A Kiss of Blood: A Vamp City Novel (25 page)

“Your friends?”

“Safe, I hope. Kassius has been keeping watch the past couple of hours, but he’s in little danger. With his wolf blood, he’s able to tolerate the sun for short periods of time.”

“I’m glad.”

He nodded, then pulled her against him. “I shall return as soon as I am able.”

“Is there any chance that Cristoff has figured out that you’re his traitor?”

“Kassius says no. He still believes I am his loyal one, and he must continue to do so.” He kissed her, slowly, thoroughly, then pulled back. “Be careful.”

“You, too.” He let her go and disappeared down the stairs.

She’d been awake five minutes and already things were starting to go wrong. Not an auspicious beginning to what might well be the most critical day of her life.

Chapter Twenty-Two

A
light rain fell as Arturo rode toward Gonzaga Castle, his horse’s gait slowing as water puddled in the road, turning the dirt to mud. The air was cool, almost brisk, and lightly scented with the diesel of the real world. An unnatural hush blanketed the land as day dawned dark as night, a hush filled with anticipation. And dread.

The equinox.

If Quinn succeeded, by day’s end, Vamp City’s magic would be renewed, and all would go back to the way it was before. Hopefully, to the way it was long before, before Phineas Blackstone’s toxic magic began slowly disintegrating the consciences and souls of the city’s inhabitants. Quinn’s magic would be different, he was certain of that. Her goodness would have a cleansing effect.

He had to believe that.

Vampires were out and about this morning, riding in their carriages or hurrying on foot for one destination or another. But their heads were down, the exuberance with which they generally enjoyed life missing. All waited with bated breath for word of the sorceress.

Being away from her now, as time drew short, had not been his plan. But plans had a bad habit of going awry, especially where Quinn was concerned.

When he reached Gonzaga Castle, Arturo dismounted, tied up his horse, and climbed the wide steps to the front doors. He’d once loved this place. For decades, the White House had been the seat of the Gonzaga kovena, until the building’s structure began to fail, and they’d been forced to build the castle. Though he enjoyed a home of his own too much ever to live within the close confines of the kovena, this had been his second home, the place where he’d come for companionship and friendship.

Now it was a prison to those, like Bram, who were trapped within Vamp City. And in the past couple of weeks, it had been a place he avoided, a deadly obstacle course to be maneuvered with the greatest of care lest his lies be revealed.

Guards opened the doors to him, bowing with deference, their expressions tense and unhappy though respect filled their eyes.

“Arturo,” each murmured warmly.

“Gil, Jorge.” Arturo entered the mansion’s ivory marble foyer, surprised at the lack of activity and stunned by the fear hanging heavy in the air. He’d expected anxiety, yes. It was the equinox. But this was different. This was dark and rancid, the fear of vampires, not humans. And never had he tasted its like within these walls.

He followed the sound of low voices coming from the billiards room, accompanied by the tap of cue to ball and found, in addition to the two playing pool, half a dozen vampires lazing atop the velvet benches like whores after a good night. But there was no sense of happy repletion in the air. Nothing but that thick taste of fear.

Cristoff’s angry shout carried from above, followed quickly by a man’s cry of agony, and Arturo understood. Cristoff was a pain-feeder and fed well on the Slavas he brought in several times a day for his pleasure. But this cry was no feeding. And he’d wager the victim was no Slava. No, Cristoff released his fury on the guards he blamed for losing the sorceress.

At the far end of the billiards room, staring out the window, he caught sight of Bram and went to talk to his friend.

Bram heard him approach, threw back the whiskey in his glass, and turned to him. His gray eyes had a bloodshot, slightly wild look that Arturo didn’t like. Blood splattered his gunmetal gray T-shirt and his jeans. And while vampire beards grew slowly, Bram had a healthy stubble that spoke of weeks of ignoring a razor, which was so unlike this male.

“Did you find her?” Bram growled, his mouth compressed, his jaw tight as if it had become welded in that position over the past two years.

“Briefly.” Even a few weeks ago, he’d never have lied to him, one of his most trusted friends, but Bram was too close to Cristoff these days, and he couldn’t risk it. “She was hiding at Fabian’s Palace, but she’s acquired the ability to disappear, and I lost her again.”

“Dammit.” Bram lifted his empty glass to his mouth, then scowled, clearly forgetting he’d already tossed back its contents. Instead, he threw the glass at the pool table, shattering it into a hundred pieces.

“
Amico mio,
” Arturo said quietly.

