“GATHER THE ASHES,” Lyric heard Vail direct the limo driver.
A chill breeze sifted through her hair, icing her skin. The world had changed. She needed… She needed.
Vail lifted her into his arms, and she melted against his neck and chest, threading a hand up to clutch his hair. She didn’t speak. It was hard enough to keep from sobbing loudly. It didn’t feel right to cry, yet mutinous tears streamed down her cheeks, and her fingertips sought the dark she wished would swallow her whole.
Vail didn’t speak or ask her questions, but instead silently carried her inside. His strength buoyed her. He had sensed correctly she could not stand on her own.
The mansion was dark and quiet, morbidly so. The vampires who had previously occupied it in the nineteenth century had chosen the dark woodwork and wallpaper. She’d never liked the foreboding atmosphere.
Vail walked down the long hall in the south wing that was lined with windows overlooking an English garden. He stopped and Lyric felt his muscles tense against her slack body. A long mahogany table stretched before the garden window, covered with blue cloth and centered with a burst of dying white roses. Her mother’s favorite.
She wanted to cling to him. She and Vail. Forever.
He will never betray me as others have.
He set her down on the table, but did not back away. Instead, he arranged her legs to hug his thighs and pulled her close, bowing over her head to kiss it. His fingers slipped through her ugly brown hair, but his tender attentions made her feel a princess with gorgeous locks. He stroked along the curve of her spine, reassuring, soothing.
She nuzzled her face against his neck. The bite marks she had pierced into his flesh were healed, but the scent of him, rich, vivacious and dark, crept through her pores on a glamorous sigh. She’d never known such quiet strength. It felt like a gift, empowering yet peaceful. With his silence Vail gave her acceptance and courage. She had lost her mother. But she had not lost hope in the eyes of her lover. This man would protect her always. Perhaps even, love her always.
She wrapped her arms about him and surrendered to what would be, and lost herself in Vail’s quiet calm. “Love me,” she whispered.
“Always.”
And that reminded her. Lyric took the lily bracelet out from her pocket and gave it to Vail. “Your stepmother gave this to me.”
He didn’t touch it. “When did you speak to Cressida?” he asked urgently.
“Earlier today, right before we left your place. She warned me you’d be tormented by a dark hunger, and if I loved you, I should make you wear this.”
He nodded but didn’t touch the bracelet. Instead, he simply asked, “Do you want me to wear it?”
Inside, Lyric was shouting no, no, no, and she found herself saying, “Asking you to wear this doesn’t feel right to me. I think the dark hunger she was talking about is your innate blood hunger, the vampire’s desire to drink mortal blood. Something you insist on denying.”
She placed the bracelet on the table beside her leg. “I don’t want you to wear it, but I would never dream of asking you to do as I insist. It is your choice. I need to be alone,” she said. “To sit in the gym in the east wing. It’s where I go when I don’t want to talk.”
“With your silks?”
She smiled at him, but it was forced. “Will you wait for me?”
“Yes, go, do what you need to and take as much time as necessary. I won’t leave, Lyric, I promise.”
She kissed him and padded away into the dark mansion.
* * *
VAIL WAITED until Lyric disappeared around a corner, and then strolled outside to the small groomed garden. In the center of the cozy garden, surrounded by a cobbled patio, a fountain dribbled rainwater. A jade cricket sat on the toes of the cherub holding center stage of the fountain.
He dangled the lily bracelet from a forefinger. He could feel the vibrations of Faery in the simple stem of May bells. He could feel the power. Crave it. Yet what power was it?
You have your own power now. Or you can. You need to take it.
And what then? What would drinking mortal blood do for him? Give him power? To do what? Rhys insisted he claim such power, yet he couldn’t figure why it mattered.
Lyric had understood him. She knew exactly what he’d been taught to believe, and that he’d chosen to believe those things, knowing they couldn’t possibly be true.
He had desperately wanted to ask her about Constantine, but now was not the right time. She’d referred to him as Connor. Why hadn’t she made the connection?
Don’t blame her. She couldn’t have known.
