Shadow Of The Vampire. Meagan Hatfield

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       The Queen.

      It had to be her. At the thought, an icy shiver passed through him. A rational part of his brain had known she would come for him if he didn’t kill her first. Knew she would take her vengeance against his kind out on his flesh—his soul.

      Well, he thought, grabbing a fistful of net. He wasn’t going without a fight.

      With a roar, Declan looped the thick cord around his wrist and pulled, taking several of the horde to their knees. Jabbing a fist through the mesh, he seized the nearest soldier by the throat and squeezed.

      “Dammit, Ivan. Hold him,” a strong female voice ordered.

      At her command, a boot rammed his jaw. Declan flew back, his chin kicking the ground in a teeth-shattering blow. Groaning, he spit out a mouthful of blood and pushed himself up, his head lolling in the direction he’d last heard the woman’s voice.

      The first thing he focused on were boots—spike-heeled, patent-leather, knee-high stripper boots, wrapped around a pair of slender legs that seemed to go for days. Declan lifted his chin and wrenched his swollen eye wider.

      The female stood with one hand propped on black-leather-clad hips. The wind whipped thin blond hair around her—a delicately framed waist, bound in a leather corset that would have given any fetish kink an instant hard-on.

      When his gaze finally reached her face, he noted she examined him with black eyes as cold and immortal as his soul. And that she was much too young to be the Queen.

      “Where is the crystal?” Her smooth words held a faint trace of a Russian accent.

      Not the Queen, but definitely of a noble caste. Declan grinned through bloodied lips.

      At his smile, a dainty line furrowed her brow, and she cocked her head to the side. For a moment, she reminded Declan of a confused puppy. Until she raised a sawed-off 12 gauge and one black eye stared down the barrel at him.

      “Tell me where it is and I might let you live, Derkein.”

      “It’s gone,” he said with a chuckle. “You have nothing to take back to her. You’re as dead as I am.”

      The vixen’s onyx eyes flashed silver before she drove the butt of the gun down to his face. He was still smiling when she pistol-whipped his nose and the world plunged into darkness.

      ALEXIA FEODOROVNA stood in the catacombs, staring into the stone cell. Although the beast lay sound asleep on the floor and chained to the wall, his size and strength still managed to unsettle her.

      Big. Dark. Dangerous.

      She had never seen anything like him. The dragon lords never shifted into human form during battle, and were said to be all but extinct, or so she’d assumed until tonight. After seeing him fight, she wondered how she’d ever believed the lie.

      He’d fought like a warrior of auld.

      The way he’d protected that female of his kind, battled until he couldn’t stand and yet met death with a smile on his face, affected her strangely. Not because she knew she would have met her own death like the coward her mother had called her. But because in the deepest part of her heart, she yearned to experience that kind of love, yet knew she would die without it.

      The prisoner shifted. The metal cuffs around his wrists caught the moonlight filtering in through the rectangular window in his cell.

      Alexia leaned her forehead on the cool iron bars and watched the play of light on the dark wall. Tipping her chin, she took in a breath of salty ocean air, wafting in the window, purifying the rancid odor of her horde’s dungeon. Funny. She’d always thought that tiny window to be the cruelest torture in the cavern. The vibrant ocean, the alive taste of freedom danced on the tips of their prisoners’ tongues, taunting their spirits from the other side of the dungeon wall. A small flavor of a salvation that for most never came.

       At least they died having tasted hope.

      Footsteps ascended the spiral staircase behind her. Sliding her eyes from the prisoner, she adjusted the tray in her arms and turned toward the guard.

      “It’s about time, soldier.” She nodded into the cell. “Are you certain he sleeps?”

      The guard stepped into the light from a wall sconce. Like every one of her mother’s soldiers, he had crew-cut blond hair, a thick pit-bull-size head and dark sunglasses he wore even in the inky-black pits of their cavern dwelling.

      “I drugged that Derkein myself,” he said, unlocking the cell door and propping it open. “He’ll be out for hours, if he wakes at all.”

      “Good. You may leave us.”

      A dark brow cocked over the rim of his shades. “But, Lotharus ordered—”

      She hissed at the name, and stepped up to him. “Lotharus does not make the orders around here. I do. And I said, leave us.”

      Though disapproval radiated off the grunt, he clamped his lips together and bowed.

      Alexia watched him leave under narrowed lids. She didn’t trust those genetically enhanced soldiers. Sure, they were efficient, strong and practically unbeatable in combat. However, their increasing intolerance of showing her the respect befitting her station was troubling. Naturally, her mother blamed her for a lack of dominance over the horde.

      Once the soldier disappeared around the corner, Alexia stepped through the iron threshold, slamming the door with more force than necessary.

      Goddess! Just once she’d like to prove to her horde she was capable of leading them, capable of succeeding on the throne when her mother stepped down. Alexia knew if she retrieved the Crystal of the Draco, no one, not even Lotharus, would question her or the horde’s centuries-old matriarchal way of life again.

      She stopped beside the slumbering beast, realizing the only one who knew where the crystal might be lay bleeding to death on the floor by her feet.

      With a sigh, Alexia settled on the ground, unwound a measure of coarse thread and nipped it with her fangs. Wetting the tip with her tongue, she threaded the needle and shifted onto her knees above the prisoner. Since he faced the outer wall, she decided to start by stitching the gash on his shoulder blade.

      Alexia set her fingers to his flesh. At the contact, he moaned, rolled to his back and took a deep breath. Alexia held hers. Every dip, ridge and contour of his naked, bronzed body rose and flexed with the movement, beckoning her gaze.

      What few noble men of her horde she’d seen unclothed had been tall and thin. Gaunt, when she compared them to this dragon lord. He was thick. Her gaze slid between his thighs. Everywhere. He had long muscled thighs and calves, solid arms and a broad, sculpted chest, not bones protruding beneath translucent skin like Lotharus.

      Intrigued, she leaned closer.

      Rich sable waves of shoulder-length hair curled around his neck. Her eyes fixed lower, on the pulse beating beneath his golden skin. A primal thrum tingled through her body. The air around her thickened, and her fangs burned.

      Alexia sat back on her heels and gave herself a mental shake.

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