Alexandra Ivy - My Lord Vampire

“Styx.” Offering a low bow, Roke’s movements were liquid smooth as he slowly straightened and with stunning swiftness was hurling a dagger to stick in the ground not an inch from Viper’s expensive leather shoes. “Viper.”

Viper growled, giving a wave of his hand to dislodge the dirt around Roke’s feet. All vampires could manipulate the soil, a necessary skill to protect them from the sun or to hide the corpses of their prey, but Viper was particularly skilled and in less than a blink of an eye Roke was buried up to his waist.

“Are you two done playing?” Styx demanded, his icy power biting through the air.

The clan chief of Nevada climbed out of the sand pit and dusted off his jeans, his expression as inscrutable as ever.

“For now.”

Viper made a sound of impatience. “Why are we here?”

Styx nodded toward their companion. “Roke has something he believes we should see.”

“His collection of blow-up dolls?”

“Christ. Enough.” Styx bared his massive fangs in warning. He didn’t know what the hell had gone down between the two clan chiefs in the past, but right now he could not care less. He didn’t have time for their bullshit. “Roke, show me.”

“This way.”

In utter silence the three vampires ghosted through the darkness, moving with a speed that made them all but invisible. They were nearing a line of rugged hills when Viper made a sound of impatience.

“As much as I adore running through the barren desert, do we have an eventual destination?” he muttered.

On cue Roke came to a sharp halt, pointing toward the desert floor just in front of them.

“There.”

Viper rolled his eyes. “Man of few words.”

“Preferable to one who doesn’t know when to shut it.”

“Agreed,” Styx said dryly, shifting so he could study the ground where Roke was pointing. It took a long moment to recognize that lines etched into the dry dirt were more than just the graffiti from some human. “Oh ... shit.”

“What the hell?” Viper tilted back his head as he caught the lingering scent. “Were.”

“Cassandra,” Styx said, easily recognizing the scent of his mate’s twin sister who had recently been revealed as a powerful prophet.

“And Caine,” Viper added. “Why would they be in the middle of the Mojave Desert?”

Now that was a hell of a question.

The pair of pureblooded Weres had been missing for weeks, despite Styx’s best efforts to locate them. An unbelievable feat considering he possessed the best trackers in the world. Of course, if the rumors were true then the two Weres were already beyond his reach.

It made any clue as to how Cassandra had been captured, or how to retrieve her from her current prison priceless.

“I’m more concerned with what they left behind,” he admitted, prowling around the edges of the strange symbols.

Viper frowned. “An etching?”

Styx shook his head. “It looks more like a hieroglyph.”

“A prophecy,” Roke said with a quiet confidence.

Styx turned to study the clan chief with a searching gaze. “Can you decipher it?”

“Yes, it’s a warning.”

Viper frowned. “You’re a seer?”

Roke shook his head, his gaze trained on the lines etched into the ground.

“There’s only one prophet. But I was sired by a wise woman who taught me to read the signs left by our forefathers.”

Of course. Styx abruptly understood precisely why he was standing in the middle of a desert.

“So now we know why Cassandra chose to travel to Nevada,” he said wryly.

“Why?” Viper demanded.

He pointed toward Roke. “Because it was the one place to make certain her message would be understood.”

Viper snorted. “She could have sent a text and saved us a trip.”

Styx’s attention never wavered from the silent Roke. It was impossible to judge how the vampire felt about being pulled into the battle against the Dark Lord.

But then, he no doubt realized that it wasn’t a choice.

Styx wasn’t the head of a damned democracy.

He led his people by cunning and brute force when necessary.

“How did you discover this?”

“A cur stumbled across it two nights ago,” Roke promptly answered. “There are no Were packs in the area so he came to me with the information.”

“How many others did he tell?”

Roke instantly understood Styx’s concern. “None, but it’s been here at least two, maybe even three weeks.” He grimaced. “It’s impossible to know how many others have seen it.”

A pity, but there was nothing to be done, Styx silently conceded.

“Could anyone else interpret it?”

Roke paused before giving a shake of his head. “Doubtful.”

Viper crouched down, studying the desert floor with a frown. “What does it say?”

Roke moved forward, careful not to disturb the marks as he pointed toward the strange etching closest to them.

“This is the symbol for the Alpha and the Omega.”

Styx froze at the familiar words.

“The children,” he murmured, speaking of the twin babies that had been found by the half-Jinn mongrel, Laylah. She hadn’t known that they were the babies mentioned in the prophecies. Or that they had been created by the Dark Lord so he could use them as vessels for his eventual resurrection. “What about them?”

Roke traced the symbol in the air. “Here they are joined.”

Styx nodded. When Laylah had found the children they’d been wrapped in the same stasis spell and she’d assumed there was only one child.

“Yes.”

“And then they were separated.” Roke pointed toward the second etching. “The Omega is lost to the mists.”

Viper muttered a low curse. Styx didn’t blame him.

They’d struggled to protect the children, but while Laylah and Tane had managed to rescue the boy child and name him Maluhia, the girl child had been taken through the barriers between dimensions and used by the Dark Lord in his attempt to return to this world.

Styx shifted his attention to the last symbol. “What’s this?”

“The children reunited.”

Hissing in disbelief, Styx turned to meet Roke’s steady gaze, the pale silver eyes even more eerie than usual.

“Reunited?”

“‘The Alpha and Omega shall be torn asunder and through the mists reunited,’” the clan chief of Nevada murmured, quoting the Sylvermyst Prophecy.

“Maluhia,” Viper breathed, his expression grim. “Cassandra was warning us that the baby is in danger.”

“Shit.” Styx shoved his hand in his pocket to yank out his cell phone, his sense of furious urgency frustrated by the realization there was no service. He needed to get back to civilization. Now. Grasping the startled Roke by the upper arm, he headed back across the desert at a blinding speed. “You’re coming with us.”

Three weeks earlier

Las Vegas

The Forum shops in Caesar’s Palace were a wonderland for any female, let alone one who had spent the past thirty years secluded from the world.

Beneath the ceilings that were painted to resemble a blue sky, the elegant stores wound their way past fountains that were intended to give the image of being transported back to Roman days, their glass display cases filled with the sort of temptation designed to make any woman drool.

With a wry smile, Caine stepped behind his dazzled companion to wrap his arms around her waist, tugging her back flat against his chest.

He could only wish Cassie would look at him with that same wistful longing, he ruefully acknowledged.

Or perhaps not, he swiftly corrected as his body hardened with a familiar, brutal need.

Since discovering Cassie being held prisoner in the cave of a demon lord weeks ago, Caine had done his best to play the role of Knight in Shining Armor.