As Shadows Fade

Page 27

“I see.” Sebastian looked back down.
Victoria had traveled since dawn, and had slept little for the last ten days while they journeyed, so she was tired. She’d ordered a bath earlier, using another chamber for privacy. More than a week’s worth of grime and dirt had layered her skin, and it was the first chance she’d had to wash in more than a small basin.
The window of their room faced east, toward the sun that would rise in a few hours, and toward Tn Church, which stood on one of the city’s central hills. She found her eyes continuing to stray in that direction, and she had to pull them back. More than once.
Perhaps she ought to try to sleep, especially since tomorrow, when the sun was up, they would go after Katerina. But something bothered her, niggled at the corner of her mind.
She wasn’t worried about sleeping with Antonn in the room-he was bound tightly, wrist to ankle, and tied to the post of a heavy bed on the floor. He was going nowhere unless she released him.
Which was probably why he continued to talk. “She’s a bit mad, as Vioget has cause to know.”
Victoria glanced at Sebastian, who didn’t flicker an eyelash. He reached for the cup of wine and drank without lifting his eyes from the pages.
“She won’t take off that ring, either, because she hopes it’ll be a bargaining chip to bring back her husband.”
“Is her husband dead?” Victoria asked in spite of herself.
“He was one of the architects trying to repair the Stone Bridge five hundred years ago. It fell apart after the king threw the queen’s confessor into the Vlatava because the priest wouldn’t tell him whether the queen was cuckolding him. Someone decided he should be sainted for that, too.”
“So Katerina’s husband was repairing the bridge?”
“Trying to. It kept falling down. Lucifer had been delighted by the murder of the priest, and he amused himself by continuing to destroy the bridge every time they thought it was going to stand. Finally, Brughard, Katerina’s husband, made a deal with him and agreed to give Lucifer the soul of the first creature to cross the bridge after it was repaired.”
“He gave his wife’s soul?” Victoria asked. No wonder the vampiress was mad.
“Not intentionally.” Antonn sounded annoyed. Perhaps she had ruined the suspense of his story. “He finished the bridge, and told the workers to release a cock to cross over first. But Lucifer sent Beauregard to bring a message to Katerina that her husband had been injured. She fled from her house and ran across the bridge, and was the first to cross. Thus she lost her soul, and Lucifer gave her to Beauregard to sire. Which of course he did.”
So that was why Katerina wasn’t very fond of Sebastian. His grandfather had tricked her into becoming a vampire. “But what about Brughard?”
“She turned him herself, but he was slain some years ago.” Antonn’s gaze drifted to Sebastian. “By a young Venator staking his first undead.”
At that, Sebastian looked up, brushing the hair from his face. “Why don’t you put a stake into him, Victoria? He’s beginning to annoy me.”
“And so now her husband is damned to Hell… not a bad thing in my book, of course, but apparently Katerina meant to keep him alive for a lot longer.”
“She thinks the ring will bring him back?” Victoria asked. “How?”
Antonn shrugged as well as he could, bound thus. “I said she was mad. But she believes a bargain might be struck with some holy or divine entity. She gives them the ring, and her husband is rescued from Hell.”
“There is no way to rescue an undead’s soul from Hell,” Sebastian spoke suddenly. His face looked grim in the low light. “Once an undead drinks from a mortal, he’s damned for eternity.”
“I have heard otherwise,” replied Antonn loftily. “Lucifer doesn’t like it one bit, but he’s had to release more than one of the vampire souls he’s collected over the millennia.” He nodded knowingly. “It’s never a pleasant time for us, of course. Lucifer is-”
“Give him some wine and shut him up,” said Sebastian suddenly. Victoria was struck by how much he sounded like Max at that moment-sharp and terse. Perhaps he was as tired as she felt.
Or perhaps there was something else bothering him… besides the reminder of what he’d done to Giulia. And Burghard.
She rose and found some salvi in her pack. The potion worked quickly to put mortals to sleep, but she wasn’t certain whether it would affect an undead. However, she was willing to try.
Antonn was thirsty, and gulped the wine she held to his mouth. When she pulled the cup away, he looked up at her with hopeful red eyes. “How about a bit of something else?” he asked thickly. “Your wrist… I could make it easy and quick.”
“Why would I do anything for you?” she asked, although a thought had been teasing her mind.
