Bleeding Dusk

She started toward the door and was out in the corridor, just entering the empty main chamber of the Consilium, before she heard Wayren behind her.

“Victoria.”

“I need to find Max,” she said, pausing near the fountain, realizing that of anyone, Wayren would know where he was. She fingered the copper bracelet in her pocket. “I’m going to find Beauregard and kill him. I want him to go with me.”

Victoria drew in a deep, calming breath, pushing away the fury and grief, reminding herself of Kritanu’s admonishments never to let her emotions carry her away. “I need Max. Do you know where he is?”

Wayren’s face did not change, but she reached out and gently grasped Victoria’s arm. “There’s something else you need to know.”

Victoria’s breath caught at the expression in her eyes. “What is it?”

“Sit down, Victoria.”

Nineteen Wherein Michalas’s Other Wish Is Granted

Sebastian heard voices just in time to slip into one of the empty rooms—at least, he hoped it was empty. It would be exceedingly difficult to explain why he was lurking in the catacombs of the Consilium, near the workshop of the dark-skinned man the Venators called a hermetist.

He wasn’t quite certain he could satisfactorily excuse his presence even to himself.

A little chill lifted the hair on his arm as he recognized Wayren’s voice. He didn’t want to be found, and he certainly didn’t want to be found by her. Before yesterday’s brief, unsatisfactory meeting, he hadn’t seen her for years…but he remembered that she had a way of looking at him, at anyone, that gave the impression she could see right into their deepest hearts.

Not that Sebastian was ashamed of what was in his deepest heart. No, if nothing else, he had a loyalty to those he loved. Perhaps one that was inconvenient, or too strong at times, but it was all he had.

That and his good looks, which he was, of course, never shy about using to get his way.

As soon as Wayren walked past—on her way out of the workshop, and quite fortuitously accompanied by the owner of said workshop—Sebastian made a speedy, silent beeline to the closed door.

Holding his breath, he tapped the door open slightly, listening in both directions.

Silence greeted him, so he pushed harder, making a large enough gap for him to ease through.

The papers should be here—it was the logical place, and if Wayren was anything, she was logical. The hermetist—Sebastian wished he could remember the man’s name—would be the one studying them, so it made sense.

The workshop was well organized: clean, neat, spare. A small pile of books rested on a slanted table, one of the tomes propped open with a curious metal object in the shape of an elongated S. Where were the journals from the villa’s laboratory? Was he wrong in his assumption?

Then…he saw something that had to be it.

Thick brown papers, shiny, and coated with the thinnest possible layer of protective wax, bound together by a thin leather cord like a book.

Sebastian smoothed his fingers over it, then flipped quickly through the papers. He needed only the one page. Just one page, and it would hardly be missed. Especially since it had been locked away for nearly two hundred and fifty years.

But it could make all the difference to him. And Beauregard.

Ahhh.

This must be it.

He paused, quickly perusing the page. There was a drawing of an odd-looking plant—a flower, really—with a swath of petals that grew up and curled out like the inverted skirt of a woman, and a massive, upright stamen. Amorphophallus pusillum, read the faint script under it. And then a list of other ingredients, or so it appeared. Yes, this was most definitely it.

Carefully he tore the page from its leather moorings, trying to keep the wax cover from cracking, and taking care to make it as unnoticeable as possible. No one would see that a page was missing. Then he returned the journal to its position.

Slipping out of the laboratory as quickly as he’d eased in, he began to hurry along the corridor. This was the trickiest part now, as he traveled back up to the area where he was more likely to come across Wayren or Ilias, or, God forbid, Victoria.

Once he thought he was caught, but he managed to duck into the dark corner of an intersecting corridor in time to keep from being seen. Good thing, too, for Victoria strode by in an angry swish—he could almost feel the fury blasting from her. Fury and something else.

But she didn’t see him, and she was gone in an instant.

With a relieved breath, he slid out of the darkness and followed her. For she was leaving the Consilium, and, now that he’d retrieved what he came for, so was he.

By the time Victoria reached the fresh air of the street above the Consilium, she was out of breath. Her throat was tight. The need to vomit lingered in her belly. But damned if she was going to shed tears again.

There’d been too many.

Her last conversation with Wayren, having begun with an air of desperation and determination, had ended with Victoria stunned speechless with disbelief and grief, and then great fury.

Max too?

She was filled with such blazing anger—at Beauregard, at Zavier, at Sebastian, and Max and even Wayren and Phillip and Aunt Eustacia—such blinding and numbing emotions that she blundered out onto the street several blocks from Santo Quirinus, exiting from the entrance on Tilhin that she’d used only once before. At first she didn’t know where she was.

Only when she tripped over a broken step in front of the empty building she was skirting did Victoria gather herself together. She stopped and hugged herself under the coat she wore, blending into the shadows between two buildings to lean against the plaster wall…and mentally she pulled her thoughts, her scattering emotions, and her wayward instincts into line. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes and asked for guidance.

It was a while before she opened them, and she forced herself to focus. These were not the actions of Illa Gardella, this shattering of concentration, of instinct. She was glad no one had been there to see these moments of insecurity and loss.

She already knew what she had to do. And she’d hoped, planned, for Max to come with her.

But Wayren had told her it was likely she’d not see him again.

She explained that his memory of her, of them, along with his Venator powers, were gone. He’d had to do it to free himself from Lilith, and he would slip into the rest of the world to live out the remainder of his life.

He hadn’t wanted to see her.

Perhaps that was the biggest blow of all.

Victoria didn’t understand why…and yet perhaps she did now, as she drew in long, steady breaths and focused her attention on the smattering of stars above her.

He was so proud. So arrogant and proud and confident that he didn’t want her, or anyone—she needn’t take it all on herself—he didn’t want anyone to see him weak or confused.

In spite of her anger with him and his high-handed ways, she understood, after a fashion. For if she had to give up part of herself in that way, she, too would be lost.

Being a Venator had become the largest part of her. Perhaps the only part.

Victoria felt her mouth twist bitterly as she remembered how blithely she’d attended balls and soirees, fending off suitors, flirting with Phillip, alternating her courtship with him and her nighttime adventures of staking vampires. Now being a Venator defined her. Almost wholly.

There was very little left of Victoria Gardella Grantworth, debutante miss, wife—and now widow—of the