It was safest to live on bagged blood. But where was the fun in that?
After fourteen hundred years, a vampire craved a little excitement. A change to the normal pace of life. Something to distinguish one day from the next and stop them all from blurring into a monotonous existence.
When you had eternity ahead of you, you needed to find a reason to keep plodding forwards.
Night had found excitement in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Chasing females in his youth. Courting princesses and queens in his adulthood. Fighting against the odds on a battlefield. Slinking through the shadows as an assassin for the Preux Chevaliers, serving his older brother, Grave.
None of it could compare to the hunt, though.
The hunt was delicious. Something to be savoured.
Picking prey wasn’t like a human going to a supermarket and grabbing the first pack of meat from the chiller. Not if the vampire had any pride or finesse, anyway.
It required patience.
Placing himself in the most strategic position so he could survey all in the room and study them in turn. Seeking a suitable host that would have just the right flavour he desired or strength he needed. It could take hours for the perfect donor to appear. Tantalising hours in which his hunger would build to an excruciating level and he would know that first sip of blood from the vein would be like manna from heaven.
And once he had found his prey?
Night shivered.
Once he found his prey, centuries of experience kicked into action and the real hunt began.
He sighed. The hunt was all that made him feel alive these days. His fingers brushed his throat, feeling the ridge of scar tissue that ringed it, and his mood darkened. Maybe he had died that night. He felt as if he had. He had never really recovered from that vile witch’s attack, or from the emotional blow her comrade had delivered him.
And he had led a dark existence since then.
Night dropped his hand back to the steering wheel of his sleek all-black Jaguar F-Type and glared at the narrow road the headlights illuminated ahead of him.
He should have been in the city, hunting as planned. If he had walked out of the door a second sooner, he might have missed his phone buzzing and he might not have checked it, and might not have grimaced at the reminder that he was due at his eldest brother, Bastian’s, house tonight.
But he had, and there was no changing it.
There was only bearing it.
He growled, his top lip peeling back off his emerging fangs, and cursed Bastian for denying him the one thing that made him feel alive. He didn’t want to spend a week leading a pampered existence, subjected to Bastian’s dull parties where only other vampires attended and blood was handed to him on a silver platter. Bastian loved hosting elegant soirees designed to remind the other aristocrat vampires in the area that they lived in close proximity to a Van der Garde, as if others of their kind should feel blessed to be in their presence.
Night hit a hard left turn and gunned the engine, his mood darkening further at the prospect of Bastian showing him off as if he was some kind of prized possession rather than his own flesh and blood. Sometimes his brother irritated the hell out of him. But—he huffed—Bastian was right. They were Van der Gardes, and that meant they had a reputation to uphold, and he would end up doing his part to impress whatever guests Bastian threw at him and endure their gushing and compliments. His bloodline had clawed their way to the top and made a name for themselves as the most powerful and vicious pureblood family, one many in this world feared, and not only the vampires.
Grave had carved out a dark and bloody reputation for them during his tenure as the leader of the Preux Chevaliers, a mercenary corps for aristocrat vampires. Anyone who knew of his brother trembled in fear.
Night found it all rather dull. Maybe it had excited him once.
Before a witch had tried to remove his head.
He slowed and swung the sports car to the right, through the gap between two impressive sandstone columns that supported the black iron gate of Bastian’s mansion. He slowed further, drawing out the approach, prowling along the drive. Moonlight cut through the slender cypresses that lined the road, making it flash over the bonnet.
The temptation to turn the car around and make up an excuse was strong, but Bastian would only be angry with him if he did. Which would only make things worse. Bastian would guilt him into a longer visit, and possibly a damned ball in which Night would be expected to dance with every pureblood female vampire in the vicinity. It was better to put up with this short stay than risk subjecting himself to that torment.
Still, it was about time Grave subjected himself to the horror of spending a week with their brother. He blamed Grave for the torture he was about to suffer. If Grave didn’t ignore the yearly summons without fail, Night wouldn’t feel obligated to obey it in some pathetic attempt to keep their family together. It didn’t help that Night lived in the mortal realm, making it far easier for Bastian to reach him. He didn’t have the excuses Grave did. He didn’t live in Hell, where pen and paper or a physical messenger were the only real way to get in touch with someone, and he didn’t run a busy mercenary corps.
