Where in the blue blazes was she?

Kai Axton glared at the entrance to the bookstore-slash-coffee shop as if imagining her walking through the door could make it so.

The day had turned dark grey with the incoming frontal system off Lake Michigan. His mood matched the cold front, a mood that had gone from warm anticipation a few hours ago to icy disappointment. When he’d arrived at his usual time of three o’clock, he’d expected the proprietor Sian York to greet him with a smile, a freshly baked blueberry scone, and a cup of coffee as always. Kai’s employees teased him about his addiction to the food--and the woman. And they were correct. He looked forward to his daily fix, needed it like a junkie needed his next hit of smack. For the last six months, he’d counted on Sian being here for him. She never went anywhere during shop hours. But she had today.

Where in the hell was she?

Kai turned toward the relatively new clerk, a twenty-something female with strawberry pink hair and more metal in her face than a prepubescent teenager with braces. Now, what was her name again? Zoe, maybe?

“Zoe,” he called out. The clerk turned toward him. Zoe, it was.

A brief, narrow-eyed look of speculation swept over him. Or, had he only imagined that? He blinked. Whatever he thought that he’d seen in her eyes was gone, replaced with a wide-eyed gaze of a person about to face her worst fear.

Most women were afraid of him. Fifteen years of wet work for the CIA had a way of marking a man, labeling him. His label read “predator.”

Oddly enough, Sian had never displayed one iota of fear in his presence. If anything, she treated him like a long lost and very special friend. Her presence extinguished the darkness in him. Around her, he almost felt human again, and not like the cold, hard weapon he’d been for so long--and often still was in his private security work.

Sian was magic. And Kai needed her the way he needed air, water and sustenance.

So, where the fuck was she?

“Yes, Mr. Axton?” Zoe finally replied, her voice creaking like a door needing oil. She coughed, clearing her throat, and then said, “Do you need more coffee?” She reached for the coffee pot with a trembling hand.

Sian’s hand never shook in his presence. She had an aura of calm about her that was almost unearthly. Well, she had until recently. For the last three days, his spider sense, his third eye, his gut, or whatever you wanted to call it, had been on high alert. During that time, his imperturbable lady had displayed hidden, murky currents of unrest. Kai was concerned that her absence had something to do with whatever had upset her serenity. His sixth sense told him that there was danger out there. But from whom? From where?

“No, no coffee.” He’d drunk three cups during the two hours he’d waited for Sian to return to where she belonged. The caffeine jolt had exacerbated his edginess. “Tell me again where Sian went.”

Zoe frowned. “I told you two hours ago that she didn’t tell me.”

Just a hint of asperity tinged the girl’s tone. Not as frightened as she looked. Good, he’d rather have her pissed at him than scared. He’d managed never to hurt a woman, not even during the worst of his fieldwork.

“Just tell me what she said when she left,” he asked, then added, “please.”

The young woman’s forehead scrunched in concentration causing the rings lining her right eyebrow to clink against one another. She tongued the metal piercing in her lower lip, a nervous habit he’d noticed on previous occasions. “Said something about an appointment downtown and that she’d be back before the store closed ... but if she didn’t make it back, I was to lock up and ask Gus at the newsstand to walk me to my car.”

“I’ll walk you to your car, if she isn’t back.”

He knew that Zoe parked in the same garage as Sian and he did, which was almost six long blocks away. The shop closed at six o’clock. Stores and businesses in this neighborhood tucked between Cabrini and River North never stayed open late. It wasn’t safe for any woman, or any man for that matter, to walk around alone after dark. Nightfall came early in Chicago in November. And with nightfall came the predators. His lady should not be out after dark.

Some indefinable emotion colored the young woman’s face. “Thank you, but it’s too much trouble...”

He interrupted her protest with a growl. “I said, I’ll walk you to your car.”

Zoe’s tongue worked the lip piercing faster, then nodded, resigned to her fate.

Sian would never forgive him if her sole clerk got mugged. Kai hadn’t labored for the last six months, stretching even his unlimited patience to the limits, to gain Sian’s trust only to lose it over something as simple as walking Zoe to her car. Especially not when he’d planned to make the move to the next, more intimate, level in his relationship with Sian.

He’d see Zoe safely on her way and then he would wait for Sian to arrive. He’d trail her home, making sure she got safely into her flat above the shop. Then, he’d call and ask her out to dinner--to talk. To let her know that he wanted to get to know her more intimately. And to get answers, if he could, to some questions that had nagged him for months.

Questions like: Why had Sian opened a shop in this borderline neighborhood, and chosen to live above it? He’d asked her that once, but Sian had just smiled, shrugged, and said it was all she could afford. But that was bullshit. She had money. Her clothes, her car, this business, and its inventory, all screamed a comfortable income. Yet, she didn’t make enough sales in a day to support any of that. So, where did the money come from? And why did he catch a glimpse of a haunted look in her eyes as she evaded giving him a straight answer? Finally, why didn’t she ever go out of town to visit anyone? Or, have anyone visit her?

None of it added up, arousing all his digging instincts. He’d made it his business to seek answers to the conundrum that was Sian. Not that he really cared what he found one way or another. His soul had recognized his perfect mate. No, Sian was his no matter who she was or where she’d come from. She completed him, made him whole.

But even with all his resources, both legal and not, he’d hit a blank wall.

Prior to last year, Sian York hadn’t existed.

Oh yeah, someone had tried to set up a background for her, but Kai had been in the business long enough to recognize a fake identity. Hell, he’d had at least ten identities himself when he’d worked for the Company.

Sian York was a fake. But there had to be a valid reason for her hiding behind a false identity. He knew that if she shared that with him, he would be at third down with only inches to go to score on the more intimate relationship he needed from her.

For the hundredth time since Kai had entered the shop, he glanced at the door then at his watch. With each sweep of the second hand, his nerves and muscles readied his body for the unknown battle ahead. That there would be a fight to protect his lady was as certain as he knew his own name. That certainty and his ability to wait for approaching danger, then act instantly and decisively, came from his past training. The skills had been learned in some of the most dangerous jungles in the world--some urban, some not--skills that never went away, but merely camouflaged themselves under a veneer of civilized behavior, lurking until they were needed again.

The forced inactivity ate at him like acid. He needed to do something, but couldn’t until he had the intel--or something happened. The feelers he’d put out and the favors he’d called in had yet to produce any information. Sian York, for all intents and purposes, did not exist, but he’d already known that. So, he’d urged his sources to dig deeper.

