As Shadows Fade (8 page)

Blood streaked his handsome face, but determination—and a bit of satisfaction—twisted his lips. After so many years away from it, he'd come to love the battle again.

Max made one last vicious slash, marking a shadowy target, and said, “Bring her back this time.”

Vioget's eyes met his, and a flash of anger dissolved the satisfaction there. He knew Max was referring to when Vioget's grandfather, the vampire Beauregard, had nearly turned Victoria—and Max had been the one to bring her back. Sebastian alone couldn't have done it.

Then Max whirled away, ducking under another darting shadow. He slashed above him with the sword, missed his mark again, dammit. He was growing weary…and he felt that blast of nauseating, paralyzing cold stagger him. He nearly fell, saw the red eyes and bared teeth of the demon as he tried to regain control of his sword—but Sebastian was there, with his gleaming silver blade, saving his bloody life yet again.

As the creature disintegrated into a foul-smelling tangle of coils, Max ran unsteadily toward the horse, where Wayren still slumped. A foglike tendril teased after him, cold and musty.

Dammit.
Dammit.
Had his delay, his coming back, given the demons a chance to find Wayren?

Max used the
qinggong
he had mastered to fly forward and leap onto the horse. Gathering up the reins, he slipped an arm around Wayren, huddling her back against him, and slammed his heels into the flanks below. His mount surged forward with a great leap, and Max bent low, closing his eyes for a moment to banish the agony that coursed through his body.

After no more than a pace or two, he looked behind him.

He saw the roiling black cloud that was still somehow contained by the walls of the cemetery, except for a few slender tendrils. He pulled back on the reins, ignoring the agonizing pain in his back and arms. The frantic horse fought the bit, needing to charge ahead…but Max forced him around, turning on the road to look back again.

The black cloud pitched and rolled, clear below a night sky lightened by moon and stars. It crept beyond the boundaries of the cemetery, slowly, as if searching. Max could hear the rising of the wind as it crooned eerily…It sought something. It knew Wayren was gone.

Bloody hell. He'd never seen anything like this. Ice settled over him as he stared back.

Something unaccountably evil burned here. Something that, he feared, would change everything.

At that moment, Wayren moved. She shifted, groaned, and Max's attention came back to her.

“Wayren,” he said as she lifted her head as though trying to waken from a dream.

Her eyes fluttered, but they didn't open, and she seemed to sag further in his arms. Bone white in the silvery light, her face stretched taut and still like porcelain.

She was ill, gravely weakened by this permeating malevolence. If she was to survive, he had to get her away. Max looked back toward the cemetery one last time, then kicked the horse again. And they were off.

Dawn reached up from behind the line of London rooftops by the time Max returned to the town house. Wayren had moved, awakening enough to sag back against him and grasp the horse's mane with weak fingers. His body, shaky from loss of blood, ached with every movement. Black dots and long, slender shadows danced before his eyes. The memory of every sword slash, every swipe of the blade replayed in his mind. Every stumble, every missed arc, every time he'd been too slow…too weak.

He tired more easily, hurt too strongly, bled too damn much.

She'd been right to send him away.

He rode directly into the small stable, pounding on the wall to awaken the groom as he slid to the ground. No one was there to see his knees buckle and him stagger before catching himself, still holding Wayren.

The groom, a bulky, redheaded young man named Oliver, appeared, and Max tossed the reins to him. No explanation was needed.

Inside the house, Kritanu waited. Lights shining in the windows told Max the elderly man hadn't left his vigil since sending Brim and Michalas after them.

Words weren't necessary; the grave condition of Wayren, who attempted to stand but needed to lean against Max, spoke for itself.

“I've sent word to Ylito,” Kritanu said quietly, helping Max settle Wayren into a large chair. “The birds fly fast; perhaps we will hear by tomorrow if he has any wisdom.”

The birds did indeed fly quickly, helped, Max knew, by the same holy power that protected and strengthened the Venators through their
vis bullae.
Ylito, the hermetic who dabbled in herbology, alchemy, and other spiritual elements, was likely still in Rome. But with the assistance of the message pigeons, he could share any knowledge that might help Wayren.

