Kathy’s frown softened, as she caressed her fingertips down the curve of my cheek. “I want you. You’re enough, Light.” I glanced up, suddenly hopeful that she could mean it. “Now, brat,” she slapped me lightly on the cheek, “go on, and don’t forget the dawn.”

  I nodded, before turning to kiss the palm of her hand. Kathy shivered, and finally smiled.

  I went back up onto the ship, the way that I’d come down.

  Ladders? Bugger ladders.

  I climbed the rope like I was a schoolboy again in gym, except this time I scaled it with powerful ease, whereas as a First Lifer... Let’s just say that my gym master caned even harder than Wakefield, and I never escaped a gym lesson without new stripes.

  When I hauled myself onto the deck, the Komodo dragon snarled at me from the sail, and I snarled back. Yet when I prowled to the nursery, I found myself faltering outside: what if I was too late and the ritual had already started?

  I hesitated, my heart pounding, before I slid open the door. Slipping inside, I rushed to the cot.

  “Papa.” Joelle beamed: an orange sun amidst the fake stars of the candles. “Papa.” She clapped her hands together, as if in applause.

  A grin stole over my face too, as I hoisted her into my arms. “I promised that I’d come back, yeah?”

  Tap, tap. Two polite, delicate knocks, like a papa knocking on a nursery door. I twirled around in shock, clutching Joelle, who was fussing now, frightened.

  Join the bloody club.

  A beautiful Blood Lifer lounged in the doorway in a purple silk coat, which had diamonds sewn like winking stars into its button holes, as well as a cravat. His hair tumbled over his shoulders in brunet curls, and he raised his eyebrow sardonically. I couldn’t help the way that I stared into his indigo eyes, as if mesmerized. Why did I want to fall to my knees and worship…sod it, love him?

  It had to be Versailles, the Long-lived leader of the cult.

  I battled against the attraction that buckled my knees. It wasn’t real, unlike my love for Kathy, only his power under the Blood God, right?

  Versailles’ cool expression spoke of a time when French aristocrats had eaten, if not cake, then at least brioche, whilst the poor had starved in Parisian alleys. The calculation in his beautiful eyes whispered of royal plots and machinations in the corrupt heart of the Sun King’s court, even if Versailles was torn between past and present in a pair of denim jeans like I’d caught him on his night off.

  “Who is this come to play?” A smile danced around Versailles’ pink bow lips, but his eyes threatened death. I backed against the cot. There was no way out, not with a little one curled in my arms, and I wasn’t leaving her behind. Not again. Versailles sniffed the air, as his tongue flicked out, like he was tasting my blood already. “The Plantagenet brat who Maverick loves?” He clapped his hands. “You’ve made my night complete!”

  I looked him up and down. “Smug bastard, aren’t you?”

  Versailles’s smile never slipped, but the story in the darkness of his eyes shook me. I wondered if anyone ever spoke back to him, and if not, then he was in for a shock with me.

  Versailles’ gaze became thoughtful. “True, you steal my sacrifice, naughty man, but you offer up one that I desire even more, believe me.”

  And I did, which was the sodding problem.

  I couldn’t stop the way that I trembled, even though Versailles gave a delighted laugh at my terror. Was this why he’d been hunting for me? I was trapped with Versailles and his Moon Cult, I hadn’t saved Joelle, and Versailles desired me to become his next sacrifice.

  13

  WEDNESDAY 23rd NOVEMBER 1977 PARIS, FRANCE

  My Kathy,

  I’m being watched now. Every time that I explore the Parisian streets, either on foot or on my Triton, losing myself in the scent of baking pastries and black coffee, I’m followed by Versailles’ fanatics.

  Yet even whilst they watch me, I can’t look away.

  The draw to Versailles and his world grows stronger every day, just as my love for you does as well. First or Blood, which am I? I was born into a second life of Blood, but I chose First Life with you. Now though, I don’t know if I can fight who I truly am and over a century of conditioning by Ruby.

  Would the answer terrify you or would you even love me as a predator?

  Heroes and sacrifice is just so much posturing. In the end, we’re just lovers snogging against a wall: two lovers across the divide of species.

  Always.

