Immortal Beloved - Kith & Kynn Book 2 Page 4

  “Still hooked on those coffin nails, I see,” he remarked dryly. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t smoke in my office, please.”

  The remark engendered a look of extreme annoyance. The tip of the cigarette burst into flame without benefit of a lighter. The strong scent of cloves emanated from the rich, dark tobacco.

  Morgan took a deep drag. “What are you going to do, Carnavorn?” A taunting smile was followed by the exhalation of smoke through his nostrils. “Throw me out of your fucking bar for smoking?” Tinged with just a hint of a brogue, his voice was akin to a whisky sotto; deep and touched with a hint of gravel.

  Brow wrinkling, Devon drew his shoulders back. The little bastard only stood five-foot-ten to his own six-four. In theory, he should be able to nail this pipsqueak into the ground. Yet he wouldn’t dare insist that the cigarette be extinguished. He did not wish to make his wife a widow this day.

  In truth, the cigarettes weren’t half as offensive as some other brands; they were much more akin to incense, which he could tolerate after a fashion. It was, too, the scent of those strange cigarettes that bought a rush of images to the forefront of his mind. He could easily recall the time when he’d first encountered Morgan. Every second of that surreal night was etched in his mind.

  The year was eighteen ninety-five…

  He and Ariel had been lovers for less than two weeks, but already she was enticing him into exploring her world. Each night she would take him to a new place, leading him further and further astray from the life of a moral upstanding young Lord.

  In truth, he was none of those things to begin with. At that time in his life he regarded all women as prostitutes, good for little more than giving a man pleasure. Not even a married woman held any esteem in his eyes, for what was a wife but a whore—bought and paid for. That Ariel was a lady of the night was true enough. But when other women had failed to capture his intellect—as well as his body—Ariel had succeeded brilliantly.

  A willing convert to the joys of the flesh she was introducing him to, Devon had eagerly trailed her as she introduced him to life in the slums. He was not surprised when one of her stops had been one of London’s most notorious opium dens; a place where one could buy oblivion, where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new. The degradations seemed to speak to her on a deeper level. He was soon to understand why.

  Entering the hideaway in her wake, a haze of smoke hung in the air; opium easily overwhelming his senses, making him dizzy and light-headed. As if in a dream, they’d waded through an ocean of prone bodies, Ariel leading him to a private chamber, one she seemed to know with some familiarity. Inside was a couple, already in the throes of a strange ritual of lovemaking. He remembered thinking there was a whiff of decay under the lavishness of the decadence.

  Cigarette in hand, Morgan Saint-Evanston lounged on a bed. Topcoat discarded on a nearby chair, his white dress shirt was unbuttoned to the waist. Lilith lay naked beside him; beautiful, sensuous and leonine. He was murmuring in a strange tongue as she made small cuts in his flesh with a strange sharp-edged silver charm. Stroking his inner thigh through his tight trousers, she lapped up his blood like a cat taking cream. Fingers tangled in her thick hair, he was clearly enjoying her assault on his flesh. Devon was mesmerized by the forbidden sensuality of lovers sharing more than their bodies as they engaged in a crimson-stained kiss.

  Guiding him to a chaise lounge, Ariel had undressed; shedding her clothes as a butterfly shed its chrysalis. Naked, she settled on the floor between his legs. The words she’d next spoken were compelling ones.

  “We take of our men,” she’d murmured with a smile. “But we give pleasure in return. Much pleasure, as you will see.”

  Indeed he had, watching Morgan and Lilith engage in violent sexual intercourse. At the same time, Ariel had begun arousing him in the most carnal of ways. Her cuts into his flesh had sent a delicious shiver straight into the very core of his soul. He knew then and there that he had found the place where he belonged.

  I wanted to cross over, he remembered himself thinking. I had no hesitation when I was given the chance…

  An abrupt movement brought him back to the present time. He reluctantly packed away the cherished memories of a past he could no longer reach out and touch in his dreams as he once had. His life was in a different place and his priorities had changed. Rachel had rescued him from the oblivion Ariel’s shadow too long cast on him. What he had with her was precious. He would make every effort to preserve it at any cost, even sell his soul if he must.

