The young man stopped and stepped back from the lilacs, a dazed look on his face. Raven studied the young man. Golden hair beneath his hat. A handsome face, but a young one. The face looked suspiciously clean-shaven, as if the lad had barely begun to sport facial hair. Moonlight illuminated large blue eyes that looked blank for several seconds. Then the lad shook his head and lowered his stake. He dropped it into the pocket of his greatcoat.
The young slayer’s clothes were those of a gentleman, Raven noted, as the boy crept back to Frederica. “There was nothing there. I couldn’t find anything. It must have been an animal that broke a branch. That must be what we heard.”
It was easy to plant suggestions in the lad’s mind. However, it did not please Raven that Frederica had moved into the boy’s embrace. Couldn’t she see how daft the lad had to be? Raven had felt no resistance in the boy’s mind to his suggestions.
“I’m so afraid,” Frederica whispered, though Raven could easily hear her muted voice.
“The vampire came to my room last night,” she continued, clutching the young man’s arm. “He was a giant bat! It was horrible. Terrifying! He tried to get in through my window.”
Raven’s blood ran cold. That vampire had not been him. One of his brethren was trying to attack his sister?
It had to be a minion of Queen Jade.
He still had time to do as the bitch of a vampire queen had asked and take Ophelia’s power. Jade had no right to frighten his sister.
Then he saw something that froze him on the spot. That stunned him to his gut. It would have slammed into his soul, if he’d had one.
His slender, young sister stood on tiptoe and locked her arms around the vampire slayer’s neck. Her lips softened, and she cocked her head like a woman accustomed to being kissed. The lad’s arms went around her.
Raven could have handled witnessing a sweet kiss, a small peck.
The boy gave Frederica a long, steamy, intimate French kiss. Raven had one glimpse of their tongues dueling before he staggered back and looked away. Frederica’s sigh of delight was like a spike through his heart.
How could his sister have fallen in love with a vampire slayer?
Raven waited in the dark, his heart thumping. He hated that he could not go near her.
He wanted to destroy the man who was now kissing Frederica and caressing her body with his hands. But did he have any right to destroy a man she loved?
The kiss ended on a fluttering feminine sigh and a lusty male groan.
Raven’s hands fisted.
“I should go in now,” she whispered. “In case I am missed.”
“Be careful, my love,” the slayer murmured. “Keep your windows locked. Lay the garlic flowers along them and wear them around your neck while you sleep. Do not open your doors or windows for anyone. I am going to hunt that vampire tonight.”
They shared a hasty kiss, then Frederica turned and slipped through the shadows toward the house. Raven watched her, to make sure she got inside safely. So did the slayer.
“Who’s there?” It was the boy, moving carefully through the dark, searching the stretches of blackness.
Raven knew he hadn’t made a sound. The boy was not as much of an idiot as he thought. The lad could sense him. He tried to send thoughts into the slayer’s head. Now he found resistance as he tried to break into the young man’s mind and plant thoughts. Apparently without Frederica there, the boy had much more control over his wits.
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—