Dark Debt_ A Chicagoland Vampire - Chloe Neill Page 0,8

the group when you were gone, and his behavior was no better. I did not go back.”

Balthasar’s eyebrows lifted. “It seems we are being frank. But it was a different time. I’ll not apologize for what I was, nor will I request your apology.”

Ethan’s gaze darkened. “I owe you no apologies.”

“Perhaps you do, perhaps you do not.” Hands still linked between his knees, Balthasar leaned forward. “But do you owe me thanks? You owe your immortality, and all the benefits it has brought you, to me.”

I felt the quick rise in Ethan’s magic. “And why are you here now?”

“I’d say to make amends, but that sounds equally naive and pretentious. Let’s say I became . . . unassailably curious.”

“Because I have power?”

Balthasar dipped his chin a bit, managed a wicked smile that edged toward creepy and malevolent. “Because you’ve become so interesting. As have your . . . accoutrements.”

“Careful,” Ethan warned. “Or you will quickly wear out your welcome.”

Balthasar made a vague sound of disagreement, then stood. He walked toward the bookshelf, long fingers lingering on the back of the chair. Before I could blink, he stood before the tall shelves, fingers now trailing across the mementos Ethan had collected over the centuries.

I’d barely seen him move.

God, but he was fast. Faster than any vampire I’d seen. He wasn’t just a relic or an anachronism of an older age, but a powerful predator. And he was showing off.

In consideration of the threat, I straightened beside Ethan, felt his answering attentiveness.

Balthasar picked up a small crystal globe, let it glide across his fingers.

“I’ll warn you again,” Ethan said, “and for the last time. Use care.”

“Care?” Balthasar asked. “The same care that you would show me?”

The world began to vibrate beneath my feet, as if the House had been suddenly perched on the edge of a machine large enough to spin the world on its tilting axis. It tilted around me—the entire room—while I stayed upright.

Me . . . and Balthasar.

Chapter Three

THE VAMPIRE’S GIFT

I gripped the back of the couch as the world shifted, saw Ethan’s eyes go wide. Saw his mouth form my name—“Merit?”—but heard nothing but the pounding of blood in my ears.

I glanced up, vertigo racking me as perspective shifted, caught Balthasar’s intense glance.

“What are you doing to me?” I demanded.

Balthasar smiled venomously as the sound grew louder and faster, as if hornets buzzed through my head. “I am demonstrating what it means to be one of my vampires.”

I became a marionette, pulled toward him as if gravity’s axis had shifted, sucking me sideways. I fought back—of course I fought back, tried to pinwheel my arms and legs to move. But the effort was useless. He dragged me stiffly forward, pulled me toward him by the sheer power of his will.

Balthasar had called me. Balthasar, who stood smiling through hooded lids, had managed to draw me in despite my obvious reluctance, my palpable fear.

This wasn’t supposed to work on me.

When Mallory had brought Ethan back to life, her power over him had briefly lingered. She’d been able to funnel her magic through him, and he’d detested the violation, her presence inside the sanctity of his mind.

I understood that feeling now, because that’s precisely what this was—a violation. By compelling me forward, he’d stripped me of my right and will, my ability to say no.

If this was glamour, the calling of a vampire to its Master, how did other vampires survive it? How did they live with the intrusion? The invasion? How was this different from what Mallory had done?

I glanced back, intending to scream for help, wondering why Ethan, Malik, and Luc hadn’t risen to stop him, to help me.

But they looked frozen behind me. Not because Balthasar had stopped time, but because I was moving faster, at the same speed that Balthasar had demonstrated a moment before.

I fought for control of my own body, of my own mind. I’d long ago learned to keep blocks in place to keep my keen vampire senses from overwhelming me with sounds, smells, and tastes. I tried to pull them down, imagined their working like heavy metal shutters, creating a seawall between my mind and the buffering waves of his magic. But it was like trying to hold back a hurricane with an umbrella. The magic spilled around it, over it, under it, and through it like a leviathan.

And with the leviathan came a pulse of passion and arousal so keen it was nearly painful. My body felt suddenly electric, every nerve