“Well, I haven’t seen any resurrected myself, but that doesn’t mean that’s not possible.”
“Fine. Kill me and bring me back.”
“Are you insane? Not that I wouldn’t like to, but if I hurt you, your kin would skin me.”
“Probably. But what’s life without a little risk?” He held out his hand. “Go on. You touched a part of Onvyr. Touch me.”
“Just don’t be mad if I take you over.” Now thinking about what a boon it would be to take Khent and use him for her own means, she crossed to him and took his hand in hers, aware of how much smaller she was in comparison.
Val closed her eyes and felt with that part of herself that her parents insisted she hide, that part that sensed more than normal necromancers. She let it out of the careful container within and enfolded Khent inside her. Or at least, she tried to.
She frowned, eyes still closed, seeing him for the presence he projected, that essence of the reaper that made up who and what Khent was. A spiritual meeting that stymied her.
She blinked her eyes open but still saw the darkness overlying Khent’s physical form, like a demonic entity smiling down at her, deep with a thready blackness, two bright red lights where his eyes would be.
“I told you so.”
“Shut up.” She clenched his hand tighter and let her inner power out, swirling over him, studying the alien feel of him. All that influence tucked away when it could be hers.
“You feel surprisingly…” His thick voice tapered off, and she saw the moment he grew aware of the danger.
A danger no one could ever know she possessed.
Val was a powerful necromancer. But whatever she’d tapped into didn’t want to go back to slumbering deep inside her.
And that scared her even more than Khent’s sinister scowl.
Shoving her entire being back under the protective aura of what she considered her normal human glamour, Val yanked her hand away and stepped back. “Fine. I’m scared. Happy now?”
“No. Not at all.” He stared at her, and she had a bad feeling he was seeing what she’d done her best, for such a long time, to keep hidden.
Khent studied the small human, fascinated at what she had buried inside her.
When he’d first come to live with the Night Bloode and experienced firsthand what it felt like to be under the control of a Bloode Stone, the energy of an ancient god had overpowered him for the first time in his life.
Not that Khent hadn’t fought against strong opponents both physically and magically. But the Bloode Stone was all-consuming. He couldn’t ignore it even if he wanted to.
The same with Valentine. She wasn’t just a human or necromancer. He’d met others of her magical kind before. They felt human, looked human, and on another magical level, felt familiar, kin of a sort with death.
Yet Valentine vibrated with a buzz of something powerfullyother.She presented a tantalizing puzzle he needed to unravel. More, she set his entire body ablaze with the need to copulate. Attraction, he understood. But this wanting for the female went beyond sexual need.
It was as if the energy inside her called to him, attracting negative to positive, yin to yang.
And in an odd way, like to like.
She looked scared now when before she hadn’t been more than appropriately terrified of Varu. He credited her for having intelligence and common sense. This new fear bothered him, though, and he didn’t understand why.
Putting aside this new anomaly, he promised himself to get to the bottom of this mystery she presented. Just after they figured out where and how to stop this Vladimir of the Void.
“We need to find your necromancer.”
She opened and closed her mouth, obviously confused. “What?”
“Void. Spectre. Whatever he prefers to call himself. We need to find him. You have had little luck with that, but you aren’t a vampire. We have resources you don’t.”
“I have my pets.”
“And I have mine.” He smiled as he called Mila back to him.