What twisted joke was this realm playing on him, to put him so close to his father and yet deny him that knowledge?
He tapped the circlet of May bells against his mouth. This bracelet had protected him from the blood hunger, that much he did know. Cressida’s sly means to keep him forever a prisoner of Faery, though he could never again set foot there.
He believed Cressida did care for him in her own twisted manner. But he also knew she would have been happier had she chosen Trystan instead of him.
Had Vail been the baby left behind, he would have grown up with two vampire parents and may have been in a very different place right now.
Trystan may have had a time of it in Faery. Or not. The Unseelie held a tentative truce with werewolves, and allowed them free rein in Faery. Trystan may have enjoyed growing up there, and who knew, he may have been promised to Kit. But he wasn’t a half-breed, so Cressida would have been angry about that, as well. He did not wish Faery upon his brother.
Vail dropped the lily bracelet onto the water’s surface. It floated, dancing around the circle of the fountain.
It wasn’t difficult to admit now that he was glad Trystan had not been chosen. Trystan was Rhys Hawkes’s blood child. The two deserved to be together.
And you deserve no one?
He tilted back his head and closed his eyes. The dark roil in his being had not let up. It commanded he take action. He fisted his fingers. Kill Constantine. He’d not forgotten, nor would he ever. It was what he most desired.
And yet. He wanted something more now.
All of her. Her kisses, her body and her blood. Inside him, outside, all over him. A part of him. He’d never wanted anything more than Lyric Santiago. He would sacrifice it all, die for her, even.
A hot burn clutched him from the inside, pulsing the ache throughout his system. And then he knew he could wait no longer.
“I want her blood.”
* * *
LYRIC LAY on the thick gymnasium mats in the east wing of the mansion staring up at the streams of red fabric suspended at the ceiling from carbon swivel hooks. The three-story room was quiet and she’d turned on one light, which spotlighted the silks. She’d changed into soft yoga pants and a formfitting shirt and had washed away the tears that had fallen unbidden once alone in the bathroom.
Now she closed her eyes and a tear trickled down her cheek and landed on the mat. She mourned her mother’s passing, and was calm with it.
Charish had lived over a century. She’d done the best she could with the knowledge and habitat she’d chosen for herself. Lyric loved her, and knew Charish had loved her in return. She would always remember her bubbly laughter, her inability to walk by a spider without shrieking and her joy for shopping in cosmopolitan cities.
Saying goodbye was easier than she expected, perhaps only because Lyric was now frightened for her future. It should feel easy now, she mutinously thought. But her heart told her that her world had been flipped. Everything Charish had begun while alive would require reckoning.
Like her mother’s deal with the Unseelie lord.
Spreading her arms out across the mats, she breathed deeply. Don’t think, she reminded herself. It was how she moved beyond tough situations. This room was meant for serenity. When working with the silks she could only feel peace.
She toed an end of dangling red fabric. Years ago, when Leo had been training, Lyric had become fascinated with the aerial silks used in the course of his training. While Leo had mastered the skill to utilize during break-ins to steal, she found the acrobatics calmed her, returned her to the innocence of her childhood, when summer camps and stolen kisses in the forest had ruled.
Grasping the strong yet giving fabric, she pulled her body up and, hand over hand, worked her way upward until she was suspended twenty feet above the landing mats. A swing thrust her body toward the other hanging silks, and she grasped another.
Hooking an ankle in the fabric with a deft twist, she dropped her handhold and hung upside down, gliding an arm along the silks to grip. Closing her eyes, and spreading out her arms to bring out the fabric like butterfly wings, she surrendered to the graceful art with pleasure.
Much like surrendering to the faery dust had felt.
“Never again,” she murmured. She would never put herself in a situation where she might imbibe dust. And she intended to be there for Vail should he decide the same.
* * *
VAIL WANDERED THE DARK HALLS in the Santiago mansion. It was a real castle, with musty stone walls and old tapestries on the floor and the walls. The furniture was dark, heavy, and reeked of ancient times. He had no idea how far back the Santiago lineage went. He sensed Charish had touched every part of this home, and it wasn’t a good sensation, but not repulsive either. Just different.
