Silken Rapture: Princes of the Underground, Book 2 Page 2

  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.

  What had made his clone so strong?

  Morshiel forced him back against the edge of the platform, a manic, wild expression on his face. The concrete beneath Blaise’s boots crumbled and he lost his balance. Morshiel pushed his heartluster with so much strength that Blaise tottered at the edge of the platform. Blaise halted the blade a mere inch away from his chest, but it took all his strength to hold the block. He was falling…falling. His heart pounded against his breastbone frantically, as if it suspected it was on its last beats.

  He’d dreamed of a moment just like this countless times over the centuries. What would it be like to die beneath Morshiel’s blade? It was the only thing that could end Blaise’s life, after all. The mandate to control Morshiel had been set into his very blood—a biological order he could not ignore—but his clone was the only one who could grant Blaise relief from this endless, pointless, soulless existence.

  He met his clone’s eyes in that stretched second and saw not his murderer, but the beneficent angel of death. He longed to embrace him, to be comforted in turn. His gaze flickered ever so briefly to the vision of the luminous woman. Although she stood completely still, her body vibrated with energy.

  “She’s mine, you freak of nature,” Morshiel grated out between clenched jaws.

  A white-hot fury erupted in Blaise’s brain. He roared like a cornered lion, the sound drowning out the noise of battle that surrounded them. He let his body move with the momentum of his fall, pushing mightily off the platform away from Morshiel. His feet flew over his head in a somersault, only to strike the far side of the tunnel. He vaulted back toward the platform like a missile, causing Morshiel to retreat, a surprised expression on his face. He struck a hammering downward blow on Morshiel’s raised sword hand and plunged his heartluster toward Morshiel’s chest. He grunted at the sensation of the metal tip sinking into flesh.

  As a Sevliss prince—one of the surviving six—it had been predetermined by forces greater than Blaise that he could not kill his clone, but he could weaken him.

  Morshiel let out an unearthly shriek. Suddenly he was changing, altering form and rising off the tube platform. Blaise stood and watched as the giant demonbird beat its membranous wings and headed away from the platform down the dark tunnel. Morshiel let out another blood-curdling shriek in his shifter form, calling his followers to him.

  Blaise leapt onto the platform in time to behead a canid and a prowler in two vicious passes of his heartluster. Dark red, viscous blood flew into the air, but Blaise sidestepped both sprays with the ease of long experience. Revenant blood burned exposed skin like acid.

  He stared at the man and woman who took the loathsome creatures places, recognizing Morshiel’s soldiers—Anthony Shrivencraft and Amory Doyle.

  They would not be rejoining their master now.

  He anxiously counted the remaining Literati—both wolves and men. Aubrey Cane transformed back into his human form, his clothes intact. Blaise wished he could master that trick, but Aubrey was a gifted magician—had been since the moment Blaise first met him three and a half centuries ago. Transforming into human form fully clothed was the least of Aubrey’s manifold skills.

  Aubrey knelt next to a large pale gray wolf that lay inert on the platform. He touched the blood-matted fur and muttered some words in Latin. The wolf jerked and whined.

  “Mallory will be all right. He got the worst of us all,” Aubrey said as he walked from one wolf to another, assessing and bringing each creature relief like a doctor on a battlefield. He stood and approached Blaise after a moment. Aubrey was one of the few males Blaise knew who matched his height, putting them eye to eye.

  “We did well, thanks to you. Shrivencraft, Doyle, Allenshare, Mason and Solerin,” he said, referring to the revenants—walking, blood-drinking, sentient corpses—they’d killed.

  “Morshiel turned Shrivencraft five hundred and thirty-two years ago,” Blaise said flatly, his gaze now glued to the awesome sight of the woman touching the crystal.

  “He suffers no more,” Aubrey said, following Blaise’s stare. “Who…what is she?”

  “I don’t know. But whatever she is, Morshiel wants her. So that means I’m taking her.”

  Aubrey nodded. Blaise had stated the obvious. They would never consider leaving such a powerful creature in Morshiel’s hands.

