Devil at Midnight (36 page)

“You think you deserve it?” he mocked aloud to the stars. “You think you deserve anything except eternal damnation?”

He was a betrayer just like his father. He had barely thought of Grace in all this. When he had, her memory had whipped such sadness into his heart that he had welcomed an excuse to push it away. The vampire had been happy to provide one, over and over again.

How could you leave me, Grace
? he thought.

He grimaced, too aware of his veins burning, of his every cell clenching at the scent of humans that rode the air. In that moment, he was not certain he wanted Grace to return. She was too tenderhearted to approve of his decision. Maybe it was best that she not see how thoroughly he had damned himself.

With a groan that encompassed more than the stings of his altered body, he pushed, trembling, to his feet.

Nim Wei stood before him across the cold ashes of the fire. His heart gave a slower than human skip. That he had not heard her approach, even with his new ears, alarmed the soldier in him.

An instinct he could not control made him curl his upper lip back and growl at her. She did not flinch at the bestial sound. Indeed, she did not react at all. Though Christian might now be considered a threat to her, she did not appear afraid to be alone with him. He recalled her saying she was a queen.

“It was a ploy,” he said, needing to speak his idiocy aloud, to punish himself for it. “Hiring my father’s men. Pretending you needed an escort to protect you. You could have traveled anywhere you wanted without our help. From the beginning, you planned to seduce me.”

She did not blink, but neither did she deny it.

Christian snorted at himself. “I hope the satisfaction of hearing me beg for your favors was worth it.”

He could not read her expression, but some emotion tightened her face subtly. Perhaps she was considering reaching out. The muscles of her arms twitched, then relaxed again at her sides.

Had she expected him to like her better now?

“We should go,” she said calmly. “You need to feed tonight.”

Hunger exploded inside him, not only for blood but for more of the carnal pleasures she had shown him. Surely that was the worst betrayal of his beloved: that his body could long so deeply to sin again. Grace had literally been a part of him. Wanting anyone else, even for a moment, was a stain he would never be able to scrub off. His new fangs felt huge behind his lips, stonelike, curving, pulsing in his gums as his mouth watered copiously.

Aware that Nim Wei was watching, he swallowed and spoke carefully—
after
offering his maker a polite nod.

“I would be obliged for your instruction. It seems I have a powerful thirst for revenge ...”

 

 

G
regori had not left Florence. Nim Wei tracked him to a room above a closed goldsmith’s shop, following a trail Christian could not yet read with his new powers.

“In there,” she said and left him alone at the door.

Christian’s palm was damp, the sweat that coated it cold. He suspected this was a rare reaction for the kind of creature he had become, but he ignored it just as he would have before. The handle of the door was iron, which Nim Wei had warned him to avoid. He yanked a length of shirt from his hose and used it to wrap his hand. That done, he shoved inward hard and fast enough to snap the plank that barred the chamber from intruders.

The quick splitting of the wood did not wake his father. Gregori sprawled, snoring, in a carved and upholstered chair. The table beside it held the remnants of a meal some hireling must have brought him.

Apparently, killing all Christian’s friends had not spoiled Gregori’s appetite.

Christian glanced around him, not breathing or needing to. This was a room to hole up in for a while. It was richly furnished, though with tired objects. A single deep window, shuttered now, overlooked the street front. A second door might also serve as an escape route. Christian would have to ensure his father did not reach it.

His survey complete, he looked down at his sleeping sire, at the thickness of his muscles and bull-like chest, at the size of his sword-scarred hands, at the squashed appearance of his oft-broken nose. His lips were more sensual than Christian’s-beautiful, really. Had Christian’s mother ever touched that mouth with desire? Had there been a time when Gregori did not frighten her?

Would Christian have frightened her now?

Perhaps sensing a presence, Gregori’s eyelids fluttered.

“Son,” he croaked as they opened.

The inferno of rage Christian experienced at being called that, by this man, did not show in his face. He was relatively certain nothing showed there at all.

Receiving no answer, Gregori gripped the arms of the high-backed chair and pushed himself straighter.

“I know you are angry, son.” Though his eyes were wary, Gregori was too proud to display fear. “Believe me, I am sorry matters had to come to this.”

“You are sorry they
had
to,” Christian repeated in disbelief.

“You forced my hand. How else was I to bring you back into the fold? You had to learn that I am still your master. You will never outmaneuver me on the battlefield.”

Christian was breathing, his diaphragm surging slowly in and out. “
You
are the one who made this a battle. I was willing to take my men and go home.”

“A coward’s choice,” Gregori dismissed. “Unworthy of our blood.” Two stemmed silver goblets sat on the square table. To Christian’s amazement, Gregori reached for the wine decanter and began to pour. “Come, Christian. We will drink to our rapprochement. To our long future at peace again.”

Christian forced his throbbing heart to slow. “I would sooner drink with Lucifer himself.”

His father looked up and truly saw him for the first time since he had come in. His gaze cut to the door where the broken wooden bar listed drunkenly. The neck of the wine decanter clinked on the second goblet’s tarnished silver rim.

Christian had rattled him.

“The minstrel bit you,” he said, his eyes widening.

“Oh, Father,” Christian said, the words sliding from his throat with a strange richness. “Nim Wei did so much more than bite me.”

His father moved like he was underwater, or so it seemed to Christian. His grip shifted on the glass decanter, wine splashing out in red ribbons as he reversed it. Gripping the throat securely, Gregori smashed the base on the table’s edge, loudly shearing it off. Armed with the resulting circle of jagged edges, he jabbed his makeshift weapon at Christian.

