Kristie Cook - Genesis

The thought of bedding Inga was enticing—she’d yet to lose her youthful looks and sumptuous body—but Jordan didn’t want everything that came with it.

“Why’d you even come here?” he asked. “You knew what I wanted and you didn’t have it. Why are you bothering me?”

She blinked and he watched as her throat worked to swallow.

“With Eris gone … ” she started and stammered. “I mean … I thought … I love you, Jordan. I just want to be with you. That’s all I ever wanted.”

Exactly what he didn’t want. Love. What a deception. Nobody truly loved. It was just a bothersome word, full of dishonesty that often fooled the one using the word as much as the one hearing it. It destroyed more often than not, wreaking havoc on people’s lives. He wondered if His Lord had created this word.

Inga pushed her hand across his back and to his other shoulder and wrapped her other arm across his front, embracing him. She leaned in to press her lips against his cheek, a soft touch of tenderness, not passion. Part of him ached for her, the part that felt her soft breasts rubbing against his bicep. No, not her. He craved almost any woman at this point. But definitely not her and all she would expect from him. He shoved her aside, so hard she fell to the floor.

She looked up at him, her eyes watery and pleading. “I will do anything for you, Jordan. There are many ways I can help you. Whatever you need. Whenever you need it. I may not be as magickally powerful as Eris, but—”

“Exactly. I have no need for you. Be gone, woman!”

She flinched and her lower lip trembled. He thought he would hit her if she cried, but she disappeared just as the first tear fell. With an angry exhale, Jordan pulled himself together before flashing north.

Jordan entered the dark, fire-lit room, prepared with an argument for Zardok. He wasn’t prepared, however, for the number of people in the circular cavern—every throne was filled and more stood by the fires. One of the cloaked figures rose from a throne and dropped his hood. Eris’s father. Jordan sucked his breath. He’d forgotten about him.

“Did she tell you the incantation?” Jordan blurted, too excited to control himself. Surely she’d shared it with her father and the sorcerer was powerful enough to make it work … unless, for some reason, he mourned his daughter’s death. Jordan didn’t think it possible, but he’d stopped trying to figure out the Ancients a long time ago.

“Of course not,” the sorcerer sneered. “She was smart enough to know sharing it would make her dispensable. Unfortunately, she wasn’t smart enough to overcome her own vanity. Stupid woman, drinking what she knew would poison her.”

“Do you plan to help me recreate it?” Jordan asked.

“We already have our best witches working on it.”

Jordan’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared. He didn’t like the idea of others working on his potion.

“You, Jordan, have more important things to worry about,” Zardok said from his throne. He rose, pushing the naked brunette off his lap and wiping his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. She slipped into the shadows and a dark shape licked the blood trickling down her breast. “Your sister.”

Jordan’s eyes snapped back to Zardok. “Yes. I thought I would give her time, let the potion take full effect, then retrieve her.”

The vampyre chuckled. “Retrieve her? I do not think you understand the gravity of the situation.”

“You won’t be able to retrieve her,” the sorcerer said. “She will never be ours. The Angels have permanently tainted her.”

Jordan pressed his lips together. He’d come to realize this already, but he’d been holding onto the hope that the Daemoni qualities would overpower whatever the Angels did to her.

“They have claimed her and her descendants,” Zardok added. “And now we have a problem. It’s a small one right now, but if you don’t do something about it, it will grow. And it’s your problem, Jordan.”

Jordan peered at him and lifted an eyebrow in question.

“We are losing our own to her,” Zardok said.

Growls and hisses sounded around the room. Jordan’s eyes darted to Zardok’s face.

“She’s converting your new troops. She’s taken Niko back. He’s brought her more. We’re losing their souls, Jordan,” Zardok said. “You must stop her.”

Anger welled in Jordan’s chest, but he just nodded. “I can take care of it. I just need a couple of men.”

“You can choose the men you take, except for Deimos,” the sorcerer said. “If you fail, we’ll still have him.”

“I won’t fail.”

“You should hope not,” Zardok said. “Because if she and hers don’t kill you, we will.”

“I said I can take care of it,” Jordan growled. “She’s just my sister. I am still far more powerful than she is.”

“So be it,” Zardok said. “Take care of it. Even if it means killing her.”

“Of course,” Jordan said with a slight bow to the Ancients.

He had no problem making the promise—he secretly clutched to the hope that his sister could still be useful to him, but if not, and if she was any threat to his future, he would kill her. How, he wasn’t sure. After all, his main intent with the potion was immortality. He just hoped that part hadn’t taken effect in her yet.

First, he had to find her. Which became more difficult than he expected.

Cassandra sat on a dead log with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She peeked to her side to ensure Andronika still slept, even with everyone’s voices growing louder. She now had six others in the little group Father had told her to create—Niko, two other vampyres, two werewolves and a witch who had just joined them about a month ago. Definitely not an army. Even if she converted a hundred more, she wanted to avoid fighting the Daemoni at all costs. She couldn’t put her growing family—she loved them nearly as much as she loved her daughter—at risk. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what they wanted to do.

“We’ve been running from your brother for nearly two seasons,” Niko said. “We have more numbers now and we’re all trained warriors. We can fight them, Cassandra.”

“I don’t want to fight them,” she said for the fifth time tonight.

He’d been making this same plea to her for a while now. Being on the run was, admittedly, tiresome. All she really wanted to do was vanish onto one of those little islands in the sea, where Jordan could never find them. But they told her they could never truly disappear from him. He’d always find them. At least, until they had a warlock or more mages on their side to produce a strong enough shield, whatever that was.

“This cat-and-mouse game has to end sometime,” said Michael, a red-headed vampyre. “We should end it our way. We should go on the offensive.”

The others murmured in agreement. She knew he was probably right. She wasn’t trained for battle, except for what they’d been teaching her, but they were. They would know how to plan and execute an attack on Jordan. If they went on the offensive, they could better control the situation and she might still have a chance to end this peaceably, but if Jordan found them first, her chances for that would diminish drastically.

“Jordan only ever has two others with him. We can easily take him down,” Niko said.

“He only ever has two with him, but he can summon hundreds if he needs to,” said Inga, their most recent addition.

And that’s exactly what frightened Cassandra and why they kept at this same argument. She refused to take the chance of losing lives to Jordan and his minions.

“What if we devise a plan that prevents him from summoning any others?” Michael asked. “We could ambush him and he’d never have a chance.”