It was a woman's voice that spoke first. "I say we dump her in the river."
"We cannot do that, Beloved," a man's voice answered, humor lacing his voice.
"No? Then we'll find a lake and dump her. A deep lake." The woman's voice was American and vaguely familiar. That thought startled me, not because I found her voice familiar, but because I found anything familiar. It meant I wasn't dead, or a mental vegetable.
"Allie, you're not being very charitable. It's not Nell's fault she did what she did, although I truly did not know she had that much power. She swore to me that she was not a Charmer, and yet she managed a banishing ward by merely speaking words. I was not aware that was possible."
I cracked an eye open at the words. Melissande was speaking, shaking her head sadly as stood looking out a window.
"Oh, she knew what she was doing! Did you see what she did to Christian's hands? It took him an hour to heal those burns! A whole hour!"
I rolled my opened eye to the side and watched the crazy woman - evidently named Allie - who sat on Christian's lap. A faint smile touched my lips. Although I've always prided myself on being a fairly peaceful, nonaggressive person, I was not averse to causing a little grief to a vampire who was trying to harm the man of my dreams.
Adrian! Oh, my God, how could I have forgotten him! What happened after I cast the banish charm? Had he escaped? Where was he? Immediately I tried to stretch out with my mind to reach him, but a sudden blinding pain pierced my brain, causing me to waver on the edge of unconsciousness.
"Christian, have you ever heard of a Charmer who could speak a ward?" Melissande turned to address the dark-haired vamp.
The pain ebbed slowly, enough so I could catch my breath. With tentative, careful movements I tried moving my left arm and leg a tiny fraction, praying with a wordless prayer that they'd respond to my commands. I couldn't stand finding myself a prisoner of my body again. Not now, not when my life had taken on new meaning.
Christian looked thoughtful. "Two or three centuries ago I met a Charmer who could verbalize a ward. But she was a very powerful Charmer, and I do not get the same sense of power from this one." A languid hand waved my way, stopping in midair as he noticed the movement of my left foot. "Ah. I believe she has returned to us."
I clenched the fingers of my left hand into a fist, relieved almost to the point of tears that my body did what I asked of it. I had stopped in time. I hadn't been consumed by the white light of my mind failing me - I had charmed and still lived whole and complete. Or as whole and complete as I was when I started this little adventure.
Adrian. What had happened to him? Oh, God - what if I had killed him as I had killed Beth? "Adrian," I said, my voice coming out a panic-filled croak. "Where is Adrian?"
"She's awake? Good. Let me go look up where the nearest lake is."
I turned away from the angry Allie as she slid off Christian's lap, looking at Melissande. She seemed to be the most sympathetic person in the room. "Where is he? Where is Adrian?" I asked.
Melissande's hands fluttered helplessly as she cast a glance at the vampire who approached the bed where I lay covered with an eiderdown. It was Christian who answered. "The Betrayer is in confinement, Charmer."
Confinement. That could be good or bad. If I hadn't killed him with my attempt to charm, his jailers could have. "Did you hurt him?" I asked, my fingers curling as I pictured Adrian lying somewhere hurt or dead.
"He is" - Christian paused, and I knew that whatever he was about to say would be a lie - "unharmed. What we would like to know is, what is the exact nature of your connection to him?"
Unharmed. I didn't believe that for a moment, but at least I was reassured that he wasn't dead. They would have been celebrating had that been the case.
"Nell, what did the Betrayer do to you? How did he turn you?" Melissande sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing a hand over my forehead in a motherly gesture that confused me. She was a vampire... or at least, a female of the species. Christian was a vamp, a powerful one if the aura of menace that cloaked him was anything to go by. Couldn't they tell that I was Adrian's Beloved? Maybe other vamps didn't know.
"Turn me?" Until I knew where he was, and how I could help him, I would play stupid - an act I suspected wouldn't be too hard to pull off.
"He fed off you, didn't he?" Melissande asked, her face filled with sympathy. "Sebastian said you carried the Betrayer's scent. He thought you had somehow joined forces with the Betrayer, but I told him that could not be so. No woman, mortal or Moravian, could bear to be bound to him."
My gaze slid from her to where Christian loomed over the foot of the bed, an angry Allie next to him. She wasn't wearing dark glasses now, but I could see why she had worn them in public - her eyes were the strangest I had ever seen, one a pale, washed-out gray, the other a mottled brown.
"You seem concerned about the Betrayer," Christian said, his dark eyes unreadable. "Did he feed on you?"
I looked them all over as I thought of how to answer the question. If I told them I was Adrian's Beloved, that he wasn't the monster they had all painted him, would they believe me and release him? Or would they confine me, too, their hatred of him spilling over onto me?
Stupidity has its uses, I decided. Despite my reticence to lie to Melissande - whom I truly liked, even though she was all wrong about Adrian - it was clear to me that here was a situation where less than the whole truth would be wise.
