Susan Krinard - Nightmaster

“Your spirit intrigued me. You speak our language well, and I have some interest in the human perspective. Perhaps you can provide me with a new one.”

Trinity looked at him as if he were slightly mad. As he would be, in most Opiri’s eyes.

She rubbed her arms as if she were cold, though nearly all of Erebus was kept warmer than most of her kind preferred. “I know I have no rights. But I am … glad you won me.”

Yet her eyes were soft, her lips parted, her face flushed as if with desire. The unmistakable scent of sexual arousal rose from her body.

Ares grabbed her by the shoulders, lifted her face to his level and kissed her. His teeth grazed her lower lip, giving him the smallest taste of her sweet blood.

SUSAN KRINARDhas been writing paranormal romance for nearly twenty years. With Daysider she began a series of vampire paranormal romances, the Nightsiders series, for Mills & Boon ®Nocturne™.

Sue lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband, Serge, her dogs, Freya, Nahla and Cagney, and her cats, Agatha and Rocky. She loves her garden, nature, painting and chocolate … not necessarily in that order.

Nightmaster

Susan Krinard

www.millsandboon.co.uk

As always, with thanks to Lucienne Diver and Leslie Wainger.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 1

Trinity Ward waited with the other dozen convicts, her wrists aching from the grip of the padded cuffs that kept her hands locked together at her waist.

Not that she would have fought to escape. This was where she was supposed to be, among these poor, lost souls whose punishment was to be more terrible than mere imprisonment. Or even death.

They were condemned to a life of blood slavery to some Nightsider master in the Opir city of Erebus—an existence of unending servitude—until they were too old to provide blood or serve in any other capacity.

But these living offerings around Trinity, men and women who had committed only the most minor crimes, were not old. Some were in their late teens; the eldest couldn’t have been more than fifty. If not for the Treaty and the need to maintain the Armistice, they might have lived normal lives, sentenced by the Courts to jail time, probation and reparations.

Except that there were only two jails in the Enclave, and they were nearly empty. Crime had dropped to levels unknown in all of human history. Dropped so far that the bloodsuckers were growing restless.

“What did you do?” a young woman standing next to Trinity asked in a surprisingly calm voice.

Trinity met her gaze. She knew what the woman saw: normal human eyes, not the catlike pupils of a half human, half Nightsider dhampir. In a way, the contact lenses were like shields, not only concealing Trinity’s identity, but also helping her keep her distance from those around her.

Distance, Trinity thought, shouldn’t be a problem. She had been chosen for this assignment because she was known as the most unflappable, most controlled operative in all of Aegis. The one without close friends or lovers, because she wanted it that way.

Still, it was hard looking at this woman’s face, knowing she hadn’t earned the fate that awaited her. None of these people had.

“I didn’t pay my taxes,” Trinity whispered. “You?”

The woman’s brown eyes filled with tears. “I stole a pair of earrings. They weren’t expensive at all, but I hadn’t had something pretty like that in—” She broke off, her calm dissolving in grief and fear.

“I’m sorry,” Trinity said, awkwardly touching the woman’s arm.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for my daughter,” the woman said, wiping her eyes on her forearm. “She’s going to stay with my parents now. They’ll take good care of her. But I—”

She didn’t have to finish. Trinity knew what it was like to lose family. Not that she’d ever really had one. Her Nightsider father, whom she didn’t remember, had been killed at the end of the War when Enclave soldiers had found him in possession of Trinity’s mother and their daughter, treating both as prisoners rather than anything a human would call a “family.”

Trinity’s mother had taken her back to the Enclave. But there had never been another father. And Trinity had grown up half vampire in a world of humans who feared and hated the part of her that made her so different, so much faster and stronger and keener of vision, able to see in the dark and with teeth made for drinking blood.

Something most dhampires would rather die than sink to.

“My name is Trinity,” she said to her companion.

“Rachel,” the woman said, raising her bound wrists. “I can’t shake your hand.”

Suddenly they both laughed, the laughter of people without hope. Trinity wasn’t completely faking it. She knew her odds of coming out of this alive and free were minimal, but that wasn’t what she feared. She had to obtain the necessary information and get word out of Erebus. If this was to be her last assignment, she intended to make it count.

“Attention,” the soldier at the front of the column shouted, his helmet reflecting the sunlight. “You’ll be boarding the ferry now. When we reach the Larkspur Ferry Terminal, you will board a transport to the border of the Zone, where we will proceed on foot to the transfer point.” He scanned the small gathering, his eyes—and his feelings—hidden behind his visor. “Any disruption or attempt to escape will be met with force.”

He glanced at his fellow soldiers flanking the crooked line of dozen convicts and moved closer. “Stay alive,” he said in a soft voice obviously meant only for the prisoners. “There’s always a chance things will change. If we ever beat the bloodsuckers—”

“Sergeant!” one of the other soldiers said. “Ferry’s ready to board.”

The sergeant stepped back and nodded brusquely, gesturing with his rifle. The convicts walked onto the boat and moved to the center of the deck, heads down and shoulders slumped. The soldiers instructed them to sit on the hard benches under the canvas canopy and then clipped the prisoner’s ankles to rings fixed to the deck at their feet.

Trinity watched the soldiers patrolling the deck, far more than were needed to escort a dozen petty offenders. Did any of them have relatives or friends who’d been deported? She knew that the kin of politicians and higher-ups in the government were usually spared this punishment, including the board of directors of Aegis itself.

It wasn’t fair. But neither was the fact that the bloodsuckers had devastated the earth before the attrition of their own numbers had forced them into a truce. These men and women were soldiers, and sometimes soldiers did what they didn’t want to do.

You can never forget you’re only a slave from now on, she told herself. You have to make sure you’re chosen by the right Bloodmaster or Bloodlord. And then you have to make yourself indispensable to him.

That meant playing the part of a proper serf—and, if necessary, revealing her dhampir nature. Because, in spite of the supposed rarity of half-breed captives among the Nightsiders, it was believed that the leeches found nothing more delectable than dhampir blood.