Gideon led the way, Iana and his enchanted vampire minion following up the rear from either side. Though I was sure Iana would rather tear Gideon’s head off and play kickball with it, the effect made it look like he was in charge. I wondered how Max would view this situation, and how the hell I would keep him from killing Gideon out of hand.
At some point, Arnold and Sara fell too far behind for me to see them. The mage had said he could find us wherever we went, but I wasn’t sure if he just wanted to get me out of his sight or if he really meant it.
I was tempted to give in to panic and despair, but that wouldn’t help anybody, least of all Sara.
Iana stopped in her tracks so abruptly that I ran into her, sending us both stumbling forward a couple of steps. Her fingers closed around my upper arm so tight that it hurt. Gideon paused, glancing over his shoulder.
“Weapons,” she said.
“All I’ve got is the one gun. They wouldn’t let me have anything else,” I said, apologetic.
“No.” She shook her head. “We need to arm ourselves. I don’t have the strength to shift yet, and you need more than a pistol. Come, he has an armory on display.”
Couldn’t argue with that. Gideon opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but closed it with a snap once Iana got moving at a much faster clip. She led us through a room full of paintings and sculptures, an echoing, empty ballroom with at least a dozen crystal chandeliers reflecting the moonlight into a thousand tiny stars on the polished floor, and an indoor arboretum full of exotic flowers and ferns arranged in a labyrinthine maze. There were small lights here and there, but most of the place was dark, and I was afraid the shadows might be hiding more than just a couple of ornamental rosebushes.
We didn’t run into anybody along the way. I spotted security cameras here and there, tiny red lights or the sheen of a lens giving them away. Either everyone in Max’s employ was otherwise occupied, or Max didn’t care that we were running around unchecked. Neither option boded well for us.
We must have run half the length of the building before Iana led us into a room that looked like something out of an exhibit I had once seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The arms and armory display there had been full of swords, daggers, shields, helmets, and other kinds of armor. Max’s collection was similar, but rather than sticking with a particular theme or time period or even culture, he had a little bit of everything. Spears with bronze, iron, and stone tips, armor made of leather and metal and other materials I couldn’t immediately identify, knives with handles of stone, bone, and wood.
The difference between what I saw here and what I had seen in the museum was that each piece on display here still looked just as serviceable and dangerous as it must have been the day it was made. None of it was hidden behind display cases, either. All of the armor looked to be about the same size. Made for a man of Max’s proportions.
As I took a breath, aside from the scent of dust and metal and leather and oil, I could taste the old blood in the air. Long dried, long dead, and so much remembered violence radiated from these pieces that I could have choked on it if I breathed too deep. These weapons weren’t the purchases of a collector. They were trophies, retired reminders of a life of violence and a river of bloodshed. Lifetimes of it.
Iana viewed the place with distaste, her lip curled in a sneer as though she’d gotten a whiff of something rotten. I had the feeling she was sensing the same thing I was. Maybe more than I, considering she was a far stronger Other than whatever I was turning out to be. Her senses were likely more attuned to these things in a way I would never experience.
Something told me that there was a history behind each and every piece in this room, and that if I held it long enough and breathed it in, the blood soaked into the material would tell me the story. My connection to the one who had worn and wielded these instruments of torture and murder would be enough to let it unfold like a grisly picture book in my head.
Never had I felt so ill at having a piece of Max inside me.
Iana studied the collection on the wall before selecting a short, double-bladed sword with some kind of raised line running down the flat of the blade. It was old. Ancient. Cast bronze, now myriad shades of green, but not so pitted or oxidized that the metal couldn’t hold an edge. The pommel was far newer than the rest of it, but even still, the leather around the grip was cracked and so faded that I couldn’t tell what the original color must have been.
She held it out to me expectantly. As soon as my hand closed around it, a jolt of something dark and hungry radiated off the blade. Countless images of angry, frightened faces, splashes of blood, and other things assailed me.
Hair like sunshine. Eyes like the sea. Taken away in a flash of red, replaced by the shadow of Rhathos—Royce—and then Iana was shaking me, and the images were gone.
“These things will haunt you if you let them.”
“No shit,” I replied.
The sword Max had used to fight against Royce for the life of his ladylove, Helen of Volos, was in my hands. A fight he had lost, and with it, any hope of reconciling with the only true friend he’d ever had. Thousands of years old, and the weapon was still so well preserved and cared for despite its age that it could cut through flesh and bone like butter.
I was tempted to throw it away, to find some other way of dealing with Max, but I knew it wouldn’t matter which weapon I picked up. They would all carry memories of death, and it was up to me to keep it under control. “I’m fine. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Gideon ran a fingertip down the edge of a much newer blade, smiling at the red smear he left behind. “We’ll have to come back here before we leave. I could use a few vamp-blooded blades for some rituals I’ve been meaning to try.”
“I don’t think so,” came another voice. That hated, familiar voice.
Max stood in the doorway, his eyes gleaming crimson and his hands and clothes spotted with flecks of red and black. He must have run his hands through his short, dark brown hair at some point, because half the curls were plastered to the top of his head by I-really-didn’t-want-to-think-about-what.
Iana grabbed a sword and rushed forward, her eyes full of murder. Before she was halfway across the room, Max was behind her, one hand on her wrist and the other wrapped around her throat, holding her tight against him. Christ, I hadn’t even seen him move.
