by Колин Глисон
Victoria didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge his presence as she looked down from her hidden view, watching the people mingling below. The edges of the velvet curtain crinkled under her fingers as she pulled it taut from its moorings, positioning it in front of her face so she could look through the narrow opening. Max moved closer, brushing her shoulder as he peered through the same slit.
Now she saw Zavier in the center of the room below, talking with two men, and she focused her attention on him rather than on the man behind her, crowding her against the drapes.
Somehow Max must have known her thoughts, for he said in a low, amused voice, “A nice lad, Zavier. A good Venator.” He was standing so close behind her his words whispered over her temple. If she drew in her breath, Victoria was certain her shoulders would brush against his chest.
She continued to watch Zavier, watch the way he gestured grandly, his large arms and broad shoulders setting him apart from the willowy dandies with whom he spoke: men who could be expected to parry a few fancy steps with an epée, and perhaps throw a punch or so if caught in an unpleasant situation…but who hadn’t one iota of the power and strength in comparison to the more casually dressed Scot before them.
She looked down, turning her attention to count the people below, to give her something to focus on, willing her heart to slow its jagged pounding, and wishing Max would step away before she had to.
But he didn’t move. His voice rumbled again. “Take care with him.” There was an edge to his words, a warning that hadn’t been there a moment before.
“Take care?”
He nodded, and she felt the movement of his head against the top of hers.
“You’ll break his heart.”
Victoria started in surprise, but her grip on the curtains—which had suddenly become deathly—kept her from spinning around or even turning her head. Still looking down, she tipped her face slightly to the side so he could hear her cool words. “Break his heart? What on earth do you mean? Never say you are attempting to advise me on my intimate affairs, Max. The closest you’ve come to any matter of the heart was an engagement to a lover of vampires.”
“Zavier is a good man.” Max’s voice was calm and even in her ear. “You’re too strong for him. You’ll merely tread upon him with your silk slippers and trounce his heart, which he wears much too openly on his sleeve.”
“You never cease to amaze me—”
“Victoria,” he interrupted, still smooth but very firm. “The man is in love with the idea of a woman Venator. Any woman Venator. Had Eustacia been a few decades younger, he would have courted her.”
“You’re crude, Max.”
A short, sharp laugh rumbled. “Perhaps. But at least I speak honestly.”
“Disgustingly so.”
“You would be better off with the likes of Vioget than that milksop Zavier.”
“I begin to wonder why you continue to push me toward Sebastian. Is it some form of punishment?”
“Push you toward Sebastian? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.”
“It was you, after all, who ordered him to kidnap me last autumn to keep me out of your way.” Max had known well enough that she’d want to be involved in destroying Nedas, but she’d had no idea how tenuous and risky his plans were, and how much her interference could have jeopardized them. So he’d arranged for Sebastian to get her out of the way.
“A task that he accepted with embarrassing alacrity—but, of course, he had his own motives for cooperating. I’m certain he found the rewards worth the risk. That carriage must have been quite comfortable.”
Victoria’s face burned. How could he know she’d allowed Sebastian to seduce her in a carriage? Thank God he couldn’t see her cheeks; they must be red with fury and embarrassment. And how dared he say such a thing?
Did he think that since she’d seen and experienced so much more than other women that her sensibilities weren’t as delicate?
“At least Vioget can recognize your faults,” Max continued in that steady voice, as though he hadn’t just insulted her. “And, aside from that, I wouldn’t bloody care if you were to tear out Vioget’s innards and screw your heels into them. In fact, I’d applaud it. Zavier, on the other hand, the blasted fool, wouldn’t see your faults if you engraved them on his stake. He’s already anointed you and ensconced you on a pedestal.”
“I still fail to see why you should be concerned about my affairs.”
“You misunderstand. It isn’t your affairs that concern me. It’s Zavier’s. I should hate to see a Venator incapacitated due to a broken heart. And you will break his if you continue on this path.”
“You’re so certain of this?”
