He flinched, but a mage didn’t remain in the employ of a temperamental vampire without a set of titanium balls. He pasted a smile on his lips as he smoothly moved to kneel in front of her, his hands running an intimate path from her knees to her upper thighs.
“I may have my faults, but you need me.”
She polished off the last of the blood and set aside the goblet.
“Unfortunately,” she conceded in disgust. She deeply resented having to rely on the treacherous rat. But while Kata had some magical talents she was a mere human and Marika had no powers to keep her alive. Not unless she made her into a vampire. A tempting thought, but one she couldn’t afford to indulge. Not when she’d lose her one last connection to the missing child. “It would be so much easier if she were immortal.”
Sergei chuckled, sliding his hands between her thighs to caress her with a skill that took centuries to perfect.
“Perhaps easier, but you would miss me if I were gone,” he husked.
“So sure of yourself?”
The pale eyes shimmered with ready heat. “I fulfill more than one purpose.”
With a blur of motion she planted her foot in the center of his chest and sent him flying into the far wall.
“Later,” she growled, rising from the divan. “I want to know what is bothering Kata. Let me see her.”
“See her?”
Marika narrowed her gaze. “Are you deaf as well as stupid? I said let me see her.” “Yes. Of course.”
Straightening, Sergei dusted off his expensive suit and stiffly moved to the heavy wooden door across the room. Marika followed behind, waiting as the mage fumbled with the lock and at last led her into the barren room carved from stone.
She curled her lips at the stench of mold and nasty things rotting beneath the stone. Unlike her innate powers that called upon nature, Sergei was forced to use blood and death to create his spells.
Magical hack.
Bypassing the stone altar stained with blood that was set in the center of the floor, he halted beside a small depression filled with stagnant water. Then squatting at the edge, he waved his hands over the surface, muttering words beneath his breath.
Marika impatiently waited at his side, alert to any hint that Sergei was attempting to deceive her. The fool would learn that a nightly skinning was nothing compared to what would come next.
The water began to swirl, as if being stirred from beneath, and Sergei’s chants deepened, echoing eerily through the cavern.
At last he reached beneath his jacket to withdraw a slender stiletto and sliced a small wound at the tip of his finger. One, then two drops of blood hit the water, spreading over the surface with a strange shimmer.
Marika bent downward as an image began to form, slowly revealing a woman who was stretched on a narrow cot in a dark, iron-lined cell.
A woman who bore a striking resemblance to Marika.
The same black curls and pale, perfect features. And if her eyes had not been shut they would have flashed as dark as midnight.
Even her lush curves were the same beneath the shroud that covered them.
Perfect twins.
Or at least they had been before Marika had been turned.
Once she’d awoken as a vampire her ties to her previous life, including her family, had been severed. Or at least they should have been.
Any memories of her past life were forgotten, but there had been a persistent voice whispering in her head that refused to be ignored. For weeks she’d struggled to rid herself of the annoying buzz. Then she’d spent the next weeks hunting down the source of the aggravation.
It’d been a nasty surprise to discover an exact replica of herself living among a caravan of gypsies.
Her first impulse had been to kill the bitch.
That would put an end to her intrusion into Marika’s mind, not to mention the creepy knowledge there was an identical copy of herself walking around.
But some mysterious impulse had halted her bloodlust.
Almost as if she’d glimpsed into the future to sense she would have need of her dear, sweet sister.
“You see,” Sergei said. “Sleeping Beauty safely tucked in her bed.”
Marika frowned, infuriated by the stab of fear that pierced her heart. Kata might be a mere human, but she had gypsy blood flowing through her veins. Which meant she possessed a unique ability to injure a vampire. Something her tender heart had been reluctant to do in the early days. Back then she still thought of Marika as her beloved sister. Stupid female.
But over the last decades each time Sergei had released her from his spells Kata had been crazed, striking out so swiftly that it had been a miracle that Marika hadn’t been harmed.
She wasn’t about to put herself at risk again. “She’s stirring,” she hissed.
Sergei frowned as the woman in the watery vision turned her head, almost as if aware she was being watched. “Yes.” He shook his head. “That shouldn’t be possible.” “It shouldn’t be, but obviously it is. Find out why.” “I could wake her and …”
His words were squeezed to a halt as Marika grabbed him by the throat and shoved him against the roughly hewed wall.
“No.”
He smiled through his pain. “You’re still worried about the curse?”
Her fingers tightened. She was not pleased that Kata had outmaneuvered her. Again.