Lucinda, Darkly Read online

  Mentally, Nico threw up his hands. “I give up. Nothing I say or do is going to convince you. Is it? Okay, I concede defeat. You don’t have to like me. We don’t have to be bosom buddies. You just have to tolerate me and let me do my job.”

  “How long were you among the humans?” Stefan asked.

  “Just over a month’s time.”

  “You picked up quickly their way of speaking.”

  “From watching lots of TV and from spending all my time with them. A delightful people.”

  “Some of them,” Stefan agreed.

  “Their women certainly were.” Nico grinned.

  “You were with human women?” Jonnie said with surprise. “Stefan was never attracted to any of them.”

  “Ah, so that’s what it is,” Nico said, suddenly enlightened. “You have been over twenty years out of practice. Don’t worry, old chap. It’ll come quickly back to you. Like picking up a sword again.” He slapped Stefan on the shoulder with good cheer. Stefan, on the other hand, looked like he wanted to gnash his teeth. Or maybe rip off Nico’s hand.

  “We’re here,” Stefan said. The car slowed, pulled to a bumpy halt along the side of the road, and they got out.

  “I think this is where we left her,” Stefan said, walking to a patch of flattened grass and kneeling beside it. “I smell the faint scent of her blood here, where it dripped from her mouth.”

  “Well, she’s obviously not here,” Nico said with relief. “She should be fine.”

  “No,” said a quiet voice behind them. “She’s not.”

  Stefan spun around, raven hair flying, to find Talon crouched beside him. He had gotten soft living among the humans, used to their easy detection. It unsettled Stefan greatly to have this creature be able to glide right up to him like that, without his awareness—no sound, no heartbeat, no presence. And so odd looking, the dark creature was, not just disproportionately short as if his growth had been stunted, but something even more than that. Something with the eyes. They were odd, different.

  “What do you mean?” Stefan asked. “What do you sense that I do not?”

  “Another demon was here. He was here.” The shivering increased, shaking Talon’s body almost violently.

  “He?” Stefan said, not so much a question as a demand.

  “He means the demon that brought him to this realm,” Nico said, his voice sober, almost hushed. “That continued to drink his blood. The demon that called himself Horace, though I doubt that was his real name.”

  “Then Lucinda is in danger,” Stefan said.

  “Yes,” said Nico, all his amicability falling away, leaving a hardened warrior in its place, eyes cold and resolute. A fellow brother with the same goal—the need to protect their lady.

  “How the Darkness did he find her?” Stefan asked.

  “Mona SiGuri must have warned him. And he must have tracked us here, followed us somehow.”

  “We have to help her,” Stefan said.

  They sent their senses flaring out. Picked up nothing but the scent of those few drops of her blood that had wet the ground.

  “Anything?” Stefan asked.

  Nico looked uncharacteristically grim. “No. You?”

  Stefan shook his head.

  As one, their eyes turned to fix upon Talon.

  “Can you track her, Talon?” Nico asked.

  “No,” Talon answered, “but I can sense him. He headed that way.” He pointed east.

  Stefan loped back to the car and returned with sword in hand, and a gun holstered at his side.

  “A gun? How human,” Nico said. The Monère warrior in him wanted to sneer, but the sensible rogue that he’d been forced to become was envious of the efficient little weapon. All he had were his daggers.

  “And practical. Let’s go,” Stefan said sharply. But Talon stayed crouched on the ground, unmoving but for the wild tremors that shook him. He looked a delicate thing, frozen by fear. Panic flared his eyes round, and only then did Stefan realize what was odd about those almond eyes. There were no whites. Just the blackness of his pupils, and the same continuity of color extending to his irises and beyond. A sea of ebony darkness.

  Nico knelt beside Talon, gently clasped a slim shoulder. “Talon, I know you are scared of the demon, but if we do not help Lucinda, he will kill her. And then he will kill us, the only other witnesses, the only ones who know you exist, and take you back as a captive, putting you back under Mona SiGuri’s care once more.” Although care was perhaps too kind a word. “Our only chance . . . your only chance is if you lead us to them now, before it is too late. Lucinda is our only hope.”

