'Venator,' he said, sweeping down toward her. 'Come now… relax… I shan't hurt you.'
'No!' she grunted, slamming the stake upward with all of her might.
She stopped him, impaled his body on the wooden pike, but he did not disintegrate. His movements slowed… but he did not die. With a scream of horror and desperation, she used the stake and her hand to shove him away. The stake came free, and she bolted to her feet.
She needed another weapon. The pistol in her pocket… she pulled it out, aimed it at the creature, and squeezed the trigger. The explosion kicked the gun in her hand, and the bullet slammed into the chest of her attacker.
The focused part of her was not surprised when he barely paused… drew himself to his feet, and came at her again.
Victoria launched herself backward over the sofa, frantically looking for something that could be used as a weapon… but what?
He was so fast, so strong… she had no chance.
He was after her, on top of her, and they rolled on the floor, slamming into furniture. The sharp-edged silver tray of brandy and sherry clattered to the rug, spilling the sharp-scented liquors.
Through the fog of panic and shock, Victoria's mind scrambled through a warren of possibilities, of the need to survive, of the anger at being taken by surprise. She felt the heavy tray behind her, and closed her fingers around its sharp edge. Not certain she knew what she was doing, Victoria pulled it up and over her head, slamming it down onto the skull of the man bending toward her.
He staggered, losing his footing, and she shot to her feet, still clutching the tray. Grabbing the sofa, he propelled himself around toward her, his eyes back to burning red, his mouth grim. Victoria said a prayer and swung the tray in a mighty blow, into and through his neck, severing the head in one powerful, ragged stroke.
His eyes rolled back and his head lopped to the floor, and Victoria braced herself, waiting, trembling, panting as though she'd fought ten vampires.
As she watched, the face changed… it shrank and deflated, turning leathery brown with sunken eyes and shriveled lips, and metamorphosed into ribbony black… then sank into the floor and disappeared.
Chapter 2
'It had to have been some sort of demon,' Victoria said when she finished describing her experience. It was early the morning after she had visited the Silver Chalice, and she had slipped out of St. Heath's Row long before most of the ton would have been stirring. 'Even though I've never met one before, and there haven't been any in England for centuries, it couldn't be a vampire. I couldn't kill him with a stake. And he changed appearance.'
Aunt Eustacia, whose glittering eyes had grown worried during the telling of the tale, nodded. 'A stake to the heart will always kill a vampire,
Her blue-black hair, still without a trace of gray in its coiled coiffure, gleamed and rippled like ink. Even her face, more than eight decades old, bore little sign of her age… but her hands—the ones that held the small metal amulet Victoria had given her—twisted old and gnarled, with arthritic joints that made it difficult for her to grasp a stake.
'I stabbed him two times,' Victoria continued. Her heartbeat still hastened when she remembered those moments of panic. Unlike the time in the alley of The Dials, where it had been all too easy to nearly kill a man, this had been a nightmare in which she couldn't kill a vampire. 'Two times, full in the chest… it slowed him, but when I removed the stake it was as if nothing had happened.'
'You say he was with a vampire? That is peculiar. Demons will never coexist with vampires if they can help it. They are as much enemies as we are.'
'I don't see why they wouldn't, for both races do the bidding of Lucifer.'
Aunt Eustacia nodded. 'One would think. But we are fortunate that they are too jealous of the other to do so. Both races vie so mightily for the partiality of Lucifer that they would never wish to allow the other to attain any great favor from him.'
When one considered it, it made sense, in a warped sort of way, Victoria thought. The demons had been heavenly, angels before turning to follow Lucifer, long before human history began.
In comparison, vampires were relatively young. Judas of Iscariot, the infamous betrayer of Jesus Christ, had been the first of these immortal undead. Unable to believe that he would be forgiven after turning his friend over to his enemies, Judas had committed suicide and chosen immortality, aligning himself with Lucifer, who in turn gifted him by making him father of the vampires, a new breed of demons. In a horrible irony, the devil had taken the words of Jesus—'This is my blood, take and drink of it'—and deemed that Judas and his vampires would be required to do just that in order to survive.
It was no wonder those two races of creatures were rivals for the powers of Hell. One had been with Lucifer for an eternity; the other had been created by him, wooed from the side of Jesus Christ by thirty pieces of silver and the promise of protection from the wrath of God. Apparently these detestable beings were no different from their human counterparts in their zest for power and recognition.
'Victoria?' Aunt Eustacia looked at her as though a new thought had placed itself forefront in her mind. 'I must ask you—and think on it before you answer—after you had killed the vampire, did you sense the presence of another one? Was the back of your neck cool? Do you recall?'
Victoria stilled and took herself back, reviewed the conversation she'd had with him and tried to remember… had her neck been cold? At last she had to shake her head. 'No… it wasn't like I was sensing a vampire, but there was something. I smelled something… odd. Off. Strange, but I cannot say it was as discernible a sensation as when I am near a vampire.'
Aunt Eustacia smiled. 'Well, that is quite interesting. Most Venators cannot sense the presence of a demon like they can a vampire; in fact, most cannot sense the presence at all. If you felt something, anything, that is unusual for a Venator.' Her smile faded. 'I shall contact Wayren and show her this. Perhaps she will have an idea what would bring a vampire and demon together.' Aunt Eustacia looked down at the bronze disk Victoria had found where the creature's body had sunk into the floor. 'Whatever it is, it cannot bode well.'
The disk was perhaps the size of a large man's thumbnail, stamped or engraved with a sinuous doglike animal. Although she couldn't be sure it had come from the creature she'd decapitated, Victoria's instinct told her that it was important. When she'd touched it to pick it up, an uneasy sensation skittered along her arms, flowing over the back of her shoulders so that she'd whipped around as though someone had come up behind her. Or
'Where is Wayren?' Victoria asked, wondering about the serene, yet mysterious woman Eustacia often consulted when research needed to be done. Her attention darted to the small bookcase of aging, fraying manuscripts. They looked like something Wayren would have loaned to Aunt Eustacia—old, important, sacred. Perhaps they were part of Wayren's library, which she managed and studied… somewhere. Victoria had never learned exactly where Wayren lived.
Her aunt placed the amulet on the mahogany piecrust table next to her favorite chair. 'She was with Max, in Roma, but she will come if I send for her. She was helping him with a problem.'
'Max has a problem?' The sarcastic words slipped out before Victoria could catch them. 'I would never have guessed it. In truth, I'm flabbergasted to hear that all things are not splendid in his world. So how does Max fare, back in your homeland?'
'He has not been in contact for several months.' Her aunt kept her eyes downcast; perhaps she didn't wish Victoria to see the expression therein. 'Victoria, I realize it seemed rather callous that Max returned to Italy so immediately after the events last year with Lilith… and what followed, but he had been called back by the Consilium—the council of Venators—weeks earlier, and had chosen to stay until we could stop the threat of Lilith here in London.'
