Page 5 of Of Flame and Fury
“He knows now,” Gemini fires back, throwing the words in my face. He gives me a once-over. “Are you done now?”
“Eh.” I shrug. “For the moment.”
He rolls his eyes. Like I mentioned, we’re totally in love.
I release my glass carefully. It floats away and joins the other empty glasses on a round table covered in shimmering gold linens. “It’s a respect thing,” I say.
“You call how you approached our hostess respectful?” he asks.
“I was talking about respecting us, darling,” I drawl. “She should know better than to pull that. Call, text, send a raven, and be polite. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Taran, enough,” Gemini mutters through his teeth. He forces a smile onto a passingwere. I wouldn’t call it a friendly smile. I wouldn’t necessarily even rank it as human.
Thewereeases away from him, nodding a little too stiffly and almost mowing over a vampire with long, red hair.
Gemini stiffens. I angle around him and to where his focus locks. Hmph. There’s good ol’ Misha, Celia’s sworn protector, man-slut extraordinaire, and possibly the most powerful master vampire to ever walk the earth.
No real news, but vamps lack souls. They give them up in exchange for eternal beauty, sex appeal, and immortality. Misha gave up his centuries ago only for Celia to accidentally regift it back to him. It’s why he’s so potent. He simultaneously balances life and death.
I’m not shocked to see him here or that he’s with some gorgeous… No. Sweet baby Jesus chewing on his fist, nother.
Ileana Vodianova is the sole remaining female master vampire in Europe.She’spowerful for all the wrong reasons. In her day, Ileana didn’t just wipe out her rivals. She practically conquered the entire continent. Bedding and feeding from lovers like Attila the Hun, Sargon of Akkad, and Boudica, Ileana is a force reminiscent of an earthquake. An earthquake that swallows buildings whole and spits out the bloody bones of its victims. I met Ileana years ago. Well, sort of. Gemini told me who she was and wouldn’t let me anywhere near her.
“She’ll see you as a threat,” he told me. In other words, she’ll try to eat you and pick her fangs with what’s left of your pinky.
In a sheer white gown, diamond-encrusted thong and, well, that’s about it unless you count the earrings and the dazzling red rubies glued to her nips, Ileana stands like a life-sized sex doll created by horny and lonely Dungeons and Dragons enthusiasts. She’s tall, curvy, and scary. Very scary.
“Genevieve didn’t want her here,” I remind Gemini.
He takes a protective stance in front of me. “I know,” he says.
“Then why is she here?” I ask, barely above a whisper. “Vieve is queen around here, and this is her castle.”
Ileana’s attention drifts from Misha to me. She lowers her lashes, slowly and seductively, drawing my attention to what must be diamond dust coating her eyelids. Her long thin tongue glides along her gleaming white teeth as if she can almost taste me.
Gemini’s pause is so severe, the room itself pauses with him. “The vampires refused to attend without her.”
“You mean Uri refused,” I clarify. I’m no longer whispering, and neither is he. Hell, it’s not like she can’t catch every damn word we utter.
Gemini shakes his head slowly. “No. It was Misha who insisted.”
“What?” I ask. Well now, I thought he was on our side.
Gemini narrows his gaze. “Is this a good time to remind you that you can’t trust the leech?”
Misha turns and smirks, his features all sin and no sweet. Ileana throws back her head and laughs. Their humor fades when Aric enters the room like a god.
I feel Aric before I see him. Everyone does. No one speaks. No one breathes. The sense of beast and power worsen in his presence. Except for him and theweresprowling with him, time simply stops.
There was always a pronounced lethality to Aric, but it was contained to a degree. Around Celia, it would shift into something more protective and vigilant. Tonight, everything I’ve known of him, and everything that makes him the most powerfulwereof his kind, magnifies, promising to destroy anyone if it suits him.
The darkness Aric carries swallows me, blinding me to everything but the sense of his beast circling me and baring his fangs. “Gemini,” I rasp.
Gemini squeezes my hand. “It’s all right, love,” he says. “You are not his prey.”
His words do nothing to reassure me, not with all the pent-up power spilling from Aric’s pores.
Aric stalks forward. Gemini’s twin wolf leads the way. Twoweresflank Aric, except they’re no mereweres. I recognize them from their paintings in the great Den hall. The one with the peppered silver hair is in line to be the next President of the North American Were Council. The other is the most decoratedwereand Warrior of his time. I expected the big guns here. What I didn’t expect is how inferior they’d appear in Aric’s presence.