He had the sense that he was running out of time. Something had happened three days ago that had upset Sian--no, that had scared her. Was it notice of this damned meeting she’d gone to? Did the meeting involve something, or someone, from her secret past? Had some long ago trouble raised its ugly head? He’d get the answers tonight at dinner. She had to tell him. Had to trust him. Had to.

Whether she was ready to accept him as a lover or not--Sian was his. God and all the deities in the Otherworld knew that she’d become his from the first time she’d greeted him with a smile--and really looked at him. For too many years, he’d been invisible, a specter lurking in the shadows of a dangerous world.

But Sian had changed all that with a smile, with her warmth. She’d looked him directly in the eyes, eyes that he’d been told were dark, deep and pitiless, and still had invited him to share her world, to share the humor in the life around them. It was as if the sun had reached deep into his soul and melted the icy fortress around his heart.

He’d start his claiming of Sian tonight and hope to God he didn’t scare her away with his all-consuming passion. Sian was his sole chance at a future that he’d once thought might never come. A home. A woman to love. Children.

He’d be damned if some unknown danger would take that away.

* * * *

What Sian needed was a badass hero in her life. Someone like Superman, Batman, hell, any man who could protect her and stand for her against the past that again threatened her very existence.

Sian fought the exhaustion that came with the renewed fear and anger. She walked briskly down the dimly lit street, away from the parking garage, as if she could outrun her former life and the decisions that had dumped her into the U.S. Witness Protection Program. Protection? Ha! More like Witness Sacrificial Lamb Program.

A shuffling noise like that of soft-soled shoes on pavement sounded behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. Nothing there.

This was not like her. She never jumped at shadows or noises. But her nerves were stretched to the nth degree. Over the last three days, her fears about today’s meeting had eroded whatever calm she’d managed to cultivate since becoming Sian York. All that worry had not been unfounded.

A frisson of something primitive swept down her spine, interrupting her thoughts, then stealing into her gut. She chanced another look over her shoulder. Rush hour and the mad exodus of this no-man’s land had come and gone. The street was empty--no cars, no people that she could see. Hell, there wasn’t even a stray cat to break the monotony of the preternatural quiet. It was damn spooky and exacerbated the maelstrom of gloomy thoughts swirling in her head.

No, wait. Was there someone--or something--in the inky shadows of the doorway that she’d just passed? She could’ve sworn there was movement, just a glimpse of motion from the corner of her eye. Dark sliding over dark.

Sian blinked, shook her head, then refocused--and finally remembered to breathe. A shaky sigh escaped her cold, dry lips. There was nothing there, just the sooty blackness of a poorly lit entrance.

Yet some primordial instinct urged her to quicken her pace.

She wouldn’t be out on the barren street, jumping at shadows, if it hadn’t been for the damned meeting with her handlers from the WPP. They’d kept her late. If all had gone smoothly, she’d have been back to the store well before dark, well before the streets had become deserted.

The meeting had been anything but smooth. But it had been predictable. She’d been through it too many times not to sense that the meeting wasn’t just a check up on how she was doing.

Damn them all to Hell!

It wasn’t enough that they’d told her she’d have to move yet again, but they’d kept at her far too long. First one marshal then another badgered her with the same questions again and again as if she were the criminal and not the innocent victim in all this. Had she noticed anyone following her? Had she had any suspicious phone calls? Any phone surveys in which the interviewer seemed overly nosey or intrusive about her background? Had anyone suspicious been lurking around her shop?

Hell, everyone in her neighborhood was suspicious-looking. She was on the edge of the fricking damn ghetto known as Cabrini. And Cabrini for all Chicago’s efforts at cleaning it up for urban professionals was still a lodestone for gangstas, hoodlums and just plain badasses.

In a burst of independence and aggressiveness that had shocked even her, she’d out-and-out told her handlers, and their supervisors, that she’d neither seen nor heard anything untoward--and that she wasn’t moving again. The Feds had spent another two hours, pounding into her the concept that she had to move--or they’d throw her to the dogs. See if she’d like that.

Well, she would--like it, that is--and she told them so.

Sian had had enough of the government’s tender protective care. What had she gotten for testifying against her boss Tony Brucchi, a stone-cold killer, and the heir to a criminal syndicate masquerading as a legitimate business?

Five identities in five years.

Nancy. Brenda. Susan. Tammy. And Sian.

The witnessing of Brucchi’s crime and the consequential hasty journey into the netherworld of the WPP had sucked the very life from her, had relegated her to being as bland as the names they’d chosen for her.

By the fifth move and change of identity, she’d found her lost spine and asserted herself for the first time. She’d chosen Sian as her fifth name. She’d chosen Chicago as her new home. She’d figured that they owed her those concessions after all the abrupt moves in the middle of the night. All because they’d over-estimated the justice system and under-estimated her nemesis’s desire for revenge.

Brucchi was out on bail, pending a new trial--something that the Feds had told her would never happen. He was free, living a wealthy lifestyle, surrounded by his relatives and associates, whereas she was virtually a prisoner, torn from all that she’d known.

No, she wasn’t moving again. She liked being Sian York of Chicago, Illinois. So, today, she’d taken another step to regain her life and drawn the proverbial line in the sand. She had refused to budge.

The marshals had smiled, said they’d be in touch--and that she should start packing.

Like hell she would! There had to be another way. What she needed was a damn hero.

A sound like wind rustling through tall grass halted her desperate thoughts. Again, she checked her surroundings. Nothing.

Hindsight, commonsense and Murphy’s Law said that she should’ve waited until one of the marshals could escort her home. But she didn’t trust them. She wouldn’t put it past them to detain her. For her own protection, of course.

At the very least, she should’ve called someone to meet her at the garage and walk her home. With Tony Brucchi on her trail, it wasn’t safe to be alone on the street.

But who would she have called? She hadn’t made that many friends in Chi-town yet, at least not any that could handle themselves against someone from the Brucchi family.

The image of Kai Axton’s dark, dangerous face and large, solid and oh-so-capable-looking body popped into her head. Yeah, Kai could handle Tony and his thugs, probably with one hand tied behind his back and without breaking a sweat. His whole essence screamed lethal competence. It was that combination of tall, dark and dangerous that had instantly attracted her. When Kai was around, she felt safe. Something she hadn’t felt for a long, long time.

