The Nightwind's Woman Read online

  “Stop doing that!” she said.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Force of habit.” He smiled apologetically. “I forget you are not accustomed to magic and that which it entails.”

  “Before today I thought magic and creatures like you were a myth,” she said and could feel the blood pounding in her ears as her heart raced.

  “There is always some semblance of truth in all myths,” he said.

  “I am deeply sorry I frightened you, McKenzi,” he told her. “I did not want the Supervisor to see my true form at that time and the image of the wendigo is what he was expecting to see. I was trying to reassure you with the wink but I realize now the act was misconstrued. In retrospect, I should have wiped the memory of what you saw from your mind. I didn’t at the time because it seemed a violation and I did not want to start our relationship off on a bad note.”

  “I wouldn’t have known that you had done that, though, would I?” she asked.

  “No, but I want honesty between us, McKenzi. Trust and confidence. I never want to do anything to make you distrust or fear me.”

  “You scared the hell out of me,” she said, tearing her eyes from him for his blatant handsomeness was unnerving. She’d never actually seen a man in person who was so flawlessly beautiful to the eye.

  “Again, I apologize. I am sorry I caused you even a nanosecond of distress.”

  “Please don’t do it again,” she asked. “My heart can’t take that kind of stress.”

  His brow furrowed. He tilted his head slightly to one side then frowned. “There is a problem with you heart?”

  “I have A-fib,” she said, and when his frown deepened, she knew he had no idea what that was. “My heart has an extra beat.”

  His gaze dropped to her chest and she knew without a doubt he was listening to her heart beating.

  “I did not know such a thing was possible,” he said then lifted his eyes to hers. “Is this dangerous for you?”

  “It puts a strain on my heart and poses a greater chance of stroke,” she said. “I take medicine—a blood thinner—for it and I have had my heart shocked back into natural sinus rhythm a couple of times.”

  Disquiet settled on his chiseled features. “Does that not hurt?”

  “They put me asleep to do it and it only lasts for a second or two. I don’t feel anything, although I’ve had a rash where the pads were placed. The conductive gel and I don’t get along very well.”

  “Can nothing permanent be done?” he questioned.

  “I can have a cardiac ablation and that’s probably down the road for me,” she said then looked down at her lap. “Or have a pacemaker installed.”

  “Cardiac ablation?” he echoed.

  “It’s a procedure where they go up through an artery in my groin into my heart to destroy the area that is causing the problem.”

  Shock registered in his blue eyes and he slumped against the sofa. “They destroy a portion of your heart?”

  “It’s a safe procedure.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “That will not be done to you.”

  He moved so fast she didn’t see him leave the sofa, didn’t realize he had until he was leaning over her with his palm pressed tightly over her heart. Before she could protest what he was doing, she felt a deep warmth spread through her chest and for just a moment she experienced a ripple of dizziness. There was a brief flicker of discomfort that made her whimper then everything went dark.

  Kerreyder lifted her from the chair and carried her into her bedroom. The fleeting pain he had unintentionally caused her beat at him like a barbed whip. He had not meant to cause her any hurt but apparently her heart was damaged more than she knew and the healing of it had taken an extra boost of energy she’d felt. He’d willed her into unconsciousness the second he realized he’d hurt her. But it was over and done with and her heart completely healed.

  Gently, he laid her on the bed then sat down beside her, running the backs of his fingers along her soft cheek.

  “My pretty lady,” he whispered.

  He studied every inch of her face from the soft curve of her eyebrows and long lashes to the perfect bow of her full lips—lips he wanted so badly to taste but would not. Such a thing would not be gentlemanly and to his mind constituted a violation. So he contented himself by staring at the slightly parted perfection of those lips and contemplating how sweet they would be beneath his own.

  Sighing deeply, he got up from the bed and went to the armoire in the corner of the room. He opened drawers until he found a nightgown. With his back to her, he stared down at the garment until it vanished from his hands. He stood there for a moment with his eyes closed then turned, knowing he would find that gown caressing the gentle curves of his woman’s body and she would be beneath the bed covers.

