A laugh threatened to bubble up her throat again.
“Caspar Morales was different,” said Gavriel. At his name, Lucien stiffened. “He didn’t remember who turned him, only that he’d had a feeling of being followed and then was surprised, alone in an alley. He woke up in his own house, with the shades drawn. On the wall, in blood, someone had written ‘tell death hello.’
“It was as though someone turned him for a prank.”
Lucien stayed very still. “Who would do that?” he asked finally, his tone flat.
Gavriel turned back to her, and Tana suddenly realized that she was playing the role of the jury.
“I killed five black-haired and dark-eyed vampires in the month before, all of them with something in their features that made them look, from a distance, as though they could have been kin to me. Three women and two men. All of them with an odd story about how they were turned, all with faces that spoke to me of my brother. My sister. And the clothes they wore—oddly antique, as though someone set them out for them. The jewelry, too. It was uncanny. One of the boys even had a useless old dueling pistol.
“Tedium is the worst enemy of those that live forever. We all have ways to amuse ourselves. And Lucien’s are often—how shall I say it—petty.”
Tana shivered. The chill of infection was creeping back into her skin, but she could still ignore it.
“All right,” Lucien said. “Enough.”
“It was like murdering ghosts, over and over again,” Gavriel said. “I couldn’t do it that last time.
“I let Caspar go. I let him go, but I was not the one who turned him. You did that, Lucien. You turned all of them, to see what I would do. Because it made you laugh to be cruel. And the reason you won’t betray me, Lucien, is that if you do, I will tell my story to the Spider and you will spend the next decade in a cage by my side.”
Tana looked at them both and for a moment the enormity of what Gavriel had said went washing over her. He was saying that the end of the world wasn’t an accident; it was a joke.
“You have no proof,” Lucien said. “Only a story.”
Gavriel shrugged.
“If you really believed that, why would you have kept this secret for so long?” Lucien’s body vibrated with manic suppressed energy. His arrogant mouth trembled.
He was afraid, Tana realized. Afraid of what the Spider would do to him if he knew, maybe afraid of all the other ancient vampires, cheated out of their old world, banding together and ripping him apart as they had done to Caspar Morales. Maybe even afraid of humans, or at least human governments finally having one person to blame.
No wonder Lucien had praised Gavriel for changing the world. Every time Lucien praised him, he was really praising himself.
But being afraid made him dangerous. Tana could see the repressed violence in his face, could see the fresh hate glittering in his red eyes. If Gavriel thought that showing Lucien the power he had over him would ensure his loyalty, Gavriel was wrong.
“I kept your secret because I liked the thought of you free,” Gavriel said.
Lucien crossed the room abruptly, as if he could not bear to hear any more. He opened the door to the hall. “After tonight, we’ll both be free. We’ll be free forever, so long as you don’t screw it up.”
He slammed his way out, making the wall shake.
Gavriel flopped down on the settee and put both his hands over his face. Then he looked at her with his strange eyes. “Lord, but you must despise me.”
She slid off the mattress, shaking her head.
“I’m better now,” he said. “Sometimes I am, anyway. Before, it was like being in a dream. I couldn’t put everything straight. It got muddled and messy, and now I—now I see how horrifying it must have been. How horrifying it must all be.”
“What was it you said—it would take a river of blood to wash away all my wounds? I saw a video of you the other night. You appeared to be taking all your medicine at once. So I guess that helped. I’m glad.” She remembered him bent over the girl’s throat, balancing his knee on the edge of her chair, covering her body with his. A shudder went through her that wasn’t fear.
“I really said that?” he asked. “It sounds a bit mad.”
Tana laughed, perching on the arm of the settee. He reached out with cold fingers and dragged her down next to him in a surprisingly human gesture. She let herself slip onto the cushion, her head falling against his shoulder.
“How are you?” he asked softly.
“Well,” Tana said. “Every new outfit I get, I manage to ruin within a few hours.”
His grin was immediate, his gaze going to her dress and then away. “Leather wipes down.”