Sharon Page - Blood Curse

He did not want to battle with Frederica’s paramour. He would be too tempted to rip the slayer’s head off.

Then the boy’s face popped around a shrub and they stared face-to-face. Familiar blue eyes gaped at him, and Raven’s heart lurched as he recognized the boy’s features.

Ophelia. The young vampire slayer looked exactly like her, except his hair was a darker gold. The vampire hunter courting his sister must be Ophelia’s brother.

Shock made Raven slow, made him stand in place longer than he normally would. Suddenly, the boy’s arm arced and the stake plunged toward Raven’s heart. He twisted to escape and the wooden point struck his right side. It drove in, tearing his clothing, biting slightly into his chest. With a soundless roar, he jerked back.

Normally he would fight a vampire hunter. One less slayer meant he was safer, after all.

But he couldn’t break Frederica’s heart.

The slayer had let the stake drop and had pulled out another. “I’m going to destroy you, you blood-drinking plague. Your kind took everything from me. My parents. My oldest brother. My sister.”

“What in Hades are you talking about? Vampires killed your parents? She never told me that.” Raven paced around the lad as his gut clenched. He thought of Guidon’s words. To look back over the men he had assassinated for Jade.

“Who never told you what? Who are you talking about?” In anger and fear, the lad’s voice rose to a squeak.

Raven didn’t answer.

He’d preyed on mortals, but he had never assassinated one for Jade.

He could not be responsible for the deaths of Ophelia’s family. With a lunge forward at vampiric speed, Raven grabbed the lad’s wrist. He tried to see inside the boy’s thoughts, but what he saw wasn’t in the slayer’s head. It was a scene from his past, a scene buried deep inside his mind. Ophelia’s brother froze, the stake clutched in his hand, and Raven saw the truth flashing through his mind . . .

It felt real. As if he was reliving it.

Jade drew her fangs from his neck and sat up on top of him. She had forced him down using her strength. Her servants had chained him to her bed. Now she licked his blood from her lips. “I have work for you,” she said smoothly.

Her razor-sharp fingernails scratched his chest, adding more wounds to those that already crisscrossed his bare flesh. Jade slicked her pink tongue over the furrows of parted skin, slurping up the blood.

“There is a demon you must kill for me. He is a vampire and warlock crossbreed. Very lethal to our kind and very dangerous. He must be destroyed.”

Those had been the days when he had obeyed her every command, but he had needed to know more about his foe.

Jade licked her way down his body toward his cock. It was soft now, and the shaft and head were covered in healing wounds from her fangs and her nails.

“He was sired by a vampire who had studied the dark arts of magic,” she purred as she made harsh bites in his flesh. “He has studied witchcraft and is about to acquire an enormous power and could destroy both vampires and mortals. He could have power equivalent to a vampire queen, and we cannot let that happen. You are an assassin. You must do this for me; it is your duty to protect me. But I do want you—” She hesitated. “I want you to take care. I do not want to lose you.”

For a moment he’d thought she cared about him.

But she had smiled with cruel pleasure. “None of my other playmates can take as much punishment and pain as you.”

With that, she had released him so he could do his duty. As she’d said, he was an assassin. He carried out his task swiftly and efficiently.

To destroy a warlock was difficult. Raven was only a vampire and couldn’t combat spells. Jade had helped him by giving him spells to combat some of the magic the warlocks would use to destroy him. With her protective incantations, he could not be destroyed by anything they conjured, like fire, lightning, or vicious beasts. But he could be killed by any demons they summoned.

It had been a hell of a battle. He had destroyed six demons before the vampire-warlock, who had been young and inexperienced with spells, collapsed in exhaustion, unable to summon any more magic.

Raven had gone for his throat. The crossbreed’s gaze had fixed on him as he took the last drops of blood. Golden hair. Blue eyes, large blue eyes—

He looked like this man, who was Ophelia’s brother.

The man he’d killed must have been her eldest brother.

Raven released his grip on her younger brother, and it broke the spell that held the young man transfixed.