  He moved to the chair beside the bed and sat down, crossing his ankle over his knee and bracing his elbows on the chair arms as he steepled his fingers, watching the steady rise of her chest over the tips.

  “So long have I waited for you,” he said quietly. “So long have I known anything but abject loneliness and growing despair that I would ever find you.”

  He closed his eyes and laid his head along the back of the chair. For the first time in his life, he was experiencing a modicum of contentment and it was an emotion that humbled him.

  “One day your Blood-mate will be presented to you, placed in your care by Destiny,” his mother Queen Eisheth had told him. “You will know her the moment she is near you. She will be your consort, your eternal companion, the center of your Megaverse. When you take her, your seed will render her immortal—never to age, never to wither and die. Let no man, no entity rob you of your Blood-mate. She is yours though not yours alone.”

  “Now I understand what you meant,” he said aloud as the face of the incubus flitted across his mind’s eye.

  “If there is another with a claim to her, respect that claim. Do not harm the male for your Blood-mate will curse you for doing so. You will lose what ground you will gain with her if you harm one hair on the male’s head. It is important to us he survive.”

  But his mother had said nothing about tossing the bastard into the Abyss, he thought. Though he suspected his lady might take umbrage should he send the Nightwind back where he belonged.

  He knew all there was to know about incubi and more than he had ever wanted to know about succubae—one in particular—and he understood the bond between Randon Kayle and McKenzi’s maternal linage. Kayle had sworn a blood oath generations back with a witch of her line and was linked to the women of her family for eternity. That was the way of Nightwinds. He would be made to serve the women until he found the one who would redeem him, who would return his humanity to him.

  Kerreyder smiled. It was ironic the incubus had found that woman in McKenzi only to have her become immortal, his time with her finite unless he could coax her into allowing him to sign—in blood—her Book of Shadows.

  A book he doubted she even knew existed.

  A soft sigh from the bed made him open his eyes and lift his head. His lady had turned her face away from him in her sleep. Tenderly, he used his powers to turn it back to him again so he could watch her. His gaze roaming lovingly over that beautiful visage, and as it did, he felt a tugging at his heart. Already he was in love with her—had been the moment she had appeared at his cell door.

  Now he had to make her fall in love with him.

  * * * * *

  Naamah sat in her cell and listened with growing fury to the thoughts of the man she considered her mate. He was mooning over some human bitch he believed to be his.

  Calm yourself, her sister whispered to her from galaxies away. His mind is clouded to you but if you allow your emotions to fester, the ruse will be up and he’ll know you are there with him.

  “I will tear that harlot apart with my bare hands!” she said aloud.

  Bide your time, her sister cautioned. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

  For a week longe
r than her mate had been incarcerated, Naamah had endured the stench and filth of the humans who had caged her. She had allowed herself to be captured, have offensive creature hands upon her sacred person in order to be in this vile place before he arrived.

  For billions of years she had loved Kerreyder Abaddon as much as she loathed humankind. He was the only thing in the Megaverse she cared about. He was the only male she had taken to her body with joy.

  Into her body with the greatest of desire. In her eyes, he was her eternal mate and always would be.

  She had been his first lover when he was but a green youth of ten and four. She had made him a man. She had taught him all he knew of women. Of sex. Of the pleasure the sexual act could give. Though it galled her to do so, she strove to overlook his experimentations with other female creatures, his peccadilloes with goddesses who ventured secretly from Jeeoil—the home of the gods—to lie with him. He was hers and she intended to see that it remained so.

  “Blood-mate, bah!” she snorted. “I will squash that human toad.”

  Be careful, sister, Lilith warned. You do not want to risk the archdemon’s ire by harming the woman.

