Daughter of the Tides, Servants of the Moon Book 2

Nyall didn’t manage to sleep but he did eat and shower. Shaving off his beard took a long time, and having his face bare felt strange. When he dressed, he was surprised to find a note from Locksley in the pocket promising to custom tailor any clothes “his king” might need in the future. Looking in the mirror, Nyall ran his hand over his short hair and clean-shaven face. He looked boyish. He looked handsome… He did not look like a son of the New Wemyss Warrior Wolves. It made he and his wolf suddenly long to go home and run the shores of the Black Lake in the cool evening air. They both hated the dry air and oppressive heat of the southwestern desert that hung on through the night.

“Nice hair, nicer shirt,” Essie said from behind him. She never knocked. She took a picture of him and sent it to someone.

“Servant Locksley sent it and a few others to me. I don’t know how he knew.”

“I told him your measurements and sent him a picture or ten,” Essie interrupted before taking a long draught from her cigarette. She blew a ring. “I think Locks has a thing for you.”

“I do nah understand this.” Nyall scowled and handed her the note.

“My most gloriously beautiful king?” Reading it, she snickered. “You know he isn’t just talking about measurements for trousers or custom-fitted anything.” Her phone chimed and she held it out to him. She grinned as a blush crept up Nyall’s neck while she teased, “He wants to be your custom-fitted.” Her eyebrows waggled up and down.

“Aye, enough, you have made me well aware of the clothier’s preferences,” he growled, interrupting, and handed the phone back. Essie doubled over in laughter.

She straightened up and wiped her eyes, “Oh Nyall, you need to get some.”

“My mate has gone to the moon, Essie,” he reminded tiredly.

“And you are still here.”

“You sound like your sister,” he complained as they walked toward the front of the packhouse.

She turned and pointed the two fingers holding her smoke at him. “No... I’m not saying find your new queen, I’m just saying... you know... you could enjoy some company. We can’t all live pure and virtuous like Del. We literally could die on any day to the Sunwolf.”

“You mean your mate?” Nyall wanted to confirm with her what Zane had told him.

Essie’s sapphire eyes became as hard as the stone whose color they shared. He wondered if she was about to attack him. “I refuse to accept that he is my true mate. The Moon screwed up, just like She screwed me when She sent me back.” Essie poked him in the pectoral. Her voice dropped to a threatening tone. “And if you know what’s good for you, Nyall MacGeal, you’ll never mention that again. Now, get your arse in the car with Heather before we’re late.”

The club was loud and flashing lights pulsed with the beat of the music that vibrated in his bones. Nyall was grateful to Heather for the foam plugs that dampened the sound to a bearable level for his wolf ears. They had walked in unchallenged by the large human at the door. The doorman nodded to Heather as though he knew her. Zane and Essie headed into the crowd while Nyall followed Heather up to the private rooms. Heather left him by a rail with a drink. Across the dancefloor, Essie was dancing her way through the mass of writhing bodies. Zane had disappeared from sight.

Nyall held a cool, sweating glass. Sipping the strangely flavored drink made Nyall feel relaxed. There was a unfamiliar smell mixed with the scent of sweat and lust rising from the dance floor. It bothered his wolf but neither knew why. He wandered to the upper dance floor to escape a pair of human girls who kept trying to talk to him.

Heather came up the stairs with a tall, beautiful female wearing a floaty silk minidress the same color as her skin. There was something hauntingly familiar about her pale skin and eyes, it reminded him of the witch he killed the night his pack fell. She looked as if something had faded all the color from her.

“Nyall, this is Lady Anjael. She lets me work for her sometimes and she wanted to meet you.”

Nyall nodded in greeting, but his wolf immediately sat up and noticed there was something not normal about this female, something dangerous neither he nor his wolf recognized. She was the source of the worrisome scent.

“Don’t worry, Monarch, you are safe here... This is my club. Heather told me the werewolves are trying to help the vampires? Is this true?”