“I’m losing it, Ax.” Bram ran both hands through close-cropped dark hair. “We’re all losing it, Cristoff most of all. Even when he’s not punishing anyone, he’s feeding almost constantly, now. Blood, pain. Mostly pain. It’s an illness, Ax. He can’t stop.”

“And you?” Arturo asked carefully.

“I’m not as far gone, not nearly. But the hunger grows. The more I’m around him, the more I feed, and the hungrier I become.”

“Leave here. At least for a while.”

“I have. I do. I wander the streets, but the hunger no longer comes upon me as a slow thing but hits me like a hammer. I’m suddenly violently hungry, with little control. I need pain. And I won’t cause it, Ax.
I can’t.
”

Arturo squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “I know. I’m glad. It tells me your soul has not been compromised.”

“Not my soul perhaps, not yet. But I’m losing my fucking mind. If this doesn’t stop soon, I’m going to turn into as much of a raving sadist as our master.”

“I’ll find the sorceress. I’ll see the magic renewed. I promise.”

“If you don’t . . . if you can’t . . . don’t let me become like him.” Bram’s gaze caught Arturo’s, hard as steel. “Promise me, Ax. If I start causing the pain, you will end this worthless excuse for a life of mine. And you can do it. We both know it.
Promise me.
”

Arturo nodded. “It won’t come to that.”

“I hope not.”

As Bram turned away, Arturo retraced his steps through the billiards room. As he crossed the foyer to the stairs, a second male began to scream, his cries in stereo with the first. Two of them. Below the males’ cries, he could hear the softer sounds of female agony. An agony that weighed on his soul. When had he begun to block out the sounds of others’ suffering? How had he gone so long without feeling . . .
and not known it
?

In a way, he missed that numbness. Life was far easier for a man . . . a creature . . . who must feed from humans when he couldn’t feel the suffering of others. But that wasn’t the man he was. Nor was it the man he wished to be.

With heavy steps, he climbed the stairs and strode down the hall to the massive doors of Cristoff’s throne room. Stepping inside, he took in the sight, blinking, careful not to reveal his shock. Four of Cristoff’s vampire guards had been strung up by their wrists. Two of them had been assholes loyal to Ivan even before the failing of the magic. Two had once been honorable males. Blood ran from the ears of all four, dripping from their jawbones onto their shoulders.

Six more guards stood at attention around the throne room, their backs ramrod straight, fear sharp in their eyes. For once, no other vampire joined their master in this feeding. The room was empty but for Cristoff and his guards.

Cristoff stood with his back to the door, facing his captives. As Arturo watched, the vampire master lifted his hands.

“Where is the sorceress?” he shouted, his voice hot with fury.

The captives eyed him with varying degrees of terror and resignation. But all were clearly in agony.

“I don’t know,” one gasped. “I had nothing to do with her disappearance.”

In response, Cristoff raised his hands and pressed his fingers against the male’s forehead. Seconds later, the guard was screaming at the tops of his lungs, the blood gushing from his ears and nose.

No wonder fear hung thick on the air throughout the castle. Every member of the kovena worried that he or she could be the next to hang from those chains as Cristoff sought his traitor.

Guilt lashed Arturo that innocent men were suffering for his own actions. He couldn’t confess, not with Quinn’s life on the line. But perhaps he could distract.

“Master.”

Cristoff whirled on him, a wild gleam in his eyes that punched Arturo in the gut. A gleam quickly masked.

“News,” Cristoff snapped.

Arturo spun his lies as quickly and cleanly as always. “I found the sorceress in Fabian Neptune’s palace.”

Cristoff’s eyes lit with excitement. “You have her.”

“No. She’s acquired power, a gift of invisibility, or perhaps phasing. But she escaped, disappearing into thin air.”

Cristoff’s jaw turned to granite, his eyes narrowing, his face growing red with fury, and Arturo began to wonder if he, too, might soon be joining the guards hanging from the rafters.

Instead, the vampire master whirled back and palmed the heads of the two whom Arturo knew to have been decent males at one time. The pair screamed with an agony Arturo had rarely heard. The agony of having one’s brain fried by a mind blast.

But Cristoff wasn’t simply making them suffer this time. He held on to them as their screams intensified, as first one, then the other, fell unconscious.

No, not unconscious. Cristoff stepped back and Arturo watched, stunned, as the limp forms of the guards disintegrated, one after the other. Dead. He’d killed them, two of his own.

The fear of those watching surged a hundredfold.

Cristoff strode to the other two. “Tell me where she is!” But though they professed not to know, Cristoff palmed their heads as he had the first pair, and moments later, they, too, were gone.

