by Thea Devine
“As soon as I can. As soon as Peter dies.” Charles leaned over Peter’s body. “Are you dead yet?”
Peter groaned. Then he sighed. “Senna . . . ,” he whispered.
Senna froze.
She flew up the steps just as she heard another sigh. She whipped around midair just in time to see his bloody head fall forward, and then he was gone.
“Dear Peter,” Lady Augustine said. “I take it we’re invited for dinner now.”
The bitch. To do that to her son minutes after he died?
“I should think. While the food is still fresh.”
By the damned. Senna couldn’t get out of there fast enough. She heard the gnawing and slurping sounds quite clearly as they began to feed.
She’d never get the sound of their feasting out of her head.
It struck her suddenly that she hadn’t blooded up for nearly a day, not since she’d ravaged that guard’s earlobes.
She’d ducked into a basement delivery area as she felt her body force itself back to human form, then collapsed on the steps to recuperate.
The child objected to the change with kicks and pushes and turns. And she hadn’t fed it the food Mirya insisted it needed either.
Things couldn’t be worse. Lady Augustine had nearly overtaken the Queen. Charles was thinking about using Dnitra as the next Iscariot vessel to carry and possibly bear the Eternal Ruler. Peter was dead. Dominick was nowhere to be found.
And now Senna wasn’t sure if she could even make it back to Mirya’s hovel. She could die on the street, her life energy sapped from the burden of carrying this child.
Her legs and her belly felt as if they were filled with lead. Wearily, she heaved herself to her feet. If she held on to lampposts and fences, she might make it. Step by step.
Mirya paced, stopped, and cocked her head at Dominick.
“Devil’s bones,” he muttered. “Are you a witch?”
“Find her. Somewhere near the town house.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. He ripped out into the alley, transhaping as he ran, and lofted up into the air with one leap.
He caught a current and glided his way toward the town house. Damned old witch. As if he hadn’t been searching the whole of London for her. The only place he hadn’t been able to search was the Palace, the one place he should have been, given his suspicions about Senna’s amorphous plan to compel her way into the Queen’s retinue.
Something had gone wrong. Senna was nowhere near the Palace. He didn’t know if she was carrying the sun stone or if the child was safe. If anyone was following Senna or if she was exhausted for blood. The unknowns intensified his urgency into finding her.
She could be anywhere, even with Mirya having pinpointed her general whereabouts. And why was she in the vicinity of Lady Augustine’s town house? Had she gone there looking for him?
Had something happened? Peter had been too near death to factor. And Charles would not give up. Dominick knew Charles’s ultimate goal was to be the puppet master behind the Eternal Ruler. There would be no attempt to unite the clans. Only to divide and enslave.
Which clarified Iosefescu’s desire for Dominick’s return. The old man needed soldiers to populate the Iscariot army. He saw Dominick as new blood, a new leader with new ideas. Iosefescu saw an end to the eternal atoning for Judas’s betrayal. If the clan stayed in Stigira. If they didn’t succumb to the lure of the old legends.
If the child Senna was carrying bore both clan marks, Iosefescu would have no choice: both sides would claim the child, and there would be war.
But if there was but one clan mark on the child, then what?
In the myth, an innocent girl was seduced by a warrior from each tribe and subsequently carried a child of commingled blood, who, when grown, merged the clans and became the Eternal Ruler.
The story didn’t quite fit together here. Senna was no victim of seduction. She’d wanted him. She was bound to him. The child was Dominick’s, and short of kidnapping and murder, nothing Charles did would change that.
A thought struck Dominick that made him tumble downward, on the verge of transforming, just as he spotted a woman slumped against a gate near the town house.
Devil’s bones.
He landed by her side in an instant, pulling her against his body with not a thought for the prickly sparkles that immediately flared up and down her body.
He tried to support her under her shoulders and midriff, but the sparkles flared up again.
“Devil’s bones—I can’t. Senna, you have to help.”
“Slowly,” she whispered.
“We’ll go slowly,” Dominick assured her, and they inched their way across streets and avenues. He couldn’t touch her but he could walk behind her, make her feel safe, sheltered.
She felt as if she would fall to her knees with each step. She desperately wanted Dominick to hold her. Just for a minute. Even with the sparkles.
She felt herself sagging, she felt him catching her, and the sparkles flared up.
“I don’t care,” she whispered. “Just hold me.”
He held her, the sparkles dancing up and down both their arms until he reached the alleyway.
Mirya was waiting for them with food, her brows pulled in worry.
“She is done in,” Dominick said, handing Senna a bowl of blood.
She gulped it down, then grabbed her stomach. “The child is moving.”
“The child is hungry,” Mirya said, handing her another bowl.
Senna waved it off. “I have so much to tell.”
Mirya shoved the bowl back at her. “Eat first.”
Senna took a spoonful of the beans and rice. “Peter is dead.”
Dominick nodded, which surprised her.
“He bled all over the place and they made no move to stop it or to help him . . .” Senna’s voice wavered. “And he died. They ate him.”
