PROLOGUE

1901

A KSEL

“Why have you not answered my call?” I looked up when I heard the all too familiar voice of Drasil Tempest, my sire, and the bane of my existence. My skin crawled and my incisors grew at the first sound of whatever abomination of the truth the man spoke. “I’m your sire, and I know you can hear my voice in your head.”

“Why are you here?” I asked, unable to disguise my disdain.

“Is that any way for a son to speak to his father?” Drasil asked menacingly.

“You’re not my father, Drasil, you’re my sire. The fact that you don’t know the difference is very telling and makes me utterly grateful that you can’t actually procreate.”

“I need your help.”

“You’ve needed help since the first time I set eyes on you. If I recall correctly, that’s what got me into this godforsaken situation in the first place.”

“It’s been almost two hundred years, utakknemlig s?nn.”

“Again, I’m not your son, but I’m most definitely ungrateful. What do you want from me, Drasil?”

“I’ve come into a bit of trouble.”

“Good. I hope you hang for it.”

“It involves a young woman.”

I tipped my head back and took a calming breath - not that I needed it to survive, but in this instance, Drasil might. “If you’ve hurt another young woman, I will braid the rope myself.”

“She’s not for me, son, she’s for you.”

“I don’t want a woman,” I said simply, when what I meant was that I didn’t want anything to do with a woman who had any connection to my sire, especially if she was willingly going along with whatever plan he’d concocted.

“That doesn’t surprise me, but I do appreciate that you’ve made sure your fickle nature hasn’t tarnished my name.”

“A pig slopping in its own feces couldn’t tarnish your name more than you’ve already managed to do yourself.” I didn’t bother to argue the fact that he thought I didn’t appreciate women and the wonders of their bodies because he wouldn’t listen anyway. “Now that we’ve established that I’m not interested in your castoffs, please leave.”

It killed me to know that I couldn’t force him to leave, but I was well aware of the strength the elderly vampire possessed and the lack of morals he embodied. With Drasil as my sire, it wouldn’t matter how strong I became over time. The bond that formed during that process was unbreakable for a reason - so that new vampires could be controlled as they developed urges they didn’t understand.

I was long past that stage and could resist Drasil’s pull to an extent - insofar as I could form my own thoughts and control my own actions even if he was urging me otherwise, which I could feel him trying to do right now.

“I’m a little old for those tricks, Drasil.”

I could see the frustration on his face before it morphed to anger, and I knew I’d pushed him too far. He moved so quickly that even with my expanded vision and powers, I didn’t see it happen. Before I could think to protect myself, he had his hands on my throat and started to squeeze as he looked deep into my eyes. I felt my world start to spin, not from lack of oxygen, but from the proximity of the power he held over me. As I fell into a black abyss of unconsciousness, all I could hear was his throaty laughter that sounded like the devil I knew him to be.

◆◆◆

ANASTACIA

“Listen to me, sweetling. They will come for you any second now, and I need to tell you what to do when they take you away.”

“I don’t want to leave, Mama,” I whispered as tears started flowing down my cheeks to mingle with the ones that had dripped from her face as she lay imprisoned in her cage.

“You must. You will. There is no other way for you, my Stassi. They will come for you and force you to marry a man who is also forced as part of a bargain between two evil men. They want to continue your bloodline and pass along its magic. In order for you to do that, they’ll have to unchain you and give you nutrition to become a strong vessel for the spawn they desire. Go with them and take everything they give you with a shy smile. Don’t speak up or draw more attention to yourself than necessary. Get strong, and when you find the chance, I want you to run. Hide. Escape to the mountains east of home, and follow the pull that will take you to the well of magic called Mereu.”

“But what about you?”

“I’m dying, sweetling. You were meant for so much more than the life you’d have if you stayed.”

“What do I do when I find the well of magic?”

“Three sisters will guide you like beacons in the night. Heed the pull to them because they’re all that’s left of my family. They think I’m long dead, but I know that they’re well. I can feel their strength even though the dark magic has blocked me from their gaze.”

“What are their names, Mama?” I whispered frantically when I heard heavy footsteps in the hall.

“Clarisse, Vivienne, and Maribel Deveraux. Prick your finger and prove to them that you share their blood because they won’t understand what your father and I have made together.”

“Will they hurt me?”