  And when I forget that and hide, hugging myself at the bottom of the wardrobe, you find me. Then you hold me and never let go because the dark is coming.

  Tonight, I’m lost in a haze of smoke on my bed, shaking with the need to touch and possess every bleeding inch of you, but I’m alone because there were no dark heroes in Cherbourg on that final night of the full moon. Instead, on the boat there’d been a wickedly beautiful monster and his deadly god.

  If I could’ve broken Versailles’ spell over me a month ago, maybe I wouldn’t be alone now.

  Please, remember that I love you.

  Your Light

  14

  Pale fingers stretched towards Joelle, forming an impatient cradle. I growled.

  Versailles pouted like I’d slapped him. “Gorgeous thief, cease your unseemly behavior. The little one, if you please.”

  I clutched Joelle to my chest. She was squirming and warm…alive. How could I give her up to be murdered? I tilted my chin. “Sod off.”

  Versailles puffed up: a ruffled peacock with a god complex. Yet his scrutiny still made me desperate to worship his wicked beauty. The strut of Versailles’ leather slip-ons, as he stalked so close that his breath gusted across my mouth, echoed in the cabin. The scent of roses crawled from him to coat my skin like a shroud. When I tried to draw back, his eyes widened with outrage, as if he was close to stamping his foot.

  This Versailles’ eyes narrowed at Joelle. “A baby’s skull,” he whispered onto my lips, “is so soft at this tender age, believe me. It smashes, like this.” Click — he snapped his fingers next to my ear. Bugger it, why did I have to jump? Versailles’ lips quirked, mockingly. “If we fight?” His tongue licked out between each word across my lips, tasting them. I shuddered, but Versailles clasped the sides of my head, studying my gaze as if looking for something, before teasing open my mouth. Then he murmured, “Please, do not be unreasonable over this child, mon ami...” He pressed punishing kisses against my mouth. Christ, how I craved to slice the bastard’s tongue in two. Yet I couldn’t help shivering and arching against him. His power thrummed through me, as he held me in place; I’d never sensed a Long-lived like him before. “Shall we discover how soft her skull is?”

  I wrenched back my mouth from Versailles’ domineering kisses, shaking my head.

  Versailles had me. If I didn’t hand Joelle over, he’d simply kill her now. How could I battle with a baby in tow? How could I keep her safe?

  Buggering hell, I hoped that Kathy had taken the brats to our room.

  When cool fingers caressed down my cheek, I startled. “One’s patience is not infinite.”

  One is a bloody wanker.

  “Papa.” Joelle curled closer in my arms, and I stroked the top of her skull; it was First Lifer fragility at its most raw. Joelle’s look after me vibe pulled on every paternal instinct, but I was a Blood Lifer, so what the bleeding hell did it have to do with me?

  Why couldn’t I believe that?

  My eyes burned with tears as I held out Joelle towards Versailles. Then, before I could stop myself, I kissed her forehead.

  Sorry. I can’t keep my promise…I’m so bloody sorry…

  Versailles’ laugh was high and delighted. “Such a sweet picture! Now I understand why Maverick wishes to own you! Although, he lusts after your First Lifer too. Yet I’ve tried to teach him so many times that a Blood Lifer’s greatest weakness is love.” He feathered a kiss onto my own forehead, which betrayed my own gesture with Joelle and made my stomach churn, but not more than the way that his lips curled against my skin, as he whispered like a wicked secret, “I killed Maverick’s first family and stole his lovers, until all he could see was me. Why should I not be enough for him? How did he dare to weep for them?”

  When Versailles drew back, his eyes blazed with a terrifying burning possessiveness, but also an anguish that I understood. Versailles loved his followers with an obsession that was deadly, as much as he pretended that he didn’t.

  “I didn’t realize that you were the god.” I cocked my head. “Do you like blokes on their knees before you?”

  Versailles hissed, before clutching Joelle tighter. My breath hitched. “I would very much enjoy seeing you on your knees.” Yeah, I hadn’t chosen the best taunt. “Whilst Maverick loves poorly, you…? Love only a First Lifer and that is nothing but madness.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Don’t talk about Kathy.”