Yes, there had been a few years where Night had managed to skip the ritual torment, but thanks to the advent of modern technology, otherwise known as mobile phones and the internet, he could no longer easily escape it. Not only that, but if he missed a year, Bastian more than made up for it the next.
He wasn’t talking about balls now. He was talking about Bastian’s tendency to make every moment they weren’t in the presence of other vampires, putting on a show so they appeared perfect to their guests, a living nightmare for him. Night had grown tired of hearing his brother regale him with his failings as a Van der Garde.
It wasn’t exactly fun to have them pointed out to him.
For once, he would like his brother to notice the great things he did, not the mistakes he made. He chuckled at that. Hell would freeze over long before Bastian praised him for anything. His brother didn’t have it in him.
He stared at the elegant Georgian sandstone mansion as it came into view ahead of him.
A golden glow emanated from most of the sash windows on the two levels, especially those closest to the double-height portico in the centre of the long building. Lights set into the ground illuminated the façade, including the Grecian columns that supported a triangular pediment with a beautiful carved frieze set into it. He stared at the figures and blew out his breath.
It looked more like a prison than a home to him as dread pooled in his stomach.
A whole week of putting up with Bastian and whatever fawning vampires his brother invited over.
Sometimes he wished Grave had succumbed to bloodlust and gone as nuclear as their cousin had, finishing the job Snow had started that dark night by murdering the rest of his family. Except for him, of course. Snow had spared his brother, Antoine. Night was sure Grave would do the same for him, clawing his sanity back in time to save him.
Or maybe he should just let his brother finish the job the witch had started on him.
Grave would never do it, though. His brother was cold and ruthless, but Night wasn’t as blind to his feelings as others were. His brother loved him too much to let him die. Proof of that was the fact Grave had reassigned him to the mortal world soon after the incident, using some excuse about him commanding a new black-ops type team that would be responsible for carrying out covert missions. His brother had wanted him out of Hell and away from danger. He wanted to keep Night safe.
Maybe his brother’s desperate desire to keep him alive was the reason Night had been seeing less and less of him over the decades. Night wanted things between them to reach a point where Grave wouldn’t stop him.
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and crushed those dark thoughts, putting them out of his head. He had important missions to complete for Grave. He was vital to Grave’s plans to become the most powerful man in Hell. Someone had to watch his brother’s back.
And who better to do it than his shadow?
Night frowned as the door of the mansion opened and Bastian hurried out of it, one of his owned humans following him.
With a lot of bags.
Night parked his car and stepped out, the golden gravel crunching under his black leather shoes. “What’s this?”
Bastian spared him a glance and then pointed at the boot of his enormous black Bentley. “Put the luggage in there. Hurry.”
The young man dipped his head and rushed to comply with his master’s orders, and Night strode towards his brother. Something was wrong. It wasn’t like Bastian to be flustered and his brother looked close to doing something terribly undignified, like running his hand through his neat dark brown hair.
Or losing his temper.
“I asked, what’s this?” Night stopped close to him, but Bastian moved away and did something very unlike him.
He opened the rear door of the car himself.
“Things must be dire if you’re not waiting for a servant to do that for you. I’m a patient man, Bastian, but it looks a lot like you’re leaving and I would like to know why.” Night steeled his nerves when Bastian paused and his head swivelled towards him. It wasn’t wise to demand anything of his eldest brother, but he was tired and had come all this way to see him, sacrificing a hunt to be here.
“I have business I need to deal with.” Bastian’s baritone was as smooth and calm as ever, but it didn’t fool Night. His brother was harried and the crimson ringing his pale blue irises told Night that the business in question had angered him, or maybe something else had.
Night’s own impertinence, perhaps.
He couldn’t be sure.
Bastian went to get into the car and Night gripped the top of the door, stopping him and earning himself another look that warned him he was treading on thin ice.
“I shall be back before the end of the week, Night. Make yourself at home.” Bastian looked over his shoulder as the servant shut the boot and the driver started the engine. “Stay here and look after the house.”
It wasn’t a request. It was an order.