“They’ll protect you with their lives, but they have to understand who and what you are before they’ll open their hearts. Do whatever you have to do to get there, sweetling,” Mama said frantically. I felt a surge of electricity travel through my fingers that were wound with hers through the bars of her cage, and then I felt my mother’s strength and power wane as she said, “Trust no one but my sisters, and use anyone you can to get to them.”

“Yes, Mama,” I whispered as the door to our cell flew open. When rough hands grabbed my shoulders to pull me away, I held onto the cage that held the only friend I’d ever known. Without thinking, I unleashed the ball of flame inside me and heard the man holding my shoulders shout in pain.

“Trust your heart to lead the way, Stassi, and if your heart can’t get you there, let your magic do as it will.”

“You want me to burn?”

“Once you leave this room, I want you to forget about me. I won’t be here anymore but my soul will always be in you. If you have to kill anyone that gets in your way, so be it. Let them know this is a war, and make it so they can never do this again. Burn it all down.”

“I can’t leave you!”

“Go now!”

After the injured man fell screaming into the hallway, more footsteps rushed into the room. I felt three souls behind me, black and tarnished, but I couldn’t fight back because if I let myself go, Mama would be injured and probably killed.

As if she could read my mind, I heard her yell, “I’m no longer here, Anastacia! Burn it all!”

And burn it was exactly what I did.

◆◆◆

AKSEL

“It’s gone,” Drasil whispered as we came over the hill and saw the burned wreckage on the horizon. “All of it is gone!”

I scanned the town below us and wondered how that could be. The clearing didn’t have any trees to speak of, having all been felled to make way for the new buildings and homes. It was possible that a fire had started in one of the wooden structures, but that didn’t explain the perfect circle of scorched earth around the rubble. It appeared as if a ball of flame had fallen from the sky and leveled just the town, leaving a thriving and healthy forest around it.

“I have to find him,” Drasil said frantically as he spurred his horse to move faster.

I felt the connection he’d been holding so tightly snap, and I came to my senses with a jolt. His inattention had severed the thread he’d attached that day in my office . . . Was that days ago or had it been weeks? I wasn’t sure, but now that it was gone, I knew that my only option was to run as far and as fast as possible to make sure he didn’t beguile me again.

I tugged the horse's reins to turn him around and spurred him into a gallop back down the hill, not sure what my destination should be now. Plans would have to wait until I found sustenance. Drasil had intentionally been keeping me weak so I didn’t fight him or hinder his nefarious plans.

I veered off the path and cleared my mind - hoping to keep the door closed to Drasil’s probing thoughts to give me time to get far enough away to recover from this latest hellish episode with him. The man could suck the life out of a being just by standing near, but when he was focused, his evil made it hard to breathe and almost impossible to think. However, I’d learned a lot from my sire over the years since he turned me, and the most important lessons were how to avoid his grasp.

I felt something pulling me to the north, which was not the direction I felt I needed to go, but I couldn’t resist it if I tried. I wondered if Drasil had somehow found a new way to torture me. Without my consent, my hands directed the reins to take me deeper into the woods and then tugged to stop the horse so abruptly that I was almost thrown from the saddle.

I had been so busy fighting the pull and erecting mental walls that I hadn’t taken the time to look around until a vision appeared next to a tree just in front of me.

“You will take me with you and protect me with your life,” the young girl said without preamble.

She was a beautiful young woman beneath the soot and ashes that covered her face, only relieved by the tracks of long-dried tears that ran down to her chin. Her hair was a disheveled mess, but I knew without a doubt that it would be lush and beautiful in different circumstances. As she walked closer, I got a good look at her eyes and gasped at what I saw there. They were unlike any color I’d ever seen - almost like the glowing embers of a campfire, but then, suddenly, they were such a dark blue that they were almost purple in the waning light.

“You will not hurt me or put your hands on me in any way, but you will take me where I need to go and keep me safe until we get there and your task is complete.”

“Where did you come from?” I asked, ignoring her orders.

She tilted her head in confusion and asked, “Did you hear me?”

“I did, but I’m asking you a question.”

“I need help.”

I listened closely to see if I could hear Drasil coming near but only heard the sounds of the forest around us - leaves whispering in the light breeze that still smelled faintly of smoke from the remnants of the blaze I’d just seen.

“Where did you come from?”

“I came from the fire, and I’m all alone. I need help, and I want you to take me with you.” Her eyes changed again, and she repeated, “You will protect me with your life until you get me to my destination.”

