Dark Awakening Read Online Free PDF Page B

door. His hunter’s mind saw all this, but the rest of his thoughts were consumed with Nero. He was well acquainted with the ambitious Ptolemy’s “methods.” Just as he had firsthand experience with Nero’s feelings on lowbloods and what, exactly, they had been put on Earth to do.
    Just get the girl and get home
, he told himself. Lily Quinn would either manage among the Ptolemy or would not. It was nothing to him. What mattered was making sure that the handful of his kind who still lived underthe thumb of the Ptolemy dynasty didn’t end up like the rest: dead, or as good as.
    As he stepped through the doors and was greeted by a blast of warmth and the scent of stale beer and cheap perfume, Ty allowed himself a moment, just a moment, to despise his own existence. He wished he had died that long-ago night. He wished his queen had never taken notice of him and left him to his fate.
    But he had not, and she had. His lot was what it was.
    And he had already been gone too long.
    Hours later, at the time of night when the world seems to be holding its breath for the dawn, Tynan stood looking down at the woman who had already caused him so much trouble and who was, he feared, bound to cause him more before they were through.
    His hunger had long since been sated by a homely little bleached blonde so drunk that she’d barely skipped a beat between the time he’d bitten her and the time he’d bundled her into a cab to go home. The blood, full of alcohol, had given him a pleasant buzz. But he found, with some dismay, that the scent rising from Lily’s skin was quickly renewing the knife’s edge of his eternal hunger. Feeding had done nothing to dull the odd effect she had on him.
    He began to wish he had waited to come and find her here, asleep in the upstairs bedroom of the little old Victorian near the college where she taught. She had been so easy to find. He felt a moment’s pity for her, for the way her life was about to be upended—however long her life lasted.
    Lily shifted and gave a long, soft sigh, as though agreeing with him. She was curled on her side, knees drawn upbeneath the quilted coverlet, the shape of her body making an S. Small hands were tucked beneath the delicate point of her chin, and all of the thick, shining hair he’d so admired in the moonlight seemed to pulse with a life of its own, bloodred against the white of her pillow. Long lashes twined together, and her lips, a feature he had tried with no success to get out of his head all night, parted gently in sleep.
    She was beautiful, Tynan thought with an unfamiliar sinking sensation. And he needed to find a way to draw her in as quickly as possible. That he would betray her, likely hurt her, was a given. He didn’t bother to rail against it much. If he didn’t do what he was told, he would die, and that was one thing he’d really rather not do. He was out of the habit.
    Before he could consider what he was doing, Ty reached out one long, slim finger to trail it down Lily’s bare shoulder, finding her fair skin as soft as it looked. He sucked in a breath at the sensation that shimmered through his body at that small touch, curling through him, stirring him in ways that would prove very unhelpful if things continued this way. She shivered, too, as though sensing the direction of his thoughts.
    He wanted her. But Lily, like so many things, was now forbidden to him.
    With a frown, Ty lifted her hair away from her collarbone with a light, deft movement and bent as closely as he could without disturbing her. He didn’t really want to see—it was as though a part of him knew he hadn’t imagined it before.
    A light green pentagram, entwined with a single snake, glittering faintly in the darkness.
    Unconsciously, Ty lifted his other hand to rub at his own mark, the black Celtic knot of cats entwined with the ankh of the Ptolemy. When she had chosen him, the queen had branded him herself, allowing him but a single drop of her own blood on his