Victoria had been receiving Phillip’s proposal when she realized what was happening, and had needed to duck away.
She was not likely to forget Lord Truscott.
“You killed him. After all I’d done to protect him. ” The chill sharpened, and Victoria spun just as a shadow turned into the figure of a man in front of her. As she ducked the undead’s attack, ramming into his gut, a gun fired
. For the second time that day, a bullet whizzed much too close to her head.
She flipped the vampire over her shoulder and whirled around, still looking for something to use as a stake. The undead crashed to the ground, and she looked up to see Goodwin facing a cluster of vampires. Three of them. That made four total.
Red eyes glowing, the undead in front of her scrambled to his feet and launched himself at Victoria. As she kicked out, catching the vampire in the chin, she saw Goodwin pitch his firearm wildly at the one closest to him.
When the creature near her attacked again, she pummeled him back, allowing all of her red rage to burst free with kicks, punches, elbows, and head butts. The last time she smashed him to the ground, he had enough and scrambled to his feet, running away.
Victoria turned and saw Goodwin pinned to a brick wall by the hand of a vampire. His legs thrashed wildly and anything he might have screamed was reduced to faint gurgles. Two others were closing in on his large companion, who brandished a heavy club.
It wouldn’t be long before he was relieved of the club.
The rest of the street was quiet and empty.
Victoria looked at them through red vision, heart pounding, hatred surging through her. Then turned her back on the scene and walked into the darkness.
Fourteen
Victoria Faces the Music
“I never thought to see you in such a state, Vioget. If there’s one woman who can take care of herself, it’s Victoria,” Pesaro drawled.
Sebastian turned away from the supercilious prick, who lounged long and dark in an armchair, a book open in his lap. Not only was his neck cloth a disgrace, but he looked supremely unconcerned about the fact that Victoria seemed to have disappeared. The hackney driver, Barth, claimed he’d let her off a block away from the house in the early afternoon . . . but no one had seen or heard from her since.
But what did he expect from Max Pesaro? The man was utterly useless except for slinging insults and veiled comments now that he’d lost his Venator powers.
He was an unfeeling bastard, but he’d made his opinions clear to Sebastian last night, when Victoria left them alone in the carriage.
I’ll be gone soon. You’ll need to stay with Victoria. I know you loved Giulia, and though you may not believe it, so did I.
The sentiment had been implicit: take care of Victoria without overtly taking care of her. It smacked of Pilate, but Sebastian’s annoyance grew from the fact that Pesaro felt it necessary to make it an order. Yet, the fact that Pesaro had felt the conversation a necessity at all made it clear that Sebastian’s warning to Victoria had been accurate: He doesn’t want anyone.
“You’d be better off learning that now,” Pesaro continued, holding a glass of brandy that was as full as it had been when poured. “She doesn’t need to be taken care of. Nor does she desire it. ” But take care of her regardless.
Sebastian took a drink of his own liquor instead of replying the way he wanted to. He was better equipped to know Victoria’s desires than Pesaro was, by God. Once he swallowed the burning liquid and leashed his instinctive response, he replied, “That may be the case—which remains to be seen—but since I’ve been in such close proximity to her, I’ve noticed that all is not well. She’s acting differently. ”
Pesaro glanced sharply toward the door, and Sebastian stilled for a moment. Had that been a sound in the front entrance? By silent communion, they waited for another beat, but they heard nothing else.
Sebastian sipped again, rolling the brandy over his tongue. Unease tickled when he looked at the clock and saw that it was midnight.
“Differently?” Pesaro sounded bored, but Sebastian noticed that he was resting the glass on the table next to him.
He could barely stand the sight of Pesaro sometimes, for the shape and color of the man’s dark eyes reminded him of Giuilia’s, along with the sharp peaks that formed the dip in his upper lip. On her, the Pesaro eyes had been huge and overwhelming in her pale, delicate face, and her lower lip a lush complement to the well-formed upper one. . . .
Giulia had been a sickly girl, thin and delicate, with a cough that never seemed to ease. Sebastian had fallen completely, foolishly in love with her the first time he laid eyes on her at fifteen. Plagued by illness, she might not have lived to her twenties, but her life had been shortened even further by her brother’s naive decision to bring her to the Tutela. Pesaro had thought vampirism’s immortality would be the cure for her illness, but he’d been horribly tricked.
Sebastian steeled his thoughts, returning from the past to the present concern. God help him—he couldn’t bear to lose Victoria as he had Giulia. But he wouldn’t.
She was so much stronger.
“She reacts to the smell of blood,” he told Pesaro, returning to the conversation. He hated having to share his concerns with him, but there was no one else. And, like it or not, Pesaro had been a fierce, capable, knowledgeable Venator who had given even Beauregard concern.
Sebastian’s statement snared the other man’s attention. The glass clunked softly as Pesaro released it completely onto the table. Though he didn’t move otherwise, Sebastian noticed that his eyes sharpened in a way Giulia’s never had. “What do you mean?”