Night's Honor (Elder Races #7)(10)

He gave her a light smile that showed too many teeth. “Of course I’m looking for you, Tess. It’s only a matter of time before I find you.”

“Get out!” she hissed. Horror tightened an invisible hold around her neck, restricting her breathing. She brandished the useless knife. “Get out of my head!”

“You shouldn’t have done it, Tess.” Malphas’s voice held a caressing tone. He strode toward her, moving at a leisurely pace. “Eathan was mine, and you stole him from me. And I never forgive someone who steals from me.”

“He wasn’t yours to take,” she said between her teeth. “He didn’t know any better. He was just a stupid kid.”

“You know, most people don’t really understand the definition of agony,” said Malphas as he circled her. “Nor can they grasp the concept of eternity, yet both of those things together are a powerful combination.”

At his words, wind blew over her and grew hot, until every inch of her skin burned. The pain was truly unendurable. She screamed again and, desperate to stop it any way she could, she turned the knife on herself.

The noise she made, half grunt, half whimper, woke her up. As she bolted into an upright position, her breath sawed in her throat and her gaze darted everywhere.

Her tired back muscles protested the sudden movement, sharp pain shooting down her spine. The day had progressed significantly, the sun was high overhead, and the temperature had warmed so much that she was burning up, wrapped as she was in the blanket. She pulled it off then tore out of her jacket to let the balmy air cool her overheated skin.

She could sense no presence other than the ocean, no other sound but the wind and the waves.

“It’s just a dream,” she whispered, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. “It’s not real.”

She had been telling herself that for a week, ever since she had run away from Las Vegas and Malphas’s employment. No matter how many nightmares she had, they were all just dreams. Not even the most ancient and Powerful of the Djinn could enter a person’s dreams.

She didn’t think.

But her words were a cold comfort. While her dreams might not be real, they were still, in the end, quite true. She used to believe she had a bright future, and now, suddenly, her life was reduced to choosing the lesser of two evils in an effort just to survive.

Compared to endless torture by a vengeful pariah Djinn, life with a Vampyre might not be so bad after all.

*dpgroup.org*
THREE

Most of Marin Headlands on the Northern Peninsula was federally protected land, given over to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, but for two major exceptions.

The first was Evenfall, the Nightkind Palace that lay just north of Rodeo Beach, along with a small city of shops and services that clustered around the castle’s stone walls.

The second exception was Xavier del Torro’s estate. According to the directions, the property lay roughly twenty minutes’ drive north of the Nightkind Palace.

After such a sullen start to the day, the sunset turned the sky and ocean into a fiery blaze of color, a canopy of gold, orange and rose arching over water that was almost purple. The last strong strands of sunlight pierced through tall redwood trees that bordered the narrow, winding road, causing blinding patches of dark and light that strobed through her windshield and made driving a challenge.

Light-headed from hunger and the lack of proper rest, she drove carefully, tense from wrists to shoulders. Xavier had not been exaggerating. Once she left the highway, the road had no safety railings and almost no shoulder.

After an intensely uncomfortable trip through the dense forest, the road broke out of the tree line and followed the curving, rocky edge of the coast. The last part of the drive was startlingly beautiful, with the ocean to her left and the forest on her right.

Due to the position of the road as it followed the coastline she saw the estate a few minutes before she came to it. A large, Spanish-style mansion graced the shoreline, with a pigmented stucco facade that was a warm yellow-gold color that seemed to glow in the blaze of the sunset.

The house lay behind a matching wall that barricaded the property from the road for several acres, but even from a distance, she could see glimpses of gracious arches, tile roofing, and large, black-metal framed windows, along with the rooftops of other buildings.

Finally she pulled off the road and onto the short drive, and almost immediately came to a halt by an intercom box in front of huge arched metal gates. As she rolled down her window, a pleasant male voice came over the intercom.

“Good evening. How may I help you?”

“My name is Tess Graham,” she told the unseen man. “Mr. del Torro asked me to come this evening.”

“Of course. We are expecting you. Please follow the drive around the main house and park in the small lot at the side. I will come out to meet you.” With a well-oiled hum, the gates opened.

“Here goes nuthin’, kid,” she muttered. She drove in, and the gates swung smoothly shut behind her, blocking out the world.

That could almost be a comfort, except, well, it wasn’t.

Inside the walls, she got her first real sense of the size of the estate. Several acres of well-tended, emerald green lawn stretched around the main house, which despite its size was gracious rather than ostentatious. Well-placed trees dotted the expanse, along with a variety of bushes and flowers.