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The Chamber of the Scholomance

875 A.D.

Impossible to believe he was here, that he now stood inside the labyrinth that led to the Chamber of the Scholomance. As his father had wished, he had been selected to be an apprentice to Lucifer. He would learn the timeless magic. He would learn to control the winds, the rain, to summon powerful bolts of lightning or baking heat. He would know all the mysteries of nature, alchemy, and death.

Candles burned in a ring on the dirt floor. He dropped to his knees and let his head fall forward in the pose of a penitent man. Feminine laughter rippled over him in response.

The woman who waited in the shadows stepped out. She carried a beautifully wrought axe with a sharpened blade, and she was nude. Stars were painted over her nipples. She was entirely shaved of her nether hair. Where the thick bush of her pubic hair should be, a circle had been painted in red blood. Her hair was a rich red—almost the color of flame—and it spilled over her shoulders and down her back in soft, fragrant-smelling curls. When he breathed deeply, all he smelled was the sweet promise of new grass, fresh wildflowers, sun, and birth.

He could not believe, when he smelled her, that she was a demoness.

“Very good,” she murmured. “But I wonder if you will remain obedient for long.”

“I will,” he promised. But rebellion sparked deep in his soul. He was twenty-one—the age when a man is fool enough to grab up a sword and launch a single-handed attack on an army. The demoness laughed again, as though genuinely amused.

She paced gracefully in front of him. Just breathing in her smell made his cock rigid and thick. Already his juices gathered at the tip and leaked down the head. He was also nude, and she could see the response of his body. Her full, dark red lips curved in a smile. “You are very young.”

“I am not.”

“Your youth is an asset. Do not despair. For it means you will be forever as beautiful as you are now.” Humming, she laid her hand on top of his head. She stroked his hair.

His hair was long. It had never been cut. That had been the first clue in his realization that his father had always intended to offer him as an apprentice. He had realized his father had lied. He was not being sent to Lucifer to ensure the Vikings did not capture Wessex and destroy the last English king—the last king who embraced God. His father had plotted his destiny for much longer than that.

His father believed in the God of the Catholic religion, and so he had believed in Lucifer. The devil, his father had said, was the true path to power. Their bloody battles with the Vikings could be won only if they harnessed the powers of darkness—

The demoness moved to him, her breasts swaying. He licked his lips as he watched them bounce from side to side. What did the paint taste like on her nipples? Would she let him put his lips there? He wanted to. Her breasts were heavy and full. They hung lower than those of the young maidens he had bedded, and they entranced him. Through the thick cape of his hair, he watched them move.

She began to hack at his long hair, sawing through it with the blade. It fell in yard-long piles around him. “It is my duty to name you.”

He told her his name, but she shook her head. “You are not that young man anymore.” Her lashes were very long and ebony black. She smiled. “You are well endowed.”

“I hope that pleases you.”

“It does, but I will not be allowed to sample you. Once your head is shaved, you will never be allowed to have sex again.”

He jerked and the blade nicked his scalp. Pain shot through him, but he didn’t care. “What do you mean? I was told my seed would be precious.”

“It will be. But it will not be permitted for you to spill your seed in a woman.”

By all that was holy, what did that mean?

The demoness smiled. “Surely, you did not think that you would be accepted without a price?”

“I did not think the price was so high.”

Her laughter was throaty and rich. “Only a man would say that.” She cocked her head, considering. “I could be persuaded to wait before cutting your hair.”

He rose up from his knees until he was standing. She was voluptuous and petite, and she had to tip back her head to meet his eyes.

“What will persuade you?” he asked. He reached out and pinched one of her nipples. The greasy paint let his fingers slide around the hardening tip.

“Would this?” Emboldened, he slid his hand between her hot thighs. Already, her nether lips were slick with her juices. They were like exotic silk to his touch. His cock bucked, and he knew it was dripping with its lust.

He took her hand to his shaft. “Do you like this?”