Her skin reddened under his touch, and she cried out in a mix of rage and pain, dropping her weapon with a clatter. I raised my sword with shaking hands and edged closer to Gideon. Iana twisted and writhed like a snake, but Max didn’t pay either of us any mind. He bared his fangs and growled, glaring at Gideon over her shoulder as he tightened his grip around her neck.
“This is the thanks I get for taking you into my home? Allowing your union with my progeny?”
Gideon laughed, slumping against the wall next to the vampire minion staring blankly up at the ceiling like a mannequin. “I’ve done nothing to betray you. I kept your property safe, distracted, and out of the battle. You should be thanking me, you decrepit antique.”
My gaze shot to the necromancer. “You ... you what? ”
He wiggled his fingers at me. “I did what I needed to. And so will you.”
An all too familiar sense of something taking the wheel in my head set in. I shut my eyes and shook my head, but it didn’t stop the fucker from propelling me like a goddamned puppet straight at Max, sword raised in a suicidal run while blood filled my mouth as fangs popped into place.
If it didn’t mean Sara would hurt too, I would strangle that fucking necromancer the minute he loosened his mental grip on me.
Max threw Iana out of the way, sending her crashing into a display of armor that wouldn’t have been out of place at King Arthur’s Round Table. The vampire caught my sword arm on the downswing, but he didn’t move fast enough to block the gun as I shot him in the gut with my off-hand until the gun gave nothing but a series of dry clicks.
It made him jerk, but he didn’t otherwise react to the bullets. He gave no sign of pain or anything beyond a furious glare. A glare that became a great deal more pointed when he noted the sword in my hand.
“You don’t deserve the honor of touching that sword,” he hissed, digging his thumb into my wrist until the pressure became so painful that even with Gideon’s goading I couldn’t keep my grip on it.
“Neither do you,” I spat out, simultaneously fighting his hold on me and Gideon’s mental talons.
He shoved me down to my knees, and I winced at the force of it, knowing there would be bruises later. “You suicidal little bitch. As soon as I clear out the rest of the rabble, I will flay the skin from your body and break every bone until you beg me for death. The minute you do, I’ll sire you just so you heal and I can start over again. Then I’ll send you, a piece at a time, to your precious Rhathos.”
Glaring up at him, I thumped a fist against the bullet holes in his abdomen, already closing. If I was going to die anyway, I was going to stand up to him the only way I could before I did—by running my mouth.
“Revenge is not the spackle that will fix the Helen-shaped hole in your heart. Making someone else feel sad because they made you feel that way is childish, and I’m a person, not a toy for you to steal and break so you can piss in Royce’s sandbox. Grow the fuck up.”
“You know nothing about me or my motivations, you vacuous, insignificant shant of a blood-whore.”
“All you live for is someone else’s pain! You’re nothing but an empty shell, making everyone else hurt just because you can’t stand that someone did it to you. You’re nothing. Helen knew it, and so did Royce. I’ll bet Athena did, too.”
Max growled softly, grabbing my other wrist before I could hit him again and his grip tightening to the point of pain. I still met his glowing red eyes unflinching. He’d already taken everything else from me, so forcing his way back into my head would only further prove my point.
“You’re a ghost,” I said, voice soft, knowing how much my words were cutting him and wishing I had a way to make more than his heart bleed. “A ghost who should have faded away with whatever shreds of humanity you had left when Helen died.”
“Get her out of here before I forget I still need her alive,” he hissed in Gideon’s direction, though he still stared down at me with the promise of pain to come written all over his features. The pressing cloud of barely leashed power swirling around him gradually tamped down as he got his rage under control, but I knew that wouldn’t save me from the world of pain he was planning to deliver on me later.
I glanced over at Gideon and—the vampire that . . . wasn’t there anymore?
Then I screamed in pain as Max’s grip tightened even more when the other vampire latched onto his wrist and blood-crusted hair from behind, fangs digging into his neck. Max voiced a furious howl and shoved me away as he twisted and clawed at the other vampire.
“You filthy little betrayer!”
Gideon waggled his eyebrows, moving his hands like he was orchestrating a symphony as he gave Max a fierce grin, showing his teeth all the way to the molars. “Abra-cadaver, you fucking bastard.”
With a move too swift for my eyes to track, Max was across the room, his fangs embedded in Gideon’s throat even as the other vampire remained latched onto him like a freaking monkey riding his back. It would have been hilarious if I wasn’t terrified Gideon would be killed, and, with him, Sara.
The necromancer didn’t even have time to cry out, his look of shock fading into a slack-jawed combination of pain and ecstasy. His eyelids drifted shut as Max pinned him against the wall.
Gideon’s hold on me was fading. Not a good sign. I had to find a way to stop this, fast.
The vampire drinking from Max jerked his head back. Alarm quickly turned to panic and disgust, and he let go, stumbling back to spit out a red glob before he swiped his arm over his mouth.
Before he could get far, Max released Gideon’s limp frame and whirled, bloody fangs bared. The other vampire backpedaled, but he barely got two steps before Max was a blur again.
Sharp cracks were followed by a wet ripping sound, and a fine spray of cold, red mist hit my face and hands. Panting with terror, I dropped my empty gun and scrabbled for the sword with my off hand.
Before I could reach it, cold fingers slid around the back of my neck and yanked me up to my feet.