Lothaire (Immortals After Dark #12)(18)

He inclined his head regally.

Her lips parted. “I knew you were ambitious, but this is scarcely believable! Even gods tread carefully with Dorada. Especially the evil ones.” I’ve never been more defenseless against her. . . .

“I faced the sorceress and her lackeys seven days ago, yet here I

stand.”

He’d survived a confrontation? “She will target your Bride to punish you! Unless you killed her?” Am I free from the prophecy at last?

“Not yet.”

“If you left her alive, then she will be coming for us.”

“Yes,” he said casually.

“We must use this ring to return my godhood, Lothaire! And quickly.”

“Even the Ring of Sums has limitations. If the ring could make one a god, then Dorada would have commanded it to do so. I believe we are bound to the realm of the immortals.”

“In any case, give the ring to me.”

“Three weeks ago, I was trapped by foes, an organization called the Order. They imprisoned me and confiscated it.”

She was tempted to disbelieve such a story—few in the Lore were as formidable as Lothaire—but he couldn’t speak untruths. “Why would they target you?”

“To examine me, determine my weaknesses, then execute me. Many other warriors from the Lore were captured as well.”

“These foes must be exceptionally cunning to have trapped you.”

“Their weapons are advanced. But I will steal the ring back. I depart tomorrow night, once you are settled. And once we have . . . caught up,” he added.

“You must destroy Dorada, Lothaire. You must.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I intend to, as soon as I reclaim the ring. Consider the sorceress as good as dead.”

Reassured somewhat, she asked, “How long will it take to retrieve it?”

“A night? A month? I can’t say for certain,” he said. “I drank the blood of my former jailer. He knows how to find the ring, and I can tap his memories through my dreams. Have already seen some.”

Saroya wasn’t a patient god. “This body ages with each day.”

Lothaire prowled around her, shamelessly raking his gaze over her form. “It is much changed.”

“Mirror!” she ordered imperiously.

With a bored lift of his brow, he pointed behind her, to one hanging on a paneled wall.

Saroya crossed to the glass and gazed into it, cringing at her prison garb.

The scratch on her neck drew her attention. Would that scar? Would it heal before she was made into a vampire? Once this body became immortal, it would be frozen forever—its appearance fixed.

Lothaire traced to stand behind her. “You’ve suffered no ill from your time in prison, have only grown more beautiful.”

She scrutinized her figure. Had Elizabeth lost weight? Saroya had resigned herself to her new short frame—mere inches over five feet—but she couldn’t accept this leanness. “The body’s too slim.”

She recalled one of the few times she’d risen in that fetid jail. She’d read Elizabeth’s journal, noting that the mortal “worked out” every day in her cell. Unfortunately, it showed.

How Saroya missed her own features! Her eyes had once been large and feline yellow, slit down the center with a thin black iris. Her lips had been bloodred, her skin pale like the moon. She’d been almost six feet tall and voluptuous to an obscene degree.

Whenever she’d descended from her godplane to earth, men had been awestruck just to behold her. Once she beckoned for them, they’d offered themselves to her insidious brand of death. . . .

She ran her hands over this new lean figure, groping for softness. How much flesh can the body gain before Lothaire finds the ring?

At least Elizabeth’s bust had grown to a decent size. When Saroya cupped herself with relief, Lothaire’s eyes grew hooded.

Saroya abruptly dropped her hands. In a brisk tone, she said, “This face is the most lovely of my temples’.”

Though this present guise couldn’t compare to hers when she’d been a cat-eyed enchantress, Saroya had enjoyed some success luring victims. Males wanted to protect the vulnerable-looking girl and pluck her innocence. Instead, Saroya had plucked their hearts, eyes, and testes.

Unlike her twin sister, Lamia, a goddess of life and fertility, Saroya was a virgin deity and forever would be, defending her chastity to the death. . . .

To others’ deaths.

Yet Lothaire believed she was a sexual creature, believed she’d never taken a lover into Elizabeth’s body out of faithfulness to him. . . .

“Indeed lovely.” His voice had grown huskier. “Who came before this human?”

“I possessed a middle-aged professor of Americana. I had much to learn from him, kept him alive for most of the nineties. After him came a shovel-toothed hunchback of a woman. I leapt off a building to be rid of her.” She frowned. “That transfer hadn’t proved as instantaneous as I’d hoped.”

“How are these temples chosen for you?”

“It could be based on a bloodline. Only the one who cursed me can say.” Lamia, damn you to the Ether! “All I know is that I will do anything to remain in Elizabeth—and you would do well to help me. I promise you, the next form for your Bride cannot possibly be better, if you could even find me. I might possess a male, or a baby, or an octogenarian. Not a young and fair innocent.”