Darkness Bound (A Night Prowler Novel) Read online

  He sunk his fingers into the flesh of her hips, holding her still. He growled, “Jacqueline . . . stop.”

  She tilted her head back and blinked at him, smiling lazily, her eyes half-lidded and filled with heat. “Stop it because you like it, you mean?”

  He swallowed. She fit perfectly against his body, warm and soft against his hardness and angles, and it felt so right he forgot to lie.

  “Yes.”

  Victorious, she smiled wider. “No,” she whispered, grinning wickedly, and rubbed her pelvis against that straining hardness between his legs.

  With a deep warning growl rumbling through his chest, Hawk fisted a hand in her hair and tightened the other around her hipbone, pinning her in place. He glared down at her, fighting the powerful instinct to take her, to make her arch and scream beneath him, to make her his.

  She wasn’t his. She could never be his. They were from two different worlds, and one day soon she’d go back to hers and he’d never see her again.

  And the way he felt about her, the confusion and distraction and inability to think about almost anything else when she was near told him that on that day when she left, she’d be taking his heart with him.

  Better to stop this insanity now, before she took his soul, too.

  “Stop! You’re not in your right mind! That drink I gave you, it’s making you do this—this isn’t you!”

  She threaded her fingers into his hair, arching against him. Very throaty, she said, “This is me, Hawk. This is what I want to do every single time I look at you. This is what I’d do every day for the rest of my life if I could. This.”

  She kissed him.

  Everything else faded to black.

  It was the same as the first time he’d kissed her at the hotel, the same as the next time in the jungle, when he was so overcome with emotion all he could do was lash out like a cornered animal because he didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know why but she made him feel things he’d never felt before.

  Things he was afraid of, because he knew he could never have them.

  Things that threatened to swallow him whole.

  Of course he kissed her back; he didn’t have a choice. Once her lips were on his, instinct and desire took over and pushed his rational mind aside. His hand found the firm roundness of her bottom, and he stroked his fingers over it, pinching and rubbing, the chemise silky soft against his palm. She moaned into his mouth and he shuddered, wanting so badly to hear that while he was inside her and her legs were wrapped around his waist.

  “Please, Lucas,” she whispered, rubbing her breasts against his chest. Her nipples strained hard and pink through the thin fabric of the chemise. “Please. You know what I need. Please give it to me.”

  He groaned, closing his eyes. It killed him when she called him by his given name. And to ask for that . . .

  He was going to die. That’s all there was to it. She was going to kill him.

  “I can’t, namorada . . . it would be taking advantage of you. I might be a selfish, miserable bastard, but I don’t take advantage of women when they’re drugged!”

  “What if I took advantage of you, then?” She slipped one arm from around his neck to stroke his erection through the front of his pants.

  He froze. Another groan escaped his lips as she rubbed her thumb over his swollen head. He gripped her wrist and said through gritted teeth, “Don’t. Do. That.”

  “You like it. You love it. You should see your eyes,” she said, still stroking him.

  He was throbbing beneath her hand. Twitching. Aching.

  He whispered her name, teetering on the razor’s edge of restraint, staring down at her in agony. I can’t do this. She’ll hate me. This is wrong—she doesn’t know what she’s doing!

  With a depth of self-control he wouldn’t have believed himself capable of, he placed his hands on her shoulders and set her away from him, giving her a hard little shake.

  “No!” he shouted hoarsely.

  She arched a brow and blinked. “You don’t have to be so crabby about it.”

  Hand shaking, Hawk pointed to the bed. “Go back to bed, lie down, and sleep it off!”

  Impossibly, she yawned, not even bothering to cover her mouth. “Maybe you’re right. I am kind of sleepy.” Then in a totally uncharacteristic show of obedience, she turned around, crawled up on the bed, and lay on her side with her knees pulled up and her hands folded beneath her face, as if in prayer.

  She promptly fell asleep.

  Hawk stood staring at her in disbelief, panting and sweating as if he’d just run a sprint.

