While her physical actions might support the inconceivable things Carnal was saying about her, nothing else did. Melinda had no natural sexual aggression. Either Carnal had her trained to act like a nymphomaniac for his own amusement or he thought Jacob stupid enough to fall for the obvious distraction. But it made no sense. For Carnal to attempt to harm Lyssa in her own home would be suicidal.
Carnal pricked his finger with his fang to put several drops of blood in Lyssa’s glass. He reached for the bottle of wine as it drained into the bowl.
There. As Carnal picked up the wine bottle, the finger next to the pricked finger shifted a minuscule amount. Something wavered on the glass edge. Jacob narrowed his gaze. In the dim light of the hall, he knew the eyes could play tricks, but his intuition made him sure. Carnal splashed several swallows of wine efficiently into the glass. “My lady.” Jacob stepped forward, shrugging away from Melinda. “He put something in your wine.”
Lyssa’s gaze flickered to him, then back to Carnal.
“Your servant speaks out of turn, my lady. He has faulty eyesight.” Carnal snapped his fingers as if summoning a pet. “Melinda, come here. We shall prove our intentions to Lady Lyssa. When they are proven to be honorable”—he gave Jacob a scathing look—“I hope you’ll give me a guest’s right to chastise him for the insult.” When Melinda came to him, moving without hesitation but somehow conveying rigid protest in the lines of her body, he curled his hand around her nape, tugging on her hair. “My little nymph. Sweet child. Try this exotic wine Lady Lyssa says holds the secrets of the universe. It will taste like the best candy. Just like you.” In a blink, his voice had become tender, seductive. Jacob knew vampire allure could disguise even a monster as evil as Carnal, but witnessing it was a jarring step into a different reality. As Gideon said, he easily could coax an impressionable girl to him, bind her before she knew what was happening to her.
Obediently she put her lips to the cup, tipping her head back when he exerted pressure on her chin with his thumb. She swallowed, then again more frantically as he gave it to her in one draught. It was not much more than a quarter cup, but still too much for the one swallow in which he forced her to consume the rest. “It was a common Inquisition torture, forcing someone to drink too much.” Carnal watched her struggle with the discomfort of the fluid ballooning down her throat into her stomach. Jacob realized Carnal was directing his words to him. An attempt to intimidate or threaten, he supposed. He remained silent and still, though everything in him wanted to pull the girl away from him.
My lady, your silence is getting damn irritating. Her preternatural stillness at the end of the hallway was just flat-out disturbing. “The Church wasn’t allowed to invade the body, cut it open with interrogation techniques,” Carnal continued. “That entirely unspiritual practice was reserved to the secular authorities. Therefore, if the Church couldn’t obtain a confession their way, they might turn the person over to the local law and see if it could be sliced out of them. But I find the Church’s nonsurgical methods were most inventive.” Setting the glass aside, he turned his attention back to the lady of the house. “A waste of your beautiful and rare wine, Lady Lyssa. I hope you punish him severely for this.” Reaching out, he collected the drops of wine that had escaped from the corner of Melinda’s mouth. Well trained, she didn’t jerk back, but her eyes were wide and mouth tight, anticipating pain. He jerked his head. “Go and stand next to her arrogant servant while I prepare my lady another cup.”
Melinda turned and moved toward Jacob. Her eyes were watering from the strain of taking down the wine. It was a good thing the wine wasn’t more potent. As thin as she was, Jacob doubted Carnal let her eat much, just enough ste roid-laden meat to maintain her breast cup size.
Carnal placed two more drops of his blood in the cup and poured another splash of wine, this time in exaggerated, open movements. “So your servant doesn’t have another attack of paranoia,” he explained mockingly. “Perhaps he would behave better if you castrated him. You don’t need an inferior human cock when I’d be happy to offer mine. A mortal can hardly be expected to have the stamina to please you.”
Lyssa watched all of them as if they were part of a play she’d paid money to attend, a silent member of an audience cloaked in darkness.
Carnal took several steps forward again. Paused at the invisible ten-foot barrier and extended the cup. “My lady?”
