Eversong (Midnight Playground)

  Dedication

  To all the readers who have begged me for Ever’s story, and who are as taken with him as I am.

  Much love must also go out to my bunny wife—she knows who she is, and what that means.

  Chapter One

  Valencia, Spain, 2069

  The roar of the ocean was a soothing, womblike white noise in the background as he took her in his arms. Arms that felt strong to her, yet not as strong as her own were now. She wasn’t used to it—her strength, how powerful her hearing, her sight had become. The terrible driving needs of this changed body—nearly unendurable thirst, unbearable hunger. The need for sex. For blood.

  Vampire.

  Mercy knew the word. Heard the echo of it in his mind as he kissed her and discovered that she was…different.

  Yes…but we are here together and I need…

  Her hands went into his dark, curling hair. Truly like silk under her fingertips. She’d never felt anything like it. But he was her first lover since she had been changed. And as he parted his lips, inviting her tongue into his wet mouth, despite the small trembling fear running through him, desire filled her. Burned her. Ate her up like some monstrous thing. Except that it felt better than anything had in her life, to be touched by this beautiful man.

  Deo…

  Broad shoulders and golden skin. She could see him even in the dark of night, lit only by the crescent moon hanging in the cloudy sky and that same light reflected off the water. She could even see the strange blue-green of his eyes that reminded her of the Mediterranean Sea.

  His tongue sucked hers in, his hands closing around her waist, desire overtaking him as powerfully as it had her. The sound, the salt scent of the ocean faded away—that and the fainter scents and sounds of old stone and violence from the town. Everything but the sensations of hands and mouths and bodies pressed together. The soft sound of his thoughts that wasn’t really a sound at all but still spoke to her with the same lovely Greek accent as his voice.

  He sighed as she pressed her breasts against the solid wall of his chest. Her blood was moving, quickening. She breathed in his fragrant skin. Sweet. Precious.

  Human.

  She needed that. Craved it. She’d never thought of it before. She’d never had to. But she’d been so alone these last days.

  He pulled her down onto the sand, and she felt every tiny grain against her skin. The sand and the fine, fine texture of his flesh. Her need rose, spiraled. Inside her something growled, snarled to be set free. Her arms wound around his neck. Ah yes, there it was. That pulse at the base of his throat, beating, beating. She swore she could smell the blood running through his veins. Needed it even more than she needed him.

  He seemed to sense her urgency, tore her dress over her head, kicked his way out of his jeans, and they were naked together on the sand. His hands went to her breasts, his fingers teasing her nipples, and they came up hard, pleasure intense, nearly hurting. His rigid cock pressed against her belly. Yes, that was what she wanted. She parted her thighs, pulled him in too hard—she heard his gasping surprise at the pain. She tried to rein it in, but it was too much for her as he entered her, his thick cock piercing her flesh, sinking deep.

  “Ah…”

  A wild keening seemed to grow in her chest, and in moments, as he plunged into her, it became a scream. Raw. As if some animal inhabited her body.

  “God, Mercy,” he muttered as he thrust again then again.

  “There is no God,” she said between panting breaths, between one stab of pleasure and the next. “There is only this haunting between place… Come with me, Deo. I need you with me. I need someone…”

  “Mercy?” Her name was a whisper on his lips. She sensed his confusion as she sucked the tender skin at the base of his throat into her mouth, pierced it with the sharp eyeteeth that had grown in the last days. “Ah, what are you doing to me?”

  She grasped his cock inside her, felt pleasure ripple through him, through her, as they both came in a torrent of indescribable pleasure. She drew her lips back, roared her pleasure and bit.

  His blood was impossibly sweet. Her first human blood. She was so thirsty. Unbearable. She sucked harder as he writhed, held on to his shoulders. Held him down.

  As she drank, he fought her, but soon he went weak. Limp. And some part of her knew he was dying.

  No.

  She pulled away. Listened for a moment to the fragile beating of his heart as she pushed him off her, rolled him gently onto his back.