  Bored with watching the patrons below, Morgan shifted, losing patience. He turned away from the wall of mirrors. “I have not got all night to waste admiring the view,” he grumbled. “You had better have an excellent reason for beckoning me.”

  “I do, indeed, have a reason,” Devon admitted. “Though I’m surprised you came. I’d heard you’d retired.”

  Black eyes narrowed under the crafty downturn of arched brows. Tendrils of smoke curled in the air, drifting easily toward the ceiling before dissipating. “Not so much retired— I am more an independent in this present time.”

  Devon headed toward the bar. “Exactly what I wanted to hear.” A man who’d long ago cut all ties to following the rules, Devon admired Morgan’s keen intelligence, his powers of cold analysis and, most of all, his self-serving callousness. Morgan was successful simply because he did not let his heart rule his head.

  Morgan worked—if you could call what he did work—for an underground organization that monitored cultic activity within the mortal realm; a policing agency of a sort. There were laws governing the supernatural. Entities had the right to take human victims for sacrifice or food—but the wholesale slaughter of the weaker human order was not permitted. It was not a code all cultic beings honored. That mistake was usually their last one. Few survived a visit from Saint-Evanston.

  Morgan nodded toward the bar. “Pour me a drink and I will hear you out. I admit your message was an intriguing one. Lilith was one of my more—captivating—affairs.” He commandeered the nearest chair, not just sitting, but sprawling. One leg hooked over the armrest, the other stretched out in front of him, he looked very comfortable and in command. Gray ashes fluttered in the air around him but he did not seem to notice them or care.

  Devon felt the butterflies of uncertainty take flight in his gut. His gaze skimmed the man sitting before him. An alcoholic and absolute hedonist who pumped every poison known to mankind into his body, Morgan had a taste for beautiful women and carnal sex. He liked the intense pain—and utterly erotic pleasures—inflicted during the act of being taken by a Kynn woman. But it wasn’t that side of the man Devon was currently seeking. When Morgan bothered to snap out of his haze of booze, drugs and sex, he was the best damn mercenary walking the face of the earth. Killing was his art and he was the master composer.

  Logical, lethal, and absolutely ruthless, he was exactly what Devon needed.

  “To catch a slayer,” he said calmly. “You send a slayer.” He paused—then rushed on before the nerve to say the words deserted him. “You are the best there is, Morgan. I want to hire your services.”

  Chapter Three

  Adrien gunned his engine, taking his speed from fifty-five to sixty. He had no fear of speed. He liked the adrenaline rush of riding a motorcycle, the perfect fusion of man, machine and asphalt all performing in absolute sync. Anything could go wrong at any given second; a tire could blow, a jackrabbit could run into his path, an oncoming vehicle could drift into his lane. Any and all of these things could be lethal, but he was willing to throw his dice and take the gamble.

  He had nothing to lose.

  The open highway stretched endlessly ahead, a black snake coiled across the desert’s face. The sun was only a sliver on the far away horizon, sky shifting from shimmering hues of pinks and blues into the concentrated shade of evening’s purple veil. The night was his world; the moon the only orb he could safely bask beneath.

&nb
sp; A vampire possessed various strengths, but there was one enemy they could not fight: sunlight. Since becoming a creature of shadows, his flesh had lost the deep tan that laboring out of doors had once given him. Spend ten minutes in the light and he felt as though a serious case of the flu was setting in. Twenty minutes in direct exposure and he’d be on the ground, gasping and writhing in agony, frying like an egg on the sidewalk in hundred-degree heat. An hour and all that would be left of him would be bones and the ashes that used to be flesh. His physiognomy was a highly flammable one—something in sunlight seemed to trigger a sort of spontaneous combustion. It was a terrible way to die.