  Naamah flung out a dismissive hand. She and Lilith were powerful succubae, potent demonesses who had once lain with the First Man on Terra to corrupt him and had given him children from their bodies. It had been Kerreyder who had seduced the First Man’s wife in the Garden so it only had been fitting that First Man get his revenge for the adultery in the arms of her and Lilith. The three of them—as well as her older sisters Eisheth and Agrat—had always had dominion over the sexuality of the human race—no matter upon which planet those putrid weaklings thrived. They were, after all, called the angels of prostitution, she thought with a laugh.

  And didn’t Kerreyder hate being called that! Tarred by the same brush that had smeared his mother.

  But Kerreyder was no saint by any stretch of the imagination. He could be as cold as the ice on the Plaines of Geschäft or as hot as the sands on Helios-5. His temperament ran from as gentle as a newborn to the full-on lethality of an enraged ghoret. To get on his bad side was never a good idea for he could hold a grudge longer than any male she’d ever known.

  And it had been nearly seven centuries since he’d lain between her thighs. All because of one silly argument she had had the misfortune to win.

  Use the incubus, Lilith advised. Kerreyder dares do nothing to harm him but a cog in the wheel can only be to your advantage.

  “Use him as a wedge?” Naamah asked.

  Precisely. Lie with him if you must to get him on your side.

  “Not going to happen,” Naamah growled. The thought of putting the Nightwind’s rancid flesh to hers was disgusting. Lilith might not have had a problem with doing it but she would rather slather warthog entrails between her legs than have the incubus there.

  He hates the archdemon, Lilith reminded her. His human is being usurped and the Nightwind’s ire is growing with every breath he takes.

  “Serves him right,” Naamah said. “He deserves whatever hurt can be sent his way.”

  She heard the phantom sigh of frustration that came from her sister’s throat and then there was silence as Lilith pulled away. They had shared millions of males over the eons but Randon Kayle would never be one of them as far as Naamah was concerned.

  But…

  She would work with the worthless bastard if it meant she might have a chance to take Kerreyder’s mind from the human.

  The end game was even more important for it would see the humans reap their just reward.

  * * * * *

  In his cell, Randon paced from one wall to another, growling like the caged beast he was. The uncontrollable fury that rode him caused him to lose all semblance of humanity, to revert to the revolting creature he had been in the Abyss. Hunched over, his claws extended, his fangs snapping at the air, he could think of nothing else save the fact that the archdemon was at that moment with the woman the Nightwind loved.

  Rutting her.

  Putting his seed within her.

  Giving her pleasure.

  The sound of laughter hit his ears.

  He stopped, sniffed the air, and then hissed. Something was close by that was setting his fangs to tingling. Something he wanted to rend and rip and tear and devour. Not the archdemon—for he was immortal and could not be hurt—but something that was like a sandspur embedded in his paw. Shaking his head violently to rid his nostrils of the stink, he had just enough presence of human mind to understand whatever was disturbing him was in one of the nearby cells. Any creature that could goad him so savagely needed to be dealt with once he was free.

  As if you could deal with me, you slug.

  By the gods he recognized that evil voice! It belonged to Lilith’s youngest sister Naamah, a fallen angel he despised almost as much as he did Lilith. If the succubus was imprisoned here at Tearmann, it was because she wanted to be and something evil was about to go down.

  He stopped and dropped to all fours, shaking his entire body like a wet terrier, then sank his haunches to the cold floor. Pushing his anger deep down inside him, he willed himself to return to his human form. If he were to do battle with Naamah, he had to have his wits about him and that wouldn’t happen in beast mode. Calming his racing heart, slowing his blood, he slowly got his nature under control and shifted. When he was fully cognizant he was irritated that he was sitting in the middle of the cell as naked as the day he’d come from his mother’s womb. His clothes were shredded and lay scattered over the floor.

