Desire the Night by Amanda Ashley Read Free Book Online Page B

night.
     
     
    Kay woke with a start. Sitting up, she stretched her arms over her head. A glance to her right showed Gideon was asleep. So, the sun was still up. Although she had no idea how long it was before the moon’s rising, she could feel the anxiety growing within her as her body anticipated the change. Had she been home, she would have called her boss and told him she was taking a sick day—something he allowed his employees to do from time to time—then she would have packed a bag and driven up into the Black Hills.
    Closing her eyes, she visualized the Hills—an isolated mountain range that ran from South Dakota to Wyoming, a place of towering pines and craggy bluffs and clear, crystal streams and lakes. The Hills were a werewolf’s paradise, inhabited as they were by a wide variety of prey—buffalo, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, elk, and white-tailed deer. An added plus were the miles of wide-open spaces where she could run to her heart’s content.
    Filled with nervous tension, she began to pace the floor. Pausing briefly, she picked up the bottle of water that had been left for her sometime during the day. After rinsing away the bad taste in her mouth, she drained the bottle, then resumed pacing, back and forth across the narrow space.
     
     
    Gideon hovered on the brink of awareness. Though only half awake, he felt the vibration of Kay’s footsteps as she restlessly paced the floor, smelled her growing apprehension as the sun slipped over the horizon. Only hours left until the moon took command of the sky.
    Between one thought and the next, he was wide-awake and alert. Jackknifing into a sitting position, he tilted his head back and sniffed the air.
    “Dammit!” He rose fluidly to his feet. “She’s coming.” He had known that was a possibility, but since the witch had recently taken his blood, he had hoped they could make their escape without her being the wiser.
    Without conscious thought, Kay moved to stand behind Gideon.
    Verah appeared moments later. Clad in a leopard-skin jumpsuit, her long pale blond hair pulled back in a tail, she looked like a wild animal on the prowl.
    She smiled a predatory smile as she waved her silver-bladed knife in one hand and the golden goblet in the other. “Guess what time it is?” she purred.
    “So soon?” Gideon’s jaw clenched tight. How often had she sliced into his flesh with that accursed knife? Each cut seared his skin like hellfire.
    “Word is spreading.” Greed glittered in the witch’s eyes. “I am now getting a thousand dollars for a single vial of your blood.”
    He glared at her. There was undoubtedly some spell she could cast that would make her wealthy. Unfortunately for him, wealth was not her motive for keeping him imprisoned. She enjoyed the sense of power it gave her to hold a vampire captive. She enjoyed inflicting pain. But it was vanity that played the most important role. Without his blood, she would quickly revert to her true appearance—an aged hag with stringy gray hair, sunken rheumy eyes, and skin as dry and wrinkled as old parchment.
    The witch tapped the blade against her cheek. “Hold out your arm,” she said impatiently.
    “Go to hell!”
    “Do not make me come in there,” Verah said, her eyes narrowing ominously.
    Gideon snorted. “What are you gonna do, witch? Drain me dry? Well, do your worst. I’m tired of being your fountain of youth.”
    The moon was rising. Even if he hadn’t been able to feel it on his own, he would have known it from the shudder that rippled through Kay, the sudden confusion in her thoughts.
    Verah unlocked the cell door with a wave of her hand.
    A low growl rose in Kay’s throat.
    Verah paused at the feral sound, her attention focusing for the first time on the woman partially hidden behind the vampire.
    There was a ripple of preternatural power, the sound of tearing cloth followed by a sharp cry somewhere between a groan and a howl.
    Verah’s eyes grew wide as the woman’s form