In the end, he’d used one of his human drudges to manipulate the crystal—a mortal man who fell in with his band in return for drugs. That, and the opportunity to keep his worthless life.
It pained both him and the revenants to touch Isabel. That simple fact dismayed him. The purpose of his existence had quickly altered within hours, within minutes of casting his gaze upon her. His sole reason for living would be to possess Isabel Lanscourt. Not in the way he did now. He would not rest until he found a way to touch her, to claim her.
Anything. He would do anything to make that happen.
As a ghost, Shirian could channel Isabel’s energy into him. It was not enough, but even this watered-down version of vitessence was an ecstasy he’d never imagined. He longed to feel Isabel’s vitessence flow into him skin to skin, to bury himself in heaven…
He distractedly placed his hands on the satiny skin of Shirian’s shoulders and slid his body down beneath hers until they lay belly to belly, his eyes never leaving the brilliant image of Isabel.
“If you don’t look at me this instant, you soulless bastard, I believe I’ll have to scratch the itch on my foot…”
His gaze zoomed to Shirian’s face. She regarded him with triumph.
If he hadn’t already cast eyes on Isabel, he’d think he gazed upon the loveliest creature in existence. Shirian was also one of the most deadly. She had once confessed to him during a late-night chat that she had conspired during her life to have more than three hundred people murdered. Sixteen of that number she’d killed with her own ruby-studded dagger.
One of the sixteen had been her newborn son.
And that didn’t begin to take into account the number of people she’d murdered by way of madness since she’d been freed from a curse that bound her spirit within her sarcophagus. The director of the museum had ordered that countless relics be relocated to the unused British Museum station tube-tunnels for safety during the Nazi blitz of London during World War II. A clumsy employee had liberated Shirian’s spirit from an Egyptian priest’s curse by tripping as he carried her sarcophagus down some stairs, dropping Shirian’s coffin and jolting the ancient, magical seal that protected the living from her virulent spirit.
Shirian had taken her share of human lives since that time.
She sulked too much, granted, but there was no doubt in Morshiel’s mind that she was Shirian the Magnificent.
Her skin glowed as luminously as her dark eyes. Her breasts heaved as she tried to catch her breath. Morshiel plucked at an erect nipple, spying a blue vein beneath golden-brown skin.
“I see your vitessence glow around you like subtle moonlight,” he crooned to her. “I smell your blood.”
Her pulse leapt at her throat, making his mouth water.
“It is true? I live?” she asked.
“We both live. I have a soul and you have a body—as long as we have the woman and crystal to sustain us.”
He had shivered at the hollow, ghostly sound of Shirian’s laughter in the past. Now it sounded low and sultry as it vibrated through blood-warmed flesh. He joined her in her mirth as he bared his fangs and pushed a tender breast toward his mouth.
“Yes, taste life on your tongue, my beautiful prince,” Shirian murmured huskily as she arched her back. She palmed her breast from below, freely offering the miracle of her reborn flesh and blood. He leaned forward, greedy to taste the paradox of ghost’s blood, hungry for her vitessence.
Her triumphant moment was interrupted by a fierce cold wind, the tramping paws and pants of wolves, and the furious howl of an attacking beast.
Blaise gave the signal for attack. Aubrey Cane leapt in human form and transformed to a wolf in midair. Most of his faithful followers, the Literati, also shifted into wolves, but he himself remained as a man, his heartluster gripped tightly in his hand. He rarely fought as his wolf-self when his clone was near, and Morshiel was definitely in the vicinity. He sensed his clone’s location behind six Scourge revenants—three canids, two bloodboars and a prowler that guarded the unused portion of tunnel near the British Museum platform. The Scourge were only capable of shapeshifting into these three types of foul, deadly c
reatures, while their master—Morshiel—could transform into many forms of demon animals.
Blaise sensed something else besides his clone, an energy that stunned him and left him wary…disbelieving. The low, melodious hum of the earth singing thrilled his flesh.
Nothing could create that much power. What in hell’s farthest reaches had Morshiel done?
He grasped the handle of his heartluster—the magical short-sword was the only thing that could weaken and subdue his clone—and charged through the melee of snarling wolf-Literati and Scourge revenants. From the periphery of his vision, he noticed that David Kwan had also chosen to fight in his human form. A bloodboar opened its slimy maw from behind David, about to sink its razor-sharp teeth into his shoulder as David fought a canid with a scimitar. Blaise slashed with his heartluster in a sideways motion, never pausing to see the effect of his action because he knew he’d just decapitated the bloodboar as sure as he knew the foul scent of revenant blood and decaying flesh in his nose.
“Thanks,” David called before he slashed with his scimitar and the canid howled in fury and pain.
“Don’t thank me. Fight,” Blaise shouted, not looking back. He broke through the crumbling revenant defenses and strode onto the tube platform. What he saw there confused him. A crystal protruded between the rails of the unused train track, the pointed end of it thrusting up next to the concrete platform. It was enormous, the exposed portion sixteen feet long and three feet wide at the bottom.
What truly shocked him was the vision of the woman touching the crystal. She glowed like a captured star. He had a fleeting image of another woman, this one naked. She gave him a quick glance—both haughty and curious at once—before she disappeared. Had she been a ghost? For a split second she’d looked so real.
Morshiel sprang up from the platform, his fangs protruding between a snarl. He grasped for his pants, which had been shoved halfway down his thighs, and extracted his heartluster in one fluid motion.
Blaise roared and flew at his clone. They crashed together like two opposing tidal waves, rebounding backward before they sprang again, teeth bared in bloodlust. They thrust and parried so rapidly that the sound their heartlusters made blended into a seamless metallic hiss, a sinister background noise for the vicious cacophony of growls and shrieks that bounced off the tunnel walls. Morshiel fought with uncommon strength and fervor tonight, shocking Blaise.