“Obviously, I’m not going to leave a woman alone in the forest,” I said, ignoring her transfixing gaze. “However, I’m not quite sure I’ll be safe from you.”

The girl laughed, the sound like a windchime I remembered from my childhood home, and I couldn’t resist smiling at her.

Finally, she said, “I think that you and I will make a very good team, Aksel Nilsen. I can sense that your heart is good, but there’s darkness following you.”

She got closer to my horse and put her hand up, but instead of reaching down to help her mount, I sputtered, “How do you know my name?”

“Those walls you’re building to keep the darkness out have cracks that let the light shine through.”

“What does that mean?” I asked as I reached down and swept her up, letting her settle on the horse’s rump behind my saddle.

“I’m the light, Aksel, and I really need your help.”

Her voice was so faint that I could barely hear her, and seconds after she wrapped her arms around my waist, I felt her collapse against my back and start to fall to the side. I grasped her arm to hold her upright and then reached back to bring her around and lay her across my lap. With one arm around her to hold her steady, I directed the horse deeper into the forest.

“Go west to the other mountains where the three beams of light are calling for us,” I heard a voice in my head say.

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked aloud, not even shocked that this powerhouse of a woman could speak in my mind, something that not many supernaturals had ever been able to do without my permission.

“The three sisters - Clarisse, Maribel, and Vivienne - are my family. They’re the light in the darkness.”

I turned the horse west and wondered what I was getting myself into, but that didn’t stop my trek. I knew the Devereaux sisters, and if this young woman was their family, that could explain so much - especially the power I felt emanating from her even though she was barely conscious.

◆◆◆

By the time I got close to Mereu, I knew almost exactly how long I’d been in a haze under Drasil’s spell - twenty-seven days. Twenty-seven days lost to that monster was a drop in the bucket to all he’d taken from me over the years, but this time, I felt more violated than I ever had before, including the time when he took my life and brought me back as what I then considered an undead monster.

Of course, the 172 years that had passed since he turned a twenty-nine year old man with a promising future and a family he loved above all else into that monster had changed my perception of things a bit. For instance, I knew I wasn’t a monster, just a being who required blood to survive and, for a time, could only live in the darkness. That changed when the town of Mereu was formed and I was invited to join the council that agreed to the rules and spells that would make it a home for all beings, not just vampires and witches, but shifters, too, which was a good thing, considering the young woman with me seemed to be a mixture of all three.

For the first few days of the trip traversing the heavily wooded mountains and across several rivers, the young woman had remained barely conscious, only waking when I forced her to drink whatever fresh water I could find to help keep her alive. I knew that witches were like mortals in that they needed sustenance in the form of food, and even though it had been decades since I required such things myself, I hadn’t forgotten the skill I used as a young man intent on feeding his family. I hunted for rabbit and stoked a fire to cook it for the girl, but was only able to get her to nibble a small bite before she went limp again.

But then I let my guard down while she was near me and found a plump rabbit of my own to drain. Not my favorite meal, but something that would do in a pinch and much better than the rodents I’d had to live on during the long ride to the land I now called my home. The second my teeth punctured the skin of the small animal, the girl sat up and growled like a bear before she yanked it out of my hands and ripped at the throat with the canines that had burst from her gums.

By the time she had drained it, her color was much better even though she was still weak. From then on, I hunted twice as much game as I would need and gradually built her health up enough so that she could hold onto me as we rode rather than lay limp in my arms.

By the second week on the trail, another problem had arisen. The girl developed a fever that made her skin so hot to the touch that I could feel her burning as she rested against my back. At one point, Lothorio, my trusted horse, became skittish, and I realized that he was suffering from the heat, too, so I had no choice but to hold her in my arms again until I found a stream where I could immerse her in the hopes of cooling her down.

Luckily, the fever subsided until yesterday when it came back with a vengeance. If it wasn’t for my healing abilities, my arms would be covered in burns deep enough to expose bone. The snow that had begun falling on us in big flakes wasn’t a hindrance but a welcome respite from the fire that raged inside the young woman whose name I still didn’t know and might never know if she didn’t wake from this fever.

I heard the scream of a hawk and then an answering call from an owl in the distance and knew that I’d finally reached the edges of the Mereu where sentries kept watch to protect the villagers from marauders and thieves who had no idea what sort of magical hell they were walking into.

