Page 103 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

48

RUNE

Turned vampires were forged from the blood of the born. The more powerful the bloodline, the more powerful the turned.

The sconces and dim, warm witch lights in Sadie’s vast underground flickered to life in her presence. Soft groans echoed off the stone walls, absorbed into the elegant carpeting and decadent wallpaper. Leave it to Sadie to make her dungeons beautifully wretched.

I loved this woman.

Now she was in a leather dress with a bustier top and the same ridiculous heels she always wore in shiny black. She hummed some old mountain hymn as she walked, her power only expanding the closer we got to her magnum opus, the site of the most powerful magick ever created. It struck me as hauntingly profound that the product of her workings would forever reshape the landscape of our realm, but the world would only know her name after she was dead.

Yes, other powerful chaos witches had concocted spells to rebirth humans into vampires.

But none did it like Sadie did it, and that went for her every action, her every breath. She was Selena’s shadow, the dark side of the moon, the unholy feminine.

We also had something that no turned factions in Ravenia would ever have. The blood we used to create more turned didn’t come from just any born vampire.

The blood I used to initiate my clan members came straight from the fallen born king of Valentin himself, Ivan Ardente. The world believed I’d killed him with my bare hands, that I’d ripped open his jugular and had drunk and bathed in his blood in his own throne room.

At the end of this long hallway, a set of heavy black doors lay, intricate carvings of branches and vines spanning their length. The handles were carved from moonstone. Steady power radiated from the room beyond in waves that raised the hairs on the back of my neck in recognition.

In her typical dramatic fashion, Sadie raised her palms and flung open the doors with a crack of explosive magick. When she turned back to me with a wide grin, I shook my head.

“Goddess knows what new horrors you’ve stirred up in your cauldron since I last visited.”

Her laugh filled the air, and soon we were inside her grand room of mysteries. A pentacle was drawn with blood in the center of the room, unlit candles at each point of the pentagram, and black salt around the circle.

An altar lay at the front of the room carved from a slab of moonstone, encased by tall pillars of onyx. Statues of the three major goddesses towered around the altar, Selena at the center and her sisters on either side.

A worktable lay in one of the enclaves, books, crystals, enchanted objects, and loose papers scattered all over the dark wood and on the stone floor below. In another enclave was our captured vampire, suspended in midair in a field of translucent shadow magick, eyes wide open and glaring at us as he had now for centuries.

I nodded. “Ivan. Nice to see you again, mate.” I flashed my fangs and tongued over each sharp edge, a move I knew drove him to maddening rage like no other. For just like Durian and his following, to Ivan and his brother, I was an abomination, a bastardization of vampirism and a direct act of blasphemy against the Dark Goddess.

His brother, Haemon, was long dead. Before I’d taken Nyx, captured Ivan, and turned the tides of the war, the turned of Valentin were forged from Haemon’s blood. I had been the first.

How Haemon had been imprisoned by Sadie was another story entirely. Powerful men had a nasty habit of underestimating seductresses, none more so than sex workers. Haemon might’ve been paying Sadie to degrade, humiliate, and brutalize him, but he still believed in his mind that he was the one who held all the power. How could he have known what magick this crafty courtesan had dedicated her entire life to creating?

Sadie was my reason for believing in fate, no matter how cruel and finicky of a mistress it was.

Because fate had led me right into Sadie’s spell circle. Fate had intertwined our destinies, melded our thirsts for retribution, power, blood, and supremacy. It was rather beautiful, really.

“What’s that look?” Sadie asked. Nothing escaped those all-seeing eyes.

“Just feeling sentimental.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t.”

I chuckled, amusing myself again by meeting Ivan’s bloodthirsty glare and winking.

“Yes, Mistress,” I taunted.

She spun on me, those cruel red lips spreading. “Careful, now.” She frowned. “Are you sure you don’t need a tune-up? This mystery woman has you scattered. I don’t like that. It’s not what Valentin needs, not now.”

Her words made me bristle, even if I knew they were coming. It was the entire reason I’d mentioned Scarlett in the first place. The terrified part of me was nearly considering letting Sadie try to beat the obsession out of me, drain it from my veins just as she did the blood from Ivan’s.

But I wouldn’t, and Sadie knew this. She knew me better than anyone. Aside from Mason and Uriah, she was the only one who knew where I came from and what had led me to her. Mason and Uriah knew of my origins, but they didn’t know my mind, not in the full, frightening clarity that Sadie did. She knew my every weakness, my every desire.

When we had united centuries ago, I’d begged on my knees to be remade. Not only physically, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I’d allowed her to destroy me and remake me in her perfect image, free from the bondage of desire and whim. An immortal being of great power and perfect control—control that was now being threatened by a small human woman with eyes as blue and deep as the sea.

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