The Bleeding Dusk

Eighteen Wherein the Ruby Box Is Opened

Max stripped off his soaking clothes and slapped them over a wood-backed chair. His hair was still wet enough to plaster to his face and neck, but at least it wasn’t dripping anymore, and at least it wasn’t long enough to get in his eyes and mouth. He combed his fingers through the wet locks and slicked it back from his forehead and temples and over his ears.

Returning to the Consilium had taken longer than he planned. He had initially hoped to make the trip, then return to the villa in the event that Victoria needed his assistance to find her mother. But because he was carrying the alchemist’s papers—or whatever it was they were—he’d decided to take no chance of being followed or spied upon and took a much more circuitous route than he would have liked. By the time he’d come dripping onto the marble floors of the Consilium, it was nearly midnight, and Wayren asked him not to go back out.

As always, it was a request, not an order. But one he could not deny.

The time had come.

He avoided looking at the small ruby box that sat on a little table next to a small lamp. It was so small, yet it beckoned. Here in this sparse room in one of the far reaches of the catacombs that attached to the Consilium—so distant and secret that no one but Wayren and Ilias, and perhaps Ylito, knew of its existence—the small ruby box was the only bit of color.

It mocked him. The life-altering box that he could no longer avoid.

The decision that was no longer his to make.

Had it ever been?

He pulled on the dry clothes Wayren had found for him, annoyed at the way they clung to his still-damp legs, hurrying because the subterranean room was chilly, and so was his skin. As he pulled on his shirt he looked down at the little silver vis bulla. The one that didn’t really belong to him. Brushing his fingers over it, he touched the filigree cross, the impossibly dainty fingernail-size thing that hung there and gave him the power, the purpose, the exoneration he needed.

And then, with quick, nimble fingers, he slipped it out of the areola it pierced.

Immediately the strength ebbed from him. It slipped away like a quilt whipped from over a sleeping body, so suddenly that at first his fingers trembled with the loss. The bullet wounds he’d received only two nights ago, which had nearly healed, now pounded and throbbed deeply in his muscles, reminding him of what was to come. What his future would be.

Of course, he would remember none of this when he woke up.

He placed the vis on the little table next to a small lamp…and the mocking ruby box. And then, as if to counteract the blasphemous presence of Lilith’s box, Max took his small leather satchel and pulled out the few items he’d stored in it.

In the morning, or whenever it was he awakened, the box, the vis bulla, none of it would mean anything to him. The charred satin rose, the black stake with the inlaid silver cross on the blunt end, the small glass vial of holy water, the pearl earbobs, the gold watchcase…the items he placed on the table. None of them.

Max looked away, annoyed that he was feeling sorry for himself. He did what he had to do. There was no question. The day he’d awakened after the tragedy into which he’d brought his family was the day he promised himself in service. For the rest of his life.

And his life was not yet over.

What would he do after this?

Max shrugged. The path would become clear. He had only to watch, and to follow it.

A knock on the door drew his attention, gratefully, from his self-pity. “Yes. Come.”

Wayren entered, her gaze moving quickly over him, the items on the small table, the untouched bed. “You’re ready?” she asked, still standing in the doorway.

“Have you heard from Victoria?”

Her eyes moved sharply over him, and she nodded. “Yes. She sent word by messenger bird, and asked whether you’d returned as well.”

“Melisande?”

Wayren nodded again. “All are safe. Did you drink Ylito’s decoction?”

Max nodded.

“Good. He claims it will ease your way—although we don’t know exactly what will happen, do we? He did study the salve, Max, to determine if there was a way to use it, or alter it somehow, so that you could sever your bond with Lilith but keep your Venator powers.”

“But then I would be no help in the destruction of Akvan, would I? No Venator or demon shall destroy him. And someone must.”

Wayren chose to ignore his comment, replying, “I’ll be here when you awaken, so that I can remind you of your task.” She came into the room, closing the door behind her.