“Young men. Obsessed only with their cocks.” She scraped her nails along his rigid shaft and he moaned at the pleasure and pain. She stroked his hipbone. He had to admit the caress was an arousing sensation. “I would like to touch you, to stroke and savor you, but I know you are thinking only of shoving your erect cock inside me as quickly as you can.”

Her words had made it only more important that he bury himself inside. Every breath was bringing him close to release. There was something about the erotic smell of her cunny, of scents he could not describe, but that were feminine and lush and appealing, and that had him on the brink of orgasm.

He threw aside the pretense at being submissive, and he pulled her into his embrace. Fighting and warrior exercises had made him strong. Standing, he could lift her to straddle his cock, and he impaled her on his rigid spike.

She laughed. Her eyes changed to a vivid red, and she rode him until she tore at his neck with her teeth and ravaged his back with her nails. Climax after climax took her, then he surrendered to his orgasm. Laughing, she pulsed her cunny around him, sucking him dry with her muscles. His legs collapsed beneath him and he let them both fall to the ground.

She leapt up to her feet while he was still gasping for breath.

“I will name you Lukos, and your beast shall be the wolf. You shall be a predator, sleek and swift, without mercy. You shall be a beautiful beast, my pet. And you will put behind you your mortal name, your mortal ties. You will give everything up—”

“Including pleasure,” he grumbled.

She smiled, eyes narrowed, her thick black lashes batting playfully. “A small price.”

“After that bout I know it is a great sacrifice.”

“Do not flatter.” She waved away his words, then went to a table in the corner of the vaulted chamber. She dipped her blade into a gold dish of hot water. She stroked it along his head. He felt the scrape, the awareness of pain, of sensation. She worked, shearing his hair from his scalp.

“You will lead me there?” he asked. “Through the labyrinth.”

“Ah, there is so much you do not know. That is not the way you meet Lucifer.”

“How then?”

“You will find out very soon. Now, let me finish.”

After his head was shaved to his scalp, she bade him to stand. He lifted his arms as she commanded, and she drew the blade on the skin beneath his arms. She pricked him several times.

He caught his breath as she shaved his chest, then took off the downy line of hair that ran down his abdomen.

“Stay very still,” the demoness murmured.

He stood like a statue as she drew the blade along the plane of his pubis to reach the root of his cock. She cooed and stroked his soft member until it swelled again, and his blood rushed into it. The scrape of blade over his skin aroused him, and made him harder than he’d ever been. He held his breath, afraid the slightest twitch would send the sharp edge into his flesh.

He’d always been proud of his thick, rigid organ. The maidens of Wessex all loved it. He wasn’t ready to lose it.

She gave him a wicked glance, then licked the head, running her tongue around and around as her hands deftly shaved his nether curls. He watched the hair fall to the ground.

Then he shuddered as she drew the shaving blade over his ballocks. She pulled the skin tight to shave and the pressure chased his balls around in their sac.

With a tap on his buttocks, she urged him to bend over, and she swept the sharp edge around his anus to take away the hair there. She cleaned the blade in the water and even shaved his legs, then finally, his arms. She took off the long golden hairs on his forearms.

“There, you are finished.”

She stroked his hard shaft. “And now, your poor sweet organ will no longer be able to play.”

He did not believe that. He refused to. He reached for her breast, but she slapped his hand away. She still held the blade, so he jerked back quickly.

“Now you will take me to Lucifer.”

She gave him a robe of fine scarlet fabric, sensually soft. “Put this on and get down upon your knees.”

His scalp prickled where it had been shaved. His ballocks itched. But he forced himself to ignore the nagging desire to scratch his testicles, to ignore the stinging places where the blade had drawn blood.

“Close your eyes and tip your head back.”

A shudder passed over him. A shadow of wariness. But he had lived for this moment, the moment he became one of Lucifer’s ten apprentices, and he had to trust.