The night she’d marked Lord Brian, the ritual had been far more intimate. She’d taken the blood directly from his throat, taunting Jacob as he stood silently behind her chair only a few steps away. But she’d needed more of Brian’s blood because he was staying in her territory and was under her protection. For Carnal, all that was required were these few drops in a cup to allow her to monitor his movement through her territory. It was an act of surety, part of the whole manual on etiquette governing vampire interaction, a Book of Shadows embraced by each new Council. When Jacob reviewed it under Thomas’s tutelage, there were times he understood why many of the younger vampires made fun of it. However, knowing how quickly vampires could revert to unthinkable brutality, he’d come to understand the uncanny genius of it. It had been surprisingly effective in helping vampires govern their bloodlust, for it imposed a detailed, Sun King–type aristocratic hauteur on their personal interactions that appealed to them.
This was a simple, standard ritual. In the mundane world, no different from someone paying a toll. Yet as she stared at that glass, Jacob sensed something rising in her, something as unstable as an atom exposed to forces that could cause it to split and become nuclear.
“My lady?” Carnal’s brow was raised, a slight smile upon his lips. He took a step forward, then another. Coming into her space uninvited. Her gaze rose, her eyes dark pools holding the capability of destruction. Jacob couldn’t tell if it was outgoing, where she might obliterate Carnal, or incoming, something attacking her vital organs, destructive to herself. If she wasn’t so damn closed off he could tell. His gut wasn’t helping him a bit.
Something was off. At her lack of response to Carnal, the way she studied him as if he were merely an uncomfortable thought, rather than a physical threat directly before her, it finally came to Jacob. Even when she was shielding her thoughts from him, there was an essence to her that was accessible, touchable. But it was missing right now. A woman who had been violated shut down when confronted by her violator. Instinctively, all her defenses would be raised against anything male. Wagons pulling around in a circle, warding against attack from any side. While it hurt him to acknowledge that was what she was doing, Jacob knew it was a survival response. “Don’t,” she said through stiff lips, raising a hand to stop Carnal’s forward movement.
He wasn’t sure if she was anticipating him or speaking to Carnal, but Jacob was already moving, sensing a threat his instincts assured him was there. Formalities be damned; she needed him at her side.
A cry split the air, interrupting whatever Lyssa had been about to say. Jacob spun in time to see Melinda drop to her knees and collapse on her side, her body convulsing, fingers clutching at the air, throat working. She bucked to her back, her head and heels the only parts of her touching the ground before she flung herself back on her side as if a monster were manipulating her limbs.
Jacob lunged to her, yanking the radio from his belt. But it was already too late. Before he could hit the emergency number, her body slowly eased back to the floor, death rattling in her throat, her eyes glazing over. Foam spittle gathered at her lips.
“Hemlock, mixed with some other special ingredients to hasten the pro cess,” Carnal remarked.
Jacob raised his head, torn between horror and fury as the vampire studied his dead servant with indifference. “In a vampire, it produces the reputed paralysis, giving another vampire temporary control of him or her.” He glanced over his shoulder at Lyssa, who remained motionless, her pupils wide and dark in the shadows. “There’s also an aphrodisiac mixed in, so it’s a delightful concoction. Just enough pain to b
lend with the pleasure of arousing a body restrained by its own muscle paralysis. I thought you might find it enjoyable, as well as appreciate the devious nature of the ploy. I doubt any of your other suitors have been as creative.” He lifted a shoulder, glanced contemptuously at Melinda. “Unfortunately, what is pleasurable for us is fatal to a human. But fascinatingly painful, even if for a disappointingly short time. Melinda was not a fighter.”
He made a face abruptly. “God, the worst thing about human death is the release of the bowels and bladder. However, her blood is still warm and quite tasty, at least for the next few minutes. My gift to you. As you know, young blood is quite sweet. Let me get you a taste.” His eyes glittered at the implication of Lyssa taking blood from his fingers. When Lyssa’s attention rose from the girl back to him in reaction, he smiled, a slow curve of his thin lips. He began to move toward Melinda, giving Jacob a curt look. “Step aside, servant.”
