Lustre of Twilight (Love Bitten)

8

Jareth

I hurried out to my garage and hopped into my SUV, one of five cars I owned—I’d tell Narkissa about the rest after I’d claimed her. Although, she seemed to have gotten over her hesitation with my wealth that first night. She hadn’t mentioned it again, but she’d spent a good portion of the last several days with her mouth otherwise occupied.

Breaking a few speeding laws, I rushed back to the little duplex she used to live in and parked in the shared driveway. The lights next door were dark, not surprising since it was nearly three in the morning. I paused for a moment when the scent of human blood tickled my nose. It was faint, but that was probably because the dried blood was old.

Thankfully, the scent wasn’t coming from Narkissa’s former home, but it still concerned me. I crept around the side of the house and tried a window, but it was locked, and the shades were drawn, as were all the others. However, the sliding glass door on the patio out back was cracked, and I heard the murmur of voices.

The scent of blood was stronger through the slight opening, and the hanging slats over the door were at just the right angle for me to get a small view inside.

Fucking hell. A pale, lifeless body slumped on the couch, and it was clear he’d been drained a day or so ago.

It was a damn good thing my woman hadn’t come back to her place before tonight, but I wanted to kick myself for leaving her alone to go get the car. She could have stumbled right into them if she’d decided to visit her neighbor.

“The master took her to his house across the street from the store,” a man muttered. “He said we can have her after she’s made him a daywalker.”

A woman’s voice replied, “Don’t sulk, Clive. We can wait a little longer to drink the consort’s blood. Once we’re all daywalkers, you can drink all the pussy you want, and nobody will be able to do shit about it. Especially when there are enough of us to wipe those born assholes off the face of the earth.”

What the fuck? They were clearly nightwalkers, and it sounded as though someone had told them there was a way for them to become like my kind. That person must have gotten their wires crossed because there was only one very specific scenario where someone who’d been bitten and turned could make the transition to daywalker, and I highly doubted any of these motherfuckers were destined consorts who hadn’t found their match yet.

But they seemed to think—

“Besides, we don’t even know if it will work with this one,” another male voice piped up. “The last two didn’t survive his attempt at claiming. This one has been paired with a very powerful daywalker, though, so maybe she’ll be different.”

Apparently, someone had made them believe that they could claim a daywalker’s consort to gain the ability to walk in the sun. And their master had made more than one attempt. Fuck. I needed to help the girl he’d taken. They said she was a consort—probably a relation of the man they’d killed—and even if it hadn’t been my duty to protect her, I still would have reached out to my family to save her.

First, I needed to take Narkissa home where I knew she’d be safe, then I’d meet up with my brothers to take this master and his minions down.

“The Bancrofts are the most powerful family I know of. If—”

At the mention of my last name, it hit me just how fucking stupid I was. I popped into Narkissa’s old room and saw the open suitcase on the bed and a beautiful, blue gown dropped on the floor by the closet—still on the hanger.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

What the hell is going on? Ren’s voice floated into my mind.

How do you know something is wrong? I asked as I teleported back to the alley behind the convenience store.

You’re so worked up, you’re projecting your emotions through our connection.

Usually, we only spoke through our link, but on occasion, we could catch each other’s feelings, so they must have been pulsing from me pretty hard. Not that it was surprising, considering the situation.

Braeden and Liam’s voices followed Ren’s, asking the same questions.

Narkissa’s been taken by a nightwalker.

My statement was met with silence, so I added, The master of those minions we killed when we found her.

Their relief was almost audible. Under just about any other circumstance, if a human was taken by a nightwalker, they were a lost cause. By the time anyone arrived to save them, they would already be dead or in the process of turning.

But by a stroke of luck or fate, Narkissa seemed to have been abducted by a delusional master who thought she could turn him into a daywalker. I quickly filled them in on what I’d learned about his motives for keeping her alive.