But his lids opened and he relinquished faith—

He saw the countess’s arm move in a smooth arc. The blade penetrated his throat, and her strength drove it through his skin to the bone beneath. He felt a pass of cold, then a spurt of warmth.

Panic flew up like frightened grouse. Blackness swirled in on his vision. He spluttered. He fought to breathe.

She had sliced his throat open.

Her voice sang by his ear. “This, Lukos, is how you meet Lucifer.”

Her hands were held together and a strip of her own petticoat was being wound around her wrists to bind her.

Miranda bit her lip, fighting to stay calm, but her chest heaved on a fit of panicked sniffles. The vampire with the white streak in his hair was tying her up. His breath whispered softly over her neck as he meticulously wrapped the cloth around and around her crossed wrists. His breath was surprisingly…warm.

The shades were drawn, the carriage lamps were not lit. She sat in the gloom, a prisoner of two otherworldly beasts, trapped in shadow. Trapped in fear. To think she’d been terrified of poverty and the workhouse.

Miranda didn’t understand. Why tie her up? They were so strong. Wouldn’t they just plunge in their fangs, drain her blood, and leave her dead?

“Not too tight, Lukos. We don’t wish to harm her pretty hands.”

So the vampire with the white streak in his hair was called Lukos. She had seen her brother’s schoolbooks—Lukos was the Greek word for “wolf.” There were tales she’d heard of men who could transform themselves into wolves. Between the vampire and the werewolf, she would be torn limb from limb.

Wouldn’t she?

“Where were you traveling?”

The mesmerizing, silky baritone of the vampire Zayan compelled her to turn to him. Against her will, she drew in a sharp breath at his stunningly handsome face. She could not fight against the need to stare into his silvery, reflective eyes.

Could she break free, throw herself at the carriage door, and fall out? She ran the risk of being run over by the wheels. But wouldn’t it be better to die that way than by a vampire’s bite? And if she forced the door open, she’d burn the vampires inside.

Zayan’s compulsion was pushed aside and another took hold. Lukos. She sensed anger between them—it was like sparks of lightning in the carriage. Fire shot from their glittering eyes at each other. She had seen gentlemen before a duel, struggling to keep rage beneath a restrained and refined exterior. She could sense things about people—their darkest fears, their most primitive emotions, the things they did not say but that they felt deeply. And she could almost taste the hatred between these demons.

“Good plan, but it won’t work, sweeting,” Lukos growled. “You’d never get the door open. Tell us where you were going.”

It was like a command, and inexplicably the words came to her lips. She couldn’t understand why they wished to know. “To Lord B—” She stopped, battling the compulsion to speak.

She looked at Zayan again, was drawn to him.

He undid his cloak and let it fall from his shoulders. The thick cape was lined with dark, rich fur—an animal’s pelt that was as black as his long, untied hair. His burned skin had now repaired itself. Within moments of being inside the carriage, with the shades drawn, he had healed. “Are you going to your husband?”

“No!” She cried it out, afraid that these beasts would hurt Blackthorne if they thought him precious to her.

“Why does a proper lady travel to an English peer alone?” Even in the shadows, his eyes glinted silver at her. “You do not look like a mistress.”

What did it matter to them? They were only going to kill her. She wriggled her hands; she pulled, but the cloth would not tear. Even though it had been ripped so easily from her skirts, it would not give now. Her chest felt as if it would burst out of her corset.

Lukos bent to her ear. “Relax, sweet lass. We mean you no harm.”

Her heart slowed, as though Lukos could control it. Fear slithered through her, but her body did not behave as if she were as terrified as she was. Her cheeks burned hot. Her body felt tight, but in a pleasurable way. And all she could think of was the pressure of the bonds at her hands.

“You are obviously innocent,” Zayan murmured. “And very sweet.” But he stared so deeply into her eyes, she felt he was searching for more.

“Tempting,” Lukos agreed. And he actually leaned to her neck and sniffed. Like a wolf. “This man you are traveling to see, you are in love with him. You intend to marry him.”