  “Deo, I’m sorry.”

  He stared up at her with hollow eyes, his brows drawn together. He was fading.

  “Stay with me,” she begged him. But she understood he had no choice now.

  Tears poured down her face. She wiped them with the back of her hand, and it came away red with his blood.

  “What have I done?” She sat up, held him in her arms, rocked him. Felt him begin to slip away.

  “Forgive me,” she whispered. “Forgive me for doing to you what was done to me. It’s too late to do anything else.”

  She lifted her arm, tore open the flesh of her own wrist and held it to his lips.

  Immediately he began to suck, drawing her blood in. A few drops at first then more as he pulled her back down onto his chest. She grew dizzy, knew he was taking too much. But did it really matter? She didn’t want to live like this, with what she had become.

  Black spots danced before her eyes. Beneath her, she felt the strength return to his beating heart. And knew she had changed him. Forever.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her tears falling onto his shoulder. She could hear the soft splash against his skin. “Please…I’m sorry. So sorry…”

  London, four months later

  The music pumped like heat in Ever’s veins. Hot, heavy, sinuous as a snake. He had often thought of music in this way, comparing it in his head to some sort of primal animal. Sensual. Tactile. The idea seemed to fit well there at the Midnight Playground, London’s exclusive vampire sex club, where despite the luxurious surroundings everything was about those most basic, primal drives. The need for flesh. For sex. For blood. Where everyone, on some level, was as cool and sleek as a snake. Including him.

  Possibly even more so, in his case. He’d lived too many years not to be a little cold at the core. And the force of his appetites often reduced him to a purely animal being, where everything ran on instinct. He didn’t believe it was a bad thing necessarily. He’d been a vampire for far too many centuries not to accept that aspect of his nature. He still managed to maintain that shred of control that prevented him from killing anyone. For the most part. Not that it concerned him very much. He was, after all, a vampire. And this was his club, his palace of carnal appetites in Soho’s old Palace Theater.

  He loved to think of it that way—his palace. This beautiful old building that once had housed the grandest theater in London. The country’s aristocracy had watched the finest in entertainments from the gilt-edged theater boxes, among the black-and-white marble-paneled walls. And now, twenty-nine years after the fall of the monarchy, this lovely structure served the more wicked entertainments of the immortals. His kind had taken over most of the nicer homes and other structures left standing after the riots. The vampires were the only ones the street thugs wouldn’t dare to approach. The only ones who could safely keep what they laid claim to. Oh yes, that had been proven effectively enough in the early years of the cultural and governmental collapse happening all over Europe. The financial crumbling of the world’s economies. It was what had allowed the vampires to come out of the dark, to become known, with most of the world in too much a state of chaos to protest. It was, finally, a rather grand time to be a vampire.

&nbs
p; He leaned into the hard, cool marble surface of the bar and gave a sharp nod of his chin. The leather-clad bartender, a young human beauty with a gorgeous swell of cleavage over the top of her red corset, came instantly to refill his wineglass. He smiled at her, holding the fragile crystal between his fingers, rubbing at the smooth surface. Her returning smile was brilliant, full of want. She would do anything for him, this one. Like any of those humans who came to the Midnight Playground. She would have sex with him, certainly. Let him take the whip to her in the club’s dungeons. Drink from her. And yet, he couldn’t find it within himself to want her. Or anyone, lately.

  He’d even let his latest matched set go a few weeks earlier—Franco and Julian, a pair of dark-haired Italian beauties whom he’d Turned less than a year ago. He’d sent them off to the Rome club with his recommendation. He’d never parted with one of his sets so quickly, but he hadn’t been able to bear it any longer. To be with them and feel so little, not even the desire that normally drove him as hard as it did any of his kind.

  He sighed quietly, sipped at the dark red wine he favored, but he barely tasted it.

  Why was he so restless? Why could he no longer appreciate all life had to offer? And why did the idea of living forever in the lap of utter luxury fill him with dread these last months?

