Night Huntress 06 - Eternal Kiss of Darkness by Jeaniene Frost Page A

ago. Mencheres was Tick Tock’s Master, so he inherited all his property when Tick Tock died, me included.”
     
    “Master? Mencheres considers you his slave ?” Kira blurted, aghast.
     
    Sam gave her a look. “Not Master like that, lady. Master of the line of vampires Tick Tock came from. If you’re a human who belongs to a vamp, you’re considered their property, but I can walk away from this anytime I want to. I’m no one’s damn slave, got it?”
     
    “I’m more like you, Kira,” Kurt said, breaking up the tense moment. “Didn’t know about vampires until I stumbled across some by accident, but I decided to stay because they were safer than the gang I ran with.”
     
    Kira’s mind spun with this new information. Selene, Sam, and Kurt knew exactly what Mencheres was, yet they all stayed with him willingly. Or did they? Had Mencheres manipulated their minds to make them think they’d chosen to be here? Was he waiting to do the same thing with her? What if she were thinking Mencheres’s ability to erase her memory was her ticket home, but in reality, she was giving him the ability to lock her up forever?
     
    It was such an ugly thought that Kira felt bile rise in her throat. Her instincts, which had been her flawless compass for the past dozen years, might not be trustworthy when it came to Mencheres. If vampires could manipulate minds, then it stood to reason they could alter someone’s gut reaction to them, too.
     
    Kira looked around at the kitchen and the three people seated in it. On the surface, everything was the picture of normalcy, but scratch the surface, and all of that disappeared.
     
    Just like her trust in the instincts that assured her Mencheres meant it when he said he’d let her go.
     
    Kira stood up, barely managing to keep her hands from shaking. “Nice to meet all of you,” she got out.
     
    Then she quickly left the kitchen to go into the garden, feeling as if the walls were closing in on her.
     
    M encheres strolled past the pool toward the garden, drawn toward Kira’s heartbeat as if it were a beacon. She was on the far edge of the garden, sitting in the lower branches of a tree, of all things. A breeze carried her scent to him, that lemony fragrance tainted with fear, confusion, and anger.
     
    He sat on a concrete bench at the opposite side of the small garden, wondering what caused Kira’s sudden shift in mood. She’d seemed fine this morning as he listened to her move about her room. Then nothing in the conversation he’d overheard between her and the others in the kitchen should have alarmed her, but Kira had gone straight into the garden afterward and stayed there the past three hours. Was it normal chafing at the circumstances that necessitated her being here? Or was it something else?
     
    He shouldn’t care. It was utter madness that he’d come out here to sit on this bench in the hopes that Kira would tell him what was bothering her. After all, if he were being logical, he’d concern himself with crucial matters instead of with a woman who would soon not remember him.
     
    That breeze lifted her scent to him again, tantalizing him with the invisible caress of her on his senses. Then again, what was the harm in a little pleasant madness? Mencheres decided, breathing in Kira’s fragrance. At this point in his life, hadn’t he earned the right not to make every last decision based on cold, unfeeling logic?
     
    His attention snapped away from Kira when something else swept over Mencheres’s senses. Something old, strong, and vindictive. He straightened, already coiling his emotions back into their familiar, impermeable shell by the time he heard Gorgon answer the door.
     
    “I am here to see Mencheres,” an all-too-familiar voice stated.
     
    “Guardian,” Gorgon replied, with the proper amount of respect his enemy’s station warranted. “I shall let him know you’re here.”
     
    Laughter rolled from Radjedef like quiet thunder. “He knows,