+ Prologue +
A Widow Grieves
* * *
One month after she lost her husband, Victoria took to the streets of London.
In the darkest part of night, while the rest of the city was safely tucked away and the bulk of Society had repaired to the country for hunting season, Victoria Gardella Grantworth de Lacy, Marchioness of Rockley, strode alone through the slum known as Seven Dials.
Dullness permeated her bones. Dispassion and numbness, laced with deep, gnawing grief and rage, caused her limbs to move soldierlike, one foot in front of the other. It was not only in deference to her status of mourning that she wore black from head to toe, but also to allow her to meld with the shadows, in and out, to be seen if she wished to be seen…to become one with the darkness if she did not.
She wore men’s clothing for ease of movement and because they smelled like her husband.
She also wore them as a silent protest against the strictures of Society that demanded she sit in her dark-swathed home and do nothing for a twelvemonth. Her lips curled humorlessly at the thought of what the ton’s matrons would say if they only knew.
The beaver topper, tall enough to tuck her thick braid up into, had also been Phillip’s. She had smelled his rosemary-scented pomade on it when she first placed it on her head. Now the comforting, familiar, painful scent was lost in the stench of horse droppings, human waste, and other refuse that littered the streets of one of London’s worst neighborhoods.
These streets were narrow and close, with buildings built barely a man’s width apart. Windows were fairly nonexistent, and every other structure had hanging shutters or sagging doors, or both. Carriages and even hacks were a rarity, especially in the early hours of the morning when it was still dark and the ruffians and thugs were on the prowl for an unsuspecting mark.
Victoria knew she wouldn’t find vampires to hunt tonight. They had all fled the city with their queen, Lilith, a month ago.
No, Victoria didn’t expect to find an undead to stake tonight, but she wanted to. Oh, she wanted to. She needed to.
She needed to feel the blood coursing through her body again—the blood that felt as though it had slowed to a crawl and sat, stewing, like a scum-covered pond, in her veins. She needed to move, to exert, to feel again.
She needed revenge.
She needed absolution.
Victoria turned the corner and immediately ducked into the shadow of the old brick building she skirted. Across what passed for a street in this area of London, she saw two figures.
One, a tall, burly man. The other, a slender young woman; a girl, really, for she barely reached the man’s armpit. The half-moon stippled light over the street and illuminated them quite well. Victoria could see the girl was frightened, pleading, struggling…while the man, using the ease of his bulk and height, manhandled her against the wall, holding her by the throat as he groped her breasts, tearing away the bodice of her dress. Her small hands pulled and scratched at his hairy arms, alternately trying to cover herself, pull his hand from her neck, and bat his other hand away.
Victoria glanced around as she let herself into the light, easing from the shadows. There was no one else in the vicinity. Whether the girl had been brought here by the man, or whether she’d become lost on her own, it appeared as though there was no one to help. She whipped off Phillip’s hat and let the long braid fall along her spine. She wanted him to know a woman was going to bring him to his knees.
Ignoring the stake in her deep inside coat pocket and disdaining the knife she had strapped to her thigh, Victoria walked up behind the man, silent as a cat, and gave a powerful kick to the base of his back.
With a cry of rage he spun, his meaty hand still closed around the girl’s neck…until he saw who’d accosted him. He released his prisoner, who slumped to the ground, and lunged for Victoria.
She was ready for him. The blood was moving in her, her hands were poised, her knees bent to give her stability, just as Kritanu had taught her. The rage she’d swallowed for weeks bubbled to the surface. Her breathing quickened.
The man spared her a nasty smile, then lunged. Lithe and swift, Victoria waited until the last moment before she sidestepped him At the same moment, she grabbed his outstretched arm, using the force of his weight to propel his bulk. Her braid whipped about in a powerful arc. The tiny vis bulla she wore gave her the same superior strength and speed as the undead she was used to fighting, enabling her to slam a man thrice her weight face-first into the brick wall.
He crashed into it with a satisfying “oomph,” but Victoria wasn’t finished with him. She wasn’t ready to contain her exploding emotions. Ignoring the wide-eyed look of the young girl, who’d slunk off to the side and away from the activity, she spun the would-be rapist back around. Her nerves zinged with energy, her breath came in deep, drawing gasps, her vision edged red as she slammed a fist into his cheek. He stumbled, but righted himself and, with a guttural cry of fury, swung out with an arm thicker than her thigh.
Victoria blocked him with one strong, slim limb, and thrust her other palm toward his face in a powerful blow. His expression blared surprise and shock, but he ducked and bent, spinning…then rose with a blade in his hands.
The world slowed to a crawl and raced ahead at the same time.
Later, Victoria remembered smiling, remembered the feeling of contentment that settled so calmly over her as she reached for her own knife. She recalled the ease with which she withdrew it from the garter on the outside of her trousers, the feel of it in her palm…not so unlike the weight and thickness of a stake. An ash stake.
It was like coming home. It was like being released from some deep, dark confine.
She burst free.
She thrust and sliced and slashed. Images burned in her mind as she flowed in and out of the positions Kritanu had taught her, the ones that had become second nature to her in the last months. The memories—of Phillip, of Lilith, of the myriads of red-eyed vampires she’d fought—all melded, intermingled with this attacker’s face, still frozen in shock and then pain…and then emptiness.
Emptiness.
It wasn’t until she raised her arm to strike yet again and saw the dull red streak of blood over the tendons of her hand that Victoria came back.
She froze, looking at her hand. There wasn’t supposed to be blood. Vampires didn’t bleed when they were staked.
She realized she couldn’t catch her breath, that it h
ad escaped and was jolting her body into deep heaves with each inhale. Her shoulders jerked up and down. Her lungs burned. Her arms and legs shook. Her eyes and nose leaked.
Victoria looked down. She was holding a knife, not a stake. A knife dripping with blood. Her hand was not only streaked, but dotted, splattered with blood in a horrific pattern. She was kneeling…kneeling over a massive body that no longer moved.
His eyes were open, dull and glassy, and blood covered his chin and cheeks, even his lips, in the same ghastly pattern that was on her hands. His chest barely rose and fell.
Victoria stared down at him and gingerly pushed to her feet.
She looked at the knife. She would have dropped it, but her fingers would not release the hilt. She shoved it into her pocket, still clutching it, and looked around.
The girl. She dimly remembered the girl.
But there was no one. No one to see what she’d wrought, what the rage and devastation had done when it erupted from her.
Victoria looked down at her hands again.
She’d killed before…but she’d never had blood on her hands.
+ + +
Eustacia Gardella heard the noise before the man sleeping beside her did. She reached automatically for the stake she kept beside the bed, rolling off the mattress with an agility that belied her eighty-one years. Kritanu, his black hair shining in the moonlight beaming through the window, shifted and woke at her movement.
He saw the stake in her hand and then his dark eyes met hers silently. Then he too slid his wiry body from beneath the sheets. He reached for his knife, and Eustacia felt him behind her as she turned to slip from the room.