  “The amount of vitessence coming off her and that crystal,” Aubrey mumbled. His gray eyes narrowed and glazed as he stared. “It’s not possible.”

  They both approached the light-infused woman. For the first time, Blaise noticed she wore one long black glove on the arm that hung at her side. He bent to pick up its mate which had been discarded on the concrete platform. He gripped the cheap, synthetic fabric convulsively. His nostrils flared.

  Her scent filled him.

  She was so illuminated he had a strange feeling that if he removed the purple evening dress she wore, he’d be able to see inside her, see her very heart beating out a rapid, desperate tattoo. His own heart felt as if someone had just reached into his chest and squeezed it without mercy.

  “The connection is hurting her.” He reached to detach her from the crystal, but Aubrey stopped him with a hand on his forearm.

  “No. I don’t believe the soulless can touch her without harm.”

  Blaise understood. If they were the soulless, this woman was the very essence of a rarified soul. Differences repelled. His heart throbbed in pain. He threw his friend’s hand off his forearm. His eyes sprang wide when he grasped her wrist. He had the disoriented thought that the crystal was an electrical conduit, for an enormous shock went through him. The woman’s back arched and she screamed.

  For the eternal second before he broke the conduit, a rapture filled him unlike anything he’d ever known. It was as if her very soul slammed into his consciousness in one powerful pulse of energy.

  He blinked. The woman fell limply into his arms, unconscious. He checked her pulse, exhaling in relief when he felt her rapid but strong heartbeat.

  She will never be able to leave Sanctuary, he thought numbly as he lifted her limp form. Her days of freedom had come to an end the second Morshiel had learned of her existence. From now until the end of her days, this woman would either be hunted or captured. Better that he—Blaise—was the one to hold her captive.

  He moved his hand subtly on her hip. The dress she wore wasn’t expensive. As the owner of the largest silk factory in Europe, Blaise knew fabrics. He knew the sensation of vitessence better. The dress might be cheap, but that couldn’t begin to disguise the purity and strength of the woman’s soul-energy.

  Michael Lord, one of the Literati, approached, buttoning up the jeans he’d dropped on the platform before he’d transformed. He paused a few feet away, staring at the woman in his arms in opened-mouthed awe.

  “No, don’t—” Blaise uttered harshly, but too late. Michael strode forward and placed his hand on the woman’s upper arm.

  He flinched back in pain.

  Aubrey grabbed Michael’s hand and examined the reddening palm, looking alarmed and interested at once. Fear could never completely diminish Aubrey’s vast scientific curiosity. Blaise craned to see what Aubrey examined.

  A small blister broke the surface of Michael’s palm. Michael appeared to be in no great pain or distress, merely confused about what had just happened.

  “He’ll be all right,” Aubrey declared, releasing Michael’s hand. “It’s a small burn, almost as if the woman was radioactive to him. The burn is already healing, given Michael’s nature,” Aubrey said, referring to Michael’s sta
tus as one of the Literati. Near immortality and the ability to heal rapidly were only two of the Literati’s inhuman powers. The humans Morshiel embraced might transform into bloodthirsty, foul Scourge revenants. On the rare occasions throughout the centuries when Blaise had embraced a human, however, the man retained the nobility of his human spirit and gained the savage grace of the wolf.

  “Why did you do that?” Blaise growled at Michael. “She might have destroyed you.”

  Michael flushed and looked downward, showing him only the crown of his chestnut brown hair.

  “Don’t blame him too harshly,” Aubrey said. “He did what any of us would do. She beckons like a magnet to Literati blood. She’s like a fountain of vitessence that would never run dry.”

  Blaise’s nostrils flared in anger when he noticed Aubrey’s hungry stare on the female. Maybe Michael’s impulsiveness wasn’t for naught. Better the Literati knew the truth. Nature had given the woman some form of protection from immortal hunger.

  “Do you think she can harm the Literati from a distance?” he asked Aubrey.