  Cracks in the asphalt made the ride an uncomfortable one. The state wasn’t very interested in spending a lot of money maintaining its back-area roads. Out in the middle of nowhere, it was the deadest, damnedest piece of Godforsaken land to be found on the face of this earth. From dawn to dusk, that burning orb in the sky stared down like a merciless god. Skin scorching heat sucked up every drop of moisture and powerful winds kicked up tornado-like storms of dirt that obscured the landscape for days on end. Only rabbits, rattlesnakes and the occasional yucca bush prospered on the barren hills.

  A border town no bigger than a blink in the road, La Lorona New Mexico was the kind of place that could sink into the desert sands and never be missed. Boasting only the basic necessities of civilization, the name originated from the old Mexican legend of a young widow who drowned her two sons and then herself. Reasons and versions differed according to the region. The river cutting through the land had long ago dried up. Only when torrential spring rains fell did the chasm in the land remember its purpose and, for a brief time, flourish.

  In this present time, La Lorona was home to no more than three hundred residents; closemouthed people who tended their business and took care of their own, exactly the way it’d been since oxen-drawn wagons had crossed the Colorado Rockies to escape the glacial winters. More than half the buildings on the five block Main Street expanse were shuttered years ago, never to reopen. Weeds flourished between the cracks in the sidewalks and local merchants kept hours no later than three in the afternoon. There were two traffic lights that actually worked. A midnight prowler in this sunset town was shit out of luck for entertainment. No wonder the locals had altered the state’s motto to read the ‘Land of Disenchantment.’

  Adrien chose this wasted hole in the wall because living was cheap, the winters were amazingly mild and it was easy to settle into without a lot of questions about his past. Migrant workers from Mexico walking the endless stretches of highway were commonplace and drug traffickers running methamphetamine labs had free reign of the desolate tracts throughout the area. It was so dead that not even the state of Texas, usually very territorial about land rights, bothered to stake its legal claim to the dozen or so miles that served as the unofficial state line. What did Texas need with one more prairie dog or scorpion? The next stop that could even be considered a town of any size was twenty-two miles away.

  There was a certain sense of peace to be found in such overwhelming isolation. It had been a long time since he’d felt so comfortable. Were he to choose a location to settle down for the rest of his life, he believed it would be this one. He was getting to know the area well and liking it. The spaces were wide and open, a far cry from the damp, fog-shrouded streets of London. He no longer belonged in England, hadn’t for many years. He’d never go back. The paths bringing him to this crossroads in his life were ones he had no desire to tread again. England was Lilith and he didn’t like thinking about his imprisonment under her control. She’d taken especial delight in humiliating him, taunting him, tempting him.

  She took her pound of flesh from me, determined to make my eternity a living hell.

  His speed increased to seventy-five, then eighty, eighty-five. The miles whizzed by, a dark dangerous blur. If he lost control of the bike, he’d total it and there would be no walking away.

  Realizing that he was going into that bad place in his mind, he eased up on the gas and let the motorcycle drop back to a comfortable cruising speed, a more legal sixty-five. Setting his sights on the road ahead, Adrien stuffed the sinister memories back into the shadowy velvet box of his consciousness and locked the lid. The demons might escape unbidden during sleep, but he did not have to let them haunt his every waking moment. He wanted to simply enjoy the ride, savor the peaceful desert scenery and its freedom.

  Thirty minutes later, the lighted city limits of Port Orchard hove into sight. Why it had been named that, nobody knew. There were no great bodies of water nearby and the area was not especially known for its fruit orchards. With a population of thirty thousand plus, it was the kind of location to be born in, but rarely one that people chose to die in if they didn’t have to. Like every city, it was sectioned off between the business and residential districts, one side of town being upper-class and prosperous, the other being on the low end of the poverty scale.

  Literally across the railroad tracks, the bar, convenience and junk store trade flourished, positioned haphazardly in a neighborhood where many of the houses were barely above the ranking of falling down shacks. Living on this side of town put people in fear of their lives, and it was not uncommon to pass rows of houses with bars in the doors and windows. Sad but true, residents locked themselves in at dusk to feel safe.

