Silas knew at once that Lucius Montfort had left the house, because Michael St. John made an appearance again that evening, about an hour or so after the same silent semivive brought Silas his meager dinner of water, an apple, and some bread and sausage. He’d eaten all of it, not because it tasted good in any way, except for the apple, but because he knew he needed to keep his strength up.
When St. John appeared, though, Silas could only smile and shake his head. “Maybe you should bring a deck of cards or something. It would help to pass the time.”
“Hadn’t thought of that.” The vampire came farther into the cellar and leaned against one of the racks of wine. “You know what day it is?”
Silas did some quick mental math. “Thursday?”
“Well, true, but I was thinking of something a little more specific.”
If it was Thursday, that meant the date was March 11th. Silas tried to think of anything significant that had happened that particular day, but only drew a blank. “Sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s your girl’s birthday. Serena’s birthday. And Lucius went to take her out to a fancy dinner.”
Rage boiled up within Silas. He should have remembered that date — it wasn’t as though he didn’t have access to that information via Serena’s file — but it had slipped his mind, subsumed by far more pressing matters. And knowing that Lucius sought to exploit his connection to her by taking her out to dinner…well, Silas had to keep quiet, since he knew that whatever came out of his mouth would only betray how angry he truly was.
Correctly interpreting Silas’ silence, Michael St. John continued, “Don’t like that idea very much, do you?”
“Not really,” Silas growled.
“Well, look at it this way — you have a great excuse for not buying her a birthday present.”
“Not funny.”
St. John grinned and gave a careless shrug. “I wasn’t really trying to be funny. I just wanted to point out a helpful fact.”
“It wasn’t helpful, either. If you really wanted to be helpful, you’d take these goddamn manacles off me while your master is away.”
The vampire looked almost contrite. “I wish I could. I really do. But my bond to Lucius won’t let me do something so obviously subordinate.”
“How about, I don’t know, dropping the key someplace where I can find it?”
“No go. That won’t work, either. I’m afraid — ”
Michael St. John didn’t have the opportunity to say what he was afraid of, because a second later, three Watchers in their gula forms burst into the cellar. Although a human would have a very difficult time differentiating one gargoyle from another, Silas immediately recognized the members of the strike team as Felix, Aaron, and Micah. They advanced on Michael, who was caught with them between him and the door, and therefore didn’t have many options. The vampire froze where he was, hands curling into fists even though he had to know he was grossly outnumbered.
“Stop!” Silas called out, and Felix paused, orange eyes blazing.
“Stop?” he said in some incredulity. “This is a vampire, one of your captors. He must be destroyed.”
“No, he isn’t.”
“He’s not a vampire?”
“No, I mean that he isn’t one of my captors. He’s — ” Silas had to pause there, because he wasn’t precisely sure how he should label Michael St. John. Not a friend, but not an enemy, either. “He’s given me assistance. There’s no need to kill him.”
Michael blinked but remained silent. Even though most of the time he was quick enough with a quip, he seemed to realize that in this instance, he should let other people do the talking.
Felix glanced over at Micah and Aaron, both of whom gave the gula equivalent of a shrug. Since Felix was clearly in charge of this operation, they would defer to him. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
A tilt of the lead Watcher’s head in Silas’ direction, and both Aaron and Micah hurried over to free him from the wall. The combined strength of the two gula was enough to tear the manacles to pieces, and just a minute later, he was free, able to stand up completely straight for the first time in days. His muscles ached, and he knew it would take some time for the stiffness to disappear completely, but he cared little for that.
“The guards?” he asked.
“We took care of the semivives guarding the property,” Felix said. “No vampires, except this one here.” His nostrils flared in dislike, but to Silas’ relief, he didn’t seem inclined to attack Michael St. John.
“Tristan and Leticia usually go out at night,” he offered, clearly trying to be helpful, but Felix ignored him and kept his attention focused on Silas.
