"You should see what's happening, it's unbelievable," Angie said, trembling uncontrollably. "It's like everything that is you is going into him and right now he is in complete upheaval. His very nature is fighting against it ... everything dead ... against everything so vibrantly alive! It's the most chaotically beautiful thing I have ever seen," she said, excited and terrified all at the same time.
After several tense moments, Christian sat upright and stared at Victoria. His eyes were bright, unsure but so incredibly knowing, it made it suddenly hard to breathe. And time stopped along with her breath when he crushed her to his chest and kissed her with the fierce, aching tenderness of a starving man too long deprived. She tasted a tangy sweetness on his lips and knew it to be her own blood. It electrified her more than she'd ever thought possible. They strained toward each other for what seemed like an eternity, bodies trembling and blood on fire, until he finally lifted her face to his, his thumb brushing the fullness of her cheek.
"Tori ..." His exquisite voice was like rough velvet and she almost wept at the sheer beauty of hearing it again. "What did you do?" Her throat choked at his inane question, he knew exactly what she had done, but she knew what he meant. He meant how.
"I didn't know if it would work, but it did. I controlled the blood magic. I did it this time." She was overwhelmed at the power that lived within her, and the magnitude of what she'd done. Christian had been on the verge of death one second and now he was completely rejuvenated in a matter of minutes after consuming barely an ounce of her blood.
The same poisonous blood that could kill and destroy everything in its path, she had magically commanded to save him. And now he was awake, and alive. Victoria touched his face, emotion clogging her throat, and noticed that his once clear silver eyes were now rimmed in black, startling and unique ... a part of her now part of him.
A sudden crash from the room next door had them all on their feet. Enhard had just leapt off the wall to smash into the marble floor just where Gabriel's head had been, and there was a hole in the floor where his foot had crushed through the marble. They were circling each other again, and Gabriel was repeating something over and over in a monotonous chant. It was very dark magic. Victoria knew it as certainly as she knew herself—she could feel it sucking the energy from the air around them. She raced into the middle of the room.
"Enhard, get down!" she said, blasting a stunning spell toward Gabriel, which his shield spell easily deflected. In the split second before Gabriel's spell left his fingers, Victoria noticed something crouching in the shadows ... Lucian. He met her eyes and stood.
"Incendo maleficus," Gabriel shouted.
A low warning scream tore from her throat, just as Gabriel released the yellow-rimmed black fire that had formed between his hands at the exact same moment Enhard looked toward the doorway, drawn by the movement there. Lucian stood there like a statue, silent and detached, his white face calculating. That millisecond of distraction was Enhard's undoing.
The black fireball hit Enhard squarely in the middle of his chest and engulfed his body in black demonic flames. He didn't even flinch even though the dark spell would have been excruciating. Instead, he looked across at Christian, linking eyes with his and bowed. Then he looked at Victoria and did the same. She bit her lip watching impotently as he closed his eyes and was incinerated within seconds.
"NO!!!" The agonized roar was from Christian, a blur of movement as he grabbed Gabriel in a choke-hold, crushing his windpipe until his face went gray. With colossal strength, he flung Gabriel's body as if it were made of air against the wall, the sound of wetly crunching bone echoing in the cavernous room.
Gabriel fell to the ground gasping nonsensically, his splintered bones irreparable. Blood seeped into the floor beneath him and he gurgled helplessly. Christian fell to the ground where the only remnant of Enhard was a black smear on the marble floor, and touched a closed fist to his forehead in reverence to the man who had been like a father to him.
Christian rose after several minutes, suddenly cognizant of the newfound fluidity of his movements. He could sense the old hunger in him but it did not bother him at all; in fact, he was strangely oblivious to it. He stared at his hands, flexing them and feeling their new tensile strength, the extraordinary blood flowing in his veins from the tips of his fingers along his arms through his chest and throughout his entire body. His insides felt like they were gilded with light, Le Sang Noir tracing a fiery phosphorescent path everywhere it touched inside him, transforming, metamorphosing. Powerful.
He looked incredulously at Victoria. Christian didn't know how she had done it, but from sheer force of will, her deadly blood had fed him and saved him when it should have killed him. It was impossible.
Victoria remained silent, her eyes glued to his. She knew that if by some horrific chance, the blood turned him into something worse, she would be the only one who could kill him.