While Night felt he should be aggravated by the fact his brother was demanding he stay in his home for the week despite the fact he wouldn’t even be there, he actually felt as if he had hit the jackpot. By the time Bastian returned, his week of torture would almost be up, and he had the huge mansion to himself.
He was already planning parties in his head. Not elegant balls, but debauched gatherings. Lavish affairs at his brother’s expense. Bastian could afford it. He was a shark. Bastian had a head for business that was more terrifying than Grave’s head for bloody mass murder on the battlefield. He had made billions since the mortal world had begun advancing, and the bastard kept it all to himself.
Bastian was a firm believer in making your own mark, which Night knew really meant he was a frugal son of a bitch who wanted to keep all his money to himself. Night couldn’t really hold it against him, because he knew where this side of his brother had come from. Their father had always been absent, far more concerned with his business dealings than his own family, leaving their mother to raise them.
In response to that, Bastian had started pushing Night and his siblings to make their mark on the world and live up to the Van der Garde name, foolishly believing that if he made a big enough impression that their father would take notice of him.
It had never happened.
Bastian slipped into the back seat of the car and Night rounded the vehicle, moving to the side of it nearest the house and giving it room to leave. His brother popped out again and looked over the roof of the car at him.
“Watch the female.”
Watch the female? What kind of cryptic request was that? While Night was trying to figure out the meaning of that demand, the car pulled away and he was left standing in the driveway, frowning at the gravel and wondering what Bastian had meant.
There were so many choices.
The female was a lover. The female needed protection from something. The female was an enemy and was incarcerated in the house, something which wouldn’t surprise him since many people had tried to claim the honour of killing one of the Van der Gardes over the years.
All had failed, of course.
His senses sharpened and he looked over his right shoulder at the butler, one of Bastian’s owned humans.
The dark-haired man bowed his head, pressing his gloved hand to the breast of his formal black and white attire. “Shall I retrieve your luggage, sir?”
Night nodded and shunned the uneasy feeling that went through him as the servant moved to carry out his request. He was never getting used to someone waiting on him, not again. His family had owned human servants when he had been living at the chateau in Switzerland, but since moving away, he had only been around them at Bastian’s house.
Bastian had a horde of owned humans, each with the scar of his bite on their neck. His brother was traditional that way. It was an aristocrat thing. A show of power. A simple exchange of blood made the human docile, a slave to the vampire. He supposed it was one way of staffing such a large house.
It wasn’t to Night’s tastes. He didn’t really care that humans were used as slaves for work, sex and blood, but he didn’t own any himself, despite how many times Bastian had extolled the virtues of having servants. Night’s apartment was small in comparison to this country house. He didn’t need someone to tend to his home for him, or for blood and sex. He preferred to get those things from a different female each time.
Speaking of which.
He smiled slowly and walked towards the steps up to the entrance, intending to go to his quarters and kick back on the four-poster bed and start planning his first soiree.
Only he hit an obstacle.
Night stopped in the doorway.
Standing in the middle of the elegant double-height foyer, her back to the twin wooden staircases that led up to the first floor and her head bent, her eyes fixed on the Italian marble floor, was a woman.
The female?
Her dark chocolate hair tumbled around her shoulders, brushing the black material of her short dress, and her hands were twisted in front of her white apron.
Night studied her. She wasn’t tall. Had to stand a good nine inches shorter than his six-three. She was dressed as a maid, which meant she was one of Bastian’s servants. She was rigid despite her deferential appearance. Afraid.
He drew down a breath as Bastian’s butler moved past him, carrying his luggage towards the right staircase, and several other servants milled around the room, going about their business. As the foyer cleared, he caught her scent and almost gasped.
She was mortal.
And she wasn’t owned.
He knew because while he could look at the other females in the house and had no desire to do anything with them, he couldn’t stop the flood of hunger that made his fangs itch as she slowly lifted her head, her caramel-coloured eyes inching up to meet his. Desire struck like a thunderbolt, zinging through his bones and burning up his blood, and it only worsened as her dark hair fell away from her neck.
Revealing the smooth pale curves of it to his eyes.
Eyes that zeroed in on the fact she wore no marks.
The knowledge that Bastian didn’t own her, that no vampire had marked her, had his fangs lengthening and his mouth watering.
Gods.
What new hell had his brother thrown him into this time?