“And Lucius is out having dinner with Serena,” Felix said. Silas felt his eyes widen, wondering how in the world Felix knew about that particular detail, and the other gula went on, “She and I planned it together. It seemed the easiest way to get him off the property.”
“You planned it? How?”
“Later,” Felix responded. “We don’t have time to get into all that now. Let’s go.”
Silas recognized the wisdom of those words. Somehow Serena had managed to set up a distraction, but even the most lavish of birthday dinners wouldn’t last forever. They needed to be long gone from this place before the vampire master returned. Getting Serena away from him would be another task that needed to be handled, and soon, but her rescue could be planned elsewhere, someplace safe.
“Very well,” Silas said.
The three gula began to head back toward the door, with Silas taking up the rear. Michael St. John’s voice stopped him, however.
“That’s it? You’re just going to leave me here?”
Silas turned around. The vampire remained where he’d been standing, only now his arms were crossed and his dark eyes snapped with irritation.
“Yes, that was the plan,” Silas replied. “You would have preferred for them to hurt you?”
“Well, not exactly, but….” St. John shook his head. “When Lucius comes back and sees you gone and me completely unscathed, he’s going to be royally pissed off. You need to make it look like I at least tried to stop you, or I’m going to be in a world of pain.”
Felix frowned. “So you do want us to hurt you.”
“Well…yeah. Just a little. Just enough to make it seem realistic.”
Aaron spoke for the first time. “What would be realistic, vampire, would be for one of us to come back here with a stake and drive it through your worthless heart. Is that what you want?”
“Erm…no.” Michael St. John swallowed. “Just…beat me up a little. Maybe you should do it,” he added, directing his words at Silas. “You’re still in human form. It probably won’t hurt as much that way.”
“You’re serious.”
“Dead serious. Or undead serious, as the case may be.”
The vampire’s expression was almost pleading. Silas could see his point — when Lucius arrived here and found his semivives dead and his prisoner gone, there would be hell to pay. The least he could do was rough Michael up a little. Whether or not that would be enough to convince the vampire master that there had been a struggle, Silas didn’t know for sure.
But he’d better try.
His fist came out and caught Michael St. John across the cheek. Such a blow might have shattered the fragile bones of an ordinary man, but of course the vampire wasn’t really a man at all. Even so, he staggered back a few paces, then blinked.
“That was pretty good,” he said. “But I’ll need more than that.”
“No problem.”
This time his fist landed on St. John’s jaw with such force that he actually was knocked off his feet. He landed on his ass only a couple of feet away from the manacles that had held Silas chained to the wall for the past few days. He lay there, panting.
“Good enough?” Silas asked.
The vampire nodded…and then his eyes widened in fear. Silas looked over his shoulder, only to see Aaron approaching, holding a splintered piece of wood in one hand. Where he’d gotten it, Silas didn’t know.
“No, don’t!” he cried, but it was too late.
The piece of wood flew through the air for all the world like a javelin at an Olympic track and field event. It caught Michael St. John in the chest, and he flopped backward, eyes wide, blood beginning to stain the dark shirt he wore.
“Damn it! I told you not to kill him!”
“He’s not dead,” Aaron said carelessly. His amber-hued eyes flicked over toward the mortally wounded vampire. “At least not yet. Let’s go.”
“No — ” Silas couldn’t leave St. John lying there like that. Not after the kindnesses — off-hand as they might be — that the vampire had shown him.
“Now.” That was Felix. Technically, the two of them had equal rank, but Silas knew that because Felix had been put in charge of this mission, his commands had to be obeyed.
But damn it….
Silas wasn’t allowed any other protests, because Aaron and Micah flanked him and all but dragged him from the cellar. As he struggled to get one last glance over his shoulder, he saw that Michael St. John’s eyes had closed.
Strangely, though, he wore a smile on his face.
Lucius’ fork clattered from his fingers. His eyes stared straight ahead, but I could tell he didn’t see me. “Oh, no….”
“What is it? Lucius!”