  He was going to kill kalum.

  He went into the bathroom, unzipped his pants, took his swollen cock in hand, and stroked himself until he came with a stifled groan and mighty spurts, the entire time imagining Jacqueline on her knees before him, her cheeks hollowed as she sucked him into ecstasy, her eyes upturned to his, shining blue and lustfully bright.

  Kalum, Keeper of the Ancient Ways, lived in a cave that Hawk had always been insanely jealous of, both for its distance from the rest of the tribe and its incredible view.

  Situated on a rocky outcropping at the top of a hill beside a roaring waterfall, the cave had been hand dug by one of kalum’s ancestors, yet sported perfectly smooth walls and floors that conducted the wind in sighs and groans along its winding corridors. The main room gaped wide yet felt somehow snug. Thick woven rugs interrupted the cold expanse of stone floors, and clusters of candles burned in niches in the walls day and night, casting warmth and wavering light into the echoing spaces.

  When Hawk came barging in like an angry bull, kalum was busy preparing something in a kettle hanging over a small fire.

  “You gave me the wrong thing!” His voice bounced off the stone walls, repeating itself before fading into silence.

  The old man glanced up at him, his face impassive as he stirred the gently simmering broth in the pot. “A proper greeting, if you please, mar sarrim.”

  Prince. It was kalum’s pet name for Hawk, one that made no sense in the context of his life and which Hawk always supposed the old priest uttered with irony.

  The real irony, not the fake Alanis Morissette kind.

  Hawk stopped, bowed, blustered, “Ati me peta babka.” Gatekeeper, open your gate for me. Then he repeated, “You gave me the wrong thing for the girl! The potion—it was wrong!”

  Kalum stirred and stirred, unperturbed by Hawk’s agitated state. “Did I now? And what makes you say that, mar sarrim?”

  Hawk began to stalk to and fro before the fire, waving his arms like a madman. “She was . . . intoxicated! Not in her right mind! She was saying crazy things, doing crazy things!”

  “Hmm,” said kalum.

  “It was like she was a different person or something—like her body had been taken over by aliens!”

  “Hmm.” Kalum stirred the pot, watching Hawk as he made a fourth pass in front of it.

  “I’m telling you, it didn’t work, something went wrong—”

  “It took the pain away.” This was stated as a fact between delicate sniffs of the steam rising from the bubbling mixture in the cauldron.

  “Well . . . yes. She didn’t seem to be in any pain at all, actually.”

  “So it worked perfectly.” Kalum tasted the hot broth, sipping from a long-handled ladle, and nodded in satisfaction. “Almost ready.”

  Hawk ground to a halt and stared at the old man. “Kalum, listen here—I cannot have her in that condition until she heals!”

  “Taxing your self-control, is she?” the old man said, mirth twinkling in his eyes.

  “Wait. You knew that would happen? You knew she’d get so . . .” His face turned red.

  “No. I did not. Everyone reacts differently to the brew. But judging by that”—his gaze dropped to the bulge in Hawk’s trousers, the ere
ction still refusing to diminish even after he’d finished his sad little self-molestation in the bathroom—“your little Gibil had her inhibitions stripped away along with her pain.”

  Gibil meant One of Fire. Knowing kalum, it could simply be referring to her red hair . . . or it could mean something else altogether.

  Hawk groaned and ran a hand over his head. “You can say that again. And apparently her sense of reality, too. She actually thinks she likes me.”

  “Would that be so hard to believe, in light of what she did for you last night?”

  Hawk looked askance at the old man, taking up his pacing again. “She would have done that for anyone. She’s very . . . protective.”

  “As you are protective of her,” kalum said with a small smile.

  “That’s different!”

  “Is it?”

  Hawk was becoming increasingly frustrated by this irritating, circuitous conversation. He didn’t want to disrespect the priest, but kalum had given him a potion that was supposed to relieve Jacqueline’s pain and instead turned her into some kind of horny beast who blurted nonsensical things like, “Please give me what I need,” and “This is what I’d do every day if I could,” right before she kissed him.

