Vampire In Her Mysts

Vampire In Her Mysts
Meagan Hatfield

Bounty hunters had wounded and abandoned him in the Mysts, a dark haven for the supernatural.But vampire Yuri Feodorovna thinks he has found the key to survival when he sees Ileana Tarasova, a beautiful servant of the Goddess. Yuri is filled with desire at the sight of her tantalizing body. . . though it is a desire with a dangerous undercurrent of hunger.He cannot resist his need to feed and possess Ileana, just as she cannot help the way her body responds with eagerness and lust at his touch. . . But will Yuri still want Ileana when he learns her deadly secret?

Vampire In Her Mysts

Meagan Hatfield

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Bounty hunters had wounded and abandoned him in the Mysts, a dark haven for the supernatural. But vampire Yuri Feodorovna thinks he has found the key to survival when he sees Ileana Tarasova, a beautiful servant of the Goddess.

Yuri is filled with desire at the sight of her tantalizing body…though it is a desire with a dangerous undercurrent of hunger. He cannot resist his need to feed and possess Ileana, just as she cannot help the way her body responds with eagerness and lust at his touch…

But will Yuri still want Ileana when he learns her deadly secret?

Chapter One

“Where am I?”

Yuri Feodorovna forced his eyes open, his keen vampire senses instantly tasting damp earth and blood in the night air. He lifted his head off the ground. An unbearable ache pulsed through his veins and a fine layer of sweat coated his body. Both sensations were something he usually experienced after a battle.

Pressing a palm into the velvety earth, he pushed himself up to sit.

“Ahh,” he gasped at the spear of agony jabbing through his rib cage. He covered his tender side with his hand, wholly unsurprised to see his palm covered in red when he lifted it toward his face.

“That’s my blood,” he groaned, letting his head collapse against the tree behind him. “That’s…a lot of my blood.”

What in Fatum’s veil happened?

Clutching his waist with one hand, he used the other to push himself up. Standing sent a fresh wave of dizziness through him that threatened to pull him to the ground. Blood seeped between his fingers and streamed down his pant leg. Yuri bit down on his jaw at the current of pain streaming through him. The tip of his fang nicked his lip and the coppery taste of blood flooded his mouth.

“Dammit,” he said on a growl, spitting the mouthful on the grass. As if being ginsu’d across the abdomen by some wannabe samurai blood hunter last night hadn’t been bad enough.

Yuri stopped. An icy cold hand grabbed his heart, as memories of the past few hours came together…the fighting, the clanking of swords and slicing of flesh. In particular, the tattoos embedded across his adversary’s forearms seared into Yuri’s brain. They identified the sword-wielding vampire who attacked him as a vanator. A vampire blood hunter.

Yuri knew those tattoos well.

He should.

He’d worn the same ones for more than a century.

One mystery solved. A vanator had done this to him, he thought, inhaling an uneasy breath. Too bad owning that little bit of knowledge didn’t make him feel any better. He could think of a dozen other beings he’d prefer trying to kill him rather than a vanator.

Before Yuri’s brother Nikolai took over the Mysts, vanators were known as blood hunters—trained killers who assassinated their own from within. Blood hunters took out those vampires deemed not to be following the auld ways. Kings, queens, Dark Council members, corrupt politicians and aristocracy—no one had been safe from the vanators and everyone in their realm respected them and their missions.

Yet now, they’d become little more than bounty hunters. Duty-bound by an undying blood oath to Nikolai, a false ruler and the brother Yuri had been covertly fighting against for the past decade. Ruthless, brutal, the vanators relentlessly stalked their mark. They would not stop until they succeeded in delivering their target, dead or alive, and collecting their bounty.

Now they hunted him…and in the Mysts, of all places.

The holy vampire lands beyond the Fatum, Earth and every supernatural realm in between, the Mysts were a perpetual dark haven where day was never truly day and vampires could roam freely. For that reason alone, this place had always been dangerous territory for any vampire to enter.

Well, it had been pure and utter madness for him to come here.

Yuri dropped his chin to his chest and closed his eyes. Exhaustion warred with the need to act, to take out his opponents before they could regroup and strike again. He stumbled to the lake, pushing aside the marsh grass and shrubs. Collapsing at the edge, he sank to his knees. Cold water leached into his clothes, sending a chill up his already blood-drained body. He groaned, a tired and weak sound that made him cringe.

Dipping his arm in the pool, Yuri washed the blood away. The caked-on redness seeped into the lake, revealing the tattoos forever embedded on the underside of both forearms from elbow to wrist, marking him vanator to anyone with the gift of sight.