His gaze seemed to grow less glassy, and his eyes met mine. Bleak, worried…and yet beneath the worry was a flicker of anger that looked as if it could easily grow into a raging forest fire. “Something’s wrong. Michael….”
“Is he hurt?” I still didn’t entirely understand the connection between the master vampire and his fledglings, but it was clear enough to me that their bond had communicated some kind of calamity to Lucius. My body clenched. Strangely, I realized that I didn’t want anything bad to happen to Michael. Yes, he rubbed me the wrong way, but there still seemed something almost wounded about him, as if he’d been forced into a life he didn’t want.
“Worse. I don’t….” He broke off then, and plucked the napkin from his lap. “We have to go.”
I didn’t argue. If Michael was gravely wounded, what did that mean? Had something gone wrong during the raid to rescue Silas? Only one way to find out, I knew, and that wasn’t by sitting here.
Lucius got out his wallet and carelessly dropped three hundred-dollar bills on the table. We both rose from our chairs at the same time, and were headed for the exit as our waiter came up to us. “Is something the matter? If the food isn’t to your liking — ”
An impatient shake of the head from Lucius, and I said hurriedly, “No, the food was wonderful. We just got a call with some bad news and have to go. But we’ve left enough to take care of the bill.”
The waiter’s gaze flickered toward the table. Immediately his posture became far less tense. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “Thank you for a lovely meal.”
And then I didn’t have the opportunity to say anything else, because Lucius had taken my hand and was practically dragging me toward the parking lot. I stumbled along as best I could, since I knew I couldn’t rely on him to give me a steadying arm this time. He practically flung the ticket at the valet, and was opening the driver-side door before the Mercedes had even come to a stop.
I got in and began wrangling with my seatbelt as he pulled out of the parking lot and headed north on Fair Oaks. Almost immediately he turned down a side street, and zigzagged through a neighborhood I didn’t know very well. Apparently he knew exactly where he was going, because after jogging through a few more residential neighborhoods, he turned onto San Rafael Avenue, cutting across the arroyo on the bridge there, so we could reach his own neighborhood of Linda Vista.
After that, it was only a few minutes before we pulled into the long, curved driveway that led to the house. As soon as I got out of the car, I gasped. Lying in front of the doorway were two of Lucius’ semivives, one of them the brown-haired man who always chauffeured me back and forth from my condo.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered. I didn’t even have to feign my shock…or my sadness. Yes, I didn’t think much of the semivives most of the time, except to shake my head at their complete lack of a personality, but they hadn’t deserved this. They were still people, even if their minds had been broken by Lucius’ control. Tears stung in my eyes, and I reached up to wipe them away, not caring what destruction that might cause to the makeup I’d applied so carefully only a few hours earlier. “What happened?”
“Gula happened,” Lucius said grimly. His face might as well have been carved from marble, it was so cold and pale. Then his expression softened, and he held out a hand. “Come here, my dear. This is terrible, yes, but you will feel safer if you’re here next to me.”
I didn’t argue, but hurried around the rear of the car and went up the steps so I could let him take me by the hand. Oddly, that did feel somewhat reassuring, to have his fingers wrapped around mine. And I hated myself for feeling reassured. It wasn’t as though I needed a vampire to protect me from the gula…more like the other way around.
“Come along,” he told me, and hurried into the house.
Luckily, there were none of Lucius’ servants lying in here, but I had no doubt that Felix and his team would have made sure to neutralize all the semivives on the property. The others were probably somewhere out in the gardens, or by the other entrance to the house.
Lucius headed for the kitchen, and then down into the cellar. As I’d hoped, the manacles that had bound Silas were now broken and empty, their prisoner long gone. Relief began to flood through me…and then stopped abruptly when I saw Michael St. John sprawled on the cold stone floor, dark blood pooled all around him. A bloody, splintered piece of wood lay on the ground nearby, as if he’d pulled it from his body and flung it away.
“Oh, no,” I whispered, as Lucius let go of my hand and ran forward. He knelt next to his fallen fledgling, and reached out to touch Michael’s throat.
