“Andre?”
He sighed as air escaped his lungs, and then an unnatural stillness took over his body. My eyes searched for a window, seeking out the rising sun, but the only source of light in the tomb was the flickering flame.
My body was tugging me towards sleep, but my mind still raced. So much had happened to us over the last several days. Most bad, but some good.
A cool draft of air gusted through the crypt, blowing out the candle and throwing the room into darkness. I shivered. Andre’s cold arms still encircled me, but his presence here was gone.
“Hello, consort.”
Chapter 8
The devil’s breath moved the hair near my ear. If I turned, I probably would’ve brushed his lips.
Choking on my fear, I sat up. The darkness was absolute, and the only sentient thing in the crypt with me was the lord of the Underworld.
“Little bird, I can hear your fragile heart pattering away. It will give out soon, do you know this?” His words skittered over my skin.
“Go away,” I whispered, my eyes wildly searching the blackness for him.
“Once you are queen, you will not fear me.”
Terror lodged itself in my throat, and I swallowed, trying to tamp it down. “I thought you wanted me to fear you?”
Phantom fingers trailed up my forearms, drawing the hairs to attention. The touch was oddly sensual. “I lied.”
My skin crawled. “You’re lying now.”
The air shifted and I heard his hollow laugh. It echoed throughout the chamber. “And precisely how would you know that?”
My words hadn’t angered him like they once might’ve. Odd.
“Come away with me,” he said.
Next to me I heard Andre stir, like he was trying to rouse himself from the hold of the sun.
“Leave me alone. Please.” Was he trying to smoke me out? If so, it was working. I was eyeing the mausoleum’s stone door, wondering how long I’d survive out in the sun now that I was more vampire than human. Even if the elements couldn’t kill me, someone would find me soon. Then I’d die.
The devil was an evil genius.
“I enjoy tormenting you far too much to ever leave you alone.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want me to fear—”
“It was a joke.”
“Oh.” Were we really having a conversation? One based on something other than threats? My heart continued to race at the possibility. It seemed like a fragile sort of peace. One that could only last for a few more minutes—if that.
“You’ve always known this was supposed to happen?” I asked. I didn’t need to clarify what I was asking.
“Always.” The word stroked my skin.
“Why would you want a consort?” I asked the darkness. My voice still trembled from his nearness. He might not be threatening me, and he might not be corporeal right now, but he was the devil.
The air shivered. “Come with me and find out.”
I stared into the abyss; I could feel his eyes watching me. “I will never willingly join you.”
The silence that fell over me was ominous.
“You mortals are so full of promises you can’t keep,” the devil hissed. “You’ll vow one thing today and rescind it tomorrow. Once you join me, that fickleness will fade.”
The devil’s chill no longer seeped deep into my bones, and that worried me because it should’ve. His presence should be carving up my soul. But it wasn’t.
“What makes you think I’ll be joining you at all?”
If darkness could smile, then it just did.
“There are many things that haven’t yet come to pass, but there is one vow I can make you: willing or not, you will join me in hell as my consort. Of all things, that is a certainty.”
Andre’s touch woke me.
His fingertips glided down the side of my face and trailed down the curve of my arm. Only in the blackness of the crypt with the devil’s presence a vivid memory, I recoiled from it.
I could practically feel Andre’s frown through our connection. Even as my body weakened, the link between us had strengthened.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Only everything.
“Bad dream,” I lied.
“Vampires don’t dream.”
“And I’m not yet—”
Andre cut off my response with a sigh. “I can smell your dishonesty, soulmate.”
Well crap, there went that excuse.
A hand fell on my shoulder and squeezed. “I will not mine you for the truth. Tell it to me on your own time.”
He stepped away from me then and moved to the doorway. Only once some space separated us was I able to breathe freely again. I didn’t want to mention the devil’s visits because voicing them worried Andre and made this all the more real.
Andre propped the crypt’s door open, and pale moonlight filtered in. My night vision amplified, and suddenly I could see again.
While I began to fold up the sheets of our bed, Andre dug through the bag. He pulled out several clothing items from it and handed two of them to me. It was a leather bustier and a matching jacket.
Very vampire chic.
I scrunched my nose. “Do I have to wear this?”
“No,” Andre said, shrugging off his shredded jacket. I watched the bunched muscle beneath it move.
I glanced back down at the clothing in my hands, flustered from something as simple as watching his body. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t seen him in less. Maybe it was because I felt so achingly close to throwing all care to the wind and finishing here what we’d started a couple nights ago.
“You are embarrassed,” Andre said.
I glanced up, realizing with horror that even in the dark he could literally sniff out my emotions.
“Not embarrassed,” I said. “Just … overwhelmed by you,” I admitted.