Bring Him Back to Me

(Present Day)

The memory burned behind Ru's eyelids—Dekaris' fingers at his throat, Heise's lullaby sliding into his veins like poison. The humiliation. The betrayal.

His eyes snapped open.

Now he remembered.

The scent of blue flowers from the rain garden choked him, layered over the phantom rot of his old prison. That cold, suffocating chamber, where his wrists were bound in chains—first iron, then silk. He consistently lowered his head, yearning for the acceptance of a vampire who granted him merely the illusion of absolution.

Lord Dekaris Zharqasti and his stunning captive, the seventh clone.

And Heise? He was a shadow on the threshold. Throughout the extended period when the seventh served only as an ornament in the vampire lord's chambers of pleasure, Ru seldom encountered Heise. At last, Heise had arrived not to rescue him but to conclude his story.

Heise placed him in a glass coffin and sang him one last magical lullaby.