But they were just casual friends, plus she didn’t know Kai’s phone number. She could never ask for Kai’s help. She didn’t dare risk the deeper relationship needed to ask for his protection. Bill, the last man that she allowed too close, had taken a bullet meant for her. His death had nearly destroyed her sanity. She couldn’t take that chance again. Not after Bill.

Sian’s footsteps echoed loudly on the quiet street, too quiet for a large metropolitan city like Chicago. She slowed her pace and listened--for what?--she wasn’t sure. The back of her neck itched like crazy. Another quick sweeping glance revealed deserted, dimly lit streets, traffic lights seemingly stuck on red, and closed and shuttered businesses and warehouses. Nothing moved, but something inside her said “hurry up, hurry up.”

Thank God, she only had a couple of blocks to go.

Sian started to jog-walk. Her feet hitting the pavement sounded like booming thuds in the cold, thin night air. Frosty little clouds puffed rapidly from her mouth. She shivered and pulled the lightweight jacket more closely around her. Winter had finally arrived.

Incipient hypothermia was even more of a reason to get home and safely inside.

She was less than a block away.

“Hey there, pretty lady. You want someone to warm you up?” The low, rough voice chilled her even more than the frigid lake winds. His hand grabbed her from behind, digging into her upper arm, and pulling her to a dead stop.

The voice belonged to a young man dressed in dark clothing and a stocking cap. A knife in his free hand glistened in the weak street light. He must have stepped out of the last alleyway she’d passed. Good to know that her itching neck was reliable. Too bad she couldn’t have made it to safety.

Sian looked over her shoulder. Her captor wasn’t alone. She’d sensed that also. She wished her gut had been wrong. There were three others, similarly dressed and all armed with a weapon. Two guns that she could discern and at least one other knife.

The men smiled the kind of smiles that hyenas flashed just before tearing into their prey. Each of the men was much bigger than her five-feet-one-inch height and one hundred ten pounds. And even if she were of Amazonian proportions, she was just plain outnumbered.

Sian did the only thing she could do, the thing they’d least expect a helpless woman faced with a knife would do: she shrieked at the top of her lungs, shoved out of her captor’s grip--and ran.

She hoped she’d fare better than the hyenas’ prey.

She had only a slight chance to make it across the street and down the last half block to Kai’s building. Her building was not an option. She wouldn’t be able to open all the safety locks before the pack could grab her. And Kai’s building had cameras mounted outside. He’d told her about that once, even had walked her over so she could see them. He wanted her to know that 24/7 there was some security in this rough and ready neighborhood. Was he prescient? Had he foreseen that she might have need of his security precautions?

She thanked God for Kai and his security consciousness--it was her only chance. Whether she wanted to involve him or not, the choice had been taken from her.

She was about to cross the street to the southeast corner of Kai’s building and the location of one of his many cameras. Suddenly, one of the pursuers grabbed her jacket and jerked her to a stop, pulling her around to face him. Was she in camera range? Could someone inside even now be calling the police? Rushing outside to help her? Somehow, she doubted she’d be that lucky.

“Now why’d you wanna go and run like that?” growled her original captor. “You made me look like a chump in front of my guys.”

A knife point pricked the skin below her chin. Tilting her chin up to meet his flinty gaze, he glowered at her in anger.

“We just wanted to get to know you.”

Knife-man squeezed her arm in a cruel grip. He looked around the deserted street, then up at the security lights on Kai’s building. “Let’s get you into the alley where it’s nice and dark--and all cozy-like. Me and the guys haven’t had us a pretty little piece of ass in, oh, at least twenty-four hours.”

Scared--and madder than she could ever remember--Sian slapped at the hand that held the knife, pushing it away from her jugular. Startled by her move, Knife-man lost his grip. The weapon slipped in his hand, cutting him. He screamed “fuck,” and the blade fell to the ground.

“You fucking bitch!” Favoring his injured hand, Knife-man roared as he tightened his grip on Sian.

Ignoring her own pain and the sensation of dripping blood, Sian screamed, punched, and dug in her heels. Knife-man struggled to drag her one-handed toward the alley that ran between her building and a neighboring business.

Nothing she did stopped the inexorable journey to the unrelenting darkness. And no one responded to her frantic, pain-filled screams as they echoed and bounced off the silent, dark buildings.

“Kai!” she screamed as loudly as she could. She recalled that Kai had explained that his surveillance cameras also had audio capability. Maybe someone would hear her, even if they couldn’t see her.

“Shut up, bitch!” Knife-man backhanded her across the face with his bloody hand. His blood spattered across her face, hot on her freezing skin. Nausea swept over her, hot and sickening. Struggling to hold onto consciousness, Sian continued to slap and punch at her captor. Her blows were like using a feather to pry off a steel vice, but she never stopped. To stop would be to die.

“A little help, Roy. The bitch has a mean right and I’m bleeding like a stuck pig,” Knife-man said.

He sounded like he was in pain. Good. She hit him again.

Her captor moaned, followed by a hiss of pain and more foul language. He punished her for his agony by twisting her arm cruelly. She screamed. He backhanded her again. She’d have bruises on her face and arms--if she lived that long. She avoided the thought of where else she’d be bruised if the four followed through on their threats to rape her.

“You’re mine now, bitch,” the man called Roy whispered into her ear as he fastened an arm around her mid-section, then pulled her away from Knife-man. Roy was bigger and stronger than her first captor. He lifted her straight up and off her feet and carried her toward the alley. She clawed at his enveloping arms and struggled, gasping for breath. He was like human duct tape, the more she fought him, the tighter he held onto her.

Knife-man paced alongside them, visibly favoring his wounded hand. “You might as well give up, bitch. We don’t call Roy ’the vice’ for nothing.”

Roy snorted. “Yeah, and guess who gets to hold you for the guys. By the time it’s my turn, you won’t have enough fight in you to need holding.” He licked her neck at the point where the blood dripped onto her jacket collar. “Yummy. Blood--and vanilla. Saul, she sure is tasty. What say we keep her for a while before we trash her?”

“Nah,” Knife-man’s voice responded. “We got paid to do her tonight and it can’t look like no hit. I ain’t crossing the man.”

The man? What man?

There was only one man who wanted her dead--Brucchi must’ve had hired them. He’d found her. But how? And how long had he known her new identity? And why had he made his move tonight right after she was told she had to move again--and not before? Obviously, someone in the WPP had leaked her whereabouts--and the fact that she would be alone on this dark street on this particular night. It had to have been one of her handlers! Too bad she wouldn’t live long enough to share that vital piece of insight.

