Morrigan's Cross (Circle Trilogy 1)

“Got something against chairs, Shorty?”

Her lips twitched. She liked the way words rumbled out of him, like rocks down a stony hill. “No, but I like sitting on the floor. Is it time for more training?”

“Taking a break.” He sat in a wide chair, a huge mug of coffee in his hand. “Larkin could go all damn day. Up there now, practicing some katas.”

“I like the katas. It’s like dancing.”

“Just make sure you’re doing the leading if you’re dancing with a vampire.”

Idly, she turned the page of a book. “Hoyt and Cian fought.”

King took a drink. “Oh yeah? Who won?”

“I think neither. I saw them coming back, and from their faces and limps, it seemed to be a draw.”

“How do you know they were fighting with each other? Maybe they were attacked.”

“No.” She traced her fingers over words. “I hear things.”

“You got big ears, Shorty.”

“So my mother always said. They made peace between them—Hoyt and his brother.”

“That eliminates a complication—if it lasts.” Given their personalities, King figured a full truce between the brothers had the life expectancy of a fruit fly. “What do you expect to find out in all these books?”

“Everything. Sooner or later. Do you know how the first vampyre came to be? There are different versions in the books.”

“Never thought about it.”

“I did—do. One is like a love story. Long ago, when the world was young, demons were dying out. Before, long before that, there were more. Scores of them, walking the world. But man grew stronger and smarter, and the time of the demons was passing.”

Because he was a man who enjoyed stories, he settled back. “Kind of an evolution.”

“A change, yes. Many demons went beneath the world, to hide or to sleep. There was more magic then, because people didn’t turn from it. Man and the faeries forged an alliance to wage war on the demons, to drive them under for once and all. There was one who was poisoned, and slowly dying. He loved a mortal woman, and this was forbidden even in the demon world.”

“So man doesn’t have a lock on bigotry. Keep going,” he said when she paused.

“So the dying demon took the mortal woman from her home. He was obsessed with her, and his last wish was to mate with her before his end.”

“Not so different from men in that area then.”

“I think, perhaps, all living creatures crave love and pleasure. And this physical act that represents life.”

“And guys want to get off.”

She lost her rhythm. “Get off what?”

He nearly spewed coffee, choked instead. He waved a hand at her as his laugh rumbled out. “Don’t mind me. Finish the story.”

“Ah…Well, he took her deep into the forest and had his way with her, and she, like a woman under a spell, wanted his touch. To try to save his life, she offered her blood to him. So she was bitten, and drank his blood in turn, as this was another kind of mating. She died with him, but she did not cease to exist. She became the thing we call vampyre.”

“A demon for love.”

“Aye, I suppose. In vengeance against men, she hunted them, fed from them, changed them, to make more of her kind. And still she grieved for her demon lover, and killed herself with sunlight.”

“Doesn’t quite hit Romeo and Juliet, does it?”

“A play. I saw the book of it here, on the shelf. I haven’t yet read it.” It would take years to read all the books in such a room she thought as she toyed with the end of her braid.