  He looked around the club, at the humans and vampires milling around the long, polished bar, undulating on the slick marble dance floor. Beautiful, all of them. Stunning, as only the vampires and those few humans they allowed into their space could be. Shining hair and gleaming skin. Desire so thick in the air it was palpable. But he was entirely unaffected by any of them.

  He hated when he was morose. It had happened all too often of late.

  And now, he was waiting for the arrival of a problem. One he’d volunteered to solve.

  If he’d been capable of having a headache, he was certain his head would be pounding.

  “Ever.”

  A touch at his elbow and he turned to find Calam, one of his new assistants, at his elbow. Gorgeous, with his hulking musculature, his short crop of dark red hair, the auburn goatee framing his lush mouth. He’d had Calam a number of times, played the beautiful human male in the dungeons over and over. He’d been a longtime favorite. Calam’s love, Ilana, was a more recent favorite. The two of them had been the last humans he’d felt any real desire for. He adored them both, in his way. But he was beginning to feel that limitation too acutely. It bothered him more than he wanted to admit.

  “Ever?” Calam asked, making him realize he’d been wool-gathering, as the English called it.

  “My mind was wandering, Calam. What is it?”

  “I just got a call. They’ll be arriving shortly, your new guests,” the Scotsman said, his accent giving his deep voice a lovely, rumbling edge.

  “Ah. Thank you.”

  “Will you see them in your office?”

  Ever nodded. “Yes. Please call for Aleron. I’ll see him before the others.”

  “Aleron is just getting out of his car, I believe,” Calam told him.

  “Ah, so he is,” Ever said, casting his thoughts out and finding his old friend’s essence nearby. “Thank you.”

  Calam nodded and moved away. Ever finished his wine quickly then made his way through the crowded bar and up the wide marble staircase, his hand trailing over the gilt-edged wrought iron railing until he’d reached the top floor. Down the plush carpeted hallway, everything pristine, silent, the sounds and the energy from the bar and the sex rooms and the dungeons fading. He approached his own doors, a wide pair of heavy, black lacquered wood, each with the insignia of the club—a dragon head done in fine gold filigree, with lashing tongues in red enamel, the eyes a pair of burning garnets.

  A brief pull in his chest. He usually had his matched set standing guard at his doors. But he’d had to let them go, hadn’t he? It wasn’t fair to keep them there, acting as no more than guards any longer. It was his duty to satisfy those he Turned, as much as it was theirs to satisfy his needs and desires. He simply didn’t seem to have any lately.

  Why did he feel so hollow? So lost?

  As he pulled the door open and slipped into his office, he flashed back to his lovely, lost Vérún. Her lithe figure going into the sea, her long, waving blonde hair floating around her like a mermaid’s before she went deeper, under the water…

  Don’t think of her now…

  But he couldn’t help wondering if perhaps he was losing his mind, as she had. As the older vampires sometimes did when the weight of the world rested too heavily on them. One reason why he’d begun grooming his dear friend Aleron to assist him with the management of the London club. Or perhaps even to replace him one day.

  He moved to his enormous antique French desk, carved and trimmed in gold, trying to shake his mood. He had important work ahead of him tonight. He ran his fingers over the edge, letting the old wood bite into the hard flesh and bone of his hand. He pressed harder, a small sense of desperation filling him.

  Need to feel something.

  He heard Aleron in his head before he turned to see the old vampire coming through the doors. He was beautiful, his spiky blond hair so pale it was nearly white, his brilliant blue eyes like two piercing pieces of sea glass. He crossed the room in a few long strides, went to take Ever’s hand, pulling him in for a kiss, and Ever tasted that faint stone-like flavor that was common in the older vampires. Just a friendly brush of lips, but Ever was glad when his body heated a little. Perhaps he wasn’t entirely dead after all.

  “Come, sit down,” Ever told his friend. “Shall I call for drinks?”

  “No, thank you.” Aleron’s voice still held a faint trace of a French accent, even though he’d been in London for some time, had traveled all over Europe in his three hundred years. “Calam met me downstairs to let me know they’ll be arriving in a few minutes. Is there anything I should know before they come?”