He didn’t want to impose on Lyric’s privacy, because he’d meant it when he’d told her he would wait as she took as long as she needed. Much as he should be looking for Zett—who was now a murderer.
And Constantine.
And find the gown to save his uncle’s ass.
But he could no longer deny the aching hunger. He’d felt the pain in his home just before the rock had smashed the window. It had returned as a hollow ache below his breastbone. Now that he was clean of ichor, he needed blood.
Cherry jasmine perfume led him down the hall. It tickled his veins, teasing his yearnings into desires. Saliva wet his mouth. A hot pulse burned around the ache. Everything he touched, every chair rail, wall or slip of fabric heightened his senses and opened him up to receive.
So this was the blood hunger?
What he’d once feared, he now craved.
Was it merely a replacement for his previous addiction? Vampires could become addicted to blood.
No, he mustn’t rush ahead of himself. He hadn’t tasted blood yet.
“But soon.”
You will step down to join the ranks of filth? Vampires are lesser than you.
No, he couldn’t subscribe to Cressida’s beliefs now. He wasn’t a faery and he didn’t belong in Faery. He’d never belonged there. It was time to claim his heritage from the person he trusted most.
He traced the stone wall with his fingers and strolled through the darkness. He sensed her presence as he took the stone stairs and knew she was in the room ahead with the door cracked open. Dim light crept along the door frame and veiled the stone floor.
Stopping outside the door, he put his back against the wall and wondered if he dared intrude. He should not. She’d been through too much the past few days. He owed her this time alone.
They were both alone now, without family. No, he could no longer cling to that tired excuse. He had family—he simply needed to embrace it. He would do so, with Lyric in his arms.
A swish of fabric tickled his curiosity, and Vail could not resist peeking inside the room. It was a gymnasium fashioned after something only the Addams family could appreciate, with dark stone walls, a dusty buttressed ceiling and low lighting.
An incredible sight stilled his breath.
A beautiful vampiress performed a ballet in the air, suspended by rich, red fabric strips. Must be the aerial silks she had mentioned to him. Her hobby, a means to relax.
Captivated, he carefully pushed open the door and walked inside. Low light lit only the center of the mat-carpeted room where Lyric worked out. The slide of her hair along the red silks whispered to his cravings, but he resisted in favor of the visual satisfaction. Graceful muscles pulsed and elongated, strong limbs belied her delicate beauty.
“You’re staring, vampire.”
“So I am.” He splayed out his hands. “I didn’t mean to intrude. You looked so beautiful. I’ll leave.”
“No.” She slid down one strip of fabric, stopping about six feet from the mat. “Join me.”
“Ch’yeah—no.” Vail thumbed his jaw and shook his head. “Sweetie, you were literally flying. You looked more graceful than any faery I’ve seen in flight. There’s no way I could—”
“Quit grumbling, and give it a go. It’s just strength and knowing when to grip and when to trust yourself.”
Sounded complicated, and off the chart for his skill level.
“I shouldn’t infringe on your—”
“Mourning? I’ve had a good cry, said blessings for my mother’s passing. I need to connect right now, Vail. Please—” an ache rasped her voice “—don’t leave me alone.”
No, he couldn’t walk away from her. Not from the heady scent of life that tormented his wanting soul. But more so, he wanted to hold the hand she held out, and never let go.
Vail took off his boots and mounted the foot-thick blue vinyl mats, finding a new balance to navigate the cushy surface. Lyric dangled a silk over his head and he pulled it down to inspect. It was flexible and stretchy and he didn’t believe it could support his weight. His lover was a bird compared to his bulk.
“Take your shirt off or the buttons will get caught on the silks.”
He did so, tossing it over by his boots, and doubting his sanity as he complied with her request. “You want me to strip naked?”