  Suddenly, Joelle reached towards me, struggling to escape. My eyes gleamed brighter with tears, but I forced myself to step back, whilst Joelle wailed, low and animalistic at my abandonment. Versailles bounced her, like a stylish dad of the year, but her face only screwed up redder. At last, Versailles tutted in frustration.

  I’m sorry…so bloody sorry…

  When Versailles stuck his fingers into Joelle’s mouth to suck on, I took my chance and shoved past him, diving into the corridor. Versailles snarled, but I didn’t even slow. Instead, I sprinted onto the moon drowned deck.

  Behind me, I could hear hollering, followed by heavy footsteps.

  The yacht had woken up.

  I took a single deep breath, before I hurled myself over the side of the boat. Freezing salt water swallowed me; it soaked through my clothes, weighting me as if I was wearing concrete. I battled the swell and wash of the waves. Shivering, I struggled towards shore, whilst I was lit up by the moon as if I was under a spotlight. My eyes stung at each splash of my arm: two more strokes, and…

  Splash — a coiled rope landed around me in the darkness, before it tightened with a jerk.

  I yelped, as the rope dragged the air from my lungs, bruising my ribs and yanking me backwards. I flailed my arms and legs, choking on seawater, which spluttered out again from my mouth in stinging sprays. I wrenched at the rope that was binding my middle, like a Victorian lady in a whalebone corset.

  Maverick had sodding lassoed me.

  Clank — I hit the yacht’s side, hard.

  I hollered as my left shoulder shattered on impact, and then as I was dragged up, clasping with my right arm to the hull to stop myself from spinning upside down. I cringed, as my damaged left side was battered — clank, clank, clank — against the side. Gritting my teeth, I clawed at the lip of the deck, before I was hauled onto it, face-first.

  Cowboy boots, shiny boots, and slip-ons: I was surrounded by a circle of stinking leather shoes, and all I could do was gasp, splutter, and shudder.

  At last, I rolled onto my back, only that view wasn’t any better. Now I was staring up at a smirking Texan, sneering Nazi, and scornful Parisian. Maverick was still toying with his lasso like he wanted to toy with me. I toyed with the idea of snapping his sodding fingers.

  I just had to figure out how to stand up first.

  “I told you that Maverick always gets his man, Little Stallion.” That ghost smile of Maverick’s, before his gaze became serious again. “And I always break him.”

  Water dripped into a puddle underneath me, and tendrils quested towards the bastards’ shoes.

  Versailles glowered down at me. “Are you devout, Light?”

  I raised my good arm in a shaky two-finger salute.

  When Versailles lifted his foot, I clocked the movement but couldn’t roll away before he’d pressed my right hand — and rebellious salute — to the deck. Versailles ground my hand slowly and deliberately under his heel.

  I shrieked, as pain exploded in pure light, whilst Versailles snapped the bones in my hand and lit the nerves on fire. My body arched from the wet, whilst tears streamed down my cheeks. Panting, I didn’t realize for a moment that Versailles had lifted his foot again. I cradled my hand to my chest like the baby that I hadn’t saved. Yet Versailles wasn’t now cradling Joelle. Where was she? If she’d been killed because of me...

  If I’d been able to crawl right then to Versailles so that he wouldn’t harm Joelle, I would’ve done. Only, I thought that was more Maverick’s kink than his.

  Maverick knelt down, easing the rope away from my middle, more gently than I’d been expecting. “You’re likely to die, amigo, if you go aggravating Versailles,” he murmured; his gaze was intent and searching. Then he straightened as he declared more loudly like it was as much for the other two Blood Lifers’ benefit as for mine, “Just sacrifice the First Lifer and bow to the Blood God, like a good boy. If you had a mind to be a dark hero, like us, we’d share the world with you. I believe you’d stand the taste.”

  My tongue flicked out, licking my lips like I could taste the world as I’d once eaten it whole with my Author. Maverick hadn’t missed the movement or the hunger in my gaze, and he smiled with soft longing that twisted something inside. Versailles had murdered Maverick’s family and his lovers so that he’d never need to worship anyone outside the cult. I understood the message under his words: that I wouldn’t be choosing the Blood God, I’d be choosing freedom to be a Blood Lifer alongside him. He wanted Kathy as well. So, could I even have a true family again?

  All I’d need to sacrifice would be the blood of one First Lifer.

