Of Night and Desire Read online
OF NIGHT AND DESIRE
Mia Bailey
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
OF NIGHT AND DESIRE
Copyright © 2010 by Mia Bailey
E-book ISBN: 1-60601-743-8
First E-book Publication: May 2010
Cover design by Jinger Heaston
All cover art and logo copyright © 2010 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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DEDICATION
Night Flights
I escape my fears in the Night
I touch the moon and stars
They are my companions—
They guide me, and give me Purpose
They console me, and give me Strength
They challenge me, and give me Courage
They embrace me, and give me Love
I fear not the Night
As Selena's radiance bathes me in warmth
she cradles me in her arms
For a time, life is Serene
To my friends and family for their love and support as I strive to make my dreams a reality.
OF NIGHT AND DESIRE
MIA BAILEY
Copyright © 2010
Prologue
Immortals are an ancient race—as old as the mountains lining the European border. Powerful and mysterious, they possess great power. Governed by an elemental Code of Morality, they walk the Earth protecting their race and the lives of those in the mortal world.
Dedicating their lives to protecting all from evil, Immortal males become hunters. Their prey are all those who seek to destroy life, whether it be mortal or immortal. They can be found in all walks of life, in every land seeking to protect the innocent, and render swift justice upon the guilty. They can be found in moments of war on the battleground with those to whom they have sworn allegiance. They can be found in moments of peace, pursuing wisdom, serenity, and love.
If they are fortunate, they will find their true life mate and complete an ancient ritual that will bind him to her and her alone. Giving all to protect and cherish her, he will fight even to the end of his very life. Together, they serve their race in the hope that one day they can save all those of their people who walk alone.
An Immortal’s life mate is the light that fills the dark void within him, saving him from the emptiness of his soul and memories of violence, retribution and death from centuries of lonely nights. Only with her does he continue to feel the raw emotions and see the beauty and color of life. She is the day to his night, the heart to his soul that come together as one. Their love is a power, an undeniable energy that promises light and life. Without her, faith and hope are destroyed, and there is only desolation.
When an Immortal does not find his life mate, they lose all hope and plunge into a despair so deep there is no return. They turn to the darkness and become Vampyres, destroyers of light and life. Desperate creatures with no morals, no ethics, no chance of hope, they terrorize humanity, still searching for their lost life mate. It is a search that is destined to fail. For once an Immortal turns Vampyre, no life mate can save them.
The Living Death—where all rhyme and reason vanish and all that is left is an unquenchable thirst—for the life in the light they can never have as the darkness consumes their bleak soul; for the blood that sustains their cruel lives as the blood of their life mate is the only essence that can truly sate their hunger; but most of all, for love, as their life mate remains lost forever. It is this dark irony that serves to feed their madness.
Between these two lines of light and darkness, there is only death. An Immortal who can no longer face the isolation without his life mate will find his way to the mountains for the Final Sacrifice. He will stand on sacred ground and make his peace with The Great One, healer to the Immortal Race, before he faces the morning dawn. In this way, he can save his immortal soul rather than be condemned to The Living Death.
For Valya, the Guardian, it has been more than an eternity he has walked the narrow line between good and evil, between darkness and light, his soul tormented. He has searched for his life mate. He can hear her voice calling to him on the night air and sense her close to him while he dream-walks through the World. He can feel her reaching to him, beckoning him to find her and join with her, to become one.
For reasons unknown even to himself, he leaves his beloved home for a new world, a strange place called Detroit. He does not understand why, he knows only that he is compelled to go. With no fear, no reservations, he seeks what destiny is drawing him so far from his home in the Mountains.
Valya has spent centuries as the hunter, and now, in this new world, he will become the hunted.
The Beginning
Adelaide Sommers wore a somber expression while she bustled her daughter along, dragging a suitcase behind them. She had only enough time to pack a few clothes, a bit of food, and her journal in the worn bag before she woke her daughter and dressed her for the evening chill. The dream that had roused her from her sleep had been vivid. There was no doubt. They were close. Too close.
It was what she had feared—that they would find her. When they caught up to her, they would also find Richelle. She had to protect Richell
e.
