Sex, Lies, and Vampires

I stood in front of her, confused by the anger visible in her gray eyes as she lifted her face to me. 'My brother.'

I turned away, unwilling to believe her, but driven to defend his cruel action. 'Adrian has been—'

'Not Adrian,' she interrupted, her voice throbbing with anguish. 'Saer. He did this to me. He did this after I agreed to arrange a safe passage into the house for him. He marked me with the symbol of the power he's claimed after he promised to keep Damian safe.'

'Safe,' I snarled, whirling around to face her. My hands were clenched with the need to grab her and shake her as I'd done to Belinda, but I couldn't, not with the blood still fresh on the brand that marked her lovely cheek. 'Safe from what, his own father? Don't you understand that Adrian loves Damian? Don't you see that he's sacrificed everything to save the boy? Are you so blinded by prejudice that you can't get it through your head that Saer is the one who means Damian harm, not Adrian?'

She stood, slowly lifting a hand. Her fingers were clenched tight in a fist, unfurling stiffly to reveal a small white and gold object lying in her palm. 'I know that now. I am more sorry than I can ever express that I didn't recognize the truth.'

I looked from Asmodeus's ring to her tear-stained face, confused. 'Did Saer give you that to hold for him?'

'No.' Her eyes were filled with pain similar to what I'd so often seen in Adrian. 'Saer doesn't know I have it. Adrian gave it to me to give to you.'

'Adrian gave you the ring? Why—'

'They took him,' she said, shoving the ring at me. Of their own volition, my fingers plucked the ring from her palm, the familiar warm weight of it a comfort as it slid onto my thumb. 'Saer and Sebastian took Adrian. He tried to save me despite what I had done, but it was no use. Saer threatened to kill me outright if Adrian did not cooperate. Sebastian went after Christian, but Saer remained. He made Adrian watch as he marked me, and then he tied me here, leaving me to face death alone.'

'Death—' Belinda said. We both turned to look at the wall opposite. Melissande's chair was carefully placed so that as the sun rose in the morning, light from the unshuttered window would creep slowly across the tile floor until eventually it would consume her—but not before she had a few hours to anticipate her end.

'I don't understand,' I said, turning away from the window as I fought my own battle with a rising sense of panic. 'Why didn't Adrian use the ring against Saer?'

'He could not,' Melissande answered, her voice breaking as she slumped back into the wooden chair. 'Saer too has been bound to Asmodeus. The ring was useless to Adrian, but he knew that in the right hands—your hands—it could wield the power needed to free him. Please, Nell, please free my brother. Save Adrian. Don't let Saer destroy him.'

'Oh, don't worry, I won't,' I said, marching determinedly toward the stairs up to the main floor, pausing when I realized I had no idea where I was going. 'Uh—where exactly has Saer taken Adrian?'

'The British Museum. Adrian told Saer that the ring is hidden there. He did not admit it, but I know his intention is to summon Asmodeus before Saer can make the sacrifice. When Asmodeus finds out that Saer is trying to usurp him, Adrian will destroy them both.'

My shoulders slumped. Alice and her six impossible things had nothing on me. 'I really am going to have to have a talk with Adrian about his obsession with martyring himself. What sacrifice does Saer plan on making?'

'Damian,' she said, sliding a guilty glance toward Belinda. 'The only way Saer can gain power over Asmodeus without the ring is to offer the sacrifice of an innocent.'

Belinda stiffened.

'OK. So we just have to get there and put a cap on Saer before either Adrian can summon his demon master to wipe out everyone, or Sebastian finds Christian, whom he'll have to kill to get Damian, which means Allie will probably die too, thus making the death toll three even before he drags Damian in to be turned into a sacrificial offering. And I thought Americans were violent! Belinda?'

She stared at Melissande for a few moments, then shook her head. 'Saer is lost to me. I can't do any good if I go with you. He would only use me as a hostage, and I couldn't stand being the cause of any more of this horribleness.'

'You're not the cause of any of this,' I said, running back to give her a quick hug. 'You're the most innocent of all of us—you and Damian. You're just caught up in a war between siblings.'

I looked at Melissande, part of me wanting to blame her for Adrian's capture, but a more benevolent side of me pointing out that she had had her comeuppance, and had paid the price for her misguided loyalty. I summoned as much of a smile as I could manage (which admittedly wasn't much). 'I won't let the bad guys win.'

'Thank you,' she said simply.

'I'll stay with her here,' Belinda said, getting to her feet as I headed back to the stairs. 'In case someone needs to know what's going on.' She bit her lip for a moment, her eyes shadowed. 'You're sure that Christian —'

'Absolutely. That's one tough vamp. I know, I've tried to take him down a couple of times. Damian will be as safe with him as he would be with Adrian.'

'Good luck,' she said, her chin lifting as she tried to put a brave front on her worries. 'May God go with you.'

'Thanks. I'm going to need all the help I can get.'

It wasn't until I hit the first floor that something struck me: My mummies were gone.

'Well, hell!' I swore, looking around the hall in case someone had dumped them in a corner. 'Sorry, guys, wherever you are. I'll deal with you once Adrian and I have taken care of the baddies.'

It's amazing what a ring of power will do for you when it comes to escaping a forming police cordon. I had figured that there was no way I'd be able to slip out of Christian's house without being stopped and grilled by the cops, but either London's police force had been warned about coming between a Beloved and her vamp in need, or the ring had some sort of invisibility mojo going on that allowed me to walk out in plain sight of the police who had gathered beyond the rim of Nazimobiles. Blue lights flashed, sirens wailed, and occasional staccato bursts on bullhorns demanded that the supremacists surrender.

I walked down the sidewalk past two sharpshooters hiding behind a rhododendron bush. The men's eyes shifted to look at me, but neither gave me more than a glance as I walked by.

'Cool!' I whispered to myself, twisting the ring like it was some sort of talisman. The other police, everyone from a guy in a yellow jacket who was trying to convince the neighbors to go back into their houses to the incident officer in charge of the bullhorn, all clearly saw me, but I didn't seem to register on their psyches.

Which was perfectly fine with me.

I took the ring off after I figured out that its protective powers went so far as to make me insignificant to the taxi drivers gathered around a train station a half-mile down the road. By the time I found a cab and was whisked through the oddly empty streets toward the British Museum, enough time had passed for all sorts of horrible, torturous, life-ending, apocalyptic things to have happened to Adrian.

And each and every one of them paraded through my mind in glorious Technicolor and Dolby digital surround sound as we drove.

I expected there to be more guards than normal at the museum, given the events of a few hours past, but I hadn't expected to find a veritable army camped around the museum.

'Sorry, love, but this is as close as I can get you,' the taxi driver said as he pulled up a block away from the museum. He nodded toward the two big black police vehicles that blocked the road. 'Must be a terrorist threat or something.'

'Something like that,' I agreed, handing him a couple of pound coins I had bummed off Belinda. I slipped on the ring as soon as the taxi made a U-turn, smiling and nodding pleasantly at the various police stationed at checkpoints that led to the museum.

I approached the museum bold as could be, secure in the power of the ring. Police and the British Special Forces guys in ultratechy skin-tight black body armor and armed with enough firepower to blow a small country off the face of the planet filled the forecourt of the museum. Small mobile dispatch centers, command posts, and a couple of official police chemical toilets (even SWAT team members have to go sometime) stood like black monoliths amidst a sea of police on the paving stones that led to the museum front doors.