She pushed the bowl aside. “There’s more. Lady Augustine tried to take the Queen this afternoon. She had the same idea as I: to compel a lady-in-waiting to get close to the Queen. During her usual postluncheon stroll this afternoon, the Queen tripped, and Lady Augustine decided to take advantage—even with the guards and the other ladies watching. And so I had to stop her.”
Senna knew Dominick immediately saw the whole picture.
“I made certain that no one would remember the incident,” Senna said. “I’m certain they easily found my lady-in-waiting unconscious in her dressing room. I can’t speak for the Lady of the Bedchamber’s whereabouts after Lady Augustine got hold of her.”
Senna blew out a deep breath. “I had no clue that Lady Augustine would seek to replace someone of that high a position that close to the Queen.”
“So she was not successful. What happened then?” Dominick prodded gently.
“She disappeared, and I thought my only option was to go to the town house on the chance that you”—Senna nodded at Dominick—“had come. Instead, I found Peter dying and Charles and Lady Augustine concocting yet another plan.”
“Dnitra,” Dominick said quietly.
He’d shocked her silent.
“A convenient sex-hungry Iscariot,” he amplified. “To mate with a Tepes. It makes perfect sense. He’s going to impregnate her as a backup plan before you give birth.”
“By the damned,” Senna muttered. “Is there any truth to the idea that a vampire of commingled blood can rule both the clans?”
Dominick shrugged. “It’s been the tradition of our clan forever, because the myth is that the Eternal Ruler will unite the clans and bring peace into time beyond time.”
“But no one will be satisfied with that. Somewhere, someone will make a grab for power and then what?”
Dominick shrugged. “Then the war and the hunt begins again.”
The Season had begun. Senna was resting, b
ut she read the paper avidly for details about the horse races, the flower shows, and especially the first of the Queen’s garden parties, which was covered in detail down to the menu and the clothes.
“They write nothing of the murders in the warehouse district,” she said to Mirya, as she rocked gently and sipped tea. “Only about the Queen’s upcoming Jubilee. I wonder if the Queen ever had an inkling what happened in the garden.”
“They only want to print tales of horrible bloody death,” Mirya said.
“It’s true. They call on the Keepers to be more vigilant, and they are keeping a tally of all the deaths, according to this report,” Senna added. “They insinuate that perhaps there are those among them who had a taste for blood and death. They hint that maybe vampires are on the loose and walking among us again.” Senna looked up at Dominick. “As they are.”
“Perfect,” Dominick murmured, taking the paper from her and rifling through the editorial pages of the Gazette. “Nothing puts a vampire on the run faster than the accusation of murder and the threat to root him out wherever he’s hiding.”
“Yes, I can see you’re scared,” Senna said sleepily from Mirya’s bed, where she lay curled up and cozy while Dominick read and Mirya prepared yet another bowl of that noxious mixture she called food.
“The authorities taking note of the unusual number of deaths will force Charles to move up his timetable. It means he can’t afford to wait and see if Dnitra becomes pregnant. It means he’s looking for you, Senna, and the threat is more extreme now. People are watching, people are reporting whatever seems strange to them. Charles will eventually deduce that Mirya is hiding you, because who else is there?”
“And then I will die,” Mirya said dourly.
“And Dnitra?” Senna asked.
“She’s hunting for me. Though that won’t stop her from having sex with Charles, or anyone else for that matter.”
“She is very beautiful.”
Mirya spat, “She is ugly. Her soul, her thoughts, her desires, her body. She waits but occupies herself as she will. She feasts on sex and blood, and she waits for Dominick. Or Charles.”
Senna shuddered. She eased up against the wall, and Mirya handed her the bowl, saying, “Her purpose is to return him to the Iscariot so he can spawn a nation of strong, virile male children. With her. She is destined to carry that next generation.”
Senna stared at Mirya. “How do you know this?”
“I know.”
Senna turned to Dominick.
“It’s possible,” he said reluctantly. “But it has nothing to do with the problem at hand.”
She curled her hands around her belly, taking small comfort in the movements of the child. She had no future. But the child . . . all the ifs crowded out anything positive she could think of.
She ought to just take the child and run, which seemed just as good a plan as any other in that moment.
“Charles will have sex with Dnitra, get her pregnant, and do it while he’s still pursuing you and our child,” Dominick added after another long pause.
“I’ll just hand the baby over,” Senna said. “That will solve the problem and leave you free to take Dnitra back to . . . wherever she came from—and you can then get to work making dozens of vampire babies.”
Dominick sent her a long, level look.
“You will be the father of generations. And they’ll be beautiful because Dnitra is beautiful and willing and always available.”
“Senna, stop it!” Dominick grabbed her arms without thinking, and the sparks exploded, showering them with needle-sharp stings.
He dropped his singed hands abruptly. “Devil’s bones—I can’t touch you? Ever? How do you think it feels not to be able to touch you, to feel our child.” He levered himself up and started pacing. “I don’t give a damn about Dnitra.”
“And yet, you were the one she was with.”
“You are the one I’m with.”
