Francesca’s heart was pounding in alarm. She had succeeded in angering him. There was no telling what he might do to her now. Overhead the storm clouds were gathering, a dark ominous portent of things to come. Lightning arced from cloud to cloud while all around her the skies darkened until every star was blotted out, until the moon was nothing but a memory.
The vampire hissed again, a deadly sound while the wind whipped at his tattered clothing and raked the lank hair hanging around his skull-like face. “You will be punished for that. I will have this human, and his dying will be long and painful. I will destroy everyone who has ever meant anything to you.”
Francesca’s heart was pounding frantically and she took a deep breath to calm herself. Inside she felt her daughter leap in fear. Immediately she covered her womb with her two hands as she faced the beast. He was undulating his head again, a rhythmic motion designed to be hypnotic. He attacked again in a blur of motion and Francesca waited until the last possible second to escape, towing Brice with her. Before the vampire could reach her, something inserted itself between them so that the undead was forced to halt his attack. With a howl of rage, he jumped backward.
Between her and the vampire a form shimmered, solidified. For one heart-stopping moment she thought it was Gabriel. The figure was tall, broad-shouldered, with the same long black hair and hauntingly perfect features as her lifemate. His eyes were black and empty, although Francesca could occasionally see the beginnings of small red flames smoldering deep within the empty depths. Power clung to him as if he were power come to life, power personified. He moved with a flowing grace, yet when he stopped, he was as still as the very mountains, a part of the earth itself. He was like Gabriel, yet unlike him. He bowed to her, a courtly, princelike gesture, before turning his attention to the vampire.
Francesca’s breath stilled in her body. This was Lucian. It could be no other. Gabriel’s twin and a vampire without equal. Her heart began to thud painfully in despair. Where she had feared the other vampire, she was now terrified. It was something about Lucian, something she couldn’t name, but he seemed invincible, seemed so powerful that a force of hunters could not defeat him. This was Gabriel’s mortal enemy and the one he loved above all others. She bit her lip hard to keep from crying out to her lifemate.
And then Lucian spoke. It was as if music were playing, music not of this world, but so pure and beautiful it was impossible to forget. His voice was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard in her life. “You have come here to this place and you have annoyed me, undead. I have chosen this city as my own personal playground and yet you think you can simply ignore my claim. You sent your minions to challenge my brother while you attack this one that he has laid claim to. She is under his protection and I can allow no other to interfere in our game. You understand that.” The voice was so perfect, so reasonable, anyone could understand him. “You lost your soul many centuries ago, dead one, and you yearn for the freedom of the final death. Go now. Your breath is no longer able to sustain you; your heart shall cease beating.” He raised his hand into the air and slowly began to close his fingers into a fist.
Francesca watched in horrified fascination as the undead obeyed the compulsion in that sweetly lethal voice. The vampire gasped for air, and as the fist closed tighter, his face began to turn color as he choked and strangled before her eyes. The vampire clutched at his chest as his heart stuttered, but he made no attempt to fight the order, so powerful was that voice. Francesca could scarcely take her eyes from her lifemate’s twin; she, too, was caught in the spell of his power, mesmerized by the true beauty of his voice. It was only when he plunged his fist deep within the cavity of the vampire’s chest and extracted the heart, when lightning slammed to earth in a jagged bolt of blue white and incinerated the already dead organ and its host, that she managed to jerk herself awake, once again aware of her own very precarious situation.