‘Just one? You’re getting soft in your old age.’
She laughed and adjusted the cuffs of her high-necked dress. Katsumi’s ink bodysuit was widely known but rarely seen. ‘Is that what’s happened to you, my dear noble friend?’
‘We’ve never been friends. What’s the condition?’
She slunk closer. Her perfume had none of the sweetness of Chrysabelle’s. ‘I want you to fight for me again—’
‘No.’ Under no circumstances would he enter the Pits again. Yes. Fight, kill.
‘No one has to know.’ She lifted her hand toward his face, then obviously thought better of it. ‘You can wear a mask, if you like.’
‘A mask isn’t going to hide what I become.’ Monster, killer, murderer.
The light in her eyes brightened. ‘Then own it. Use it. You’ve had more human blood in the last few weeks than you’ve had in the past fifty years. You’re stronger than ever. You could win now, win your way back to a place where you can afford to buy whatever blood you need.’
‘You mean back to a place where you can profit off me again.’ Back in the day, Katsumi had made mountains of yen from Mal’s fights. So much that she’d shared some of her take with him. Just enough to buy blood from the butcher. Just enough to keep him in fighting shape. But with Fi inside him, keeping the beast from rising, he’d lost most fights. Which was fine. No one needed to see that part of him. Losing had done nothing to diminish the crowd’s desire to gawk at the marked anathema. ‘Not again. Not ever. Besides, I don’t need your money.’ There was plenty of that left over from the sale of the diamond Chrysabelle had given to Doc. Not that Mal had touched that money for anything yet. Or wanted to.
Greed soured her smile. ‘But there is something you need. What the comarré promised but didn’t deliver.’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘Dominic doesn’t keep many secrets from me.’ She cocked her head to one side like a hawk staring down a fat, dumb rabbit. ‘So would you fight for the chance to speak to the comarré historian? To finally find a way to end your curse?’
Ice burrowed into his spine and froze him in place. ‘You can’t offer that.’
‘Oh, Malkolm-san, but I can. Dominic knows how to access the one you seek. Fight for me and I will persuade him to show you the way.’
‘You can’t promise that.’ She lies, lies, lies …
‘I can and I do.’
‘You give your word?’ Katsumi’s word wasn’t worth squat, but a chance was a chance.
‘Yes.’
Fool. He hated himself. So what was new? ‘When?’
‘Tomorrow night at Seven.’
‘I’m not waiting in the holding cells.’ Never again.
‘And spoil the surprise of your presence? I wouldn’t dream of it.’ She blinked like she was shocked he’d even suggest it. ‘You’ll have a room of your own.’
He still didn’t trust her. ‘How do I know you won’t go back on your word?’
‘I’ve broken only one promise in my life.’ She held up the hand with the missing pinkie. ‘Once was enough.’
Chapter Two
‘You will not fail again.’ Lord Ivan paced across the hand-knotted Turkish carpet in Tatiana’s sitting room. ‘You cannot. I know how difficult the task before us may be, but the ancient ones care little for our troubles.’
‘I understand that, Lord Ivan.’ Tatiana rose from the velvet upholstered chair as she watched him. Ivan was her sire, the Dominus of her family and the last obstacle between her and the power she craved. The House of Tepes had done well under Ivan’s rule, but her plans would raise it to levels not known since Vlad Tepes himself had held the title. Before she could do that, she needed to be back in the graces of the ancient ones. That meant possessing the ring of sorrows at the very least. Pleasing the Castus Sanguis was a slippery, dangerous, painful slope, but she’d traversed it before and would do so again if need be. ‘I would also point out that I did succeed in breaking the covenant. Surely some credit must be given for that.’
He waved one heavily jeweled hand in the air. ‘Yes, of course, but without the ring’s power, we are vulnerable. We must be invincible. Unstoppable. No matter what the sacrifice, we must have the ring. The power it unleashes … ’ He shook his head and turned back the way he’d come. ‘The ancient one assures me it is great.’
‘Have I given any indication I am unwilling to sacrifice?’ She lifted her arm, causing the sleeve of her ivory silk blouse to fall back from her wrist and reveal the metal hand that had replaced her missing one.
He paused, his gaze darting to her new appendage. The gilded mantel clock ticked toward midnight. His mouth softened. ‘No, my pet, you have been perfect. As willing as I could have hoped for.’ He smiled. ‘As I knew from the start you would be.’ He drew to her side, pulled her against him, and kissed the hard, scabbed joining of metal and flesh. ‘Why else would I have given you the gift of navitas?’
Beneath her calm expression, she seethed. He may have given her navitas, the ritual in which a vampire was bitten by a different sire so they might take on that vampire’s lineage, but the pain from the process had been hers alone to bear. ‘One might say you offered it to me because I not only shared your ambitions, but because I also have the wherewithal to accomplish whatever might be necessary to realize those ambitions.’
Lines of irritation bracketed his mouth. His hands tightened painfully on her hips and he leaned in as silver tarnished his pupils. ‘Calling your sire weak is rash, even for you, gypsy.’
She hated that name and all it reminded her of, but she robbed him of that satisfaction and
