"But you are going to work past this fault and tell me everything now, aren't you?"

"Maybe if we'd simply put you on your guard about why demons created the h.e.l.lhounds, me and my ancestors wouldn't have had to live in your shadow all these generations."

He'd always known they were out there, waiting to strike. Or so he'd thought. He shook his head. "I've guarded against your kind because of a promise I made to one of your pack, when your pack could have been helping me care for their cousins?"

Tess winced. "Please! h.e.l.lhounds aren't sentient. They are no more kin to us than arctic wolves, or Great Danes."

It pleased him that werewolves still underestimated the h.e.l.lhounds' capacity even after all this time. "They're smart," he said.

"For dogs, maybe."

"h.e.l.lhounds," he corrected.

She sprang to her feet. "Exactly! They are straight from h.e.l.l. Really. That's the whole point and always has been."

He stared at her for a long time. Finally, he said, "I take it there was something Syrilla didn't tell me."

Tess shook her head. "She didn't know. The poor b.i.t.c.h was under a spell when she mated with your war dog, otherwise she never would have done"-she grimaced-"the dirty deed with a dumb mutt."

"Hardly a mutt. I paid a fortune for the animal because of his pure lineage. His ancestry was far more grand than mine."

"But he was still a dog! No werewolf in her right mind could possibly . . . do that . . . with one of those . . ." She shuddered. "It makes me sick to think about it and it's been two thousand years. It's a wonder my whole pack wasn't wiped out to erase the shame of it. It's bad enough we've been tied to the h.e.l.lhounds' fate ever since."

"You were explaining about spells and demons," Dan reminded.

"h.e.l.lhounds were created through demon magic," she answered. "They were brought into the world to eat souls and build power to be used in demonic ceremonies."

He didn't disregard this information out of hand. It was clear the werewolf witch believed it. "What sort of ceremonies?"

"How would I know? The demons have never gotten a chance to get their claws on a h.e.l.lhound. You've protected them. My pack's guarded them."

"I don't always protect them. I train them and make sure they go to good homes."

"That's just it-we think it's the pups the demons want. We think that they can't use h.e.l.lhound magic once you've tamed them and trained them to obey strigoi. The demons need to train the pups themselves for whatever it is they want. They've never gotten the chance-until now."

He was on his feet. "Your pack might have told me all this at some point over the centuries!"

Her eyes blazed with anger and she opened her mouth a few times as if to protest before saying, "Yeah. That probably would have been a good idea."

Dan was glad that at least this pack member was able to look past the centuries of mayhem vampires and werewolves had committed on each other over the h.e.l.lhounds.

"I can forgive and forget if you can. And even work with you if necessary."

She balked at this. "If? What do you mean 'if necessary'? Who got you out of the trap earlier? Who-?"

He'd grabbed the furious woman's shoulders. "No offense intended," he said.

Then the robe slipped off her shoulders and his hands were touching warm, soft flesh and Dan forgot what he'd meant to say next.

Two thousand years were gone in an instant. The hot mouth he pressed against his was the same. The wild intensity that flared between them was the same. The small, high b.r.e.a.s.t.s he cupped responded the same.

But Tess wasn't Syrilla.

For one thing, he was far more attracted to this werewolf female than he'd ever been to her ancestor when he was a mortal man-and that was saying quite a lot.

For another, he liked Tess far better than he had Syrilla-and that was also saying quite a lot.

"I can't," she said breathlessly after they'd fallen together onto the couch.

He had her naked beneath him once again. Her thighs were wrapped around his hips. He held her a.s.s cupped in one hand. She had a wonderful little a.s.s.

"I made vows-and you're-strigoi and-oh, G.o.ddess!"

She bit his shoulder in response to an intimate caress. It was a love bite, not an objection to anything he was doing.

He laughed in her ear, and bit back.

The taste of her blood was wholly different from any human he'd ever tasted. It was like being introduced to hot peppers and fresh ginger after a lifetime of bland, invalid fare. Everything that was l.u.s.t and life came to him through her. He'd never tasted anyone like her and he had no intention of stopping.

He wasn't going to drain her dry. But he was going to f.u.c.k her brains out.

Dan picked Tess up and carried her to the bedroom.

NINE.

WHAT WAS SO GREAT ABOUT BEING A VIRGIN ANYWAY?.

This fire burning between them was the real magic. This was life. This was real. This was important.

Tess threw her head back and draped her arms around Conover's neck, vaguely aware he was carrying her and not caring where they were going.

He put her down on a wide expanse that was silky soft and cool. She stretched out on the luxurious bed and would have purred if she wasn't a werewolf. The room was dark but werewolf eyes and vampire eyes met and they saw each other clearly. The recognition of like to like that pa.s.sed between them shook her to the core, but not at the wrongness of their two species blending both body and soul. It was the rightness that shattered but didn't break her.

She cupped his face in her hands and drew his mouth down to hers. She'd never shared a kiss so intense, so intimate.

She'd never shared a proper kiss at all, she realized. At least she'd never initiated one.

This is so going to get me in trouble, she thought.

Me, too, he answered.

There was no repentance in either of their minds, and no hesitation.

This is a first, he thought, a vampire mating with a werewolf.

"Well-" Tess began, then decided to let it go. They were in Valentine's bed, but this wasn't the time for conversation about the Ancient Mother. "This is about Tess and Dan," she said.

"It's about who, not what, we are," he agreed.