He resisted a disgusted snort and instead settled himself on the bed. She would remind him of the task he must set out to do—to somehow annihilate Akvan, and to do it as a mortal man, a non-Venator. But what he might or might not remember and know of himself when he awakened was frightening to consider.

Wayren pulled the chair next to him and opened the small cachet box. The pomade’s scent—at once intriguing and horrific—wafted into the room. To his great annoyance his stomach lurched when he realized that an undercurrent of the aroma was the same rose smell that always accompanied Lilith’s presence.

He closed his eyes briefly, wishing that there was another way. That he didn’t have to make this choice, go through with this task, drink this cup…give up the life he’d built for himself, the one he’d managed to construct from the ashes of guilt and self-loathing.

She knew it, damn her. She knew this was the last thing he’d ever want to do. Ever be willing to do.

By God, she knew him too well. And he, her.

He hoped Victoria would remember his advice about Lilith. That she would learn her enemy and find a way to keep herself distant from the malevolence, the conniving, so that she could remain untrapped.

A glint of brightness caught his attention, and he willingly trod out of the depths of anger and regret and back to the present, where Wayren was holding something in front of him.

He recognized the small golden disk that spun on a web-thin chain in front of him, the lamp having been placed at such an angle that the pendant appeared to glow and glitter. The memory of Eustacia was bittersweet…and appropriate.

Yet it was soothing to stare at it as Wayren murmured something in the back of her throat that was just as relaxing. He tried to force himself into ease, to let it go…and it wasn’t as difficult as he’d expected.

Cool, sure fingers smoothed over his neck and at the angle into his shoulder; the smell of roses became stronger, sickeningly stronger. He tried not to breathe too deeply, watching the golden disk, letting himself feel light.

Lighter than he’d ever felt.

But then it came to him: the ugly, evil tug, the insistent snakelike tendrils pulling at him, forcing, smothering….

She was there…her blue eyes rimmed with glowing bloodred…her hair a copper nimbus around her pale, blue-veined face. He could see the delicate markings on her cheek…the five marks that formed a crescent shape from temple to jaw…the pale lips…one warm, one chilled like death….

He fought it, fought to come out of it, just as he had before…tried to swim up from the deep pull of an ocean floor, an ocean of blue and glowing red, heavy and cloying, dragging him down…. Any moment now those lips of cold and warm would be on him…the smooth knife glide of sharp incisors into his flesh…her hands, chill and strong, over his skin—

“Max…Max!” A voice penetrated his delirium. He tried to listen. “Max…” And then somehow, through the whirl of darkness and evil, he heard the throaty murmur, the calming chant. It sliced through the lowering darkness, the enveloping horror of memory, and he allowed himself to slide back into the bath of golden light and the gentle lapping of relaxation.

There was one more thing…one thing he had to know….

“Victoria,” he managed to say, trying to focus, pulling his attention away from the gold gleam and instead to the sand-colored wall.

“She has returned…she’s safe, Max. You can go now.”

He nodded, felt his head lighten, his eyelids grow heavy. “Tell her….” He couldn’t speak. The words were too heavy, but his lips, sluggish and slow, formed them silently.

The scent of roses, now warm on his neck, grew stronger, suddenly putrid.

And then he let go.

It was nearly three o’clock that morning by the time Victoria extricated herself from her still-furious mother and her two twittering companions, not late at all by London Society standards, and certainly not unusual for Victoria herself. But because of everything that had occurred in the last few days, she felt utterly exhausted.

She needed to go back to find the splinter she’d dropped, but first Victoria wanted to change into warm, dry shoes and perhaps a split skirt. She’d sent Verbena to bed, neglecting to tell her of her plans to go back to the villa. Oliver could drive her. She sat down on the stool in front of her dressing table and began to strip off her soaked stockings.

