“Emily!” Karina tried to crawl after her but her body refused to obey.
Arthur touched the hem of her black top and edged it upward. His fingers touched her stomach. Pain pierced her and she cried out.
“Ah. Now see, this isn’t good.” Arthur shook his head mournfully. “All of this must seem terribly confusing to you and our time is short, so I will keep the explanations simple. This is the house where monsters live. We are the killers of monsters. I suppose that also makes us monsters simply by necessity. I don’t know why you’re here. It’s probably a pure coincidence. An unlucky roll of the dice. You and your children were caught in the cross fire. One of the monsters poisoned you with her throat dart. The wound is fatal. You’re dying.”
Fear shot down Karina’s spine in an icy rush. She didn’t think she could have gotten more scared, but his tone, that patient, pleasant, even tone, as if he were discussing lunch, terrified her. It’s not a dream, she realized. It’s happening. It’s happening to me right now. God, please let Emily be okay. Please. I’ll do anything.
“I can smell your fear,” Arthur said. “It rolls off your skin. A better man would feel discomfort at your pain. But I’m not a good man. I feel nothing for you. We rarely have to deal with innocent bystanders and when we do, we strive to send them back unharmed, not out of some altruistic impulse, but because we dislike attention. If you hadn’t been injured, Henry here would wipe your memory and the five of you would go merrily on your way. As it is, however, you will be dead in the next thirty minutes.”
The words refused to leave her mouth. Karina strained and forced them out. “Why are you telling me this?”
His ice-cold smile made her heart jump. “I’m talking to you because I’m about to offer you a deal. You have something we want, my lady. Your body has a genetic predisposition toward producing certain hormones one of us desperately needs. Your subspecies isn’t unique, but it’s rare enough to make you valuable. I suspect that’s also how you were able to find this place, and that’s why the yadovita, the redheaded woman, took the time to poison you instead of defending herself from us. Listen carefully, my lady, because I won’t repeat myself.”
She stared at him, committing each word to memory.
“The creature behind you requires your blood. He will feed on you. His venom will counteract the poison that’s killing your body. In return, he will consume the chemicals your body will produce. You will give yourself to the House of Daryon. You will let the beast feed on you. You will live in quarters of our choosing. You can never leave. You can have no contact with the outside world. For your agreement to this, we will spare your life and the lives of the children.”
The thing on the windowsill let out a low whine of anticipation. That . . . that beast would feed on her. Forever. Oh, dear God. I can’t do it . . . I can’t . . .
Arthur leaned forward, his face showing no emotion beyond the pleasant, calm composure. “Consider carefully before you answer. I don’t offer this deal to you because I like you or because I’m moved by some noble emotion. I do it because we need you. What I propose won’t be pleasant for you. You won’t enjoy it. In fact, many would say you’re better off dying now.”
Fog gathered on the edge of her mind, threatening to smother her. Karina clawed at reality, trying to remain conscious.
“My daughter . . .”
The beast growled on the windowsill.
“He guarantees her safety,” Arthur said.
“The children . . . will be returned to their families?”
“Yes.”
“I agree.”
A gentle hand seized her mind and pulled her back through time and space to the reality of the round table and the hot tea mug in her hand. She looked at Arthur.
“My daughter, Emily?”
He didn’t answer.
“You promised me the children would be returned to their families. Her father is dead. I’m the only family Emily has. Where is she?”
He smiled, a flat curving of lips without any emotion. “She’s at the main house for the time being.”
No, she wasn’t, Karina realized. He was lying. “I want my daughter. We made a deal. Bring me my daughter, or I am leaving.”
Daniel rocked back on his chair and laughed. A door slammed. Footsteps echoed through the house. “Cooperate with Lucas and your daughter will be brought to you,” Arthur said.
A man walked into the kitchen. Tall, corded with muscle that bulged his T-shirt, he dwarfed the doorway. He wasn’t just large, he was massive and wrapped in menace, as if he were a whirlwind of violence, barely contained in the shell of his body. Black hair fell on his hard, aggressive face in long strands. He glanced at her, his eyes green and merciless. She met his gaze and gulped. It was like looking into the eyes of a tiger. His stare promised death.
Recognition sparked in his green irises and flared into rage.
He lunged forward, inhumanly quick, and hit the table with his palm. She jerked back.
“Get your hands off of her!” His voice rippled with a snarl.
