Gavriel licked the blood off his knife, his tongue sweeping to the tip of the blade. “I want to watch both your ashes blow away across the face of a blood red moon.” He sang the next bit, his voice swelling with madness. “By the light, by the light, by the light of the blood red moon. I’ll be killing you soon. Do you remember that song? I’ve altered the words a little.”
“So nothing will satisfy you but death?” asked Lucien, clearly uncertain at how to talk to this new Gavriel.
“I came a long way for it. I’d hate to go back empty-handed.” He truly sounded crazy, Tana thought. Crazy like some poet or prophet. Crazy and lethal. He shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
“Let us show you how grievously sorry we really are,” Lucien said, with the voice that had enchanted so many children hungry for the grave, the voice that mesmerized viewers the world over. He put his hand on Elisabet’s shoulder, pressing down lightly. “Let us make a formal apology. We’ll kneel and beg your forgiveness. Could you think of any other creature we would kneel before?”
Elisabet glanced over her shoulder at him, as if looking to read on his face whatever he planned, but then, slowly, sank to her knees, her skirt puddling around her. She looked like a beautiful supplicant at a shrine.
Even Gavriel seemed transfixed, staring down at her. His brows drew together, and his chin lifted as though he was trying to wrench himself free of her hold on him.
Lucien moved behind her, stroking her dark hair back from her face. “She took my men and went after you. They wanted to protect me. Isn’t that sweet? But I swear to you, I had nothing to do with it.”
Elisabet looked up and struggled to rise, but Lucien seized a handful of her hair and jerked her head back. Then with Gavriel’s own knife, Lucien sliced her throat open. The river of her veins parted, blood pouring out like water. He cut farther, severing her head.
The whole room gasped as Elisabet’s body slumped forward, Tana gasping with them. Lucien wore a tiny, odd smile as her body began to curl and wizen, her honey-colored skin wrinkling like bark. Her lush mouth withered, and the hollows where her eyes had been grew as sunken as the gluey holes of Tana’s purse. Lucien let her head fall.
A moment before, Elisabet had been one of the most dangerous people in the ballroom. Now she was dead. A few partygoers knelt down beside her as if there was something yet to do for her, as though she’d just fainted. A woman with a pierced nose and mermaid braids stroked the vampire’s once-smooth cheek. A boy drew his finger through Elisabet’s blood and popped that finger into his mouth.
“You’re worth more to me than she ever could be, Gavriel,” Lucien said, stepping away from her body. “Now that I’ve punished her for you, perhaps you will see how much I mean that. I loved Elisabet in my way, but you are as a son to me. Forgive a father his sins.”
Gavriel took a step back, the shock on his face evident. “Did she really deserve that?” “You asked for our deaths,” Lucien said. “I gave you hers. Ask me for something else, and I will give you that, too. I knew from the moment you broke out of the cage under Père-Lachaise Cemetery that you would come here, either as my prisoner or of your own free will.” Abruptly, Lucien raised his voice. “Cut the feeds from this room! Cut them!”
One by one the lights on the cameras around the room went from green to red.
The crowd that had gathered began murmuring. Tana wondered what it meant that Lucien had left the streaming video on while he murdered Elisabet and only now was calling for it to be turned off. What could be worse than that? She edged toward the door, pushing through the crowd.
Gavriel looked incandescent, trembling with readiness.
“We never would have hurt you,” Lucien said. “We knew that once we’d captured you, we could begin to plan. Plan a glorious future and a far better revenge than you dreamed, my dear lost friend. The old ways are dead, and it’s time the old ones died with them.”
“Starting with you?” Gavriel said, but his gaze kept tracking from Lucien to Elisabet, as though he was still surprised by her corpse.
“You don’t really want to kill me,” Lucien said. “Look at you, you’re even sorry Elisabet is gone. You just want to come home.”
“Do I?” Gavriel asked.
“You know why, in films, the villain hesitates before he kills the hero? You know why he explains his whole dastardly plan? Do you know why you’re hesitating now?”
Gavriel quirked a smile. “I do know. But I wager you’ll never guess.”
Lucien plunged on. “Because the villain knows that without the hero to hate, his life would be empty. Once he’s murdered his adversary, he’s alone.”
“So you’re the hero?” Gavriel asked.
“Every hero is the villain of his own story, wouldn’t you say?” Lucien was speaking to Gavriel, but he pitched his voice to carry to the crowd of partygoers. He knew how to draw them to him and make them hang on his every word.