Sherrilyn Kenyon - Seize The Night

For my fans and friends who have kept me going through thick and thin, and especially the RBL ladies and those of you who take the time to visit the Dark-Hunter. com bbs. Your support means more to me than any of you will ever know.

To Kim and Nancy for all the hard work you do on my behalf, thank you. I can honestly never say that enough.

To my husband and sons who put up with all my wild imaginings and most importantly to my mother who indulged me when I was young. I miss you, Mom, and I always will. Love and hugs to all of you.

"Happy birthday, Agrippina," Valerius said as he laid a single red rose at the feet of the marble statue that held a sacred place in his home.

It was nothing compared to the sacred place that the woman herself had held within his heart while she had lived. A place she still occupied-even after two thousand years.

Closing his eyes, he felt crippled by the pain of her loss. Crippled by the guilt that the last sounds he had heard as a mortal man had been her wrenching sobs as she called out for his help.

Unable to breathe, he reached up and touched her marble hand. The stone was hard. Cold. Unyielding. Things Agrippina had never been. In a life that was measured by brutal formality and harshness, she had been his only refuge.

And he loved her still for the quiet kindness she had given him.

He clasped her delicate hand in both of his, then laid his cheek against the cold stone palm.

If he could have one wish, it would be to remember the exact sound of her voice.

To feel the warmth of her fingers on his lips.

But time had robbed him of everything except the agony he had caused her. He would die ten thousand more deaths if only he could have saved her the pain of that one night.

Unfortunately, there was no way to turn back time. No way to force the Fates to undo their actions and give her the happiness she should have known.

Just as there was nothing that could fill the aching void inside him left by Agrippina's death.

Grinding his teeth, Valerius pulled away and noted the eternal flame that burned by her side was sputtering.

"Don't worry," he said to her image. "I won't leave you in the dark. I promise."

It was a promise he had made to her during her lifetime, and even in death, he had never broken it. For more than two thousand years he had kept her in the light even while he was forced to live in the darkness that had terrified her.

Valerius crossed the sunroom to reach the large Roman-style buffet table that held the oil for her flame. He removed the oil from the center of the buffet and took it to her statue; then he stepped up onto the stone pedestal to pour the last of it into the lamp.

In this position, his head was even with hers. The sculptor he had commissioned centuries ago had captured every delicate curve and dimple of her precious face. Only Valerius's memory supplied the honey color of her hair. The vivid green of her eyes. Agrippina had been flawless in her beauty.

Sighing, Valerius touched her cheek before he stepped down. There was no use in dwelling on the past. What was done was done.

He was sworn now to protect the innocent. To keep watch over humanity and make sure that no other man had to lose so valuable a light in his soul as Valerius had lost.

Assured the flame would last until tomorrow night, Valerius inclined his head respectfully to her statue. "Amo," he said to her, whispering Latin for "I love you."

It was something he wished to the gods that he'd had the courage to say aloud to her while she had lived.

"I don't give a damn if they throw me down into the deepest, slimiest pit for eternity. I belong here and no one is going to make me leave. No one!"

Tabitha Devereaux took a deep breath and struggled not to argue as she tried to pick the lock on the handcuffs that her sister Selena had used to fasten herself to the wrought-iron gate that surrounded the famed Jackson Square. Selena had hidden the key in her bra and Tabitha had no desire to search there for it.

No doubt that would get them both arrested, even in New Orleans.

Luckily there wasn't a big crowd on the street in the middle of October, right at dusk, but what people were there all stared at them as they passed by. Not that Tabitha cared. She was more than used to people looking at her and thinking her strange. Even insane.

She prided herself on both. She also prided herself on being available to her friends and family in a crisis. And right now, her big sister was in an emotional turmoil second only to the time when Selena's husband Bill had been in a car wreck that had almost killed him.

Tabitha fumbled with the lock. The last thing she wanted was to have her sister arrested.

Again.

Selena tried to push her away, but Tabitha refused to budge, so Selena bit her.

Tabitha jumped back with a yelp as she shook her hand in an effort to relieve the pain. Completely unremorseful about it, Selena sprawled on the cobbled steps that led into the Square in a pair of ripped jeans and a large navy sweater that obviously belonged to Bill. Her long, curly brown hair was braided and oddly sedate. No one would recognize Madame Selene, as she was known to the tourists, except for the big sign she was holding that said, "Psychics have rights, too."

Ever since they had passed that stupid, asinine law that psychics couldn't read cards in the Square for tourists anymore, Selena had been fighting it. Earlier, the police had forced her out of the federal building for protesting- so Selena had headed over here to chain herself to the gate not far from where she had once set up her card table for reading other people's futures.

Too bad she couldn't see her own fate as clearly as Tabitha could. If Selena didn't unhook herself from this blessed fence, she was going to be spending the night in jail.

Overwrought and angry, Selena kept waving her sign. There was no reasoning with her. But then, Tabitha was used to that, too. High emotions, obstinacy, and insanity ran deep in their Cajun-Romanian family.

"C'mon, Selena," she said, trying yet again to soothe her. "It's already dark. You don't want to be Daimon bait out here, do you?"

"I don't care!" Selena sniffed and pouted. "The Daimons won't eat my soul anyway since I have no friggin' will to live. I just want my home back. This is my spot and I'm not leaving." She punctuated each of the last words with a pounding of her sign against the stones.

"Fine." Sighing in disgust, Tabitha sat down near her, but not so close that Selena could bite her again. She wasn't about to leave her older sister out here alone. Especially since Selena was so upset.

If the Daimons didn't get her, a mugger would.

And so here the two of them sat like two immovable bumps on a log: Tabitha dressed all in black with her dark auburn hair pulled back into a silver barrette and Selena waving her sign at anyone who came near them on the pedestrian mall, urging them to sign her petition to change the law. "Hey, Tabby. What's up?"

It was a rhetorical question. Tabitha waved at Bradley Gambieri, one of the docents who led vampire tours around the Quarter, as he headed toward the tourist center to drop off more brochures. He didn't even pause as he passed by. But he did frown at Selena, who called him an imaginative name because he didn't sign her petition.

Good thing he knew them or he really might be offended.

Tabitha and her sister knew most of the locals who frequented the Quarter. They had grown up here and had haunted the area around the Square since they had been young teenagers.

Of course, things had changed over the years. A few of the shops had come and gone. The Quarter was a good deal safer these days than it had been in the late nineteen eighties and early nineties. However, some things were the same. The bakery, Caf Pontalba, Caf Du Monde, and Corner Caf were in the same place. The tourists still gathered in the Square to ogle the cathedral and the colorful natives who passed by. and the vampires and muggers still stalked the streets looking for easy victims.