Chapter 3
Raine had a feeling she was sending him on a fool’s errand, but he went off into the shadows as directed. It was difficult to resist the warmth in her eyes as she made her request. He almost believed her.
But he hadn’t been born yesterday. In fact, he’d been born more than a hundred years ago—but his physical aging had ceased on the Christmas Eve he dreamt about Lucifer.
When the Devil came to him in a dream and offered him immortality in exchange for his soul.
When the fallen angel gave him an escape from the dark, empty life he’d been living.
Or, at least, that was what Lucifer had led him to believe. An escape.
How foolish he’d been.
Raine shook off the memory of that morning, when he awoke beneath a swath of festive evergreen boughs, head pounding, mouth dry, empty stomach heaving from drinking himself into a lonely stupor yet again.
But from then on, his life had been radically different.
And it had all led him to here, and now, and the fact that, although he went off as Arial Bonny had asked him to do, he didn’t quite go as far as she intended.
Raine had excellent instincts—except when it came to gambling, which was how he’d ended up at Luce’s mercy in the first place—and so he stopped once he was out of sight of the captain.
Then, when he heard her move—ever so lightly, nearly soundlessly—he emerged from the shadows to follow her.
The wind was steady and strong, but the weather was otherwise calm and comfortably warm, and there were only a handful of crew members up on the deck. No one to notice as Raine skirted the mains’l in the wake of the lovely, spicy woman who’d most definitely caught his fascination.
She was making her way to the rear of the ship, which was the most deserted area of the vessel.
He was so intent on keeping her in his sight while not being seen that he tripped over a camouflaged coil of rope and nearly stumbled into a rack of water barrels.
By the time he recovered and made certain no one had noticed the disturbance, Arial Bonny had disappeared.
He couldn’t see her, nor hear her any longer. The night was silent but for the soft flap of the sails above, and a distant metal clang from some metal hook hanging from a rope.
Damn and blast. Where could she have gone off to?
And then Raine heard a different sound. A sharp flap, then a change in the air followed by a soft, elegant whoosh.
He stumbled back on his heels as a massive bird of prey suddenly flew around from the stern and up, off into the night: graceful, smooth, and powerful.
He caught a glimpse of its coloring as the hawk passed through a moonbeam—a combination of black, brown, and gold. Its beak was elegant and sharp, frosted white in the starlight, and its talons were the same. She…somehow he knew it was a she…had a wingspan wider than his arms would go.
Raine stared after the hawk, his skin prickling.
Surely that wasn’t…no. Ludicrous.
Then he began to chuckle.
Well, why the bloody hell not?
While Arial was gone on what Raine surmised was her reconnaissance mission to find out where the Devil’s Target was—and now her skill at easily finding and following other ships was explained—he went in search of someone on which to feed.
It had been more than a day since he’d fed, and although he wasn’t feeling strong hunger—except for the lovely Captain Bonny, and that hunger was an entirely different matter than mere sustenance—he thought it would be prudent to have a snack in case they met up with the Devil’s Target any time soon.
But as he wandered around the deck, Raine found himself less than enticed by any of the crew members he encountered. The same could not be said for the reverse, for he seemed to attract salacious looks from more than one of them.
Including Bladsoe, the very tall and broad mate Raine had enthralled as he boarded the ship—only to be interrupted by Captain Bonny herself. He smiled privately, remembering her admonition that Raine was more the type her crew preferred than she was.
Raine had no preference himself when it came to feeding.
A man’s blood was just as acceptable as that of a woman; and if the act of feeding—of penetration and laving and drinking blood was inherently sensual and erotic—that was just part of the experience.
While Raine might feed on either gender in a pinch, he took only women to his bed—though he knew Dracule who weren’t as particular.
He shrugged. He’d lived long enough and experienced enough dark, sensual hedonism that little bothered him in the way of sexual encounters…
except the practice perpetrated by Cezar Moldavi.
That evil bastard preferred young girls and boys, and made a practice of leaving them to die after taking what he wanted from their delicate bodies.
That was why Raine was here in these hellish tropics, with days that were far too long and sunny for one of his kind.
Because Moldavi must be destroyed, and if obtaining the powerful Svari medallion from the Devil’s Target brought Raine, Corvindale, and Chas Woodmore closer to doing so, then he would risk it all.
Even frying in the blazing sun.
And if he got Arial Bonny into bed and beneath him and his fangs during the process, he’d consider the mission as getting as close to Heaven as he was ever going to get.
Even the passing thought of Heaven caused Lucifer’s Mark, located on the back of his shoulder, to twinge and throb painfully. It was a constant reminder of Raine’s damaged soul and its immortal connection to Lucifer.
But at that moment, something else, and new—and unpleasant—prickled over the back of his neck.
Raine stiffened. This was not the first time he’d felt a warning shift of energy since coming onto this ship.
There was something evil in the air, and he felt it boring into him as if some entity stared from the darkness, waiting for the opportunity to spring.
He didn’t turn. Instead, he became very still and homed all of his attention on the space behind him as he stood at the edge of the ship’s rail. All but the last bit of sliver of the sun had sunk below the horizon, and the line where sky and sea met was slowly becoming less definite.
He closed his eyes, focusing every other sense on the danger he’d felt, the wave of malignancy that had been released toward him.
Someone was watching. The weight of a malicious stare caused his muscles to tense and his body to ready.
Raine spun suddenly, prepared to ward off an attack.
But no one was there.
And the sensation was gone.