Prologue

Through the horror shattering my mind, I gasped as the pain sliced me in two. As if someone flayed my nerves into individual strands with the sharpest blade. Each one flexed and separated, sending me flying off in every direction with the agony.

An icy center danced in my palm as my fingers contracted around nothing but the specter of her touch. Closing my eyes brought her face to mind as if it had been etched on the insides of my lids with acid.

Dark hair that wavered somewhere between chocolate and deepest black. Her smooth skin gleamed like the palest gold honey. The long brush of her inky lashes flirted with her cheeks as her lips smiled in radiant delight, her laugh a melody on the breeze.

She made me complete. Vibrant. Unstained.

In her, I found my soul’s purpose. The driving need to succeed I found in each life. The one who turned sacrifice into a gift. The one who healed every scar and soothed every ache.

It took me almost three centuries to understand.

To learn.

To see.

It was her eyes that spoke the truth. Those pale gray orbs absorbed joy and dealt agony with the slightest flash in their depths. They shifted like the mists that crept in like smoke from the water. They held only hunger.

An all-encompassing desire to consume.

As I allowed the blade to fall from my burning hand, I struggled back to my feet. The clang of the knife a sharp symphony of ending. Breath turning my lungs to ash, I felt my eyes burn with loss. The grief absolute.

Steam rose in vapors from the remains of her eviscerated body at my feet. A crimson serpentine trail that highlighted her leaking life force. I stayed to watch until the last ghostly wisp evaporated.

This time I had to be sure. I had to be positive. There could be no failure, no mistake, no misunderstanding.

Not this time.

Not ever again.

This would be her final end and I her escort into the next beginning.

As the primary sun of my home world eventually inched its way above the horizon line, I felt the first shuddering breath of relief fill my lungs. Please, gods, let this be done. Let this never ending horror be finished.

But I’d been fooled before.

So still I waited.

Pushing through the hunger, the need to feed, the urge to stalk my prey, I held vigil over her form. As the first sun broke over the edge of the hill to my right, I squinted through the pain that ate through every cell of my body. When the second sun blazed white-hot light from the north, I felt the pressure inside my heavy frame condense into a single point of magic.

As the suns greeted each other in the middle of the sky, my vision failed as I knew it would. My kind were not meant for the light. We owned the darkness, caressed the shadows that created us.

With my vision gone, there was no other method of verification, save one.

Easing my agonized body back to its knees, I lowered my hands. The blood that had coursed through her veins now cool and tacky to the touch, I went searching with my power. As I sifted every molecule of what remained of her, the beast that lived inside my form tipped its head back and made a harrowing growl of anguish.

She was gone.

Finally.

Totally.

From this and every lifetime.

As I searched through the scraps of her final form, I sought the length of gold that hung around her neck in each life. When my broken and battered fingers curled around the metal, I brought it to my lips. I made a vow as the remnants of her body disintegrated into fine dust against my knees.

Lifting my face, my eyes still blind, I spoke the words I’d promised myself to never say. “Erase this pain from my mind and heart. Grant me this and I’ll be whatever you need. If you do this, I’ll never try again. If I should break this vow, my life is forfeit.”

The world under me shifted and trembled in answer.

I slid the necklace’s chain over my head. “Find the peace I could never give you, daughter. I’ll seek you in the Void.”

As soon as the last echo of my words disappeared under the heat of the afternoon suns, my mind went black.