Page 79 of A Vampire Bewitched
Torches—similar to the ones in their own mountain hideout a few miles away—lit the tunnel as they descended deeper and deeper into the underground. But they did nothing to warm the air, and he felt Emma shiver in the damp cold.
Two hundred feet in, the tunnel split into two separate passages. Aiden left the creek and chose the smaller one to the left, Nik and Emma following close behind.
“Do you actually know where you’re going, or are you just choosing at random and hoping for the best?” Nik asked him quietly. Although they normally kept an eye on Leeha’s comings and goings when she was here, he’d never actually been inside her lair.
Pulling one of the torches off the wall at the division, Aiden gave him a wry look. “Have some faith, mate. This isn’t my first rodeo here, as they say.”
“That’s what concerns me,” Nik muttered under his breath.
Chapter 44
Emma was equal parts nervous and excited as the tunnel narrowed, squeezing them in together until they had to walk single file. Excited that she might be seeing her sister again very soon, and nervous at the unknown prospect of what they’d have to face to get her and Luukas out of here.
Even the vampires were unusually subdued. And that couldn’t be a good sign.
Falling in between the two taller males, she couldn’t see very much, even with the torch Aiden had thought to grab. Because any nightmarish creatures that lived down here didn’t need light to sniff out their prey?
Get a grip on yourself, Em.Yeah. Did she mention she was not a huge fan of the dark?
Nik stayed right behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder, his thumb occasionally rubbing small circles through her shirt. Her skin prickled where he touched her, and her breath came in shallow pants. From her claustrophobia or from his touch, she honestly couldn’t say. But either way, she couldn’t complain. She was the one who’d insisted on coming along, after all.
As they traversed deeper into the dark underground, Emma kept her eyes on Aiden’s back. She continued to place one foot in front of the other, silently fighting the ongoing battle not to freak out in the enclosed space, when she suddenly felt a rush of air and got the feeling of more space around them.
Stepping from the passage, she heard a loudwhooshas a hundred torches lit simultaneously and without warning, temporarily blinding her. Shielding her eyes with her hands until she grew used to the sudden light, she squinted as she looked around.
Another immense cavern loomed before her like the vampire’s hideout. But this one was not only larger, the stone was chiseled away to give the interior the appearance of a vast cathedral of old.
A vast, gothic, spooky as all hell, cathedral.
Illuminated by the fire that danced eerily along the dark stone walls, her eyes widened at the giant archways lining the wide, central aisle. Slender columns led up to a soaring ceiling of pointed arches a hundred feet or more above their heads.
When she could tear her eyes away from the majesty of the ceiling, she followed the columns back down to the floor, where mosaic tiles were laid out in a seemingly abstract order, but which created an overall pattern that directed the eyes forward to the other end of the room, and the main attraction.
Dropping her hands away from her eyes, Emma blinked hard as she stared down the endless aisle to the opposite end of the cathedral. Stone steps led up to a raised stone platform that took up the entire far end of the room. And alone in the center of the platform was a throne. An actual, honest-to-God throne, reminiscent of medieval days.
Made of the same kind of smooth, dark stone that lined the walls, it was interspersed with threads of shiny gold that glittered in the flickering firelight. Other than that, the starkness was only broken up by a blood red seat cushion along the seat and back. It contained no other ornamentation, the overall effect as sinister in appearance as the woman sitting upon it.
She was one of the most stunning creatures Emma had ever seen. So much so, she half wondered if she was a figment of her imagination.
Lowering his arm from his eyes, Nik immediately spotted the woman on the throne, and impaled her with his angry gaze. He reached for Emma’s hand, and she let him take it as he pulled her along behind him.
“Enough with the party tricks, Leeha. Where is my brother?” he demanded.
But they weren’t party tricks. There was magic in the room. Emma could feel it. It pulsed in the air like a living entity. Did he not feel it?
However, the magic did not come from the woman in the room. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but Emma would bet her life on it.
Ignoring his question, their host sat forward, all of her attention on Emma.
Belatedly, Nik noticed Leeha zero in on Emma and stopped abruptly midway up the aisle, tucking her behind him.
“And who isthis, Nikulas?” Leeha asked. Her richly accented voice pronounced each syllable in his name distinctly. “Have youfinallyfound a new little human whore to warm your bed?” Undaunted by the warning growl aimed at her, she stood up and came toward them.
Emma stared, unable to look away as envy tore through her gut.
Leeha didn’t so much walk, as leisurely seduce her way across the floor. Head high and arms confidently at her sides, she prowled over the stones with an erotic roll to her hips, designed to entice every male in the room into imagining it washiscock she wanted, and no one else’s.
Her dark red hair was thick and soft and long, tumbling around her shoulders in artful disarray. Her deathly pale skin was unnaturally flawless and only made one startlingly aware of her full, red lips and hollowed cheekbones. A thin, sheer, white gown showed off her full, rounded breasts and each rose-darkened areola, the large nipples constantly tight from rubbing against the fabric.
