Jane Kindred - Seducing The Dark Prince

Fascinated, Theia thumbed through an entry on the Smok family’s history. But it wasn’t about the Diamantes at all. It was an accounting of Madeleine Marchant’s belongings, given to the nobleman who had been her benefactor—none other than one Philippe Smok, Vicomte de Briançon. And among those “belongings” were Madeleine’s children: seven daughters, in fact. Seven sisters.

The Lilith blood allele—a hypothesis Theia had formulated when she and Rhea had first traced their genealogy—was passed down through recessive genes, only resulting in the Lilith phenotype when daughters were born to two carriers of the gene in Madeleine’s direct line. And this always seemed to result in the birth of seven sisters with the gifts. But she hadn’t realized that the first set of sisters were Madeleine’s own daughters.

Puddleglum plopped down in the middle of the journal to announce that Theia was done reading. She hadn’t realized how late it had gotten. Lying back on the bed and staring at the ceiling, she tried to work out what Lucien Smok’s game might be. There was no way his appearance at Phoebe’s wedding was a coincidence. Rafe was right. She should keep her distance. But if his family had a connection not just to the Covent but to Madeleine herself, then Lucien surely knew it and had sought them out deliberately. Theia had to find out what he was up to. Particularly with regard to Smok Biotech.

The arrival of the vision was the first indication that she’d actually fallen asleep.

It flew out of the night like a carrion bird, circling overhead, waiting for death, casting a heavy shadow on the creatures below: the crow. The wolf. The dragon. The flying thing drew closer, and now she was looking up at it, standing with her sisters. It was both a vulture and a reptile, a prehistoric lizard with wings—a pterodactyl, perhaps—its head birdlike, with glowing red eyes, bat-like wings stretching out from the lizard body.

In the distance, a rooster crowed, and the sound became a screech in the thing’s beak, a scream of laughter as it dived, talons outstretched.

The rooster crowed again. Light blazed through a crack in the blinds. Dawn light. The rooster was somewhere outside. Nice. Phoebe hadn’t mentioned the built-in neighborhood alarm clock. Theia pulled the pillow over her head and rolled onto her side.

Before the cock crows twice. What was that from? Something in the Bible, she thought. New Testament. She hadn’t been to church in years, but she remembered it now: Peter’s denial of Christ. The cock outside had crowed twice. Not that unusual, probably. But why was that sticking in her head? Cock, not rooster. Theia giggled, knowing what Rhea would have to say about it.

Cock crows twice. The vision came back to her in a rush. It wasn’t the Bible phrase she was thinking of, after all. The flying thing—it hadn’t been a pterodactyl like she’d speculated in the dream. It was a cockatrice. And it was coming for them.

In middle school, she’d once gone with a friend to her church, an evangelical one. The preacher had spoken of some mad theory about human-animal hybrids and the evil plot of godless scientists who wanted to bring back such things as griffins, harpies and cockatrices. His theory claimed such creatures had roamed the earth before the Great Flood because of the sins of unnatural men who’d bred them, and God had wiped them out.

Theia had barely been able to contain her laughter, and her friend had been furious. Even at twelve, Theia understood enough science to know how idiotic such a theory was. Nobody was trying to splice genes across species to create monster hybrids, and even if they did try, it wouldn’t work.

Except... Lucien Smok had said Smok Biotech’s research at NAU was both scientific and supernatural. And what was more supernatural than mythical creatures that turned out to be real?

She certainly hadn’t believed dragons were real until recently, when she’d seen two of them with her own eyes. Dev Gideon shared his form with the dragon Kur, and Rafe was a scion of Quetzalcoatl who sprouted iridescent feathered wings and snake flesh and commanded the dead. And she hadn’t seen Leo shift, but according to Rhea’s account of their time battling another ancient dragon in the Viking underworld, he could transform into a serpentine creature with the destructive energy of the mythological Jörmungandr—who maybe wasn’t so mythological after all.

What if the Smok family’s “magical-adjacent” connection was that they were bioengineering other such creatures?

Theia unhooked her arms from the pillow, and her eyes focused on the crimson business card on the nightstand. If she wanted to get to the bottom of this, she was going to have to take Lucien up on his offer.

Chapter 4

Lucien’s phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. He’d been out on a job all day and had turned his ringer off. He took it out and glanced at it, surprised to see a voice mail notification from Theia Dawn. And annoyed that it seemed to make his heart beat faster.

Theia’s message was brief: “We should talk.”

Somebody else had talked, obviously. From the tone of her voice, he could tell she was better informed about the Smoks than she’d been yesterday. Lucien lay on his back on the Berber rug on the floor of his penthouse suite while he returned her call.

He grinned when she answered. “I knew you couldn’t resist me.”

“I can resist you just fine. It’s your company I find intriguing.” There was a pause as she apparently realized how her word choice sounded. “Your firm,” she said quickly, followed by an adorable, mortified gasp.

He put her on speaker and crossed his arms behind his head. “So what can my...firm...do for you, Ms. Dawn?”

“I thought we were going to talk about what I can do for your...” She swore softly at herself in the background. It sent a little shiver down his spine to know how flustered she was when he wasn’t even standing in front of her. “About the job. With Smok Biotech,” she hastened to add. He wondered how flushed her skin was right now. With the chocolate-brown hair bobbed sharply at her chin and those little points of cherry red at the ends, it would make her eyes seem even larger.

“You want the job at the lab.” He spoke lazily, imagining her large gray eyes blinking at him.

“If the offer’s still open. And it depends on exactly what the job is.”

“The offer is most definitely still open. Why don’t we meet for dinner tonight to talk over the specifics?”

“Tonight?” Her voice went up slightly at the end, a little squeak of surprise.

Lucien smiled. “Is that a problem?”

“It’s almost eight o’clock.”

“Too close to your bedtime? I’m sure I can accommodate that.”

“No, it’s just—it’s short notice. I wasn’t planning on going out tonight. It would take me a little while to get ready.”

“It’s just a business dinner. You don’t need to impress me.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Her tone was clipped.

He loved getting under her skin. Lucien grinned at the thought. He’d like to get deep under it. Or inside it. In a manner of speaking. Lucien shook himself out of his little daydream. That wasn’t going to do him any good.

“Why don’t we meet at Cress at L’Auberge in an hour? Is that enough time?”

“Are they open that late?”

“They will be for me.”

* * *

The last time he’d seen her, she’d been dressed as a bridesmaid in a bloodred chiffon dress that swung around her hips when she walked. Undeniably flattering, but he’d suspected it wasn’t the sort of thing she normally wore. Neither was what she had on tonight—a conservative navy blue pencil skirt with a cream-colored blouse buttoned up far too high. It was an interesting look, perhaps something she thought a scientist would wear to a business dinner. The one departure from the conservative style was the pair of red crushed-velvet heels that drew attention to her fantastic legs.