  “No, no more than we’d already spoken of.” He listed the facts aloud, if only to force himself to focus on the task at hand, to shift his mind from his morbid musings. “That this girl, Mercy, was Turned by a rogue who abandoned her almost immediately. That she met and Turned her companion Deo only days later. I hear they are both quite young. Innocents, especially the girl. That they didn’t even know how to feed properly.”

  Aleron shook his head. “A terrible state of affairs.”

  “She has no idea of our rules, I am certain.”

  “No, of course not. Tragic, that any of our kind would Turn another and leave them so suddenly.”

  “That is why they’re known as rogues, my friend.” Ever smiled at Aleron. “A different sort of rogue than you were known for being in your day,” he said.

  “Ah, my Meeraj has cured me of that.” A smile spread over Aleron’s face.

  “I am glad to see you happy.”

  “So am I. I would wish the same for you, Ever.”

  “That is not meant for me.”

  Aleron raised one pale brow. “Never?”

  “I’ve lived for over a thousand years. If it hasn’t happened yet, then…”

  “One never knows.”

  “Perhaps.” Ever shrugged, not really believing it.

  “Perhaps.”

  Aleron smiled again, his eyeteeth catching the light, and Ever felt once more that small spark of desire for the alluring, masculine vampire.

  No, perhaps not dead yet…

  Not entirely. But he’d felt dead for months. Had felt that fear of his mind going. Had those moments when, alone in the darkest part of the night, he almost thought it might be best if his mind did go and he slipped into some sort of dream. Or sought a true death the way his dear Vérún had.

  He ran a hand over his sleek ponytail, straightened his posture. Tonight, however, would not be that night. He had responsibilities. And as he tuned his mind’s ear, he heard that they were just about to come through the door.

  Chapter Two

  It was all so confusing. The last mo
nths, wandering through Spain with Deo. Ramsey, the darkly beautiful vampire who ran the Madrid club they’d wandered into, hoping for help. The long trip from Madrid to England in the heavily armored car that was pure luxury inside.

  Through the tinted, slatted, bulletproof windows, Mercy could make out the tall buildings, their grandeur barely reduced by the occasional bombed-out structure. Even in this elegant part of town, the gangs of street kids, the morphies, huddled in doorways.

  The sky was clouded—with fog, with smoke. Yet behind the clouds she could see with her new eyes how the sun tried to shine through, its rays almost white through the dark glass. As a child in the United States, she’d read about London, about its history that didn’t seem to matter anymore. Not to humans. Certainly not to the vampires.

  To her, now.

  The car slowed and she caught a trace of Ramsey’s thoughts. Their trip was almost over.

  Mercy couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking.

  Ramsey had been unbelievably kind, yet she was still afraid. Frightened of what they might do to her—the vampire council they’d been told had been called in order to decide what to do with them, two young vampires who had been created in some outlaw fashion.

  She glanced at Deo beside her. Her lover. Her only friend, despite the fact that she had Turned him unwillingly, as she had been Turned. He was so beautiful, his profile silhouetted against the dim morning light filtering in through the tinted windows. As a human, he’d been devastating, with his curling black hair, his soft blue-green eyes that looked like two aquamarines when they caught the light. As a vampire he was so exquisitely gorgeous, she thought there could never be another creature on the Earth as beautiful as he was. She loved his face, his lush mouth, his long, tapered fingers. And his perfect, muscled body. Flawless. Hard. Like hers.

  The hardness of their bodies had shocked them, at first. But she’d come to know the sleek velvet of his skin. The sweetness that was his vampiric body. That was him.

  Deo had accepted what she’d done to him. Had come to love her, as she loved him. She was so incredibly grateful he’d stayed with her. But what else would he have done? They were lost together in this strange existence neither had known much about until they’d become immortal, felt the preternatural strength, the incredibly heightened senses, the driving need for sex. The even more powerful driving need for blood.