Isadora (Masters Among Monsters Book 2) (27 page)

“A monster?”

Leo shook his head. “No. I don’t really think that. I was angry. I mean, did you have to break his finger?”

Vasilios spun him around so fast that Leo’s head rattled. “Yes, Leonidas. Don’t you understand? I cannot show favoritism. I cannot show you kindness. I rule all vampires. What I say is law. I am what stands between there being a controlled horde or a savage one.”

Leo had to wonder what it cost Vasilios to explain his actions. He knew he wasn’t one to answer to anyone. Alasdair had warned him of that. But, as they stood face-to-face, he felt that perhaps this was Vasilios’s way of showing some kindness. So he relented.

“Alasdair is mad at me.”

Vasilios’s eyebrow rose as if shocked, and then he laughed. “Is he now?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Because you almost melted his pretty face off? That’s enough to upset anyone, don’t you think?”

Leo’s lips twitched. He was flabbergasted by the conversation they were having. “Well, it’s not like I meant to do it. But I think he’s more concerned with you and me than his
pretty
face.”

Vasilios’s eyes narrowed as a pensive look crossed his handsome features, and then it disappeared as quickly as it had come. “Both he and I know you did not mean what you did. But I feel this is a good a time as any to let you know of something somewhat important when it comes to both our survival and yours. You see, Leonidas, the moment you ingested my blood, your life became linked to mine and, by circumstance, Alasdair’s.”

Leo’s mouth fell open, and Vasilios gave a tight smile.

“So, you see, I am not particularly worried that you will harm us because I do not believe you have a death wish. Especially since you offered up your body to save it once before. Although,” Vasilios mused, “perhaps that wasn’t a completely altruistic move, hmm,
agóri
?”
 

Leo didn’t know what to say. Vasilios had tied him to them? But—
 

“Are you
mad
? What if I hurt you? What if I hurt myself, for that matter? I don’t know what the fuck is happening to me, and now, you tell me this? Why?”

“I assure you I am quite sane. And, despite what you think and fear, I do not believe you wish to harm Alasdair.
Or
me. We have much to discover when it comes to you, Leonidas. Just as we have much adjusting to do when it comes to the attention each of us requires.”
 

Leo’s breath hitched when Vasilios traced his upper lip.

When he lowered his hand, he said, “I wouldn’t worry much about Alasdair. He will come around. I once ripped his veins from his arms and he forgave me.”

Leo grimaced in horror.

Vasilios gave him a wolfish grin. “I told you, breaking a bone
was
me being kind. Now, tell me. Whom were you talking to when I arrived?”

Leo gained control of his finer motor skills again and offered his fate up to the gods, Vasilios, or whoever the fuck was controlling it as he replied, “I think it was Apollo.”

DIOMÊDÊS GRIPPED THE back of his neck as he marched around his chambers, waiting for Isadora to return. When she’d faded from the Assembly Hall with the prisoner in tow, his first instinct had been to stop her. The second had been to locate and trail her to protect her. Yet he’d sensed the underlying need for her to do this on her own and relented. Then, after no contact from her, he felt for her presence and saw exactly where she was. She’d faded to Neda’s Waterfall with the human.

Revenge… He understood her need for it. He himself had sought the satisfaction of getting it once before. However, he couldn’t help but worry that Isadora’s actions weren’t a result of more than that one emotion.

The fury and disappointment that were so integral in stoking the flame of true vengeance were there, but unlike the first time she’d sought justice for herself, this time, the feeling was less sure. It was clouded by more.

Neda’s Waterfall—31 BC
 

DIOMÊDÊS WALKED DOWN the narrow path towards the falls where he’d instructed Isadora to wait for him. In his right hand, he held the end of a rope and behind him staggered his gift to Isadora on this night.
 

Isadora Nikitas. The emperor’s daughter.
 

She was a beautiful female, but there was more to her than a captivating face. He’d seen love, determination, and strength in that woman, and when he’d offered her an eternity the night before, she’d placed her hand in his without a moment’s hesitation.

Tonight, however, would solidify it. She had drunk his blood, and when she fed, it would make their bond a permanent one. She would forever be his. His first-sired.

As he stepped into the clearing, he saw her standing down by the water’s edge. The same place where Daphne, the woman she’d loved deep within her soul, had been slaughtered like an animal.

 
He had been sure to remove Daphne’s body last night after he’d placed Isadora somewhere safe to rest. He had returned to the gruesome scene and buried the young woman. There was no way, however, to remove all the blood from the ground where Isadora was standing. It had seeped deep within the earth and would forever taint the peaceful place.
 

With her back to him, she knelt down and pressed her fingers to the dirt. Her back shuddered as she took a sobering breath, but after she fed from the one he’d brought her, she would no longer need oxygen in her lungs to survive.
 

It was odd, this newfound responsibility over another being, knowing that he held her life in his hands. But, in return, she too would hold his.

“Mikri mou polemistria,” he said, not wanting to startle her.

As she stood and faced him, he was, as always, taken aback by her appearance. Her eyes found his, and the tears that streaked her cheeks had a long-dormant emotion rising inside him. Sympathy.
 