  I shook, blinking the water out of my eyes and not knowing if they were actually tears.

  “Bring the naughty man,” Versailles’ order rang across the deck.

  I wailed at the agony burning down my shattered hip and shoulder, as Maverick hoisted me onto his shoulder. Yet he balanced the weight on my right side to save me from worse pain.

  I reckoned that Maverick hungered for me to be his brat — the latest recruit to this Hell Ship — as much as I hungered for a taste of the freedom and family that he’d offered. Maverick was a berk but a beautiful berk who was my ally, in a keeping me against my will in order to brainwash me to kill a baby way.

  You take what you can get.

  Plus, Maverick had been alone, trapped with Versailles, by a possessive and destructive love that I recognized because my own Author, Ruby, had caged me in the same way. If this cult had a weak link, it was the unwilling convert.

  When Maverick wrenched my shoulders up to hang me by manacles, which hung from chains around a pole (so Versailles did this a lot, the kinky bastard), I could’ve staked him, ally or not.

  I screamed.

  “Sorry,” Maverick muttered, tightening the shackles. My fists spasmed, and I peered at Maverick through blurry eyes. My feet dangled off the floor, but at least that rested my hip, so…small blessings.

  Versailles chuckled, tilting his head as he watched me like I was a pretty bird struggling in its cage.

  The moon through the cabin’s windows cast a silver carpet, which Versailles sauntered over, past walls hung with Komodo flags. He threw himself down in damask chair with an emperor’s ease. Then he studied me, tapping his chin with his finger, as he threw one denim-clad leg over the chair’s arm. “I am a Magnificoe.”

  I blinked. “Good for you, mate.”

  Versailles’ gaze became frosty. “Do you — a Short-lived — not perceive the respect owed to—”

  I snorted. “Personally, I don’t give a wankering—”

  “Sacrilege!” Versailles swung his leg off the arm of the chair, leaning his elbows on his knees instead.

  “Hmm, is that worse than murdering kids then?”

  Versailles tapped his chin again thoughtfully, before relaxing back. He was shaking with rage, however, although he didn’t lose his haughty beauty. His porcelain skin was so perfect that he could’ve been a doll. I hated that I wanted to see if it was as soft as his lips had been. “Perhaps I should simply gag you?”

  “Perhaps you should just kill me. Then I wouldn’t have to hear your bollocks.”

  I yipped, as Maverick urgently poked me in the ribs.

  Versailles’ lips thinned, yet he only shrugged one slender shoulder. “Do you know what night it is?”

  My eyes widened. “Bugger, I didn’t miss our anniversary again…?”

  Slap — Exitus’ handprint bruised my cheek.

  I sucked on my cut lip.

  “It’s the night that we give tribute to the Blood God: our most powerful god.” Versailles’ eyes sparked. “She’s a deity more ancient than the First Lifers’. She grew from blood and venom—”

  I swung from the chains, wincing at the pull on my shoulders. “Seriously? Have long have you wankers been risking the whole Blood Lifer world for…?”

  Versailles twirled a curl of his brunet hair. “The arrogance of youth! Our world has more balances and secrets than a child such as you could comprehend, believe me.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Try me.”

  I was desperate to understand. Versailles’ draw was magnetic, as was the desire to know whether, despite everything, there could be a place here for Kathy and me. Maybe there was another way to satisfy their god that didn’t include blood sacrifices? No Blood Lifer was meant to be able to resist the cult leader’s seduction, and now I understood why.

  Versailles sneered, “Our god isn’t ruled by petty dictates. We feast on blood, sex, and sin, in worship, whilst — my Light in the dark — the humans honor us as their heroes.”

  I studied Versailles’ cheeks that were flushed with fervor. He believed every word, and his certainty wrapped me in a comforting warmth. But he’d used that same charisma to con the humans, and I hated that. “All this wankery about dark heroes? It’s just bollocks that you made up, so that you could steal babies.”

  When Versailles leapt up, stalking towards me, I flinched back. He gripped the chains, yanking me closer to him. “You misunderstand. Indeed, we are not what the First Lifers imagine, but we are dark heroes because we sacrifice all that we are to our God. You can have no comprehension what I’ve sacrificed for centuries…”

 

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