  “Fuck,” he grumbled and—not for the first time—wished he had the power to rearrange molecules as the Reapers did so he could fashion new clothing. He could remove them with a thought but he couldn’t replace them. Sitting bare-assed when the Supervisor or Sorn came to release him was an embarrassment he didn’t need and would never hear the end of from the Reaper. Somehow he had to get Sorn to show him how it was done, yet not be beholden to the little shit.

  He’s fucking your woman right now and you’re worried about covering your skinny little cock?

  “Get the hell out of my mind!” he yelled and heard laughter skirling through his mind. He slammed his hands against his ears as though that would help but it only made her vicious laughter louder.

  I’ll make you a deal, she said. You help me get him away from her and back to Treigeilys and I’ll see that he stays there.

  He knew the demoness had no more control over Kerreyder than he did. Not even the archdemon’s mother Eisheth had control over him. It was doubtful his sire, the Father-God, did either. The good in his father canceled out the evil in his mother, leaving Kerreyder stuck in the no-man’s-land of ambiguous morality.

  I can control him, you warty newt. Have no worry on that account.

  “How the fuck do you think you can do that, you diseased twat?” he said with a growl.

  He came here to find five creatures who need their paws slapped. Help him find them quickly and he’ll be back at Prysson torturing them and not between your bitch’s thighs.

  He’d always wondered why Lilith had sent him to work at Tearmann. It was something totally unexpected and beyond his comprehension. What possible reason could she have for wanting creatures that frightened or harmed humans to be caught and incarcerated? It was a puzzle he had never been able to solve. He’d been there since before Kenzi was born—in between the women of her family who were witches and to whom he could blood-bond his services. Now it made sense. Lilith had known one day the two of them—he and Kenzi—would be at the facility together and he was willing to wager she knew Kerreyder would be there as well. It was just one of her many ways of punishing him.

  I could think of some very painful ways of punishing you, myself, Naamah said with a chortle. Very painful, long-lasting ways that would take what little sane mind you have left.

  The demoness had once been an angel before she had taken sides with Samael to war against their Creator. She’d picked the wrong side and had been c
ast out, flung into the Drochtom Arc—The Under—with the other Fallen. Though she had power, it was limited to those with whom she’d lain or could seduce. Thankfully he had not been one of them.

  As if I’d have you.

  She would, he thought with a smirk. As would her sister Agrat, but he belonged—body and soul—to Lilith until the day Kenzi would claim him solely as her own. With Kerreyder now in the picture, that day might never come, and he was sure Lilith had known that all along.

  Comprehension struck him then and he reeled. The sisters—no doubt all of them, but with Lilith at point—had set this in motion. It was by their hand the insurrectionists against Yn Drogh Spyrryd had fled Treigeilys and come to Terra to hide. The whores had set the beasts free so Kerreyder would be forced to track them down.

  And meet Kenzi, the woman whom the Fates had decreed his Blood-mate.

  “You bitches,” he whispered, feeling the betrayal, the retribution all the way to the marrow of his bones.

  You were never meant to be free, incubus, Naamah told him. We knew to the second when the Blood-mate was to come into life. That she was also your only salvation was icing on the cake of vengeance.

  “And she is the only one who can control Kerreyder,” he said miserably.

  You are not as stupid as you look.

  Another realization hit him—apparently as the demonesses intended. Kerreyder would be forced to take his captives back to Prysson and he would be gone a long time. He would return, but in the interim Randon would have the pleasure of Kenzi’s company, which would make the archdemon’s future return all the more hateful.

  He’s willing to share the cunt. Be glad for what crumbs you’ll get, Nightwind!

  * * * * *

  Kerreyder pursed his lips, annoyed at his aunt and the way she was taunting the Nightwind. He almost felt sorry for the incubus as he sat there beside McKenzi and listened in on the conversation from the cells. And he could afford to be magnanimous and show the Nightwind some compassion for he had his Blood-mate and would make her his at the stroke of Midnight, the traditional time of Joining, while the incubus would be forced to suck hind teat.