She’d seen Gavriel rip free of the heavy chains that bound him in the coatroom, tear free from the metal trunk of her car. And if Lucien was his maker that meant he was older and more powerful than Gavriel. She couldn’t possibly fight him in hand-to-hand combat. Even throwing her knife would be futile. He wasn’t going to be surprised, not when she was standing right in front of him, and would have ample time to dodge.
“Lucien,” Gavriel said. “If you’re proposing a duel, I believe she gets to pick the weapon. I hope she picks me.”
Tana looked up and saw, all over again, that one of his hands was free from the chains. Despite her muzzy head and the fear that clutched her chest, she couldn’t help thinking there was something off, if only she could figure out what.
The chains. That was the problem. Lucien had sent Elisabet out to get Gavriel, had sent her with chains that were definitely and absolutely supposed to imprison him. Except they hadn’t. He’d been weak after they escaped from Lance’s farmhouse; he’d been hungry and burned by the sun. But he’d still pulled apart those iron chains, had still torn her trunk as if the metal was only thick paper.
Lucien should have known how strong Gavriel was, if Lucien was stronger.
The chains were rigged tonight, but they weren’t rigged then.
“You really didn’t know she was coming, did you? To save you,” Lucien said, whirling on Gavriel. He reached into the folds of his jacket and removed a slender blade, as bright as the scales of a fish. “Did you see? She almost shot me in the heart.”
“Then you were completely safe,” Gavriel said. “Since you don’t have one.”
“It hurt,” Lucien said petulantly, stabbing Gavriel’s stomach and then again, the knife making a horrible sound as it scraped a rib. “See? It hurts.”
Gavriel made a soft choking noise. Blood stained his mouth. Lucien must have hit a lung.
“But there’s nothing you like better than when it hurts a little, is there?” Lucien asked.
Gavriel’s bloody mouth lifted in a voluptuous smile. “Sure there is. I like it when it hurts a lot.”
Lucien stabbed him again, twisting the blade around in Gavriel’s guts. Gavriel moaned. “This is what you get, coming back here, thinking you’re going to have revenge on me. On me, your maker!”
“The nerve,” Gavriel whispered, that mad light bright in his eyes, blood dripping from a corner of his mouth.
Drawing him off her, Tana realized. Gavriel had gotten Lucien’s attention and drawn his anger deliberately. But what was he doing? Lucien had said that the Spider had sent assassins after him. Could the Spider have decided to free Gavriel and let him work off his debt by killing Lucien? But then why would the Spider come? Why not stay in Paris and let the work be completed without any danger to himself?
Her head spun. There was something she was missing. She felt it the way you can feel a word on the tip of your tongue.
Lucien left his knife where it was, shoved in Gavriel’s belly all the way to the hilt, and he paced back and forth across the marble floor. He looked transcendent with fury, lit up from the inside.
One of the gray-clad guards, a vampire with dark skin and broad cheekbones, stepped forward. “The Spider is nearly at your door,” he reported. “I suggest you ready yourself.”
Lucien looked at them as though he’d forgotten the audience of guards, forgotten the imminent arrival of an ancient vampire, forgotten any bargains.
Gavriel reached for the hilt of the knife embedded in his own stomach and pulled it out. Then he glanced at Tana and grinned an odd, conspiratorial grin, as though they were sharing some secret. “Tana, go.”
And just like that, all the pieces came together in Tana’s mind. She started to laugh, the nervous, crazy laughter she felt she’d been holding back since she’d woken up in a bathtub to find a house full of corpses. The lunatic laughter of someone who’d been in over her head from the start.
Lucien looked at her with a furrowed brow. She was laughing so hard that Lucien himself started to smile uncomfortably.
“The Spider is here,” she managed to spit out, calming finally. “He’s already here, isn’t he? He’s been here the whole time.”
With a heave, Gavriel pulled his left arm free from the chains, the manacles hanging around his wrist like a bracelet. He brought up the dagger, stained with his own blood and ran his tongue over the blade. “She’s far cleverer than you.”
“How did you—?” Lucien asked. “What is she talking about with this ‘Spider is here’ business?”
“The Spider’s dead,” Gavriel said, his mouth curving into a wide, terrifying grin. “He’s been dead. Dead for weeks. Dead when I left Paris. That’s how I escaped. I killed him.” Lucien shook his head, looking at Gavriel with blank incomprehension. “No. That’s not possible. He’s ancient. You can’t have killed him. You’re just—you’re—”
“I’m the Spider now,” Gavriel said.
The gray-clad Corps grabbed Lucien’s three robed guards. Quickly and efficiently, wooden blades were thrust into their hearts. They dropped, one after another, with sickly thuds.