  “And if we are too late?” Talon asked. “If he has killed her already?”

  “Then we are all doomed.”

  Talon looked up. Met Nico’s eyes. “That’s what I always liked about you, Nico. You tell the truth, no matter how unpleasant it is.” Oddly adult words, coming from so young a voice and face.

  The shaking eased, disappeared, and the slight creature stood, his eerie eyes going distant as he sensed with that part of him what the others could not sense. “This way,” Talon said, and loped off into the woods, Nico right behind him.

  “Stay in the car. Lock the doors,” Stefan told Jonnie, this young man he had raised like his own son. “If we don’t return in an hour, drive away. Don’t go to the airport, they may be waiting for us there. Just leave this place and keep driving. Promise me.”

  Eyes somber, Jonnie gave his word.

  Stefan took off after the other two, trailing after Nico’s heartbeat.

  FIFTEEN

  DEREK WAS ONE of the older guardians. One that had served as such for over two centuries before he had retired, coincidentally enough, a little over two decades ago. A formidable guardian I had respected, if not entirely liked. But now I realized he had simply been serving himself more than others.

  “I’m sorry,” Derek said. Real regret shone in his eyes. “I always liked you.”

  “Funny,” I drawled. “I was just thinking the opposite. I never liked you.”

  He smiled, looking the way a hero should look, tall, with noble brow and wise deep-set eyes the color and clarity of the Caribbean Sea when the sun shone brilliantly down into its depths. A handsome facade covering a treacherous spirit.

  Derek’s eyes drifted over me. “I used to look up to you, almost worship you when I first became a guardian. All of us did. The beautiful huntress, the golden princess. You were a legend among us, lasting so long.”

  “But no longer,” I said. “You just saw to that.”

  He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “You should not have taken what was mine.”

  “You know as well as I that a Floradëur belongs to no one it does not willingly choose.”

  “An old law that is as archaic and outdated as the High Lord.”

  “You have broken some of our most sacred edicts by bringing Talon here among the Monère. Broken a few more by keeping him against his will and taking his blood as you have so done.”

  “But that is the whole point . . . as I have so done. And will continue to do for a long, long time to come. Long after you will have gone. You cannot begin to imagine what I will do with the power he gives me.” He smiled handsomely, evilly. The smile widened as he tilted his head slightly, as if he heard something. “Unbelievable. They come to me like a bird to hand, saving me the trouble of going after them.”

  My muffled senses picked up then what Derek had already discerned. Two slow heartbeats.

  “Your men that you claimed as your own.” Derek shook his head. “The utter gall of royalty, taking things for themselves then telling other demons all the things they cannot have.”

  “The difference that you cannot seem to grasp, Derek, is that I gave them a choice. They are willing. Talon is not.”

  “Willing or not, I will take and hold what you claimed but cannot keep. Talon. Not your men. Their existence I will have to extinguish, unfortunately. But do not worry.” He smiled with chilling coolne
ss. “You will join them in the great Darkness soon enough.”

  I struck then, gathering the remnants of my quickly waning strength, using up the last reserves of that buoyant energy boosted by Talon’s blood, unleashing my beast, brutally pulling upon that final reservoir of power. In a blink of time, with a ruthless willing, I gathered that strength, gathered it all, and let it fly from me like an invisible hand of power. One narrow shaft of brilliant force that vibrated the air, sang through it, and struck Derek across the neck with a blow as sure and true as if I had physically leaped the distance and hit him. His spine snapped with an audible crack, and both of us dropped to the ground. Me like a puppet with its strings suddenly severed, and that was how I felt—completely without power, without strength. He, with both hands clutching his head, trying to hold it steady atop his broken neck.

  “Bitch,” he gasped and then laughed maniacally. “You always were a crazy, unpredictable demon bitch. Thought you’d try for the bridge. Not for me.”

  “Run,” I said, looking up at him as I lay there on the ground, utterly helpless, unable to move, the sound of my men running swiftly toward us, the beating of their hearts loud in my ear. “Run before my men arrive and finish what I started.”

