“Believe what you must, but she is mine now. See?”

He showed Sebastian his arm, a long lean one, bared by a rolled-up sleeve, corded with muscle and decorated with the damned copper band. A deep cut above the wrist, between it and the armband, still oozed dark, glistening blood.

“She drank willingly, greedily. She enjoyed it, Sebastian.”

“No…” He started toward the bed, and to his horror Beauregard didn’t try to stop him. That was the worst sign of all.

So then he knew.

“With her power and my blood, by Lucifer’s sword, she’ll be as powerful as Lilith.”

“Damn you.” Everything slowed again, but this time Sebastian was focused on his grandfather. The stake, the weapon he’d disdained for more than a decade, felt light and useless in his hand after the guns and swords he’d taken to using in hunting and fencing. But it was lethal, and he would use it.

By God, he would.

Beauregard stopped the blow, blocking Sebastian’s wrist with the flat of a sword that seemed to come from nowhere. “Sebastian, you are overwrought,” he said with a calm that burned Sebastian. “I’ll share; I promise you this. And now, with the page you obtained from the journal, we’ll have the power—”

With a grunt Sebastian reared toward him again, caught his grandfather by the neck in his long fingers instead of in the chest, as the older man had expected. With a shove, with power long dormant and a strength he’d forgotten he had, he slammed him back against a tapestried wall. The bed curtains next to them brushed their legs as Beauregard struggled, dropping his sword with a clatter, and trying to pull Sebastian’s hand from his throat.

“Damn you,” Sebastian said, readying his stake.

“You cannot do this,” Beauregard wheezed, his fingers still pulling at him. His sharp nails tore into the tender flesh on the back of Sebastian’s hands. “After all I’ve…done for you.”

“You took her from me.”

“She was pulling you from…me. I did it for both…of us.”

Sebastian tightened his fingers, ignoring the blood that was streaming down onto his wrist. He steadied the stake. One plunge and it would be done.

“I raised you…when no one else…would.” His eyes were no longer pink; his fangs had retracted.

“Because my father was taken by your lover!” Sebastian spat. “She mauled him, remember?”

“She was…jealous…of him.” Beauregard’s throat convulsed under his hand as he coughed. Sebastian wasn’t fooled. He couldn’t strangle a vampire; this would merely slow him down, cause him pain enough to hold him until he could stab the heart. “And he…like any Vioget…could not resist…a beau…tiful…woman.”

Sebastian became aware that the sounds of struggle behind him had ended. He glanced back and saw nothing but the signs of their battle. Brim was nowhere in sight.

They were alone.

“Don’t, Sebastian. Don’t do it.” Beauregard’s breaths were stronger now. His hand wrapped around Sebastian’s wrist instead of pulling at it, scratching at it. Gentle. Imploring. “You’ll regret it. You know it. You’ve lived with it for—”

“Stop.” Sebastian felt his fingers cutting into the flesh beneath them, tearing into his grandfather’s throat. He lifted the stake. “I do love you.”

The door burst open at that moment, and Pesaro charged in. His arms and shirt were streaked with blood, his face hardly recognizable in its intensity.

He didn’t hesitate but went straight to the bed, and Sebastian watched as he yanked back the blanket with a bravery he himself hadn’t had.

Victoria murmured, moved sinuously, and her eyes fluttered, then closed completely. The hair fell away from her face when Pesaro lifted her, her head falling back to show the bites and blood streaks on her throat and shoulders. Her lips curved in a sensual smile, and a quick trickle of blood spilled from the corner of her mouth.

“Christ Jesus,” Pesaro breathed. He lifted his face, and Sebastian was struck by the loathing there. The stark fury. The same madness he knew was on his own face, grinding in his own gut.

Everything else fell away, and Sebastian plunged his stake.

The soft poof resonated, the ashes scattered, and he heard the tinny clatter of the copper armband as it fell to his feet.

Twenty-three

In Which There Occurs a Bedside Vigil

“There’s nothing we can do.” Wayren looked around the room. The Consilium’s fountain rumbled behind her, all of its sparkling, blessed water of no help in this instance. “Do you not feel it? You can sense her, even here.”

She knew they recognized the presence of an undead—a destroyed one of their own, brought into the sacred and secret halls of the Consilium; she knew because of the stark hopelessness on Sebastian’s handsome face, the self-loathing and guilt that certainly churned inside him.And the murmurs and exchanged glances of Michalas and Brim, who, though injured and knocked unconscious during their battle with the undead, still stood strong at the back of the room.