She ran her hands over the thick, hard muscles of his back and cupped his rounded b.u.t.tocks. Her foot stroked up the length of his calf. "Let's make it about s.e.x," she told him.

Her fingers reached around to curl around his c.o.c.k. She groaned as she stroked his p.e.n.i.s and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, but he soon positioned himself between her thighs.

When he entered her the thrust was so hard she couldn't stop the scream.

"Hey! I'm new to this!" she reminded him.

"Sorry!"

He made up for it by settling into a slow, gentle rhythm that sent amazing bursts of pleasure through her and made time and place disappear.

Tess eventually came down from the series of steadily building o.r.g.a.s.ms. She tossed her head from side to side and tried to catch her breath. She tried to focus. It would be so easy to stay inside the shared ecstasy forever.

She moaned and grabbed the vampire's hair. "Come!" she begged him. "Now! You've only got until dawn you know."

Dan laughed, flashing fang. And his mouth came down on her breast. There was a quick sharp pain that took her back into the ecstasy that she rode down into the dark.

TEN.

HE WAS CLOSER TO THE OLD b.i.t.c.h NOW. KRAAS knew the time would soon be ripe to confront her. Did Valentine suspect an evil presence just beyond her reach? Had fear invaded her dreams yet? Did the shadow of ripping fangs make her throat ache? He held his master's enemy's true death in his arms and stroked the velvety head while the pup whimpered. The energy released when a demon creature killed Valentine would increase his master's power a thousandfold. Kraas's reward would be equally immense.

"You're hungry, I know. You're getting heavy from all your kills, you know." He rubbed the fat little puppy belly. "You're growing into such a big, fine boy."

He continued to murmur to the pup as he moved silently through the backyards of the sleeping neighborhood. He listened all the while for heartbeats.

The houses were large but most of them held no more than two or three people. The pup needed more than that to eat his fill.

"You're a growing boy. I miss the days when families slept six to a bed with servants huddling around besides. I'm almost ashamed to bring my master into this world. He'll whip the mortals into shape with you and me at his side to share the kills. Ah,"

Kraas said as they stopped behind the center house of a cul-de-sac. He closed his eyes and listened carefully, counting as he discerned individual heartbeats within the dark house. Eight, he decided. Eight mortals sleeping peacefully. A good night's feast for the youngster.

Kraas remembered to check around the outside of the building for any of the alarm systems mortalkind thought protected them.

The house proved to be free of any warning device, and, of course, no spells warded the place from magical entry.

He returned to the back and used a diamond-sharp claw to sc.r.a.pe a hole at the handle of a sliding gla.s.s door. Once he had the door a little way open, he let the h.e.l.lhound pup down inside the house's kitchen.

"Run free," he urged. The pup was already determinedly crossing the room, already on the scent. "Find your prey," Kraas said.

"Feast."

ELEVEN.

"A MOTEL IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE-HOW charming," Valentine said as Yevgeny turned off the empty road into a gravel parking lot. For all of her sarcasm she was glad to finally be arriving somewhere with four walls and a roof. Though she'd managed to fight off the phobia on the drive west of Las Vegas, she had not enjoyed the wide desert vista or the vastness of the starry sky overhead. She regretted the bravado of letting Yevgeny drive her Cadillac with the top down.

"You shouldn't fear the world," Yevgeny said. "It's the world's job to fear you."

"Oh, shut up."

He chuckled. "I thought it was a very good line. You can use it in your next script if you like."

She sighed. "Everybody thinks he's a writer."

This reminded her of how she'd met Yevgeny at a studio reception for Soviet diplomats back during the Cold War. He'd been an undercover KGB officer. She was a scriptwriter as well as a vampire. She'd been obsessed with him instantly. She looked at him now and he was just as big and blond and impressive as ever. An echo of the old longing stirred.

"d.a.m.n it, Yevgeny."

His fingers cupped the back of her neck, the touch so familiar the reality of it was painful. His fingers were not so warm as they used to be, but the contact still sent heat through her.

"There's no Law against vampires being lovers," he said.

"Euwww!" She meant to flinch away but found that she hadn't moved. His touch felt too good. "It's not done," she reminded both of them. "You were my companion-that's incest."

"You didn't turn me into a vampire, someone else did. How can it be incest if you aren't my maker?"

It would be easy to argue this, even easier to give in without an argument. But she and Yevgeny were over, done with. There was too much history, too much bad blood to even start a discussion. She didn't want to know where the discussion might lead. Besides, there was Haven, her runaway groom. Even if she had sent Geoff Sterling to fetch the man back instead of going herself, she still had a claim on Haven.

She rubbed her temples and stared straight ahead, out into the empty night across a road that didn't go anywhere. "Get your hand off of me, Yevgeny. So I can remember what the h.e.l.l I'm doing here."

She heard the car door open and felt the air grow colder as he moved away. Valentine jumped in surprise when he appeared beside her. He opened the car door and took her hand to help her out. Always the gentleman. Haven was no gentleman.

"Time to check on the puppy," he said when she was standing beside him.

Her confusion blew away at this reminder of why he needed her here. "Thank the G.o.ddess you picked an isolated spot," she said.

"If you aren't the only guest at this fine establishment you soon will be-not that the place is likely to still be standing when we're done."

He laughed. "I rented all the rooms and sent the owner away. We have plenty of privacy to hold puppy school."

She shook her head at his humor and started forward. "Come on, let's wake up the monster while the night is still young."