"WELL DONE, BROTHER," Lucian said, pulling up from his slouch and walking into the room clapping loudly. "You have saved the day as always!" The sarcastic amusement in his tone was evident. Christian looked merely curious that Lucian was even there, and Victoria stared at him with wary distaste. Lucian's saccharine tone irked her. She knew why he was here; he had come to finish his brother off, and he had also come in search of her ... to fulfill the prophecy that haunted him.
She watched in slow motion as he walked over to Gabriel's inert body and pressed his booted foot to his throat. He was still breathing. Locking eyes with Victoria, his face was cruel as he stepped with all his weight, breaking Gabriel's neck in seconds. The wet sound of crushed flesh and bone echoed in the room. Gabriel did not move. Lucian smiled with savage pleasure.
"No!" Victoria shouted. "You are sick! You really are a monster!"
"He attacked my brother."
"Strange that you weren't worried about your brother when I came to see you in Paris," Victoria said. "I warned you, Lucian."
"Warned me not to help my brother? You forget yourself," he said. Victoria looked at him with distaste.
"I can hardly forget that you were the one saying that if your brother was meant to die, then so be it. I also can't forget that you tried to kill me," she said, watching Christian's reaction out of the corner of her eye. She was not disappointed. He whirled in a fluid twist, his silver eyes like diamond chips and Lucian involuntarily backed up a step.
"What's this?" Christian asked, carelessly, like he was asking about the weather, but a muscle began its familiar movement in his jaw.
"Do you know what she is, brother?" Lucian said. "Of course you do, you played me for a fool and I listened to your song and dance about the prophecy not being about her, and that her blood was poison! You knew and you lied!"
"I did not lie, Lucian," he said. "Her blood was poison."
"You still protect her?" Lucian was snarling now. His overwhelming desire for Le Sang Noir impeded his better judgment, and his eyes were starting to go wild at Victoria's nearness, feeling the heat of the forbidden blood that surged so sweetly beneath the surface of her flushed skin. Such torment ... he could barely concentrate. It was so strange that he had never noticed it before until she had deliberately revealed it to him in Paris, and now it was like a tempting secret suddenly naked and exposed.
Christian watched Lucian, knowing the signs of the change intimately. He glanced around the room. Angie had wedged herself into a corner staring at them with unfocused frightened eyes as if she were watching something totally different in her head. She had moved Gabriel's body away from where Lucian had been standing and he lay just a few feet away from her. Her fist was pressed against her mouth as if to stop herself from screaming. Victoria was silent.
"Lucian," Christian said.
Lucian's long, lithe body started to lope with a familiar grace as the hunger spread through him, and he fought to control it. It was a losing battle.
"Lucian," said Christian roughly. "Snap out of it!" He tried to grab Lucian's shoulder and Lucian backed away ever so slightly, only to continue his frenzied shifting. "Lucian, that's what it does. I have seen it ... it lures you in and then it kills you. Trust me."
"Trust you?" Lucian's laugh was hollow and completely devoid of any humor. "I never should have trusted you. You couldn't stand to see me more powerful than you, that's why you hid it from me!" Christian looked at his brother's twisted face in stunned surprise.
"Is that what you think I've done? Saved you from a deathly mistake so that I could be more powerful than you?" Christian said slowly. Lucian's eyes were over-bright, and the truth of his feelings was clear as he glared murderously at Christian. "I left so that you could have the power you craved, to rule the House of Devereux as you wanted, not because I wanted to be more powerful than you!" Christian's body was rigid with disbelief at his brother's complete and utter hatred toward him. "We are brothers ..."
Lucian laughed humorlessly. "We are the furthest thing from brothers there ever was. Mother worshipped the ground you walked on. You were always the first. I only have the House because you left—"
"For you!" Christian said.
"You took Lena, you hid the prophecy from me, and now, her—"
"Lena?" Christian looked at Lucian like he was demented. "You have Lena!"