Jasmine, Heather, and Marjorie linked hands, making blue-white static zing between them with Tara in the middle to draw her vamp-locator knowledge to the fore.
"The old stones are screaming," Heather said quickly, looking up at Damali. "The region is not just white-hot topside, but underground. The holy cities ... with the conflict going on near Beirut, Jordan, and north - Christian and Muslim and Jewish strongholds are hi flames."
"But they went to Lilith's bedchamber," Tara said with a shiver. "To her main lair that has never been breached in history - even warrior angels couldn't find it... it is an insane move, a fool's quest." She covered her face with her hands and breathed into them deeply as though trying to keep from hyperventilating.
"Yeah, but Carlos is the only fool I know that ever sat in the Chairman's throne and lived to tell about it as a living human being," Marlene countered. "Even warrior angels didn't do that... and if he had an old link to Cain that didn't all the way die out, then if anybody could find Lilith," she added, glancing at Damali, "it's him." Damali briefly closed her eyes, trying to find the silver lining in the mayhem surrounding her. "There's always a reason, there's always a reason ... there's always something good that comes out of every bad for the greater good," she murmured like a mantra, trying to remind herself of that and calm her nerves for the sake of the team as another wave of panic threatened to sweep through her.
"Ohmigod," Krissy said, beginning to rock. "From where we are in the South Pacific, they're already into the next day, fourteen to sixteen hours ahead of us, just before midnight there by an hour, perhaps. What if... oh, shit, they're outta their minds!"
"I know, I know," Damali said, pacing. "They're nuts."
"Just like the prophecies," Juanita murmured, holding her hands up in front of Inez as both women's eyes rolled back into their skulls, showing only the whites the moment each seer went under.
"And I saw the Lamb open one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, come and see... and I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him; and he went forth conquering, and to conquer." Inez's head snapped up with a gasp. Her voice had been a gravelly, chilling tone that was not her own.
"Revelations one and two!" Marlene screamed, running into the bedroom and searching
Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer for Damali's stones. "Where're your stones, child? Your divination tool! This is the big one! The first seal is opened! Call Father Pat - this is not a drill!"
CHAPTER TWO
If she could just rest... if he would just relent so she could regenerate... Lilith clawed at the thick ropes of sinew before her, barely able to lift her head to strike at his black ni**les with her fangs. She'd wailed so hard and long with pleasure that her voice was now only a weak rasp. Twelve days, and he'd promised her a month alone ... she couldn't stand it. He had to call in Jezebel and Delilah to take some of the abuse be fore she lost consciousness.
"No," he said in a wash of impassioned heat against her hair. "You're my favorite, and what you've done in this throne behind my back absolutely scorches me senseless." He sucked in a hissing breath. "Had I known the extent of your treachery, I would have come up here years ago... most certainly days ago." His voice dipped to a caressing whisper.
"But I just didn't know."
Lilith's head dropped back as she pleaded with him through another blinding orgasm.
"First it was the topside desert near the beginning of all history..." she gasped in an elongated wail, "I could barely take it - then near the burial tombs of the pharaohs that Rome overran... now this. I am vapor!"
"Yessss.... Now thiissss," he hissed, promising a huge serpent-shift in the offing that made her shriek.
Black tears of pleasure coursed down her face. He'd promised her his best and damn if he wasn't delivering. His huge spaded tail was wrapped around her and what had once been Cain and Dante's old throne. In his passion, her ecstasy-crazed husband had actually ripped it up out of the floor anchors, using his tail to repeatedly bring her into his every thrust while holding on to the Vampire Council's pentagram-shaped table for leverage. Never in her existence...most assuredly never by a vampire that championed this throne ... only the power that belonged to this entity could produce such near-fatal delirium. Ruby blood splashed everywhere as his massive talons dug into the table's veins, causing the center fanged crest to close its eyes and shudder with need. Hot drool splattered the table, the floor, her hair, and shoulders. When she peered up, he was foaming at the mouth with his eyes shut tightly, images fluttering beneath his lids from all that his deceased heirs had carnally committed to that throne.
That her husband, the ultimate Dark Lord, had actually consummated a deal in the Chairman's throne, giving her co-rulership of it to prevent any further coups, had literally made her pass out when he'd generously offered it on a cumming gasp in Dananu. Bats were limp on the floor, spent, unfed, so frenzied for twelve unending days and nights of mating that they couldn't whirl themselves into a transport if they'd wanted to. Scythe-bearing messengers were prostrate in the hall, exhausted and weak from the spectacle that created copulation frenzy in the corridors. The Unnamed One had never graced the council like this, not as long as Dante ruled it, and never during Cain's short reign. He'd brought a lover to chambers, here, as though it were his Level Seven lair, and marked territory, one level up closer to the surface? It was so incredible that Lilith's pleasure sob became bleating hiccup wails.
"Strike me, Lilith!" he thundered, beginning to shift. Couriers and messengers swooned and passed out in the cavern just beyond the chamber doors. Four exterminator guards flatlined, the energy that rippled pleasure across the marble floor was so great. Tortured voices rose to a piteous crescendo in the Sea of Perpetual Agony, begging to be able to feel just a fraction of that ecstasy just one more time. Fren zied rats ran around in circles, humping any surface they could find, including exhausted bats. Mating calls from the upper levels wafted down the dark corridor, coaxing the twisted sensual energy up to their realms.
"Do it now!" came the urgent command that made Lilith lift her head, yank back, and deliver a cobra-quick strike against his throat as he bent down for it. The wail he released as they hit the floor and his coils swiftly wrapped her into a pulsing squeeze, crushing the throne with it against her back, caused her scream to bring down stalactites. Convulsing in a rhythmic pulse, the huge cobra head lolled from side to side, hissing, eyes sealed, then struck her jugular.
When she came to, he was lying on his side, propped up on his elbow, looking at her, but normalized in his gorgeous human male form. He stretched out a massive, black feath
ered wing and covered her with it, caressing her cheek. She turned her face into his rough palm and kissed it.
"It has truly been a long time since anybody has taken me there, Lilith," he said with a satisfied smile, still slightly breathing hard.
She snuggled closer to him and chuckled. "Wow."
"Better than Dante or Cain?"
Her eyes were wide with disbelief. "Of course - are you mad? Their throne is in splinters." He chuckled an easy, satisfied laugh and then slowly rolled over to flop on his back, his wings spread-eagle on the battered floor. "I think I killed some of your messengers and a few Harpies. I'll do a body count later and replace them ... I was simply overcome." She slid up onto his chest, vastly flattered, and kissed him slowly, then licked the site of his oozing mate mark until he shivered. "Do not concern yourself with such trivial matters. I'm just grateful that you visited me like this after all these years." He nodded, winded still. "It's been too long, Lilith ... I don't even remember what came between us."
"Good," she whispered petting his huge, granite-cut chest. "Neither do I." Without looking over at it, he began gathering splinters of the destroyed throne together, absently mending it with one hand outstretched and petting her with the other.
"Pitiful," he said with a smile. "I can't even think it back together right now without using my hands."
She sighed, but then tensed as she felt his body become rigid. "What is it?" Lilith sat up quickly, her gaze studying his as he looked up to the ceiling. Her husband was on his feet in one lithe move, toppling her to the floor. His black feathered wings were wrapped around him and beginning to transform into leathery batwing membrane. His tail ripped through his back and he bellowed up to the ceiling, eyes beginning to glow. "Not f**king now!"