Sheer horror raced through her blood. Lukos had read all of that in her thoughts. Would he see the rest—that it was her intention to marry Blackthorne because she had no other choice? “No, none of that is true,” she lied in a desperate, blurted rush of words.

Zayan shook his head. “So you are traveling to your fiancé, but unprotected.”

“No, I had the servants, of course.” Servants who had been somehow compelled or hypnotized by these vampires to do their bidding and drive the carriage. They were traveling in this direction only because she had foolishly looked this way along the road when Zayan had first asked where she was going. She had revealed the truth even as she refused to speak.

Lukos lifted his hand. A swirl of red light flowed from his palm. It danced through the air toward her. She screamed and pulled at her bonds, but the twinkling light encircled her neck. It touched her like a caress. Pleasure, terrifying pleasure, shot through her every nerve. She moaned with it.

Lukos grinned, his white fangs flashing. He bent to her neck. Dear God, no. But the red lights were delighting her, as he pressed his warm lips to her throat. His touch made her skin ignite with sensation.

He lifted. “Just a kiss. Nothing more.” The magical light disappeared. She was weak with relief, even as her body was heightened and aware. Heaven help her, she wanted another touch.

Stop, Miranda. You must fight.

The mad thought struck her that Lukos was also astonishingly handsome. His silvery eyes, almost violet in the soft light, compelled her to watch him. He looked so young, perhaps younger than she was, but he seemed ancient at the same time. Behind his wicked smile, she could sense his emotion—pain so acute she winced with it.

“I would not hurt you,” he promised softly. “Nor will I drink from you until you ask me to.”

Miranda pushed aside her connection with his emotions. “I would never ask you,” she cried. “No matter what you do. And I won’t kiss either of you willingly. I-I’ll spit on you if you try to kiss me.”

Lukos’s deep, rusty laugh rang in her ears.

“My turn.” Zayan stood, and despite the swaying of the carriage, he wrapped an arm around her waist. She squirmed but to no avail. He scooped her up and carried her across to his side.

God, this was so…humiliating and awful. They were taking turns with her.

Zayan’s touch reminded her of how strong these men were. Lukos had carried her over his shoulder as though she weighed nothing. And Zayan’s hand spanned her waist, nipped in by corset and snug pelisse.

The shades rattled at the window; Miranda could see the light fading beyond. The sun was setting. Soon it would be nightfall, which meant her best chance of escape was now. They could not chase after her in the sunlight.

Though they’d lasted in the sunlight for long enough before.

Zayan’s hand neared her face.

She shook. “Tell me who you are. When did you become a vampire?” She thought of every tale Aunt Eugenia had told her about vampires. Her aunt wanted to know the entire story of a vampire’s background. That, she claimed, was what gave a slayer power over a vampire. Not weaponry, but understanding. Most slayers did not bother to know their prey, which was why many died. “Who made you?” Miranda asked, trying to look at the clasp of Zayan’s cloak and not his magnetic eyes. “When were you turned?”

If she could make him talk, she could keep his mouth off hers, couldn’t she? She could play for time.

“I have been Nosferatu for many centuries, love. I have lived an eternity.” He spoke with a touch of weariness. She had the sense that he really had no interest in her. If this was a game to him, it bored him.

“But what happened to you? Who were you as a mortal? You didn’t choose to be a vampire, did you?” She fired her questions out in a tumble, one atop the other. Anything to keep him talking to her. To postpone the moment he would bite her or ravish her. “I want to know. I know I won’t survive this night. But I need to…to think of things. All I have left is curiosity.”

Zayan’s black straight brows jerked up at that. He laughed. The sound was as smooth as the deep velvety night, like the ripple of a nighttime breeze through the trees. The other vampire, Lukos, had a lusty throaty laugh, one that implied he was thinking very rude thoughts.

Miranda shook her head. Why did she think these things?

