“That’s the best you can do? Oh, Patra. How boring.”
Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. Hell, I was surprised at myself.
Patra didn’t like being laughed at. Her incensed expression was evidence of that.
“I’m not as stupid as you’re hoping,” I went on. “Now, either shut up or leave, because you’re interrupting things. There’s got to be a law about that as well.”
“I’ll go.” Her smile was contemptuous. “I’ve seen what I wanted. You’re nothing, and soon you’ll be less than that. But before I leave, I thought you should know why you’re in this war in the first place. I’m betting my husband hasn’t told you, has he?”
“Told me what?”
She laughed again, and I found myself thinking I hated her laugh more than any sound I’d heard before it.
“Haven’t you asked yourself why I turned against Mencheres in the first place? If I hadn’t, then there would be no war, and no reason to kill you or Bones.”
If she was waiting for me to encourage her to go on, all she got was silence. Patra sighed.
“Very well, I’ll explain. When Mencheres offered to make me a vampire, I told him I wouldn’t cross over unless he changed my lover Intef as well. But after I woke up from my death, Mencheres told me Intef had been killed before his people could reach him.”
She paused to give Mencheres a look filled with loathing.
“Then one day Anubus, a former friend of Mencheres, broke his silence. Intef wasn’t killed by the Romans. Mencheres did it. You see, little half-breed, you’re in this war because I’m finally getting revenge on my lover’s murderer, so who’s really to blame for Bones’s death?”
I glanced at Mencheres, who closed his eyes briefly before meeting my stare. I saw it then. That what Patra had said was true, every word of it. For a moment, I was overwhelmed with the urge to stab both of them for their ruthlessness in getting what they wanted.
Then I turned back to Patra. “I get your motivation. But you should have just gone after Mencheres. Instead, you chose to kidnap people’s family members to force them to suicide bomb themselves. You chose to murder Bones, and for that, I’m going to kill you. You of all people should understand why.”
Patra smiled. “Because I understand your pain, I’m going to free you of it.” She raised her voice. “I offer amnesty to anyone who leaves her and joins me! Furthermore, to the man or woman who slays her, I offer a reward beyond your ability to fathom. You have the word of a god.”
I gave her a stare that was harder than the diamond on my hand. “You arrogant bitch, I’ll see you dead, and that’s the word of a half-breed.”
Patra gave me a last disparaging glance and turned her back. Her four escorts flanked her as she ascended the aisle in the same sweeping manner she’d arrived.
Only after the doors closed behind them did I let my breath out. I was so furious, I was shaking.
The silence was complete, absent of the typical human shuffling or nervous clearing of throats. I went over to the side of the stage where the weapons were and almost gently pulled out a sword. Better to deal with the repercussions of Patra’s offer now than to let the idea that I was too weak to lead simmer and grow.
“All right, whoever believes that bitch and thinks they can take me, here I am.”
The challenges came thick and fast, several different voices calling out. This time I didn’t offer the choice of weapons—I kept my sword. And one at a time, I hacked, stabbed, or decapitated each vampire who stepped onto the stage. All my pent-up fury and grief I put into my blows, thankful that for those brief moments, I could feel something aside from pain.
When I’d finished with the eighth vampire, running my sword through his heart so deeply half my arm followed, my outfit was sliced in dozens of places and gaping indecently in some. Ironically, my own injuries had healed with the continued contact of fresh vampire blood.
I turned toward the audience. “Who else thinks they can cut me down?”
No one else called out a challenge. I drove the sword into the center of the stage like it was Excalibur into the proverbial stone. Then I wiped some blood from my cheek with the ragged remains of my sleeve and turned to Mencheres.
“Now can we leave?”
TWENTY-FOUR
W HEN I GOT BACK TO THE HOUSE, THE BED’S yawning emptiness taunted me. See, it mocked, my sheets are straight. There’s no dip in my mattress where a long pale form lay waiting. Bones is gone. He’s never coming back.
With impotent wrath I flipped the bed, smashing it into the wall. All it did was expose the antique box with the letter inside I couldn’t stand to read and destroyed a perfectly good bed. A waste, like all my plans for a future.