Bloodspell (23 page)

Christian stood up, bringing Lucian up with him and watching as his brother's broken brow bone, nose and jaw mended themselves, the pulverized face reforming perfectly and the broken skin healing before his eyes. In moments, Lucian's features were unmarred except for the blood that remained on his face and spattered on his clothing. His expression was dark with hatred.

Christian stepped away and turned toward the fireplace, his hands falling to his sides. Instinct alone alerted him to the movement behind him and he ducked just as the dagger whizzed past his head, spinning with inhuman speed to bring the heel of his hand into Lucian's exposed neck.

As Lucian buckled, Christian slammed him up against the splintered wall and spat, "Don't even try it, Lucian."

"Or what?" gasped Lucian.

"You will not like the outcome, that, I can assure you. I will deal with the Council and then I will go back home, Lucian. And you, you will respect the rules of the Council, do you understand?"

Christian released his brother and walked away without a backward glance. The room was in complete shambles. As he closed the door behind him, he heard the fifteen hundred dollar bottle of Louis VIII smash into the doorframe followed by a slew of violent curses. Christian walked out to the foyer, past the throngs of Lucian's followers watching him with wonder. They feared him, and rightly so. As he neared the ornate front door, Lena held his coat draped over her arm, her beautiful face expressionless.

"He won't forgive you so easily for that, you know," she said.

"I don't care," Christian said flatly.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He didn't fully understand the relationship between Lucian and Lena, but he could hazard a guess at the nature of it.

Despite her history with Christian, Lucian seemed to trust Lena implicitly. And Lena seemed to have decided that second-best was better than nothing at all. The look in her eyes, if anything, still told him that, even after all these years. But there was a new hardness to her that Christian noticed. Years of committing atrocity after atrocity would eventually take its toll, even on an eternally perfect face. She placed a hand on his arm.

"Christian," she said. "It's good to see you." Again the unspoken invitation was apparent. Perhaps another time Christian would have taken her up on it, but not now.

"Lena, I can't." He saw the glimmer of hope die in her ice blue eyes. Understanding dawned, and the blue sparked with venom.

"It's because of her, isn't it? She is a dirty mortal witch, Christian, and not your equal! You degrade yourself by deigning to be seen with her. It is forbidden!"

"Actually, she deigns to be with me," he said, "but I wouldn't expect you to understand." Christian looked at her with some measure of pity despite her malicious words. "You don't understand love Lena, you never could."

"Love?" she spat. "I thought Lucian was out of his mind when he said that you had put a filthy mortal before your duty! But he was right wasn't he?" Lena's eyes flashed fury and disgust and jealousy. "You are not fit for the House of Devereux."

He looked at her coldly and she shrank from the intensity of his frigid glare. "You forget
your
place, Lena. I am a Devereux. I answer to no one. Don't you
ever
forget that!" Christian's voice shook with wrath. His next words were silky. "If you ever challenge me like this again, be prepared to face the consequences. I won't be so forgiving the next time." The door crashed into its frame as it slammed shut behind him.

The limousine pulled away from the curb and Christian leaned back into the seat. He had just succeeded in antagonizing two of the most powerful vampires in the House of Devereux and quite possibly in the whole of Europe, which probably had not been the wisest move. But if it kept his brother from realizing who Victoria was and kept the Council in balance, then it would be worth it.

Christian thought about Lena. She, on the other hand, was a different story—she was one of the deadliest and most lethal vampires he had ever met. He should know, after all, he had made her.

He stared out the window at the passing shops and restaurants, and thought back to the first time he had met Lena. An Austrian baroness, she had been stunning, mesmerizing, and both Christian and Lucian had been enraptured the minute they had seen her dueling in Vienna. It was in the last decade of the nineteenth century on a day neither of them would ever forget.

Her delicate feminine beauty had belied her strength and furious force of will, not to mention her skilled grace with a rapier. They'd watched her as she fought against three men, two twice her size, her weapon spinning at impossible speed. Her blond hair had whipped free of its covering, and people around them gasped. They'd thought her a boy.

"She's magnificent," Lucian had announced, staring at his brother in unspoken challenge. "I want her." Back then, competition had been a natural force between them—it had made the prize more exciting and much more satisfying when won.

"I want her, too," Christian had said.

And so it began.

They had pursued her relentlessly, fueled by the competition from each other, and fascinated by everything about her; her disregard for propriety, her flagrant disrespect for the rules, and her insatiable appetite to try anything—she did what she wanted when she wanted. She could speak nine languages, fight with all manner of weapons including her fists, having grown up with seven brothers, and she was fearless.

In the end, Christian had been first to petition the Council to allow her to become his companion, and they had granted the request. He'd told Lena the first time he'd taken her to his bed, and afterward, Christian offered Lena the gift of immortality.

"How could I want anything more than to be with you forever," she'd said.

There'd been no mention of love, and Lena had embraced becoming a vampire, and him, with open arms. Lucian had been a gracious loser, but in hindsight, Christian recognized that things had changed between them after that day.

It was during a time in his life when the monotony of immortality had weighed its heaviest and he had been looking for something, someone,
anything,
to offset the incredible sense of emptiness that had plagued him. Lena's uninhibited zest for every part of life had been like a spike of adrenaline to his system.

But despite his being her maker, a true bond between them had never formed and his attraction to her had worn off. He didn't love Lena, and the things that had drawn him to her in the first place, her fearlessness and lust for life, became the very things that he loathed the most. Like Lucian, she reveled in the kill, she reveled in being immortal, being stronger, faster, better, and she was willing to do whatever gave her the biggest thrill. In the end, she couldn't change who she was, a deadly killer who thoroughly enjoyed being one.

