I remembered the painting on the wall in Leo’s office. The eyes in the shadowed face, the woman watching Katie and the king in the bed. Bethany. Bethany’s eyes. They had Bethany, or Bethany was a spy for the Europeans in Leo’s city. Had Katie hung the painting as a warning? A way to get us to notice the power structure and the old relationships that might be affecting the current EuroVamp political climate? Bethany had healed me and tasted my blood the first time we met. She knew what I was. She had to. And Bethany was certifiably insane. Or was she? What if she had been faking the crazies? God only knew what she was up to. They had Sabina prisoner. And maybe Katie was now a double agent. I wanted to bang my head at all the possibilities.
It would be best to consider and plan for the worst-case scenario and hope for something better. Worst case? They may have killed Sabina for her blood. Bethany and Katie were behind door number one. Or, Le Batard, Louis, and Grégoire were. I sniffed the air, but the scents hadn’t reached us yet and the air just smelled stale.
I looked down at myself and my star-shaped magic. The silver and red motes were different. Moving slower, the speed uneven. The motes were zipping a bit and slowing, zipping a bit and slowing. It was as if there was some kind of interference. As if something was attacking and breaking, or worse, deciphering, my own magic. That couldn’t be good. I needed to get out of the arcenciels’ time bubble. “I need to let you go,” I said.
“Not yet,” Eli said.
He had the door open, and I wasn’t surprised to see Grégoire just behind the door, his body positioned as if running, one hand out to shove the door open, the other holding a sword. Behind and to his sides were two other vamps. I got a good look at Le Batard and Louis le Jeune, king of France. Louis was as pretty as his portrait, with soft curling brown hair and a delicate face. He also looked cold and totally without emotion, a serial killer of humans, intent on his work. Le Batard was a man full of hate, his mouth pulled back in a snarl, fangs exposed, vamped out. There was also something excited in his eyes. Fever pitched. I’d seen that look before once. Feeding frenzy. He was looking forward to killing prey. A lot of prey.
They were wearing modern clothes. I had subconsciously been expecting pantaloons and waistcoats and big buckled shoes. Maybe powdered wigs. Instead, the Big Bad Uglies were wearing dark fighting leathers spelled with a geometric pattern, the energies looking like herringbone. Each carried two swords. Dang.
Le Batard wore a gold chain around his neck with trinkets on it: a red heart, an old key, a small stoppered glass vial that might have held blood. The necklace was flying in the air. His partner in murder wore earrings in each ear and a good dozen rings on his fingers, each one bright with gems and worth a fortune.
The pretty vamp—Louis le Jeune—had the point of a foil, a dueling sword, buried in the middle of Grégoire’s back. There was blood on Grégoire’s clothes. I didn’t know if Louis was killing Grégoire for running away or herding Grégoire into the room to kill us, but I was betting on the latter.
Grégoire was wearing dark slacks and a dark wool sweater that clung to his boyish frame. He was crying, blue eyes brimming with tears. More tears glittered on his cheeks, streaked back across his face. He wasn’t vamped out. He looked . . . afraid. In the V of his sweater, I could see burns and unhealed fang marks, some still bleeding. Grégoire’s old master and sire had resorted to torture to get his scion to do his dirty work.
“Jane.” Eli pointed to Grégoire’s other hand. It was holding a small black instrument. “Switchblade,” he said, “blade placed to penetrate his own chest.”
“Blondie’s planning to kill himself before he does whatever they want him to do.” That was the epitome of sacrifice. I wanted to hug Grégoire.
Le Batard and Louis were Naturaleza vamps, and Naturalezas wanted power, power of all kinds. So . . . My mind kicked into gear. They wanted Sabina to drink from, Grégoire to fight for them, and for Le Batard to have bloody kinky sex with him, sexual torture—trying to make Grégoire fight to win. They wanted Leo for his land. The SOD for power. The arcenciels for time bending, and, if I was right, to carry them into the past so they could change history.
They wanted to own the world. And they needed the storm to call and capture the rainbow dragons to get it all. The European emperor had sent them ashore for a first strike, suggesting that Adan Bouvier couldn’t do big magic on a boat. He needed dry land under him for anything major.
Grégoire was the linchpin. It was possible that Grégoire could defeat Gee DiMercy. And Edmund. And Leo. All the EuroVamps needed was to get him to fight his own people, and that alone would throw any defensive plans to the winds. They needed motivation.
They had the twins to force Grégoire to do what they demanded, hurting the boys until he complied. I looked back at the twins. The spell over them was a strangely geometric haze. The motes that were present in most magics were random. This working was regular, evenly spaced, and . . . herringbone, like the magics on the Deadly Duo’s clothing. “Brandon and Brian are behind some kind of weird ward. I have no idea how to break it.”
“Okay, so we do the next best thing. Stay close.” He edged in behind Grégoire and beneath the sword in the vamp’s back. Feet scuffling, I followed. With a flick of his hand and blade, Eli cut Louis’ wrist. The blade, though sharp, barely sliced the flesh.
“That ‘yada yada, physics,’ thing?” I questioned. “You have to press hard. Things in the Gray Between appear to be more dense.” Eli repositioned his grip and shoved the tip against the wrist. This time it penetrated and Eli rocked the blade back and forth, widening the wound. Blood appeared at the edges of the gash and I leaned to sniff. The blood smelled of fear and Grégoire and Sabina. And the stink of vamp blood meeting silver—acrid, burned, and vile.
My stomach rolled, sick.
Inside me, Beast thought, Half-shift. Fighting form. Now.
Not till Eli’s done, I thought back.
She snarled but didn’t insist.
Eli patted my hand as if reminding me to grip harder and applied more pressure to the tendons beneath the skin. After a few nonmoments we both realized that incapacitating them was not going to happen fast enough. Bile rose up my throat. I gagged. I needed to half-shift. “Oh to heck with it. This is taking too long.” I pulled a vamp-killer, handed it to Eli, and pointed at Louis’ throat. “Cut deep. He’ll heal faster than we want, but we’ve bought ourselves some time.”
“You want it off?” He meant the vamp’s head.
“Not until we know where all the prisoners are.”
“Look at you, being all ‘Think first and kill later.’” Eli hefted the blade and turned it to a backhand. He swung. Cut an inch or so into the neck on one side, into Louis’ jugular and his carotid artery. The blade stuck in the time-hardened flesh. Eli waggled the blade, yanking it at the same time. The tissue parted and blood appeared. Not spurting yet, but that would come. However, Louis was Naturaleza and had fed well on blood. He was capable of healing most anything. Eli took another backswing and hacked into the cut, widening it. Removed his blade and gripped my hand with one of his, holding it on his shoulder. His hand was cold. Too cold.
“Eli?”