"Yes, he fed off me. After some blond bloodsucker named Sebastian gutted him. I'm concerned about where he is because" - my mind, newly awakened from what I guessed had been a protective slumber, reasoned with awkward slowness - "because I seem to be under some compulsion to help him."
There. Let them interpret that as they would.
"You poor dear," Melissande cooed, gently touching my cheek. "I knew he was capable of the most horrific of crimes, but to turn an innocent, to enthrall a mortal, is the worst sort of sin to my people."
"Really?" I asked, not bothering to correct the impression I had hoped she would leap to. "I thought making human slaves was what vamps did best?"
"Only in fiction," Melissande said with a smile, glancing at her cousin. "Moravians do their best to blend into mortal society, not draw attention to themselves."
"There are many questions we must ask you," Christian said smoothly, but I wasn't fooled by the softness of his voice. He was trouble with a capital T.
I closed my eyes as if I was too weary to keep them open, allowing my voice to crack."I will do my best to answer them."
"Later," Melissande said, patting my arm. "She needs rest now. She suffered tremendously in her attempt to banish the Betrayer. She must rest and regain her strength."
Banish the Betrayer? Hmm. What I wanted to know was what happened to Adrian. My brain refused to review in detail the events at the train station, leaving me with no idea if the power I summoned had been enough to expel Sebastian from the train station, and now did not seem a good time to inquire. I opened my eyes halfway, sounding as pathetic as I could when I asked, "Adrian? He is safely confined?"
"For the present," Christian said, his eyes narrowing.
"Have no fears," Melissande soothed. "He is in a secure place and cannot escape."
"I still say we should find a lake," Allie mumbled, giving me a dirty look as Christian escorted her out the door. His dark head tipped toward hers as he murmured in her ear, the door whispering softly as it closed behind them.
Melissande fussed with the eiderdown for a moment, asking me if there was anything I wanted, pointing out the bathroom behind an adjacent door.
"You'll feel better after you... oh, there you are. As you can see, she's recovered from her traumatic experience."
I almost came off the bed with surprise when the last man I expected to see walked through the door. "Adrian!" I shoved the cover back and swung my legs off the bed, about to throw myself protectively across him lest Melissande try to attack him.
"No, Nell, it's not the Betrayer! There is no need to run. This is Saer, my brother." Melissande hurried forward to stop me. "You remember I told you about him? Saer is organizing the rescue of Damian. He was in England, tracking Asmodeus when he received word that I had found you."
"As my darling sister says, there is no need for you to run from me," the Adrian lookalike said, his voice carrying more than an edge of mocking amusement.
"Brother? You're her... her..." My voice crawled to a stop as I stared open-mouthed at him. He was dressed the same way I had seen him in the train station, in a black pullover and pants. His hair was pulled back, but it was Adrian's dark auburn hair, Adrian's nose and jaw and adorable lips. Even his eyes were the same changeable blue, although, on looking closely, I saw a hardness to Saer's eyes that was lacking in Adrian's. Other than that, they were carbon copies of each other. Which meant it was to him I had given Asmodeus's ring in the train station. My heart tightened as I realized that not only did he have the ring I needed to release Adrian and Damian from their captivity, but he knew the truth about my relationship with Adrian.
No wonder he was so amused with Melissande's assumption that I was trying to escape the Betrayer.
"Brother, yes. And Adrian's twin, if you hadn't guessed." Saer finished my sentence, and I shivered at Adrian's voice coming from his mouth. His lips quirked in a catlike smile, his eyes filled with secret laughter. "Identical twins, as you have no doubt noticed."
"Twins." I absorbed that information, turning my gaze to Melissande. "But that means Adrian is your brother."
She looked away. "That is our burden, yes."
"But... but you're trying to kill him! Your own brother?"
"He is the Betrayer," Melissande said, still not meeting my eyes. "He would think nothing of destroying Saer or me. Family bonds mean nothing to him, as he has demonstrated to us over and over."
I didn't believe that. Not for one moment did I believe that. Everyone else might believe that Adrian was a cold-hearted, cruel killer, but I knew the truth. The curse that bound him to the demon lord was responsible for his actions, not his desire to hurt people.
"Adrian is responsible for many things," Saer said as if he had read my thoughts. I panicked for a moment, wondering if being Adrian's twin meant he could dip into my head as easily as his brother. "Including Damian's present tragic situation."
I dragged my mind from the worry about brain-invasion to what Saer was saying. My mind skittered around the thought, unwilling to even think such a horrible thing. "Adrian handed Damian over to Asmodeus? Are you sure?"
Melissande nodded, her head down as she obviously blinked back tears.
Saer's jaw tightened, his eyes going black as he said, "I swear I will save him. I will not let Adrian destroy the one being I love more than life itself."
