Only my shadow stalker is a danger to my eternal soul. Other vampires might kill me, yes, but none of them should want to keep me as if I’m some kind of pet.
“Dammit, Nikolaos,” Knox grumbles as he climbs out the car. “Would you listen to reason for a minute? What you want to do is insane.”
Straightening to his full height, Nikolaos pulls on my hand, bringing me closer.
“Is it, Knox?” Nikolaos asks with a smirk. “Is it, really?”
Not giving Knox a chance to answer, Nikolaos tugs me forward, walking me to the building directly in front of us.
Four stories high and made of dark stone, the building would be completely nondescript and unremarkable if there wasn’t a long line of humans standing behind red velvet ropes, waiting to enter.
There’s no sign, glowing or otherwise. No lights, and no indication at all that the building is special.
But I instantly know what it is.
Looking at the long line of humans dressed their best in the hope that their effort will gain them entrance, I know it’s a vampire den.
Though I’ve never been inside one before, I’ve been told they’re places of hedonism and debauchery. Places where vampires don’t have to hunt or work to score their next meal.
Their meal comes to them.
“Yes,” Knox nearly shouts as he catches up to us, “it is. It’s stupid fucking madness. Every vampire for miles around will try to challenge you for her when word gets out.”
Nikolaos gives Knox a bored look. “And?”
“And?” Knox sputters. “And?!”
Nikolaos rolls his eyes as he leads me past the long line stretching down the block, ignoring the calls and attempts to get his attention.
Getting ahold of himself, Knox reaches out and grabs Nikolaos’s arm, forcing him to a stop just in front of the big, beefy vampire standing guard at the entrance. “What if she’s not yours? What will you do when her fated shows up?”
Nikolaos looks down at Knox’s restraining hand then back up to his face. “What do you think I’ll do?” he asks as he jerks his arm free of Knox’s grip. “I’ll kill him.”
“You’re mad,” Knox says in disbelief. “Fucking mad.”
Nikolaos grins without any shame. Grins as if he’s taking pleasure in Knox’s reaction. “Yes, I think we’ve already established that.”
Determined to enter the den, Nikolaos tugs me forward again. Leaving Knox standing in stunned silence.
The big, beefy vampire bouncer jumps to attention and opens the door without a word, keeping his gaze cast downward in submission.
Nikolaos takes one step over the threshold with me a mere step behind him before he comes to a sudden stop.
Glancing over his shoulder at Knox, he says, “Oh, I almost forgot. I left my other toy in the car. Fetch her for me before you come in.”
Then he grips my hand tighter and leads me into pure darkness.
Nine
Asher
The landing of the plane pushes fresh waves of euphoria through my body. Is it something in the earth that connects us? Now that we’re so close to finally being together?
My blood’s boiling, rolling through my flesh and flowing through my little undead heart. I’ve never felt this type of miserable bliss, the longing that reaches through every vein and artery, in all the nights I’ve searched for her.
My cock.
Oh gods, my cock.
It throbs as if scenting her out across the city. Her very essence calling me to claim her.
Those memories of her body, the way it would move and sway as I thrusted into her virginal cunt, fill my head.
Just because it was a fevered dream for her doesn’t mean I didn’t feel every clenching muscle of her core. It was perfect completion.
A deep shiver flows through me at the memory.
“Asher?” Matthias questions.
“She’s close,” I say.
She’s here, somewhere in this Order-infested city.
New Elysium.
A city that was on the verge of becoming a safe haven for vampires and their allies one hundred years ago. A city where we could finally let ourselves be true to who we are. A place to live freely.
Then it was granted to Nikolaos.
If you ask anyone who was around back then, it wasn’t given to him fairly. There was an underhandedness to how he got the city. It could have gone to any one of us who had experience, and who had earned what they had. Instead, the governing council of this nation’s vampires handed it over to the fuckwit.
What a fucking stupid way to ruin such a perfect city.
Within fifty years of Nikolaos taking over, the Order successfully installed a small conclave. Fast forward another fifty years and they’re the largest delegation on the east coast of the North Americas.
Nikolaos’s coven can barely keep their act together. There are too many other interlopers who have made headway in the city, and it’s becoming a rotting cesspool of shit. I wasn’t up for a promotion when the dumbass was granted the city, but there were at least a couple of other choices.