The servant woman, with a worshipful glance toward her master, withdrew.
“I am ever yours to command,” said Lucien with a short bow. He hated the antiquated vampires, hated their silly palaces and their airs and the way they expected one to bow and scrape. Here, among all the trappings of modern Vienna, one might be tempted to think the time of monarchs was past, but whatever revolutions happened elsewhere in the world, none was likely to occur among the shadowy governance of vampires.
The Spider snorted. “You’re an apple farmer’s son from a little town in Normandy, no matter how much you play at consequence.”
Oh, and had he mentioned how much he hated their ridiculous obsession with ancestry, as though it mattered what blood ran through one’s veins when all of it was stolen? He bit his tongue and said nothing.
The Spider turned to Gavriel, pointing at him with one clawed nail, making him flinch. “At first glance, they do not seem so unworthy for you to have hidden them from me, Lucien. Why did you not present them as you should have? Is there some reason I would have forbidden you from turning them?”
Only that one is a psychopath and the other has what Freud would call a powerful death urge? But which one is which?
“I am impulsive,” Lucien said, readying himself to make a speech of contrition. “But I meant no harm. I taught them how to hunt and kill, to leave little trace of their passing through the world. They’ve done nothing wrong save being born—and in that, too, they are innocent. I am their maker. That crime is mine.”
“Yes,” the Spider said.
Lucien would have said more, but that one word halted him. He’d never thought he would receive any real punishment. He glanced surreptitiously toward the two Corps des Ténèbres in plain sight and reconsidered Elisabet’s plan. No, still better to run.
“Lucien Moreau, I accept your confession. Our power comes from our small numbers, from our secrecy, from our adherence to what few rules we have. Your death is a just one, for it will warn off others like you who are equally impulsive.” The ancient vampire set his clawed hand lightly against Lucien’s shoulder. Lucien turned and looked into the Spider’s face, puzzled for a moment. But then a shudder went through him. Because he saw, in that moment, that all of the Spider’s fine clothes and civilized words were just a mask. Beneath it was something ancient and savage, something that feared nothing and only hungered. Lucien felt his knees buckle as though some unseen force bore down on him. He went to the floor with a groan.
Gavriel gasped.
“No,” Elisabet shrieked, throwing herself down beside Lucien in a sea of skirts and crawling toward the Spider. “No, please spare him. He is our father, our brother, our master. He is the one who gave us life eternal. Please!”
The Spider held up a hand and she subsided. For the first time in a hundred years, Lucien was truly afraid. “Let one of you take his place then. Will you?”
For a long moment, Lucien’s progeny were silent. He closed his eyes, cursing them both in his thoughts.
“It is right and good,” said the Spider. “For a parent to die before his child. You are right to leave him to his fate.”
“No,” Gavriel said. “Wait. I will take his place. Get up, Lucien.”
Lucien looked at Gavriel, black curls spilling over his cheeks, and thanked whatever wisdom had made him turn a man who availed himself of every single opportunity to throw his life away. Lucien hoped he wouldn’t have to watch the execution.
“You’re certain,” said the Spider, his greedy gaze boring into the boy, stripping him raw.
Gavriel nodded quickly, clearly steeling himself. He began to kneel.
The Spider shook his head, smiling. “You may remain standing. You’re loyal and courageous, two qualities not often found among our kind. What a waste to cut down such a rare creature. No, my sentence is that you will hunt for me—you will hunt our own kind. You will be one of my Thorns, and your term of service will be your entire illicitly born life.”
“I’m not to die?” Gavriel asked, clearly puzzled. He looked toward Lucien, but Lucien was powerless to speak, possessiveness lighting through him like a flame. Gavriel was his, made from his blood, alive by his whim, his to jeer at or adore or destroy. And if Gavriel wasn’t to be his, then Lucien would rather he was razed from the earth.
“No.” The Spider took a long drag on his cigarette, looking like a very modern sort of monster, despite his years. Despite what Lucien had seen in his face. “Oh, no, you’re to give me the gift of all that loyalty.”
What Lucien hated the most about ancient vampires, he decided, was the way they had studied cruelty for so long to know just how to hurt you best.
It won’t always be this way, Lucien vowed.
And it wasn’t.
CHAPTER 29
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
—Leonardo da Vinci