Adelaide was a rare phenomenon. She was a Germanic witch with the power of sight, inheriting her gifts from her mother, and her mother before her. As a young child, she was taught the craft. Meticulously honing her skills with herbs and spells, her psychic powers grew. It was when she tried to save a young schoolboy that her powers were discovered and the hunt began.
She remembered the day with great clarity. She was only eleven years old when she saw a classmate slip into a diabetic coma. She tried to warn the boy, his parents, and the teacher, but no one would listen to her. When she told her father, an eminent pediatrician, what she had seen in her vision, he interceded and convinced the parents to bring their son in for a check-up.
But by then it was too late. He had slipped into the coma on the way to the doctor’s office, seizing with severe convulsions before expelling a breath and closing his eyes. His parents were hysterical when Adelaide’s father met them at the office. They rushed to the hospital, but the damage was done. The poor boy passed away four days later, never awakening from the coma.
His parents were inconsolable, out of their minds with grief. All they could think was that somehow Adelaide had known what was going to happen. They accused her of vile, derisive acts of malevolence. They called her a devil child, spawn of Satan. It wasn’t long before the town believed that Adelaide had something to do with the boy’s death. A local pastor had come to speak with Adelaide’s family.
All through their conversation he kept staring at Adelaide, who quietly sat on the hearth combing the hair of her cherished porcelain doll, a gift from her now deceased grandmother. She remembered being afraid when the old priest sprang from his chair and began his manic ranting, coming toward her. She remembered how her parents had to pull her from the priest’s grasp against his proclamations that she was a weapon for God. The demented look in his eyes as her parents spirited her away into the night struck a chord of fear in her, even at her young age.
Her parents had left everything behind when they escaped to America, making their way to New York. Her father had changed their names, even returned to school to change specialties to veterinarian medicine. At every turn, he would be watching, ever vigilant against those who were seeking his family, his daughter. Adelaide’s mother warned that there were others pursuing them, coming for her. It was several years before any of them realized to what extent they would go to get their hands on Adelaide.
Adelaide was celebrating her sixteenth birthday when the old priest found her. He had approached her on the street walking home from school. He seemed a benevolent clergyman asking for directions to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Then he began to speak with her about her school, her home, her family, questions that were less curiosity and more invasive. He became insistent in his questioning, wanting to know more about her, her friends, her life.
She tried to evade his pervasive probing as she dodged his hands reaching out to her, trying to touch her. He kept pressing with his questions and his grasping hands, becoming more and more infuriated each time she avoided him. It was when he began to accuse her of lewd acts of wantonness and how she needed to remain pure to fulfill her destiny that she broke away and ran home.
Her mother was frantically waiting for her, having seen all that had transpired in a mind flash that came to her unexpectedly, the strength of the vision forcing her to her knees. Adelaide melted into the warmth of her mother’s embrace, trying to hide from the eyes of covetous men. Adelaide saw the priest come around the corner with two men close on his heels. Peeking out from her mother’s embrace she could see they were taking his directions.
Her father came running from the house but it was too late. When Adelaide was wrested from her mother’s embrace by one, her mother protested against her daughter being thrown into the arms of the priest, and then was stabbed in the chest by the other henchman. She slumped to the ground, a pool of bright red blood staining the sidewalk. Her father flew into a rage. He wrested the knife from the murderer and stabbed him in the heart. He withdrew the dagger and spun to face the second assailant. He plunged the dagger into the chest of the second man, piercing his lung, leaving him dying on the pavement.
He turned, his eyes glowering at the priest. Hastily, the priest released Adelaide, who rushed to her mother’s side, crying for her to be all right. Her father turned on the priest, his fists pummeling the spongy body of the vigilante despite his attempts to shield his body from the powerful attack. Only Adelaide’s wailing bought him back to reality. He let the priest fall to the ground and ran to his wife’s crumpled body. He gathered her lifeless form in his arms, her blood covering the front of his white shirt.
Adelaide’s father looked up with a murderous glint in his eyes. He searched for the priest to vent his rage at her senseless death, but the priest was gone. His eyes scanned left and right. The bodies of the two men lay sprawled on the ground. They were dead but it did little to appease his vengeful hate. His heart softened as he watched Adelaide weep softly at the loss of her mother. Bowing his head, he held his wife tightly against his body before laying her back upon the ground. Tenderly, he kissed her forehead.