Damn Brucchi to the deepest regions of Hell and back! She refused to let him win. But how could she escape? The odds were against her. She’d already used her one opportunity at surprise and flight--and had failed. They wouldn’t let her escape so easily again. God knew that she didn’t have the brute strength needed to fight off one, let alone four strong men. She’d already proven that.

A male scream of pure undiluted terror cut through her thoughts. It came from the alley, where Roy now dragged her for her execution. The other two thugs had already entered it when Saul had handed her off to Roy’s less than tender care.

Another horrifying scream followed quickly on the heels of the first. The sound reverberated off the buildings, its tone different from the first, yet eerily the same. Abruptly the screeching was cut off, followed by a loud, ominous gurgling. The sound of a thud punctuated the night. Something, or someone, had been thrown against a wall.

At the sound of the screams, Roy and Saul had stopped just short of the entrance to the murky dead-end passageway. Their breathing had audibly escalated to match Sian’s own frantic, choppy respirations.

Then there was silence. A silence even more horrific than the preceding screams.

A flickering street lamp cast a strobe-like effect over their faces. Her captors were afraid of the unknown threat in the alley.

She didn’t blame them. The two masculine shouts of terror had chilled her to the marrow of her bones.

Something was in the alley. Something that could make hardened killers shriek with fear.

Struggling against Roy’s punishing grip, Sian renewed her efforts to get loose. The odds of escaping wouldn’t get any better than they were right now. Two terrified hoodlums against one motivated, scared woman. Sian couldn’t take the chance that whoever or whatever had handled the other two in the alley was on her side. She only hoped he, or it, was after the gang who’d attacked her and would overlook a mere victim.

Roy tightened his hold on her diaphragm, threatening to break her ribs and severely restricting her air. His knife nudged at her throat, adding a new nick to the others Saul had inflicted. Sian couldn’t help herself and cried out at the sharp pain. More warm blood trickled down her chilled neck. The contrast set her to shivering feverishly. She stilled and attempted to control her trembling, fearing that Roy would just kill her and be done with it.

“Let her go.” A dark, gritty voice boomed from the alleyway. “And you might live.”

“Saul?” Roy’s voice sounded shrill as if someone had his testicles in a vice. “What’re we gonna do?”

Saul’s answer, if he had one, was cut off as he was enveloped by something like black fog. The amorphous mass swirled and rapidly surrounded the man until Sian could no longer see him, only hear his terrified shrieks.

After what seemed like hours, but could only have been minutes, Saul’s bloodcurdling screams ended. Roy stood as if frozen to the street, low moans and gibberish coming from his mouth. But he never let up on his excruciating hold on her.

“Run, you idiot,” she whispered in a harsh voice that she failed to recognize as her own. Fear must have frozen her larynx, too. “We need to get away from that ... that ... whatever it is.”

Roy ignored her--or maybe in his terror he didn’t even hear her. Hovering mere feet from them, the unearthly cloud shimmered, undulated, and glowed darkly against the night like black satin against dull black velvet.

What was it? Was she seeing things? She blinked several times, but nothing changed what she saw. What was this dark specter that could cause grown men to screech with fear then go deathly silent? And more importantly, whatever it was, would it be her savior or her worst nightmare?

Sian shoved against Roy’s imprisoning arm. “If you don’t want to run, at least, let me go so that I can.”

Roy held on as if she were his lifeline. He kept her between him and the spectral mist. And finally, he began to back away, slowly so as not to draw its attention.

But the lethally silent cloud followed, cutting off their retreat, herding them toward the blind alley from which it had emerged.

Roy’s hand shook so hard that his knife sliced her tender flesh again and again. Sian whimpered from the pain, but managed to match him step for step, afraid that if she struggled the sharp knife would cut her jugular.

“Let her go.” The same rumbling voice ordered.

A sense of familiarity niggled at her mind, but any chance at placing the voice was lost as Roy stumbled over something on the street. He barely managed to keep both of them upright. His knife cut deeper and she screamed.

The dark cloud rumbled like thunder and snaked toward them. Roy cried out a strangled, garbled litany of words. His arm squeezed her against his body so hard that she bit her lip to keep from screaming out in pain.

Sian strained her neck away from the punishing knife. She gasped for every breath she took now. Spots and flashes of light floated across her field of vision. If she couldn’t take a full breath soon, she’d expire on the spot from lack of oxygen.

Roy’s grasp on her loosened. He gibbered away, fear making his words unintelligible and shrill. She couldn’t care less about his fear. She could breathe again. She dropped her head, sucking in air. It was then that she saw what had caused Roy to jabber in terror. It was Saul’s body. He lay on the ground. Motionless.

Was the man dead? Would they find two other corpse-like bodies in the alley? Because that was where they headed, their only path of retreat from the slow-moving darkness.

They entered the alley, followed closely by the lethal apparition. On the ground and vaguely revealed by the green glow of an EXIT sign over her building’s service entrance lay two human-shaped masses. Neither body moved.

Sian shuddered and felt an answering tremor race through Roy’s body.

“One more time...” The voice from the cloud boomed.

The amoeba-like shape quivered, slithered closer, then cornered Roy and her between it and the alley’s dead end. The glow of the EXIT sign bathed the unusual standoff between her captor and a roiling, hovering mass of effervescent dark matter. Roy--or she--couldn’t get to the street and safety without going through the darkness.

“Let her go.” The words rumbled like thunder chasing lightning.

“No!” shrieked Roy. “You’ll kill me like you did the others.”

“Kill?” The cloud wiggled wildly as the sound of its laughter ricocheted within the small area. “They aren’t dead, only unconscious. You’ll know death soon--and it won’t be an easy one--unless you let Sian go.”

Sian shuddered at the cold certainty in the threat--and at the mention of her name. This cloud, or whatever it was, knew her. It seemed to want to protect her.

Roy whimpered and squeezed her hard against him. “Stay back. I’ll kill her. I will.”

The pressure on her ribs was excruciating. Her breath escaped in a garbled scream.

“Sian!” The dark cloud’s voice roared.

The roiling mass surged forward. Moving like a thundercloud propelled by tornadic winds, it tore her from Roy’s grip. And despite the force of its forward momentum, the misty darkness laid her gently on the ground before turning back to Roy who had begun to back away.

Sian attempted to stand, but the pain in her ribs defeated her struggle. She collapsed to the alley’s filth. Leaning weakly against a trash bin, she watched as Roy’s attempt to escape failed.