So he had left the House without any regrets, and she had stayed with Lucian. Over the years, she had remained eternally beautiful, but had become a thousand times more lethal.

As they drove through the city, Christian caught a glimpse of the gilded top of the Eiffel Tower in the distance, beautiful and majestic, and he felt an urge to just stop and breathe in the magic that was Paris. He instructed the driver to head toward the Arc de Triomphe. He felt like taking a walk.

He got out of the car and dismissed the driver for the night, saying that he would get himself back to St. Germain. The night air was crisp and cold, the Champs-Elysées beautifully lit with trees covered in tiny white lights meandering down either side of the grand avenue. Brightly lit storefronts glittered as far as the eye could see and the occasional glow of headlights pierced the darkness. He loved the sounds and the smell of Paris. It was like old world glory, infusing his blood with the sense of life and warmth that he barely remembered from his mortal existence. He knew it would always be home in his heart even though he only visited once a year.

Perhaps one day he would bring Victoria here. She would love it.

As her name crossed his mind, he felt the familiar stirring in his heart and wondered whether she was thinking about him. Christian had tried to communicate mentally with her but for some reason, he'd been unable to, and when he'd tried to call, it went straight to voicemail. He didn't like not being able to reach her, but there was nothing he could do but keep trying.

He clasped his hands behind his back and walked down the avenue as groups of young people with their ruddy happy faces swirled past, laughing and talking loudly. He watched as a young couple, hands laced, kissed passionately on a bench, and felt the familiar sensation unfurl in his belly. He hadn't fed since arriving in Paris. Normally he could last a week between feedings but the fight with Lucian had drained him more than expected.

His gaze remained relaxed as he slowly swept the area. He didn't have acres of woodland to work with as he did in Canville, but at the end of the day, blood was blood. He supposed he could go to Lucian's, there were enough willing human donors there as he had seen from the housekeeper's lurid bruises, but everything about it repulsed him, making the cattle analogy a little too real for comfort. He kept walking, his predator's mind alert and searching.

Soon, it seemed like hours had passed, and Christian had considered and just as quickly discarded several handfuls of people passing by. Frustrated, the sensation in his stomach becoming more insistent with each vibrantly alive body, he faced the truth of the matter—he knew exactly what he wanted, someone like her. Despite how terrible it seemed, a small part of him wanted in some desperate way to mirror the act, with someone who at least looked liked her. The mere thought of it excited him.

He walked past the Place de la Concorde and into the Jardin des Tuileries, where he sat on a small green metal chair and waited, watchful. Something stroked his awareness and he focused on a girl who had just crossed the far end of the gravel path. She smelled nothing like Victoria, but her long dark hair, coloring and height were enough to make his heart beat faster from a distance. Curiously, she did not appear to be nervous when he approached her, asking if she had the time in flawless French. She smiled coquettishly, attracted despite herself to him, a handsome, mysterious stranger. He had forgotten how naturally the magnetism came to him.

It wasn't difficult to persuade her to accompany him to a wooden bench in the shadow of a small tree, his silver eyes compelling, his vampire power hypnotic and irresistible. She had no chance. They sat and he leaned into her slowly as her hair fell forward in a dark curtain, her neck long and slim and inviting. Warm. Pulsing with life. He felt his jaw tighten, his teeth lengthen, and a single thought crossed his mind .
..
Victoria.

To the random passerby, they looked like any other couple in love, sharing a fevered embrace, her expression beatific, arms resting on his shoulders. Christian took what he needed and watched as the puncture wounds healed, facilitated by the enzyme in his saliva until the only sign of entry remaining was a slight, reddening bruise. He thanked her for her assistance and watched as she woozily made her way to the main road. She would not remember the encounter other than a stranger asking her for the time.

Although the blood had satiated his hunger, he felt strangely empty, and the edge of his desire remained, taunting him with its presence. It was a longing that only Victoria herself could assuage.

Christian couldn't sleep and spent half the night sitting on his balcony in the blistering cold, staring out at the night sky. He missed not being able to communicate with Victoria at any moment and his anxiety was getting the better of him. He wanted to call her, knowing that it would only be nine in the evening there but he didn't want to seem obsessive. After all, she hadn't called him either.

After another hour of arguing with himself, he finally picked up his phone and dialed her cell number. It went straight to voicemail and he didn't bother to leave a message. He went back to staring blindly at the dark sky.

CHRISTIAN TRIED TO call Victoria several times throughout the morning with no success. He decided that he would try the ski lodge once his meeting with the Council was over. It had only been a couple days, but he needed to know that she was all right.

The limousine cut west neatly through the afternoon traffic on the way to La Défense, the business center of Paris. The Council was a powerful body that owned several wealthy corporations and made use of their boardrooms to conduct other business like special Council meetings. Real estate was just another of the perks of immortality.

The limousine pulled to a stop, and the chauffeur opened the door. Looking up briefly at the overcast sky, Christian stepped out, leaving his overcoat in the car and walked briskly over to the Tour Areva, one of the tallest skyscrapers in La Défense. The building was entirely black, fitting for its owners, with dark granite walls and darkly tinted windows, a massive onyx structure rising more than six hundred feet into the air.

Christian walked into the lobby and immediately turned heads. Despite his youth, his height commanded attention, and the authority and confidence he emanated, held it. Dressed in an impeccably tailored charcoal Italian suit, crisp white shirt left open at the neck with no tie, and polished Dior loafers, he certainly looked the part of an executive. He looked young, sophisticated and entirely too dangerous.