“He’s alive. Barely.” Without hesitating, he reached into his pocket and drew out an elegant silver pocketknife, then traced a careful line against one of his wrists. Immediately, blood began to well up from the wound, and Lucius pressed it against Michael’s mouth. The younger vampire spasmed briefly, then began to drink from the cut in his master’s wrist, as greedy and unthinking as a newborn latched onto its mother’s nipple.
There was something very intimate about the gesture. My cheeks heated, and I wanted to look away, but I forced myself to stand there and watch. After a moment, Lucius pulled his arm away from Michael, and retrieved the silk square from his pocket so he might hold it against the wound.
“That will keep him for a while,” he said. “But to survive, he will need to replace the blood he’s lost. He will need to feed.”
Although I tried not to react, I couldn’t help shuddering slightly. Lucius’ mouth thinned, and he got to his feet and came toward me.
“This is who we are,” he said, his tone harsh. “He cannot survive without blood.”
“Can’t you just give him some from your supply in the refrigerator?”
“No. He needs living blood, or he will slip into a coma and die the true death.”
All I could do was nod. I hated the thought of a living person losing their life to keep Michael alive, but I also knew that any protests I made would only show Lucius that I wasn’t quite as on board with the whole vampire thing as I’d tried to convince him I was. As I moved, the heavy ring he’d placed on my finger earlier glinted in the light from the emergency fixture over the door. Lucius believed I was bound to him, and I had to maintain that lie until Silas came to get me. At least he was safe, although I wished with all my being that his rescue hadn’t resulted in so much mayhem.
“I will take him to his room,” Lucius said. “I want you to stay with him until I come back with his…donor.”
His victim, I thought. But of course Lucius couldn’t quite bring himself to be that forthright.
“Of course,” I murmured.
The master vampire bent and picked up his fledgling, apparently oblivious to the blood staining his expensive suit. I waited off to one side as he went to the door, then followed him down the hall and upstairs, where we went to the wing opposite the one where Lucius’ suite was located.
Michael’s room was nearly as large as Lucius’, and a stark contrast to the bedrooms I had seen so far in the mansion. Although all the rest of them had been furnished in a style that matched the house, this space was very modern, with furniture in pale wood and stainless steel, the bed on a raised platform. Abstract art hung on the white walls.
Lucius must have noticed the way I was looking around, because after he’d laid Michael on the bed — first moving the pale gray comforter out of the way — he said, “Michael is a child of this time. He once told me…and I quote…that he ‘didn’t want to live in a room that looked like something out of an old horror movie.’”
Despite everything, I couldn’t help smiling slightly. “That does sound like Michael.”
“Watch over him. He will sleep while I am gone, but I want someone to be here…just in case.”
In case of what? What if he woke up while Lucius was gone and decided, in his ravenous and not-entirely-conscious state, that I looked like a tasty morsel?
I didn’t argue, though. I had to assume that Lucius knew what he was doing. Besides, I was still his prize…and now his fiancée. He wouldn’t put me in harm’s way…would he?
“I’ll be here,” I promised.
Lucius came to me, then bent and kissed me. A swift kiss, barely more than a brush of his lips against mine. “This is not how I wanted this evening to go,” he said. “But I will have him restored soon enough.” He touched my cheek and then was gone from the room, moving in that frightening vampire blur, now that he didn’t have to worry about me trying to keep up with him.
Since there wasn’t anything else I could do, I turned back toward Michael St. John. If it weren’t for the blood that stained his dark blue shirt, I could have almost said he looked asleep. While he certainly wasn’t all the way back, the blood that Lucius had given him seemed to have restored him somewhat, since he didn’t look quite as deathly pale.
There was a black leather and steel chair in one corner. It was too heavy to move, but I sat down on it anyway, perching myself on the edge so I could immediately be at Michael’s side if he stirred or called out for someone. I didn’t see much sign of life, except the occasional movement beneath his eyelids, as though his eyes twitched in dreams.