He wanted to go to her, take her in his arms, and comfort her. With the waterfall as her backdrop, he thought the tears on her cheeks matched the turbulent passion of the raging water.
 

“I have brought him to you, as you requested.”

He tugged the rope hard, and the one who’d trailed behind him lurched forward. He shoved him out between them, and Isadora lowered her eyes over the man in front of her.
 

He was dressed as he had been when Diomêdês had dragged him from his bed, in a lightweight nightshirt, and he’d tied a blindfold over his eyes. The man’s hands were bound in front of him, and he trembled.

Isadora glided forward, closing the distance between her and the man, and then she stopped when she was able to reach out and touch him. Her gaze shifted over his shoulder to Diomêdês’s, and he could sense the rage in her as it boiled to that fever pitch. To that place that was needed to do what must be done.

She peeled the blindfold from the man’s eyes, and there, staring back at her, was her brother, Dimitri. The same one who’d murdered her Daphne.

“Isadora,” he gasped, stunned by the one who stood before him. But, like the snake he was, he tried to use it to his advantage and slither out of what he could sense was coming. He raised his hands out towards her in an appeal to his sister.
 

She looked down at where he was bound and then tilted her head to the side. Her silence was unnerving. Diomêdês could feel the fear and apprehension in the man as he finally saw what
he
had all along.
 

True magnificence, true power. She would make a superb vampire. All she had to do was kill and feed, and it would be done.

“Do not speak my name,” she said, her tone frigid. “You gave up that right when you came after me with a knife.”

Diomêdês took ahold of the back of Dimitri’s neck and held him still for her. He couldn’t wait for this, this first moment where she would unleash what he had given her—it would be spectacular.
 

“Isadora, you have to understand,” he pleaded, but he was too late. Perhaps if he’d only come for her, she would’ve had it in her heart to forgive. But that was not the case, and nothing was going to save him now. “I was angry.”

“Oh, I understand, adelfe. I too am angry,” she told him as she raised a hand to cup his jaw. She gripped his chin, angling her face in until they were nose to nose, and said, “Anger can turn the best of us into monsters, can’t it, Dimitri?”

As her eyes changed to the color of the night surrounding them, her brother sneered, “Look what you have become. A whore’s whore and a freak’s fuck. Father should’ve never allowed you to step foot from your room.”

Isadora’s fingers tightened. A bone cracked—Dimitri’s jaw—and he grunted.
 

“You never loved her,” Isadora hissed. “Not like I did.”

Diomêdês felt her conviction in those words, proud she’d said them aloud. Her fangs descended for the first time, and her eyes flared at the pleasurable power that came with that punch of pain.
 

Diomêdês grabbed her brother’s hair and twisted it, tilting his head away and exposing his throat for her, and when she lowered over him, Dimitri managed to say, “What kind of monster have
you
become?”

She took a deep breath, scenting his fear.
 

Yes. That’s my girl.
 

Then she grazed her fang over his carotid and whispered, “The one you have made me.”

She struck hard at his vein, as instinct had driven her to, and it wasn’t gentle or sweet. It was vicious and wild, and as she drank from him, Diomêdês felt a pull inside of him, a connection that sent an electric shock to his dead heart and seemed to restart it for one heartbeat…two...and a third. Then every thought, memory, and feeling she had flooded him. They washed over his entire being and filled all the missing pieces inside. They were connected in every way they could be, and as if she too felt it, she raised her head, looked over to him, and offered the close-to-lifeless body in her hands to him.
 

Diomêdês slicked his tongue over his lips and lowered his head to drink from the puncture wounds she’d inflicted, and when he was high as a proverbial fucking kite, he looked to her and saw a kindred spirit staring back.
 

Yes, she was his now. And he was hers.
 

As he thrust her brother’s body over to her, she clasped his head in her hands and snapped his neck like a twig.

ISADORA STARED AT the man she’d knocked unconscious and brought back to her bed. She had re-cuffed Elias and secured his hands to one of the bedposts. Now, she looked at his body, which was stretched out across her sheets. With his dark eyelashes brushing his cheeks, he looked as he had many times over when she’d left his bed.

This, however, was a totally different circumstance. There were no sweet memories accompanying what they’d just done. Instead, she was full of guilt. Guilt because she’d enjoyed it so very much.
 

 
She squealed in surprise when, backing away from her king-sized bed, she ran into something solid. Upon spinning on her heel, she was stunned to see Alasdair. She hadn’t even been aware of his arrival.
 

“This, dear cousin, is going to be very, very tricky.”

Her eyes widened as he peered around her shoulder and then brought his cunning eyes back to her.

“Alasdair…”

“Yes, Isa?”

Frustrated that she’d been found out before she could locate Diomêdês, she balled her fists together. “Fuck. What are you doing here?”

“Me?” he asked, his mouth kicking up on one side. “I think what
you
are doing is more important right now,
ne
?”

She sighed and stepped around him, making her way to the door. “I’m going to find Diomêdês is what I am doing.”

“Are you? And what do you plan to tell him? That you couldn’t bring yourself to kill the bastard who almost destroyed a third of our race?” Alasdair sauntered towards the bed, which had Isadora flashing over beside it. He gave a knowing smirk and nodded. “Yes, I’m sure that will be well received.”