Lora Leigh - Primal

The scorpion-shaped charm at Sajia’s neck felt warm against the cold of the moment and the icy precipice she stood on. Her shirt clung to her skin as her nightgown had earlier. And her heart beat furiously against her chest.

They would smell her fear, hear the thundering race of her pulse, but they would also expect it. Though she had nothing to do with Corinne’s disappearance, she wouldn’t escape punishment because of it. As bajaran she was responsible for Corinne’s well-being. It remained her duty to know Corinne well enough to anticipate her actions and keep her safe from the impulses and ill-conceived plans of youth.

Like prey transfixed by a serpent’s stare, Sajia continued to meet The Master’s gaze. A subtle shift, perception rather than true movement, told her the danger of having her mind invaded had passed. Taking a bajaran ’s oath protected her from it unless there was reason to suspect betrayal. But he was The Master and no one would challenge his actions.

He steepled his hands and rested them on his chest, letting the tension build until it once again became evident that guilt or fear wouldn’t compel her to offer additional information. Finally he acknowledged, “Corinne is missing. She was taken to Oakland, though all that remained in the memory of the fisherman who piloted the boat is Corinne’s face and a vague recollection of a charm he passed to her before she hid herself under his nets.”

At the flexing of The Master’s fingers, the wall of vampires near the doorway parted to reveal the naked form of a man. The skin on his face and hands was deeply tanned from spending his days on the water.

It took only a glance for Sajia to know he was dead, drained of blood. The bite marks on his flesh were ragged and unhealed.

He’d been questioned and killed elsewhere. His body washed to rid it of the urine and feces that had come at death, if not before, so as not to offend The Master when the corpse was brought into his presence.

Sajia allowed no pity to show, though she felt a glimmer of it. Only a man driven to desperation would come to San Francisco on business not sanctioned by the vampires. Or a greedy fool.

She looked away from the corpse. Understanding it for the message it was, that it could just as easily be her, or one of her family members.

“With your permission,” she said, “I’ll leave to begin searching for Corinne.”

ADDAI STOOD NAKEDon a snowy ledge high in the Sierras. White wings spread out on either side of him as if to catch the howling, frigid wind and use it to lift upward in glorious flight. Long black hair streamed and whipped at his back like a satin cape.

He was impervious to the temperature, uncaring of air traveling fast enough to become a multitude of icy needles. What was cold to a being with origins in the dark of endless space and unfathomable universe? To a being who was the essence of light, born of the essence of power? A favored creation until the one humans named a god decided to breathe life into mud and lay claim to this planet.

And so it had begun.

The defeat of the Djinn who’d called this world theirs.

The birth of envy and betrayal. Of temptation, and lust grown into love.

Lucifer’s challenge and the casting out of his followers.

A second angelic fall.

The slaughter of mortal and Djinn wives, of angel-sired children.

Followed by the deluge, a flood to further cleanse the world, though such a cleansing proved an impossible feat.

All of it spanning his existence, though in thousands of years he had become something different than he once was, the reason for the change embodied in a name.

Sajia.

Djinn. Long-ago enemy.

He’d found her drawing water from a village well, her family in the distance, loading trade goods onto camels. He’d meant to kill her first and move on to the others, but instead it was his own sense of purpose that had died in the face of her fear, in the mirror she became as she backed away, water jugs shattering as they fell from trembling fingers, her soul calling to his, weeping and making his own cry at the thought of her loss.

In the desert they’d become lovers, husband and wife. His fear of becoming Fallen had kept him from tying his fate to hers and irrevocably making this world his own.

A fist of pain formed around his heart as he remembered sharing a last, lingering kiss before lifting her onto a camel’s back, and how he’d fought the urge to go after her as she rode away with her family, all of them answering the summons of The Prince who ruled them.

He’d turned away, not yet ready to bind himself so thoroughly to her that the gathered Djinn would accept him among them as ally and not enemy. But some part of her spirit already lived in him. He’d felt the moment of her death in a searing blaze of agony that opened a chasm of emptiness in his soul. One that filled with terrible rage and hate when he went to the place where the Djinn had gathered and found Sajia’s lifeless body among those of her family members.

With a sweep of snowy wings he shook off the nightmares of the past, forging the emotion they brought with them into formidable determination. After thousands of years she was reborn, and soon she would be returned to him.

Iyar en Batrael, the most powerful Djinn of the Raven House, had gone to the fiery birthplace of his kind and called Sajia’s name. Though she would hold no memories of her previous life, it didn’t matter to Addai. She was his to love and possess, to forever protect from harm and keep safe even as a new war loomed—one heralding the return of the Djinn from their prison-paradise deep in the ghostlands.

Addai looked down at the chalet built when humans still possessed the technology to achieve such a feat, in the time before what they called The Last War. Then beyond it, at a sweeping vista of desolation.

Not the ruins caused by bombs, but the harsh lands given birth by Earth itself. Rugged, barren mountains covered in snow. And at their base, flatlands where water was scarce and survival a challenge, even in the days when humans ruled the world.

He would bring her here first. He, who could allow a millennium to pass without clothing himself in flesh, who could close his eyes in rest and wake to the dawning of a new era, now counted the hours, the days. Chafed in impatience at the demands of heart and soul to be reunited with Sajia, at the demands of the body to have her beneath him, legs splayed and arms clasping him to her as she welcomed him deep inside her.

His eyelids lowered as images of the past returned. Despite bearing the mark of the Scorpion House on her skin, she’d been so very, very submissive. He had but to walk into the tent and she would kneel before him, naked as he’d demanded she be in the privacy of their quarters.

Head bowed and long tresses a silky curtain flowing over her breasts, she’d been the picture of perfection. She’d enticed him with the feminine line of her spine and the sweet curve of her buttocks, her thighs parted slightly in subtle invitation, in subtle defiance. The sight of her that way never failed to harden him instantly, even when it was one held only in his memory.

Desire coursed through Addai and he took himself in hand. He would bring her here first and tend to her every need himself.

In the future, after they were bound by the incantations of his kind and the spirit-sharing of hers, then if she desired it he would surround her with servants to do her bidding, except in the most private part of their home. There she would wear nothing against her skin and be seen only by him.

He would guard her as he’d been unable to do in their previous life together. Perhaps insist that outside the home she wear abaya and niqāb so no man could look on her figure or her face and see what was his alone.