The room turned silent as a tomb, terror pulsing beneath the hush. Slowly, Cristoff turned back to Arturo. “Where is she?”

Arturo met his master’s gaze with a façade of calm certainty. “She’s gone back to the real world. I nearly caught her this morning, then lost her when the sunbeams broke through, and she escaped through one of them.”

“You saw it with your own eyes. Her escape from thin air.” As Cristoff stared at him, the hot fury slowly left his eyes to be replaced with something far more disturbing. The gleam of fanaticism.
Madness.

“I did.”

“And did you see her disappear?”

“No. She was in the room, a small windowless bedchamber. There was no escape. And yet when I turned around, she was gone.”

Inexplicably, Cristoff grinned, then motioned Arturo to follow as he strode toward the back hallway.

His pulse pounding unsteadily, Arturo complied. With his mind blast, Cristoff had always been one of the most deadly vampires alive. But he’d been calm, fair, and intensely loyal to his own. Today, he’d proved himself none of those things. Deadly, unpredictable, dangerous, now, in the extreme. And Arturo knew he’d been sliding toward this for a long time. Arturo had simply been unable to see it.

Cristoff led him to his own private bathing room, a room Arturo had once enjoyed the comforts of on a regular basis. The room was furnished in bright blue tile with fixtures of gold, the bath more pool than tub, a good ten foot by ten foot square. Steam rose from the citrus-scented water, and around the tub stood four scantily clad female Slavas, their jeweled nipples peeking out from beneath sheer sleeveless gowns.

Cristoff stripped off his robe and sank into the water. As he leaned back against the side with a sigh, he motioned to Arturo.

“Join me,
mio figlio leale.
” My loyal son.

His heart heavy from what he’d just witnessed, Arturo sat on a nearby stool to pull off his boots.

“Tell me about the sorceress,” Cristoff said, resting his arms along the sides of the tub, his tone warm. “Tell me everything.”

Arturo undressed slowly as he took a moment to collect his thoughts, to decide what Cristoff really wanted to know, and to plan his lies. Then he slid into the heated pool across from his master until their legs were parallel, though not touching. One of the Slavas knelt at Arturo’s side and began soaping his chest with soft, slender hands. Slender hands through which he felt no sunshine; hands that left him cold.

Slowly, he spun a tale, part truth, part fantasy. He told Cristoff about how he’d followed Quinn’s trail to Fabian’s, how Fabian had seemed genuinely surprised at her appearance, how he’d captured her and been shocked when she’d disappeared. He’d hunted her, of course, cleverly and untiringly. And again he’d found her, only to be forced back as the sunbeams broke through, sunbeams she’d taken quick advantage of to escape back into her world. No creature, not even a vampire, could leave Vamp City on a sunbeam. None but the sorceress.

Excitement and speculation lit Cristoff’s eyes. “If she escaped Ivan, why would she return to Vamp City?” He answered his own question. “She was searching for her brother.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Find him.”

Arturo nodded. “Kassius is already hunting him. We’ll find him.”

Cristoff began to grin. “She’s powerful.”

“So it would seem. Where she came into that power, I do not know.”

“It doesn’t matter. Only that she has it. With that kind of power, she’ll renew the magic on a null day. It matters not that we catch her today. Only that we catch her soon.”

Arturo hoped she was half as strong as he’d portrayed in his fiction. She had power, yes. Power enough to throw furniture, but enough to save a magical world? That was yet to be seen.

Leaning back against the side of the tub, Cristoff closed his eyes. “You’re the only one of all my vampires whose loyalty I have never questioned, my snake.”

The words no longer warmed Arturo as they used to.

The vampire master waved his hand lazily. “Whiskey for me and my loyal son.”

One of the Slavas immediately poured two tumblers, settling one in each vampire’s hand.

Cristoff took a sip of his and opened his eyes, spearing Arturo. “You and Micah will find the sorceress in the real world, and you’ll bring her to me. Quickly, Arturo, for we’ve not much time before this world crumbles around us. She will renew the magic. And then . . .” A satisfied smile bloomed slowly across his face. “And then she is mine.”

Arturo swallowed. “What have you planned for her?” He tensed for the litany of tortures Cristoff had in mind.

But all his master said was, “You’ll see, my loyal one. You’ll see. And you shall rejoice.”

Finally, Cristoff rose, taking the towel offered him. Arturo did the same, drying off and quickly dressing as one of the Slavas helped Cristoff back into his robe.