The Vampire Narcise

still, Narcise. I still have forever.”

So he wasn’t like Dimitri and Voss. She frowned, her heart lightening just that bit. “You are no longer Dracule…but you aren’t a mortal?”

He shook his head, his eyes steady. “I don’t know what I am…but I know that I’m my own man once again. And that I have an eternity to learn what this change means. I hope… Narcise, will you stay with me?”

“But I’m Dracule,” she replied. I can’t love you.

“It doesn’t matter, Narcise. I love you…and that will never change. I told you: it’s only you. It’s only ever been you.”

“He has to die,” Chas told Narcise sometime later. Much later, after she and Giordan had fully recovered in the privacy of the bedchamber. “That’s why I came: to slay Cezar. Then you’ll never have to worry about him again.”

She nodded, imagining a life without her brother’s dark shadow hovering over her. “But how can it be done? He’s protected himself so well. You can’t even put him on a guillotine.”

“There is a way,” Chas replied. His expression had been, and remained, emotionless—something that she’d come to notice since he’d rescued her from the feather cape.

When he thought she wasn’t looking at him, however, she felt his eyes on her: heavy, filled with heartache.

The next day, Narcise walked into the dining chamber to watch the execution. The servants and made vampirs who’d lived with Cezar had either been slain by Chas or run off now that their master was a prisoner. There was no one left but the three of them and her brother.

Cezar was manacled to the high-backed chair, his arms and legs chained in place. He was also fettered at the hips so his torso wouldn’t move, and a chain positioned his head and held it immobile against the back of the chair.

Narcise found the sight of her brother thus contained visually shocking—horrifying, really—and more than a bit unsettling to see a man who’d made her life so tormented now in such a crudely helpless condition.

As executioner, Chas had managed the preparations, and now he stood off to one side, sharpening a long wooden pike. It looked lethal and wicked, and Narcise shuddered in spite of herself. Giordan, who’d come in with her, had an understandably tense look on his face.

Soon, she would be rid of her brother and the threat he posed to her and the rest of the world. And then she could go on to live the rest of her life without fear.

“Narcise,” her brother said from his restricted posture.

This was the first she’d spoken to him since the events of yesterday.

She walked over to stand in front of him and found his blue-gray eyes steady and clear. They fastened on her, and she felt a wave of hatred and disgust for the man who’d taken so many years of her life away. Yes, he’d given her immortality—an unwelcome gift, after all—and he’d taken so much else from her: a normal life. A family. The natural cycle of living and loving and dying.

The man she’d loved…or tried to love…for more than ten years.

“Did you come to bid me farewell?” Cezar asked. “Or to taunt me? I must congratulate you, Narcise. You’ve beaten me at last.”

“I thought it only proper to bid you adieu,” she replied, aware that Chas was listening. “And to make certain the deed was done. I’m sorry that our reunion wasn’t as long as you’d hoped. But I’m not sorry that there will be no more children bled by you.” And that you won’t live to torture me any longer.

His face changed as he looked at her, and she saw a flicker of something in his eyes. Not fear, not anger… perhaps something like regret. “I have always only admired you, sister.”

“Admired and tried to control,” she reminded him. “Bartered off to the highest bidder or the strongest sword. Such admiration.”

“How else was I to keep you with me?” he asked. “You would have left the moment you had the chance. I wanted you with me. All the time. Forever.”

“You nearly achieved just that,” she said, her throat raw again. “What happened to you, my brother? How did you become like this? You used to be…sweet.”

For a moment, his facade crumbled, and she saw the real Cezar: a frightened, self-loathing, insecure man. “I couldn’t find who I was supposed to be,” he said. “I couldn’t accept who I was.”

But then the tortured expression was gone just as instantly as it had come, and he took on a haughty face and speared her with cold eyes. “I should have been you. I wanted to be you, Narcise. Always loved, always petted and worshipped…perfect in form and image. A woman of unbelievable exquisiteness.”

Her heart was pounding and Narcise realized that Giordan had come to stand with her, resting his hand at the base of her back. Comforting and supporting.

“You always had the men,” her brother continued. “They always loved you and wanted you…and I could understand why. I admired you…even loved you…but I wanted to be in your place.” Cezar’s attention flickered to Giordan, standing behind her. A flash of regret and admiration went through his gaze and his lips flattened in a humorless smile. “And then he came and I knew I’d lose you to him. And rightly so. You were,” he said to Giordan, allowing his eyes to glow a bit, “all that I’d hoped and imagined.”

Narcise felt Giordan’s faint shudder against her, and she eased back a bit so that she was closer to him and his hand pressed more firmly into her back.

What he’d gone through. For her.

The very thought, especially now, faced by Cezar and seeing the lust in his eyes even as he prepared to die, made her sick with regret and revulsion.

How could Giordan ever forgive her for misunderstanding? For doubting him?

“And so I’ll go to my death, envying you still, Narcise,” Cezar said in his lisping voice. “What an irony.” He closed his eyes.

Narcise turned away, her belly lurching. It was time.

Chas was there, watching silently. “I’m ready,” he said, flashing a look toward Cezar. “Let’s finish this.” He turned to walk away, then paused and came back. “You don’t have to watch, Narcise.”

“No,” she replied. “I’ll stay. I’ll see this done.”

Giordan, who couldn’t witness such a deed, squeezed her hand and, after one last searching look, left the chamber.

Chas brought a chair and positioned it behind Cezar’s seat. He climbed up on it, the long, lethal pike in his hand, and stood there for a moment.

“This,” he said as he raised the long stake vertically above Cezar’s head, “is for the children you slaughtered, and for the Jews you blamed for it. This is for Narcise, and the years of abuse in your household and for keeping her captive. And for tricking her into the covenant with Lucifer.”

The point hovered directly above Cezar’s dark head, and Narcise couldn’t take her eyes away from him. He sat, immobile, stony, unable to move, trussed and captured, helpless—just as she had been. He stared straight ahead, his lips curved in a faint smile. But fear glinted in his eyes.

Chas would have to slam the stake all the way down, through his skull, into the brain and mouth, down his throat, and into the chest cavity…then into his heart. Narcise closed her eyes. Her brother would be killed in an instant, put out of the misery of the life he hated.

He’d be gone, sent to Lucifer forever.

No more fear, no more violence….

“Goodbye, Cezar Moldavi.” Chas raised his arms, muscles tense and swollen, and just as he moved, Narcise screamed. “No!”

She flew across the room, launching herself at Chas, slamming into him and the chair just as he brought the stake down. They crashed to the stone floor in a rough heap, the pike clattering across the ground as a white-hot blaze engulfed her.

“What the hell are you doing?” Chas said, grasping Narcise’s shoulder as he pulled up into a sitting position.