Blood Legacy (9 page)

Chapter Five

“You still don’t believe me,”
Victor said, as we wound ever higher up the peak of Bressov Tower.

“That I’m an
agonie
?” I asked. I wanted to laugh it off, but after everything that had happened that day, I no longer found humor in it. “I suppose the more important question is, what does it mean to you?”

His boyish grin faded; we reached the peak of the staircase, and heavy shadows fell like curtains across his face. “Everything. It changes everything. I don’t know where to begin . . . How to explain to you . . .” He shook his head, guiding me down a dark hallway. “I’m sorry. This all must seem terribly surreal.”

“That’s one word for it.”

Victor keyed in access to a nondescript door that led into a stone foyer, then opened a heavy iron door beyond that. My breath caught in my throat as I glimpsed the chamber beyond—another chapel-like chamber, filled with guttering candles and the heavy, sweet scent of musk.
It was just like in my hallucination. I tried to peer between the colonnades for the dais that I somehow new, deep in my gut, that I would find, and what I would find upon it, but the shadows were too thick. Victor escorted me onward, through the edge of the chamber, and to another set of doors that opened onto a balcony and the brisk night air.

New Sanguinus stretched luxuriously before us, the lights that were so harsh up close twinkling like jewels from this height.
Above us, the Bressovs had requested the skies cleared of clouds for the night, and the inky night echoed the city with a few bright stars and a heavy, gravid moon that watched us from behind the spires of downtown. I strode to the balcony railing and risked a glance down—and down, and down—at the insignificant specks of lev cars darting between buildings and lazy mag-lev trains giving chase to them like snakes through the grass.

“When I was turned,” Victor said, still several yards behind me, “New Sanguinus was multiple cities, not the gaudy clump of humanity that it is now.”

“And how long ago was that?” I asked.

“Several hundred years ago. Back when there was no order to the Vampyrs or the Families. We were fractured, squabbling clans who hid underground from humans and the sun alike.”

“Instead of united, squabbling clans?”

Victor chuckled at that. “Exactly.” I heard him step closer toward me, but he maintained a respectful distance. “I was a foolish, idealistic youth at the time, living in a country on the brink of revolution. Sorry—a country is like the Republic, only there were dozens of countries back then, instead of just the one.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not completely ignorant. There are a few contraband history books down in Undertown, you know.” I turned away from the balcony and propped my elbows against the railing. “But why are you telling me all this?”

“Because I want—I need—you to understand.
” His hand fell upon my shoulder, warm and steady, with none of his signature harshness. I didn’t feel coveted in that moment, but something deeper—something I found myself craving even more.

Wanted.

“My attraction to you . . .” His voice wavered, and I turned to meet his eyes. “This—this passion you inspire in me—It’s not just that you’re an
agonie
. It’s important that you understand that. I’m not interested in you merely because of my overwhelming desire to fuck you senseless.”

I laughed, in spite of myself. He raised his hand up my shoulder and along my neck to cradle the base of my skull, fingers tangling in my curls. “But you
do
want to fuck me senseless, right?” I asked.

“Who wouldn’t?” Victor
grinned back at me. “But there’s more to it.” He hesitated, exposing a new side of himself. Not the animalistic Vampyr predator, and not the charming, wealthy princeling. Someone troubled, looking over his shoulder for centuries’ worth of debtors coming to collect. “The man who turned me into a Vampyr taught me how to draw power from an
agonie
. Many thought him mad, but he prophesied the coming war against humans . . . and the Onyx Queen’s subsequent fall. He warned me I would need that strength to keep the peace.”

The cold wind tugged at my skirt, sending it billowing out to one side. I rubbed at my bare arms. “To keep the peace amongst the Vampyr families, or to keep the peace between Vampyrs and humans?” I asked.

Victor’s thumb grazed my cheekbone. “Both.”

“So I’m here to help you seize the throne of the Republic.” I let my arms hang limp at my sides and shoved off the balcony, making for the door back inside. “Well, then. You really know how to charm a girl.”

“No, Raven. Please—listen.” He caught me by the wrist. “I need
you
. I need to draw that power into
both
of us. You want it too, don’t you? A girl like you—you can’t be happy with your people’s plight under the current rule.”

“A rule your family instituted after the Onyx Queen’s death,” I retorted. “Lucio Bressov headed the Coven of Families when all the rules about Donations got
reinstituted, when they laid the new set of strict measures governing our forced migration to Undertown.”

“But that wasn’t his doing. It’s a Coven for a reason, and believe me, if you knew what he’s told me about the other families and what they want to do with humans—”

My veins turned to ice. The cold, calculating resistance fighter in me guided me now, turning my face back toward Victor’s; that ice hardened my heart against his pleading look. He could pour sugary words into my ear and he could turn me on like a wall panel, but whether I wanted to feel for him or not, the real truth was that I needed him. I needed to
use
him—just like he needed to use me.

“And what is it that the other families want to do with us humans?” I asked coolly.

Victor’s jaw tightened, muscle working under the surface. “You’ve heard of what it was like when the Vampyrs first emerged. Before the Onyx Queen came to power.”

“A bloodbath,” I whispered. Humans hunted into near-extinction while the Vampyr families, all vying for control of the world, were turning humans into Vampyrs at a prodigious rate in order to build their own private armies.
It was only under the Onyx Queen’s work to unite the Families, establish the Donation system, protect the remaining humans, and regulate all turnings that humans were able to survive at all, second-rate citizens though we were.

Victor nodded. “And I’m sure you can guess which families would love for us to return to those days.”

I shook my head and made my way back inside, Victor still following my closely. “Why do you go along with Violetta, then, if you don’t agree that that’s the way the world should work?” And why would he share my
agonie
powers with her, I thought silently, if he didn’t want her to gain that upper hand?