  Aubrey shook his head. “No, you shouldn’t take my analogy of radioactivity too far. Only touching her will cause cellular damage at the site of contact,” his gaze flickered curiously over Blaise’s hands cupping the woman’s hip and waist, “at least for most of us.”

  A strange sense of satisfaction tore through Blaise, twining with his bewilderment over the fact that he could touch the woman. He was as soulless as the Literati, whom he had turned immortal to save from the ravages of the bubonic plague. He was as soulless as the revenants Morshiel daily created through murder by excessive blood drinking. He was as damned as Morshiel himself.

  But he could touch her.

  “Spread the word among the Literati that it is forbidden to touch her.”

  Aubrey nodded.

  “Find out who she is,” Blaise told Michael. “The more information we have, the better. Morshiel won’t rest until he has her once again.” Michael nodded, seeming relieved that Blaise was willing to move past his earlier impulsiveness. Blaise glanced at Aubrey. “Send out a scouting party to see if they can catch Morshiel’s scent. Bring the crystal to Sanctuary. Protect it, Aubrey,” he added under his breath. “It provides more vitessence than blood. It won’t take Morshiel long to recover from his wound and decide to reclaim it.”

  “And the woman?” Aubrey asked.

  “She has my protection.”

  Aubrey nodded. Michael gave the woman one last glance of incredulous longing before he stared once again at his reddened palm.

  “Fool,” Blaise muttered under his breath.

  He walked down the platform toward the dark tunnel in the distance, refusing to look into his captive’s face. If he did, he’d turn into as much a fool as Michael.

  If he did, he might never look away.

  Chapter Two

  Margaret Turrow, his human housekeeper, turned when he entered the bedroom.

  “Keep your voice down,” she warned with a glare.

  Blaise curled the side of his upper lip in a menacing gesture. It didn’t mean anything. It was just a habit. He still snarled at Margaret, even after she’d been in his service twenty-eight years. True, a quarter of a century was nothing to him, but sometimes it seemed he’d known Margaret as long as he’d known Aubrey. The woman deserved his respect, if only for the fact that she’d put up with him for all that time. The Literati had good reason to be wary of Blaise’s dark moods, but Margaret knew for a fact she could do nearly whatever she pleased in Sanctuary and Blaise would only bark at her for her impertinence before he let her do whatever she wanted.

  Most of the time, anyway.

  He walked around the four-poster bed where Margaret sat. He hadn’t seen the woman when he entered because the posts were draped in a white diaphanous fabric, blocking his vision. She lay on the amber silk sheets completely nude with the exception of the two elbow-length black gloves.

  He came to a halt as if he’d just realized he was about to walk off a cliff.

  “She still hasn’t awakened,” Margaret said as she raised a sponge from a basin of water and squeezed. The sound of the trickling liquid barely penetrated his consciousness. He followed the glistening trail of dampness as it swept along the curve of a hip to a narrow waist, and then along the woman’s ribs. The sponge whisked against the smooth skin of a small, perfectly shaped breast before Margaret withdrew it and dipped it again in her bowl of water. The contrast between pale skin and the dark hair between her thighs was electrifying. The pink, relaxed nipples also stood out markedly atop creamy flesh.

  No wonder Morshiel wanted her so much. It was like staring at life distilled. For a full five seconds Blaise sensed her blood zooming through her veins, thousands upon thousands of rich rivers nourishing sweet flesh. Her heartbeat throbbed in the center of his brain, calling him, pulling him.

  For a stretched moment, he couldn’t breathe.

  With extreme effort, he jerked his gaze off her. He blinked in disbelief when he realized his incisors were extended. Sweat had gathered on his upper lip.

  And he was harder than stone. Thankfully, Margaret was still turned away.

  “Why the gloves?” he asked.

  Margaret threw an admonishing glance over her shoulder, still washing the girl’s belly. Apparently he’d spoken too loudly for a sickbed.

  “She becomes restless when I remove them,” Margaret said. “Worse than restless—agitated—although she still doesn’t awaken. Do you have any idea why that might be?”

