But then it came to him: the ugly, evil tug, the insistent snakelike tendrils pulling at him, forcing, smothering….
She was there…her blue eyes rimmed with glowing bloodred…her hair a copper nimbus around her pale, blue-veined face. He could see the delicate markings on her cheek…the five marks that formed a crescent shape from temple to jaw…the pale lips…one warm, one chilled like death….
He fought it, fought to come out of it, just as he had before…tried to swim up from the deep pull of an ocean floor, an ocean of blue and glowing red, heavy and cloying, dragging him down…. Any moment now those lips of cold and warm would be on him…the smooth knife glide of sharp incisors into his flesh…her hands, chill and strong, over his skin—
“Max…Max!” A voice penetrated his delirium. He tried to listen. “Max…” And then somehow, through the whirl of darkness and evil, he heard the throaty murmur, the calming chant. It sliced through the lowering darkness, the enveloping horror of memory, and he allowed himself to slide back into the bath of golden light and the gentle lapping of relaxation.
There was one more thing…one thing he had to know….
“Victoria,” he managed to say, trying to focus, pulling his attention away from the gold gleam and instead to the sand-colored wall.
“She has returned…she’s safe, Max. You can go now. ”
He nodded, felt his head lighten, his eyelids grow heavy. “Tell her…. ” He couldn’t speak. The words were too heavy, but his lips, sluggish and slow, formed them silently.
The scent of roses, now warm on his neck, grew stronger, suddenly putrid.
And then he let go.
It was nearly three o’clock that morning by the time Victoria extricated herself from her still-furious mother and her two twittering companions, not late at all by London Society standards, and certainly not unusual for Victoria herself. But because of everything that had occurred in the last few days, she felt utterly exhausted. She needed to go back to find the splinter she’d dropped, but first Victoria wanted to change into warm, dry shoes and perhaps a split skirt. She’d sent Verbena to bed, neglecting to tell her of her plans to go back to the villa. Oliver could drive her. She sat down on the stool in front of her dressing table and began to strip off her soaked stockings.
Last night had been the attack near the Consilium, the deaths of Mansur and Stanislaus, along with the horrible moment when Zavier found her and Sebastian…and the night before that she and Sebastian and Max had been locked in the cell at Villa Palombara.
If she’d been bored and impatient a few weeks ago when she was without her vis bulla, now Victoria felt as though she’d been plunged back into an uncontrollable whirlwind of battles. Not to mention how forcefully she was being reminded of the impossibility of keeping one side of her life separate—and safe—from the other.
It had been a near thing, her mother and Conte Regalado. The very thought made Victoria’s stomach lurch and churn. She could not have borne it if she’d lost a third person she loved to the vampires, especially one like her mother, who had no concept of the darkness and evil that pervaded their lives.
She had to find a better way to keep those two parts of her life safely apart. She had to keep her mother and her friends away from the vampires, and hide the fact that she was responsible for fighting them.
How had Aunt Eustacia managed? How had other Venators? Surely they all had had parents; some of them had siblings and other loved ones, either before or after they became Venators. How?
If Aunt Eustacia were there, she could ask her. It was something they’d never really talked about, even when she’d married Phillip. She knew Aunt Eustacia hadn’t approved, but at the same time her aunt hadn’t tried to convince her otherwise. Unlike Max, who’d argued with her and warned her every step of the way.
Why hadn’t her aunt stopped her? Was it because she wanted to give Victoria the chance to try to find love—and happiness—as difficult as it might be?
At least Aunt Eustacia had provided Victoria with a means to keep herself from getting with child.
But now she was gone too.
To her chagrin Victoria’s eyes filled with tears, and she felt the telltale sign of a dripping nose. She hated to cry. She was a Venator, and she’d cried more in the last few days than she had the year after Phillip died.
Died?
No. Not died. She had to acknowledge the truth. It hadn’t been an accident. And he hadn’t simply died.
She’d killed him.
She’d killed him with her naivete, her selfishness, and her bravado. Her lies.
Her lies.
And with her own hand.
A stake to the heart, as she’d done so many other times before—and since.
Blindly she reached for a handkerchief and wiped her nose, her cheeks, her chin. It was soaking when she pulled it away. In the dim light from the moon that shone through the villa window, Victoria could see her wet face reflected in the dressing table mirror. Her eyes were dark and shadowed, and her dark hair fell in horrible snarling curls around her face and neck. She looked like a Medusa. A hollow-cheeked, sad Medusa.
The only thing she had to be thankful for was that she’d killed him before he’d fed on a mortal—thus before he’d damned himself and his soul.