Page 4 of Eternally Theirs

Chapter Two

Through the tinted, slatted, bulletproof windows, Mercy could make out the tall buildings, their grandeur barely reduced by the occasional bombed-out structure. Even in this elegant part of town, the gangs of street kids and the morphies that seemed to be everywhere huddled in doorways.

The sky was clouded—with fog, with smoke. Yet behind the clouds she could see with her new eyes how the sun tried to shine through, its rays almost white through the dark glass. As a child in the United States, she’d read about London, about its history that didn’t seem to matter anymore. Not to humans. Certainly not to the vampires.

To me, now.

The car slowed and she caught a trace of Ramsey’s thoughts. Their trip was almost over.

She couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking. The last few months wandering through Spain with Deo had been so confusing. Meeting Ramsey, the stunningly handsome vampire who ran the Madrid club they’d wandered into, had been a stroke of pure luck, but even now, his kindness was inexplicable. And the long trip from Madrid to England in the heavily armored car, which was pure luxury inside, had seemed so strange after having spent months living in the woods, or abandoned buildings, or camping on beaches.

Ramsey had been unbelievably kind, yet she was still afraid. Frightened of what they might do to her. The vampire council had been called in order to decide what to do with her and Deo, two young vampires who had been created in some outlaw fashion.

She glanced at Deo beside her. Her lover. Her only friend, despite the fact that she had Turned him unwillingly, as she had been Turned. He was so beautiful, his profile silhouetted against the dim morning light filtering in through the tinted windows. As a human, he’d been devastating, with his curling black hair, his soft blue-green eyes that looked like two aquamarines when they caught the light. As a vampire he was so exquisitely gorgeous, she thought there could never be another creature on the Earth as beautiful as he was. She loved his face, his lush mouth, his long, tapered fingers. And his perfect, muscled body. Flawless. Hard. Like hers.

The hardness of their bodies had shocked them at first, but she’d come to know the sleek velvet of his skin, the sweetness that was his vampiric body. That was him.

Deo had accepted what she’d done to him, had even come to love her, as she loved him. She was so incredibly grateful he’d stayed with her. But what else would he have done? They were lost together in this strange existence neither had known much about until they’d become immortal and felt the preternatural strength, the incredibly heightened senses, the driving need for sex. The even more powerful driving need for blood.

She felt him watching her and smiled at him, squeezing his hand for comfort. He squeezed back. Even now, through the unease, the confusion, she felt that sharp, lovely stab of desire, felt the answering stab of his, like a wave of pure heat rolling off his body. Heard an echo of it in his mind.

He leaned in to her, whispering in her ear, “Yes, love, I want you. But it will have to wait.”

She shivered, biting the need back hard.

“We’re nearly there,” Ramsey told them, his tone low.

Mercy nodded.

He was magnificent, this old vampire, with his velvety skin and gleaming green eyes. His hair was a cap of short dreadlocks, his body impossibly graceful. He’d told them he’d come many years ago from New Orleans, and although he looked to be no more than thirty, he’d mentioned that he was hundreds of years old. Hundreds! Hard to absorb. Hard to imagine that she and Deo could live that long, as long as Ramsey had.

He emanated power in a way she’d never encountered before. He’d been gentle with them, but she still wasn’t certain they wouldn’t be punished, she and Deo. She’d heard the whispers between Ramsey and the other vampires at his club, the questions about how she and Deo had come to be vampires. She’d heard the terms outlaw and rogue. Retribution. And as much as Deo had since become her protector, she’d sworn to herself that Deo would not be made to pay for what she’d done to him.

The car pulled up in front of the club. As the chauffer, a handsome human male, held the door open, she caught the scents of damp pavement, gunpowder and wood smoke. Ramsey stepped from the car and held a hand out for her. Not that it was necessary, given what she’d come to know was her low station among the hierarchy of vampires, but she’d always loved this sort of rare graciousness the human race seemed to have lost, and which, she’d recently found, the vampires still possessed—those other than the outlaw who had Turned her.

Gauis.

Why did she feel some small trace of adoration for him still?

But she didn’t have time to think about it. Deo was right behind her, taking her hand once more as they moved toward the front doors of London’s Midnight Playground. The building was grand, with its pale red bricks and soaring arched windows, its turreted façade. Her nerves drawn tight, she focused her gaze on the fine white linen of Ramsey’s shirt stretched across his wide back as he led the way into the club, past a pair of burly human doormen who nodded respectfully at the older vampire.

Inside, the light was dim, burning red and amber as though it were still nighttime, and she realized right away that in some way it was, inside the club. It had been the same in what little she’d seen of the Madrid club before they’d been taken to Ramsey, secreted away until the car had arrived to bring them here to London. As they moved through another pair of inner doors flanked by another set of human doormen, she could feel the low throb of music coming from somewhere, and smell the metallic scent of human blood. She felt the sexual hum of bodies coming together, blood being drunk. Still, as titillating as the idea was, she was too distracted by worry to allow her mind to indulge in the sensual scents and sounds assaulting her from every direction, as though she were one raw nerve ending. Maybe she was.

She hung on tighter to Deo’s strong hand as Ramsey led them down a hallway that seemed to be made all of black marble. She was vaguely aware of those they passed —humans and vampires, all of them gorgeous, unbelievably beautiful. Her heart hammered in her chest. She was overwhelmed by it all. Fear and desire. Stimulation overload. Emotional overload. Her fingers dug into Deo’s hard, silky flesh.

“It’ll be alright, Mercy,” he murmured, leaning in to press his lips to her temple.

Still, she was glad when they stepped into a quiet elevator. It was paneled in sleek wood, as fine and luxurious as the walls of any mansion might be, making a soft whirring as it rose several floors.

Her pulse sped up as the doors opened on to a long hall, and Ramsey gestured for them to step out of the elevator. He led them to a pair of doors decorated with two dragon heads, gilded and jeweled.

“Deo…”

“Shh, love. Don’t be frightened,” he assured her. “I’m right here. We’ll be fine, I’ll make sure of it.” But she felt in his touch that his heart was beating with the same racing doubt as hers.

Would they be punished? Separated? She couldn’t stand to think of that, of being left alone again, as she’d been those first days after being Turned. After Gaius had abandoned her.

Ramsey turned to her then, his accent a soft rumble of Spanish and a touch of Southern French from his life in New Orleans centuries earlier. “Mercy, you will never have to be alone again. That is our purpose here. One of them, anyway. They will not take you from your companion, I can promise you that.”

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