By the time I came over the final rise that would take me into the valley, I had an escort of two brown bears who were almost as large as Lothario and much more temperamental. Luckily, my horse was used to supernatural beings, so the scent of the shifter bears didn’t affect him like it would any other horse. Instead, it seemed to put some pep in his tired gait because he knew we were close to home.

We came around the final curve, and I saw the sleepy town I loved spread out before me. It took everything I had to hold back tears of joy. My body was exhausted and my mind even more so from worrying about what was to come with Drasil and the future of this young woman, if she even had one at all. Once I was on level ground after trekking down the steep terrain of the mountain path, I spotted Clarisse’s home in the distance, the unassuming house that would never lend an outsider to know how expansive it was inside.

Of course, outsiders didn’t make it this far into the valley unless they were a supernatural creature, and even then, the town wasn’t really what they were allowed to see. The magic that protected the residents of Mereu cloaked their presence from those that might do them harm. The three witches who had cast that spell were vigilant in their duties and hadn’t once been surprised by a visit because their sentries clocked every living thing within miles of Mereu’s border, just like they’d spotted me and reported back.

When I stopped at the edge of the neatly kept grass in front of the Devereaux sisters’ home, they were already waiting for me on the porch.

“Who do you bring us, Aksel?” Clarisse called out. I knew she wasn’t coming any closer because she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what the being in my arms happened to be.

“A young woman. I don’t know her name, but she’s very ill and asked me to help her get to you. She said that you are her family and the three beams of light in the darkness.”

I saw Clarisse’s face change from suspicion to shock, and that look was mirrored by her sisters, Maribel and Vivienne. They quickly moved down the stairs to get closer as I clutched the girl to my chest and dismounted from Lothario.

“It can’t be,” Clarisse whispered. “She’s dead.”

“Actually, she’s closer than you may think. She has a fever hot enough to burn down the forest.” The mixture of exhaustion and hunger made me almost giddy at the thought of a nice, comfortable bed and an unlimited blood supply. “We’ve been on the trail for almost a month now, and I’m happy to say that I did as she asked and kept her safe from harm on our journey.”

Clarisse reached out and brushed the girl’s matted hair from her face before she gasped, “Celine.”

“She was our sister,” Maribel whispered.

“She has been muttering in her sleep, calling for her mama and her papa and someone named Nicholas.”

“She was alone?” Clarisse asked as she nudged me toward the house. “Come inside and let us help you, Aksel.”

“I just want to go home and rest.”

“Nonsense. We owe you a great debt that we can never fully repay, but we’ll start by making you healthy again.”

“And the girl?” I asked unnecessarily.

“She’s our family, and we’ll do everything we can for her.”

“You can sense what she is?”

“I have no idea,” Clarisse admitted.

“She shifts, drinks blood, and can cast a spell that puts an invisible umbrella over us to avoid the rain.”

“She can?” Maribel asked in shock.

“She’s not like any other being I’ve ever encountered.”

“That’s not . . . that’s not natural,” Vivienne whispered as she held the door open for me to walk through. “She must be a hybrid of some sort but . . .”

“That’s not possible,” Maribel muttered as she rushed ahead of us to clear the couch for my charge.

“It is possible because I’ve seen all three things happen.”

“She shifts? To what?” Clarisse asked.

“A beautiful white bear with bright blue eyes.”

“A polar bear?”

“Not nearly big enough,” I said as I shook out my arms. Vivienne reached out and touched my charred sleeves and then gasped when she looked at the girl.

“Is she . . . The couch!”

Without thinking, I scooped her back up from the smoldering couch, hoping to save the Deveraux sisters’ furniture from the girl’s heat.

“When she gets like this, I usually dunk her in a stream for a while. It helps.”

Clarisse stared at me, dumbfounded, and said, “There’s a stream at the back of our property.”

“Let’s go.”

I shook my head and said, “I’m not sure I can. I’m completely drained and weak. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it today.”

“You’ve taken such good care of her that it only makes sense that we take care of you,” Clarisse said as she nudged me toward the coffee table and urged me to sit down. “Just hold onto her for another few minutes. I’ll call Tremayne to help.”

Even though Tremayne was one of my oldest friends, I didn’t want him to come because that meant I’d have to let the woman go, and I wasn’t sure that was something I’d ever be able to do.