I watched him, wondering if anything he’d said to me tonight had been sincere. Yes, probably some of it had been. The problem was time. What he meant sincerely tonight might be entirely different under the next moon.
Women, especially witches, didn’t let things like that slide. I smiled to myself. Menessos was feeling the wrath of a witch whose scorn he’d earned.
I wondered if he’d killed Vivian. I didn’t care if he had; she’d killed Lorrie. But I thought I could understand how Vivian had become the seriously unhinged person she was. Menessos could be charming, could be delightful, but he could drive even a devoted partner away with the hoops he expected them to jump through, the orders he expected to be obeyed.
“Red,” Johnny urged. “Do it.”
“No.”
“What? We’ve come too far not to kill him now!”
I strode straight to the living room hearth.
“Red! Red, no.” Johnny followed me. “I beg you! Think about what you’re doing! This is the weapon. Stake him, and then you can wear it on your belt and be a threat to every other vamp on the planet. It’s the weapon you should wield.”
I looked him in the eye and tossed the stake into the flames.
Immediately, Menessos’s moans ceased.
Johnny crouched before the hearth, hand poised to snatch the stake from the flames, but it had caught fire as if it were paper. The orange flames licked over it, devouring it like a child with a delicious candy. Johnny gave up on rescuing it. He stood and grabbed my shoulders. “Why did you do that, Red? Why?”
I jerked out of his grasp, but didn’t retreat.
“I’m the Lustrata,” I whispered. “If I wanted him all the way dead, I wouldn’t need that to kill him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Menessos made a call instructing that Nana and Beverley were to be immediately returned to the house. Then I made him leave, sent him walking down the road before they arrived.
We watched him stroll down my driveway from the porch. “You’re just letting him walk away?” Johnny asked, incredulous.
“When was the last time you think he was forced to take a good, long walk?”
Johnny snorted.
“With no one he knows to talk to or command, no one to make this easy, his thoughts are his own right now. And he has a lot to think about.”
“Yeah—like revenge, retaliation, and retribution.”
“Or options, opportunities, and open doors.”
Johnny turned and leaned on the railing, facing me. “He marked you. He has forever to manipulate you to do his will.”
My eyes left the vampire reluctantly, but when I focused on Johnny, my gaze was unyielding. “Your time frame for explaining how you managed to start and then suppress an at-will, uncyclical partial transformation is much shorter.”
“Maybe we should go inside….”
I allowed him to hold the door for me and wasn’t surprised when he found something else to talk about in order to stall. So he wanted it to be a conversation for another day. I was tired and he was, literally, beat. It could wait.
Besides, Nana and Beverley would be home soon.
* * *
The following day a truckload of flowers arrived, and I do mean a truckload. Every room in the house had three different vases, even the bathrooms. Hundred-dollar gift cards to every store imaginable arrived in a FedEx package. A big-screen TV and all new appliances arrived. A limousine drove in at dusk, and I was afraid that it was Menessos. When the driver opened the back door, however, he removed a large, flat package. He brought it to the door, bid me a polite “good day,” and promptly left. When I opened the package, I cried. It was an original painting—not a poster—by John William Waterhouse. Menessos’s overwhelming way of saying “Thank you; please forgive me” might just obligate me to forgive him. Damn it.
Ares spent the day bounding around the yard with Beverley. I think they’ll be good for each other. Nana found a spell in the Codex copy that reinstates the house protections that were broken when I asked the vampires inside. I guess Menessos will get a surprise if he ever comes back, but I don’t look for him to show up.
And Johnny. The swelling around his eye is down, but his ego is in a world of hurt. He growls every time he passes a vase of flowers, and he stares resentfully at the painting. I know he’s jealous, but it’s not like I’m making a big deal of the stuff sent to me. There’s anger brewing around him, I feel it. At least part of it is at me, because I burned the stake and let the vampire go. Let him be mad. He lied to me, and it could have cost us all our lives. His lie did cost Samson D. Kline his life.
He hasn’t offered to explain the partial change yet. I’m going to have to push for that info. And I know he thinks the stain is gone, burned away like the stake. But it isn’t. I can feel it. I don’t know how to tell him that I chose to keep it because I realized that giving it up meant giving up myself. I can’t even explain how I kept the stain and fed Menessos back his pain.
Though I still have questions, I’ve learned a lot in the last week. Like the power of words, of intentions, and of friendships. And how the death of a friend—and the death of friendships—can change you. Most people let something like that change them in sad ways, bad ways. They retreat inside themselves and hide from pain and conflict. But that’s a weak response. It hurt like hell, physically and emotionally, but I faced the pain straight on. It changed me, for the better—and I earned that.
But, if I’m going to walk between worlds, I still have much to learn.
Vicious Circle Page 29