Within the closeness of the alley, Roy’s terrified shrieks vibrated across her skin like hundreds of crawling spiders. She shuddered, closed her eyes and clenched her teeth against the unceasing agony. Roy’s escalating screams of terror accompanied her into the welcoming darkness of unconsciousness.

From Welcome to the Darkness

Darkness enshrouded Gwen’s consciousness. The night closed in around her.

She felt a shiver of unease course down her spine. She was in a dark alleyway, and two men stood at the end. They were still too far way to make out anything specific about either of them. But both men had a magnetism that drew her toward the end of the alley.

Her footsteps echoed in the silent night. It was odd that there were no other sounds, no people, no traffic, nothing except the click of her heels on concrete and ice and her nervous breath.

Snow flurries swirled around her. She knew her skin would be cold to the touch, but she felt warm, almost overheated.

“Hello, Gwen.”

The voice echoed off the walls around her, and she couldn’t tell which man had spoken. And while she was scared there was something about the voice that soothed her.

“How do you know my name?” she asked.

“We know a lot about you.” This voice was scarier. It made her want to turn and run. Unfortunately she still didn’t know which voice belonged to which man.

“One of us will be your salvation and the other will be your death.”

She shivered and it had nothing to do with the temperature.

“It’s up to you to discover which one is which.”

It was as if they followed a script. The voice changed with each sentence.

As she reached the end of the alley, both men came into focus. One was as light as the other was dark.

The man to her right was dressed in black. His leather pants glistened in the moonlight. His tee shirt was black with a red slash across the front. Black hair was cropped closely to his head, and he had a black goatee surrounding a frown.

He was the perfect image of a bad boy. He’d be so obvious as the one that would bring her death.

The other man was his exact opposite. He had curly blonde hair and dimples. Good God, dimples. He smiled broadly at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back.

The other man growled. Or was that just a sound of the night? She couldn’t be sure.

The blond man wore a light blue shirt and khaki pants. His stance was much more casual. Somehow, the blackness of the night didn’t seem to touch him. There were no shadows, no mystery around him.

Her salvation?

The shiver that coursed up her spine made her think otherwise. She’d prefer to have no further dealings with either man.

“Why am I here?”

“Because you’re the key,” the blond man said, his eyes blazing.

“Key?”

“You’re the key to everlasting night. Or everlasting day.”

As soon as the words were out of the darker man’s mouth, lightning flashed and the wind picked up. She was battered by flying debris. Blowing snow stung her skin. Colors swirled in front of her eyes.

“You will die, Gwen. You’re the key, and you will die.”

The evil voice screeched in her ears. Whether it came from one of the men or someone else entirely, she wasn’t sure. She turned and ran back down the alley. It was pure luck she didn’t slip on the ice and break her neck. She had no idea where she was going except away. Away from the evil behind her.

The voice continued to echo in her ear.

“You will die. Light will rule.”

The cold wind continued to batter her. Tears streamed down on her face.

She wasn’t going to get away. She couldn’t. The wind was too strong, the voice too determined. Too evil.

Her lungs burned, and she couldn’t run anymore. This was it. It was going to be the end.

Greasy tendrils lashed against her skin. The evil was almost upon her. This was her death, but where was her salvation?

“Wake up, Gwen.”

Her eyes popped open, and she bolted upright in her bed to see the blazing overhead light of her bedroom. She had no idea who belonged to the voice that woke her, but she would be forever grateful. The nightmares were getting worse. She wiped the sweat from her brow and fell back on her pillow.

It was going to take a while for her pulse rate to slow and her breathing to return to normal.

Chapter One

Derek sat back in his chair, staring at the monitors that surrounded him. The night was going as it should. Vampires and werewolves prowled the street, fitting in more than they stood out, despite what mythology would have people think.

People were sleeping, partying, loving and leaving. All under the cover of night. Some were having peaceful dreams, others horrid nightmares. They both made him smile.

Night was his domain, and he took his position very seriously.

Still, no matter how many times he changed the images on the computer screen, nowhere could he see her.

She’d had nightmares all of her life. He thought back to the first time he’d seen her having a nightmare. She couldn’t have been more than five years old. Back then, just as it was now, her sapphire blue eyes and white blonde hair were impossible to miss. She’d been just another job, another something to keep an eye on.

But seeing her in person, or at least in a real dream, not just on a computer screen, had been more powerful than he could ever imagine.

“Damn it,” he muttered.

He hadn’t seen her since that night two weeks ago. And he hadn’t stopped thinking about her, either.

He wished he could convince himself that the only reason he was interested in her was because she was the key, but he knew he was kidding himself. He’d never been so aware of a woman before.

Well, that wasn’t true, he had been once, but that was a long time ago.

He pushed a few more buttons, and there she was. Finally. He’d found her.

He zoomed in to see her more closely. She was asleep on a bright red sofa. Her chest rose and fell in an even rhythm. She had finally let her guard down and fallen asleep.

He smiled, a rusty motion that had been called lethal a time or two in the past.

He snapped his fingers, and, quicker than a blink of an eye, he was standing in the room with her, looking down at her. Instantly, his cock stirred in his leather pants. Her long white blonde hair was spread around her. She wore a Black Sabbath tee shirt and super short black shorts--really, they were nothing more than panties. Her long pale legs were left bare, except for her toenails, which were painted a bright blue.

Perhaps it was the fact that such an angelic looking creature was dressed all in black--and wearing the tee shirt of one of his favorite bands to boot--that drew him to her. For half a second, he would have given anything to be more than a nightmare to her.

But he knew it could never be. They were both too intimately entwined in the mess that was the never-ending battle between light and darkness to be anything but problems for one another.

And he’d just come here to look.

He’d wanted to convince himself that she wasn’t as incredible as she looked. That he hadn’t felt something. That she wasn’t worth all the suffering--the cold showers, the exotic dreams, the almost perpetual hard-on--he’d gone through in the last two weeks at the mere thought of her.

He reached out to touch her and she moaned. He’d give anything to be with her, just one time. She was so...light. Perhaps that was why she intrigued him so much.

She rolled over and grabbed his hand. In her sleep, she slowly pushed his hand down her tight body.

He froze for a moment, unsure of what to do. But the uncertainty faded quickly. He’d be a fool to pass up this opportunity. And even though a small part in the back of his brain told him this was wrong, no one had ever called him a saint.