He twisted his arms slightly, exposing the marks forcibly inked alongside his old ones, branding him a traitor to the vanator brethren. His stomach soured. Assassin scum was more accurate. Blood hunters, true vanators were brother to no one. Masters of disguise, they frequently changed personality, occupation and appearance to the point of being chameleons. They always worked alone. And they always hunted their prey until they were either captured or dead.

And for the first time, Yuri was the prey, not the hunter.

A twig snapped in the forest behind him.

Yuri froze. Instinct had him sinking lower into the grass seconds before his brain registered the order. Eyes alert, he scanned the darkness. A thick cloud passed before the moon, shutting out what little light there’d been. Yuri breathed out a curse as night’s veil cloaked the forest around him, further concealing any would-be attacker. Careful to not make a sound, he floated his hand inches above the velvety lawn toward the dagger holstered at his thigh. Holding the weapon in his palm, Yuri fisted the hilt tight and waited.

If it was a vanator who hunted him, he wouldn’t have to wait long.

He swallowed, his grip flexing on the weapon.

The darkness not forty yards behind him suddenly parted, revealing the pale flesh of a woman’s leg. An astonishingly long, slender leg. Yuri blinked. Certain he must be hallucinating from the loss of blood. Yet he remained fixed on the spot, waiting for the apparition to show herself once more. A heartbeat later, a bright flash of red fabric swished in the night, followed by the second bare leg until the woman stepped into full view.

Although the heavy cloak she wore obscured her form, the brief glimpse of red ceremonial robes beneath it identified who she was.

AKalu.

One of the holy women from the Samostan, a women’s temple devoted to the worship of the Goddess.

Yuri regarded the girl intently, remaining alert even though she posed no real threat to him other than alerting any lurking vanators to his presence.

With feline grace, the woman walked toward the water. The pads of her feet rolled from ball to heel with the elegance of a dancer. His sight in line with her ankles, he studied their delicate structure, the dip and curve of bone and flesh. Each step slid the cloak higher up her legs, first past her knee and then her thigh. Yuri eagerly explored each inch as it became visible. The curve of her calf, sway of her knee and slender thigh, each inch more enticing than the last. For a woman devoted to prayer and books, her body was more muscular than he would have thought.

An arm reached back and up. In a deft move, the woman removed the hood, settling the fabric back on her shoulders. His gaze slid to her profile. Skin, so white and pure in the moonlight it could be translucent, glowed with the perfect luster of a pearl. In stark contrast, wave after wave of ebony hair flowed down the enticing curve of her back, resting at the dip of her hip. She looked ethereal. A goddess reminiscent of the one she worshipped.

The female bent to the water’s edge only a stone’s throw away. With the grace of a soaring hawk, her pale arm arced over the water. Yuri caught sight of her wrists, slender and elegant, before she dipped her hands, plunging them into the lake and scooping up water. A moment later, the cloak fell off, pooling to the ground around her feet.

Yuri’s heart skipped. Sweet Goddess, if he thought her magnificent before, she rendered him speechless now.

He’d heard of the alluring, borderline erotic Kalu garment, but had never seen one. Slaves to the Goddess, the Kalu’s attire reflected such. Red arm covers swathed her forearms from wrist to bicep. A narrow piece of fabric crisscrossed over her breasts and curved, wrapping once around her waist, leaving an enticing amount of flesh exposed from her rib cage to her navel. Panels, no more than ten inches wide, hung between her legs to her ankles on the front and back. Deliciously bare, her hips and thighs were concealed by only two ribbons tied in bows at her hipbones. Another slim red ribbon collared her delicate throat.

A sliver of moonlight peeked down from between the clouds, casting a hint of light upon her skin. Yuri’s eyes widened with each new inch of flesh the moonlight exposed.

Tattoos.

This beautiful creature was covered in them. They peppered her flesh, her abdomen, arms, chest and no doubt her back too if he had the opportunity to look. Suddenly, the desire to bare this female to his gaze and study her marked body besieged him.

Unlike humans, who used tattoos the way a male peacock struts its plumage, in the Mysts, each tattoo told a story about the vampire who bore it, for good or ill. Some were put on the body by right, some by force and none were taken lightly. Every mark had meaningful and thoughtful placement. They spoke volumes about those wearing them. The tattoos identified where they were born, what class or horde they belonged to, what specialties they owned, or where their affiliations lay.

In the same vein, if someone placed false tattoos on their bodies, claiming to be someone or something they were not, they would bring shame upon their clan, and in most cases find themselves exiled. That is, if a disgraced family member did not find and kill them first.