The Bleeding Dusk

Twenty-Four In Which There Is a Chilling Draft

Victoria murmured, shifting restlessly, moving for the first time since they’d come into the room. Sebastian brushed the hair away from her forehead, the soft, lush curls that had been captured in a braid that lay in a thick line past her breasts. Her skin was damp and clammy, and still so pale.

This would be the last time he’d touch her.

Sebastian looked at her lips, at the curve of her jaw, remembering how strong it could be—how defiant when she lifted it and pretended she didn’t want him as much as he wanted her. Now he would have no one to taunt in a carriage, no one to tease and tug and coax into his arms.

His wound from her stake still ached, oozing blood, and he remembered again why she was lying there, and how she had found Beauregard’s lair. Who had led her there, and why. How Beauregard had manipulated them both.

He’d sat there—it had been hours—since he and Pesaro had been allowed to enter after whatever Hannever and Ylito had done with Zavier’s blood. Somehow they’d fed it into Victoria using some sort of tube, but it hadn’t seemed to do any good. The back of his neck still prickled and chilled, and she still lay there, cold and pale.

She moaned again, and Sebastian looked up. He met Pesaro’s eyes from across Victoria’s body. There was no hope there, nothing but grim determination. A stake sat on the table near Pesaro; Sebastian had no doubt he’d not hesitate to use it.

A cold one, he was.

Wayren and Ylito had found a small corner of the room where they both sat reading or studying some old text. The sight of them brought to Sebastian’s mind the fact that the page he’d stolen from the Consilium was still in Beauregard’s lair.

He would have to go back and find it once…once this was over.

At that moment Victoria’s eyes fluttered, and the sensation in the room shifted. It became closer and smothering, and no one seemed to breathe.

Wayren was suddenly standing at the foot of the small bed. Ylito took his place near the head, and before Sebastian knew what was happening he heard a soft whisk, and then a faint clink. Pesaro was doing something at his side of the bed, and Wayren and Ilias near the foot.

Restraints.

God, restraints.

How demeaning for her.

He felt and found the soft leather cuffs, the metal fastenings on the side, and let them drop. He wouldn’t do it.

Victoria was breathing more stridently now, and her eyes were fluttering. One of her legs moved; her lips parted; she rolled her head. She tried to raise an arm, but it was held in place by…not a cuff, but Pesaro. His hand on her arm, around her wrist. Clamping it onto the edge of the bed.

All of a sudden her eyes fluttered open. Wide. They opened wide, and she looked around. They weren’t red; they were the same brown-green they’d always been.

The room seemed to hold its collective breath, waiting. Ylito shifted near the head of the bed, and Sebastian saw him reach for something on the table.

No. Not the stake. Not yet.

But when he glanced over, he saw that it was still on the table, held in place by Pesaro’s hand.

“What…” Victoria said, looking around, her eyes moving slowly from face to face. “Beauregard!” She tried to move, and a confused look passed over her.

Ylito moved, and something splashed through the air, sprinkled down on her face before Sebastian could stop him. Not her face!

But instead of screaming and tearing at the spray of holy water, Victoria twisted around, merely turning her face to get away from it as if it were nothing more than a summer rain shower.

“Why did you do that?” she asked, her voice stronger now.

Something in the room changed. It was as if a sudden light had come on. They all looked at one another, afraid to hope….

“Is it possible?” Ylito asked, looking at Wayren.

“I don’t know how it can be,” she replied. She’d moved next to Sebastian, and he felt her palpable…was it relief? Could it be? She reached down, smoothing her hands over Victoria’s face, over her shoulders, her eyes closed, a low hum coming from the back of her throat.

“The two vis bullae.”

They all looked at Pesaro, who’d removed his hand from the stake. Whose face actually bore an expression now. “She wears two of them, does she not?”

Sebastian stared at him. How the bloody hell could Pesaro know that…when he himself didn’t?

Wayren straightened, her hands continuing to move in soft, rhythmic gestures over Victoria’s body as if to soothe it…or to somehow measure it. “It must be. There can be no other explanation. The strength of the two overpowered Beauregard’s blood, and she was not turned.”

“And so that is why she needed blood,” added Ylito. “When the tainted vampire blood did not take hold, it had to be replaced with mortal blood.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Victoria. “Why am I here?”

Sebastian looked down at her, a sudden jubilance rushing over him. For the first time in a long while he felt something other than doom and guilt. Thank God.

But then, as he took her cool fingers into his hand, he realized something horrible.

His neck was still cold.