“Ophelia told you!” the slayer shouted. “That’s what you mean. You are the monster who killed my sister?”

“Your sister is alive.” Raven snapped it out before he had time to think. She was supposed to be hidden.

This time, the brother grabbed him. “Where is she? Take me to her. I’ll spare your existence, vampire, if you take me to her.”

At any other time he would have laughed. He was in control here.

But this knowledge of what he’d done left him stunned.

This was something she could never forgive him for. She could never love him. This would break her heart.

Without a love given and received, Ophelia would die when he took her power. He could not take her power, which meant he could not satisfy Jade.

He shifted with speed, so he grabbed her brother by the shoulders. Before the boy could stake him, he threw the lad across the lawn. With a howl, the slayer landed in a lilac bush. Unharmed, but it gave Raven time to turn and run.

He was running for his house, for his sister. He had to get to her to protect her. It would terrify her to discover what he was, but he had to keep her safe from Jade—

A woman’s scream split through his skull.

Raven ran toward his house, moving at preternatural speed. Gravel sprayed as he rushed up the drive like a hurricane’s wind. He could no longer see the bats in the sky. The damned things were gone.

His heart hammered with fear. “Frederica!” he shouted.

A jolt of pink lightning flew out from the doorway of the house, struck him in the chest, and sent him flying back down the stairs. Gravel bit into his back as he sprawled on the drive. He jumped to his feet.

Jade stood in the front of his former home. She floated a few inches above the foyer floor. Her long gown rippled with the night’s breeze, and her hair swayed and danced around her. A seductive smile played on her full lips, which were rouged to a deep scarlet.

“We have taken your sister,” she said softly.

Raven ran at her, ready to tear her apart, moving so fast a human would not see him. But it was no match for Jade’s speed. She easily danced away from his grasping hands. She laughed lightly. Then she lifted her hand, and a bolt of pink light flew from her hand. It compressed into a thin, powerful beam that shot right through his chest below his heart.

The pain drove him to his knees. The wound began to heal over as he forced his weakened body up from the ground. “Let her go, damn you.”

“I no longer trust you,” she said smoothly, her voice cold. “You have been stalling and I have waited long enough. I have taken your sister as a hostage. You must take Lady Ophelia’s power now, if you wish to free your sister.”

“I cannot, damn it,” he roared. “There is a chance it would kill Ophelia. I need more time to know for certain.”

He knew what he had done to hurt her—he had killed her brother. If she forgave him for that, she could survive . . . hell, how could she forgive him? It was impossible.

“You have until midnight tomorrow night to make your choice,” Jade commanded. “Either take her power and kill her, or watch your sister die.”

With that, Jade threw bolts of sizzling light and energy at him from both hands, knocking him onto his arse.

When Raven struggled back onto his feet, his chest smouldered where his clothes had burned away, and the vampire queen was gone.

Raven leapt to the side. A crossbow bolt narrowly missed his chest.

Damned Royal Society.

He stood in the shadowy, mucky mews that ran behind the yard of his town house. Fixated on returning to Ophelia, he had not noticed the two men positioned in the mews, until they’d jumped out and starting firing at him with crossbows.

“I don’t have time for this,” he roared. He shifted shape and flew at them, darting from side to side to avoid the hurtling arrows. Panic made the men clumsy. They messed up their loading, and he had his chance.

But instead of killing them, he transformed back into human form and threw one down the mews. The slayer landed on his arse, scrambled to his feet, and ran away. Raven knocked the other unconscious.

With that, he jumped up onto the tall fence that separated his small yard from the mews and dropped over the side.

Landing softly on the grass, he called in his thoughts to Guidon. Jade has my sister and will kill her unless I take Ophelia’s power. Is there a way I can fool Jade, make her believe I took Ophelia’s power when I didn’t? Make it look like I have the power to kill people with just my touch?

You could tell Lady Ophelia the truth, Guidon answered. About her brother.

So you know I remembered that. Damn it, are you reading my thoughts?

Of course not, my lord. It is in my records of the vampire world. I knew you would remember it.