He knew she wouldn’t wake, he could see to that with his presence alone. He ran his calloused hand up and down her creamy thigh. It was smoother than the softest silk he’d ever touched. He felt unworthy even to be touching her. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

She shivered slightly, mumbled something incoherent and then shifted in her sleep. If he was a kind man he would have made her wake and move to the bedroom, because sleeping out here she was going to have an awful crick in her neck.

But he wasn’t a good man. And when she moved, her shirt lifted slightly so he could see the black crystal nestled in her belly button.

As intriguing as she’d been before, his cock throbbed to know her better now. He moved his hand from her thigh to her stomach. It was just as soft. As he brushed his knuckles over the silken skin, the muscles contracted. She smiled and giggled a bit, though she remained deeply asleep.

Derek was well in tune with the images that were drifting through her mind. Though he wasn’t putting them there, he couldn’t deny he liked what he saw.

She was having quite a dream.

In her dream, a man’s hand slid over her stomach and moved lower to slide around the waistband of her panties. In real life, Derek’s hand followed the same path. When his hand slid under the waistband of her panties, she sucked in a deep breath.

He sucked in a breath too, as his cock throbbed.

He was desperate to touch more of her, feel more of her smooth skin. As his fingers moved down farther, he could feel just a slight dusting of hair and, if he wasn’t mistaken, it was in the shape of a heart. And the bottom point of that heart was pointing directly south to ecstasy.

“More,” she muttered in her sleep, arching up against his hand. Warmth emanated from her core. His hand slid further into her panties, into her slit. Instantly, her cream coated his fingers.

He slid his fingers up and down until they were thoroughly coated with her wetness. Her essence filled the air and he breathed in her intoxicating aroma.

She moaned again, louder this time, and Derek’s eyes were drawn from where he was watching the play of his hand under her panties, back up to her face.

She was so damn beautiful.

Her skin was like porcelain, though her cheeks were flushed pink. Her mouth was a perfect cherry-red bow, only marred by the teeth that were biting her lips, keeping her from crying out.

He was the one causing her to mar her beauty in her own pleasure. Power surged through him at the realization that he was doing that to her.

He desperately wanted to know if the color of her nipples matched the color of her lips. A part of him was desperate to wake her, to make her see who was pleasuring her, but he knew he couldn’t. He shouldn’t be here. Meeting her in person would cause too many problems. It would be best if he forgot she ever existed. And best that she never know that he was more than a nightmare.

She arched against his hand, and one of his fingers slid inside her tight channel. He couldn’t hold back his own moan then. Her hands, tipped with cherry red nails, went to her breasts, kneading them through her tee shirt.

“Please take it off,” he softly begged.

But she didn’t listen. Instead, she continued to palm her breasts, pluck at her nipples through her shirt.

“Lucky shirt,” he whispered.

While one of his fingers continued to slide in and out of her, he moved his thumb to her clitoris. The bud pulsed under his fingers as it filled with blood. He could tell she was close to coming and it wasn’t because of his preternatural abilities.

It was pure male instinct.

He increased the tempo of his finger thrusting in and out of her. Her moans increased. He was desperate to silence her with his mouth on hers, but couldn’t. That wasn’t something he did. Hell, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d actually kissed a woman on the mouth. Had he ever done that?

He couldn’t pause to ruminate, because at that exact moment her pussy started to contract around his finger. He paused long enough to add a second finger as his thumb increased pressure on her clit.

She came apart under his hands. She thrust against his palm and clamped her thighs together with his fingers still buried deep inside of her. Finally, she collapsed onto the couch, her breathing heavy, a slight smile playing on her lips.

And then a face appeared in her head. But it wasn’t his face he saw in her mind. No, the man she was imagining was blond with dimples.

“God damn it, Gwen, that’s fucking dangerous.”

He pulled his fingers out of her, snapped them and appeared back in his office. But he was too wound up to concentrate.

He checked his monitor. Gwen was still sound asleep.

* * * *

Gwen couldn’t even tell up from down anymore, she was so exhausted. She hadn’t slept well in weeks, ever since she’d had that awful nightmare.

And the fact that she could actually remember this nightmare from all the others she’d had in her life really said something. But last night was her breaking point. She’d never had an erotic nightmare before. It had been amazing. A man had been touching her in ways she’d never been touched before. She didn’t know why, but she’d assumed it was the man with the goatee from the earlier dream.

Then, just when she’d been completely relaxed, the other man appeared. His dimples had been blazing, but she just felt uncomfortable. And when he’d asked her if she liked it, she woke up in a cold sweat. And alone.

And really, she couldn’t do with any less sleep than she was already getting. Catnaps here and there had kept her functioning, but not well.

Heaps of coffee had helped, too. Although she was getting jittery.

But her art was thriving. She studied the painting in front of her. She’d drawn the man several times over the last two weeks, but this was the first time she’d actually put him on canvas.

“I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but you sure make a good muse.”

As much as she loved this painting, it made her uncomfortable to look at. It was as if his eyes were staring through her.

The painting was in abstract, but if she closed her eyes, she could see the man clearly.

His hair was jet black, his skin tanned, a goatee around lips that she was desperate to taste. He wasn’t classically handsome, but his face was breathtaking, all angles and lines. It appealed to both the artist and the woman in her.

She pictured him dressed all in black. She knew his hands would be big, calloused but gentle. If she concentrated hard enough she could almost feel them sliding over her body, down into her panties.

“Snap out of it, Gwen,” she berated herself.

It wasn’t bad enough that this guy had a part in the nightmare that scared her so much she was afraid to sleep. Now he had to be haunting her waking hours, too.

And why couldn’t she have picked the less scary guy from her dreams to lust over. But even as she thought of his charming blond locks and killer dimples, a shiver of unease ran up and down her spine.

So she turned her attention back to the painting of the dark man.

“Who are you?”

She reached out and ran a paint-splattered finger down a red slash on the canvas. It didn’t surprise her that she didn’t get an answer, but another shiver skittered down her spine. She was getting really tired of being so jumpy.

She jerked her hand back and cradled it with her other hand. After a few more seconds of standing before the painting, she picked up an old paint spattered cloth and covered the image. Unfortunately for her, even with the painting covered, she could still feel his eyes on her.

She looked outside, and then at the clock.

Four-thirty.

It was already starting to get dark. She headed downstairs and into the bedroom area of her apartment. If she was going to get any sleep at all today, she'd better hit the sack. Once it was the depth of night, there would be no sleeping for her.

* * * *

Derek was having a hard time keeping his attention where it was supposed to be. “Brad, will you watch over things for me tonight?”