Senna turned her face away. She didn’t want to see his expression, she didn’t want to hear how much more he cared for her than that Other. Vampires didn’t care, in any event. She knew one day the last shred of her still-functioning humanity would diminish into a memory. But for now she could still feel pain in her heart about the Other. She could love her child. She could care about Dominick, she could even love him, but it was likely that she would eventually forget what that meant.
“You’re the one I’m with,” Dominick reiterated. “Despite the Countess’s wishes and everything she did to manipulate things her way, even from the grave. But we are now beyond the point where she can touch us. I promise you, we’ll defeat Charles, we’ll have our child, and we will be together. And I will keep you and the child safe.”
“Can a vampire be trusted?” Senna asked rhetorically. She looked at Mirya, who was watching all the emotions war within her. “Can he, Mirya?”
“Vampires are vampires,” Mirya muttered cryptically.
“So he can’t.”
“A vampire is a vampire.”
Could he care about me—or is his sole function to procreate for his clan?
Senna couldn’t get the idea out of her head. Or the fantastical image of the Other spread out naked on the floor, accommodating every male Iscariot who wanted to impregnate her.
Mirya only seemed to confirm it. Dominick could be nothing more than he was. His ever-diminishing humanity didn’t make him any less compassionate or loving or any of the other things she had loved about him, or that she might want in a mate.
She didn’t know why she should be so upset. She’d willingly given herself to him, she’d willingly given him her blood, she’d willingly died for him, without any consideration of what that actually meant or the consequences to her. Now she knew it meant loss. A big, hurtful, heart-crushing loss. She would lose him, she would lose the child, and she would lose herself in the vampiric maw of the eternal pursuit of blood and death.
She made a stifled sound and silently began to cry.
Dominick hated that he couldn’t hold her. She looked so fragile, curled up on Mirya’s bed, so forlorn.
“I need to find out what Charles is doing,” he said, his voice harsh with frustration.
“And her,” Senna whispered miserably.
“I hope I find them together,” Dominick muttered. “I’ll kill them both.” But that would require some preparation. A silver dagger to immobilize Dnitra, a stake to pierce Charles’s craven heart. An ax to whack off their heads and make sure the job was finished.
Next time he’d crush them. Before Charles could get to his child, to Senna. Charles had no idea of the depth of Dominick’s revulsion, his hate.
He couldn’t punish Peter for giving Senna the vampire kiss; he couldn’t punish the Countess. So Charles would bear the brunt of his vengeance. Charles would feel his wrath and die for their sins.
He knew he was losing perspective. He could feel his humanity drifting away in fits and starts. He knew he loved the child and he knew he loved Senna.
At least, he used to know, but now everything he’d ever known or cared about had started to imperceptibly ebb away, and a vampiric disposition had surreptitiously crept into his thoughts, his heart, his soul, his very being.
It was as if, when he let down his guard, the vampire in him came slithering out.
He couldn’t let it show. For Senna’s sake. For the child’s.
For himself.
Damn Dnitra for complicating things. He would kill her if he ever had the chance. And kill Iosefescu’s manipulations with her.
But in the meantime, he’d destroy Charles and Lady Augustine.
The town house was dark, no sign of any servants or Puckett. Lifeless as a body drained of blood.
Which meant Charles and Lady Augustine were abroad in the city—or they’d found someplace new to roost.
Charles�
�s alliance with Lady Augustine had to be as tenuous as a thread of silk. He didn’t need her now. Her attempt to injure and impersonate the Queen had failed. Charles wouldn’t try that again; he didn’t need to with Dnitra on the side, ready and able to be the mother of a vampire nation, and Senna close to term.
Lady Augustine was now expendable. She would fight Charles for her life. To survive. To go forward with the plan to replace the Queen.
If he were Charles, how would he dispose of Lady Augustine?
Feed her to the wolves.
It wasn’t that far-fetched. Lady Augustine, torn limb from limb—a definitive death from which no vampire could regenerate.
London Zoo. The thought transported him just beyond the stone gatehouse of the entrance and into a commotion of visitors running as one body deeper into the park.
He felt a crackling comprehension—he had been compelled to come here to find chaos, tears, shouting, rescuers, barriers.
“Dear heaven—it’s an old lady—somehow got in with the tigers—hurry . . .”
“Stay back, stay back—”
Those in charge had entered the fray and slowly pushed the crowd farther away from the tiger panorama, while detectives from Scotland Yard muscled their way into the fenced area.
He didn’t have to witness it; he knew Lady Augustine lay bleeding in chewed-up pieces in the tiger backdrop, her heart devoured, and her limbs scattered over the landscape.
And now if he returned to Lombard Street, Charles would be hot on his tail.
He heard Charles laughing in his ear, buzzing around his head, whispering, Give me Senna. Give me the child.
Charles had him in his sights. There was nowhere to hide, especially not Mirya’s hovel.
Dominick’s house in Belgravia was a possibility—and perhaps where Charles and Lady Augustine had removed to plot their next move before Charles consigned her to this hideous death.
Charles would follow him there, but at least he wouldn’t be revealing Mirya’s whereabouts.
It was his best option. He transported himself there in the blink of an eye.
The house looked slightly neglected—overgrown shrubs, wilted flowers, mold forming on the stoop steps.