The Bleeding Dusk (The Gardella Vampire Hunters 3)

“Don’t, Sebastian. Don’t do it. ” Beauregard’s breaths were stronger now. His hand wrapped around Sebastian’s wrist instead of pulling at it, scratching at it. Gentle. Imploring. “You’ll regret it. You know it. You’ve lived with it for—”

“Stop. ” Sebastian felt his fingers cutting into the flesh beneath them, tearing into his grandfather’s throat. He lifted the stake. “I do love you. ”

The door burst open at that moment, and Pesaro charged in. His arms and shirt were streaked with blood, his face hardly recognizable in its intensity.

He didn’t hesitate but went straight to the bed, and Sebastian watched as he yanked back the blanket with a bravery he himself hadn’t had.

Victoria murmured, moved sinuously, and her eyes fluttered, then closed completely. The hair fell away from her face when Pesaro lifted her, her head falling back to show the bites and blood streaks on her throat and shoulders. Her lips curved in a sensual smile, and a quick trickle of blood spilled from the corner of her mouth.

“Christ Jesus,” Pesaro breathed. He lifted his face, and Sebastian was struck by the loathing there. The stark fury. The same madness he knew was on his own face, grinding in his own gut.

Everything else fell away, and Sebastian plunged his stake.

The soft poof resonated, the ashes scattered, and he heard the tinny clatter of the copper armband as it fell to his feet.

Twenty-three

In Which There Occurs a Bedside Vigil

“There’s nothing we can do. ” Wayren looked around the room. The Consilium’s fountain rumbled behind her, all of its sparkling, blessed water of no help in this instance. “Do you not feel it? You can sense her, even here. ”

She knew they recognized the presence of an undead—a destroyed one of their own, brought into the sacred and secret halls of the Consilium; she knew because of the stark hopelessness on Sebastian’s handsome face, the self-loathing and guilt that certainly churned inside him. And the murmurs and exchanged glances of Michalas and Brim, who, though injured and knocked unconscious during their battle with the undead, still stood strong at the back of the room.

And Max, whose face was devoid of expression. Who couldn’t sense it any longer himself, but who knew. Who kept in the dark alcove as if he would separate himself from them all.

Perhaps it was best if he did, now that Victoria was gone.

“I’ll wait with her until she awakens. Ylito, too. The rest of you”—Wayren glanced at Sebastian, and then Max—“can do as you wish. It won’t be sundown for hours. ”

She turned from them, from the dark, hopeless faces and the simmering undercurrent of rage. She hoped, prayed that it wouldn’t be directed at Sebastian—for as much as Max wanted to place the blame there, and as much as Sebastian himself did, Wayren knew it was not that simple.

Sighing, she passed by the portrait gallery. There would be the need for more paintings, for Zavier would expire soon. And Stanislaus’s had not yet been completed. And Victoria…

Footfalls drew her attention, and she turned to see Sebastian in her wake. “I want to be there when she wakes,” he said. Gone was the charm, the light, flirtatious manner. There was deep sorrow and angry regret, but determination as well.

He would be a good Venator. His time had come at last.

“Do you intend to fully join us now?” she asked, making way for him to walk abreast with her.

“I have no reason not to. If I had…I’ve been foolish and irresponsible. ”

He had been, but she understood, as she was wont to do. He, as Max had done, would find his place here, and learn to grow beyond his faults and mistakes.

“You dispatched your grandfather. Don’t think I don’t know how difficult that was for you. You will grieve. ”

Sebastian looked at her, his face set and haggard. Despite the weariness and pain there, he reminded her, as he always did, of the great Uriel—but with an extraordinary sensuality she didn’t think Uriel would appreciate. “Is there truly no hope? Nothing that can be done?” he asked.

“There’s nothing. ” Max’s voice was flat and sharp behind them, startling Wayren. “She drank from him. ”

She paused so that Max could join them, then replied, “He drained much of her blood—she was very weak, and by drinking from him she replaced hers with his. She’ll awaken and be an undead. ”

“Then why not stake her now and relieve us of the waiting?”

“Because you must see her as she’s become so that you can say your farewells,” she told Sebastian. “And know that it is so, and irreversible. ”

They had reached the room where Victoria lay. No one had been allowed in since Max burst into the Consilium carrying her unconscious, blood-streaked body. He’d then relinquished it to Ylito and Ilias.

The chamber was small, too small for five people, but Wayren knew it was futile to try to keep Max and Sebastian out. Victoria had been bathed and dressed as though she were a corpse, ready for burial. Her dark hair lay in a thi