Free Beyond the Night by Thea Devine Page A

care of business, or to attend state functions, and now, it was announced, to plan her upcoming Golden Jubilee.
    Senna tucked the chunk of obsidian into her belt. “I’ll find out what I can anyway. At the very least, I’ll try to get into the Palace and eliminate that obstacle.”

    It was hot. The streets felt as if they were giving off steam. The obsidian, absorbing the sun’s rays, felt as fiery as lava in her hand.
    The streets were crowded, the air humid and cloying, with the mingled scents of garbage, horse, smoke, and perfume.
    And blood. Pulsing beneath the skin. She felt a roaring in her ears, her body shaking, her palate shifting.
    No feeding. Not now. For her child—not ever again.
    This was such a bad idea. She should have thought of a different way to approach it. She should have transported. And she hadn’t thought through the difficulty of getting permission to enter the Palace.
    Over and above that, she’d underestimated the pull of blood among all those strangers. She bent over and kept limping toward her objective.
    The noise of wagons, vendors, footsteps, and random conversation sounded chaotic in her head, in tandem with the waterfall of her hunger.
    How many of these strangers might be vampires, given the mission of Charles and the Keepers of the Night; how many bodies had they fed on and turned last night? Any number passing her on the street right now could be newly sired members of Clan Tepes.
    She saw now why Mirya was so worried.
    There are colors. . . .
    She kept her eyes on the ground and her pace as steady as an impaired old lady could manage. She was a lousy actress. Her mouth burned with need.
    She needed to concentrate. Charles could be anywhere. He was the most dangerous. He was as bloodthirsty as a pirate. He loved to kill. He lived to feed. There could never be enough blood to satisfy him.
    Even in the ebb and flow of these early-afternoon crowds, Charles could be somewhere above her, swooping among the pedestrians, looking for her. He was already too comfortable in his vampire skin.
    But Dominick must know this—Charles was his half brother after all. Dominick would stop him.
    If Dominick even cared.
    Of course he didn’t. He had other interests now. He and Dnitra had probably gone off to establish their own intimate little vampire lair.
    Stop it!
    She bumped into a body. “Excuse me, sorry, forgive an old lady.” She scurried on. Mirya was right, she shouldn’t have come out on the street. She wasn’t nearly ready to handle being among people, especially with the hunger gnawing at her, and her body shifting to accommodate it.
    The lust corroded everything. She had no mastery over it yet.
    Charles was right: she was a baby vampire. She hadn’t even begun to crawl, let alone develop the powers that would help her achieve her mission.
    She kept on, swallowing her hunger, pushing back on her body’s demand that she prepare to feed. Useless. It took only a moment for her to release her ferocious hold on her thoughts as she waited to cross the street, and she doubled over as the lust took her.
    She had no choice: she wheeled and threw herself in front of an oncoming dray.

    She was so suffused and plump from feeding, she could barely move. She lay slumped against the wall in a straw-covered stable, her victim lifeless beside her, and the wagon shielding them from the stable door.
    An inspired idea, throwing herself under the wagon. Too easy to induce the driver to take her to a for-hire stable, where she could finally feed. The grace note was now she had the wagon and, with it, the wherewithal to approach the Palace.
    Not yet though. Have to think. Have to plan.
    It was beyond fortunate his wagon was filled with baskets of vegetables and fruit among other things. He was off to market, he’d said. He couldn’t imagine how he’d run her down.
    Don’t think about that, about him and what he said.
    A fluttery