She opened her eyes when she felt the hands pull away, the chaos slip into silence. She was looking up into the face of Nedas.
Up close he was more terrifying, more intensely repugnant than he’d seemed from a distance. She smelled something raw and dusty about him that brought to mind burning bones and butchered meat, and her stomach wanted to heave.
But she would not let it. Her aunt had been brave. Incredibly brave and strong as she walked to what she had to have known was her death. Victoria’s body was shaking with exhaustion and shock, and she had a multitude of hurts that pounded along with her slamming heartbeat.
Drawing in a shaky breath, Victoria pulled her energy about her, refused to think of what had happened, and what her life would be like without her mentor, without Summa Gardella, and called on her strength and her wit.
And most of all, she drew upon her rage and the loathing for the man she’d once fought beside and trusted with her life, and channeled it into potency.
“The other female Venator, I must presume,” Nedas said, toeing her with his leather boot. His fangs were out now, and obviously her wooden bolt had missed its mark and let him live. “This one is much prettier and livelier than the last.”
Victoria looked away from the compelling eyes that had begun to glow with bright red rings around the same blue irises of his mother—which indicated the power
she’d invested in him. She found Max.
For the brief moment when their eyes met, she saw his stone exterior slip saw something agonized waver there—but then it was gone and he straightened his posture, giving her that cool, mocking look she’d become used to.
“She is no real threat,” he said. “Why do you think I chose the other?”
“Damn you to Hell,” Victoria said to Max, as if they were the only two people in the room—softly, as a lover might murmur a soul-deep secret.
He met her gaze without flinching, without distancing himself from the rage she knew was there. Even Nedas’s presence faded away from the periphery of her awareness. For Victoria, it was just the two Venators.
Then she was whipped to her feet by a strong, dark hand, and she found herself chest-to-chest with, and less than an arm’s length away from, Lilith’s son.
“No real threat,” Nedas commented, perusing her face as if he were reading the pages of the London Times and it was devoid of any articles of interest. “No, not the woman who fought and killed two of my Guardians, and an Imperial whom I sent to bring Polidori back. No. No threat.
“And most certainly, not the woman who escaped from five vampires, even as they fought over feeding on her, during a Tutela meeting. No.” He looked over at Max. “This one is no real threat.”
Max arched a brow. “She must have made much improvement in the last year.”
Nedas looked at her, and she remembered to keep her vision from getting trapped by his gaze. She focused her eyes on his eyelashes, noticing how thick and black they were, how they brushed his thick, wiry brows when his eyes were fully open.
She and Nedas were nearly of a height, and he barely had to tilt his face toward her. One hand held her arm and she made no move to shake it loose. It would be a superficial, short-lived victory. Better that he think she was frozen in fright. Or held in his thrall.
“I could kill her now—or have you do it, Max, as your first duty in my inner circle…but perhaps I will, instead, take a page from the book of my dear mother. Claiming a Venator of my own, most particularly such an attractive one, would not be such a hardship. And after tonight…well, she will have little to do, won’t she? The rise of Akvan’s Obelisk will make the Venators inconsequential.” He smiled at her again. “And won’t you be pleased to be one of the protected, like your colleague here?”
Victoria did not grace him with a reply. It was useless, and she had more to think about than to exchange repartee with the vampire prince.
The thought reminded her that Sebastian had disappeared sometime during the altercation. But before she could make sense of it, Nedas, apparently annoyed that she would not engage with him in a war of words, commanded, “Disarm her.”
Thank God Max wasn’t part of it—part of the pairs of hands that held her immobile as others felt around and removed the stakes and holy water, and the knife she wore in various locations on her body. She bucked and kicked and twisted futilely, but she could not remain still with those ugly, repulsive fingers on her. They even found the vial of holy water tied to the underside of her thick braid, along with the stake looped beneath it as well.
Her tunic shirt was lifted before she knew what was happening, and then the sudden, rending pain at her navel as one of them—surely a Tutela—tore the vis bulla from her skin.
She cried out, a low moan as she felt the instant evaporation of her energy and strength, and the surge of weakness overwhelmed her. The pain was great enough that this time she did succumb to the black void where there was no pain and no grief.
+ 24 +
In Which Lady Rockley Attempts to Draw Blood
* * *
When she awoke, Victoria found herself alone in the dark.
She drew in a deep breath, surprised at how much she hurt everywhere. But she was not used to such intense, debilitating pain. Her arms were too weak to prop herself up, so she remained prone for a long moment, measuring her breaths, trying to discern shadows in the darkness.
The memory waited before it came upon her, then it flashed in, overwhelming her mind with all its blood and death. The whistling arc of the blade. The hands groping and pulling and punching at her. The red-rimmed blue eyes of inhumanity. The tearing pain at her navel.