Wayren wasn’t given to sensitivity, but the recollection of Victoria’s face when she’d seen Zavier, the shock, anger, and fear that had passed over her beatific countenance, would long be in her memory.
Such anger.
It worried her.
Max groaned softly, drawing her attention again. The golden disk lay on the table next to him, its chain coiled around it in serpentine fashion. He shifted again, becoming restless, his large hand rising as though to ward off something, then falling heavily onto the table, sending the lamp and the earbobs that had belonged to his sister jiggling.
Hoping to calm him, Wayren took his warm hand in her smaller ones, noticing scraped fingertips and cracked nails that looked as if he’d tried to climb a stone wall.
She knew many things of past and future, of possibility and truth, of good and evil…but she did not know whether Ylito’s plan would succeed. She wouldn’t know until Max awakened, and she used the golden disk into which she had collected his memories.
As if she’d called him to waken, his eyes fluttered open, suddenly clear and dark. He looked around. She released his hand, watching as he curled his fingers closed.
“Max. ”
He looked at her, half sitting, the blankets falling to his hips. “Yes. Where am I?”
The bites were gone, she saw. His neck was smooth and clean, sweeping gracefully into powerful, broad shoulders. But he recognized his own name, seemed comfortable with his body.
“You’re safe, Max. I’m Wayren. ” She waited.
He nodded, but she knew he didn’t remember. “Wayren. What am I doing here? Have I been ill?”
“In a fashion, yes. Please. Drink this and let me talk to you. ” She handed him a metal cup filled with another of Ylito’s concoctions.
He hesitated, sniffed at it. Hesitated more.
She smiled. “If I wanted you dead, I had ample opportunity while you were sleeping. ”
He nodded and drank.
When he looked back at her, she had the golden disk spinning eerily in her hand. She began to murmur again, calling down the power of the Spirit, asking for help, and watched as his eyes were drawn irrevocably to the flat pendant.
Wayren knew the moment he remembered it all…a tightening of the face, a tension in the shoulders, a return of the sharpness to his eyes. He reached for the tiny, delicate vis bulla. Closing his fingers around it, he picked it up, shuttering his eyes, and drew in a slow breath.
And then opened his eyes. They were bleak. “Nothing. I feel nothing. ”
Wayren nodded. “But you remember. ”
“Yes. ” He swung his feet off the bed. “What time is it? I must go. ”
“It’s midday. But you cannot go hurrying off, Max. ”
He’d half risen, but at her words he sat back heavily. “Of course not. I’m the shell of a Venator now. I have the knowledge and the skills, but not the strength or the powers. A shell. ”
“You’ll not go alone. ”
His beautiful lips snarled. “I may not be a Venator any longer, but I’m not helpless. I killed vampires and at least one demon before I earned the vis bulla, Wayren. You know that. ”
“Do you remember what you told me to tell Victoria, just before you went to sleep?”
He stilled, his face blank. “You didn’t bring her here. ”
Wayren shook her head. He’d made her promise not to let anyone see him—anyone, especially Victoria. “Only Ylito. ”
“What did I say? Did you tell her?”
She felt his tension; it was as if it hung in the air over them like a heavy blanket. She knew much, but now she knew even more. “You wanted me to tell her you were sorry. ”