“I have lived for almost two thousand years,” Zayan said dispassionately. “I was a Roman general. My name, in my mortal world, was Marius Praetonius. I took most of Europe in the name of Rome. I was celebrated, worshipped. Your fiancé might have read about me in his schoolbooks.” Lines were suddenly carved at the side of his mouth as he smiled more deeply.

I sense a great power about you…. You intrigue me….

Miranda heard his deep voice in her head, felt it in her entire body, the way music would vibrate through her. She heard it and went ice-cold. Could he guess that she had special powers—a power she couldn’t even understand? That she possessed some kind of magic? She shivered. What would that mean? Would it spare her life? Was any of what he had told her true?

“Of course it is true,” he said in answer to her thoughts. “What do you think—I’m some insignificant slave who concocted a fancy tale?”

She recoiled from the sudden anger in his voice. His lower lip thrust out, in the way her brother would do when she had caught him making some foolish mistake, such as gambling.

Vampires were once mortal men. That is the critical thing to remember when hunting them. Aunt Eugenia had told her that over and over again.

She remembered her response to Aunt Eugenia: I am a gentlewoman. I am supposed to even fear the power of mortal men.

But Aunt Eugenia scoffed at that. A woman is as powerful as she believes she can be. The words had almost made Miranda laugh—she painted watercolors, diligently perfected her embroidery, strolled the gardens with a dainty parasol. How could she be powerful? But she had wanted to believe her aunt. And Eugenia’s words had a strange power attached to them. As though, by thinking them, they could give her greater strength.

Zayan stretched his arm along the back of the seat. It was such a masculine gesture—such a normal, human one—that it caught Miranda by surprise. “Does knowing who I once was make you more willing to kiss me?” he asked, amusement heightening the allure of his looks.

She fought the instinctive tug of feminine admiration at his chiseled jaw, full lips, at even the crinkles at the sides of his mirror-like eyes.

“Of course not!”

“Wise girl.” Across from them, Lukos had propped one booted foot on the velvet seat of the coach. “He’s a vampire. He’s taken the blood of thousands of innocent women and children.”

She froze, horrified.

“As have you,” Zayan growled. He was watching her, his gaze hot and intense. “I would like to know what you are. Not a normal, flighty, empty-headed woman of society, are you?”

Miranda twisted her bound hands. Her entire body tensed, but she tried to look rather stupidly at Zayan. “Of course I am just an empty-headed, ordinary woman.”

But he held her gaze, seeing through her, she was certain, with his mirror-like eyes.

She had slid along the seat to put as much space between them as she could. But he reached out and caught hold of the bindings at her wrist. With two fingers, he tore the cloth. She wrenched her arms apart, fighting at the fabric, even as he unwound it.

Oh. Her hands tingled as feeling returned.

Zayan reached for her hand. “Isn’t a kiss on the hand the way a proper English gentleman begins his seduction of a lady?”

His hand clasped hers; his fingers threaded through hers. Like a perfect gentleman, like a man she might have dreamed about, he raised her hand to his lips.

“No, don’t do this.” She could not bear a mockery of courtship before she was killed and her blood taken. “No, I know nothing of magic. I didn’t even really believe in vampires!”

Soft and full, Zayan’s lower lip touched the back of her bare hand. A jolt of warm pleasure ignited there at the brush of his mouth. He kissed her hand as no man had ever done before—a tantalizing play of mouth and tongue. She’d had no idea a kiss to her hand could make her blood rush madly through her. Could make her nipples lift against her shift.

But Lukos was not going to simply watch, she realized. He had moved to their side—he was on his knees. It startled her that a vampire, a demonic creature, would be on his knees for her. “I do not share,” he growled, looking like a defiant boy. “We could have her choose—”

“Choose!” she cried. “I’d never—”

“But we can both compel her thoughts,” Lukos continued, ignoring her outrage. “I propose a competition. An amusement for a long journey.”

The fiends were speaking as though she were not even there. And butterflies took flight in her belly at the word competition.

“No magic?” Zayan asked.

