She was a queen, and a vampire. Daughter of a Fey lord. She had her compass, and it did not answer to anyone surrounding her now, only to the man whose life she was taking, who’d given it freely. To whom she’d given her heart in a way she hadn’t to anyone else, not in her entire long life. As a vampire, she didn’t possess the humility that mortals with their short life spans had to cultivate. She expected things to occur the way she wanted them to occur, and by God she wasn’t going to accept this outcome.
“My lady—”
“Can it hurt her, to keep drinking?”
“Perhaps she needs the additional strength…She was so close to the end …”
Disparate voices, worried murmurs, irritations only. The lesion on her hand disappeared. The one on her breast closed, healing into smooth skin. She felt the burns on her face receding like their worries. Their awe and amazement vaguely reached her, as did Brian’s sense of triumph.
She released the serum from her fangs, felt it speed through Jacob’s body and merge with the antivirus serum as she opened herself to what was going on inside him, his body nearly drained of its blood. It caught her heart in a fist, the feel of those systems failing, the process of death she knew intimately, but she also saw the serum winding through those passages, quicksilver mixing with the blue among empty passages that had been filled with blood she’d drained from him. Just a little more…
The effect of Brian’s potion was rocketing through her like a hallucinogenic, only in reverse. The clarity of her reality was now so sharp it was as if everyone in the room but her and Jacob were moving and speaking in extreme slow motion.
His fingers were loose. No responding pressure as she held them. Somewhere his soul was hovering, wanting to go to the place he deserved, but he would still want to see he’d done what he swore to do. Protect her to the end.
But I haven’t released you. You are still my servant, and I command you to come back to me, Jacob. I won’t let you go.
Silence. A void. Her soul suddenly emptied as if it had been tipped over, obscenely quick. She knew what having a servant die felt like. Thomas had been the worst of all those she’d lost, until now. A never-ending emptiness, the very definition of loss.
What she wanted didn’t appear to matter. She looked, searched desperately within him for any indication, but now her serum glittered in his system like malachite on rock. Inanimate, sparkling but inert.
“He’s gone.” Debra’s voice, soft, compassionate. The stethoscope was pressing over his heart, just above their linked hands. His hand was heavy, wanting to fall, drop away from hers. Lyssa wanted to kill Debra, silence her forever for saying those words. “Lady Lyssa, it’s over.”
Lyssa lifted her head, her fangs marked with the remnants of his blood. Traces of ethereal silver mixed with it.
“She …” Uthe’s eyes widened, flicked to Jacob. “She turned him.”
“She tried to turn him.” Mason stepped forward before panic could sweep the room. “She was unsuccessful. The man is dead.”
A pause, where she could hear her heartbeat. One, two. Thump. Thump. Something was…odd. The physical pain was gone, but she wasn’t going to survive the tearing agony of Jacob’s death. He was gone, no longer in her mind. She was alone. Completely alone. Something was dying…something important but she couldn’t seem to care…
Energy exploded through her. Lyssa arched back, screaming as the transformation clamped down on her, tore her into pieces. The dress split. Her fingers, rising to untangle herself from it, lengthened with the razor-sharp claws of her talons.
It was as if by emptying her reserve of conversion fluid into Jacob’s blood, there had been a reaction between Brian’s serum and hers that had kicked back through her own system and overloaded it. Her Fey form was the only one strong enough to take the reaction. Like Mason and the Council, her own body had ignored her wishes and was forcing her to grasp at life.
Whenever she transformed, the exponential melding of her two forms was something she could control with careful precision, as Jacob well knew from the night she’d taken him on the forest floor. She’d transformed portions of herself between human and Fey as needed without effort.
Not now. Her other self literally exploded out of her vampirehumanoid form, tearing her flesh to ribbons, tearing screams from her throat as she inadvertently dropped Jacob’s lifeless fingers. His hand flopped to the side, his blue eyes staring, glazed over. She snarled, her fangs lengthening to curve over her chin. With serpentquick movements she lunged onto the table as Brian started forward with Uthe and Belizar. Now they stopped as she hissed, going to a crouch.