Last night had been the attack near the Consilium, the deaths of Mansur and Stanislaus, along with the horrible moment when Zavier found her and Sebastian…and the night before that she and Sebastian and Max had been locked in the cell at Villa Palombara.

If she’d been bored and impatient a few weeks ago when she was without her vis bulla, now Victoria felt as though she’d been plunged back into an uncontrollable whirlwind of battles. Not to mention how forcefully she was being reminded of the impossibility of keeping one side of her life separate—and safe—from the other.

It had been a near thing, her mother and Conte Regalado. The very thought made Victoria’s stomach lurch and churn. She could not have borne it if she’d lost a third person she loved to the vampires, especially one like her mother, who had no concept of the darkness and evil that pervaded their lives.

She had to find a better way to keep those two parts of her life safely apart. She had to keep her mother and her friends away from the vampires, and hide the fact that she was responsible for fighting them.

How had Aunt Eustacia managed? How had other Venators? Surely they all had had parents; some of them had siblings and other loved ones, either before or after they became Venators. How?

If Aunt Eustacia were there, she could ask her. It was something they’d never really talked about, even when she’d married Phillip. She knew Aunt Eustacia hadn’t approved, but at the same time her aunt hadn’t tried to convince her otherwise. Unlike Max, who’d argued with her and warned her every step of the way.

Why hadn’t her aunt stopped her? Was it because she wanted to give Victoria the chance to try to find love—and happiness—as difficult as it might be?

At least Aunt Eustacia had provided Victoria with a means to keep herself from getting with child.

But now she was gone too.

To her chagrin Victoria’s eyes filled with tears, and she felt the telltale sign of a dripping nose. She hated to cry. She was a Venator, and she’d cried more in the last few days than she had the year after Phillip died.

Died?

No. Not died. She had to acknowledge the truth. It hadn’t been an accident. And he hadn’t simply died.

She’d killed him.

She’d killed him with her naivete, her selfishness, and her bravado. Her lies.

Her lies.

And with her own hand.

A stake to the heart, as she’d done so many other times before—and since.

Blindly she reached for a handkerchief and wiped her nose, her cheeks, her chin. It was soaking when she pulled it away. In the dim light from the moon that shone through the villa window, Victoria could see her wet face reflected in the dressing table mirror. Her eyes were dark and shadowed, and her dark hair fell in horrible snarling curls around her face and neck. She looked like a Medusa. A hollow-cheeked, sad Medusa.

The only thing she had to be thankful for was that she’d killed him before he’d fed on a mortal—thus before he’d damned himself and his soul.

Suddenly, she became aware that the door of her bedchamber had swung silently open just a bit. Just wide enough for her to see a narrow, pale face glowing in the low light.

“Lady Nilly?” Victoria asked, hastily swiping the back of her hand over the last trails of tears.

The door opened enough for the slender woman to come in, silent and thin as a wraith in her lacy white night rail. A prickle began at the back of Victoria’s neck…not a chill, but an apprehensive sense.

“What is it?” she asked, coming to her feet, reaching automatically for one of her stakes, even though she knew…she knew Nilly was all right. But…

“I’d forgotten…I have a message for you,” said the older woman, her voice oddly hollow. Her eyes were wide and luminous in her long face, her fragile hand clasped to the fabric of her wrapper, her pale hair falling behind her narrow shoulders in a ghostly shadow.

“From the one who bit you?”

“Beauregard. Master Beauregard,” breathed Nilly, and Victoria saw a hint of fanaticism in her eyes. They lit like candles, her lips tipped up at the edges, and she seemed almost as if she were in a dream. “Master Beauregard…says…he has returned something that belongs to you…and that he expects you will return what you have…of his. Or…” Nilly’s voice faded. Her words launched Victoria to her feet, suddenly scrabbling through the pockets of her man’s coat. Of course! At the mention of Beauregard’s name it came back to her. She pulled out the copper armband, wondering how she could have forgotten where she’d seen the etched insignia: on Sebastian’s skin.

