He sat up, still exhausted. “Get me out of here.”
“I can’t do that.”
“The hell you can’t. I’ve seen what you can do, Wayren.” His head was splitting and pounding at the same time; it was a wonder he could form words.
She smiled, but there was a trace of sadness there. “You deserve happiness after so many years of darkness and self-recrimination.”
“I can’t.”
“You refuse to, Max. Let it all go and stop thinking about it. Stop denying yourself.”
“I won’t.”
“She loves you.”
“She loves Vioget.”
Wayren nodded briefly. “Yes, she does.”
Max closed his eyes. When he opened them, she was gone.
“Get me out of here!” he said to the empty room.
“You must do that on your own.” Wayren’s voice penetrated . . . from somewhere.
And then Max woke up.
Victoria opened her eyes.
Her first impression was of a warm room, filled with dancing red and orange lights. Smelling of roses. The back of her neck was unbearably frigid and the stone wall close to her nose was immediately recognizable to her. She was in the subterranean abbey Sebastian had shown her, lying in the exact place she’d found Briyani’s body.
“Ah, at last. Our guest awakens.”
Victoria realized she was lying crumpled on the ground, and, from the feel of the intense ache throughout her body, flung there like a sack of grain. Unfortunately, beyond the radiating aches, there was no uncomfortable, hard roundness under her hip or leg that would indicate the presence of her stake. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, focused . . . and pulled herself up on her hands, then her knees, and then proudly to her feet. The ache and lingering weakness ebbed into nothing, and she felt a surge of power when she concentrated on the vis bullae, groping for them through the special slit in her gown.
She hadn’t needed to concentrate on the power of the vis bulla for a long time, but now she was flooded with it.
As her mind started to work more sharply, her first thought was of James. Had he been part of the trap, or an unwitting accomplice?
She turned to face Lilith, who had been silent since her greeting.
The room looked much more comfortable than it had when she and Sebastian were there. Fires roared in massive saucers throughout the room, giving off the reddish glow and warmth Victoria had first noticed. There must be some kind of ventilation that allowed the smoke up and out, as in the Consilium. A rug lined the stones in the center of the room.
The vampire queen sat on the thronelike chair Sebastian had moved to find the Ring of Jubai. She looked no different from the last time Victoria had seen her—nearly two years ago, when Victoria had offered the Book of Antwartha as a bargaining chip to free Max.
Lilith was still horribly elegant, still skeletally slender with the whitest skin marked by an occasional blue vein. Her eyelids were onionskin thin, colored bluish-purple, and her lips the gray-blue of someone who cannot get warm. Five dark marks dotted the side of her face, creating the path of a half-moon’s curve.
But her hair and her eyes . . . they burned, in horrible contrast to the frigidity of her flesh. Brilliant copper, her curls fell about her like a glorious nimbus, and her eyes: Victoria glanced at them just long enough to see the sapphire blue ringed by red.
“I see that you’ve recovered from the accident of our last meeting,” she told Lilith coolly, wondering if the stake buried in her coiffure had been located and removed. She reached up to feel through the mass of curls there . . . and pulled out the slender stake. Aha. They’d missed that one.
The vampiress’s eyes narrowed, either at Victoria’s taunt or the sight of the stake. “My skin healed from the burn of sunlight . . . but even so, you’ll not walk away from me again.”
“You’ve gone to much trouble to bring me here. What do you want?” The stake, no more than the thickness of her thumb, was comforting in her hand.
Lilith forbore to answer. Instead, she merely watched Victoria from her negligent pose on the throne. Her body angled in the massive stone seat so that one elbow rested close on an armrest, and she positioned her wrist on the other arm. “So it is you.” She sounded contemplative, but Victoria knew better than to look closely at the vampire to confirm.
Instead, she scanned the room. Clearly, Lilith meant her no immediate harm—otherwise she would not have been left to awaken on her own—or, even, to awaken at all.
They weren’t alone in the room. Two Guardian vampires stood like stoic statues at the door through which Victoria and Sebastian had entered less than a week ago.
Lilith rose from her throne, the pale blue of her long gown whispering over her gaunt figure. “You are the one. I should have known it from the beginning. Who else could capture him?” She was talking as if to herself, but moving closer to Victoria. The smell of roses accompanied her movements, the cloying sweetness nothing like the delicate tea rose Lady Melly wore.
“It’s your vis bulla that he wears.”
