Page 6 of Queen Takes Queen
She cupped his chin and tugged his face back up to hers. Leaning in close, she glared at him, her bond a fierce, white-hot blade of ice. “I would rather have you here, looking at me, talking to me, letting me see into your heart, than ever have an assassin. Even if you never killagain.”
“What if your goddess meant for you to send me after Marne Ceresa or Keisha Skye?” Xin asked softly, regret clogging his words. “And now, I’m unable to kill them? What then, myqueen?”
She sat up, tossing her hair back off her shoulders. Her face hard as marble, her neck long and graceful, breasts jutting proudly, blood trickling down herthroat.
My queen. My goddess. “Then I’ll fucking kill themmyself.”
2
Shara
Iwas startingto realize why vampires were always portrayed as nocturnal. I was too busy feeding and fucking all night to see the sun before noon. Okay, two in the afternoon. As we walked up to the main house, I could only hope Gina and Winston didn’t tease me about the lateness of the hour. If he’d made breakfast early this morning, he’d definitely be wondering where the hell wewere.
Which made me wonder how we were going to handle the workers who’d be wanting to enter my nest. If they were going to be dependent on me to wake up and let peoplein…
“Anyone carrying your blood can make the decision.” Guillaume, my Templar knight, walked on my left. “One of us on guard will always be near the gate during the daylight hours so we can examine anyone wanting entry. Frank can allow people through too, but he may not carry enough of your blood to sense anything amiss. He’s an excellent security guard for a human, though, and he does have goodinstincts.”
“But how do you actually allow them topass?”
“The easiest way is to touch them.” Guillaume dropped his hand on Nevarre’s shoulder beside him. “A handshake, a friendly touch. We’ll open our senses up, using our power that you’ve magnified, and if they’re fine, we let them pass while touching them. Once they’re through, they can come and go at will, and we’ll all feel it as they pass the circle. Though if you’re sleeping soundly, you shouldn’t be bothered. Over time, you can tone down that sense too because security of the nest lies withus.”
Rik walked on my right, closely enough I could feel the heat that radiated off his big body. “If you look at the tapestry in your mind, you’ll see the nest’s boundaries and exactly who is within. You’ll know their purpose because they’ve touched your bloodcircle.”
We stepped onto the back patio, covered with a trellis of old, dead vines. A slider door would let us directly into the kitchen, assuming the door wasn’tlocked.
Rik made a low rumbly sound that made my spine strum with pleasure. “The doors to your house will never be locked to you, myqueen.”
I was so used to lining the walls with salt, making sure my room had no windows or easy access points, and all my doors were always locked by dusk. Unlocked doors and huge windows were completely foreign concepts to me. “But we’ll have people in and out all the time. Do you really think it’s safe to leave all the doorsunlocked?”
Guillaume snorted. “Do you really think anyone would dare break in or steal something when a rock troll, warcat, wolf, hell horse, winged snake, and giant bird are guarding yourproperty?”
“That would be raven, Sir Guillaume,” Nevarre said. “And the first person who makes an Edgar Allen Poe joke will have the great pleasure of competing against me in a cabertoss.”
“Good thing Daire isn’t here to hear this challenge.” Rik laughed. “I can hear his crow jokesalready.”
At the mention of Daire’s name, I automatically felt for his location. He and Mehen were on guard duty together. An odd pairing, but Rik must have had his reasons. Probably a deliberate attempt to torture Mehen a bit more with Daire’s antics. Of all my blood, he was the most likely to play a prank or make an inappropriate comment that would probably set the oldest, and yeah, most touchy, Blood’s teeth on edge. Xin was further away, alone. I had a moment to worry about him, especially after his comments about being broken. But I felt his wolf slipping through the trees and his bond was full of a wolf’s joy as he tracked his prey through the trees. He didn’t smell an intruder, but his wolf knew his nature. I wasn’t worried in the slightest that he wouldn’t be able to kill if he needed to protect me. As for assassinatinganyone…
That wasn’t really my styleanyway.
My Blood stood on either side of the door, watching me. Waiting for me to test the door and verify it really was unlocked. That it would always be unlocked for me. Even this obscure side door that wasn’t visible from the maindrive.
I laid my fingers on the slider’s pull and gave it a tug. Yeah, it opened, though I will admit to holding my breath. I pushed the door open wider for the guys and stepped inside the kitchen. “Hello?”
Smiling, Winston hopped up from the round table in the corner where he’d been sitting with Gina. “Your Majesty, good day. What may I getyou?”
Gina stood too. “I’ve got some interesting television footage to showyou.”
I groaned. “We made the news again? I’ll have whatever you’re having, and please, call meShara.”
There were only four chairs at the small table, but the guys were too busy hitting the food laid out on the counter like a buffet to care where they sat. Rik sat me down by Gina and kissed the top of my head. “Trust me to pick something foryou?”
I rolled my eyes. “Duh.”
Gina turned her laptop toward me and hit the play button. The headline read“Christmas Miracle—or Apocalypse?”The video itself was shaky enough to tell me it was recorded by an amateur. A man spoke in Spanish, too rapidly for me to make out any of the words, but a translation ran along the bottom of thescreen.
“Do you see where it went? A black shape. Huge. It didn’t look like an airplane. I think it wasalive.”
Breathing hard, he stopped, the camera panning the night sky. Light blazed to the right, and the camera jerked in that direction. A huge pillar of silvery bright light drove down toward the ground like a sci-fi movie tractor beam. Too bright to make out much, but there was definitely something inside thelight.