  The woman was clearly not rational. Which was kalum’s fault!

  “In case you’re wondering, mar sarrim, anything she might have said was the truth.”

  Hawk froze in place. The priest was calmly crumbling a handful of dried herbs into the cauldron.

  “What?”

  The small smile the priest had been wearing seemed to be growing larger. “It’s a common side effect. Euphoria and pain reduction are the main effects of the spirit vine, as are the occasional vivid hallucination, but I added a few special things of my own. I customized it, you understand. So if her body reacted to the potion by stripping away her inhibitions along with her pain, it also stripped away her ability to prevaricate.”

  Hawk stared at him with his mouth hanging open, his face blank.

  “She can’t lie,” added kalum, assuming Hawk didn’t understand.

  But he did. He understood, but he didn’t believe.

  The priest shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He ladled some of the bubbling broth into a bowl and held it out to Hawk. “Anteater stew?”

  “She can’t lie,” he repeated, ignoring the offered bowl. “For how long?”

  “For as long as it takes for her body to burn through the potion. Two days, possibly three.”

  “Three days!” Hawk shouted. “I have to live with her like that for three days?”

  “It’s no good shouting at me, mar sarrim. The only way to remove her pain was to give her the brew. And you wanted to remove her pain, yes?”

  “Well, yes, but not to make her . . . like . . . that!”

  “Hmm,” said kalum, dipping into the bowl of stew with a spoon. He swallowed a mouthful and pointed at it. “Oh, that’s tasty. You sure you don’t want any?”

  Hawk cradled his head in his hands, pressing on both temples in an effort to make the sudden throbbing subside. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening!

  The priest said innocently, “Don’t get yourself all worked up over this, mar sarrim. If she’s too much for you, just let Alejandro take care of her. I’m sure he’d be more than happy to take her off your hands . . . did you see how he looked at her when she introduced herself?” He chuckled. “Thought he was going to drool all over his own feet.”

  A spike of jealousy, scalding and black, shot through Hawk’s chest. He lowered his arms to glare at the old man. “I know what you’re doing, and it’s not going to work!”

  Kalum walked over to him with small, unsteady steps. He gazed up into Hawk’s face, smiled, gave him a fatherly pat on the cheek, and said, “What you think is down, is up. What you think is up, is down. They are the same, yet they are different. Yes?”

  “Kalum,” said Hawk, jaw tight, “don’t speak to me in riddles. What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying the way to understand the truth is to stop resisting it. The swan that believes it is an ugly duckling is no less a swan, but for its own perception. The day is also night, the dark is also light, the hunters are also the hunted. Reality is nothing more than a mirror, reflecting back what you shine forth. The truth is a mutable beast, docile or devilish simply depending on where you stand.”

  Hawk stared at him, seething. “Well. How enlightening. Any clearer and it would be crystal.”

  The old priest looked pleased by his sarcasm. “It will give you something to think on, then.” He clapped his hands together, as if summoning invisible servants. “Now get out of here; I’ve got two mating ceremonies and a birth blessing to do today, and you’re messing up all the good energy in this cave. Scoot!”

  He shuffled back to the fire, dismissing Hawk with a wave.

  Hawk watched him for a long, silent moment, before turning on his heel and marching back out the way he came.

  When Hawk had gone, the priest finished his anteater stew with intent mindfulness, savoring the flavors, knowing this would be the last time it would ever pass his lips.

  He made it often, in batches large enough to offer bowlfuls to the many visitors he had each day, hankering after potions or ointments or blessings on babies and unions, after punishments and before cremations, during the Season of the Inundation and at Akitu, the beginning of the New Year. Other days he made it with tapir or tamarind or capybara meat, there were a dozen different combinations, but he knew by the time it was due for the anteater to be featured again, he would no longer be here.

  None of them would.