Perhaps she’d not wanted to remember seeing that mark on him.

But it was there.

“What does he have of mine?” Victoria asked as she turned back, just in time to see Lady Nilly slip silently to the floor.

She was at her side in an instant, feeling the older woman’s neck on the unwounded side. Her heart was still thumping, and the odd, tense smile had faded from her lips. Reaching up onto her dressing table, Victoria fumbled for a little vial of smelling salts and pressed them under Lady Nilly’s nose.

Almost immediately the woman stirred, coughed, and twisted her face away. Her eyes fluttered open. To Victoria’s relief they were clear, and she seemed surprised to see Victoria.

“What are you doing?” she asked, pushing herself into a seated position.

“Are you feeling well?” Victoria asked, helping her to her feet.

“I’m quite all right. I don’t know how I…” Lady Nilly looked around in bewilderment.

“Let me help you back to bed.” Victoria did, and as they moved at a snail’s pace down the hallway, she realized what Beauregard had that belonged to her.

The answer was not something she wanted to contemplate, but it was more than possible. It was likely.

After all, she’d dropped the necklace near the Door of Alchemy, and Lady Nilly had been near the door when she was bitten.

But that meant that Beauregard had been there when she was fighting the other vampires near the front of the villa.

And he’d left.

By the time she helped Nilly back into bed, she saw the faint tinge of gray in the east. The sun would be up in less than three hours, perhaps sooner. Beauregard had the necklace, so there was no need to go haring about the city tonight.

Tomorrow, in the daylight, she’d take the copper armband to Wayren and Max and see what they thought. If copper rings were important to Lilith’s Guardians, what would an armband mean?

She didn’t consider showing it to Sebastian, Victoria realized as she began to drop off to sleep, clothed only in her shift and with cold, bare toes. She’d shown and shared so much more with Sebastian…yet she wouldn’t seek him out for help in relation to Beauregard.

Suddenly she was wide-awake again, staring out her window at the dark gray night.

Sebastian loved Beauregard. Last autumn he’d asked her if, knowing how he felt about his grandfather, she’d kill him in front of Sebastian. Victoria hadn’t known the answer then…and she didn’t know it now.

She knew that Beauregard was malevolent and selfish…but some of Sebastian’s arguments had crept into her mind and sat there, mocking her. He couldn’t bear to know that his grandfather, whom he’d learned was a vampire only once he’d grown to adulthood, would be damned to Hell for eternity with the well-placed strike of a stake.

Would Victoria hesitate to place that stake because of her feelings for Sebastian?

Her fingers had grown cold. Her feelings for Sebastian were nebulous and wispy, and she dared not contemplate them now…perhaps ever. But surely, surely…they weren’t strong enough to keep her from doing her duty, should the moment arise?

Of course not.

Beauregard was an undead. He deserved to die, or at least to be turned into dust and sent to wherever he must live out eternity. It was Victoria’s responsibility to rid the world of vampires whenever she had the opportunity.

Nothing would keep her from her task. Not even the golden angel named Sebastian.

Victoria must have dropped off to sleep at some point in the labyrinth of her thoughts and debates, for she dreamed of things: slow, sensual, curling, arousing things…dark, strong, metallic, angry things…loud, putrid, frightening things.

She woke, not because of the dreams, she realized belatedly, but because Verbena stood over her bed. Her hands were on her shoulders, as if she’d been shaking her.

“My lady. My lady, you must awaken.”

Victoria sat up abruptly, the last vestiges of the nightmares dissolving and clarity resuming in her mind. “What is it?”

Verbena handed her a small paper. It was tiny and rolled, as if it had come from the tiny container on a bird’s leg. A quick glance at the window told Victoria that Myza wasn’t there, waiting to bring a response back to Wayren. It was daylight, well past sunrise.

She unrolled the paper, her mouth dry. Come at once.