  He staggered to his feet, clutching his lolling head. “I will be the one to finish things, demon bitch. I will have all the time in Hell to come back and finish things. You only just delayed their deaths. I’ll be back, rest assured of that. May you rot in Darkness and never find peace.” With that last hurling curse, he ran awkwardly away, his head wobbling grotesquely back and forth over its loosened base as he fled into the woods.

  Moments later my men spilled into the small clearing, led surprisingly by Talon. The slender creature moved with the quiet grace and quickness of a natural child of that other realm. A realm that I would not see again. Funny, now that I knew I’d never go back, that was when I actually missed it. Such contrarian creatures we were.

  Those wholly black eyes gazed for a second where Derek had fled, then turned and fixed unerringly to where I lay on the ground, a splash of maroon and gold against the leaf-strewn forest ground. I knew that he had found me not by sight but by feel—that awareness of Other, of like and yet not alike, that creatures from Hell sensed in one another. Different than what we felt from a Monère. But faint . . . how faint it must be to him now. Faint because I knew I was starting to wane, beginning to grow insubstantial. Beginning to ghost. But at the sight of Talon, at the visual reminder of this poor misplaced creature from Hell, I rallied. Tried to fight what was slowly taking me over, breaking me apart, dissolving me.

  Him, perhaps, we could still see home. And the men behind them . . . my men. My duty to them rested heavily upon me, making me strive to try and speak, to open my mouth and push out words, even though the oil’s smothering blanket covered me completely now, so that everything seemed muted, dimmed. My demon senses, my demon strength, were completely cut off, leaving just primitive basic ability behind. So that even though I still saw, still heard, could still sense through touch, compared to the way my senses had soared before, it was as if I were blind and deaf and amputated, with only stumps left behind. A feeling of claustrophobia made me gasp in air. A silly thing to do when I didn’t need to breathe. I was dead. And now I was dying once more. Had, in fact, willingly chosen that course.

  I’d used the final remnants of my strength to strike a disabling blow to Derek instead of making a desperate attempt for the fading bridge with the last of my power. For what reason? It was hard to remember now.

  Memory was jostled when Stefan and Nico spilt to the ground beside me, their faces grim with anguish and fear.

  A shiver rippled my skin. One and then another, a continuous nonstop flow of coldness as it settled its icy fingers into me.

  “Lucinda! You’re shaking,” Stefan said, lifting me onto his lap, cradling me. “Foolish woman,” he said, tears shining his eyes. “You should have tried to save yourself. Not us.”

  It was surprisingly hard for me to speak. “You heard.”

  “Yes.”

  “Lucinda, are you hurt?” Nico ran his hands carefully over me, finding no blood, just the wetness on my back.

  Ah, yes. My men. My dark and beautiful Stefan, so lovely that even now, racked by shudders, it moved something in me just to gaze upon him. And rugged, fair Nico whose careless facade hid a shrewd intelligence, a kind heart, and a stubbornness that put a donkey to shame. I still had a duty to them.

  I opened my mouth. Spoke. Although the words that came out were really more of a whisper. “Go to . . . High Council.”

  And faint though my voice was, I knew they heard me because Stefan’s porcelain white face blanched even paler. High Council. Words that struck fear into a rogue’s heart. I almost smiled but didn’t have the strength for it. The few threads of fading power I clung to were fast slipping from my grasp. I pushed more words out of me before the strands unraveled completely. Important words. Essential words.

  “Tell . . . Queen Mother . . . you are mine. My brother will protect you . . . and see to Talon.”

  “Your brother?” Nico said.

  The almost convulsive shaking was easing, lessening. And in its place seeped coldness so pervasive, so deep, it almost seemed to freeze my thoughts, my words.

  “Lucinda, what’s wrong?” Stefan demanded, hugging me tightly to him, running his hands up and down my arms as if to warm me. It was a measure of how low my temperature had dropped that his cool skin felt warm against me now.

  “She’s ghosting,” Talon said, his face closed, inscrutable, completely still. His shivering disappeared as mine grew more violent.

  What was it that I needed to say? . . . Words . . . Oh yes. Just a few more. I pushed them out. “Brother . . . Halcyon.”