“Aye, the Delphi has ordered it.” His wolf bristled to defend them from this predator.

Her curved-up lips were the only part of her darker than the palest peach of her skin and platinum-blonde of her hair. Between the coral lips, her teeth were unnaturally white, but pearly like the inside of a shell, and slightly pointed. Her eyes were such a fiery pale blue they looked like the North Star around unnaturally black pupils. She was striking and terrifying at the same time.

“What are you?” Nyall asked cautiously. He felt oddly conflicted.

An unfelt wind made part of her dress flutter behind her like the rustle of wings. Suddenly, her pupils slit like a cat’s, except the slits were sideways.

“Something you don’t have the power to kill, Alpha.” She inhaled the scent of his wolf’s sudden and surprising fear at the revelation. “I cannot get involved directly in your little power struggle, but the one who put the bounty on the vampires is in the private suite designated The Inferno. There is a torch by the door. Heather will take you there. Don’t worry about wrecking the rooms, I’ll make him pay for it later. Just keep it contained to the suite.”

Nyall narrowed his eyes at her. “Why would you help me?”

“Who says I’m helping you?” Anjael walked away with the lilting stride of a runway model. The long ‘wings’ of her dress floating behind her like a train.

“Who... what is she?” Nyall started to ask but Heather shook her head.

“Don’t.” She looked down at the dance floor. “Do you remember when Shakespeare wrote, 'There are more things in heaven and earth’?”

“Than dreamt of in your philosophies,” Nyall interrupted, “Aye, I know it.”

“Lady Anjael is one of those things.” Heather swallowed and shuddered. “Don’t ever piss her off.” She turned to lead him the opposite direction, but he stopped her.

“Why?” Nyall could smell Heather’s fear.

“Because she’s a demon, a real one. Fangs, talons, wings, tail... all of it. She can’t be killed, not even by a pack. She will skin you alive before she consumes your soul and drink your blood as your heart stops beating.” Heather pulled her arm free. “Forget you met her, forget everything about her. I wish I could.”

“You’ve seen her kill.” Nyall’s curiosity was oddly peaked as he stated something, he suspected was fact.

Heather blinked at him slowly, “She and her uncle saved our pack when it was taken over by rogues. The rogues killed almost all our males except a few warriors and the Alpha’s and Beta’s sons. They made them, and the surviving warriors fight to the death to entertain them and made them watch while they raped the females of our pack, sometimes to death. The late Luna Eden was an old friend of Lady Anjael’s, so she helped us. Lady Anjael and Lord Ouroboros killed all the rogues in one hour. But demons don’t do anything for nothing.”

She walked down the stairs with deliberate purpose, grabbing a pair of shot glasses off a passing tray then she downed them before facing him, her eyes radiated despair. “Remember that, Nyall, that no matter how desperate things become, demons don’t do anything for free and their favorite thing to ask for in payment is the souls of the firstborn.” She shoved through the crowd to get away from the conversation.

Nyall had no choice but to follow her through the throng of dancing patrons, he wondered what Heather’s pack had to pay for their rescue. Looking up, he saw Lady Anejal watching him like prey, with a hunger that had nothing to do with food.

Essie quickly lost herself in the dancing throng. A wolf came up behind her and began grinding with her as the music pulled. He felt promising as his maleness pressed against her until she caught his scent.

He whispered into her ear, “Give up being a traveling whore and be my Luna, Esther Ayala.”

She turned suddenly to stab him, but he caught her arm and twisted it behind her back, forcing her to drop the thin, ornate silver dagger she wore strapped against her forearm like jewelry. The crush of bodies was too tight for her to kick him away from her. “Release me, Des Rues.” She snarled at him.

“Now, don’t be that way.” He growled as they were pressed together in the most intimate of ways with only fabric between them.

