Haunted by the King of Death Read online

  But worse than that, she ached more than ever for Grave.

  Isla pressed her right hand to her chest and closed her eyes, focused on the mark on her back between her shoulder blades, near her heart. It warmed, tingling on her skin, but then the connection that had been opening slammed shut in her face just as the door had.

  She turned away from it, lifted her chin and let her hand fall away from her heart.

  If Grave wouldn’t help her, then she would track down a phantom mage alone. She would do all in her power to stop what was happening to her, and to Grave.

  She would save him somehow.

  She owed him that much.

  She couldn’t undo what she had done...

  Isla stilled.

  Or could she?

  CHAPTER 5

  Grave stood at a window in the huge library on the top floor of the palace, staring down into the courtyard, watching the slender female as she appeared from the building and stormed across the sandstone flags.

  Her steps slowed as she neared the fountain and she looked back at the palace, an expression on her face that called to him.

  There had been hope in her stunning blue eyes when she had spoken with him, but now there was nothing but despair and pain, and he enjoyed it, but gods, he hated it at the same time.

  He cursed her in his mind and tried to tear his eyes away from her, tried to force himself to turn his back on the window and stop watching her, but he couldn’t stop looking at her and couldn’t walk away.

  He had barely kept his cool and refrained from standing as she had swept into his grand hall, had barely leashed the hot bolt of lust that had burned through him on seeing her again.

  She was as beautiful as he remembered.

  Even with their apparently joint problem diminishing her slightly, she was still radiant. Ethereal. Breathtaking.

  Dangerous to him because of it.

  He had thought he was over her, that during their time apart the things she had done had destroyed any and all feelings he’d had for her, leaving his heart free of her. Leaving him cold and immune to her.

  He had thought wrong.

  One single glimpse of her. One single breath of her sweet scent. One single word falling from her lips.

  It was all it had taken to pull him back under her spell.

  He despised her for that, and hated himself too.

  He turned on a snarl as she disappeared from view beyond the main gate of the fortress and began pacing along the bank of windows. Fury rolled through him with each hard step, anger at her for daring to walk back into his life and at himself for turning her away, and being foolish enough to hope she might fight harder, might have come back when she had stopped at the fountain rather than walking away.

  Gods, had he really wanted her to come back?

  He squeezed his eyes shut, growled through his clenched teeth and shook his head. No. He hadn’t. He really hadn’t.

  A quiet voice whispered that he had.

  Grave crushed it out of existence.

  He paced harder, trying to work off some steam and purge her from his life again.

  But her scent lingered in his lungs, her beauty still branded on his mind.

  He grabbed the nearest wooden chair and roared as he sent it flying across the library. It smashed into the bookcase lining the far wall, shattering into pieces and knocking several books to the floor with it.

  Grave grabbed another, and then another, and when chairs weren’t enough to satisfy the need to destroy everything because he couldn’t destroy what he really wanted—his feelings for Isla—he tipped one of the ebony desks over and unleashed his fury on it, attacking it with claws, fists and booted feet until it was little more than a scattered pile of tinder on the wooden floor.

  His chest heaved as he breathed hard, head bent and heart pounding, anger still thundering in his blood.

  He stilled when someone halted outside the double doors of the library.

  Waited.

  Asher wisely moved on, and Grave waited for him to pass beyond the sphere of his acute senses before he staggered backwards to the window and slumped onto the seat there, the back of his head smacking against the glass panes. He grimaced as his healing right shoulder ached under the pressure of his weight and shifted into a more comfortable position.

  He stared at the destruction he had wrought, feeling nothing, not a single care about what he had done.

  Not when his heart still beat for Isla.

  He had thought he was free of her. He had thought he was stronger and able to see her without her affecting him, without feeling anything for her. He had thought that whatever he had once held in his heart had died when she had shattered that organ, but the sight of her had robbed him of his breath and her scent had made him hard as steel in his trousers, aching for her.

  He was never going to be free of her, not so long as they were bound.

  She would always affect him, no matter how much he hated it.

  Grave tipped his head back, pressing it into the glass, and closed his eyes, breathing out a deep sigh as resignation filled him.

  “Damn her,” he muttered, raised both hands and ran them over his dark hair, clawing it back.

  He couldn’t think about her right now, not when he had more important things on his mind, things he had almost foolishly revealed to her with his careless words. He had caught the look in her eyes, the intense curiosity.

  He lowered his right hand to his chest and rubbed his thumb across the pendant around his neck.

  Just as he had witnessed the spark of hope she had felt on seeing he still owned the trinket she had given him.

  And he had done all in his power to crush that hope.

  Grave looked down at the intricate knot, recalling what he had said to her—he wore it as a reminder of what she had done to him in case he was ever foolish enough to forget it and relinquish his mission to make her suffer.

  The reality was so much worse than that.

  He couldn’t bring himself to part with it.

  Gods, he had tried.

