With Eli’s hand on my elbow, I made my way to the Duprés’ study. Phin and Luc had waited. Eli reached around me, caught my gaze and held it, then turned the antique cut-glass knob and pushed open the door. I walked through a mixture of jasmine and the scent of a sweet cigar kicked up by a whirling ceiling fan as I entered the room. In the next second, a breeze grazed my cheek; Phin and Luc were across the room. I hadn’t even seen them move. My gaze lit on Eli’s parents, seated at a large mahogany desk near the window. Elise studied something on the computer’s flat-screen monitor. Gilles leaned over her shoulder, obviously interested.
“Take the bid up to twenty-five pounds, love,” Gilles said to Elise.
“Ah, and then we’ll wait and snipe,” Elise said, typing in her request. Gilles looked up and smiled at me. “On eBay. I’ve a penchant for antique pocket watches.”
“Papa,” Eli said, his slight French accent catching my attention. “Riley has . . . an issue. We need your counsel.”
Gilles rose and walked to me, stopping no more than a few feet away. His profound stare struck me. “What is the matter,
I glanced at Eli, and he nodded. I continued. “It’s as if . . . I’m him. The killer. And it’s not Victorian Arcos. It’s another male, and I’m seeing through his eyes. I can feel him. He attacks and feeds, but I can’t stop what he does.” I shook my head. “I try, but I can’t speak, move, or control his actions. It’s as if I’m . . . behind his eyelids.” I looked at Eli’s dad. “I recognized the last victim by her tattoo. It was my work.”
Gilles stroked his smoothly shaven chin; clear blue eyes the same shocking color as Eli’s regarded me. “You’ve a vampire’s venom inside you, Riley,” he said. “Yet you say it is not Victorian.” His gaze, curious, sought mine. “How do you know?”
It wasn’t that Gilles frightened me; he didn’t. I trusted him, just as I did Eli. But whenever I was around him, the feeling that I’d snuck and done something wrong and had just been busted overcame me. I’d been caught with Mary Jane stuffed in my locker in eighth grade once, and the school security guard had walked right up and caught me stuffing the plastic baggy in my backpack. He’d dragged me to the principal’s office, and it was that feeling. Gilles Dupré was an extremely profound soul.
Gilles smiled, clearly amused. He truly loved to read my thoughts. “Again,
“I ripped Valerian’s heart out myself,” Eli said quietly.
“I helped Phin burn the rest of his body,” said Luc. “No way can it be him.”
“That leaves Victorian,” said Phin. He moved to stand next to me, folding his arms over his chest. “You have only the venom of the Arcoses. Like Papa said, there can be no other.”
I shook my head and looked first at Phin, then at Gilles. “I’ve seen his hand—it’s . . . rougher in texture, older skin, leathery. Definitely not Victorian’s young pale skin.”
Gilles glanced at Elise, then directly at Eli. “This concerns me, then. My only other guess is that another is projecting himself into you.” He regarded me closely. “You’ve obviously captured another’s attention.”
“Pissed them off is probably more accurate,” said Luc, and he looked at me. With a flip of his head, his shaggy dark blond hair swept out of his eyes. “Could’ve been any of the newlings,” he said. “Or possibly someone they’ve since turned.”
I closed my eyes, grasped the bridge of my nose, and swore in Romanian under my breath. “So what am I supposed to do? Watch innocent people die? Deal?” It’s what I’d done my whole damn life, right? Why stop now?
The room fell silent for all of five seconds; everyone stared at me. I figured the whole Dupré family had read my inner rant. At this point, I didn’t care anymore. Let’em read.
“We find him,” Eli said, that deadly edge back in his voice, his hand going protectively to the small of my back. I shivered. “And we kill him.”
Part Four
Mindless
“Everyone knows the phenomenon of trying to hold your breath underwater—how at first it’s all right and you can handle it, and then as it gets closer and closer to the time you must breathe, how urgent the need becomes, the lust and hunger to breathe. And then the panic sets in when you begin to think that you won’t be able to breathe—and finally, when you take in air and the anxiety subsides ... that’s what it’s like to be a vampire and need blood.”
“I gotta tell ya—I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty tough Betty. A badass in my own right and proud of it. I’m not afraid of much, and if I am scared, I damn sure won’t announce it—to anyone. Unfortunately, my boyfriend and his entire family take privileges inside my private thoughts and know with certainty what scares me, what turns me on—and what pisses me off. All three of those emotions exist in heavy, intoxicating doses where this mystery bloodsucker is concerned, and the biggest fear I have is not that we won’t be able to stop him, but what it’s doing to Eli. He has become crazy-insane about what it’s doing to me. Heads are gonna roll—and I mean that literally.”
I thought I’d done a pretty fab job of holding it together after the terrors began. I mean, damn—I’d always fallen out in the throes of the terrors in front of someone, surrounded by, well, everyone. Yeah, they bothered me. Yeah, they were awful. And fuck-yeah, I wanted them to stop. The thing is I don’t sleep as much as I used to. Tendencies, you see. So that means my waking hours, when the terrors hit? There’re more of them—more opportunities for me to experience them. They do weird things to a mortal body, those terrors. I’m starting to feel different in a way I can’t explain. Just . . . not myself. And when I do sleep, I fall hard, as in coma-sleep. Eli is usually right there. Snooping in my brain.
He’s been on a wicked-dark edge lately that part of me totally digs, and yet part of me totally worries about. I could feel the tension in him; Eli isn’t known for his patience. I mean talk about a friggin’ stick of vampiric dynamite. So unlike his brothers who I know have the same frightening power; they just . . . contain it. Luc was so easygoing and laid-back, and Phin? I guess he was pretty much the same way. They had a good grip on their anger, their power. Eli? Ka-pow! All week at the shop, I felt his anger building. He’d done pretty well keeping it contained, but every once in a while, I’d see it; he’d extinguish it quickly. Today, though, he’d had enough. He’d parked his agitated ass right in the waiting area at Inksomnia and glared half the day while pretending to thumb through the tat design albums. Flip a page, glare. Flip a page, glare. Every freaking time I looked over at him. Glaring. At me. WTF? Nyx even noticed, but she thought we were just having a lover’s spat and left it alone. Today was Saturday, and she’d taken my last two clients so I could cut out early enough to get ready for the formal dinner at his parents’. I hurried upstairs. He followed. I felt his negative energy building, growing, festering, like some big, freakish reverse orgasm. The moment we stepped into the apartment, I shot a puzzled Seth a glance and stormed into my bedroom. I walked to the window and rounded on Eli. Ooh. I was fuming.
“What is wrong with you?” I asked angrily. “Jesus, Eli,” I said for lack of a better choice of words. “All week long, something’s been eating at you. What is up?”
Eli’s stare bore into me, his brows furrowed. “Nothing.”
I blinked. Did he really just say nothing? “You’re freaking kidding me, right? You know—never mind.” No way would I be able to force Eligius Dupré into telling me anything he didn’t want to tell me. Stubbornheaded vampire. I stepped toward him, nearly nose to nose. “Whatever it is that has you so pissed off, deal.” I poked his