She didn’t wait to change her damp, wrinkled clothes, just yanked on the man’s coat she’d worn the night before and left. It took Victoria less than thirty minutes to get to the Consilium. Oliver drove her in the carriage and let her off many blocks away, after ensuring that they hadn’t been followed.

Crossing herself as she dashed onto and then off the altar inside Santo Quirinus, she hurried through the secret door of the confessional, leaped lightly past the rigged middle step in the hidden hall, and ran down the revealed spiral staircase.

Ilias was waiting for her near the fountain. His face was grave, the lines next to his mouth deep and cutting. “Follow me.”

She hurried behind him down a stone-cut corridor through which she’d never had cause to go before. When he stopped in front of a door and gestured for her to precede him in, she did.

As she opened the door, Hannever looked up, gave her a brief nod, and moved his short, wiry body out of the chamber as if to leave her alone.

The room was small, but well lit and warm. A rug covered the floor; a bed lined one wall. Victoria’s chest felt tight as she walked in, toward the unmoving figure that lay under the blankets. Harsh breathing filled the room, as if it were the last gasps of life coming from the man on the bed. Indeed, when she stepped closer and saw his face, smelled the blood, she knew that was exactly what it was.

The last gasps of life.

A small cry escaped from the back of her throat, and she reached out to touch him: his straggly, half-braided red hair, the brawny arm that lay crossed over his barrel chest.

“Zavier,” she murmured. “What has befallen you?”

A quiet movement behind her told Victoria she was no longer alone; whether Wayren had already been in the room when she’d arrived or had just come in, she didn’t know. “’Tis desperate he is,” she said in her calm voice. “Ylito and Hannever have done all they can. We will know by tomorrow if he will stay with us.”

“Or if we will be hanging another portrait in the gallery.” Victoria’s voice cracked. Not another. Not so soon. She lifted her face to look at Wayren. “What happened?”

“He went after Sebastian. And Beauregard.”

Victoria’s stomach dropped like a stone. “No.” He wouldn’t have.

Oh, God, yes, he would. She hadn’t forgotten the look of betrayal on his face. The stunned hurt. The disbelief.

Was this another death that would be laid at her door?

Another that could have been prevented if she had made different choices?

Bloody hell, she’d done nothing wrong! She’d not brought Sebastian here. She’d not betrayed them.

“I do not know all that happened…. He was barely conscious when we found him. He said only the words ‘Vioget’ and ‘Beauregard’…the rest we have surmised. But”—she gestured to the patient—“as you can see, the evidence is there.”

Victoria looked again and saw that he’d shifted, revealing tears in his flesh, ribboning through his neck and down beyond the blankets. It wasn’t only fangs that had caused such destruction.

Whoever—or whatever—it was had meant to leave him near death…yet not dead.

Enough that he would be found. But unable to be saved.

The thought plunged Victoria into burning fury. She stood, barely keeping her fingers from shaking, and made herself move slowly and deliberately…because if she didn’t, she’d explode.

She bent, placing her hands over Zavier’s head, whispered a small prayer in his ear, a plea for him to forgive and to return…and then placed a gentle kiss on his cheek.

When she stood, Wayren’s gaze caught hers, and Victoria knew the other woman understood.

She started toward the door and was out in the corridor, just entering the empty main chamber of the Consilium, before she heard Wayren behind her.

“Victoria.”

“I need to find Max,” she said, pausing near the fountain, realizing that of anyone, Wayren would know where he was. She fingered the copper bracelet in her pocket. “I’m going to find Beauregard and kill him. I want him to go with me.”

Victoria drew in a deep, calming breath, pushing away the fury and grief, reminding herself of Kritanu’s admonishments never to let her emotions carry her away. “I need Max. Do you know where he is?”

Wayren’s face did not change, but she reached out and gently grasped Victoria’s arm. “There’s something else you need to know.”

Victoria’s breath caught at the expression in her eyes. “What is it?”

“Sit down, Victoria.”