“You will not touch him.”
Her wings cut from her back as if coming into the room from a different reality. Ten feet from tip to tip, she filled a good portion of the chamber with her physical presence, though the mental impact was far more considerable. The Council members were up against the wall.
“Holy Christ,” Brian murmured. “My lords, I didn’t take into account…There was no time. She isn’t full vampire. This must be a mutation of the serum because of her Fey blood. My lady, stay calm. We can figure out what has happened …”
The wildness of her soul manifested itself, throwing off all yokes of restraints. She had nothing left to lose. She laughed, the rasping sound of a harpy’s deadly hiss whispering through the trees at a soulless hour of night. “I am calmer than you can imagine, Lord Brian. I am as calm as death.”
For years, she’d exercised rigid control over her words and actions to achieve her goals for her own species, to protect her servant, to try to love a husband unable to accept love. Always knowing what was expected of her, never resenting it, knowing the advantages that power gave her to live her life as she chose. Until now. They would know what it meant to try and wrest power from a queen.
Lord Belizar’s eyes narrowed. “It is not a mutation, Lord Brian.”
Cocking her head, she placed her claws on either side of Jacob’s head, covering him completely, like an eagle guarding her young. “If you are clever enough to figure that out, Lord Belizar, you are clever enough to let me take my servant without attempting to molest me further.” Her voice was a rough growl.
“Lady Lyssa,” Helga said, “you cannot convert a servant. It breaks our most basic law. And there is no telling what he could be, particularly converting him with the serum in his blood.”
“She’s no longer Lady Lyssa. Perhaps she never was.” This from Carola.
“She is your queen,” Mason snapped, despite the fact his attention was riveted upon her, his expression one of fascination and amazement.
“She just abdicated.” Belizar threw out an arm, gesturing angrily in her direction. “Look at her. She has deceived us, for how many years? We cannot follow one such as this. Nor will anyone follow a Council that does. As head of this Council, I order her execution for her deception. Her servant’s body should be burned and so should hers.”
“Over my dead body.” Mason moved so he was at her side.
The Council shifted, muttering. “With all due respect, my lord …” It almost made Lyssa laugh, Brian observing courtesy when the air was rife with barely suppressed violence. “A human body cannot take the serum. She has not converted him. I tell you without doubt that Jacob is dead. I could study the effect of the serum on him. If you burn him—”
Lyssa blinked. “You think I would let you dissect him?” The harsh menace of her voice in this form would have been intimidating even if she was in a mild mood, so she appreciated that he squared his shoulders and met her gaze when he began to respond.
“My lady—”
“She is not to be addressed thus.” Belizar was practically frothing at the mouth. It took visible effort for him to look at her. Lyssa remembered how Jacob had looked at her the first time she’d changed. Touching her sleek, muscular gray skin with wonder. Making her shiver with longing.
“We have not voted,” Lady Helga said. Over the shouts and arguments, in which
she could smell the tension moving to boiling point, Lyssa met Brian’s confused but not unsympathetic eyes. But they would not get Jacob’s body. Would not set fire to it. Would not cut it up. None of them.
He was cold. All the steps of mortal death, followed by the slow rot of his corpse. The blue eyes would decay and disappear. How could God bear the inevitable end to one of His most beautiful sculptures? Did none of it matter? Were all the noble principles simply the fantasies of living beings who assigned them to a Divinity who didn’t care? If that Divinity didn’t care that Jacob’s body had been destroyed, then Lyssa couldn’t imagine It would care if she turned the walls in here red with the blood of the very Council she’d created.
“Kill her …” Belizar’s command. Seconded by another Council member. And another. She’d known vampires were like this, had accepted it as a weakness even as she appreciated their strengths. What was remarkable was how humans tolerated it enough to become their servants, this superiority that, when challenged, proved itself to be no less self- serving and motivated by fear than any other form of prejudice, human, vampire or otherwise. She was weary of it all. She was hungry for blood. Anyone’s blood would do at this point. If they didn’t stop their cacophony, she would impose silence in a way that would most satisfy the ache inside her.
