turned on a couple of tabletop lamps. “There’s no room service, but the sheets are clean.”
Talia stepped inside, her breath catching as she took in the room. “It’s beautiful.”
Joe’s face lit up with the first real smile she’d seen from him. Not charm, but genuine pride. “I’m glad you like it. I’m going slowly so I get everything right.”
There was a small sitting room separated from the bedroom by an ornate plasterwork archway. There wasn’t much furniture in the sitting room, just a couch and chair, so she could see the deep green wallpaper and paler green wainscoting below. The floor was covered by an area rug that left a border of oak marquetry visible around the edge of the room. A small fireplace was set into one wall.
Talia walked under the arch into the sleeping area. The half-tester bed looked original, as did the mahogany dressing table and chest of drawers. The forest green color scheme carried on through here and into the beautifully appointed three-piece bath. Joe had managed to find the right balance between Victorian ornament and a simpler modern aesthetic.
Or had someone given him decorating advice? She turned to ask, but found she was alone. Whatever Joe’s mysteries were, they would remain a secret for tonight.
Friday, December 31, 1:15 a.m.
Empire Hotel
A strange bed, however lovely, didn’t make for happy dreams. At least not on top of magic, and hidden tunnels, and the nightmare prospect of freezing into a coma and being chewed by rats.
Sure, Joe’s drinks and a hot bath had warmed Talia back to her normal self, but they’d also made her sleepy. She’d laid down for a midnight nap, safe in the luxurious emerald oasis hidden in the derelict hotel. Safe, or as safe as Fairview got.
Except from her memories.
Belenos, King of the East, had stood beside the stone table where she was stretched out, her arms folded across her chest like the effigy on a sarcophagus. Later, she’d find out she’d been like that for days, losing her humanity little by little as Belenos fed on her, then fed her, and finally stole her life. Those memories he’d ripped from her mind. Turning a victim was a trade secret held only by vampire royalty. It wouldn’t do to let the minions make their own toys.
The last thing she’d remembered was falling on the muddy soccer pitch behind the high school. There had been five Hunters—Talia, her father and brother, Uncle Yuri, and Tom. She’d just told Tom she wouldn’t marry him, so when she’d taken the bullet to the back, he’d barely cast a glance over his shoulder as he ran with the others. They’d left her there, fleeing before the mob of vampires that had risen out of the grass like a flock of nightmare crows. From where she’d lain in the grass, crippled and helpless, Talia had watched the Undead levitate into the clear, moonlit sky.
If they’d wanted all the Hunters dead, they could have had their wish, but this was vengeance. This was Belenos’s piece of theater: a death for a death, but with a twist.
Her father had killed Belenos’s second-in-command. Turning the great Hunter Mikhail Rostov’s daughter into the very thing he hunted was the vampire king’s idea of an artistic punishment. In short, the Hunter struck, the vampire struck back, and Talia paid the price.
When her eyes had opened on her Unlife, they hadn’t focused all at once. Belenos had been dressed in a white suit, his long red hair like a cape of flame. She’d had a sudden, crazy idea he was an angel before her vision had cleared and his Nordic features had emerged from the haze. She’d guessed what had happened in a microsecond. She was dead, not stupid.
He’d bent over her, grasping her chin to keep her face turned to his. “Congratulations, my duck. You survived.”
His touch had jolted her fully awake. She’d tried to sit up, but he pressed a hand to her chest, keeping her pinned to the cold stone. “Not so fast.”
Talia’s body had raged at the confinement. She felt enormously strong. Belenos’s blood was potent, and she was bursting with its power. She was terrified. Horrified. Revolted, and yet when she gazed on her maker’s face, she vibrated with a reverent lust.
She was his slave, and they both knew it.
She folded her hands over his, stroking the long, strong fingers. At that moment, he was her universe, and she ached to obey in the same moment she longed to rip into his veins and drink what she needed: more of the powerful, amazing blood that had Turned her into a dark goddess.
“There is something you must do for me,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Drink.”
She clutched his hand, ready to raise his wrist to her mouth, but he pulled away and gave her a paternal smile. “No, it’s time for you to take your first steps. To learn to hunt for yourself.” He said the word with all the irony it deserved. Imagine teaching a Hunter to hunt for blood, ha-ha.
She rose to follow him, her limbs as unruly as a newborn colt’s. Then she smelled the most delicious scent, sweet, fresh, and human. Hunger hit her like the blast of heat from a kiln.
“There you are, my child,” said Belenos, taking her by the hand and leading her a little way. They seemed to be in an underground crypt. More of her sire’s overblown sense of drama.
Tom was chained to a heavy iron ring in the wall, a metal dog collar around his neck. He was naked, his shaggy blond head matted with blood. Obviously cold, he huddled close to the floor.
A pitiful thing, said a new, dreadful voice in her mind. You never loved him. You thought he was weak, your father’s puppet. You knew he couldn’t protect your happiness—and you were right. He ran away when he should have saved you. Go ahead, make a meal of him. At least it’ll be fast. Faster than the slow death of spreading your legs for a man who is half the warrior you are.
That voice terrified Talia, even though it had a point. It was vile, and it was part of her. It was the voice of a real hunter, not humans with visions of species purity and moral stick-up-the-assedness. Belenos had given her more than just fangs. He’d turned her into a killer. Part of her wanted to dance, paint herself with that rich life- blood, and shriek with the sheer ferocity of what she had become.
Tom must have seen it in her face. His eyes went round, the whites showing as terror and revulsion twisted his face. “Oh, God, Talia, you’re one of them!”
You could have turned back to help me. Instead, you ran.
But what arrowed into her heart was his disgust. She had become the Vile Thing. Worse, he smelled good, like a chilled orange when her body raged with fever. Quenching. Succulent. The object of a desperate craving.
This isn’t me.
But it was. Her body raged with the urgency. A new, unfamiliar aching in her jaw told her there was venom waiting to render her meal cooperative, to give him a lustful bliss more potent than any wedding night.
“I brought him just for you,” said Belenos.
She looked up at her sire, and realized she loathed him: every pore, every cell, every hair of his fox-red mane. Her feelings had turned on a dime after that look on Tom’s face. Shaking, her voice came out barely more than a whisper. “I don’t want to play your games.”
“Ah, but my games are all you have left,” he said, his voice sinuous with anticipation. “You’re just a pitiful dead thing.”
With one hand, he hauled Tom to his feet, with the other tilted the man’s head to the side. Chains swayed and scraped against the stone, a sound like the gates of Hell dragging open to swallow Talia whole.
Belenos bit down, sinking enormous fangs into Tom’s neck. Tom screamed, a pitiful wail of despair. Talia’s insides jerked, responding to the cry of prey. Her teeth suddenly felt enormous in her mouth.
Blood sprayed all over the king’s white suit as he tore out Tom’s throat. He looked up, his face a mask of gore. “Are you going to join me? I’ve got your brother for dessert.”
She couldn’t remember what happened next. The reel of memory stopped short, as if it had been sheared