He rose up, taking Adelaide in his arms and lifting her to her feet as he guided her away from the ghastly scene. She continued to weep until he put her in the passenger seat of his car, buckling her in. It was only when he sat behind the wheel of the car and started the engine that she snapped back from her daze. She began to struggle to release the belt, but her father placed his hand over hers, preventing her from unbuckling it.
“We have to leave her behind,” he tried to explain. “We need to get away. They’ll be back. For you.”
She wept softly as they drove off well into the night. They had up and left everything behind, heading over the George Washington Bridge, heading west. She had no idea where they were going, but she was too overwhelmed with her grief to ask her father. She had been warned every night by her mother, Be watchful, for they are coming for you. She had never truly believed what her mother had told her. She thought it was paranoid delusion.
But her mother was dead.
The years had passed, and it still hurt. It hurt every time she and her father had to pick up and move. It hurt when she married in her senior year of high school to appease her dying father. She’d lost him less than a month later, and then lost her husband when she was four months pregnant. It hurt when she gave birth to her own daughter, knowing Richelle would never know her father. The craft she was taught, the powers that had lain dormant within her, came flooding back on the eve of Richelle’s birth. It came to her in a terrifying dream.
The old priest, the one from her childhood, was there in the hospital. Adelaide watched him as he stared at Richelle lying in her cradle in the nursery. He watched her with an insidious gleam in his eye. He just strode calmly into the hospital’s maternity ward. No one stopped him. After all, who would think anything of a priest in a hospital?
He stood there and watched Richelle like a proud father, smiling and waving at her through the glass. Adelaide shuddered at his seemingly caring act, remembering only the demented behavior he had exhibited when she was a small child. He then turned his head to Adelaide and smiled, reminiscent of the final scene of Psycho, his grin full of silent malevolence that reached in and took hold of her soul.
He didn’t approach her. He merely lowered his head as his eyes burned into her mind. The smile fell from his face and was replaced with a malicious grin. He glowered at her as he spoke. “You escaped me. But now, she is mine.” He pointed to the nursery. Unable to resist, she followed his gesture to see that Richelle’s cradle was empty. She screamed as the priest laughed.
Every night for the past year she had dreamed of an empty cradle. And every night she would wake screaming, bathed in sweat.
It was that vision that kept driving her farther and farther from home. Her parents were gone, her husband was gone. All she had left was Richelle. She would move heaven and fight the fires of hell itself to keep her safe. Wh
enever she felt the evil presence coming near, she would take Richelle and leave. The insurance from her late husband as well as her parents’ amassed wealth gave her the ability to disappear without a trace. Still, they seemed to find her. Then she would have to leave to start over again in a new city with a new name and new identity.
In Detroit, she had redefined herself as a legal secretary for a major downtown law firm. She had worked for several partners in the prestigious firm. She made a decent salary and her hours afforded her ample time to be with her daughter, Richelle. They lived quietly, comfortably, at least until Adelaide would feel a foreboding sense of malice encroaching upon her as oppressive as a humid summer day.
As she did yesterday.
The feeling overcame her as she was preparing breakfast, her vision attacking all of her senses. The power behind her vision—the heat, the pain, the nausea—left her a quivering mass on the floor. Richelle ambled into the kitchen to find her mother holding her head, frying pan upturned with the morning’s scrambled eggs lying on the floor and the dog happily licking them up. Richelle rushed to her mother, but Adelaide waved it off as a simple accident and bustled her off to school.
However, it wasn’t an accident. She had seen the future in great clarity. Her future. And she was not afraid, at least not for herself. For Richelle. After she sent her to school, she took the day off from work. There was a lot to do in such a short time. When Richelle returned from school, they had an early supper and went to bed. They needed the sleep before leaving this morning.
Adelaide knew Richelle didn’t want to leave. She had already moved so many times in her young life. It seemed like whenever she trusted enough to make friends, that would be the time they would have to leave. But this time was different for both of them. Richelle, with her innate sense, seemed to understand that but was reluctant to leave. Adelaide didn’t have the luxury of naivety. She knew the harsh realities of life and was determined to shelter Richelle from them, for as long as she could.