And Max, whose face was devoid of expression. Who couldn’t sense it any longer himself, but who knew. Who kept in the dark alcove as if he would separate himself from them all.

Perhaps it was best if he did, now that Victoria was gone.

“I’ll wait with her until she awakens. Ylito, too. The rest of you”—Wayren glanced at Sebastian, and then Max—“can do as you wish. It won’t be sundown for hours.”

She turned from them, from the dark, hopeless faces and the simmering undercurrent of rage. She hoped, prayed that it wouldn’t be directed at Sebastian—for as much as Max wanted to place the blame there, and as much as Sebastian himself did, Wayren knew it was not that simple.

Sighing, she passed by the portrait gallery. There would be the need for more paintings, for Zavier would expire soon. And Stanislaus’s had not yet been completed. And Victoria…

Footfalls drew her attention, and she turned to see Sebastian in her wake. “I want to be there when she wakes,” he said. Gone was the charm, the light, flirtatious manner. There was deep sorrow and angry regret, but determination as well.

He would be a good Venator. His time had come at last.

“Do you intend to fully join us now?” she asked, making way for him to walk abreast with her.

“I have no reason not to. If I had…I’ve been foolish and irresponsible.”

He had been, but she understood, as she was wont to do. He, as Max had done, would find his place here, and learn to grow beyond his faults and mistakes.

“You dispatched your grandfather. Don’t think I don’t know how difficult that was for you. You will grieve.”

Sebastian looked at her, his face set and haggard. Despite the weariness and pain there, he reminded her, as he always did, of the great Uriel—but with an extraordinary sensuality she didn’t think Uriel would appreciate. “Is there truly no hope? Nothing that can be done?” he asked.

“There’s nothing.” Max’s voice was flat and sharp behind them, startling Wayren. “She drank from him.”

She paused so that Max could join them, then replied, “He drained much of her blood—she was very weak, and by drinking from him she replaced hers with his. She’ll awaken and be an undead.”

“Then why not stake her now and relieve us of the waiting?”

“Because you must see her as she’s become so that you can say your farewells,” she told Sebastian. “And know that it is so, and irreversible.”

They had reached the room where Victoria lay. No one had been allowed in since Max burst into the Consilium carrying her unconscious, blood-streaked body. He’d then relinquished it to Ylito and Ilias.

The chamber was small, too small for five people, but Wayren knew it was futile to try to keep Max and Sebastian out. Victoria had been bathed and dressed as though she were a corpse, ready for burial. Her dark hair lay in a thick braid over her breast, and the crisp white lawn of her simple gown served only to show how pale she was. A blue-veined hand rested on her stomach, and another prominent vein lined her face from temple to jaw.

When they came in, Ylito looked up from his examination of Victoria and met Wayren’s eyes.

“She needs more blood,” he said quietly. “I don’t know that it will do any good, but Hannever wishes to try.”

“Will she drink?” Max asked, a flash of metal in his hand. He had a knife at his wrist and would have sliced into it before Wayren grabbed his arm. She sensed a viciousness, a recklessness there that boded no good.

“Wait. It must be Gardella blood,” Ylito said.

Sebastian was already rolling up his sleeve to bare a muscular arm. “Give me the knife, Pesaro.”

Max turned away and went to stand against the wall, watching. His arms hung at his sides, his shoulder against the wall in a deceptively casual stance. His face was expressionless.

The tension in the room was heavy and solid, and even Wayren, who usually wasn’t affected by such energy, felt stifled and on edge.

Hannever came in the door at that moment. “Blood. Now.” He was carrying a tray with a stack of cups on it, two small vials, and other accoutrements, and he put it down on a table. Next to the stake that lay there.

Without another word he moved to Victoria and made a small cut on her arm, squeezing a drop of the dark blood into a small bowl. The room was still and silent and tight, nearly choking in its intensity.

Anger, guilt, terror, madness…all simmered and swelled.

When Hannever turned away from Victoria, Sebastian offered his arm, and Hannever made a small incision, forcing the blood into one of the bowls. Drip, drip, drip…The sound was like little explosions in the tiny room.

“What good will it do?” Max’s voice was sudden and harsh.

“No good, I think. But she needs it. We must try,” Hannever said, busy with one of the vials. He put a tiny drop of a liquid into Sebastian’s blood and used a slender reed to stir. “No. Not this.”