Page 167 of The Seven Rings
In that moment, he wanted nothing more in the world but to answer.
The door to the Gold Room swung open, and light, smoky like the voice, poured out so the fog glittered with it.
Jones growled again, followed it with a series of throaty barks, wet, warning snarls. Owen barely heard it.
Fire smoldered in his blood, in his belly, in his loins. No power on earth could stop him from reaching that open door.
Where she stood, lit by a thousand candles, her hair streaming, her dress molding her body like skin.
When she smiled, the wanting was pain, and the pain welcome.
“Owen Poole. I welcome you.”
He stepped inside.
Jones leaped, but the door slammed, and the dog rammed against it.
Candlelight swayed in shadows. In the air wafted a perfume so seductive, Owen could barely take a breath, and when he did, the taste of it filled him with a kind of crazed hunger.
“I’ve waited for you. Waited for you to take my body, to ravish it, to sate yourself with it.” Watching him, she ran her hands from her breasts to her hips. “You want this body. You crave it.”
Desire all but strangled him.
“I know what you are.” The words tore at his throat. He swore he tasted blood. “What you’ve done. What you want.”
“It’s you I want, Owen Poole.” Her voice was a cold hand on a hot wound. “This manor, they wrenched it from you. Yours by right of blood. She is no true Poole. This manor is mine, by right of the blood I took, the blood I gave. We will share it for eternity, you and I. You and I alone. You will have me to do all the things you wish, for all time. We are and will be master and mistress of the manor.
“Say it.”
Her eyes burned into his.
“Say you want me. Say you want only to give me what I need and take all you need.”
“I want you.” More than he wanted his next breath. Rock hard, sweat slicking his skin, he reached out.
The shock stunned his hand, raced through his whole body, and left him gasping.
She laughed, and in his swimming vision was the most beautiful creature ever born.
“Oh, but not so easy, my love. Such glory as I will give has a price. You’ve only to pay it, and I will give you an eternity of pleasures beyond any you’ve known. Do as I bid you, Owen Poole, pay this price, and I give you forever.”
“What do you want? What’s the price?”
“I must have blood. There must be blood to pay. Take what I give you. Take it, give me blood. Kill them. Kill them all, and everything you desire is yours.”
“Kill them,” he said, looking down at the knife in his hand. “Kill them all.”
“And be quick about it. Kill them. The cousin, her lover, then the friend. Let their blood flow over your hands, warm and thick. Taste it, one by one, you must taste their blood, so sweet, so fresh. And when what must be done is done, take their bodies out of my manor. These I will burn to ash. Then, only then, will you have me.”
Something changed as she leaned toward him, but he didn’t know what. Then her lips brushed over his.
“A taste,” she murmured. “One taste only. Do what needs doing, then come back for all. Forever.”
He turned toward the door.
“Owen? Kill the animals as well. Clear my manor of all of them.”
He walked out. Jones scrabbled at his legs, and the blood on his muzzle where he’d rammed against the door smeared on Owen’s jeans.