Her laughter felt good. “Maybe. But let’s try a few easy moves first.” She performed a move that worked her gracefully up the fabric, supporting most of her weight by twisting the fabric about one foot. Lyric called down. “Just pull yourself up. If you catch me, you can have me.”
With a teasing challenge like that, Vail bit hard on the bait. He had climbed ropes and vines a lot when he was younger. Faery was a literal jungle gym for the adventurous youngster who’d always dreamed of having wings. More than a few faeries had teased him and called him a monkey when he was little. It was better than the longtooth epithet.
He impressed himself as he climbed hand over hand, using his feet to guide. Not so difficult when he relied on the strength of his arms. Could he have done this while mired in the hazy fog of his addiction? Probably, but he wouldn’t have had the determination to win the prize like he did now.
When he was about five feet off the ground, Lyric slid down, upside down, to meet him face-to-face. “Wrap the silk around your ankle and foot to hold position.”
He did so, and looked to her for further instruction. His muscles were taut and stretched, and he liked the feeling. But even more, he liked the position of her hanging before him, her hair tied back and dangling in a ponytail.
She hung by one ankle that held a sure grip on the silk. With her free hand she slid her fingers through his hair. And then she kissed him upside down. Vail pulled her closer and deepened the kiss. Her lips were salted with what he knew had been tears. Taking away her pain fed the ache that haunted him. His ankle became unloosened from the silk, and he slid down—he caught himself with a clutch of fabric.
Lyric giggled. “My kisses make you lose your cool?”
“Give me a break. This is my first time.”
“And you’re doing well.”
He found a position next to her again and this time divided his concentration between holding on to the fabric and kissing her. “This rocks, kissing like this.”
One of her hands strayed down his chest and flicked across the fly of his pants.
“You think so?” he asked.
“I need you, Vail.”
He blinked, understanding. His grip on the silk was tight and not at all sure. “I warn you, this could end disastrously.”
“Trust me,” she said, and she lashed her tongue up his bare abdomen. “Trust yourself, Vail.”
* * *
WHEN WITH VAIL, the world slipped away and a blissful peace overtook her. It wasn’t wrong, in the wake of her mother’s death, to want to connect, to feel, to seek confirmation that she was loved.
She unzipped Vail’s pants, and he let them slide down to land upon the mats. Ten feet above the ground, they hung suspended, their bodies relying upon each other for support.
Lyric fitted herself in the silks so her support was a cradle of fabric bracing her elbows. Spreading her legs, she wrapped them about Vail’s hips and lowered onto his cock. “Don’t let go,” she whispered.
“Let go? I’m trying not to come right away. Lyric, this is incredible. We’re flying and having sex.”
She tilted back and jerked her head to the right, which set them to a sway, and then Vail felt her intention and moved his body with hers. They spun out widely, joined together and flying.
He spread out his arms, completely supported by the silks twisted at his thighs, and cried out as climax shuddered through his body. She wrapped her arms and legs tightly about him, feeding off his tremors. And they spun slowly and descended to the mats together.
They settled onto the thick mats in a tumble of arms, legs and laughter. “That was amazing.”
When she laughed, Lyric tilted her head to the side to expose the sweep of her pale neck.
Vail stroked his fingers along her neck, sweeping aside strands of dark hair that she preferred golden but knew he would admire in any color so long as he could touch it.
Bending, he touched his nose to her neck, beside the pulsing vein.
“Thanks for being here when I needed you most,” she said. “I feel like I could get through anything with you. You’re the rock I’ve never had.”
Kissing her neck, he licked her skin. “What if I need you to be my rock? Lyric, I feel something…. I’ve felt it since we left my place. I think it’s the blood hunger. I know now is not the right time—”
“Now is the best time, lover.” She curled her hand at the back of his head and gently pulled him to her neck.
Brushing his lip over the tender vein, he gauged the steady thrum of blood beneath the surface. Her life.
His sustenance. If he would take it.
Did he want it? Could he release all the years of lies and deception Cressida had instilled in his soul, the idea that ichor had only ever sustained him?
Dare he?
“Take what you will,” she whispered. “I’m yours, Vaillant.”