“Magic is allowed, but only for seduction, which will begin like this…”

Miranda held her breath. Lukos bent to her neck. She felt him approach. Her skin seemed to anticipate him, tingling before he touched her.

His lips brushed her, and she moaned with desire. What was wrong with her? Zayan suckled her fingers one by one, and the sensations left her dizzy. She could not fight the…the heated desire rising in her. They were competing for her, like she was a prize.

What if she touched them? What if she touched them as she did to others who had died? Could she bring them back? Could this mysterious power she possessed do that—to men who had been vampires for centuries?

Did she dare try? If she could change them, they couldn’t kill her.

The shade rattled away from the carriage window. Barely any light filtered in.

The sun had set. She had to try now. She did not have any more time, and this might be her only hope to live.

London, at that moment

“An innocent from a good family will cost you, sirrah.”

James Ryder drew out a handful of gold sovereigns and dropped them, one by one, into the greasy silk glove on the madam’s outstretched hand. “Gentlemen pay at least five hundred pounds for my virgins, sir.” She reached out to return his money.

Five hundred. He had it, but he hadn’t wanted to part with so much. There were houses where that handful of coins would buy him the use of every cunny in the house. That amount of money would let him do whatever he wanted to the girls.

But he wanted to dip his wick here. In this place that was the exclusive domain of earls and dukes. In this place where he could take the maidenhead of a woman he would not be allowed to address on the street.

Tonight, Miss Miranda Bond had evaded him. To ease his frustration, he had destroyed a vampire, and the excitement of battle now sang in his veins.

He wanted the best. And he could pay for it.

He caught the madam’s wrist. “That is a small gift for you, madam. I am willing to pay the price for quality.”

“Who are you, then, sir? You are not known to me.” She sniffed and looked down her beak of a nose at him.

How in bloody hell did she dare look down at him?

“I am a son of the Marquess of Hiltshire.” The truth, though he was a bastard son. He pulled out a wad of notes and pushed those into her hand, forcing her to drop the sovereigns on the gleaming parquet floor.

The coins clinked. Her hand squeezed around the money. She stared down, her hand-drawn eyebrows arched in surprise.

He made a move to pick up his hat and start for the door.

“Wait!”

He turned to see her stuffing the money between her large, plumped-up tits, wadding the notes down below the scooped neck of her bodice, between the sweaty lumps of her flesh.

“I have a girl available. A vicar’s daughter, left homeless. She is most definitely a virgin. A true innocent, quite frightened and apprehensive, even though she goes willing to her fate for the welfare of her younger siblings. She was promised to the Earl of Huntingdon. She could, however, be yours, for one thousand pounds.”

Christ, it was a bloody fortune. But to steal the virgin who would have spread her thighs for the Earl of Huntingdon? It would be worth it. He wrote a vowel for the rest, and to his surprise, the madam accepted it.

No doubt, she thought he would return after he’d sampled the vicar’s daughter. He’d crave another virgin, just as her noble clients did. With a snap of her fingers, she sent a brawny footman to lead him to the bedroom. He found it empty. He sat on the edge of the bed but would not begin to undress until the girl was brought to him.

He’d trusted once—bought a virgin and stripped down in preparation, only to find the brothel was more interested in stealing his money, beating him blind, then throwing him out. But the stupid madam and her brutes had not understood what a vampire slayer was capable of doing with a weapon.

Ryder drew out a cheroot. He moved to the fireplace and lit the smoke from the licking flames. The room was opulent, a sign that it did cater to refined tastes.

God, he was hard with anticipation. His John Thomas strained against his linens. His arousal made him restless, angry. He should be in pursuit of Miss Miranda Bond tonight.

But he knew where she was headed. He would be on the road after he’d had his little treat, and he would travel faster than her.

With a click, the door opened. He swiveled on the bed as the footman brought in a tall, slender girl who wore a ghastly gray dress. A dress she’d worn from her home, or a costume? Her face was plain—freckled nose, pink cheeks, ivory skin. Her lashes were as mousy brown as her hair, but her skin and hair promised to be peach soft.