“He’s not strong enough, Victoria. He’s an exceptional Venator, but he’s not equipped to manage his heart. He cannot see your faults; he will let you run roughshod over him…and, finally, he will bore you with his easy ways, his pathetic doggedness of wanting to make you happy—all the time knowing he could lose you to this dangerous world we inhabit. And that’s what I do not wish to see. For his sake. For ours, as Venators.”
Tears had begun to sting the corners of her eyes, blurring her view of the party below. Burning tears of anger and grief. She blinked and took a long, slow breath, resisting the desire to spin a slap onto his aristocratic cheek like the Society miss she no longer was. “You would have said the same about Phillip had I listened.”
“No.” His voice became sharper and more serious. “Phillip was strong enough. He just didn’t understand the world you live in. If he had…”
Max didn’t need to finish, and Victoria didn’t want him to. She released the curtains and slipped to the side, away from him. She knew very well that if Phillip had understood her life even a little, things would have been so very different. Her eyes stung and her throat felt as though she’d swallowed a ball.
“Victoria, you of all people know what it is like to suffer a broken heart. Take care not to bring the same onto one of your men. You have the power to do it.”
“You forget that this Venator wasn’t incapacitated with a broken heart.”
“Weren’t you?”
She drew herself up to reply…and then deflated. Oh, God, yes, she had been. For nearly a year after Phillip’s death she’d been afraid to raise her stake for fear she’d turn berserker and annihilate anything in her path. The gifts she had, the powers, the strengths, the instincts: They could all be wielded for bad as well as for good. And the rage that had simmered beneath her calm exterior—the rage and hatred and loss—could have brought her down the wrong path.
The tears, silent and thus hidden in the darkness, were streaming down her cheeks now. Victoria had moved away from the gap in the curtains, away from Max and his insistent opinions, his ruthless words.
She drew in a long, deep breath, struggling to keep it from hitching and giving away the fact that he had brought her to this, and moved farther away. She wanted to get away from him, away from his damned truths.
Max turned, and the small slit in the curtains closed, leaving them in total darkness. The only relief was a dark gray essence that came from the direction of the stairs up which she’d come.
“Victoria?” His voice was quiet.
“There’s nothing more to see here,” she replied, relieved at how steady she sounded. “And I’ve seen no members of the Tutela.” She was moving quickly and silently toward the exit and the stairs, focusing on the barest sense of light and her outstretched hands to find her way. “I’ll go down to see what I can find.”
“Victoria.” Max was moving behind her; she could hear him. But she kept going toward the stairs, moving as quickly as she could, her eyes now able to make out the faintest of shapes.
She came to the top of the stairs, her hand on the balustrade helping her to feel her way around the corner at the top of the landing. Suddenly something came out of the darkness in front of her.
It was strong and metal, and someone was poking it into the front of her shoul
der. “How serendipitous,” came a familiar male voice. “What an unexpected prize our little trap has sprung.”
A candle flared to life in front of her, revealing Mr. George Starcasset…and Lady Sarafina Regalado.
Nine
In Which Three Ladies Are Set Loose upon the Villa
Max heard the soft click of a pistol being cocked, and he froze just as he realized the back of his neck had begun to prickle and chill.
Vampires…somewhere…but not in close proximity.
The sudden flare of a candle lent a soft yellow glow from down the steps, just out of his sight. Then the light grew stronger and more yellow as three shadowy people moved up the stairs, into his view.
“And who were you—Ah! Maximilian!”
He knew that annoying voice all too well. Blast the chit.
“Sara.” He couldn’t bring himself to sound as delighted as his former fiancée did. “And Starcasset. What an unpleasant—yet not wholly unexpected—surprise.”
He saw that Victoria—whose face was streaked with two narrow rivulets of…tears?—was under the control of George Starcasset and his pistol. She was also giving him, Max, a most loathing glare, as if it were somehow his fault she’d stormed into the barrel of the firearm.