  He finished it. He rinsed out his bowl and put away the spoon, carefully drying both. Then he went to the beautiful chest at the foot of his sleeping pallet, and opened the lid.

  Handed down father to son as the position of kalum had been, the fossilized wood chest bore the mark of every priest of the tribe, stretching back over two thousand years. It had arrived with them when they’d fled Egypt, one of the only things to survive the trek. In it were kept the sacred scrolls, called edubba. Written in the Old Language, they were copied by hand thrice a generation to ensure the teachings survived when the paper began its inevitable decay, victim to the rainforest’s dewy clime.

  Kalum knew exactly which scroll to select. His father, like his father before him, had ensured he would recognize the signs when the time came. He unrolled the parchment, gazing solemnly at the lines he already knew by heart.

  It was a poem, merely four stanzas long, titled “Sanu Enzillu.”

  Song of Extinction

  A prince of Air, a daughter of Fire

  A mournful cry and a funeral pyre

  A blooded heart, a sacrifice

  Foretell the end of Paradise

  A diamond Queen, aspect of white

  Her two young babes, bereft of light

  Augur nigh a time of strife

  A battle lost to lower life

  A comet red, a moon of blue

  A sum of five reduced to two

  An evil trickster, wishing well

  Looses all the dogs of Hell

  These things in all will come to pass

  The sand runs out the hourglass

  Harken and be not headstrong

  To Death’s cold arms we soon belong.

  Kalum finished reading. He rolled up the scroll, placed it back in the chest atop the stack of others, and closed the lid. He said a prayer to Ama-gi in the Old Language, rose from his knees, and went to stare out the mouth of the cave into the vast, green beyond.

  He’d known this day would come.

  As soon as the new Queen had been crowned—the Diamond Queen they called her, just as beautiful, just as rare—he knew it would be within his lifetime. She had twins on a night a red comet scored the sky, and he knew the time crept clo
ser. Then the four confederate colonies had merged, leaving only the Roman colony outside the arms of the rainforest. “A sum of five reduced to two.”

  And now the red-haired human, who’d arrived just last night.

  Kalum had never seen a redhead before. Actually, the only humans he’d ever seen had been the indigenous tribes of the forest, glimpsed from afar, but the moment he saw her, he knew she was the “daughter of Fire” of the poem. His father had called redheads Gibil, “One of Fire.”

  Hawk, son of an Alpha, born to the House of Air, was the prince in the poem. It was his cold heart that had been awakened—blooded—by the human, her sacrifice at the punishment tree.

  A sacrifice that took place on a full moon. The second full moon in a single month.

  A blue moon.

  As for the rest of it—the funeral pyre, the trickster, the battle—he knew those would come, too. Soon.

  “And so begins our end,” the old priest murmured, watching a flock of parrots burst from the tree line in a tangle of yellow and blue. They vanished with a quicksilver flash into the misted sky, and kalum turned back to the cave and went inside to prepare.

  Edward, Viscount Weymouth, was mad.

  Furious was a word more apropos for the emotion scraping his guts like a bowl being hollowed out by a whittler’s knife. Since he’d discovered the Queen wouldn’t be accompanying him and the rest of the final families of Sommerley on their journey to the rainforest, he’d been so angry he’d given himself a headache from his constant teeth-gnashing.

  “Something she has do first,” Leander had explained in his oblique, maddening way the day they’d left, and wouldn’t be convinced to speak further about it.

  Edward had the sneaking suspicion that the “something” Jenna had to do was related to Caesar and Morocco. But he couldn’t do anything about it . . . for the time being.

  For the time being, the Plan was put on hold.

  Leander had kept him close during the flight to Manaus on his private jet, even closer during the boat and canoe rides up the rivers that snaked deeper and deeper into the jungle. There was no opportunity for him to sneak away and make a warning phone call during all the time of their journey, and now they stood in a quiet group of fifteen on the banks of a silty river, staring into the dense jungle undergrowth from which a greeting party of six large black panthers had just emerged.