Chapter 1
“What are you?”
Belatedly, the wording of Lana’s demand made her cringe inwardly, but she maintained her calm exterior despite the very literal ticking bomb in her backpack.
Breathe. This is a minor setback. Just breathe.
The lie rang in her head like an alarm bell.
The power ebbing from the stranger hit her in hot, quick bursts against her skin.
The male chained inside the Lightning cage opposite merely raised an eyebrow in her direction, then proceeded to drink her in from toe to crown with an intensity that was as unnerving as it was poorly timed.
Even in the faint green glow of the subterranean lab’s safety lighting, she felt his eyes scorch across her.
Her words had had little impact.
Or so she thought.
“Look, we don’t have much—”
“Why are you here?”
His accent was British, but with an enticing curl of something else threaded through it. His voice was pure gravel, hoarse, as though he had spent hours screaming.
The thought made her rage.
Looking at him properly now, taking in the pure muscle stretched over long bones, his naked torso pulled taut as he hung from the ceiling in chains, she found herself imagining that making him scream would not be easy.
Though she would like to try.
God. Where had that come from?
Heat crept across her skin at the outrageously inappropriate thought.
His overlong dark hair brushed his shoulders in the uneven fashion of a buzz cut grown out, and the beard he sported looked just as neglected.
He had been here a long time.
His skin was dark, yet sallow, and viciously marred by who knew what methods. Fierce green eyes narrowed suspiciously as he watched her.
Something about his full mouth and high cheekbones—pretty yet utterly masculine—caught her attention.
Odd. She had never taken so much notice of a man’s appearance before.
His naked torso was hard to ignore, as was the dark line of hair that began just below his belly button and disappeared beneath the waistband of the sweats he wore.
A cough interrupted her vivid imagining of what else lay below the waistband, and Lana all but jumped, caught bang to rights by those jade-green eyes and a brow raised in mocking fashion.
His lip curled.
Her stomach twisted with pure, inconvenient want.
She swallowed, noting the scars that made a latticework across his chest.
For a moment, her thoughts deserted her.
Then her mission—and the contents of her backpack—surged back to the forefront of her mind.
No time to… whatever the hell she was doing.
“My name is Lana Solomon. I’m here to destroy this lab.”
She took a deep calming breath and tugged off her backpack while glancing around the sterile, eerie basement laboratory.
So much planning.
And yet here he was.
The dreaded unexpected variable.
The heat sensors had detected nothing down here, which, she realised numbly as she paused before beginning her task, answered her initial question after all.
“Vampire.”
The word slipped out in a whisper.
She shuddered, memories sharp as blades carving through her even as she yanked a blood-soaked rope charm from her pack.
She needed to hurry.
“Witch.”
His response to her involuntary reaction was cutting. Not the naming—after all, she was a witch—but the tone.
It held contempt.
It stung.
Shame over her treacherous reaction to his race coloured her skin.
Well, let him judge.
He knew nothing about her history.
And never would.
Looking up as she worked the short length of rope in her hands, she offered a thin smile.
Vampire or not, she wouldn’t complete her mission until the space was clear.
“Who are you? And hurry up, Mr Enigmatic. We have about twelve minutes before the bomb in my backpack explodes.”
“A suicide mission? Of all the stupid bloody—”
“No.”
Lana cut in as his fury ebbed toward her in waves, his leashed power snapping like a loose live cable against the stillness of the lab.
“I’ll be porting out before then. So talk.”
“Why bother? Just let the place burn—and me with it, witch.”
He let his eyes close and his head tip back.
A weariness born of ages seeped toward her.
The tiredness rolling off him, tinged with quiet acceptance and bleak relief, made her heart burn.
She worked the charm harder, channelling her energy into the knotted rope and feeding the blood she had soaked it in earlier.
Her own.
His cage bars needed to go first.
“How original,” she muttered, unpacking the device that would destroy the place in mere minutes.
Perspiration dampened her brow.
“A self-pitying vamp with a brusque manner.”
She wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist.
“Give me your name so I can at least tell your clan of your death. It’s a matter of etiquette after all.”
“Etiquette?” he growled, twisting against the chains to glare at her. “Are you taking the piss?”