Before he could move Sarafina came toward him. She was the buxom blonde, with pretty brown eyes and a head filled with little but fashion sense and coy comments, that he’d squired about Roma and engaged in many more tête-à-têtes with her than he’d cared to do. She was a lovely, fluffy piece—just the kind of woman he should marry if he ever actually thought he would do the deed, except for her affinity for the undead. But her voice and simpering mannerisms tended to grate on his nerves when he was exposed to her for any length of time.
Of course, at the moment, that simpering, fluffy chit had a pistol in her hands, so he was going to have to watch his tongue.
When she reached toward his right shoulder he merely looked down at her in annoyance and faint amusement, wondering if she was about to pull him into a reunion embrace. But when Sarafina yanked on his collar, pulling it back from Max’s neck and exposing the raw bites there, he pushed her hand away, heedless of the pistol flailing about in her other grip.
“Good gad, watch that thing,” he snapped, flipping his wretchedly stiff collar back into place. “You’ll hurt someone, Sara. Put it away.”
Unsurprisingly, she kept the pistol and steadied it, pressing it right into his middle. Painfully. “So it is true. You did go to her.”
Max remembered belatedly that there was no fury like a woman scorned.
“Perhaps you could settle your lovers’ quarrel some other time,” Starcasset luckily interrupted. He must have jabbed his firearm into Victoria’s skin a bit more harshly, for she winced and jolted. Looking at Max, he added, “I’m certain you can appreciate the benefits of coming along quietly.”
Max nodded. “Indeed. It would not be in our interest to involve the other parties below in a skirmish.” He glanced at Victoria to make sure she understood that she couldn’t go blazing into a fight, but she was studiously looking away, her lips firmed with annoyance.
Surely she wasn’t concerned about their current predicament.
“Well put, Mr. Pesaro. Now, if you and your jilted fiancée would be so kind as to lead the way, Lady Rockley and I will follow.”
Thus they moved down the steps in pairs, remaining out of sight of the presumed party in the chamber beyond the anteroom where the stairs ended, Sara prodding him along in the opposite direction from which he and Victoria had come.
Max was armed with several stakes, including his favorite black one, and his own firearm, as well as a dagger sheathed in his boot. It was the mark of the amateurs who led them away that neither Starcasset nor Sara Regalado thought to check either of the Venators for weapons. Likely they thought vampire hunters would merely be carrying stakes and little else.
He would make certain they were far enough away not to alert or alarm the partygoers in the parlor before making his move. The last thing they needed was a hoard of frithering ladies and blustering would-be heroes getting in their way.
As they progressed, the sensations at the back of his neck grew colder and more intense, telling him that they were being taken to some conglomerate of vampires. They walked through a door, entering a large, dank room that appeared to be at least partially underground, if one judged by the greater chill in the air.
Obviously a contingent of undead had gathered in the Villa Palombara. Apparently that was the true purpose behind the ostensible treasure hunt: a harvesting of victims by the Tutela, likely for Sara Regalado’s father, the conte—and whatever minions he’d managed to gather around him after he was run off by Beauregard last fall in the wake of the destruction of Akvan’s Obelisk.
An argument could be made, Max reflected as he ambled along next to Sara, that being brought closer to where the vampires were waiting would make their efforts to subdue them more efficient.
A sudden movement behind decided him. Knowing it was Victoria who’d somehow managed to catch Starcasset, the brainless devil, off guard, he swung into action as soon as Sara’s attention was diverted and the pressure lifted from his ribs.
There was a fine line between disarming a woman and causing her hurt, and so Max allowed himself a bit of flair in this battle. He slid to the side, his feet lifting from the ground in the long, gliding leap of a qinggong movement, and came up and around Sara, Victoria, and Starcasset, executing the maneuver even in the low-ceilinged chamber.
The room was a blur as he spun and floated, leaped and glided, clocking Starcasset neatly at the back of his head with a well-aimed boot toe (he had no such qualms about injuring the dandy), and then coasting around to snag Sara around the waist and toss her through a nearby doorway.