Oh, God. Adrian had handed over Saer's son to a demon lord. Even accursed, how could he do that? "No," I said, shaking my head. "There must be a mistake. Adrian wouldn't do that. I know he's the Betrayer and all, but I cannot believe he would do something so inhuman as to hand a child over to Asmodeus."
"Inhumanity is an apt description of my brother's character. You sound strangely as if you were protecting him, Charmer."
I met the laughing eyes of Saer, and wondered how I could ever have confused him with his brother. "It sounds that way, doesn't it? But then, as you've so clearly proven, appearances are misleading."
He made a slight bow, a faintly exotic move that I knew would be dashing if performed by Adrian, but was merely yet another form of mockery as done by his twin.
"You have something of mine, Saer," I said softly, getting to my feet. Melissande was still by the window, obviously too wrapped up in her grief to pay us much attention. "I'd like it back, please."
He smiled, an awful parody of Adrian's smile that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. "I would be happy to oblige, but the return of such a unique object would naturally raise many questions..." His voice dropped to a whisper that wrapped itself around me. I gritted my teeth against the sensation. "Questions which I assumed you would prefer not be discussed. Am I wrong? Would you care to explain not only how you came by the object, but how it fell into my hands?"
"Why are you doing this?" I asked just as softly, glancing nervously toward Melissande. "Aren't we both on the same side? I will be happy to use the ring to release your son from his unholy bondage."
"You do not have the skill needed to harness the power of the ring. I, however, will be able to use it to the fullest of its abilities."
"But what about Adrian?"
Saer reached out to touch a strand of hair that lay on my cheek. I recoiled, not wanting him to touch me. Melissande turned at my movement, mopping up the last of her tears and smiling a sad, brave smile at me as she moved to her brother's side. "I am sorry to be so weak, but I fear so for Damian." She put her hand over Saer's heart, her eyes liquid. "We will save him, my brother. We will find him, and save him, and destroy the one responsible for his torture."
"Asmodeus," I said, my stomach balling as Saer wrapped an arm around his sister.
"The Betrayer," she hissed, turning her face into his shoulder. His eyes met mine, and I read his intentions in them.
He would save his son, but not his brother.
No matter how nicely Melissande phrased her words to me, explaining that everyone was concerned about how weak and near death I had been after the banish charm, the plain fact was that I was a prisoner.
"I have rested," I said tersely as I paced past the small table where my jailer had deposited a tray of food. "I have recovered. I am fine, I swear to you - absolutely, perfectly fine. Why can't I leave the room?"
"The others feel you might risk harming yourself if you were to leave now," Melissande said with suspect complacency.
I toyed for a moment with the idea of binding her to the room and making my escape, but alienating her would do neither Adrian nor me any good. Obviously, I was going to have to find another way out. I sat down at the table and poked at the food. "So, where exactly are we? This doesn't look like your cousin Christian's castle."
She smiled and brushed back a long, flowing curtain. "No, we're still in Cologne, in a house that belongs to one of Christian's friends. It is a very old house, a historic structure, actually."
"Really?" I looked around the room. It was your normal European bedroom - if your idea of normal included molded gilt-touched ceilings, linen paneling, and an antique rug probably worth more than I made in an entire year. "I assume this historic house includes a handy dungeon for storing unwanted guests?"
"You're speaking of the Betrayer." She looked out the window, her face unreadable. "There is no dungeon, but I assure you he is safely confined."
"Where?" I asked, desperate to know. She frowned. I hurried on before she could ask why I was so interested. "Adrian can be very persuasive when he wants to be. Once I'm given the thumbs up health-wise, I'd like to know where he is... so I can avoid him, naturally."
"Naturally," she answered, her voice as smooth as silk. "I will tell you so you will be easier in your mind, but truly, there is no need for you to worry. Saer has most effectively bound the Betrayer, and Allie - she is Christian's Beloved - has warded all the exits in the room so he cannot possibly escape."
"Room?" I asked, feigning horror as I looked around. "A bedroom? Near me?"
"No, no, a storage room in the basement," she answered quickly. "As long as you do not venture there, you will be perfectly safe."
I hated to deliberately mislead Melissande, I really did, but I had no choice. "And Saer? Is he staying here as well?"
Her eyebrows rose as she gave me a speculative look. "He's very handsome, is he not?"
"Uh..." For some insane reason, I felt myself blushing. "Yes, he is. I'd like to talk to him when he has a free moment."
"I'm sure he would enjoy speaking with you, but unfortunately, he's returning to London. He interrogated the Betrayer while you were sleeping, and he believes he has the information he needs to find Damian."
Damn! He'd gone to save his son. I suppose that was only to be expected - if it were my child whose welfare was at stake, I would have left the second I had the ring. "Ah. Well, I'm sure he won't have any trouble rescuing Damian now that he has the ring. Will he come back here, or does he live somewhere else?"