“Because I’ll tell you how to get Katerina. The way to get to her.” His voice lowered, and he glanced at Sebastian as though afraid he would hear.
“The same way you took me to her lair at the cemetery?” Victoria said.
“I didn’t expect those demons to be there.”
“You said you’d heard about the demons, stories. How long ago did you start hearing about them?”
“More than a month.”
“Is Katerina frightened, too? Or merely inconvenienced?”
“She is frightened. All of the undead are frightened. There’s been nothing like this before.” His eyes were fastened on her white wrist, showing from the cuff of the clean man’s shirt she’d donned after her bath. “Please. Just a bit. It won’t hurt you.”
Victoria didn’t reply. “Is it true that an undead soul isn’t damned if he didn’t drink from a mortal? Is it true?”
Antonn looked at her, and she allowed herself to meet his eyes. The tug of his thrall, weak though it was to someone like her, tickled around her, and she allowed her breathing to grow heavy. Yet she was aware of everything. She knew she could blink, could turn away at any moment. “Is it true?” she asked.
Phillip. Oh, Phillip, I’ve always believed it was true.
What if it isn’t?
She allowed Antonn to lure her, to tease and pull and to think he was gathering her in with his strength. She felt it, felt the curl of warmth and pleasure slip under her skin… but not completely. Raising her arm, she watched his attention move to her wrist as though it slogged through water. The gleam in his eyes burned hot and red, and his breath whistled from behind his teeth and fangs. Warmth… softness…
“Victoria!”
Sebastian was there suddenly, and Victoria turned in surprise.
Before she could react, he pulled her from the vampire, jerking her up and away from where she’d crouched. The heat still simmered in her veins as she caught herself from falling. She steadied her staggered breath, dragged in air from between her lips.
“What are you doing?” he demanded over Antonn’s cry of annoyance.
She glanced briefly at the vampire. She’d known exactly what she was doing, but she wasn’t about to explain it to Sebastian.
“Isn’t it enough that you had to bring him here? And now you do this? What are you trying to do?”
“Sebastian,” she began, the last remnants of the vampire’s thrall slipping off her like a silken shroud. His fingers dug into her arms, and she pulled away with such force that she bumped into the table. The pages he’d been reading fluttered onto the floor, but before she could bend to retrieve them, he caught her shoulders.
Not so roughly this time, he closed his fingers over her. “Is it that you didn’t trust me?” he asked. “Or that you didn’t trust yourself?”
Then she understood. They would have been alone in the chamber with Max gone; Sebastian thought she’d brought Antonn as a chaperone of sorts. “It’s neither, Sebastian. You know that.”
She stooped, pulling away from his grip, and picked up the papers from the floor. “What have you been reading all this time?” But when she saw the ornate R on the bottom of one page, she didn’t need him to tell her. She recognized Rosamunde’s sign. “Do you find them fascinating?”
But Sebastian had turned away. Victoria set the manuscript on the table, and as she took a step toward him, she heard a choking, snorting noise from the corner. A glance told her that the salvi had worked, and Antonn was snoring with alacrity.
“It’s hard enough,” Sebastian said, looking out the window that framed Tn Church, “to be here. In Praha, with you. Both of you. Stay away from Antonn. Don’t tease him. You don’t know… you don’t know what you looked like, Victoria. Just now. Your eyes half closed, your face like that…”
She swallowed. Her throat constricted roughly, audible in the quiet moment. She had had a purpose; she would have let Antonn feed from her, just a bit. She had a reason.
But she didn’t have to explain it to Sebastian.
“I told you that I wouldn’t be a gentleman about… it…,” he said, still looking out the window. “And so if you brought Antonn here because of that, I suppose I cannot blame you.”
Victoria couldn’t hold back an angry snort. “Sebastian, the day I use a vampire as a shield from my own desires is the day I’m finished as a Venator.”
“Your own desires?”
“There’s no arguing the fact that we’ve been together, that there is attraction and affection between us. I wasn’t pretending. But I’ve no intention of acting on it again.”
“I told you I wouldn’t be a gentleman about it,” he said again, in a steadier voice. “But I was wrong. I don’t think he’s worthy of you, Victoria. And I don’t like the way he has acted toward you, in the past and during this trip. But you’ve made your choice, and if he makes it through the Trial, I’ll leave you be and wish you well.”