Read Adam for Free Online Page B

and proceeded to have buckets of children together, it became all too clear that the fault was with Syreena’s very specifically altered biology. This was Syreena’s opinion anyway. An opinion Jasmine had shared. But after Ruth’s perversion of her deepest held fears, Syreena began wandering the halls of the citadel like some kind of screwed-up Ophelia, singing to herself and chasing hallucinations in circles. Jas had let go of her enmity toward Damien’s wife, feeling too sorry for her in the long run to keep hating her scrawny little guts.
    Damien was right. There were lawless Vampires everywhere who coveted Syreena’s powerful Lycanthrope blood, and she was now helpless to protect herself. Syreena had once been a magnificent fighter. Jasmine had to confess to that. But now she was an easy meal for any Vampire who bumped into her.
    “Damien, you can’t do this for the rest of your life,” Jasmine said softly, knowing the grim reality of her words would anger him.
    “What would you have me do?” he said, but this time there was no anger, and there was no fire in the question. It was as though he was honestly asking for her help. Jasmine’s solution had always been to kill the silly bitch and be done with it. But the truth was, for all of Damien’s present unhappiness, to lose Syreena would be the end of him. He fancied himself hopelessly heartbound to the Lycanthrope, connected to her in some mystical, spiritual way. Damien had already proven to her that if Syreena died, he would quickly follow.
    Jasmine cared too deeply for him to lose him.
    And Jasmine needed her anchors, like her friendship with Damien and her appointment as leader of the Nightwalker Sensor Network. It was too easy for her to lose touch with the world around her. Too easy to grow bored and melancholy. It had been that way for as long as she could remember. Perhaps all of her life ... but more so since ...
    Jasmine shook the thought off. It did no good to wallow in what might have been, what once had been ... what no longer was. Nor was she going to allow herself to get so depressed that she could no longer bear living aboveground. Damien needed her. Desperately. If she went to ground, some bastard Vampire would take advantage of Damien’s present preoccupation, see it for the weakness that it was, and behead the Prince, taking his throne from him in one sweep of violence. Then who knew what would happen to the era of peace the Nightwalkers were trying so hard to enjoy.
    She laughed at herself. Her appointment to the Nightwalker Sensor Network was supposed to have been a temporary one. She was supposed to get it on its feet and then turn over the reins to someone else, preferably Stephan, the former leader of the Vanguard, the Vampires’ version of an army. But Stephan had been killed, and it turned out there was no one else to take over. Not anyone that all the leaders of the Nightwalker clans were comfortable with, at any rate.
    “You need to hunt. You need to keep strong,” she counseled her Prince. “You cannot protect her in this weakened state.”
    “What is this?”
    The shrill demand made Jasmine and Damien jump apart, with a guilt there was no reason to feel. They had done nothing wrong.
    But the madness in Syreena’s eyes blazed and she was pointing an accusatory finger at Jasmine and her husband. “I see! I see it now! You don’t love me! You are going to throw me aside because I cannot give you the children you desire!”
    “Syreena, that is not true,” Damien said soothingly as he tried to gather his rigid, hysterical wife into his embrace, turning his back on Jasmine and the brief moment of opportunity where Jasmine might have made him see sense.
    “You’ve always loved her more than me,” Syreena accused him with heavy sadness washing over her and tears filling her eyes. “She’s always been better for you than I have. You ought to have married Jasmine. Everyone says it. Everyone thinks it!”
    “No one says