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.