“It’s . . . complicated.” Victor drew a deep breath. “You see, as rare as
agonies
are, Violetta’s done a remarkable job of collecting them all for herself. She’s terrifyingly powerful, and sometimes, it’s too much even for a Vampyr to fight off.” His cheeks turned red as he drew the balcony doors shut behind him. “I may be immortal, but I am still a man, and . . .”

“Sure. I get where you’re going with that.” I stared into
the wobbling flame of a wrought-iron candelabra. There was something more he wasn’t telling me; he’d said it was about more than just my powers as an
agonie
. But he kept bringing it back to that.

Victor dropped to one knee in front of me. “Raven. Please, listen to me. Even if you care nothing for our political troubles, and all our scheming, I know you care for your own race. We can empower each other. With your
agonie
power, I can steer the Coven away from returning to those darker days. And you can protect your humans. If nothing else, I can promise you that.”

Finch’s voice echoed in my mind, urging me to do whatever it took to learn these Vampyrs’ secrets. As much as my body begged me to yield to Victor Bressov’s cruel touch, my mind rebelled against it; I didn’t want to be just a vessel to him, a means of gaining more power. And I certainly didn’t want
to be a pawn in his struggle with Violetta Stregazzi.

But the
power to help the Resistance, while, at the same time, I was gathering priceless intelligence on the inner turmoil within the Coven of Families?

“I have two conditions,” I said.

Victor nuzzled his hand against my palm, eyes slitting contentedly. “Anything.” His tongue darted around one fingertip, sending a tremor racing up my arm.

“The first is that you allow me to use whatever alleged ‘power’ I get from my work as an
agonie
to better the plight of my fellow humans. I want your ear on all Vampyr-human issues. Are we understood?”

“Completely,” he murmured,
then drew my fingertip into his mouth, sucking at it. I squeezed my eyes shut as a barb of pleasure pierced me. I imagined how that mouth would feel against other parts of me.

“ . . . The second,” I said, voice wavering as his sucking intensified. “You will not share me with Violetta Stregazzi. I never want to be her
agonie
. Anything that passes between us is strictly between the two of us. No questions asked.”

He pulled his mouth from my hand. “It will be difficult to keep her from you, but I promise you, she’ll never lay a hand on you, or even eyes, when you and I are . . . otherwise engaged.”

My legs were trembling like pudding as I looked back down into those dark, hungry eyes. “Then I will be your
agonie
.”

Victor laughed darkly. “I was hoping you would say that.”

In a blur, he was on his feet and clutching me by the throat with one hand while the other snared both of my wrists. I bit my lower lip, simultaneously wanting to fight against his control and surrender to it. He smelled like dark, rich chocolate, with none of the metallic scent of blood I’d smelled on the other Vampyrs that night. It filled my nostrils, intoxicating as the vodka still pulsing through my veins.

“You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this,” he purred, nose nuzzling against my throat before he took a playful nip at the soft hollow at the base of my neck.

“Four years?” I said. “You really remember me from that pathetic day at the end of my Secondary?”

In response, he crushed his mouth to mine. His flavor burst against me like an overripe berry, his tongue teasing mine as our mouths pulled together with desperate fervor. He still held my wris
ts together, pressed between us. I traced my fingers against the outline of his swelling erection. He shuddered at the touch, and sank his teeth into my lower lip as pleasure coursed through him.

“Careful, now,” he murmured. “We’ve a long way to go before that.”

I pressed my thighs together, savoring the growing heat between them. “But I want you inside me now.” It was no act—as much as I feared him, his touch was so overwhelming, and my body responded to it seemingly heedless of whatever my brain wanted.

“And that,” Victor said, “is why you must learn patience. Discipline.”

He yanked me forward by my wrists, parading me through the darkened colonnade. In the distance, I heard the steady trickle of water, drawing closer as we approached the far end of the room. Victor threw me to the ground. I landed hard on the stone, and slid, skidding against a raised stone dais.

And my heart nearly leapt into my throat.

On the raised dais, all too familiar with the candles and nearby reflecting pool, stood the iron cross, exactly as I’d seen it in my hallucination.

Chapter Six

“Is something the matter?”
Victor asked, glowering down at me from above. I could scarcely trace the hard lines of his nose and jaw in the near-darkness, but his skin nearly glowed with the dull candlelight.

I shook my head, trying to clear the haunting sense of familiarity I had with the scene before me. All that was missing from the hallucination were the hooded figures, the eerie chants.

“Then stand up. Get those disgusting rags off of you.” His voice rasped against my skin. “Quickly. Quickly.”

He began swatting at me as I tried to struggle to my feet, but I was trembling, fraught with too many fears and too much delight. As little as I wanted to know what the eerie scene had to do with me and how I’d seen it, I was dying to feel that cold metal against my bare skin, and explore whatever further pleasures Victor had in mind.

I unfastened the metal bustier; Victor reached forward and ripped it from me, throwing it to the stone with a horrendous clank. “Faster,” he snapped. He reached for the gauzy strap of the gown and tore it down my shoulder, exposing one breast.

“I’m—I’m trying.” I shook free of the gown, down to my lacy bra and stockings—ludicrous, impractical things I’d have never chosen for myself, had they not come in the box with the gown. The cool, dank air bit into my bared flesh as I took one tentative, shaky step up the dais, still in my heels.

The sharp crack of a whip split the air, sending a chill down my back as heat rose to my face. I’d always known Victor Bressov was not a man to be trifled with. But this side of him was . . . something else entirely. That knowledge gave me confidence, somehow, as I took another step up the dais and stood before the iron cross.