She implored, “Do this for me, Michael. Trust me.”
Regardless of his obvious reluctance, he released her. “Be careful, Jade.”
“I will. Now go. I can handle this.”
She’d been fighting demons her entire life, after all. In more ways than one.
Chapter Two
Darien stormed into the castle, having left his Arabian with stable attendants. He took the steps of the sweeping staircase two at a time and strode agitatedly into his study as he stripped off his riding gloves and then tossed them on his desk.
“My Lord, is there a problem?” Sheena asked as she joined him.
He suspected she’d been curled up in her chair in front of the fire in the adjacent sitting room, awaiting his return, as she was prone to do. She moved gracefully toward him, a stealthy vampire with flowing auburn hair and penetrating green eyes. A striking woman, yes, yet she held no allure for him. The object of his never-ending obsession had grabbed his attention eight years ago and had not let go of it since.
“May I pour you a drink?” Sheena offered.
“A large one,” he said, his voice as tight as his bunched muscles and his coiled gut.
His very competent and sometimes overly astute assistant handed him a snifter of brandy after he’d shed his black, full-length leather coat. He took several big gulps and she waited patiently for his next command.
When it was not forthcoming, she surmised, “Something went wrong with the human?”
At that very moment, the general of his army sauntered in, shaking his head. “Well, she’s certainly onto us now!”
Darien glowered at the head of his militia—and his longtime friend. “I don’t need commentary from you, Morgan. I’m perfectly aware I fucked the whole thing up.”
Instantly backtracking, the general said in a placating tone, “It was merely a reconnaissance mission, your Highness. No harm, no foul.”
“Wrong,” Darien insisted before he drained his glass. With a slight wince from the burning sensation in his throat, he added, “At this point, Jade knows we’re watching her and that violates the law I laid down.”
“I suspect she knew that before this evening, when I was the only one following her,” he admitted. “She’s always looking over her shoulder, stopping from time to time to listen for footsteps.”
“She wouldn’t hear any, nor would she see you. You’re a wraith. You can take male form,” as he did now, “or you can simply disappear. Become an apparition that blends into thin air.”
“I still could have been the one to tip her off,” Morgan further contended.
Darien shook his head. Fury tore through him that he’d been the one to bungle such an easy quest.
Then again, no. It hadn’t been easy at all.
Darien had come across a heart-stricken and tearful Jade years ago, and he’d been so entranced by her, he’d studied up on the people she was close to and had learned as much as he could about her.
He knew she’d once had a relationship with Michael Hadley that had gone sour. So tonight, when he’d moved in for a kiss… Darien had flinched and his horse, Thunder, had been inclined to let him know he was making an ass of himself by reacting to another man kissing a woman Darien had no business lusting after in the first place.
One, she was mortal. That alone erected a steel cage around him that was not to be breached no matter how arousing the raven-haired beauty was.
Two, he had no idea what sort of power she possessed or how she’d obtained it, but something mystical built within her. He had the keen ability to sense it, though he had no idea what the budding strength was or from where it stemmed. She didn’t practice Wicca, Morgan had already confirmed that.
Granted, Darien had discovered that Jade did have a close friend who worshiped ancient pagan gods and their rituals. Yet Lisette Bordeaux had been bound by law not to practice any sort of witchcraft. This had been Darien’s ruling, when he’d instituted the regulation no demon could harm a human.
In his mind, if he kept to the law of averages, making it illegal for demons to cause further trouble for the humans and making it impossible for Wiccans such as Lisette to use her vanquishing spells against the immortals, peace might prevail.
Admittedly, the wars had caused too much destruction and had altered not only the face of the planet, but civilization as everyone—human and demon alike—had known it in the first decade of the 2000s.
In many ways, time had stood still following the last sweep of near-human annihilation. The intent of the wars had been to reduce the numbers significantly, not completely wipe out the mortal population. The humans still had their uses. But modern advancement in the post-apocalyptic world was not something Darien supported, leaving this new society with baser provisions that were essentially throwbacks to the 1800s, a simpler time he preferred.
Darien, who’d turned two hundred years old back in 2016 when the first war broke out, didn’t miss the spoils of a high-tech world. He was old-fashioned that way.