"Saer has homes in Berlin and Prague," she answered, her frown back. "But what ring are you speaking of?"
"The ring - Asmodeus's ring. The one Adrian was looking for in Christian's castle - "
"Saer has no such ring," she interrupted before I could explain that I had found it. "He would have told me if he did. I'm not entirely sure there is such a ring. You of all people know how easily superstition and speculation over the centuries can make something that doesn't exist seem real."
"Saer doesn't have the ring," I repeated slowly. Why wouldn't he tell his sister he had it? She was obviously terribly distraught when it came to Damian - why wouldn't Saer put her out of her misery by telling her he had a surefire way to save his son? Perhaps it wasn't as surefire as I assumed it was. "Well, I hope he frees your nephew. I know you're worried."
"Yes." She bit her lip and hesitated for a moment before speaking. "Nell, I want you to know that I appreciate you had a reason for insisting you were not a Charmer, but now more than ever I need your help. Assuming Saer locates Damian, we will need you to charm the curse binding him to Asmodeus. I would not insult you by offering you more money to help us, but I am not too proud to beg you for your help if that's what it will take."
"You don't have to beg, but, Melissande..." It was my turn to do a little lip-gnawing. "I didn't lie to you when I told you I wasn't a Charmer. I'm not."
She gave me a sad, disappointed look.
"Well, obviously, now I am," I allowed, trying to think of a way to explain the situation without exposing my true relationship with Adrian. "I told you that I had an accident ten years ago. That accident resulted in the death of a very good friend, and caused me to have a stroke that took me months to recover from."
Her eyes widened.
"My actions, my attempt to charm a curse, caused my friend's death. My own destruction aside, you can see why I was so hesitant to offer to charm the curse that binds your nephew - I could very well kill him in the attempt."
"Of course I understand," she said sympathetically, her hand giving mine a little squeeze. "But that's all in the past! You warded earlier this morning, and although you swooned afterward, you do not seem to have seriously harmed yourself."
"What... uh... what happened to Sebastian?" I asked, suddenly worried that maybe I had killed him.
She grimaced. "I'm afraid your banishment charm wasn't as successful as you would have liked."
Oh, God, I did kill him! Now I had two deaths on my soul!
"Rather than Adrian being banished from the building, it was Sebastian who was removed."
"He's alive? Not hurt?" I asked, almost afraid to hope.
"Oh, no, not hurt at all. He is here, as a matter of fact. I'm sure you're distressed that your ward went awry, but I have every hope that you will succeed with Damian's curse."
Pride that I had successfully cast a ward, which had been growing as she spoke, suddenly took a nosedive to despair. "But... but, Melissande! There's a big difference between casting a banishment ward and trying to unmake a demon lord's curse!"
"I am confident you will succeed," she said, an obstinate look on her face. "You have to. There is no one else."
There might not be anyone else to charm the curse, but sure as shooting there was a big ole magic ring that could do the job.
"I can't," I said as firmly as I could without being obnoxious. "The curse I tried to lift when I caused my friend's death and my stroke was cast by Asmodeus. It is very clear to me that when it comes to besting a demon lord, I'm out of my league - dramatically and fatally out of my league. And while I would be willing to risk my own soul, I will not risk another's."
Her gray eyes were stormy as I spread my hands. "Please, Melissande, you must understand. I have already taken one life - I will not be responsible for taking another."
Her gaze dropped. "Then he is lost to us."
I struggled with the desire to swear I would do what she asked, knowing full well that the only chance I had of saving Damian involved using Asmodeus's ring. "I swear I will do everything within my power to help him. I swear it."
She left after murmuring a hope that it would be enough. I stayed put just long enough to have a quick wash and bundle up the sandwiches and fruit she'd brought me, pausing to look out the window at the rain-washed streets of Cologne. It was about an hour to sunset, but I felt driven by a strange need to get Adrian out of there. I didn't want to risk disabling myself by trying to contact him via our mental phone line, which meant I couldn't reassure myself that he was not harmed and in no danger.
The door wasn't locked, a fact that surprised me. As I strolled down the corridor and turned to a grand sweeping staircase, I saw why. A big musclebound man sat in a wing-backed chair reading a German magazine.
"Hi," I said with my friendliest smile, holding behind my back the small metal statue of Pan that I'd snatched up from a hall table. "Can you answer a question for me?"
Mr. Muscles towered over me when he stood up. He had a hard, suspicious look about him, as if he were a professional bodyguard. "You are woman American?" he asked in a heavy German accent. "You should not be out from room. What is question?"
"What's the difference between a bird and a tractor?"
He blinked at me. I smiled as I swung the statue down on his head. "They can both fly... except for the tractor."