She dropped low, readying herself. Mason was at her side, his body still, waiting. His eyes had narrowed, his lip curling back. He pulled the sword hidden in the cane he’d brought with him to the chamber and gripped the wooden shaft in his opposite hand.
Only on Belizar’s face did she see complete resolve. The others were uncertain, angry and confused. Some were perhaps willing to follow Belizar’s lead, but not with the odds so decisively stacked in her and Mason’s favor. But just like a scene from Gone with the Wind, where the Southern gentlemen were so certain that all that was needed to win the war was their honor, so her Council still clung to the naivety that their “purity” made them invincible. If they charged, she knew without a doubt she and Mason would kill them all. And the vampires would be once again lawless, leaderless…She struggled to care, but all she felt was the weight of loss and fury.
“Take her now,” Belizar thundered.
His voice was swallowed by a muted roar outside the chamber. The walls shuddered as if the structure of the west wing had been shaken on its foundation. Distant screams speared through the walls, under the door. The smell of smoke reached their heightened senses.
Several vampires had thrown themselves forward, but now came up short in confusion. Lyssa cared not for what was happening outside of this room. The second they moved, she lunged into the air. Her wide wingspan cut sharply through the air, talons reaching with deadly chaotic and unpredictable intent. Her barbed tail lashed out like a whip as she hovered over Jacob where none could get to him. Mason went to a half kneel, weapons at the ready, ducking under the movement of her wings as if he’d fought next to a Fey warrior all his life.
“Earthquake? What—”
“No,” Lord Mortimer said. He stood at the wall, still uncommitted to Belizar’s suit. “Explosion.”
Belizar’s eyes were focused inward. “Malachi says we are under attack by…vampire hunters,” he said tersely, affront in his tone at the very idea. “A significant force in numbers, if not capability. They somehow planted explosives on the verandah and have swarmed into the castle.”
Lady Helga cried out, doubling over. Lord Welles caught her by the waist, steadying her. No one in the room asked what had happened. They all knew the signs of losing a servant abruptly with no time to brace the body against the loss. Hadn’t they just seen an example of it moments before? “Tristan,” she whispered.
Jacob’s loss was like a fire roaring through Lyssa’s blood, squeezing her vital organs. She was going to go mad.
Hold, lady. Mason’s voice. Be our queen.
“Malachi says the explosion wounded perhaps sixty, killed a dozen servants at least. They targeted the upper levels and are taking advantage of the surprise to advance. We will go to their aid,” Belizar said shortly.
His gaze rose, met Lyssa’s. “You have your head start, Lady Lyssa. If you do not want this Council to hunt you down and bring you to justice for your deception, then you should make certain we never see you again. We will purge the memory of your hybrid existence from our ranks.”
“If you have so little value for your life,” she responded, red eyes glittering, “come and find me, for I will never hide from the likes of you. It is not so difficult to defeat a mind that refuses to change.”
Belizar’s eyes flashed, but abruptly his expression suffused with shock. “The vampire hunters have breached the inner walls, but there is…another group.” His attention snapped back up to Lyssa. “Vampires. There is a group of vampires apparently part of this, using the humans to attempt an overthrow of the Council. They are on their way here, led by—”
He stiffened. Though he managed his reaction better than Helga, his face still went rigid with pain. “Malachi.”
“Who?” Mason stepped forward, his eyes narrowed.
“He did not …” Belizar shook his head, struggling to overcome the effects of the severed link. “He couldn’t show me before they took his life. They must have seen him. He exposed himself to be sure of what he saw.”
“We know who it is,” Lyssa said flatly. “It is Carnal and his carrion eaters.”
Lord Stewart snarled. “We should have known. He has been increasingly defiant.”