  Blaise kept his gaze on Margaret. He didn’t look at the woman again for the entire meeting.

  “No idea,” he said.

  Margaret’s blue eyes sharpened on him. “She is powerful, though. Isn’t she?”

  He quirked up one brow. “When did you start to sense vitessence?” he asked wryly, referring to the life force that surrounded all living beings. The woman who lay naked on the bed had the most powerful vitessence he’d ever seen in his five hundred and fifty plus years on the planet. Her energy was even more powerful than Elysse’s had been.

  He could see vitessence with his physical eyes, although a human like Margaret could not. This woman’s was a brilliant gold shot through with millions of minute specks of zipping, flickering white light. He saw it now, from the corner of his vision. It beckoned him, taunted him. Like Morshiel, he was a vitessence-parasite. He sustained his physical body by drinking blood or sex juices—bodily fluids infused with the energy of the spirit. As one of the soulless, Blaise possessed no vitessence, but his craving for it was every bit as powerful as his degenerate clone’s.

  “I don’t have to see her aura to sense she’s special,” Margaret said dismissively. “Is that why you brought her to Sanctuary?”

  “I brought her here because Morshiel wants her. Perhaps you’ve noticed it’s in my nature to deny Morshiel anything he wants.”

  Margaret sniffed. “Aubrey says she’ll come to if we just give it time. For now, it’s best for her to rest. What do you plan to do with her?”

  “Do with her?” Blaise asked roughly. “I don’t plan to do anything with her.”

  “She’ll be relieved to hear that, I’ll wager,” Margaret said under her breath.

  “One does not do anything to a prisoner, save keep them imprisoned.”

  Margaret glanced around sharply. “Prisoner?”

  “I said it, didn’t I?” he barked.

  Margaret looked for a moment as if she might argue. This time, his snarl wasn’t meant for show. Margaret’s response was to frown a threat right back at him.

  “I’ll not keep her behind bars. She’ll have some freedom. I’ll eventually have to take her to Delraven, I suppose,” he growled, referring to his country estate in Scotland. A woman such as she will wreak havoc among the Literati. For now, just see to it that she stays far away from me.”

  “That shouldn’t be too difficult,” Margaret said as she drew the silk sheet over the woman’s body. “No
woman in her right mind would seek you out voluntarily with that savage manner of yours…unless she had an invitation to your bed.”

  A smile tickled at his mouth, but he did not succumb to the fancy. “You work at Sanctuary of your own free will and you have never shared my bed. What does that say about you?”

  “Most would say I’m a great fool, but I say I’m the greatest of saints,” Margaret muttered under her breath.

  Her words made him recall that he must contact his brother, Saint Sevliss. He’d video-conferenced with Saint just this morning, and it was because of that communication that Blaise had known something was amiss at the unused British Museum tunnel. How had Saint known about the powerful crystal appearing in London when he resided in Chicago?

  Something wasn’t right, and it wasn’t just him who thought so. The other Sevliss princes shared his confusion and suspicion. Saint had been strange and elusive in his communications for several weeks now—ever since he’d somehow accomplished the impossible and vanquished his clone, Teslar.

  He became distracted from his thoughts by the vision of Margaret standing and briskly tucking the blanket around the slender woman. She made a shooing motion, as if he were an annoying flea instead of a six-foot-five-inch, nearly two-hundred-pound male.

  “You hang about a great deal for someone who says he wants to be left alone. Be gone with you. Let her rest in peace. She’ll have enough to deal with upon awakening.”

  Isabel shifted her limbs as she arose from her dreams and found herself swimming in silk. Her lips curved in pleasure. As the daughter of a Pennsylvania coal miner, she had only recently tasted luxury. And this was a delicious luxury—something even her newly born fame hadn’t afforded her as of yet. Funny, she recalled seeing her room at the Ritz before she attended the demonstration at King’s College, but she didn’t recall such decadent sheets on the bed.

  Her eyelids popped open.

  For a full ten seconds, she lay there immobile, only her eyes moving around in a wary reconnaissance.