She was right: she was clever.
There was a cascade of images in front of my eyes, and this time, they were my own. Radu in his ridiculous dressing gown; my mother, glimpsed through Mircea’s eyes, the scene suffused with a love I had never believed existed; Louis-Cesare, head thrown back in passion, fingers gripping my arms like he never wanted to let go.
And Christine, off to destroy all of it.
There was only one solution left, and it meant I was about to disappoint Louis-Cesare. But there was no other choice. If I let her leave, it was over.
I pulled a gun out of my coat; Christine didn’t even notice. She was halfway up the ladder, reaching for the manhole cover, happy and confident in her newfound purpose. And still carrying the putty in her right hand.
I didn’t even try to take cover; there was no point. If the blast didn’t kill me, Christine’s death energy would. Or the tunnel would collapse and crush me. Any way I looked at it, I wasn’t getting out of here. But at least this was something I could do. For once, I didn’t need to be stronger or faster or have better weapons in order to compete. I just had to pull a trigger.
So I did.
Epilogue
“I told you she was evil,” someone said as I blinked open my eyes.
I was in my bedroom. A wash of afternoon sunshine cascaded over the old sheets, turning the off-white cotton faintly yellow. A vampire sat beside my bed, and he was in yellow, too. And before my eyes focused on the face, I knew who it was. There aren’t many people, even in the vampire world, who think that daffodil-colored satin is appropriate day wear.
Radu crossed his legs and flipped over another page in the magazine he was reading—Car and Driver, ominously enough—while I checked myself out. The parts I could see poking out of a faded blue T-shirt all appeared to be functional, although most were trying to decide between a livid red and a blue-black color scheme. But I’d looked worse, and I’d certainly felt worse. And, frankly, I was grateful to be feeling anything at all.
Even if I didn’t understand it.
I pushed the extra pillow behind me and sat up. “Maybe you can clear something up for me that I’ve always wondered about,” I said, meeting those famous turquoise eyes.
“Yes?”
“Why do you insist on dressing like freaking D’Artagnan when you were born two hundred years before that?”
Radu frowned. “Formal wear in my day was robes, Dory.”
“And?”
“Nasty, long, hot, smothering robes. Good in winter, of course, but the rest of the time . . .”
“Vampires don’t sweat.”
“Yes, but knee pants are so much more flattering. You can see my legs.”
“You want people to see your legs?”
“I have very nice legs!” We both paused to admire them for a moment.
“Are you here to shake me down for the car?” I asked, getting it over with. “Because I don’t have three hundred thousand dollars.”
’Du’s eyes flicked over the well-worn furnishings and faded quilts. “I never would have guessed.”
“I’m not likely to have it in the future, either.”
His frown grew. “I’m not here about the car, Dory! I bought it for Gunther, in any case. I don’t drive.”
“Gunther? Your bodyguard?”
“He’s a very good bodyguard.”
I looked at him severely. “ ’Du, you’re not falling for a human, are you? You know how tacky that is.”
“Certainly not.” He shook out a sleeve. “Anyway, I bought him another one.”
I grinned.
“Stop that.”
“If you’re not here over the car, why are you here?” I asked curiously. Radu was certainly strong enough to withstand daylight, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable.
He poured me a glass of water from a bedside carafe and settled back with a disgruntled look. “Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure. Perhaps I thought you might want to know how the trial went.”
I sat up a little more. “They still had it?”
“Well, of course they still had it. Elyas is still dead, isn’t he?”
“As far as I know. What happened?”
“LouisCesare was acquitted of murdering that sniveling creature.” I felt my spine relax slightly into the pillow. “And convicted of mass endangerment by knowingly concealing a revenant.”
I sat back up again. “What?”
“Well, what did you expect? She almost butchered Anthony.”
“What’s the sentence?” I asked, feeling my stomach drop.
“Death.”
“Death?”
“But since Christine was under Elyas’s care—and supposed supervision—while committing the murders, Mircea managed to successfully argue that the sentence should be carried out on him.”
“On Elyas?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“But he’s already dead.”
“Yes. Quite the time-saver, that.”
“So . . . they’re just going to let LouisCesare walk?” That didn’t sound like the Senate.
“Not entirely. He did sire her, after all, and failed to deal with the problem. He’s lucky they didn’t do worse.”