“Joining with humans to attack us?” Mortimer scoffed. “Carnal, who despises humans far more than anyone else?”
“Perhaps Carnal was able to overcome his prejudices to use their strengths. He has a bit more adaptability than this Council. Unfortunately, he’s also a sociopath,” Mason observed contemptuously.
“Carnal has been traveling a great deal these days,” Lyssa said. She didn’t want to be involved in this, didn’t want to care, but she was speaking despite herself. “Recruiting for this, I suspect, and he was wise enough to choose those who were in his camp, no chance of the secret slipping out.”
“You foresaw this—” Belizar accused.
“Oh, good Christ. You all foresaw this. You fools just assumed he would use the Council floor to try to initiate his coup. In all your civility, you’ve forgotten that the root of a vampire’s nature is violence, particularly when the end he seeks is total domination,” Mason snapped. “You did nothing. You should have staked him out years ago.”
So in the end, it is your cynicism that is our ultimate truth. You were right. I was the biggest fool of all.
Mason glanced at her. No, my lady. To try to make your world a better place and fail is far nobler than to never have the faith to try.
He turned his attention back to the Council. “If we are to stop this we need to get out there. Now.”
“Where we cannot tell friend from foe?” Belizar shook his head.
Lyssa snarled. Even during this, the most horrible moment of her entire life, she refused to let someone like Carnal take control of what she’d worked so hard to build. She felt the horrid stillness of Jacob’s body beneath her, remembered Carnal striking his face, remembered how close Jacob had come to staking him. If he’d been alive, she knew what he would be saying.
What are you waiting for, my lady? Go finish what I started. Kick his goddamn ass.
She registered the fleeting feral grin on Mason’s face as he caught the thought and reminded herself to break his jaw later, just on general principle. It would heal, after all.
“Your opponents will be Carnal and the territory leaders who have been seeking pre-Council ways.”
Where vampires could rampage unchecked in the human world, which would spell vampire extinction. She played for just a blink with the idea of letting it happen, and then let that go. All she had to do was remember Danny, Devlin, Mason…Thomas. Jacob.
Even more appealing, she’d have the immediate opportunity to kill someone. Many someones, an
d that was what she wanted more than anything. At least of the things that were within her power.
“That means he will likely have twenty percent of the overlords with him. They’ll have armed their servants,” Uthe spoke. “There’s no time for subterfuge. Either we go out now and respond with aggression or they corner us here. Mason, it’s your home. Malachi said they destroyed the verandah. What way are they likely to take to get here?”
“The west corridors are the quickest route. They might divide their forces though, bring someone around the east side to cut off escape.”
“We have allies out there.” Lyssa found it easier to concentrate on the problem at hand instead of the terrible reality of the still body on the table. “Any of you who have a blood link to a vampire here you trust, let them know what is happening. That was the point of Carnal’s alliance with the hunters, or however he accomplished their presence here. Those loyal to Council are out there fighting human hunters. By the time they understand the real enemy is Carnal and his group, they’ll have us cornered and slaughtered.”
“Do it,” Uthe said, since Belizar seemed at a loss for words at the moment.
Lyssa nodded, gazed into space for a moment, mirrored by other Council members. She looked for Danny. Blinking several times, she started at the click of the link, like the blast of a television turned on at high volume. Through Danny’s eyes, she saw carnage. Smoke, fire, the rubble of the verandah. Bodies flung and sprawled. Limbs amputated. The chaos and noise of battle.
She and Devlin were fighting back-to-back, fending off a quartet of hunters. Praying she would not distract her to adverse effect, Lyssa fed her the information.
She heard Danny swear colorfully in acknowledgment. As she tore the head off a hunter, Lyssa appreciated not only the viciousness but the creative suggestion related to Carnal’s origins. Danny kicked the body out of her way and went after another. Slamming him to his back on the ground, she ducked as Devlin launched a pike and took a man in the chest who was coming to the aid of her current victim with a crossbow.
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