As strong hands locked around his upper biceps, whipping him back to a halt, he stared at the scene before him. His vision dimmed at the edges as he gave a single, futile jerk to try to free himself. “No.”
His grandfather looked up casually from where he reclined on the large, pillow-strewn bed, stroking Victoria’s dark hair. It was long, and rich and thick, and it covered her bare shoulders, streaming over the lush red velvet bedding. Her skin was white, pale in the light cast from a roaring fire—a comfort for her, not for Beauregard—and her mouth was curved in a sensual smile. She looked at Sebastian from her position curled up with his grandfather. Her eyes were horribly bright and seemed deep in her skull.
“You’ve arrived rather more quickly than I anticipated.”
“Let her go.” Sebastian struggled again, but the two who held him were taller, bulkier, and much stronger than he. “Beauregard, let her go.”
Sebastian couldn’t take his eyes from Victoria, his heart slamming in his chest, his gut twisting painfully. Her lips were dark red and puffy, as if they’d been well kissed, and her gown…it sagged at her bodice, leaving no doubt what his grandfather had been doing, what he had planned.
Worst of all, her ivory skin seemed paler than usual, the hollow at the base of her throat darker and deeper. As she moved to kiss Beauregard her hair fell away, and he saw the streaks of blood on the side of her neck. Dark, but still glistening, still thick and rich.
He knew that there was still a chance, yes…he’d drained a good amount of her blood, but as long as she hadn’t drunk from Beauregard, Sebastian could save her.
His grandfather pulled away from the deep, thrusting kiss he’d been sharing with Victoria, a kiss that made Sebastian’s vision dim further and his struggles more desperate. He saw tongues slide and lips mesh, and it was horribly erotic and disturbing and shocking all at the same time.
Beauregard lifted his face, pulling away from Victoria’s lips with a loud smacking sound, and looked directly at Sebastian. She continued to kiss his chin and on down his neck, her small, powerful hands smoothing over the front of his chest in the same way she’d done to Sebastian himself only days ago. “You certainly may join us, if you promise to behave,” Beauregard told him.
Nausea flooded him, and Sebastian couldn’t speak for a moment. This couldn’t be happening. “Why?” he asked finally, his voice low and broken. “Why?”
“I could no longer chance your divided loyalties, Sebastian. Now there will be no question, will there?”
Sebastian just stared, the world falling away and leaving him standing on the edge of a precipice in a cold and angry wind. “Victoria!” he said, his eyes never leaving her as he kicked futilely at the undead who held him. If he could get her attention, pull her from the depths of the thrall…“Victoria, look at me!”
“Do you not fear. She’ll be just as accommodating now as she was before…yet she’ll never change. You’ll thank me in a few decades. If you’d listened to me—”
“No!”
Suddenly, as she moved and her other arm came into view, he saw the copper band biting into her wrist, and realized that was how she’d fallen. It had to be. She was too strong otherwise. “Victoria.” Desperation began to skim his nerves; his voice came out in an agonized whisper.
Her eyes were heavy-lidded and alluring, her dark lashes a thick fringe beneath brows and delicate lavender eyelids, her irises wide-pupiled. Her head tilted back as she smiled up at Beauregard again, reaching to brush her fingers over his jaw and chin in an overtly seductive manner so very unlike the proud, restrained Victoria he knew.
“Let her go,” Sebastian told Beauregard again, hating that there was an edge of pleading in his voice. His body trembled. “Release her.”
“I will not.” Beauregard’s eyes glowed more deeply, and Sebastian felt the edge of his thrall tickle over his shoulders. For the first time in a long while, he recognized the power of his grandfather, and the danger he represented.
“I’ve never asked you for anything. I’ve done what you’ve bidden; I’ve protected you. Now let her go.”
“It’s too late.” Beauregard reached out his long, narrow hand and smoothed his fingers over Victoria’s neck. Blood covered them when he pulled them away, bringing them to his mouth and gently tasting.
“She hasn’t fed from you. It’s not too late.” Sebastian’s neck was prickling and his head pounded. “Please.”
“But she will. She will feed from me. And then you’ll be happy, Sebastian, I promise. Trust me.” Beauregard looked at him. “I never could understand why you did what you did to Giulia, but—”
Sebastian managed to wrench his left arm free from Hugh’s grip, surprising both of the undead as he sent his fist plowing into the vampire’s face, and then twisted to pull free from the other.
But they were on him immediately, pummeling and kicking, fangs bared and eyes glowing, and Sebastian felt the room spinning as he sagged to the floor after a vicious punch in the abdomen.
“Get him out of here,” he heard Beauregard say. The voice was dim and far away, but Sebastian fought to bring himself back to the room, back to save Victoria.
But before he could, strong hands dragged him out of the chamber. And as the door closed behind them, the last thing he heard was a low, feminine laugh filled with pleasure.
Twenty-Two
“So you leave us once again,” Wayren said, looking shrewdly at Max.
He nodded, his hand on the doorknob of her library. He hadn’t said so, but Wayren was no fool. She understood him.
“Now that Akvan and his obelisk are no threat and you’re useless, you see no reason to remain. Such self- pity doesn’t become you, Max.”
“Self-pity? I bathed in that enough in the year after my father and sister died.” He turned the knob and heard the gentle click of the door’s latch releasing. “I have no illusions that Lilith will not be furious when she learns of my…defection…and she’ll soon be searching for me. My intent is merely to disappear for a while.”
“Again.”
He looked at her. “Again.”
“Without saying good-bye.”
“I see no need to belabor things.”
“Zavier is dying.”
“I know. I’m sorry for it, too. He is a good man.”
Wayren nodded. Then she looked at him again with those sharp, pale blue eyes. “Will you leave Victoria’s
Max’s hand tightened, but he didn’t allow it to rise to his chest and touch the amulet beneath his shirt. “She doesn’t need two.” He knew it was an equivocation, but it didn’t matter.
“She already wears two
“Then she doesn’t bloody well need three,” he snapped. He wanted to leave this blasted place before Victoria came back from wherever she was. Before he had to talk to anyone else. “Good-bye, Wayren. I will be in touch.
He closed the door behind him and hurried away before he saw anyone else, or before Wayren tried to stop him with another of her blasted cryptic comments or knowing looks. The hidden entrance near the library was closer and less noticeable. He wouldn’t have to walk through the fountain room and chance running into anyone.
Moments later he ascended the dark, narrow stairs that opened into a small cellar in an abandoned building blocks away from Santo Quirinus. As he stepped out of the rickety structure, he realized he might very well be doing so for the last time.
He ducked out of the small opening at the rear of the building and then moved silently through what passed as a courtyard, but was really no more than a gap five paces wide and filled with rubble and dirt. The sun had
