to him seemed like so much more than blood calling to blood.
But now...
Him...
That kiss.
Avery glanced up at the sky, questioning the heavens. But it had been a long time since she’d had any help from there.
She had heard something, though. The Knight had spoken to her telepathically. She’d heard him clearly because she had left a channel to her mind open. Another slip-up.
“Damn it,” she would have returned if she had been able to join in that conversation. “This is no game.”
They weren’t players on some gigantic chessboard. There was so much more at stake here than who might gain or lose a point. This was life. Hers. She’d been a fool to have been so intent on tattooed wings that she hadn’t done enough research about which of the Knights she’d potentially encounter if things went wrong in London. Being secretly attracted to this one should have kept her more aware of his travels, even though she’d been loath to remain so close.
It had to be you...
Swinging herself up the side of a building was just one of her many talents. Surprisingly, that also turned out to be a mistake, because the Knight’s scent lingered on the rooftop, preventing her from moving on. He must have watched her from here. Below this roof, the alley curved toward the tattoo parlor.
Some new stealth trick of your own, Knight?
Now, she had to regroup. He had threatened to find her, and would if she remained in this city. Leaving London, however, was not an option. A culmination of the search that had tied up her whole earthly life lay within her grasp. The importance of that could not be forsaken because a Blood Knight was on her trail.
Leave here. Leave him, her instincts warned. Before...
Before what? Before she forgot her early hatred for the Seven and their Makers who had caused her so much agony? This Knight was one of them, even if the way things had gone down at that blasted castle wasn’t his fault. Still, the beautiful bastard she’d kissed was guilty by association.
Mixed feelings were scary, and she was experiencing plenty of them. Without old hatreds to guide her, what was left? Which direction would she take? She wanted so badly to trust someone, but could not confess her secrets to one of the seven golden Knights.
Leave him.
Must stay away.
“You will never find me,” she whispered to her glorious Blood Knight. But those words made her heart ache. They made her feel sick. She added soberly, “Not without an invitation.”
Possibly she liked him too much to share the hurt she had suffered. Even more telling than her new turn of conscience was how desperately she longed to have another shot at that kiss—an action that had apparently changed everything after so many years of avoiding him.
* * *
Hissing sounds, like static coming over the airwaves, forced Rhys to address the next untimely distraction. There was no mistaking the stink of stale blood permeating the area. Over the years, he’d grown sick of the stench.
“It’s rather early for you to be partying, isn’t it?” he said to the bloodsucker tucked into a dark corner behind him.
Guttural noises accompanied the vamp’s rebuttal, as if the creature wasn’t used to speaking through its fangs. “You do not own this city, freak.”
Rhys grinned dangerously. “Freak, is it? Me? That’s rich.”
“I do not fear you.”
“You haven’t heard the rumors?”
“I have heard them,” the vamp snarled.
“Maybe you missed the fight minutes ago?”
“I did not miss it.”
“Yet you’ll confront me here?”
“Do you imagine I came alone?”
“Yes, actually. I can sense your kind, you know. It’s a gift. Or a curse. You’re the last vamp crowding my space tonight.”
The vampire didn’t take the bait of that taunt and showed itself.
“I suppose you’re drawn to the scent of this place.” Rhys waved at the tattoo parlor.
“As were you,” the vampire returned, with far too much insight.
“I’m not attracted to blood, you know. It does not sustain me,” Rhys said.
“What does?”
“Current goals. Old vows.”
The vampire floated out of the shadows—a middle-aged bloodsucker, turned in his fifties, Rhys presumed. Tall, thin and dressed in a tattered black suit, this child of the night smelled like he’d been in the earth a few years too long. This was no fledgling, after all.
“One cannot thrive on old vows alone,” it observed.
Rhys nodded. “I have also cultivated a taste for wine over the past hundred years.”
The vampire had no sense of humor.
“You came to her aid,” it noted.
Rhys applied new energy to his voice. The vampire had been watching that fight, watching his white-haired companion.
“For reasons you would likely not understand or want to go into,” Rhys said.
“Perhaps I would understand. I followed her here, too. I am not immune to what she represents,” the vampire returned.
“Would that be dinner?”
“The pale one would be a veritable feast,” the vampire agreed. “Whipped cream on a blood-red cake.”
Rhys said calmly, “She isn’t human, you know.”
“All the better.”
This bloodsucker had also tuned in to the power the woman radiated. Did the creep believe he could sink his fangs into an immortal and get away with it, when that would have been impossible?
“Trying something like that would be a misuse of your energy,” Rhys warned. “Your fangs won’t penetrate her skin, you know.”
And even if they could, her blood would make this creature choke. White blood, underscoring the colorlessness of her skin.
“Can’t hurt to try,” the vamp remarked.
“Looking for what? The fountain of youth? You do realize that’s a false rumor, and that no such thing exists?”
Agitated, the bloodsucker moved sideways. “Can you tell me this truthfully?”
“No fountain of youth,” Rhys promised.
Although the Knights had been resurrected by a blood gift sipped from a golden chalice, they weren’t vampires. Though they had fangs, the Knights ate and drank only slightly less than the rest of the world’s population. Their blood wasn’t a restorative that could heal a reanimated corpse. He and his brethren weren’t gods. All seven had been human once.
“I don’t think you understand,” Rhys continued. “The point I’m making is that this woman is not for you. Not any of your concern.”
“Is that not so for you, as well?”
Rhys wasn’t entirely sure how to reply to that. Like the vampire, he had left his human existence behind and accepted the invitation to exist forever. But he had done so willingly. He doubted this vampire had chosen his afterlife’s direction, or that many would choose to live off the life force of others.
The Seven had been called back to life by a higher power than the black hand of Death. That beginning set them apart. His heart had been restarted for a golden purpose. Only through the miracle of a chalice often referred