As Shadows Fade (The Gardella Vampire Chronicles 5)

“It’s not where I intend to take you,” Victoria replied, fingering her stake. “It’s where I want to send you: Hell.”

Lilith laughed again, moving her hand languidly over Sebastian’s curling hair. “I regret to inform you that I’ve already been there. And prefer not to go back.”

“Only one of us will leave this room. And it will be me.” With that, Victoria launched herself at the tall woman.

Lilith’s face metamorphosed into a horrific bansheelike mask, her face growing long and gray, her eyes burning like blinding beacons: red surrounded by glowing blue. Nails shot longer from her hands, curving like ten scythes. She whipped her palms up and stopped Victoria in midleap, sending her crashing to the floor.

Still feeling the imprint of those skeletal fingers and deathly nails raking over her arm and chest, Victoria scrambled to her feet, her ears ringing, careful to keep her eyes averted from the dangerous gaze. Lilith had eased back into her normal visage, and now she looked down at Victoria with scorn and dark wickedness. All trace of humor and benevolence had disappeared.

“Maximilian tried that one time, long ago,” Lilith told her with disdain. “If I didn’t want him so much, I would have killed him then. I have no such compunction regarding you.”

Victoria didn’t respond. She stood, gathering her wits and her strength, cataloguing the arsenal of weapons available to her. A quick look around the room confirmed that there was nothing to help her: nothing of wood, no sword. Even Sebastian appeared unable-or unwilling-to move. He merely knelt on the floor next to Lilith’s chaise, the same sort of empty expression on his face that Max had had while in the vampiress’s presence.

All she had were the stakes on her person, the holy water. Her wits.

And, possibly, the secret Adolphus had told her.

She had only a moment to assess all of this, for Lilith had been angered, and she no longer played the gracious sovereign. No sooner had Victoria steadied herself than the vampire queen flew at her.

Fangs sharp and extended into her bottom lip, and her long coppery hair swirled with the horrible scent of roses. Lilith knocked her to the ground, then reached down and grabbed Victoria by the front of the shirt and slammed her to the wall.

The impact set her head to bobbing and pushed the air from her lungs, but Victoria held the stake and made a swipe at Lilith. It scraped along the vampiress’s face, leaving a long gouge and blood dripping from it.

Victoria gasped, twisting from Lilith’s superhuman grip. Fumbling in the pocket of her trousers, Victoria found one of the bottles of holy water, and, ducking and rolling away from the vampire, she tried to pry the top off.

Lilith slammed into her, knocking the bottle out of her hand, and swooping toward Victoria with a delighted shriek, fangs ready and wide. Her eyes blazed now, and Victoria felt herself snagged in them, slowed, and the thrall begin to wrap around her.

No.

She shook her head, forced the hold to sever, and twisted along the ground toward the lost bottle, stake still close in her hand. Lilith followed, but Victoria was faster. She bucked back and flipped the vampire over her with a quick kick, lunging for, but missing, the bottle, thankful that the stopper hadn’t come loose.

With a shriek and a swirl of hair, Lilith rose as Victoria came to her feet, holy water in hand. As the vampire lunged toward her, nails curving wickedly in the air, Victoria ducked, and as she twisted around the queen, grabbed a handful of that awful snakelike hair.

Though it glowed like copper fire, it felt like wire, thick and hard, not springy at all. Victoria wrapped it around her wrist quickly and gave a good hard jerk, pulling the vampire off her feet to the sound of a great shriek.

Victoria dashed herself against the vampire queen, her arm still coiled in the hair, and they crashed into a wall, then tumbled to the floor. The bottle of water was just… there. She shoved the stake down the front of her trousers and reached for the vial… crying out with relief when her fingers closed around it, just as Lilith arced out with a long, powerful leg.

Bringing the bottle of holy water to her face, Victoria used her teeth to pull the stopper out as she kicked and yanked at Lilith, who scratched and clawed viciously back at her. But the crazy, twisting creature beneath her couldn’t get free from the trap of her hair, and the two scrambled across the floor, rolling, bucking, twisting.

At last the stopper came free and water splashed out, but Victoria managed to redirect the small flume onto the vampire writhing beneath her.

“Help me!” Lilith cried, then screamed as the water spilled on her face. Her bucking motions grew stronger, the horrible sweet scent of roses climbing up and around Victoria, but she kept her head clear.

Now. Victoria reached for the stake at her waist, closed her fingers around it, pulled it free.

She swiped her arm up and around, toward the writhing, snakelike vampire body linked to her by a length of long hair. She stabbed the stake down, aiming for the bony chest of the undead.

Slam.

Lilith twisted hard just as the stake pierced into skin with the familiar little pop, and Victoria felt strong hands pulling at her. She looked up into Sebastian’s face.

And his glowing red eyes.

Twenty-four

In Which the Vampire Queen Invites Her Companion to Dine

“No!” Victoria half screamed, half gasped. “No.”

Not Sebastian.

But it was. Those red eyes gleamed at her, heavy and alluring, capturing her so unexpectedly, so very quickly. And in the midst of the shock, she realized that Lilith’s hair was still wrapped around her arm. Somehow, when she stabbed up and around from under her, the stake had not gone deep enough, or hadn’t hit the heart.

The vampire queen lived.

All of this occurred in the barest of seconds, and then suddenly, the weight of Lilith was off her, and Victoria was jerked to her feet.

Still stunned, feeling as though someone had slammed a boulder into her belly, she staggered, trying to catch her breath, to understand how it could have happened… How? Sebastian?

Too late.

I’m too late. Just like for Phillip.

Hands grasped and grabbed, shoving her, and she caught herself before falling, kicking out swiftly before she tumbled onto something soft. Like cushions, pillows. Soft and smelling horribly of roses and blood and death.

All of a sudden, the memory… the terrible, red-hot memory of Beauregard, assaulted her. Hands, nails, teeth… lips… on her, something soft beneath her, red eyes glowing with pleasure. No, no… those were Sebastian’s eyes.