I wrapped my arms around myself. It was warm enough in here, especially with the pashmina I had draped around my shoulders, and yet I felt chilled, shivers moving through my body. Probably just a reaction to everything that had happened. Over dinner Lucius had asked me to marry him, and I’d said yes. As a delaying tactic, nothing more, and yet that delay wasn’t necessary any longer. Not with Silas free.
Where had the gula taken him? I doubted that he’d gone back to his loft in Little Tokyo. The vampires knew where it was located, and although they couldn’t enter the loft itself without an invitation, that didn’t mean they couldn’t still hang around in the vicinity of the building, trying to catch Silas as he went to and from his home.
All the way back to Humboldt? No, I doubted he’d allow his fellow gula to take him that far, not when I hadn’t yet been extricated from Lucius Montfort’s world. Silas would only be waiting for the right opportunity to take me away as well. I was just fine with that. More than fine, really.
Which meant that right now, I only needed to play along, just as I had been doing already. The opportunity would present itself. It had to.
I twisted the diamond on my left hand. The band was just a little too big; if I’d had any intention of going through with this marriage to Lucius, I would have taken the ring to a jeweler to be sized. No point in doing that, though, not when I hoped I’d be able to return the diamond to Lucius in the very near future.
As to how I’d explain everything to Jackson…well, I’d figure that out when the time came. Right now, I only wanted to get through the night.
The sound of footsteps came down the hallway. A moment later, Lucius entered the room. Slung over one shoulder was the unmoving body of a man, thin, hair unkempt and lank, face obscured by at least a week’s worth of beard.
I got up from the chair where I sat. To my horror, the man’s eyes opened when I moved, although they were so glassy and bloodshot, I doubted he even registered that I was there.
Without looking at me, Lucius crossed over to the bed and dumped the man on the right-hand side, only a foot from where Michael lay.
“Where — ” I began, then stopped myself. Did it really matter where Lucius had found this poor specimen of humanity?
“It pays to know where the addicts tend to congregate,” Lucius said. He turned away from the bed, silver-steel eyes expressionless. “They make good prey — they rarely fight back, and all too often no one really pays much attention when they go missing. Of course, Tristan and Leticia claim there’s no sport in these kinds of victims, but personally, I think it’s better sport not to get caught.”
He spoke so casually, so callously, that I could feel the bile begin to rise in my throat. “He’s still a human being.”
“Barely.”
All right, a different tack. I didn’t know for sure why I was attempting to delay the inevitable. Sooner or later, Michael St. John would wake up enough to feed, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it. “And the drugs in his system won’t harm Michael?”
“No. Nothing any human can take will affect us. Drugs, alcohol — it makes no difference.”
Well, there went that excuse.
Lucius’ expression softened, and he stepped away from the bed and came toward me. “I know this is difficult to accept, Serena. If I could bring Michael back from this with only the bottled blood I have on hand, I would. But he must have living blood.”
“I know.” I looked over at the man who would soon be Michael St. John’s dinner. He stared up at the ceiling, eyes still blank and unfocused. I wondered how much heroin he had flowing in his veins right then — the track marks on his arms were visible even from a few feet away. I supposed it was something that he was so high, he probably wouldn’t even realize he was dead until a few hours afterward.
From the bed, there came a moan. Not from the intended victim, but from Michael, who stirred, although his eyes hadn’t yet opened. But I saw his nostrils flare, saw how his mouth opened. His teeth glinted in the illumination from the track lighting overhead.
“He is waking up,” Lucius said. He reached and gently touched my arm. “It is probably better if you’re not here when he fully awakes, for that is when he will feed.”
My stomach lurched again, all that lovely rib-eye and wine grinding in my gut. “I understand. I’ll go wait downstairs in the salon.”
“I’ll come down to you when…when it’s over. Michael will need to sleep again afterward.”
I nodded, then turned away from Lucius and went out the door and then down the hall. Maybe I was a coward, but I knew I couldn’t stay there and watch Michael murder a stranger.