  “Your brother is Prince Halcyon?” It was Nico’s turn to whiten, for his voice to grow faint. “The High Prince of Hell?”

  One last shaking shudder, and the shivering stopped completely. Somehow I was able to smile. “Yes.”

  The shocked look on their faces squeezed more words out of me. “Don’t worry . . . nice. Tell him . . . Derek . . . demon who brought Talon here.” Then the last of my energy slipped from my grasp, and I felt myself drifting away and did not fight it.

  “Lucinda.” The look in Stefan’s eyes wrenched something deep inside me, kept me holding on a moment longer.

  “Don’t leave me,” he whispered, his voice raw and terrible.

  I made an enormous effort. Lifted my hand and touched his dear face one last time. His skin . . . I was barely able to feel it. And my hand was faint, transparent. I could see through it.

  One more word. “Sorry.” And with that touch, that one last feel of him, I closed my eyes and dropped my hand. Released my will and let it slip free.

  SIXTEEN

  TALON HAD BEEN afraid all his life. He’d lived it, existed with it. Even in his dreams, he could not escape it for it followed him, surrounded him even there. Others had taunted his stunted growth by saying that fear had beaten him down. And they were right. He was a coward. Since a child, all that motivated Talon was avoidance of his Queen’s anger. And that of the demon that visited him every season or two to drink his blood. Who beat Talon until he drank the demon’s noxious blood, in turn. Who tried each and every time to force Talon to bond with him. The demon that Talon was both drawn to and repelled by.

  At one time, Talon had thought the demon his father. Even with their skin color so unalike, the demon was the only one similar to him with no betraying sound beating within him, moving his body. Only with the demon had Talon felt that almost thrilling, tingling awareness, a presence unlike any other. Like a burn that did not hurt. But now Talon knew it not to be true, not to be unique. He had felt that same tingling rush and awareness with this female demon. The same attractive-repulsive push-pull toward and away from her. And it was even stronger than it had been with the other demon, Derek. The demon’s true name that he had heard Lucinda whisper.


  She had been different from Derek. And she had fascinated Talon from the very first glimpse, the very first feel of her. Small. Almost as small as he. With a body that burst forth with an abundance of ripe peaks and tantalizing valleys. Skin golden rather than the dark brown of the other demon’s skin, with hair so vibrant—a striking, metallic gold color bouncing, moving, a constant teasing sway that framed that beautiful, cruel face. She was the warm color of the sun but instead of heat that burned you, she exuded a cool cynical sexuality, a dark knowingness in her eyes, in the mocking curve of those full lush lips.

  But it was her oddly attractive power, the feel of it brushing up against him, raising every single hair on his body, that scared Talon the most. Because it called so strongly to him.

  Then she had captured him and taken his blood. His fear had flooded back, almost drowning him in its intensity. Yet she had been gentle in the taking. Had drank only a small amount. She had not gorged herself as Derek always did, drinking so much blood from him that it had left him weak and drained for weeks afterward. He’d always thought that was the way it worked: that the drinker would gain strength while the donor lost it. Another fallacy laid bare.

  In the car, when her power had stretched out invisibly toward him, an unseen part within him had wanted to rise up and go to her in turn, to meet that power, twine about it, become one with it.

  Talon had thought he was going mad, drawn so much to her when she was so obvious a danger. But now she was dying, and all hopes of going home lay dying with her.

  Her last thoughts, her last words, had been for her men . . . and for him. Sending them all into the care of her brother, this Prince Halcyon. A demon whose name struck terror in the two rogues’ hearts. A demon he did not know, much less trust. But her . . . Lucinda. Talon said her name for the very first time in his mind. Lucinda. It rang like a bell within him. I want her, something inside him cried. Her, not anyone else.

  And as he watched her fade, watched her grow lighter and lighter in texture, color, and substance, going away from him, dying . . . everything inside him rebelled. Fear died away, the shivering disappeared, and a stillness and rock-solid resolve came together within him. No, he screamed in his mind’s vastness. Then said it aloud. “No.”