Somewhat startled by his approach, she hesitated. "But we lost his trail when the second seal broke. They released the red stallion . . . there was nothing more we could do."
"I know," he said with a deep, slow chuckle, and then let out a long sigh. "Don't make me repeat my request. Come to me, Lilith. I've waited a very long time for this."
Her voice caught in her throat as she braced for her final extermination. Lilith's gaze slid from her husband's sensual smile and lush mouth that crested a hint of fang down to his stone-carved chest to witness his calm breaths. His sinewy abdomen was rigid with want, and her gaze briefly considered the massive erection he owned. Just seeing that made herfight the impulse to back away quickly. Whatever torture he'd planned this time in exchange for her failure had turned him on so much that her extinction was imminent.
"Just make it swift," she murmured inDananu , tears rising in her eyes as she finally approached the edge of the huge chamber bed. Her thighs came to a rest against black silk and gold brocade. "While you have every right to prolong my torture . . . I beseech you, for old time's sake . . . as your first . . . the only one who stood with you against Adam and even the Unnamed at the beginning of days . . . be swift."
"Be swift?" Her husband smiled and raised an eyebrow. His dark eyes hunted her. "Why, Lilith, I am completely offended."
Lilith's voice fractured as her breath left her body. His power snatch was so quick and severe that she didn't even have time to gasp.
He smiled and kissed her slowly as he brought her beneath him and extended his onyx-hued wings to blanket them both. "You asked me to be swift and I complied. But I had never considered my giving you pleasure a torturous thing. . . . Should that be swift, too?"
She looked up into his intense black irises that held the depths of all darkness. Unable to helpherself , she touched the side of his face, confused when she witnessed raw passion and appreciation in his eyes-something she'd never seen to this degree in them before.
"You did it," he said quietly, nuzzling her throat and beginning to call her jugular vein to the surface of her skin. "You made him. The males who took the lead throne of evil on my most cherished Vampire Council couldn't produce him, but you, my wife, you did." His voice dropped to a sensual whisper. "My own son, Dante, couldn't even do it, but you did."
Relief washed through her and her body relaxed in his hold, but she didn't say a word for fear of ruining the moment. She allowed him to lead the negotiation for now. Dark energy began to enter her pores, infusing her with a slow, inner-leaking pleasure that caused her to writhe beneath him with a feral moan.
"He is not lost, Lilith," her husband crooned as his hands lavished her body, leaving her so sensation-drunk from his touch that she could barely move. "He homed to my energies. . . . Millennia ago I had been there to challenge the one who we never name, and now, my heir has gone to Mount Temptation and slipped out of his birth skin to find the dark chrysalis of transformation. Forty thousand demon troops as a cannon-fodder diversion . . . what you did up onMasada was epic, Lilith," he said, his breaths becoming ragged. "I will give you what I wanted to give our son, Dante-what he was never demon enough to have earned as a reward."
She arched with a shriek as he entered her and bit her simultaneously in one deft move. It felt as though her heart would explode as temporal colors and scents and sounds from the earth plane erupted inside her. She dug her nails into his shoulders, her talons growing as he sent power into her throbbing vein while he moved against her, causing climatic bursts. When he lifted his head from the infusion, fangs dripping with her black blood, she was barely conscious.
"Give this to your councilmen, and surprise them with the gift. They cannot pass it yet, only my heir will have that right. But you have pleased me, Lilith. . . . This time you have outdone yourself." He kissed her, making her taste her own power-infused blood on his mouth. "Stay with me this morning of your own accord . . . and let me take my time to do this with agonizingly slow precision. Tomorrow, you can share this with them. Is that fair exchange?"
All she could do was nod.
"It's too close to dawn," Sebastian said, looking at his fellow councilmen. His gaze ricocheted between them, the chamber doors, and the goblet of blood he was afraid to touch for fear of being poisoned. "A meeting now, after months of trying to rebuild all the damage . . . what do you think this could mean?"
Fallon Nuit kept his eyes on the huge black marble doors of the Vampire Council Chambers as he spoke in a resigned, philosophical tone. "The caverns murmur that she was called by her husband. After the fledgling from Nod was lost, and given the heavy losses atMasada where the Arc of the Covenant was actually unleashed against us . . . I would say that this is a fond farewell gathering, a prelude to sure assassination." Fallon made a tent with his fingers before his mouth and closed his eyes. "When the Harpies come, do not struggle,mon ami . They will delight in it, and that will be added to your torture terrors. Rest assured, I know."
Yonnie leaned forward and filled a goblet of blood from the pentagram-shaped table, his gaze fixed on the golden-fanged crest that revealed all evil machinations beneath it. He absently took a sip. "Then, why worry, Sebastian. If you're poisoned, that's f**ked-up, but a better way to go than the wall."
"Because you won't die if poisoned!" Sebastian hissed. "You will writhe and suffer the effects as it eats your insides out, but you will not perish!"
"Aw'ight, so my bad."Yonnie flopped back against his throne. "There were so many things I wanted to do before this bullshit went down."
Fallon reached for a goblet and then knocked his against Yonnie's."Strange that we are only now coming to a strained peace accord, you and I, when it is so near our end.Ironic,n'estce pas? "
Yonnie nodded, his gaze holding Nuit's."Oui. But don't get it twisted. I ain't done hatin' your foul ass yet. But given the circumstances, at the moment, we cool."
Nuit smiled. "That is what I most admire in you, Yolando. Rare, that quality of steadfastness and blunt honesty . . . has a ring of the old Councilman Rivera to it. If there was anything I wanted to accomplish before being terminated from office, it would have been settling the score with that impossible-to-kill bastard." Nuit sighed. "Alas, but we are still on a sinking ship together, gentlemen."
"Maybe if we all . . ." Sebastian's words trailed off as the floor began to rumble.
Sebastian foolishly tried to transport out by gathering a dark energy funnel around himself, but the bats refused to respond to the command so close to dawn. They desperately flew counter-clockwise to his funnel directive in an attempt to get him back to his throne for safety. But as he fought to go in the opposite direction, the floor cracked, splattering blood from the rich veins in the marble. The conflict left the bats winded and they simply dropped Sebastian to sprawl in the middle of the floor.
Yonnie just shook his head and took a deep sip from his goblet.
Nuit coolly regarded Sebastian's shriek as Harpies poured out of the floor fissure, their little gray-green gargoyle bodies moving like a swift, demonic tide to cover Sebastian.
"Stop fighting them," Nuit said, resigned. "There is nowhere to run."
Yonnie stood as Sebastian's screams became piteous begging to be released. Poised to begin fighting, he battle bulked and took aim to blow away anything that approached with a black charge.
"There aremillions of them," Nuit said, standing to walk right into the skittering, screeching Harpie swarm."Adieu, mon ami," he said with a petulant nod. "It has been, as you say, real."
Yonnie watched in pure disbelief as the forms of both councilmen were overrun by gray-green creatures until they couldn't be distinguished from the thicket of screeching, scrambling bodies that dragged them into the fissure. Cold sweat made Yonnie's suit beneath his council robe cling to his body. He lifted his chin as Lilith's voluptuous silhouette caught his peripheral vision. She sashayed forward as her Harpies began to climb up Yonnie's body.