  He had cast it into a valley in the Sixth Realm once and turned his back on it, only to end up scouring the black lands for it, desperate to find it again and have it back in his possession. It had taken him five days of searching, five days without sleep or blood.

  When he had finally found it, he had experienced such a powerful surge of relief that his knees had given out and he had sat in the middle of the valley, clutching it tightly in his fist, close to tears.

  He curled his lip.

  There might have been one or two tears.

  The metal warmed as he traced the knot, following the lines of it, the weight of it soothing in his fingers.

  He hadn’t taken it off since that day.

  He should have known from that alone that seeing Isla again had been a bad idea, that he wasn’t over her at all. If he didn’t have the strength to part with a stupid trinket, how the hell had he expected to have the strength to see her and feel nothing?

  Imbecile.

  He huffed and released the pendant.

  Was it possible she had spoken the truth though? She was fading too, and rather than becoming phantoms, they were dancing with death?

  A few days ago, he would have leaped at the chance to hear what she had to say, to bleed her for any information she had that might help him or even use her just to save himself, but now all he could think about was the pressing need he felt to save someone else.

  The mark between his shoulder blades warmed and this time he didn’t close the connection to her, but he did hold things back from her, only allowing her to feel his negative emotions, the anger and frustration he felt.

  Not anger and frustration born of her and her visit.

  These emotions were born of the demon prince and his threat.

  Grave turned his head to his left, looked into the courtyard below and then beyond it to the wall and the grand gate, and the dark stone buildings of the town outside. Was she
still out there or had she already moved on, using one of the portals to teleport somewhere else in Hell?

  The part of him that refused to give up and die, the piece that clung to his feelings for her, hoped she found the solution she was looking for and managed to save herself.

  He ignored it, pretending it hadn’t said a damn thing, but it was impossible when the same voice whispered poisonous words in his heart, words that rekindled fear in his veins and had him coming to his feet.

  The demon prince wanted her as his prize.

  And wanted his entire family dead.

  A family that wished the same thing for him, but one he was bound to in blood, obliged to warn despite their feelings for him.

  He turned towards the window and studied the darkening horizon with a growing sense of dread. He had given himself a day to recuperate, a day in which he had locked himself in this library with three of his men and uncovered the record of the attack on the demon castle in the archives, arming himself with all the information he could muster because he knew he would need it if he was going to convince some members of his family to listen to him.

  Now, he couldn’t delay any longer.

  He focused on the mark on his back, felt it warm against his skin and start to tingle, and pictured Isla standing before him as she had in his grand hall.

  Beautiful, enchanting Isla.

  She had spoken about him getting what he deserved, and he wasn’t sure what she had meant by that, but there was a chance it was about to happen, and he couldn’t dispute that he probably did deserve it after what he had done to this person.

  The one he intended to warn first.

  Would she feel it when his eldest cousin, Snow, killed him in a fit of bloodlust?

  CHAPTER 6

  Grave stood beneath the columned portico of an elegant sandstone building in London, staring at a pair of darkened glass sliding doors that seemed so out of place on the old theatre and waging war with himself for a change as he debated whether or not to knock. He glanced over his shoulder, turning his ice blue gaze skywards, and cursed the faint pink tinge on the clouds that signalled what his body was already telling him.

  Dawn was coming.

  He had delayed long enough, dragging his feet during his preparations and his journey to the nearest portal, putting off entering it by thinking up ridiculous excuses about leaving his legion without their commander when Asher was perfectly capable of leading them in his stead, and then finally accidentally missing several vacant taxis when he had exited the portal in London.

  Now, he could delay no longer.

  It was either knock on the door and face his cousins, or leave now to find somewhere to wait out the day.

  He blew out his breath.

  He had faced enemies far more powerful than himself, had battled legions of shifters, demons and even dragons, but facing his family felt like an insurmountable task, one he dreaded, one that left him feeling death had finally caught up with him and was firmly on his heels, a shadow looming at his back waiting to strike him down.

  Grave slowly raised his right hand and rapped his knuckles against the glass. Hard. When no one showed up within two minutes, he knocked again.

  The doors slid open.

  “You are late. Aurora is—” The immense white-haired male cut himself off and scowled at Grave, his pale blue eyes glittering with ice as his eyebrows dipped low above them. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  Red seeped into the edges of his cousin’s irises and his pupils began to narrow, starting to turn elliptical. Fangs flashed between Snow’s lips as he snarled low in his throat and advanced on Grave, the sheer size of him and the threat he had issued enough to have Grave backing off a step.

  Snow hadn’t courted his bloodlust.

  It had been born in the fires of Hell, and wasn’t something Grave wanted for himself or wanted aimed at him. He had danced with his, had stoked it and somehow mastered it, controlled it when normally the affliction controlled its victim.

  As it controlled Snow.

  Images flashed across Grave’s mind, disjointed and dim memories of a night he would never forget, one that haunted him despite his best attempts to push it forever from his mind.

  Blood coated everything. Splashed up walls. Ran down broken furniture.

  Bathed battered bodies.

