“And no black cloaks with red linings—well, maybe still those, but definitely not the kind with stand-up collars.” Tana should probably stop talking like that, but she needed to prove to both of them that she wasn’t scared, even if she was.
He ignored her, unwilling to be baited and definitely unsmiling. “And now the world sees our true faces. It is remade by us into something glorious, something where men aspire to be immortal. I like this world and I would keep it moving forward, unlike the ancient vampires. Their dream of returning to the old ways is like the Romanovs’ dream of a return to power. It won’t happen, no matter how much they cackle about it in their crypts and catacombs. But with the Spider nearly to my gates, our interests align.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Whatever the Spider did to Gavriel seems to have unhinged his mind. What they used to call manie sans délire—insanity without delusion. He’s broken and we are without the time to put him back together. Help me control him and I will help you. No more making you drink cold, dead blood in front of a cage full of delicious girls and boys. I’ll turn you, Tana. I’ll show you how to be a vampire the likes of which the world has seldom known.”
“You will?” she asked, thinking of her newly sharp teeth, of the way her dizzying hunger had deserted her since she’d fed. Lucien must know what was happening to her, how the vampire’s blood was making her stronger, but he was obviously pretending he didn’t. Cold, dead, yucky blood, don’t drink any more of that! Sabotage disguised as kindness.
“In Paris, there was once a legendary delicacy, now outlawed.” Lucien was saying. “A bird called an ortolan, an unremarkable-looking creature with a grayish-green head and a yellow body, is caught alive and force-fed millet until it grows fat. Then it’s drowned in Armagnac. Finally, the bird is roasted and eaten whole, bones and beak and all, while the diner wears a napkin over his head. Some say that’s to keep in the aroma of the dish; others say it’s to hide the diner’s face—and his shame—from heaven.”
“That’s cruel,” Tana said.
“Yes,” said Lucien. “Truly. And yet even that is nothing to the fineness of human blood. Do you know what it is to drink it down, hot and metallic, pumped into your mouth by the frantic heartbeats of a quivering body? It’s half like spitting in the face of god, half like being him.”
Tana shook her head, hunger rising despite herself. “You make it sound pretty good.”
“Well,” Lucien said, with a smell smile. “If there’s anything that spits in the face of god, I’m generally for it.”
“What do I have to do?” she asked.
“Just make sure Gavriel sticks to the plan—remembers the plan, even. Decides he’ll live after all. Continues to recall that the Spider is our enemy and that I am his ally. Do you understand? You may not believe me, but I have loved him in my way. What happened to him is my fault. I bear that responsibility, but it will be easier to bear with the Spider dead. And it will be easier for him to bear what’s happened to him with you at our side. Since I want his happiness, I also must want yours.”
Tana nodded slowly. “I’ll do what I can,” she told him.
He was standing closer than she’d expected; Tana hadn’t heard him move. She shuddered as his hand came up to cup her cheek. His fingers curled against her, tips pressing against the bone hard enough to bruise. “Good, good. We never know what we’re capable of until we try.”
CHAPTER 32
The devil tempts us not; ’tis we who tempt him,
Beckoning his skill with opportunity.
—George Eliot
Eight years before, Gavriel came apart.
First, the Spider cut open his belly.
Then he took out his guts and knotted them around the bars of his cage.
Ropy blue garlands.
They gouged out his pomegranate-seed eyes.
They fed him fouled blood and bile and his own skin.
They cut him with knives, flogged him with razor-tipped whips, and drove rusty nails into the soles of his feet.
When he healed, they did it again.
Until everything hurt all the time forever.
Pain so vast and terrible and huge it blotted out thought.
And so when he came back to himself, his memories were disjointed.
He’d ripped out someone’s throat, but he was no longer sure whose.
There’d been blood everywhere; he’d slipped in it, clotted like soured milk.
There was hair, too, a nest of it in a drain.
And he remembered who had urged on his tormentors, the face of the creature who smiled down at him.
I could tell you, Gavriel thought. I could give you someone else in my place.
Someone you’d like better.
Someone you’d hurt worse.
But no. They’d taken every other piece of him.
He would hold onto revenge.
It would be his fairy story, his lullaby, sung softly by flayed lips.
Off-key and deranged.
CHAPTER 33
A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
—Adrienne Rich