The young man who usually served as his assistant, the closest thing he’d ever had to a friend, looked surprised, but was smart enough not to question his boss. Both of them knew what a coup it was going to be for him to be in charge for the night.

“Sure. Everything all right?”

“Yeah,” Derek lied. “It’s just looking like it’s going to be a slow night. I thought I’d head over to Club Insomnia and see if I can have some fun.” It wasn’t like him to give up work for fun, even if it was looking to be a slow night. Still, Brad remained quiet. “I’ll have my cell with me if you need anything.”

“Sure thing. Have a good time, Boss.”

Brad took his seat in the control room and Derek left.

Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing if he started delegating more. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d taken a night off.

As he walked out of his basement office, Derek decided to see how things worked out with Brad before he made any rash decisions.

He settled into the leather car seat, cocooned in a pocket of wealth. It purred to life when he turned the key, bringing a smile to his face. He drove his pride and joy, a Midnight Blue Aston Martin Vanquish S, through the deserted streets. Damn, he loved this car. It was a quiet time of the night. All of the families were snug in their homes, while the singles hadn’t yet made it out on the town. In a few hours, the streets in the club district would be crawling with people.

As it was, Derek found a spot right in front of the club. The bouncers, some paranormal creatures, mostly just oversized mortals, were just setting up the velvet ropes for the mortals who would try to get in later that night. They let Derek in with nothing more than a nod. His reputation preceded him.

Even though the night was young, the lights were low and music pounded inside the club. Club Insomnia might have been a bit of a cliché name for a place that catered primarily to creatures of the night, but beings like him, beings that most of the world didn’t want to believe existed, loved the irony.

His eyes very quickly adjusted to the dim lighting. Immediately he could tell there weren’t any humans in the place yet. The air was full of supernatural beings. He could sense a horde of vampires, a couple of werewolves and more.

Derek smiled and headed off toward the bar. He wanted to get a better feel of who was there tonight.

He was sick and tired of thinking about the girl, the key. He was here tonight to get laid. Hopefully he’d be able to find a nice she-wolf in heat who would keep him occupied so long he’d be lucky to remember his own name by the time he was finished. But as he picked his way through the sparse crowd toward the bar, no one drew him.

Frankly, no one appealed to him even in the slightest. He just couldn’t get that damn girl out of his head.

A young vampire he’d never seen before worked behind the bar. "What can I get for you?" the kid asked.

“Just a beer.”

The vampire simply nodded his head and started pouring the drinks.

“You’re new here,” Derek said.

The kid nodded again.

“You’re newly turned, too.”

“Right again.”

“How’s it...you know...are you okay?”

Derek didn’t know what drew him to ask. He may have been the ruler of the night, but he usually didn’t get intimately involved. Damn woman was making him act very unlike himself.

For the first time the junior vamp actually met his eyes. "You know, you're the first one to ask me that."

“And?”

“It’s pretty cool,” he said, finishing pouring the beer with a perfect head. “I mean, it sucks that I can’t tell any of my old friends. I'm from New York. They all think I’m dead. But I’ll make new friends here in Chicago, so it’s all cool.”

Another customer called from the end of the bar.

“Duty calls,” he said and handed over the drink. “Thanks for asking.”

Derek just grunted a thanks for the drink and threw an extra couple of bucks down on the bar for a tip.

A more useful tip would have been to tell the kid that things don’t get easier or better or anything. That being a creature most people didn’t believe in was no way to exist. Hell, Derek was one of a handful of creatures that was actually born this way. He’d grown up as a creature that most people would kill rather than believe existed. Trust didn’t come easily and he’d be surprised if he had a half dozen friends he could count on in an emergency. Aside from maybe Brad, most people would sooner spit in his direction than help him.

Perhaps it was his position, perhaps it was just because he was a bastard. Regardless, he’d stopped caring a long time ago.

But he wasn’t here to feel sorry for himself. Pushing the melancholy mood out of his mind, he picked up the drink and made his way back across the bar.

A busty she-wolf brushed against him. "Good evening."

She was stunning, there was no denying that. Her tits were offered up on a platter. She was dressed in all black leather and the dusky brown of her nipples peeked out above the top of her corset. Invitation was clear in her eyes.

“Excuse me,” he said, pushing past her.

Damn it, what was wrong with him?

He was here to get some. A perfectly satisfactory woman, barely dressed at that, came on to him and he ignored her.

He needed to get Gwen out of his mind.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” the she-wolf asked, obviously upset by his rebuff.

Why was everyone asking him that lately? There was nothing wrong with him. So he had an interaction with a girl. And so what if he couldn’t manage to get her out of his mind. There wasn’t anything wrong with him.

“It’s nothing. I’ve just been working too hard,” he said aloud to himself.

It wasn’t a lie. There was a time when he would have been at the bar every night. But not anymore. Now he was just restless. Work didn’t satisfy him like it once had. But that was a problem because he didn’t have anything else but work. He couldn’t.

He was the freaking King of Darkness.

From Damnation

Vilnius, Lithuania

Friday, December 11, 1812

Jacques Gerrard collapsed in the doorway of a small shop--he hadn't the energy to look or even care what type. He was exhausted, freezing, and weaker than he'd ever been in his life. All he wanted to do was rest for a moment, just a moment.

This doorway offered some protection against the unrelenting wind. The alley it opened onto was abandoned of all but him. Nightfall approached on swift feet, and the already frigid temperature was dropping rapidly.

Mon Dieu. He hated the cold.

Jacques remembered accepting his commission and heading out as part of Napoleon's Great Army, marching toward Moscow with high hopes of conquering Russia. Instead, when winter had come early, the ill-prepared army found themselves fighting nature more than the Russians.

And now, of the nearly four hundred thousand men who had marched on to Vilnius, less than ten thousand still lived. Food had been scarce--the damned Russian army had burned crops and villages before the bedraggled French soldiers could reach them--then winter had hit. Hard.

He and his comrades had subsisted on whatever they could, finally resorting to eating their own mounts. And they'd managed to reach Vilnius.

But he doubted any of them would make it back to France alive.

Jacques had spent the afternoon searching through the town, looking for food of any sort. The villagers, when they'd abandoned the area, had taken most everything with them. There was pitifully little to be found. And so he sat here, numb, probably dying.

And he didn't have the energy to care.

"I will ask you again, mon cher. Do you want to live forever?"

