Bound By Darkness (Guardians of Eternity #8)(15)

“Something like that.”

His gaze lowered to the small br**sts perfectly outlined by the black spandex.

“What do you intend to offer?”

She growled, but amazingly she made no effort to sink her pearly fangs into his arm. In fact, her mouth curled into what he assumed was intended to be a smile, although it was remarkably closer to the onset of rigor mortis.

“I’m willing to give you a few days to track down Tearloch,” she managed to choke out. “If you swear you will only capture the child and not sacrifice her.”

Curiouser and curiouser.

“Why?”

“I won’t help you kill an innocent.”

He pressed the blade back to her neck. “Don’t play stupid.”

She snapped her fangs, barely missing his fingers. “Careful, fey.”

“Earlier you refused to even discuss my need to stop Tearloch and Sergei,” he reminded her. “What changed?”

She shifted until the blade was no longer burning her skin, her raven braid spilling across the damp pavement.

“I’m no more anxious than you for the world to end. Especially if it means becoming enslaved by the minions of hell.”

Ariyal shook his head. “You really are a terrible liar, poppet.”

She made a sound of impatience. “Look, I’ve offered to give you the time you need to track down your tribesman. What does it matter why?”

“Because I don’t trust you.”

She met him glare for glare. “Believe me, the feeling is entirely mutual.”

“I should return you to Avalon.”

Something that might have been panic flared through her eyes before she was crushing it beneath a layer of ice.

“I’ll only escape again,” she warned in frigid tones. “And the next time I won’t hesitate to haul your ass to the Commission.”

Ariyal silently cursed.

He was an idiot.

His tribe had suffered untold pain and humiliation to be rid of their ties to the Dark Lord. He couldn’t afford to be distracted now that there was a chance the brutal bastard might be returned to this world.

The sensible solution would be to kill the perilously tempting vampire. Or at the very least to return her to Avalon and lock her in the lower harems where nothing could escape.

Instead, he was going to keep her with him.

What choice did he have? There wasn’t any place he could put her, not even in her grave, where she wouldn’t be nagging at his thoughts.

“You swear not to interfere?” he rasped.

“Not unless you try to kill the child.”

“Bloody hell, I know I’m going to regret this,” he muttered, rising to his feet, although he kept the dagger handy.

Jaelyn was upright and angrily tossing back her long braid in less than a heartbeat.

“You and me both.”

Still fully aroused from the feel of her body beneath him and furious with his odd compulsion to have her near, Ariyal grasped her upper arm and jerked her across the road.

“Let’s go.”

“Go?” She scowled, but allowed herself to be led toward the back of the looming townhouses. “Where?”

“If you insist on hanging around then you can at least make yourself useful.”

Her lips parted to offer a scathing comment, only to snap shut as they came to a halt near a servants’ entrance.

“The mage,” she said, her hand instinctively reaching for the shotgun that she usually carried strapped to her side. She glared at him when she came up empty. “And he’s brewing something.”

He nodded, catching the sweet scent drifting through the air.

“Yes.”

“It smells ...” She blinked in surprise. “... good.”

“Fey.”

“What?”

Ariyal breathed in deeply. “The plants he’s using are grown only by the fey.”

Her surprise hardened to suspicion. “Do you know what he’s concocting?”

He shrugged. “I would guess it’s a potion used to keep him from aging. Mages are humans and must use magical herbs to make them immortal.”

The suspicion remained.

No big surprise.

“You’re sure it’s not a spell he’s about to cast?”

“He’s a dark mage.”

“Yeah, I got that,” she snapped impatiently. “All the more likely he’s about to create some nasty potion, right?”

He studied her pale, perfect face. It was impossible to determine a vampire’s age. Jaelyn could be a few decades old or several millennia. But he suspected that she was barely out of her foundling years, despite her skills as a Hunter. There were too many gaps in her knowledge for her to be an ancient.

“His power comes from blood.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. Blood magic was a perverted form of true magic. “Either his own or that of a sacrifice.”

Her gaze weighed his open revulsion toward Sergei. “And your power?” she demanded.

“A gift from nature.”

It was the truth, and yet Jaelyn’s gaze narrowed as she sensed he was keeping something hidden.

“There’s more.”

He hesitated. He preferred to keep a few of his lesser-known skills ... lesser known. It was, after all, his secret tolerance to iron that had allowed him to escape from Jaelyn just days ago.