“Evert broke my jaw once.” The pretty woman sat down in one of the outdoor chairs placed around a square wooden table. “For fun.”
Grabbing a seat opposite, Honor focused on the ugly mottled mark forming on Shae’s otherwise unblemished skin. “Why stay with him?”
A shrug. “I was only seventy when I met him.”
Honor’s spine twitched at the realization that Shae, petite and with those bruised human eyes, was a vampire. “Dashing older man, right?” she said, forcing herself to remain relaxed. Shae was no threat, her power so muted as to be negligible—the reason her body hadn’t yet been able to heal the damage caused by Evert’s vicious slap.
“Yes.” The other woman shook her head, her curls catching on the terry cloth. “Stupid, but hey, we’re all stupid once in a while.” A penetrating glance. “Dmitri, huh? No offense, but talk about stupid.”
Yes, it was. Probably the worst mistake of her life—but walking away wasn’t an option. Not anymore. If it had ever been. “You sound very certain we’re involved.”
“Puh-leeze, as my great-niece would say.” Shae shoved her hands through her hair, either agitated by the events of the morning or constitutionally incapable of staying still.
So young, Honor thought, so vulnerable, and it was a curious thought to have about a woman who had more than half a century on her. But then, time wasn’t everything. Dmitri would’ve been a force to be reckoned with soon after his Making. Shae would always be the quarry, rather than the hunter.
Eternity, Honor thought, was a long time to spend as a victim. “What do you know about Tommy?”
“Prick friend of Evert’s. He’s four hundred years old and still has that smarmy, sweaty look that says a man’s thinking about getting you naked—and not in a nice way.” The vampire tugged her robe tighter around herself. “Evert wasn’t lying about the cabin. They took me there once.” Her silence was heavy with secrets too terrible to be voiced.
Neither of them spoke for long moments filled with the cheerful sounds of birds scolding one another, their day long begun.
“I’m so afraid,” Shae said when the birds scattered with a bright chorus, fine lines pinching out from her mouth, “that that’s what I’ll become as I age. Depraved, finding pleasure only in the humiliation and suffering of others.” A look of unhidden concern. “Even Dmitri . . . he’s barely on this side of the line, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He was no innocent, would never be one. “Tell me more about Tommy.”
“He’s good with money so he has financial power, but is otherwise weak.” Fingers playing with the lapels of her robe, dropping to twist the ends of the belt at her waist. “They like to pretend to be big men, but they’re sheep, him and Evert both.”
“Yes.” Dmitri’s deep voice from behind Honor as he stepped out through the kitchen. “They were minor pawns in the scheme of things.”
For the first time since she’d met him, she didn’t angle her body to keep him in her line of sight. Instead, she allowed him to come up behind her, to place his hand on the back of the wooden chair where she sat, brush his thumb over the skin of her neck.
Terror, visceral and gut-deep. Her heart rabbiting against her ribs.
Gritting her teeth, she held her position, a small rebellion, a tiny reclaiming of who she’d been before the pit. “No screams,” she said, the words husky.
“I had my orders.” Continuing to play his thumb over her now fear-dampened skin, he spoke to the other vampire. “Evert won’t bother you again. Someone will be picking him up in about twenty minutes.”
Shae shuddered. “I—Will—” Her eyes landed on Honor, not Dmitri. “Will you stay? If he wakes up . . .”
“Yes,” she said, caught by the irony of Shae looking to safety from a woman who was currently fighting not to choke on the rancid taste of her own terror.
Dmitri tugged at a tiny curl of hair at her nape. “Look up, Honor.”
Illium was a stunning sight against the lightening sky, his wings sweeping through the air with a grace that made him seem a half-forgotten dream. When he landed in the courtyard, his wings flaring out for an instant, he was at once very much a man, physical and sexual, and an unattainable fantasy.
She could never see herself falling for such a beautiful man. No, it seemed her tastes ran darker, rougher, edgier. But she could admire him . . . and she could wonder about the shadows beyond the gold, shadows that resonated with something hidden inside of her. “Bluebell,” she said, remembering from Erotique. “Pretty name.”
“I call Dmitri Dark Overlord.”
“Shae,” Dmitri said and the female vampire rose at once to walk quickly into the house. “Now, pretty Bluebell”—another languid stroke across her skin—“tell the Overlord what you discovered.”