“Not at all.”
She smiled sweetly as the rope began tightening on the bar.
Relief pulsed through her as the metal began to crumble to dust.
One down.
She re-tied the rope to the next bar.
“Look, witch—” dark distaste twisted his voice “—I commend your plan. This place should be burned down, scooped up, and buried at sea.”
His gaze hardened.
“But leave me the hell alone. I don’t deserve anything better than this. Sorry my self-loathing doesn’t impress you.”
“Wow.”
Lana caught his eye, then quickly looked away from the despair she saw there.
Perhaps he did deserve to die.
But not at her hand.
And not tonight.
“Well, I can’t call you ‘hey’ for your last few minutes of living—that’s just depressing.”
She tilted her head.
“What do I call you?”
“Damned will do fine, blondie. Just get gone already. Let me die in peace.”
“Technically it’ll be pieces.”
She tapped the bomb device with a grimace.
“I could call you Henry.”
As she babbled, she re-tied the next bar, mindful of the time and hoping her non-stop chatter would result in what she wanted: a name and an escape.
“As delighted as I am that you are ridding the world of this place forever, I suggest you let me die with it, witch.”
He caught her gaze with his, and the fire in them made her breath hitch.
He wasn’t as ready to die as he thought.
She continued her task as though he had said nothing, her eyes scanning the lab once more, taking in the cruel tools of torture and the scientific apparatus the people who worked here hid behind to sleep at night.
Heartless bastards.
“Not Henry. Harry. Larry. Gary! No. Hank? Alan? Keith… Norman!”
“Jesus Christ, witch, what the hell is—”
“Nope. He had a longer beard.”
Startled green eyes met hers and the room pulsed for a second.
She winked.
“Or so I’ve heard. Ha! The Bearded One. Domingo. You are so a Domingo—it’s obvious.”
“Domingo?! What are you wasting time for? Get away from the damn bars!”
His whole body swung as he tracked her movements.
Another bar fell.
One more ought to do it.
“Woman, are you insane?”
“Well, I don’t personally think so,” she replied. “Though I am certified as such in sixteen states. Makes travelling like a human awkward. Modern medicine, huh?”
She snapped her fingers.
“Jeff. Jeffrey. Jeremy.”
“Get the hell out of here, blondie, before that thing blows.”
“Oh, I have plenty of time.”
The lie scorched her throat.
“Julio? This is the right track. Enrique? Paolo—”
“Christ almighty. Ran out of European pop stars yet?”
“Hey, I already told you I’m not buying that as your sigil. And don’t blaspheme. It’s rude.”
The final bar was taking forever.
“Since when did your kind go to church?”
“Excuse me, but my coven prefers warm pews and stained glass windows to the cold outdoors come winter, thank you very much. And the naked dancing is way more comfortable in the church hall.”
Their gazes clashed.
Held.
Too long.
“Lady—”
“Lana,” she corrected absently.
“Lady, I have no idea if you are real or a hallucination.”
A beat passed.
“Do you really dance in church halls? Naked?”
She almost relented.
Almost.
“Give up your death wish and I’ll let you find out.”
He sucked in a ragged breath.
She moved.
Sliding through the space in the cage bars with inhuman speed.
Up close he smelled like the forest—earthy and clean.
Powerful.
His spirit was bright.
Not yet dimmed to fatal proportions.
Good.
She stood beside him, looking up.
His feet were bare.
God.
She was going to have to touch him.
Fear crawled through her veins.
She refused it.
“What the hell are you doing? Why won’t you just leave?”
“Any last words, Mr Nobody, before we meet our maker?”
If you can name it, you can move it, that's what babulya always said.
Please.
“Colin. Nigel. Ronald.”
“Ronald?!”
“Marcus,” he roared. “My fucking name is Marcus Entrada, you stupid stubborn witch. Now go!”
Relief swept her like cool rain.
Seconds.
That was all she had.
But it was enough.
“With pleasure, Marcus Entrada.”
She grabbed his hips, clinging as he tried to twist away.
Her fear burned away beneath the heat of his skin.
No time to think.
She threw her head back.
“Home!”
Flames roared.
The blast erupted.
The world vanished.
Then—
nothing.
Nothing at all.