Henry raised his hands in the air. The man grasped the chair, Henry still on it, and tossed it aside. Steely fingers grabbed her elbow and pulled her up. He swiped her off the floor with ridiculous ease, locking her in the crook of his arm, and snapped like a rabid dog, “Mine!”
“We have no intention of taking her from you.” Arthur sipped his tea.
“Don’t any of you fuckers touch her!”She flailed in his arms, trying to break free, but it was like trying to push back a semi.
“You must forgive Lucas,” Arthur told her. “He tends to be overprotective of his food.”
A familiar scent of heated metal invaded her nostrils. Panic squirmed through her. She fought harder, but her feet kicked only air. He carried her away out of the kitchen back to the bedroom where she had awakened.
Chapter 2
Lucas dropped her on the bed and went to lock the door. “Stay away from Arthur. He’s a sick fuck.”
He turned and strode toward her, enormous, overwhelming in his sheer size. Karina shrank back until her spine hit the wall.
He looked her over, a long, lingering stare that made her want to cover herself, frowned and ducked into a doorway on the left. Water gushed. Lucas reappeared with a tall glass of water and handed it to her. “Drink this. It will help.”
She drank.
He sat on a chair across from her and pulled off his socks. Only now she noticed that he wasn’t wearing any shoes. He balled the socks into a clump and tossed them into the room where he’d gotten the water, then shrugged off his T-shirt. Karina’s breath caught in her throat. Faded ragged scars crisscrossed his massive back. His legs were long, his waist narrow in comparison to his vast shoulders. His lines were almost perfect. As he squared his shoulders, muscles rolled under his skin, forming hard ridges. He didn’t move—he stalked and prowled, like a huge predatory animal, menace cascading from him in waves along with his hot metallic scent.
Her memory thrust Jonathan before her. Her husband had been handsome and well built, an average-sized man. Lucas could’ve snapped him in half and wouldn’t have given it a second thought. He’d just toss the broken body aside and continue on his way. She had no chance. In a physical fight, Lucas would destroy her.
“Drink,” he said.
Karina forced some more water down. Her throat had gone dry and she drank again. Suddenly Lucas gathered himself. His gaze fixed on the door. His body tensed, his expression alert. His feet gripped the bare floorboards, his legs bent lightly, as he readied to launch himself into a leap. Muscles bunched and knotted across his shoulders and back. His arms lifted slightly, spread wide, the fingers of his big hands like talons, ready to grasp and crush. His eyes ignited with a hot, hungry fire. Poised like this, he was barely human.
Someone’s knuckles rapped on the door.
“What?” Lucas growled.
“Do you want the sedative?” Henry’s voice asked.
Lucas glanced at her and asked quietly, “Do you want to be drugged?”
“No.”
“She said no,” he snarled.
The footsteps retreated. Lucas eased, relaxing slowly, muscle by muscle. He glanced at her with his light green eyes and she shrank from his gaze.
“How much did they tell you?” he asked.
“I know what I agreed to.” She hesitated. “Are you . . . ?”
“I am.”
She tried to reconcile the beast and the man, and couldn’t. That dark, grotesque creature was huge, twice as big as Lucas. A horrible meld of ape, dog, bear—Karina struggled for a comparison, a point of reference, and could find none. Her memory was fuzzy. She remembered fangs and baleful eyes, and massive shoulders sheathed in dark fur. How was it possible? Her mind refused to admit that thing existed. But her body felt Lucas near and knew the beast was real.
She had to have an explanation. Anything at all. “Are you a vampire?” she asked.
“No.”
“What are you?”
He sighed. “There’s no myth or legend or cute explanation. People here call those like me Demons. It’s just a name, nothing religious attached to it. You might also hear people call me Subspecies 30. The rest is complicated.” He took her half-empty glass and went to top it off. “I don’t actually need your blood to sustain me. I require the endocrine hormones your body will secrete in response to my bite.”
“For what?”
“To counteract the effects of my venom. It hurts me.”
He handed her the full glass, rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, and held the palm to her face. The odor of hot metal hit her nostrils and she drew back.
“That smell means I’m hungry for you.”
He was too close. The cup trembled in Karina’s fingers. God, she was scared. It took all of her will not to scream and run. “Will it hurt?”
“Yes. It’s not like vampire movies, where the vampire bites the woman and she moans softly and comes all over herself. There’s no rapture involved. No climax. Just me chewing on you.”