Brimstone Bride. Barbara Hancock J.

of a dimly lit path.

      Still, she hummed.

      She needed to draw Turov away from the monk.

      The tune was scratchy and unused. A few bars from Romeo et Juliet. “Je veux vivre.” “Juliet’s Waltz.” Her hum was rough and unmelodic to her trained ears. She didn’t even know if it would work. She could only try. And pretend her effort was only about distracting Turov from the monk stalking her. The tightness in her chest and the heat of her flushed cheeks against the night air mocked that lie.

      She had to keep Turov from finding out why she was here and inadvertently uncovering her ties to the Order of Samuel. She couldn’t allow him to confront or capture her evil stalker.

      But she also had to know.

      Would her music act as a conduit between her affinity and the power in his Brimstone blood in the same way that Katherine’s cello had called to John Severne?

      From the moment when she’d first heard his voice tonight, she had to know.

      She’d loved Michael, but his power as a full-blood daemon had completely overshadowed any she might possess. Their relationship had been fast and entirely based upon his fire. She’d been eclipsed and consumed by his daemon light.

      And then that light was gone.

      She walked and hummed in the darkness because she suspected there was a different sort of light to be found.

      To be reclaimed.

      Her own.

      The night was silent as the soft noise of the party faded behind her. It was foolhardy to go too far into the darkness without telling anyone where she had gone. She wasn’t dressed for a hike. In addition to the handicap of the heels, her dress was thin and the air was chilled. This wasn’t the stage. If something failed, there wouldn’t be a props manager to fix it. If she forgot her lines, there was no prompter to help her. She’d had no rehearsal to prepare for confronting an evil monk alone in a deserted garden...or a damned man for that matter. What if she encountered Turov on the starlit path with no one else around?

      The idea frightened her, but not only that—there was also a hint of awakening in her quickened heartbeat and her rusty hum. Its tingle felt like an adventure waiting to happen.

      A hard figure crashed into her and a cry replaced her hoarse hum, cut short prematurely by a cruel hand over her mouth. She was held in the hateful grip of the monk who had followed her to Sonoma. She recognized his stocky build and bare head in the moonlight.

      “I have a message for you, D’Arcy. From Father Malachi. You met him in Louisiana. I bet you didn’t realize you were talking to the best and brightest of us all. Father Malachi has chosen me to deliver another warning. We are always. We are watching. Do not distract or delay. Free our brothers before Lucifer’s Army comes with the waxing of the moon. You have one month. Or your son will pay the price.” His spittle-fueled voice dampened her ear. She was crushed breathless by his powerful arms. His words and the physical abuse of his bruising hold made her recall the madness she’d seen in his eyes.

      “Release her and die,” Turov ordered from the shadows.

      Gone was any hint of sophistication.

      This was his truth.

      He stepped into the soft glow of garden lanterns and starlight. The seriousness of his face was revealed.

      Hard.

      Fierce.

      His jaw was no longer marble, but iron.

      Adam Turov reached behind his shoulder and with a metallic rasp he drew a small sword that glinted, sharp and deadly with purpose.

      “Remember what I have said,” the monk growled. He flung her away and Victoria fell, but even the sharp sting of gravel against the side of her face didn’t distract from the monk’s surprised scream. It gurgled in his throat and was cut off as his stocky body fell heavily, dead and headless. She heard a light, sickening thump as his decapitated head hit the ground and rolled to rest several feet away. She’d lived a much more violent life than your usual run-of-the-mill opera singer. Would a normal woman have recognized the sounds in the dark?

      “I said release her and die. Not or,” Turov clarified softly, as if the dead man might question his semantics.

      Victoria shifted to look toward Turov without being obvious. He wiped the blade he’d used on the monk with a pristine white handkerchief, rolling the silky cloth to cover the blood before placing it back in his pocket. Then he sheathed the blade at his back beneath his jacket. When he had finished the practiced moves of cleanup, his sophisticated costume was in place again. He straightened his cuffs and rolled his shoulders before he reached to help her to her feet. The monk didn’t move at all.

      “Is he...?” Victoria said, although she knew the answer. The monk was dead.

      “He gave up the right to your consideration when he hurt you,” Turov said. “My people will take it from here.”

      The Order of Samuel was violent and ugly and murderers, all. And the man she was supposed to best had just dispatched one without a blink of effort.

      Turov took her hand and led her back toward the house. She didn’t resist. Suddenly, her bold humming seemed reckless. This was a man with Brimstone in his blood. She couldn’t afford to play games with the affinity that even now made her tremble near him. That awakening in her earlier hadn’t been about anticipating an adventure. It had been a warning.

      Adam Turov had killed the monk to protect her. But what would happen to her when he discovered she was on the Order of Samuel’s side against him?

      * * *

      A little over an hour ago she had left the cottage for a party. Now she returned with blood on her shoes. She didn’t notice the blood until they were inside, and even then not until Turov knelt to take her shoes from numb feet.

      “I’m sorry. I’ll replace them,” he said. “I didn’t mean to spoil your shoes.” He tilted one shapely pump this way and that, as if appreciating its curves in spite of the blood. “From several years ago, I think, but I’ll manage.”

      She backed away as he left the room to throw the shoes away like some bizarrely opposite Prince Charming. And, yet, he did have charm. Out in the dark, under the stars, with blood dripping from the blade he’d used to save her, he’d been charming as hell.

      “You followed me into the garden even though I told you to come back to the cottage. Why?” Turov asked when he returned. He didn’t stop inside the door. He continued with purposeful steps all the way to her. When she backed up at his continued advance, he followed until she bumped up against a bookcase. The scent of aged leather bindings filled the air to pair with Turov’s Brimstone heat.

      She wasn’t afraid. Not of him. She was afraid because she refused to be a damsel in distress. No matter how distressing her life became.

      “You may not be able to sing, but I heard you humming. I felt it,” he said. “I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

      He didn’t touch her.

      He didn’t have to.

      The heat in his blood did.

      The Brimstone that sealed his deal with daemons sang its own song to her music-starved ears. He’d made the choice to barter his soul. He wasn’t a knight in shining armor. Too bad for her that she seemed to prefer much darker heroes.

      “It won’t happen again,” she promised.

      He leaned down to catch her whispered words. She was sure the breath that propelled them from her lips bathed his. He was close enough to taste with only a tilt or a sigh. She held very still. Apart. Contained. While her former nature urged her to boldly tilt, sigh, move to join him.

      She ignored the urge to sing. She refused the desire to touch her mouth to his.

      He looked into her eyes. His were brilliant