Her eyes shone with excitement as she returned the coin to its pouch. “I love it. Solving the mystery, finding the hidden meaning… there’s nothing like it.”
“Oh, I can think of something like it,” he said, letting his gaze linger on her lips. “Something that’ll get you just as dirty. Sweaty…” Gods, he was turned on. Who’d have thought that searching for treasure could be an aphro-disiac?
“You’re hopeless.”
He reached out and traced her bottom lip with his thumb. “I’ve heard that once or twice.”
Serena tucked the pouch containing the coin into her backpack. “I’m sure you have,” she said dryly.
“Grave-robbing offal.” The booming, musical male voice echoed through the tomb with an evil resonance Wraith felt to his soul.
He leaped to his feet and whirled in a single motion. Standing at the entrance to the hidden area was Byzam. A black hooded robe obscured his body and his hair, but his unnaturally handsome face peeked out from the cowl. The hair on Wraith’s neck stood on end in a way it hadn’t the first time he’d seen the other male.
This wasn’t your average evil scum. Death would think twice before standing in the way of this demon.
Serena stood and calmly brushed the dirt from her pants. “It’s true that I’m more of a treasure hunter than an archaeologist,” she said, apparently unconcerned that the male who had snuck up on them might be a threat, “so I have a bit of a mercenary finders-keepers attitude. But offal? That’s a little strong.”
Byzam moved in a smear of light that even Wraith’s vampire vision barely tracked. In a blink, he had Serena’s arm twisted behind her back and she was kissing the wall.
With a roar that shook dust from the ceiling, Wraith plowed into the demon, sending him careening off the pillar. A sound like a gunshot rang out as the stone column cracked, chips of stone peeling away from the fissure that spread upward from the dent Byzam’s body had made.
Wraith got right up in the male’s face. “Get the fuck out. Now.”
Byzam leaned close, so close Wraith could smell his foul breath as he whispered, “I know what you’re up to, Seminus.”
Wraith rocked his head forward, smashing his skull into Byzam’s mouth. “That’s because you’re up to the same thing.”
The bastard smiled through bloody lips, but kept his voice low. “She won’t give it up to you, so you might as well go home to whatever hole you crawled out of.”
Wraith bared his fangs. “If I see you again, I’ll bleed you out.”
“When you see me again, you’ll be calling me god. For now, you can call me Byzamoth.” He bowed to Serena and swept out the door. Wraith gave chase, but Byzamoth had disappeared into thin air. Wraith stood outside the chamber for a moment, waiting for the battle high to subside, for his fangs to retract and his eyes to return to blue from the angry red he knew they’d turned.
When he returned to the chamber, Serena was waiting for him, her backpack slung over her shoulder, her face ashen.
She was shaken, and truthfully, so was Wraith. Had her charm failed, or did it not activate unless she was in mortal danger, and Byzamoth hadn’t intended to kill her?
The scent of blood was in the air, faint and human. Serena had been hurt. He went to her, took her wrist, and shoved up her sleeve. Four deep crescents scored her forearm, beading with blood. Hunger roared through him and his fangs began to throb, his mouth to water. Shit.
Pulse racing, he released her and forced himself to take a step back. “You’re hurt,” he ground out.
Gods, he wanted her in a way he’d never wanted any female, human or demon. He wanted to lick her from her arm to her throat, sink his fangs into her and take her like he had in the dream. He could pump into her as her blood pumped into him—
“I’ll live,” she said, her voice stronger than he’d have expected, given what had just happened. “What did he say to you?”
He took a moment to get his shit together before answering. “That his name is Byzamoth. And he wanted the treasure.” True enough, except Serena was the treasure. And for some reason it pissed him the hell off that the sonofabitch treated her like nothing more than a prize.
Which was exactly how Wraith was treating her, and when the fuck did he gain the guilt gene? Ruthlessly, he summoned an emotion he was far more comfortable with.
Extreme anger.
“So that’s what he’s been after all this time?” She frowned. “How did he know about it? And how did you convince him to go?”
“I don’t know how he knew about it, but I told him I’d kill him if he came near you again.”
Her hand went to her necklace, and he caught a whiff of blood again. She was killing him. “He isn’t human, then.”
“Would it matter if he was?” His voice was bitter and rough to his own ears. She didn’t deserve his anger, but he was pissed at Byzamoth, at Roag, at the assassin who’d poisoned him, at himself, at the entire fucking world, and he was tired of playing nice.
“Would it matter to you?”