Immortals After Dark 12 - Lothaire

hanging on a paneled wall.
    Saroya crossed to the glass and gazed into it, cringing at her prison garb.
    The scratch on her neck drew her attention. Would that scar? Would it heal before she was made into a vampire? Once this body became immortal, it would be frozen forever—its appearance fixed.
    Lothaire traced to stand behind her. “You’ve suffered no ill from your time in prison, have only grown more beautiful.”
    She scrutinized her figure. Had Elizabeth lost weight? Saroya had resigned herself to her new short frame—mere inches over five feet—but she couldn’t accept this leanness. “The body’s too slim.”
    She recalled one of the few times she’d risen in that fetid jail. She’d read Elizabeth’s journal, noting that the mortal “worked out” every day in her cell. Unfortunately, it showed.
    How Saroya missed her own features! Her eyes had once been large and feline yellow, slit down the center with a thin black iris. Her lips had been bloodred, her skin pale like the moon. She’d been almost six feet tall and voluptuous to an obscene degree.
    Whenever she’d descended from her godplane to earth, men had been awestruck just to behold her. Once she beckoned for them, they’d offered themselves to her insidious brand of death. . . .
    She ran her hands over this new lean figure, groping for softness. How much flesh can the body gain before Lothaire finds the ring?
    At least Elizabeth’s bust had grown to a decent size. When Saroya cupped herself with relief, Lothaire’s eyes grew hooded.
    Saroya abruptly dropped her hands. In a brisk tone, she said, “This face is the most lovely of my temples’.”
    Though this present guise couldn’t compare to hers when she’d been a cat-eyed enchantress, Saroya had enjoyed some success luring victims. Males wanted to protect the vulnerable-looking girl and pluck her innocence. Instead, Saroya had plucked their hearts, eyes, and testes.
    Unlike her twin sister, Lamia, a goddess of life and fertility, Saroya was a virgin deity and forever would be, defending her chastity to the death. . . .
    To others’ deaths.
    Yet Lothaire believed she was a sexual creature, believed she’d never taken a lover into Elizabeth’s body out of faithfulness to him. . . .
    “Indeed lovely.” His voice had grown huskier. “Who came before this human?”
    “I possessed a middle-aged professor of Americana. I had much to learn from him, kept him alive for most of the nineties. After him came a shovel-toothed hunchback of a woman. I leapt off a building to be rid of her.” She frowned. “That transfer hadn’t proved as instantaneous as I’d hoped.”
    “How are these temples chosen for you?”
    “It could be based on a bloodline. Only the one who cursed me can say.” Lamia, damn you to the Ether! “All I know is that I will do anything to remain in Elizabeth—and you would do well to help me. I promise you, the next form for your Bride cannot possibly be better, if you could even find me. I might possess a male, or a baby, or an octogenarian. Not a young and fair innocent.”
    Yet another reason this body was a seamless fit. Elizabeth was a virgin, much to Lothaire’s fascination.
    He reached for her waist, turning her to face him. She stiffened but allowed it. “I’m quite content with your host as well. How long can you hold her off?”
    “She’ll rise this very night. She is exceedingly strong-willed. Lothaire, I want her gone.”
    He brushed a lock of hair from her forehead, his red eyes following the movement of his hand. “And you shall have everything you wish once I reclaim the ring. For now, I will make her fear ever to rise again.”
    “You think you can make one like her go dormant? How? When you can’t harm the body to torture her into submission?”
    His lips drew back from his fangs, not a smile. “Let me worry about our pathetic little mortal.”
    “Such vitriol.” One thing she’d learned about Lothaire? He despised humans even more than she did.
    “Elizabeth just attempted to destroy herself, thinking that would killmy Bride. Yet I can’t punish her for her transgression!” he grated. “Be assured that the next time she rises will be her last .”
    Saroya had never met a man so certain of himself. But then he was powerful, brilliant, calculating, and, above all things, perfectly fashioned.
    Lothaire was as compelling as a virility god.
    The night of their first meeting, she’d allowed him to lick her prey’s blood from her