ve never known you to be so self-deprecating, Vaillant. You’ve always been a scrapper who will stand against any who look at you the wrong way. This mortal realm has weakened you.” Had it?
He tightened his muscles, but still she clung to his arm. “If anything it’s opened my eyes to the cruelties of Faery. Not that I wasn’t fully aware all my life. Cressida, what is Zett up to with the Santiago clan?”
“Oh, now you wish to speak with me? When you’ve important business you seek my knowledge, but never to simply wish me well or want a visit?”
“I can never return to Faery. You know that.”
“Zett does rather despise you. You had no right doing what you did.”
No right to make things better for one innocent shifter sidhe whom Zett had marked in his sights? Vail would do the same thing and take the punishment over and over again.
“What’s done is done, Cressida.”
“Yes, and done so well. I may not approve, but you know I admire your courage, Vaillant.”
She shuffled him against a wall so plush his shoulders settled into the softness of fabric, or perhaps foliage, he couldn’t determine which.
“What do you ask of me to answer my questions?” he asked. With the sidhe, a bargain was always demanded.
Her violet eyes twinkled. Wings like a dragonfly’s, yet three on either side, fluttered at her back. Her pale hair always wavered as if the sea about her lithe form.
“I know why you are after Zett,” she said. “It is to ultimately bring you to Constantine. Your mortal stepfather holds you in wicked supplication with a bargain made in blood.”
Like it or not, they had a connection, and always Cressida knew his mind.
“You’ve made it clear over the years you hate Salignac,” Vail stated. “Won’t you help me now to find him?”
“While it would please me immensely to see you stake that bastard, I’m not entirely sure I wish my pretty vampire child to commit such violence.”
“Cressida, do not affect love toward me. It is some thing you and I both know the sidhe cannot embrace.”
“Admiration.” She cooed against his ear, her cool touches gliding down his throat and chest, yet remaining chaste. “Pride. Even respect, I have for you, Vaillant the Dark. I do not believe destroying your father will put you in a right place.”
Vaillant the Dark. My dark prince.
False affection, all of it.
“Then be gone with you. I don’t need you. I don’t need…”
He glanced to the faery on the couch. The frail thing smiled and tilted her head to reveal her long neck, which was unscarred. Was it possible no one had yet supped from her?
Vail inhaled, testing the cool allure of ichor at the back of his tongue.
“Yes, Vaillant, you need what she offers,” Cressida cooed. “You will never be like them. They are bloodthirsty fiends who feed upon unclean mortals. You are starving for ichor. Take her. Be the man you are and can only ever be. My Vaillant.”
She’d not told him he disgusted her. She’d not hissed at him or demanded he leave. Cressida, in her own twisted manner, would always be the mother he could never have yet pined to love.
As he focused on the tender stroke of Cressida’s finger along his cheek, Vail inhaled the spiced forest scent. A heady dizziness swirled his thoughts. He nodded and bent to sit beside the faery. Cressida kissed his head and whispered some unaffectionate endearment. The whoosh of her wings crackled in his brain as Vail leaned in to bite the faery’s neck.