  The corpses of his kin.

  His aunt. His uncle.

  His parents.

  Snow had killed them all in a fit of bloodlust, turning their peaceful lakeside chateau into a scene straight out of a hellish nightmare.

  War erupted in Snow’s eyes, the ice fighting the fire as he fought with himself, his powerful body visibly shaking. His cousin’s muscles strained against his black t-shirt, trembling beneath the tight material as he curled his fingers into fists at his sides.

  “Go away,” Snow bit out, voice a deep pained growl, and staggered back a step. “You are not welcome here.”

  The glass doors slid shut.

  Grave pulled down a deep breath and tried to silence the voice in his mind that told him to leave. He would, but not yet. He needed to warn his cousins, even when his presence only pained one of them.

  He knocked again.

  “Fucking hell, what are you doing here?” A light female voice cut through the quiet morning air and he whirled to face the owner, his right hand reaching for a sword that wasn’t there.

  The black-haired mortal standing on the steps below him arched an eyebrow at him, her golden eyes eerily bright in the low light.

  He should have come armed, but he had feared tipping his cousin over the edge.

  Beside the female, a bare-chested demon brute towered, his dusky horns curling around the curve of his pointed ears and beginning to flare forward as he glared at Grave, seven foot of pure muscle and menace. There were other reasons not to attack the mortal female. She was mated to the demon king who was looking at him as if he was searching for a reason to tear out his entrails.

  Charming considering that Grave had gone to war on this demon’s behalf, risking his life and those of his men to assist him in his fight against the Fifth Realm of demons only a few months ago.

  The door behind him opened again and he spun on his heel, heart leaping into his throat as his claws extended and he prepared for a fight.

  That same heart plummeted into his stomach when he found himself facing a slender female with dark hair that tumbled in gentle waves around pale shoulders and green-to-blue eyes that felt as if they were peering down into his soul, pulling out all the darkest memories it held.

  All of his sins.

  Behind her, Snow loomed in the shadows, his all-black clothing a stark contrast to her fair skin and white dress. His right hand gently rested on her left shoulder, a possessive and protective gesture that warned Grave this was the female Snow had chosen as his mate, the one he had heard about.

  Aurora.

  An angel.

  Or former angel.

  Though she hadn’t chosen to turn into a fallen angel, she had chosen to fall from grace for his cousin.

  Grave eyed the male, seeing only the brutal vampire he had witnessed on the battlefield countless times and the one who had slaughtered almost all of their family, destroying their bloodline.

  He closed his eyes when a sharper image of his mother flashed across his eyes and gritted his teeth as he looked down at her where she lay in his arms, broken and dead, ripped from him.

  On the heels of that soul-destroying memory, another more brutal and devastating one followed, hitting him hard now that his defences were down.

  His sister.

  His little sister.

  He stood on the paved drive of another remote chateau, his back to the building and eyes on the snow-white dress that fluttered in the night breeze on the grass, near a pair of black heeled ankle boots and a delicate black-and-red lace choker.

  Gods, he relived her terror and her pain, the fear that she too had bloodlust because of their family’
s insistence on keeping their bloodline pure, that they had bred into her the same terrible disease that had caused Snow to take most of their family from them. She had been inconsolable, convinced that she would one day lose control and harm her family.

  She had been the gentlest creature the world had ever seen, pure of heart and kind of soul, unable to hurt anyone even to feed from them.

  She had done the unthinkable.

  Unbearable.

  She had walked out into the morning and disappeared.

  Bastian and Night believed her dead, because her young body wouldn’t have been able to withstand even weak pre-dawn light. Grave couldn’t bring himself to believe that she was gone. He didn’t feel any sense of loss, not as he had when he had held his mother.

  He stared at the clothes, studied them closely. Even a full day in sunlight wouldn’t have been enough to disintegrate her body, and there was no evidence that she had burned to death, nothing but her clothes.

  She wasn’t dead.

  Was she?

  The same terrible darkness he had experienced in that moment welled up in him again, his eyes shifting to reflect the blackness pumping through his veins, an undeniable thirst to maim and kill, to spill blood in order to unleash his rage and his pain.

  “Aurora, take Sable and Thorne inside,” Snow said, his deep voice swimming in Grave’s ears as memories swamped him, pushing at his control and giving his bloodlust a stronger hold over him.

  Gods, he needed the pain and the high of victory, needed to fight something to make those two things happen.

  He flicked his near-black eyes open, pinning them on his cousin, and breathed hard, his heart thundering against his chest as he fought with himself rather than surrendering to his need to battle his own flesh and blood.

  He had sworn he wouldn’t, never again, not after the night he had confronted Snow about what he had done and had come dangerously close to killing him.

  A slave to the very disease that had caused his cousin to murder their family.

  Bloodlust.

  It rode him hard now, at the helm, controlling him when he was used to controlling it. Oily darkness rushed through his veins, drowned out any good thoughts, any glimmer of light, replacing them with a crushing need to kill.