“Max.” She spoke at that moment, her voice low and weak. “Sit.” Her hand shifted in her lap as if too weak to make the full gesture.

He didn't want to sit. He wanted to go back out, get a fresh horse from somewhere, and fly back through town, over the Thames, to that demonic cemetery so that he could drag Victoria to safety.

Damn. What a bloody mess he'd become.

Weak. Indecisive. Battered.

“Sit,” Wayren said again, more strongly now. “Before you fall.”

Kritanu, who'd stepped away to give the butler, Charley, some murmured orders, turned to the large cabinet that sat in this small parlor. As he fumbled with its latch, using his one hand, he asked, “What happened? Victoria? The others?”

Max shrugged and felt a renewed twinge in his shoulder. His knees trembled. If he didn't sit soon, they'd leave him no choice. If he did succumb and sit, he'd not stand again. “Fighting the demons that took Wayren. The others held them back so we could get away.”

Kritanu turned from the cabinet, and Max saw he held the Gardella family Bible. An ancient tome, made up of hand-bound pages yellow and brittle with age, this book held the names of those called to the Gardella Legacy—both Venators born, as Victoria was, and Venators chosen, as Max was.

Had been.

Damn Lilith.

She'd taken everything from him.

Max gave in. His knees bent, and he slid into one of the chairs, using his grip on its arm to give his acquiescence an appearance of grace.

He watched as Kritanu brought the Bible to Wayren and rested it, open, on her lap. It dwarfed her, hanging over the edges of her slender legs and dirty, torn gown. She placed her hands on it, closed her weary eyes, and Max watched as color began to seep back into her face.

Her pale lips moved silently, flushing slowly with pink. Her fingers stopped trembling and the tension in her face eased.

Suddenly she opened her eyes and looked at him with clear gray-blue orbs. “Thank you, Max. I know how difficult it was for you to leave.”

“I was ordered to go.”

She opened her mouth as if to say something else, then paused, tilting her head to the side like Myza. Her eyes glittered brightly and she exchanged a quick look with Kritanu, who'd received a bowl of water from Charley and curled his maimed arm around it. In his other hand, he held a soft cloth. It dripped, and some pungent smell wafted from it.

Wordlessly, Max took the cloth and buried his face in it, inhaling whatever herbal decoction it had been steeped in, scrubbing away the blood and grime. Every muscle in his body ached, yet they gathered beneath his skin, demanding to be put to use, taut and ready.

He couldn't sit here. And wait.

And wait.

He rubbed his face harder.

“Thrush has returned.”

Wayren's quiet words brought Max's hands down and his face from the damp cloth, which had cooled in the interim. Then he heard a soft clinking tap at the window, but Kritanu was already there, unlatching it and pushing it open.

If Thrush had returned…

Max felt jittery and cold.

“I cannot find a message.” With only one hand, Kritanu couldn't easily remove the small tube from the bird's leg; but instead of bringing it to Max, he offered the bird to Wayren.

Hell. Did he look that bad?

Wayren looked up from the pigeon. “There is no message.”

No
message.

Max started to rise, but Wayren glared at him, raising a hand. It was surprisingly steady. “Be still. Thrush would not have left Myza alone. They simply had nothing with which to send a message.”

Was he that damned transparent?

He remained in his seat and tried not to look toward the window, tried not to appear as though every bloody creaking board in the house snapped him to attention.

“Max, it's time that you returned to the Venators.”

Despite the hollow of pain and pounding anxiety in which he sat, Max heard and understood Wayren's words. “It's impossible,” he said, taking no care to hide the bitterness. Lilith had made certain when he broke her hold over him, he would be unable to become a Venator again. Her bite, enhanced by a special salve that bound him to her, had tainted his blood. “You know it. And without a
vis,
I am nothing but a liability.”

“Indeed. You were quite the liability tonight,” Wayren said drily.

Max lifted his eyes to meet hers, and his sharp retort remained unspoken. Nevertheless. “My blood is tainted by Lilith. I cannot pass the Trial again, even if I should wish to try.”

