Rises The Night (The Gardella Vampire Hunters 2)

Blast! Would she never get one up on him?

“I hope you aren’t here to stop me. You know how it ended last time you attempted it.”

He looked at her steadily, and she was surprised to see acceptance in his gaze. “It is against my better judgment, but I will not attempt to stop you. I will, however, accompany you, if you are certain you wish to do this. Perhaps you are meant to be present for it after all.”

“Nedas is going to activate Akvan’s Obelisk, and I’m going to do my best to stop him. What do you expect to happen?”

“I’m not precisely certain, but I fear it’s nothing I would choose to witness. Anything with which Nedas is involved can only be repulsive.”

“Do you know where to go, or would that be too much of an advantage to me?”

He smiled at her, but there was a lack of his old spirit. “I know of something better. A place where you can watch unnoticed.”

Victoria thought of her bow and the wooden arrows. Unnoticed meant she might truly have the opportunity she needed. “Then let’s be off.”

As they started, she added, “Thank you, Sebastian.”

He shook his head. “Save your gratitude, for you may well regret it later.”

Victoria could hear voices as she crouched and followed Sebastian through a low, narrow opening. When she emerged, she found herself looking through a tiny aperture high in the shadows above a stage.

It was not the stage on which the opera she’d watched two nights ago had been performed. There were no box seats nor velvet-covered chairs arranged in rows in a half circle around it. The decor was not gilt and marble, but raw, rough wood and cracked plaster. A small square window studded one wall, near the ceiling just above her head, which, Victoria noticed, was made of open beams and covered with cobwebs.

“Where are we?” she breathed into Sebastian’s ear.

“Second rehearsal stage, below the theater,” he replied just as softly.

She looked back down to watch the people—mostly men, and many of them vampires—move about. They seemed to be congregating in a central area near the stage. The cold on the back of her neck had not relented. Her skin there was so frigid it burned.

Victoria leaned toward Sebastian again and was just about to speak when he closed his fingers over her arm and pointed down. As he did, something changed in the air. It turned thick and expectant, and metallic with evil.

A man was approaching the stage, and the others, Tutela and vampires alike, parted ways for him to pass through. She couldn’t get a perfect look at him, but she absorbed the image of shiny black hair worn short and close to the scalp, and his dark olive skin, much darker than an Italian’s, and thick brows. It was hard to tell, but she thought he might be perhaps a few years older than she, in his middle twenties. His lips were thin and pinched, and the whites of his eyes were so white they nearly gleamed.

He looked nothing like his mother, whose skin was nearly translucent it was so pale, and her hair like coils of polished copper and ruby, it was so bright red.

She knew he must be Nedas, the son of Lilith, for no other creature would command such immediate and complete attention from the others. And Victoria felt the evil so strongly, she wanted to brush it off, wipe it away.

She’d been so intent on examining Nedas that at first she completely missed him. But then, as three other men joined Nedas on the stage and stood there in the blush of light coming from a myriad of candled sconces, she recognized Max.

It didn’t surprise her.

No, surprise was not what she felt when she saw him, his confident, powerful figure towering over Nedas and the others next to him. She must have moved or caught her breath, for Sebastian touched her arm as if to comfort her.

Comfort. The last thing she needed—or wanted—was comfort.

She ignored Sebastian and watched Max’s harsh, handsome face as it softened into a laugh at something Nedas said, tipping up toward the ceiling, exposing his throat as he basked in hilarity for a moment.

Victoria couldn’t imagine for an instant what the evil creature could have said that was so funny.

Focus.

She had to push away the maelstrom of feelings and urges clashing through her and focus on her opportunity. Bless Sebastian, for he’d provided her with the perfect location from which to launch her assassination attempt. They were so high up and tucked into the shadows that even Max’s sharp eyes wouldn’t spot them unless he knew exactly where to look.

The thought crossed her mind, briefly but severely, that it was possible he might. That he and Sebastian had planned this together, knowing that she would do what she wanted to do, and so faked a kidnapping so that she could think they didn’t want her there…when in fact, it was all an elaborate ruse to get her here, at this place, at this time. Max was certainly smart enough to do such a thing, and he knew her well.

Wasn’t that why George hadn’t been surprised at all to see her? He’d thought Max would bring her himself, but it was just as well that she’d arrived alone.

Victoria tensed. Her stomach churned with doubt in spite of herself. No. If Max had wanted harm to come to her, he would not have helped her to escape the theater only two nights ago.