The Bleeding Dusk (The Gardella Vampire Chronicles 3)

The bedclothes were rumpled and twisted, half sagging from the bed, and sunlight—so clean and pure in comparison to the horrific malice in her dream—blasted through the filmy drapes. By the color and angle of the sunbeams, Victoria knew it was well past noon.

She started to climb from the waist-high bed, but a twinge in her side reminded her that Verbena had put her to bed very early this morning after much clucking and salving and bandaging.

After passing through the vampire, the bullet had shaved the edge of her right hip, leaving a deep red track in her skin. Her left leg had had claw marks and bruises on it that would already have started to fade this morning.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, her toes barely brushing the floor, Victoria looked at herself in her dressing table mirror. She had dark circles under her eyes and one slight bruise on her right cheek. She didn’t look that bad.

But then there was Max.

Last night, after directing her toward the carriage where Zavier and Oliver waited, he’d attempted to send her off without him. “I’m not leaving you here,” she told him flatly, walking back in his direction. “You’ve lost too much blood and you need to have those wounds seen to.”

His mouth moved in annoyance or amusement as they faced each other, both bristling with obstinacy. “Don’t be a fool, Victoria. This isn’t the first time I’ve lost a great deal of blood, and I doubt it will be the last.”

“I am Illa Gardella and I—”

“Don’t attempt to order me about, Victoria, for the only result will be your own mortification. Now be off and have your own injury seen to.” He turned and faded into the shadows, and she heard the unmistakable sound of a bridle clinking, then the soft snort of a horse.

Left with no other choice, Victoria climbed into the carriage, where Zavier waited. He said little during the ride back to Aunt Eustacia’s villa (Victoria didn’t believe she could ever come to think of it as hers, despite the fact that it was). Zavier merely watched her, as if trying to assimilate who she really was.

It had been unfortunate that he’d seen her kissing Sebastian (or, rather, Sebastian kissing her, for she’d been more a recipient than a participant in that particular instance), but there was no help for it. Sebastian had no doubt planned it thus, at any rate, although whether his intent was to annoy Max by wasting time with such frivolity or to stake his claim, so to speak, for Zavier’s sake, Victoria couldn’t say.

But the thing that bothered her most about the situation was that Max had been right. Zavier was not only hurt and offended, but Victoria knew that he wasn’t the right man for her to become intimate with in any fashion. He’d developed into a good friend and was a brave and skilled Venator, but his kiss had meant nothing to her. Having been kissed by two men last night, she knew there was only one of them she’d want to kiss again.

Now, however, as she slipped from her bed, feet touching the flat, hooked rug that wasn’t quite as welcoming as the thick Aubusson one back at home, she realized with great disgust that she’d been diverted from getting information from Sebastian about Aunt Eustacia’s bracelet.

Not that kissing Sebastian was a hardship—it wasn’t in the least, for the man had very skillful lips and hands and…well, other means of distracting her. But there was a time and a place for that sort of activity, and Sebastian was a master at disregarding propriety.

There was a brief warning knock on the door to her chamber just before it opened and Verbena bustled in. “Yer mother and t’other ladies’re belowstairs,” she said. Behind her came a short parade of servants carrying a tub and buckets of water to fill it. “They’re wantin’ t’see you, my lady, and find out what happened last night to ye.”

“Blast,” Victoria said under her breath. She needed to get to the Consilium.

“And I’m wanting to know,” Verbena said as she closed the door behind the last of the servants, “how th’ corset worked. Just so’s I can tell that Oliver so he’ll quit badgering me about it. Just because he had the first thought of it don’t mean he’s got t’know everything. And yer gown, my lady…what happened to them roses?”

Victoria sank into the hot water and sighed a long breath as she listened to the maid’s comfortable prattle. Her wounds burned, but it was more than bearable in conjunction with the pleasure of the bath. At some point, she’d need to tell Verbena that her whole coiffure had fallen apart when the vampires disarmed her and removed her stake—an inconvenience that would have to be rectified in the future. The long sagging of her hair had been a distraction.

At last, when the water was turning tepid, she stepped out into a large towel brandished by Verbena. As she turned to take a seat at the dressing table, her maid reached toward the clutter on it.

“What is this, my lady?” Verbena asked, her fingers pausing over the leather thong and the obsidian flake.

“Don’t touch that,” Victoria said, snatching at the shiny black pendant, closing her fingers around it to keep it hidden from prying eyes. It was heavy and warm in her hands for something so small, and she felt a sizzle of awareness prickle her fingers just as it had at the villa. “Just finish my hair so I can get on with my business.”

Verbena’s eyes opened into full circles, but she wisely said nothing. Victoria was suddenly weary of the chattering maid, who always seemed to have to know what was going on. Could she not simply leave her to do her duty without trying to also be her confidante?

Images from her dream—of grasping, clawlike hands, and the gleam of the black splinters of obsidian—suddenly came back to her, nearly blinding her with their force.

But now, in the daylight, fully awake and away from her bed, Victoria wasn’t as overwhelmed by the dream and the evil it portended. Shaking the images away, she recognized what it was telling her, what she must be aware of. The vampire had been wearing a piece of Akvan’s Obelisk, and Akvan was back. He’d been called back to earth by the destruction of his obelisk.

If that little chip was important enough for the vampire to wear, how important must the larger shard be, the one Victoria stored at the Consilium?

One thing was certain: Victoria was going to take the small piece to the Consilium, where it would be safe from prying eyes and hands. As soon as she could make her excuses and extricate herself from her mother and the other ladies, she would remove the pendant from her home.

In the meantime, the safest place for it was in the pocket of her gown.