The words echoed in Jacques's ears, and he looked up to see a dark haired woman standing in the middle of the snow-covered lane. Her ebony gaze held him as captive as the unforgiving cold gripping his body with icy finality. He sat immobile in the still, silent alley, his back against the door of the shop, his legs drooped over the stoop.

This...creature had come to him once already, telling him a tale much too incredible, too horrific, to be true. Yet, as he stared at her, he wondered...

She approached him on gliding feet, her elegant boots making no noise on the hard-packed snow. Stray leaves and hay from a nearby livery stirred as she trod over them. One long fingernail, tinted with henna, trailed across his tunic-clad shoulder.

His right hand tightened reflexively around his musket. His other hand went to the leather pouch holding his gunpowder. Then he sat still, unable to remember what he'd been about to do.

The woman spoke, her voice holding an accent that hinted at a long-forgotten language. "I sense your disbelief, mon cher. Why is this such a hard thing?" she asked in a silken voice. "I can give you eternal life. Eternal youth." She knelt beside him, her fingers stroking back and forth over his shoulder. "In your years of service with Napoleon's army, you have seen many strange and wondrous things, oui? Why would you doubt the truth of my words?"

He gave a bark of laughter from a throat gone dry with thirst and dread. "Madame," he said with the utmost cold courtesy, "you would have me believe you are sangsue--a vampire? C’est incroyable! Too incredible to be believed."

She smiled, showing even, white teeth. "You misunderstand me, my brave capitaine. I am not a vampire. I am a lamia--I create vampires."

With a surge of strength borne of desperation, Jacques found his feet and shuffled away from her. She must be a devil, sent to torment him before death took him in its final embrace. He quickly made the sign of the cross and muttered, "Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou among women. Please, by the goodness of God..."

His horror was compounded by the dread that God had forsaken him. What had he done so sinful as to be unforgivable? Had God damned him for living the life of a soldier?

It was war. Men died. Some at his hand.

Was this a devil, then, sent to claim him, to take him to hell?

There was no answer to his prayer. Only the woman, beautiful and deadly. Mon Dieu. He spun around to face her once more.

She shook her head and came nearer with soundless tread. "Where is your good God now, eh, mon cher? Tell me, where is He who promised never to leave you or forsake you? Tell me, Jacques Gerrard, where is He now?"

Jacques shook with horror. This slender woman with raven tresses knew his innermost thoughts. How could it be?

She ran her hand across the muscles of his chest, coming to rest over the sluggish beating of his heart. Even through the wool of his uniform, he swore he could feel the awful coldness of her flesh.

"I can save you, my handsome, brave one." She cocked her head toward the end of the alley, where several bodies were stacked one upon another, the blue and red of their uniforms barely discernable under the freshly fallen snow. She walked around him, her hand caressing down his arm, then over his back.

"I can spare you that fate, mon cher. I can show you wondrous and terrible things in this world, share with you knowledge and secrets I have uncovered over a thousand lifetimes." The woman stopped in front of him. Slender fingers touched his chin. “You will never feel cold again."

Staring straight ahead, Jacques fisted his hands at his sides. His teeth clenched. He wasn’t ready to die. But was he ready to be damned?

"Let me save you, Jacques," she whispered, kissing his rigid jaw with soft, enticing lips. "Nothing will be gained by your untimely death. Let me save you, and mayhap you can save others." Her voice was soft, sibilant, huskier than before, garnering his attention.

He looked down at her and drew in a sharp, startled breath. Somehow, her dress was gone, baring her high, firm breasts and flat belly. His gaze lingered at the dark hair sheltering her sex before he realized there were other changes.

No longer was her skin a milky porcelain. Rather, it had a gray-green hue that was reminiscent of the cobras he had once seen on a trip to the lands surrounding Jerusalem. Her eyes, too, were reptilian, glowing with a golden iridescence. She smiled, revealing dagger-sharp teeth.

When a forked tongue flickered out to taste the air, he moaned in fear and once again made the sign of the cross. The lamia--for now he had irrefutable evidence that her words were true--latched onto his shoulders with unexpected strength and bore him to the ground.

"Mon Dieu!" he cried out, shivering with revulsion and fright, fighting with all the strength his starved body afforded him. "Non! I do not want this. It is blasphemy!"

His energy quickly failed him, though, and all too soon, he lay panting beneath her. Jacques wondered briefly where his compatriots were, why no one came to his aid. Then he realized they were most likely crowded together in the abandoned hovels, sheltering against the biting cold and the dark.

He was the only one foolish enough to be wasting his time looking for food. A foolishness that would surely prove lethal at the hands of this...this monster.

She laughed. A harsh, feral sound that grated along his nerve endings. "The choice is no longer yours, garçon. You waited too long. I have decided your fate. You belong to me, to the night."

She stroked over his face with her fingers, her hands no longer cold, but hot as if they'd been plunged into boiling water.

The lamia tore open his tunic, baring his bluing flesh to the icy air. "I have been alone too long. You will be my consort, the sire to a new generation of my offspring." Placing her palms on his chest, her smile like the gaping hole of hell, she pressed down, heat from her hands spreading throughout his body.

Jacques moaned as warmth flooded into his frostbitten extremities. With a flick of her wrist, she freed his cock from his pantalon and took him between greedy lips.

He moaned again, an abject mingling of shame and unwilling passion as his frail flesh betrayed him, hardening under her erotic ministrations. Her mouth nibbled on the wrinkled skin of his man-sac and then she took one testicle between her lips and sucked gently. He gasped, his hips bucking against her.

She released him and laughed again. Long fingers curled around his rod and stroked him from base to tip, thumb sweeping over the slitted head. Opening her mouth, she took him deep into her throat and sucked hard.

Jacques couldn't help but arch into her touch. Although his spirit fought against his arousal, she was magnificent in her form and expertise and his body betrayed him. And as she impaled herself on his cock and fit her teeth into the tender flesh of his throat, a solitary tear rolled from his eye.

"Who are you?" he whispered hoarsely.

Through senses made dull by her forceful attack, he felt her move off his still-hard shaft, her clawed fingers replacing her body. She brought her other hand to her mouth and bit into her wrist.

While she stroked his erection with one hand, she placed her bleeding wrist at his mouth. He numbly swallowed, her bitter, coppery essence sliding down his throat with a burning rush.

She softly kissed him and moved back over his cock. And as he helplessly thrust his hips up to meet her once more enveloping body, he heard her laugh. "Call me Lilith, mon cher. Welcome to my world."

But in her world he did not stay. And therein lay the danger.