“What does he have of mine?” Victoria asked as she turned back, just in time to see Lady Nilly slip silently to the floor.
She was at her side in an instant, feeling the older woman’s neck on the unwounded side. Her heart was still thumping, and the odd, tense smile had faded from her lips. Reaching up onto her dressing table, Victoria fumbled for a little vial of smelling salts and pressed them under Lady Nilly’s nose.
Almost immediately the woman stirred, coughed, and twisted her face away. Her eyes fluttered open. To Victoria’s relief they were clear, and she seemed surprised to see Victoria.
“What are you doing?” she asked, pushing herself into a seated position.
“Are you feeling well?” Victoria asked, helping her to her feet.
“I’m quite all right. I don’t know how I…” Lady Nilly looked around in bewilderment.
“Let me help you back to bed.” Victoria did, and as they moved at a snail’s pace down the hallway, she realized what Beauregard had that belonged to her.
The answer was not something she wanted to contemplate, but it was more than possible. It was likely.
After all, she’d dropped the necklace near the Door of Alchemy, and Lady Nilly had been near the door when she was bitten.
But that meant that Beauregard had been there when she was fighting the other vampires near the front of the villa.
And he’d left.
By the time she helped Nilly back into bed, she saw the faint tinge of gray in the east. The sun would be up in less than three hours, perhaps sooner. Beauregard had the necklace, so there was no need to go haring about the city tonight.
Tomorrow, in the daylight, she’d take the copper armband to Wayren and Max and see what they thought. If copper rings were important to Lilith’s Guardians, what would an armband mean?
She didn’t consider showing it to Sebastian, Victoria realized as she began to drop off to sleep, clothed only in her shift and with cold, bare toes. She’d shown and shared so much more with Sebastian…yet she wouldn’t seek him out for help in relation to Beauregard.
Suddenly she was wide-awake again, staring out her window at the dark gray night.
Sebastian loved Beauregard. Last autumn he’d asked her if, knowing how he felt about his grandfather, she’d kill him in front of Sebastian. Victoria hadn’t known the answer then…and she didn’t know it now.
She knew that Beauregard was malevolent and selfish…but some of Sebastian’s arguments had crept into her mind and sat there, mocking her. He couldn’t bear to know that his grandfather, whom he’d learned was a vampire only once he’d grown to adulthood, would be damned to Hell for eternity with the well-placed strike of a stake.
Would Victoria hesitate to place that stake because of her feelings for Sebastian?
Her fingers had grown cold. Her feelings for Sebastian were nebulous and wispy, and she dared not contemplate them now…perhaps ever. But surely, surely…they weren’t strong enough to keep her from doing her duty, should the moment arise?
Of course not.
Beauregard was an undead. He deserved to die, or at least to be turned into dust and sent to wherever he must live out eternity. It was Victoria’s responsibility to rid the world of vampires whenever she had the opportunity.
Nothing would keep her from her task. Not even the golden angel named Sebastian.
Victoria must have dropped off to sleep at some point in the labyrinth of her thoughts and debates, for she dreamed of things: slow, sensual, curling, arousing things…dark, strong, metallic, angry things…loud, putrid, frightening things.
She woke, not because of the dreams, she realized belatedly, but because Verbena stood over her bed. Her hands were on her shoulders, as if she’d been shaking her.
“My lady. My lady, you must awaken.”
Victoria sat up abruptly, the last vestiges of the nightmares dissolving and clarity resuming in her mind. “What is it?”
Verbena handed her a small paper. It was tiny and rolled, as if it had come from the tiny container on a bird’s leg. A quick glance at the window told Victoria that Myza wasn’t there, waiting to bring a response back to Wayren. It was daylight, well past sunrise.
She unrolled the paper, her mouth dry.
She didn’t wait to change her damp, wrinkled clothes, just yanked on the man’s coat she’d worn the night before and left. It took Victoria less than thirty minutes to get to the Consilium. Oliver drove her in the carriage and let her off many blocks away, after ensuring that they hadn’t been followed.
Crossing herself as she dashed onto and then off the altar inside Santo Quirinus, she hurried through the secret door of the confessional, leaped lightly past the rigged middle step in the hidden hall, and ran down the revealed spiral staircase.
Ilias was waiting for her near the fountain. His face was grave, the lines next to his mouth deep and cutting. “Follow me.”
She hurried behind him down a stone-cut corridor through which she’d never had cause to go before. When he stopped in front of a door and gestured for her to precede him in, she did.
As she opened the door, Hannever looked up, gave her a brief nod, and moved his short, wiry body out of the chamber as if to leave her alone.
The room was small, but well lit and warm. A rug covered the floor; a bed lined one wall. Victoria’s chest felt tight as she walked in, toward the unmoving figure that lay under the blankets. Harsh breathing filled the room, as if it were the last gasps of life coming from the man on the bed. Indeed, when she stepped closer and saw his face, smelled the blood, she knew that was exactly what it was.
The last gasps of life.
A small cry escaped from the back of her throat, and she reached out to touch him: his straggly, half- braided red hair, the brawny arm that lay crossed over his barrel chest.
“Zavier,” she murmured. “What has befallen you?”
A quiet movement behind her told Victoria she was no longer alone; whether Wayren had already been in the room when she’d arrived or had just come in, she didn’t know. “’Tis desperate he is,” she said in her calm voice. “Ylito and Hannever have done all they can. We will know by tomorrow if he will stay with us.”
“Or if we will be hanging another portrait in the gallery.” Victoria’s voice cracked. Not another. Not so soon. She lifted her face to look at Wayren. “What happened?”
“He went after Sebastian. And Beauregard.”
Victoria’s stomach dropped like a stone. “No.” He wouldn’t have.
Oh, God, yes, he would. She hadn’t forgotten the look of betrayal on his face. The stunned hurt. The disbelief.
Was this another death that would be laid at her door?
Another that could have been prevented if she had made different choices?
Bloody hell, she’d done nothing wrong! She’d not brought Sebastian here. She’d not betrayed them.
“I do not know all that happened…. He was barely conscious when we found him. He said only the words ‘Vioget’ and ‘Beauregard’…the rest we have surmised. But”—she gestured to the patient—“as you can see, the evidence is there.”
Victoria looked again and saw that he’d shifted, revealing tears in his flesh, ribboning through his neck and down beyond the blankets. It wasn’t only fangs that had caused such destruction.
Whoever—or whatever—it was had meant to leave him near death…yet not dead.
Enough that he would be found. But unable to be saved.
The thought plunged Victoria into burning fury. She stood, barely keeping her fingers from shaking, and made herself move slowly and deliberately…because if she didn’t, she’d explode.
She bent, placing her hands over Zavier’s head, whispered a small prayer in his ear, a plea for him to forgive and to return…and then placed a gentle kiss on his cheek.
When she stood, Wayren’s gaze caught hers, and Victoria knew the other woman understood.