In the midst of this effortless and liberating activity, Max saw a flash of pink that was Victoria, dashing away in the frilly gown she’d chosen for this occasion. It wasn’t like her to run from a fight, so he knew precisely why she’d taken off.
Feet back on the ground, Max tossed Starcasset in after Sara, then shoved a heavy table in front of the door, wedging it under the knob, and started off after Victoria. His neck was cold; his fingers tingled. There were undead nearby, and many of them, if his senses were accurate.
And they always were.
The only reason he caught up to Victoria was because she’d taken a wrong turn—no surprise—and ended up in a dead-end hall.
He didn’t have to ask where she was going; she turned on him and said, “My mother!” Her eyes were worried and her mouth set in an anxious line as she pushed past him.
“This way.”
However, they’d not gone very far back when they turned a corner and were running down yet another hall just as a second door opened. More than a dozen creatures streamed in, at least some of them vampires.
Max saw Victoria run right into one of them, and before she could react another creature had leaped on her from behind. She went down in a bundle of pink lace and red rosettes, bringing the vampire with her and helping him on his way over her head.
He saw nothing else after that, however, for he was, of necessity, fully engaged with the four who leaped on him. He quickly dispatched one with his stake, but two more took its place. Something slammed into Max’s legs from behind, sending his knees buckling and him collapsing to the floor.
He reared up, swinging, just as a sharp report echoed through the room. A blinding pain drilled into his shoulder, just above the scapula, and then another flash of pain skimmed his boot top, above his knee. Breathless with agony, Max lurched forward, bringing his injured leg up behind to slam into the creature as he tried to catch himself on his good arm.
Rolling to the side, he jerked to his feet just as something crashed onto the top of his head and the world went black.
“I vow, I expect a vampire to leap out at us any moment!” Lady Nilly whispered loudly. She was clasping a slender hand to her flat
bosom as she led the way down a dark, dusty hall, lit only by the candle she held aloft.
The passageway was wide enough for the three of them to walk abreast, if they so chose, although the occasional table they passed might have necessitated that one of them temporarily fall behind. Vases or statues, many of them broken or lying on their sides, decorated the random furnishings. The ceiling was high, the walls lined with wainscoting, and everything was cobwebbed and dusty. More than once the ladies were startled by the sudden appearance of a cloudy mirror reflecting their progress along the hall.
“Vampire?” Lady Winnie gasped, slapping her own hand to her chest with a loud thunk and a poof of powder. She crowded up behind her slight friend and the safety of her light. “I’m not wearing my cross! And I’ve left my reticule with garlic at home! And my stake!”
“Hush, Winnie,” came Lady Melly’s voice behind them. “I scarcely need remind you that there aren’t any such things as vampires, and it’s just as well you aren’t wearing that ridiculous cross. It’s too large and bangs against you every time you move. It sounds like a morbid heartbeat, and it’s so big it’s dangerous.”
“It was supposed to be dangerous,” Winnie replied, her voice bordering on a wail. She’d grasped the back of Nilly’s gown and was holding a fistful of silk. “To the vampires.”
“This is just the perfect house for the undead to be lurking about,” Nilly said, turning to look back at her friends with wide eyes. The single candlestick she held made a yellow glow about her face, lighting her wispy blond curls. “I can feel it! The restlessness in the air…the sensation of dark shadows, moving toward us…the sound of bat wings flapping—”
“Stop,” squealed Winnie, releasing her friend’s gown to clap her hands over her ears. “I don’t know why we came to this dark, horrible place anyway. And why ever did we sneak away from that nice Mr. Zavier?”
Melly’s hand on the duchess’s plump arm nearly sent her friend through the cobwebbed ceiling, but her strident voice was sharp enough to penetrate the duchess’s hysterics. “You’re making a cake of yourself, Winnie. Do cease your wailing. And it was your idea to send Mr. Zavier for drinks whilst we sneaked away to start on this treasure hunt. Now, Nilly, let me look at that map. And do stop prattling about vampires. I don’t know why we’re letting you be in the lead.”