Crimson Kiss (Onyx Assassins 5)

“Awesome.” Sarcasm dripped from my tone. “Looking forward to it.”

“Do we call Alek?” Ajax asked as the last witch offered her wrist.

“Not until we have something concrete to tell him,” Benedict answered. “He’d better be up for answering questions, quick.”

“Can he lie to you?” I asked Benedict, my gaze skipping to the hunters. We’d barely spent days with the twins before they’d stolen Avianna, so it wasn’t like I fully understood his abilities. “Can he mentally force Benedict’s gift to not respond to lies?”

Ajax shook his head. “No. I can still stop time while he’s poking around, trying to make me think my bed is an aquarium. And he can’t do shit with that iron clamped around him.”

“Good,” Benedict said, stalking forward to crouch beside Saint. “Because we need to have a little talk.”

Saint released the witch’s wrist. “Thank you.”

At least he was a polite monster.

She scurried out of the room, leaving just the four of us. Jocelyn was debriefing her sister.

“Talk,” Benedict ordered, shoving his shirtsleeves up his forearms.

“You have to stop Avianna from signing that contract.” Saint looked directly at me.

“I’ve tried that. She’s certain that she’s saving her people from a civil war, thanks to the claim you two put on the throne.” I walked over to stand just behind Benedict, where I could see his forearms.

“She’s about to betroth herself to a bloodmad vampire.”

“What?” Dagon appeared at my side.

“You’re bloodmad, not Samuel,” Ajax rumbled low.

Saint shook his head. “It’s always been Samuel. It started about fifty years before we went into stasis. Remember when we had to hunt down Ivanov?”

“James’s boy,” Ajax murmured. “Your cousin.”

“Yes. Samuel started to slip, and the red ring appeared at the outside of his iris.”

Dagon blinked. “That’s because the hunt exhausted him.”

“He had the same ring when you first awakened,” I said quietly.

“Yes.” Saint nodded and shifted his gaze, speaking to me directly. “I made him tell the others that it was me. They knew our bond, and I knew that they’d ‘assign’ him to keep watch over me, which meant I could keep an eye on him, and I did, but it only got worse with every hunt. Every kill. I had to watch him feed, and when I barely stopped him from draining a human girl to her death, I told the others that I needed to go into stasis or I could not predict the future.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dagon swore.

“You fucking lied,” Ajax accused.

“I protected my brother, just like my mother ordered me to on her deathbed.”

I searched through my memories, thankful that vampires had such long, clear recollections. “On the plane back from Olivia’s, you told him not to go far.”

“So he wouldn’t kill anyone, and at that point, he’d already set his sights on Avianna. The feud between our families is centuries old. It simply went into stasis with us. James was always biding his time for our return.”

My brow furrowed. “Samuel told you he’d failed you, that this was a fresh start—”

“Failed me by nearly draining that girl. And he saw this modern time as an opportunity to claim what had been our mother’s. I never faulted Alek’s father for breaking the contract and choosing his mate, but my mother did, and her claim had been just as strong as his. Their marriage was a peace treaty, a way of stopping the civil war.”

“She was married off to one of his top generals,” Dagon said quietly.

Saint nodded. “So that she would not press her claim, but her brother remembered.”

“You told Samuel to rethink his priorities on the plane.” Was there a chance he was telling the truth? That Samuel was the bloodmad vampire and not him? There were no lies on Benedict’s arm. Had we all been fooled?

“I was trying to prevent this, and instead got these.” He shook the manacles. “Don’t get me wrong. Samuel has always been the golden boy, the perfect one, but the higher someone climbs, the harder they fall. And don’t think that I haven’t walked the fine line between feeding and murdering before, because I have, but Samuel gave himself over to the madness the second we arrived back in Edgemont.”

“He’s never acted mad,” Benedict said slowly. “And he’s never lied to us.”

“I forget that you modern vampires have little experience with actual bloodmadness,” Ajax said with a shake of his head. “It’s a frenzy, a rage, an uncontrollable need to drink the last drop and then start again. If they’re fed, they’re sane. The madness only takes over when hungered or angered. And as for the truths, they’re quite conniving. He may have chosen his words very carefully.”

“But his eyes,” Dagon argued.

“Contacts,” Saint answered. “James wears them, too.”

“No fucking way,” Benedict remarked.

“You’re telling the goddamned truth, aren’t you?” I asked. Which meant Avi had been left alone with not only one, but two killers.