  A strip called the 'ho strut' ran straight down the middle, part of the train underpass leading to the seedier side. Ladies of the evening worked there, mainly because it offered shelter from the elements. It also gave the girls a quick place to hide when the cops were on patrol. On weekends, the strip was crawling with people, both on foot and on wheels. Biker bars with names like 'Riley’s Switch' had sawdust on the floor and signs at the door demanding all guns and knives be surrendered before entry would be permitted.

  Adrien felt right at home among the dregs and outcasts of society. It might not have been the lower class east end of London, but the sleazy atmosphere reeking of poverty and desperation came damn close. Technology might have advanced in the ninety-eight years since he crossed over, but the basest, most depraved desires of mankind had not. Drinking, fighting, cruising loose ladies for a quick blowjob—it was all business as usual.

  He spent about twenty minutes dragging the strip. He’d picked up prostitutes here before, used them to feed. It helped assuage his guilt a bit to know that these were working girls, women who knew the score and were willing to sell their bodies to men for a little pleasure. They were used to being treated bad, roughed up and slapped around. He tried to treat them with respect and always made sure he paid a woman a little extra for her efforts.

  This was the part of himself that he despised. He’d never quite learned to accept his hunger, no matter how many times he’d fallen. The sole grace that allowed him reasonable justification was the fact that he frequented society’s castaways to feed his craving. And though he hated his weakness, he’d never managed to quell the thrill of the hunt that set his heart to pounding. Conquest of the weaker species was now a part of his nature. He knew of others like himself, other Kynn who walked among mortals as though they were gods, but that was not his way. He only took what he needed, never more or less. He tried to be discrete, quiet about his unnatural needs. It was better that way, to be a lone wolf and not run with the pack.

  Rolling up to the curb and letting his bike idle in neutral, Adrien ogled the ladies. Clad in short skirts and stiletto heels, faces garish masks of heavy layers of make-up, they primped, waved and smiled.

  “Hey, honey, take a look at this,” one black woman called in a sassy voice, turning around and lifting her skirt to show the thong nestled like a piece of floss between her firm, round ass cheeks. She was stacked like a brick shithouse, too; rack front and center, a sheer defiance of the natural laws of gravity. They were also very fake. She probably made enough to easily afford that big set of tits. The trade in this market was not lacking for customers. Most of the women working the streets were of vario
us origins. Latinas, blacks and Caucasians of all shapes and sizes; huddled together sharing a cigarette when they weren’t hitting the curbs. The night was beginning to cool, but the women were hot, sexually primed, the dry desert air mingling with the scent of heavy perfumes. It was heady and enticing.

  He knew the one he wanted. It didn’t take long to find her.

  Leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette, she wore a tight faux leather mini-dress zipped down the front, gartered hose and open-toed sandals. Her long cinnamon-shaded hair was parted down the middle, hanging straight to her shoulders. A thick layer of pancake makeup had been applied to cover the pocks teenage acne had left in her skin. The rest was skillfully applied with a light hand. She didn’t go overboard with the war paint. She could have been a clerk in any convenience store, but she wouldn’t have made enough money to live on. The fact that she hung back from approaching every cruising vehicle at random told him that she was choosy. She wouldn’t go with any man who waved a twenty in her face. She might have been a whore, but she had standards.

  Recognizing him, she waved.

  He motioned for her to come over. Tossing aside her smoke, she sauntered with the attitude of a woman who had plenty of time, visually sizing him up. She clearly liked what she saw. She smiled, showing a row of crooked white teeth. Her gaze slid over every inch of him, lingering on his broad chest, then lower to his crotch.

  “I wasn’t expecting you tonight.” She spoke in the flat drawling tones that revealed her to be a native of the area.

  “I need a little action, Trisha,” he replied. “You free?” His own voice held only a trace of an accent. He’d almost managed to completely erase his English origins. Anyone who picked up on it, and few did, usually mistook him for an Aussie. He didn’t bother to correct them.

  She nodded. “Tuesdays are slow. I was just about to cut out and go home.” She reached out, giving his bicep a brief squeeze. “All the way tonight?”