Silken Rapture (Princes of the Underground 2)

What had made his clone so strong?

Morshiel forced him back against the edge of the platform, a manic, wild expression on his face. The concrete beneath Blaise’s boots crumbled and he lost his balance. Morshiel pushed his heartluster with so much strength that Blaise tottered at the edge of the platform. Blaise halted the blade a mere inch away from his chest, but it took all his strength to hold the block. He was falling…falling. His heart pounded against his breastbone frantically, as if it suspected it was on its last beats.

He’d dreamed of a moment just like this countless times over the centuries. What would it be like to die beneath Morshiel’s blade? It was the only thing that could end Blaise’s life, after all. The mandate to control Morshiel had been set into his very blood—a biological order he could not ignore—but his clone was the only one who could grant Blaise relief from this endless, pointless, soulless existence.

He met his clone’s eyes in that stretched second and saw not his murderer, but the beneficent angel of death. He longed to embrace him, to be comforted in turn. His gaze flickered ever so briefly to the vision of the luminous woman. Although she stood completely still, her body vibrated with energy.

“She’s mine, you freak of nature,” Morshiel grated out between clenched jaws.

A white-hot fury erupted in Blaise’s brain. He roared like a cornered lion, the sound drowning out the noise of battle that surrounded them. He let his body move with the momentum of his fall, pushing mightily off the platform away from Morshiel. His feet flew over his head in a somersault, only to strike the far side of the tunnel. He vaulted back toward the platform like a missile, causing Morshiel to retreat, a surprised expression on his face. He struck a hammering downward blow on Morshiel’s raised sword hand and plunged his heartluster toward Morshiel’s chest. He grunted at the sensation of the metal tip sinking into flesh.

As a Sevliss prince—one of the surviving six—it had been predetermined by forces greater than Blaise that he could not kill his clone, but he could weaken him.

Morshiel let out an unearthly shriek. Suddenly he was changing, altering form and rising off the tube platform. Blaise stood and watched as the giant demonbird beat its membranous wings and headed away from the platform down the dark tunnel. Morshiel let out another blood-curdling shriek in his shifter form, calling his followers to him.

Blaise leapt onto the platform in time to behead a canid and a prowler in two vicious passes of his heartluster. Dark red, viscous blood flew into the air, but Blaise sidestepped both sprays with the ease of long experience. Revenant blood burned exposed skin like acid.

He stared at the man and woman who took the loathsome creatures places, recognizing Morshiel’s soldiers—Anthony Shrivencraft and Amory Doyle.

They would not be rejoining their master now.

He anxiously counted the remaining Literati—both wolves and men. Aubrey Cane transformed back into his human form, his clothes intact. Blaise wished he could master that trick, but Aubrey was a gifted magician—had been since the moment Blaise first met him three and a half centuries ago. Transforming into human form fully clothed was the least of Aubrey’s manifold skills.

Aubrey knelt next to a large pale gray wolf that lay inert on the platform. He touched the blood-matted fur and muttered some words in Latin. The wolf jerked and whined.

“Mallory will be all right. He got the worst of us all,” Aubrey said as he walked from one wolf to another, assessing and bringing each creature relief like a doctor on a battlefield. He stood and approached Blaise after a moment. Aubrey was one of the few males Blaise knew who matched his height, putting them eye to eye.

“We did well, thanks to you. Shrivencraft, Doyle, Allenshare, Mason and Solerin,” he said, referring to the revenants—walking, blood-drinking, sentient corpses—they’d killed.

“Morshiel turned Shrivencraft five hundred and thirty-two years ago,” Blaise said flatly, his gaze now glued to the awesome sight of the woman touching the crystal.

“He suffers no more,” Aubrey said, following Blaise’s stare. “Who…what is she?”

“I don’t know. But whatever she is, Morshiel wants her. So that means I’m taking her.”

Aubrey nodded. Blaise had stated the obvious. They would never consider leaving such a powerful creature in Morshiel’s hands.

“The amount of vitessence coming off her and that crystal,” Aubrey mumbled. His gray eyes narrowed and glazed as he stared. “It’s not possible.”

They both approached the light-infused woman. For the first time, Blaise noticed she wore one long black glove on the arm that hung at her side. He bent to pick up its mate which had been discarded on the concrete platform. He gripped the cheap, synthetic fabric convulsively. His nostrils flared.

Her scent filled him.

She was so illuminated he had a strange feeling that if he removed the purple evening dress she wore, he’d be able to see inside her, see her very heart beating out a rapid, desperate tattoo. His own heart felt as if someone had just reached into his chest and squeezed it without mercy.

“The connection is hurting her.” He reached to detach her from the crystal, but Aubrey stopped him with a hand on his forearm.

“No. I don’t believe the soulless can touch her without harm.”

Blaise understood. If they were the soulless, this woman was the very essence of a rarified soul. Differences repelled. His heart throbbed in pain. He threw his friend’s hand off his forearm. His eyes sprang wide when he grasped her wrist. He had the disoriented thought that the crystal was an electrical conduit, for an enormous shock went through him. The woman’s back arched and she screamed.

For the eternal second before he broke the conduit, a rapture filled him unlike anything he’d ever known. It was as if her very soul slammed into his consciousness in one powerful pulse of energy.

He blinked. The woman fell limply into his arms, unconscious. He checked her pulse, exhaling in relief when he felt her rapid but strong heartbeat.

She will never be able to leave Sanctuary, he thought numbly as he lifted her limp form. Her days of freedom had come to an end the second Morshiel had learned of her existence. From now until the end of her days, this woman would either be hunted or captured. Better that he—Blaise—was the one to hold her captive.

He moved his hand subtly on her hip. The dress she wore wasn’t expensive. As the owner of the largest silk factory in Europe, Blaise knew fabrics. He knew the sensation of vitessence better. The dress might be cheap, but that couldn’t begin to disguise the purity and strength of the woman’s soul-energy.