Damien. Jacquelyn Frank
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Название: Damien
Автор: Jacquelyn Frank
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Эротическая литература
Серия: Nightwalkers
isbn: 9781420105902
isbn:
For the moment, he was relieved that there was a trail at all. Whether or not the Princess would be alive at the other end would be something he would worry about when the time came. Hope came with the fact that there was a certain tension to this trail, indicating that someone had dragged Syreena against her will likely the entire distance.
He did not delude himself about how Syreena had been taken captive. The scent of a Demon lay parallel to every part of her path, and there was only one who would be so crazed as to attempt such a transgression on the royal’s own territory.
Ruth.
Psychotic Demon bitch, he thought venomously.
She and her daughter Mary had single-handedly caused more pain and death for the Demon community in the past year than he would have thought possible. Now that Mary was dead, accidentally killed by her mother’s own hand as Ruth had attempted to slay Elijah, there was no telling what she had in store for Syreena. And Damien had known the notoriously peaceful Queen Siena long enough to know that even for one as strong and practical in the ways of the world as she was, she would be hard-pressed to overcome such a personal, monstrous act and be able to maintain her peaceful ethics. How that would translate to the Demons would be hard to say. Damien could only take comfort in the fact that Siena was married to one and that would go a long way toward tempering her response. However, to lose her only sister…that could unavoidably affect a powerful monarch in ways that would have long-reaching repercussions.
The trail laid out before him was one of dragging energy. Though a teleport had all the appearance of starting cleanly in one place and popping up in another, it was more like a folding of space. A touching of the starting point to the ending point left behind something of a dotted line, as the crow flies, which could be followed if one knew what to look for and how to keep the track in sight.
The only thing was, it would take Damien a hundred times the amount of time to track it, and anything could happen in that time. So he flew through the air with all the speed he could muster, the wind burning over his skin and whipping through his clothing at hurricane force.
He barely noticed it, his entire concentration on his path.
As strong as she was, Ruth had her limitations. He did not figure her to be beyond the European continent. He had never heard of a female Mind Demon who could teleport more than a thousand miles’ distance. Ruth, however, was the first and eldest of her kind. There was truly no telling what she was capable of doing.
Especially with the black arts to aid her.
It took Jasmine a full hour before she truly took note of Damien’s extended absence.
Vampires were not in the practice of monitoring one another, but this was certainly an unusual circumstance. She was in another species’ territory, surrounded by Nightwalker strangers, set to a task that Damien had said he would accompany her on for at least this initial visit, just to make certain everything was reasonably safe and calm before leaving her to her own devices.
Not that she needed protecting. It was simply that Damien had mentored her for most of her life, elevating her to the level of a personal favorite that no one else could lay a close claim to, and since then had always taken it upon himself to act as her guardian and protector. Much in the way an elder brother would protect a younger sister.
So for him to break promised plans without even so much as a word to her, was enough to stimulate a measure of curiosity, if not concern. Far be it for Jasmine to play guardian to a Vampire twice her age and power.
Still…
Jasmine walked out of the Library, looking into the cavernous tunnels all around her, even though she knew by sense that Damien was nowhere close enough for visual acquisition. It was habit, she supposed, to look just the same. He was strong enough to block his presence from anyone should he choose to. She just did not understand why he would want to do so.
As she paid closer attention to her surroundings, however, she began to pick up his trail.
So he was not hiding for any purposeful reason.
The track was mostly cold, telling her his passage had taken place long before.
She debated the wisdom of tailing him.
It could very well be the Vampire Prince had found something…or someone…to amuse himself with, and an interruption would not be welcome. A Vampire’s attention could always be easily swayed in these ways. A race of pure sensualists, they rarely passed up a delight if it piqued their interest.
Although it had been some time since anything of that sort had been unique enough to win the attention of the Vampire who had lived long enough to see it all.
Jasmine had spent the better part of five hundred years at Damien’s side; she had seen the multitude of females he had gone through in that time alone, never mind the four hundred fifty years he had lived before she had even been born. While he still had appetites, he was no longer easily intrigued. It would not be like him, for all his Vampire nature, to suddenly see something that would distract him from a duty he held important. Especially when the duty involved a certain measure of political sensitivity and Jasmine’s exposure to it.
Jasmine made up her mind, proceeding cautiously in his footsteps.
Damien landed at last, estimating himself to be somewhere just outside of Paris.
That struck a chord within him immediately.
From Lycanthrope territory to Mistral lands? Ruth had been evicted from Russia a little over a month ago, chased away from excavating the land just above where the rest of the allied Nightwalkers had made the monumental discovery of the Library. Now she was here, again in alien Nightwalker territory.
What was she doing there? Why had she dragged Syreena all this way? Damien realized that she must have taxed herself enormously, first with the initial travel to Russia, and now by returning herself and a passenger who was fighting her tooth and nail the entire way. Nevertheless, Damien realized that he should not give too much credit to that advantage. Ruth was no doubt well surrounded by hunters who would just as soon stake him out in the next dawn for a slow and painful conflagration, and magic-users who would want to do worse.
She was crazy, not stupid.
Damien moved into the shadows, blending into them with a fluid motion he had always taken to so naturally. He was on a cobblestone path, village buildings on either side of him. It was a vintage city, exactly the type of setting where one would find Mistrals. However, it was too densely populated. Mistrals lived in close-knit groups, but usually in a country setting and with few more than twenty to a location.
This was a town of well over four or five hundred.
That only meant that Ruth had taken holdings less conspicuous than, say, trying to stay amongst Mistral villagers with the entourage that likely traveled with her. Ruth would stick out like a sore thumb in true Mistral settings.
Syreena’s trail was growing more apparent the closer he got to her. The gentle night breeze blew her unique scent to him in faint traces that only a select echelon of stalkers would have been able to identify as hers. He, Siena, and Jacob, the Demon Enforcer, СКАЧАТЬ