Victoria forgot herself, and her gaze snapped to the undead queen’s. Malice burned in those blue-red eyes; she fairly saw flames leap and dart in there. She dragged her eyelids closed even as the vampire’s words rang in the room.
Max wore her vis bulla.
She heard the rustle of silk and forced her eyes open. This was not the time to think about it. . . . Lilith stood much too close. Victoria could see each hair of her slender brows and the tiny pores of her skin. She smelled roses as if her face was buried in them. And something . . . malevolent . . . tugged at her—pulled from the center of her torso, as if a rope had wrapped around her rib cage, drawing her closer.
Victoria let out the breath she’d been holding, and sidled the stake between them.
“How brave you are, Venator.” Lilith smiled. The expression was one of such depravity that it sent an ugly, chilling shiver down Victoria’s spine and shooting through her limbs. Her fingertips suddenly felt as though they’d been submerged in icy water for hours. “But in vain.”
Victoria’s heartbeat struggled, fighting to keep its own rhythm in the face of the vampire queen’s power. Her lungs felt heavy, clogged, paralytic . . . yet she stayed steady, forcing the breaths, focusing on the power radiating from the two holy silver crosses in her navel.
Lilith moved, and suddenly Victoria felt vises close around her arms, yanking them to the side. The Guardian vampires flanked her, one of them jerking her off balance as the other kicked her legs far apart so that she stood as if straddling a wide river, unable to raise a leg to lash out.
She still held the stake, though the grip of the Guardian on her left wrist threatened to squeeze it from her fingers.
Victoria looked defiantly at Lilith, careful not to be ensnared by that enthralling gaze, fighting deep within to remain the mistress of her breath and heartbeat. “Surely you jest. You, the queen of the vampires, cannot face me without assistance?”
Lilith stepped closer, her breath warm on Victoria’s face. She turned away, but the vampiress’s fingernails closed around her chin and forced her head back to face her. Victoria didn’t waste the energy trying to fight it. Her heart was pounding now, as though ready to leap from her skin . . . toward the sudden gleam of long white fangs.
“I prefer to feed in peace.” In a sudden, horrific movement, she reached up and yanked the top of Victoria’s head to the side, releasing her chin, and baring her throat. “We shall see what he thinks of you now.”
Victoria couldn’t move; she was held firmly from wrist to shoulder, and her ankles were spread apart and kept immobile by heavy boots planted next to them. Only her hips were unhampered; but she could do little but twist and turn—and even that was ineffectual against the strength of her undead captors.
Lilith moved closer, her breath hot on Victoria’s bare neck, where the vein lurched and throbbed, pulsing as though ready to surge free. Dimly, she felt her fingers loosen and the stake fall as she struggled minutely, desperately.
The slide of fangs into flesh is rarely painful. They cut so cleanly and smoothly that the incision is little more than a terrifyingly joyful release . . . the warm blood at last free from its confines, flowing into the waiting vessel.
Victoria was stupidly conscious of the warmth of Lilith’s upper lip and the chill of her lower one . . . of the way her tongue lapped against her flesh and the fangs bored deeply . . . the suction of cold and heat tugging deeply through her as Lilith drank, swallowing against her in an absurdly gentle manner.
And, suddenly, the vampire queen pulled away. She stepped back, staring at Victoria with wide eyes. All at once her guards dropped their hands, and she was free.
“So it’s true.”
Victoria lunged for her stake, forcing herself to ignore the warm trickle of blood leaking down her neck. From the corner of her eye, she saw the darkness staining her yellow gown as she surged upright.
She faced the vampiress, her fingers tight around the stake. “Is my blood too pure for your taste?”
The shocked look faded from Lilith’s face, to be replaced by one of unadulterated pleasure. “Oh no, not at all. It was my error . . . for I discounted the tales told me. I could not believe you could drink from Beauregard, and he from you, and the turning not take place.” Her eyes narrowed with malice. “But I have tasted the truth. You have vampire blood rushing through your veins, Victoria Gardella.”
She turned and walked back to her throne as casually as if she were entertaining a guest. “I meant to destroy you . . . but there’s no need. If I let nature take its course . . . not only will you become despicable to him, but you’ll become bound to me.”
“I’m no vampire.”
Lilith looked at her again, her full blue-gray lips curling into a smile. “I see it in your eyes. You know that I speak the truth. Already you feel it, don’t you? You’ve been fighting it, likely for months now. And it’s getting stronger.” She shook her head, the smile tickling her mouth like that of a coquette. “But how could it be?” she murmured, almost to herself.