Secrets don't disappear after seduction...Elizabeth Silk is struggling to reconcile her passion for the vampire overlord Saloman and her allegiance to the vampire hunters. When a shocking vampire revolt calls Saloman away from her, she refuses to follow him.
To make matters worse, Saloman's beloved cousin Luk has been
found and awakened by one of his greatest enemies. Frenzied
with bloodlust, Luk embarks on a killing spree and prepares to
expose Saloman's biggest vulnerability: Elizabeth.
But under Saloman's regime, vampires have become less concerned with secrecy, no longer willing to hide their power. Rumors are swirling about attacks on humans. After Saloman joins forces with the vampire hunters to consolidate his power, Elizabeth begins to understand her role in the inevitable collision of the two worlds. She could bring resolution between vampires and humans - if she can manage to stay alive long enough to play both sides.
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Excerpts:
When the earth moved, the vampire Saloman felt a surge of exquisite pleasure almost akin to sexual release. The tension in him snapped, broken by the rush of rare, intoxicating fear.
Dawn approached, and he was too close to the earth¬quake’s center for safety, too isolated in these Peruvian mountains to be discovered should he become buried under an immovable fall of rock. Already he could hear the thunder of incipient avalanches and landslides drowning out the lesser destruction of man-made edifices, but if he honed his supernatural hearing, he could just about make out the distinctive thuds of collapsing wood and masonry in the distant villages. The sounds of wreckage brought him a certain amount of satisfaction. The villages were already empty of life—he’d seen to that over the last couple of weeks.
He, Saloman, was one of the very few able-bodied beings left on this mountain. Even the animals had fled, their instincts warning them that the earth was angry. Unlike them, Saloman savored that anger, that knowledge of a unique power far superior to his own, a power before which even his strength could do nothing. And so he lay on his hard mountain ledge in the dark, reveling in his rare moment of helplessness, smiling up at the black, wavering sky while the earth under him heaved and cracked, splitting rocks and trees, hurling down the flimsy village buildings.
He knew the risk; he didn’t want to end his existence or to return to the tortured sleep of death. He didn’t want to leave this world. He didn’t want to leave Elizabeth. And yet still he had come closer than he should to wait for the earth to shake—partly because he wanted to feel the massive power of it, partly because, like the rebellious boy he’d once been, he wanted to dare the danger.
It was an indulgence he shouldn’t have allowed himself. He acknowledged that as the ledge of rock split under his back, hurling him off the edge. At the last moment, he grasped onto the one stable corner, giving himself a modicum of control as he jumped the fifty feet or so onto the hard, jagged ground below—more from memory than sight, since the tumbling boulders and dust impaired his night vision.
By the time he’d found a flatter foothold sheltered enough to prevent any more stones from landing on his head and shoulders, the quake had stopped. The mountain, however, hadn’t. It continued to spit rocks down toward him, and below he could hear them gathering pace and volume. By morning, the mountain would have changed its shape.
Fear was good. He was glad he’d come up here to remember what it was like to be afraid. Confront your fears, his cousin Luk had told him, even before Saloman had died and been reborn a vampire. Luk had turned him, and had taught him well, just as if he’d known that Saloman would be the last of their Ancient race. Saloman had learned to face soul-destroying loneliness; he’d fought and defeated everyone who threatened him. There was no one left who could invade his mind and find him wanting—which had been his first and most intense fear, the one that had formed his boyhood and never quite left him. And yet he could think of his father now without pain or hurt or terror, and he knew that if it had been possible for them to meet again, he would not be afraid. He had no reason to be.
Saloman lay down once more, gazing up at the steady sky while the mountain rearranged itself with noisy, dust-filled aggression. He smiled, because no one else could possibly have done what he just had. No one had ever done what he was doing now.
Watch me, Elizabeth. I will prevail. The world will do my bidding. You can’t doubt it.
It was his own thought. He didn’t send it to her. He wouldn’t even tell her about this; he would let her find out for herself. Perhaps he’d even go to her, so he was with her when she made the discovery. Hunger tore through him. Blood and sex and Elizabeth. A reward before the next stage began.
He sat up, unable to be still any longer. His lesson in humility had, in the end, fed his self-belief. Only he could have survived the earthquake from here; he alone could unite and direct the world. No one could stop him. And as the world learned his power, who would want to? He’d find his way down the mountain and drink some human blood before he began his journey across the world to Scotland.
But as he rose, a scream of rage and terror slammed into his mind. Saloman let out an involuntary cry, grasping his head in both hands to prevent the pain, the anguish, instinctively trying to squeeze out the howling voice that should have been mere memory and yet felt as real as the rocks sliding and crashing their way down the mountainside. The flash of impossible presence surged and then vanished as swiftly as it had come, leaving Saloman to drop his hands slowly from his face.
Which was when he realized he had no time to analyze himself for sanity or injury. In a moment, he was going to be buried deep under an avalanche. Saloman hurled himself forward and leapt into darkness.
*
She gripped the stake, bracing her free hand against the rock. She didn’t need the detector anymore. She could sense Ancient.
He moved differently, like a shadow around the curve of the hill, gliding over the boulder a yard away from her feet. And instead of attacking, he stood still on top of the boulder and regarded her in silence. Only his long hair stirred in the breeze.
Slowly, Elizabeth lowered her stake. “Saloman.”
Saloman stepped down from the boulder and walked the distance between them. She tried to speak, questions and information tangling in her head and on her lips. In the end, she never made more than an inarticulate gurgle, because the words vanished as his sheer presence overwhelmed her. There was only his name in her head, his profound black eyes to drown in, his body pressing her flat into the rock. The hilt of his sword, a turning gift from Luk, brushed against her hip.
Wordlessly, she lifted her face to his. But he didn’t kiss her mouth. His silken lips took her neck in a strong, urgent pull. The hard shaft of his erection pressed between her thighs, and inappropriate lust galloped through her. Well, it had been a long time, several weeks. . . .
It seemed he felt the same. His tongue lapped at her vein and without warning his teeth pierced her skin. Her mouth opened in a silent cry of pain that vanished into the surge of fierce, familiar pleasure. She gripped his arms hard, letting herself glory just for a moment in the blissful weakness of her blood rushing into his mouth in answer to the tug of his lips.
So lost was she in the blood kiss that it was a moment before she realized he’d unzipped her jeans and pushed them and her panties down over her hips.
“Saloman, the hunters are here,” she managed. “They’re coming now.”
His cool, stroking hands left her hips, perversely disappointing her, until he seized the Ancient detector from her frozen hand and hurled it into the night. Before she could object to this vandalism, he lifted her and entered her body in one swift, gliding movement that shattered the remnants of her resistance.
Blood and sex and Elizabeth, he said inside her head.
Bastard. Can’t you even say hello?
He detached his teeth from her neck and flicked his tongue over the wound to heal it. His burning gaze lifted to hers.
“Hello,” he said huskily, and took her mouth.
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