No seasoned whore could clean up like that. This girl was genuine. Her spine was stiff, her fists clenched. “Do you want me to take off my dress, sir?”

She was doing this to save her family. That sent a rush of blood to his rod. She thought she was going to nobly sacrifice herself.

“Let me undress you, love,” he said. “I’m very good and I’ll be gentle. This will be enjoyable for you.”

Her back twitched.

She looked nothing like Miranda Bond—who was blonde, with large blue eyes. Miss Bond was stunningly beautiful. But she was flawed. She was a creature of evil. Something he had to destroy.

This poor sweet angel was someone he would nurture for an hour. He could barely afford the money, but he would be giving her a wonderful experience—a night with him would be far better than being thrust into by a drunken earl.

He undid his cravat and tossed it aside. She was standing at the doorway, kneading her skirts in her fists. “Let’s undress you, love. That changes everything.”

She frowned at that. “I don’t want to be…undressed.”

“It seems strange to you now, but you’ll enjoy it. This is what you were meant to do—give yourself to a deserving man.”

The vicar’s daughter gave a half-laugh, half-sob at that.

She had no idea what he was saving her from.

The wench smelled of a heavily flower scented soap, the soap the whores of this place must use. On one of them it would be sickening—on her it was poignant.

He would rescue her in this small way. He had the money. Why shouldn’t vampire slayers be as inventive as Bow Street Runners? He took private commissions, and for some vampires, he took payment to leave them alive. And to protect them, up to a point. Many vampires had amassed fortunes, using their power, strength, and the advantage of time, endless time, to become wealthy men.

What else would they do with their money than use it to keep cheating death?

Ryder stripped to his shirt. She was watching him, with her plain bodice rising and falling. “Take down your hair for me.” He wanted to watch the tresses fall as he kicked off his boots and took off his trousers.

She bent her head slowly, obediently. She pulled at the pins. In a waft of sweet fragrance, her long brown hair fell down her back.

He sprawled back on the bed, but she didn’t join him. “Don’t make me impatient,” he warned. “I’ve paid good money for you. I know you won’t see it—no matter what that bitch of a madam told you. Please me well and I’ll give you something special. Something for you to keep to yourself.”

She looked horror-struck, but she began to unfasten her dress. This was how he wanted Miss Miranda Bond to be for him. Taking her clothes off with shaking fingers. If he narrowed his eyes, he could imagine this pasty-faced wench was Miss Bond.

The Royal Society would not disbar him, or destroy him, if he went about killing Miss Bond in his own way. They needed him too much, needed him to do the dirty work. To carry out the secret assassinations, like this one. They needed him to do things like hunt down the seemingly innocent sisters of gentlemen and make their deaths look like accidents.

But he had seen what Miss Bond could do.

Two weeks ago, she had laid her hand on the chest of a child who had been run down by a carriage. The body had been mangled. The thing was dead.

But beneath her touch, the body healed. The lifeless eyes took in light once more. The child had been resurrected by just the touch of Miss Bond’s hand.

He hadn’t believed it.

But the gentlemen of the Society had assured him it was true. The damned woman could raise the dead.

His mission was to kill her. Ryder understood what the old men of the Society wanted to do—destroy that which they couldn’t understand.

And in return for murdering a lovely, twenty-three-year-old woman, he would have a mansion in the country. He would live better than his father, Hiltshire, whose estates were impoverished.

Hell, he would enjoy that.

All that stood between him and everything he’d always planned for was one little gently bred lady. One simple death and he would have it all.

His cock lurched against his belly at the thought. He reached out and clasped the hand of his vicar’s daughter, who now stood trembling in her shift. “Now, love,” he leered, “I’ll teach you how to suck me.” But first he pulled her to him, stuck his hand beneath her chemise, and gently worked his index finger up her tight, hot ass.