Her wolf began freaking out, howling to flee. Essie realized that she could smell her mate on the shirt Charlemagne was wearing. Controlling her fear, Essie eyed him coolly. “It is the only way I know how to be with a wolf whose pack killed my pack.”

“That was my father and uncle’s doing. I would never have harmed the great Naphtal oracles. My mother was a Delphi.” Charlemagne just smiled at her as he ran his hand up her arm, “I can feel the potential bond we have. Rumor has it, you are running from your true mate. Be my mate and I can protect you.”

“No one can protect me if the Moon can’t protect me,” She turned her face toward him. “Nice shirt, very stylish, who’d you steal it from?” She needed to know who her mate really was.

“It’s mine.” He insisted.

Essie smirked, breathing out her accusation in a sultry tone, “Liar, I can smell someone else wore it. An Alpha stronger than you.”

“My brother may have borrowed it, but he is not stronger than me. Why? Do you want to be shared by us? We share a lot of things. I suppose we could share you, my wanton Luna.” He licked her neck and she shuddered involuntarily, ashamed for the first time in her life that someone aroused her, but the whole time her wolf was ready to force a shift to escape. Something about her mate smelled wrong, burnt like sunbaked roadkill.

“I’m not your Luna. You have a mate somewhere.” She reminded.

“My weak true died years ago. Now, I get to choose, and I choose you.”

Essie groaned like she liked Charlemagne’s attention and pressed against him, whispering in his ear, “And does this brother you are going to share me with have a name, Alpha Charlie?”

Teeth scraped against her flesh, “Helios... By the Goddesss, you smell of the autumn forest under a full moon.” He let go of her arm to cup her butt. “So firm.”

She threaded her fingers into his hair and pulled his head away from her neck, but he leaned in and kissed her fiercely. She bit his lip hard enough to make it bleed and giggled when he pulled back suddenly. “Be careful, Des Rues, I bite.”

Charlemagne shook his head arrogantly, “I don’t mind as long as I get to bite you back.”

“Really... and you don’t care where I bite you?” she purred, shifting enough to bring her free hand forward and cup his crotch.

“No.” He groaned, grinding against her hand.

“Do you mind if I use my claws?” Her nails dug into his scalp.

Looking down at her, eyes half-lidded with lust, he responded, “Whatever you like, my Luna.”

“I would like...” She nibbled at his ear before biting it hard as her claws came out and pierced his manhood. “For you and your whole family to die for what you did to my pack.”

Charlemagne went rigid, crying out in pain. She bolted away as he collapsed to his knees. Essie shoved through the crowd then suddenly she could smell her mate and dove under a table as her mate and Nyall rolled over the top of it. She recognized Helios immediately as Nyall knocked him down. She didn’t wait to see who won as she crawled away through the screaming, fleeing humans.

Zane yanked her to her feet. “The Des Rues are the ones hunting the vampires,” he shouted over the noise.

“My mate is here, he’s Helios Des Rues,” she yelled back, and he stared at her with fear for her.

“Go!” He ordered. “Get away! Get back to the Eye and don’t stop until you are there. I’ll help Nyall.” Shoving her toward the crowd retreating out of the emergency exit.

Then he turned back to where Helios and Nyall battled as their beasts. The dancefloor had cleared as most of the club bouncers were rushing the remainder of the patrons out. He jumped at Charlemagne before the younger Des Rues Alpha could blindside Nyall. They punched and wrestled until they were yanked apart by a creature unlike any they had seen. Both Nyall and Helios lay on the floor unconscious and back in their skins

The owner of the club snarled at them in a strangely inhuman voice. “I said, enough lycans.” She walked between the unconscious alphas to them. “I told them they could destroy one suite, but I will not have my main club demolished.”

While Charlemagne struggled, Zane did not resist the giant gargoyle who held him by the throat. He knew it was futile and he did not want to give the demons of this place a reason to kill him and consume his soul. He crossed his wrist over his heart in an ancient sign of submission.