Or he tried to. Quick as thought and maybe quicker-Christian grabbed his father and flung him against the wall. The pompous chair he had been sitting in went with him, both it and his father’s body striking the plaster hard enough to craze its full length with cracks.

His father slid to the floor in a daze. The broken decanter fell from his hand and rolled.

“S-son,” he stammered.

“Do not call me that!” Christian screamed. He was not aware in that moment of feeling angry, but the scream said he was-as did the fingers he was constricting on Gregori’s larynx.

He was not using his full strength. If he had, his father’s head would have popped off. Instead, he watched, mesmerized, as Gregori’s coarsely pored face turned ever darker shades of red. Christian crouched above his father with his heavy torso between his knees. The veins on Gregori’s forehead were standing out in blue ropes, his big chest jerking with his fight for air. The thunder of his heart, of his growing terror, seemed to drown out every other sound in the city.

“You would do this to your own father?” Gregori choked. “Because I killed a few strangers?”

Christian growled, the struggle going on inside him one he did not perfectly understand. His body should have been calm and still, but it felt as if beasts were tearing him from within.

“
You
are the stranger,” he accused his father. “
They
were people I loved.”

An unexpected pain stabbed him in the stomach. Christian staggered up and back in surprise. He had not been wearing mail or armor; according to Nim Wei, the steel was not pure enough. Now the hilt of a small dagger was sticking out from his gut. Its pommel was wrapped in leather that was stamped with the Durand crest. Cool, thick blood welled out from its point of penetration. From this and the way the blade burned icily inside him, Christian concluded that the dagger’s iron content was high.

Gregori must have concealed it in his clothing.

“My father’s knife,” Gregori rasped, crawling back from him like a crab. “My father, whom
I
knew how to respect.”

Red washed across Christian’s vision. His fangs punched from their sockets in an uncontrollable spasm. Seeing them, his father sucked in a breath.

“Devil,” he said, his voice atremble. “You stay away from me.”

Christian had fed before he came here. Nim Wei had made sure of that.
You want a
cool
head to face your father
, she had advised.
You
are
young
and
strong, but he is
a
wily dog
. So Christian had fed, and cooled his head, and had fully intended to do no more than snap his neck.

But when Gregori called him a devil, when he dared to cross himself and pray, those intentions fled.

Christian tugged the dagger from his belly, not caring how the wound hurt or bled. He tossed the weapon past Gregori’s reach. Hands free, he yanked his father up to his mouth like a sawdust doll. Instincts deeper than a soldier’s were guiding him. His teeth pierced flesh, found veins, and then he was swallowing.

It was a pleasure far beyond feeding from the sleeping thief whom Nim Wei had found for him. This was the life-giving feast of vengeance. This was a son’s long-awaited declaration of freedom. This was joy itself running down his throat.

He worried at the punctures until the blood he could not drink spurted free. It was hot like summer, like the sun that was now his enemy.

He only felt sickened when his father’s heart stopped beating.

U
nlike the other times she’d been flung away, Grace retained no memory of where she’d been—not even a vague one. It seemed to her that she had simply ceased to be. She returned to existence on her feet in a narrow Italian street. It was night now and very quiet, so evidently medieval Florence was no New York. The buildings on either side of her rose four stories, and were plastered in a soft yellow. The one directly in front of her was set apart by a goldsmith’s sign.

A black cat looked straight at her as it slunk across the cobbles. Grace wondered if this were a good or bad omen. Animals hadn’t been able to see her before.

Well, now what
? she thought.

A muffled sound drifted out from one of the floors above, a swallowed back cry of pain. Grace leaped for the window without thinking, her lack of corporeality allowing her to land on the sill
inside
the closed shutters.

She saw she had found Christian.

Her ghostly heart skipped a beat. She was looking at him in profile. He had one knee and both hands planted on the floor-like a runner poised to propel himself from a pair of blocks, except he seemed to be frozen there. His lower face and a good portion of his chest were splashed dark with blood. Strange gold lights flickered in his eyes, exceeded in shock value only by the pointy thrust of his fangs. Despite these jarring alterations, he looked strangely beautiful, even more than she remembered. The straight black hair that cloaked his shoulders could have been spun from the night itself.

He was a vampire. Somehow, in the unknowable amount of time she’d been gone, he had made this choice. At least, she didn’t think it could have been thrust on him. Never mind the grief he’d been suffering. Christian wasn’t a person who did much against his will.

Maybe a different woman would have run then, but Grace didn’t know how to run from him. At a loss, she hopped down from the window. A noise broke in Christian’s throat as he jerked his head around and saw her. He must have made the cry she’d heard earlier. It was hard to read his emotions through the partial mask of blood, but she didn’t think he was grateful that she’d showed up.

‟Grace.” He stopped to laugh brokenly. “You would return to me like this.”

It had been his choice then. She could tell from his rueful tone. With a shock she didn’t need to pile on the rest, she realized a body was lying on the floor next to him. Its neck had been more than bitten. Two bloody gouges tore halfway down its length. Even in death, the barrel shape of the chest was unmistakable.

“Christian. Your father...”

Christian’s broken laugh rose in pitch. “Well, his blood was already in me. What was a little more?”

He stopped laughing and began to weep-harsh, tearing sobs that sounded like they must have hurt coming out. He covered his bloodied face in both hands. The gesture was so graceful it reminded her of a statue.