“You don't wish it?”

To become whole again? With all of his being.

And yet…never again.

“I won't go back…to that.”

Wayren looked steadily at him. “Ylito has been studying your blood.” she said as though he hadn't spoken.

“My blood?” Then he remembered. He'd sliced his arm open during that black ordeal in Roma. Victoria had needed blood in order to help fight back Beauregard's blood as it attempted to turn her undead. Because his blood was not of the Gardellas, it was useless, but… “Ylito kept it?”

Wayren nodded. “That was why I asked for you to give some, even though we did not believe it could be used for Victoria. I asked Ylito to study it, to see if Lilith's taint was real. Or if she lied.”

Max closed his mouth. He didn't ask.

The Trial to become a Venator for one not called by the Gardella Legacy, one without the blood of the family in his veins, was a life-or-death proposition. Max had not cared about dying the first time he'd undergone the test.

In fact, he'd fairly wished for death. Yearned for it, for years.

But now.

He wasn't afraid of it.

He just…didn't want it. Yet.

He looked at Wayren and read the answer to the unspoken question. “Ylito believes there is no taint,” she said, reaffirming his thoughts.

Just then, his keen ears recognized a new sound from the front of the house. Max surged to his feet, ignoring the rush of light-headedness and the renewed flow of warmth down his arm, moving toward the foyer.

Flinging the door open, he saw the shadowy figures sliding from their horses. The big, burly Brim, moving slowly, but on his own, thank God. The tight strawberry blond curls of Michalas as he dismounted his horse.

There was another person turned away, pulling a limp body down from a horse.

Max hurried down the steps…without appearing to hurry. Hiding his fear.

The figure turned, steadying the inert bundle, and Max saw that it was Victoria, bloody and wild-faced, helping Sebastian stagger toward the house.

+ Six +

An Unwelcome Summons

“Wayren?” asked Victoria
as soon as she saw Max coming toward her. She didn't have to ask the other question that had burned in her mind all during the long ride home. Though his face looked haggard in the early dawn, and she could see bloodstains all over his clothing, he was walking. Limping, moving slowly, but walking. Thank God.

Thank God.

“Recovered,” he said.

The tension drained from her, then surged back.

They were safe. For now.

Victoria saw Max's attention shift to Sebastian, who sagged against her, an arm around her neck while she steadied him with one around his waist. She suspected he was exaggerating his weakness just a bit, for his fingers had been tracing little designs under her braid for the last fifteen minutes. The gentle caresses sent shivers skittering over her shoulders, and down along her arms, reminding her that Sebastian, unlike Max, had no problem with intimacy.

At least with her.

When they left the cemetery, Sebastian had been unable to walk on his own, due to a deep slash from hip to knee. Though his face had creased with pain, his eyes gleamed with delight when she suggested he ride pillion with her so she could keep him balanced on the cantering horse. His leg was still bleeding; she'd felt the warmth of it soaking through the back of her left trouser leg as they rode.

And though his leg was immobile, his hands had not been. Settling at her hips, those strong fingers had curled around them like the handles of a teacup as he leaned gently against her wounded back.

Max turned away, toward Brim, leaving Victoria and Sebastian to make their way up the three steps onto the front stoop. Kritanu waited in the doorway.

The sun seemed to move suddenly, and all at once, clear yellow beams shone between rooftops and chimney peaks as though the earth's lamp had been turned brighter. Victoria found it difficult to believe only hours before, she'd dressed to attend Lady Winnie's dance and had walked down these very steps in that crimson gown.

Now it felt as though many things had changed, in some indefinable way.

Inside, Victoria went directly to Wayren, who, though she appeared fully recovered, did not rise when they came into the small room.

“Thank you,” she said to Victoria, extending her slender hands.

Victoria took them, feeling the warmth and peace that always came with Wayren's touch. She didn't know as much as she'd like to about the woman. But based on what she'd seen of her at the hands of the demons, she felt as if she'd learned quite a bit tonight. She shook off the older woman's gratitude. “It was Max who got you to safety.”