Jacob stood up. Lifting his arm, he fired the arrow from the wrist sheath beneath his sleeve.
If he’d gotten the damn adjustment worked out, it would have gone straight through the hellspawn’s dark heart. As it was, it lodged in his shoulder, two inches too high, but close enough to wipe that smirk off his face. He had a blink to think another arrow might work and then Carnal was on him, shoving him hard into the wall, a roar of rage blazing hot on him, the vamp’s hand on his neck. In the same flash of time, Jacob fell to the floor. Carnal was now on the opposite side of the room, his body plowed into the masonry of the hallway wall. Sheetrock caved in an outline around his body, dust rising around him. Lyssa had hit the side bar in the maneuver and it crashed to the floor, making the thump of his body trivial in comparison to the din of shattering glass on the wood floor next to the carpet runner. Jacob scrambled to his feet.
“Stay where you are.” Her voice was cool, authoritative. Whatever had held her frozen several moments ago was gone as if it had never existed. His lady was fully present, giving him a cursory look that told him she expected him to obey. She turned her green gaze on the vampire she held against the wall with one hand on his throat. “He’s dead, Lyssa,” Carnal snarled, coughing against her grip. “I’ll kill him where he stands.”
“He is my servant, to reward or punish as I see fit. Marked by me and therefore my property. My slave.” Her voice hardened as did her grip, for Carnal gagged against it. “You may seek what recompense the Council feels I owe you for the insult, but they’ll laugh at you for your presumption. This is a failed courtship ploy only, and my young, inexperienced servant took it as a threat upon my life. Such loyalty is a boon. Jacob used to be a vampire hunter, Carnal. It is one of his many talents.”
“I was nearly successful in my attempt,” Carnal growled. When he reached over Lyssa’s hold, she didn’t interfere as he yanked out the arrow with a grunt, let it fall to the floor. Jacob wished he’d poisoned the tip. Carnal made a visible attempt to rein back his temper, despite the fact she continued to hold him pinned. “I knew whether your servant had perverse tastes or an overinflated sense of honor, the little creature could prove a useful distraction. His focus is considerable. Your choice is perhaps better than I first thought. But he’s a guard dog, Lyssa, not submissive enough to be your servant. He’s too young. Too alpha and temperamental.”
“He’s not the one in this room I consider inferior to his station.” Her words dropped into the air like ice. Jacob felt the coldness to his marrow.
“Ten feet of space, elaborate rituals of courtesy to try to pretend we aren’t what we are,” Carnal hissed. “They’re sheep for our slaughter. All of mankind should be our slaves. If we agree on nothing else, I do not fathom why we don’t agree on that.”
He had balls, Jacob gave him that. His lady’s heat had turned the hallway into one of the lower regions of Hell. Watching her and Carnal closely, Jacob knelt by Melinda’s still and lifeless body. Picking up one of her hands, he verified the lack of pulse.
“You were part of Rex’s life that he forced into mine,” Lyssa said to Carnal, her voice flat. “I have no desire to share a conversation with you, let alone anything else. You’re not welcome here.” She glanced at the broken glass on the carpet runner, the various spilled wines and liquors staining it, and shifted her attention to the young woman whose postmortem waste was doing the same. “You’ll go back to your own territory, taking the shortest route out of mine. If you wish to get to the Midwest, you’ll circle around to the west or fly. If you come in my territory again, I’ll kill you.”
She dropped him, took a step back.
My lady, watch out.
Jacob sprang up, lunging forward. But even with his ability to anticipate what Carnal was about to do, he was no match for a vampire’s speed. With a roar, Carnal flung himself on her.
As he leaped, Lyssa ducked under him. Catching him midbody, she flipped him, spinning so he ended up on his belly on the carpet and wood. His face pressed against the shards of broken glass while she pinned his neck with one hand and held the arrow he’d dropped against his back.
“You think you have the power and strength to woo me, keep me?” She raked the arrow downward, tearing his shirt and finding skin. Kept going, moving over the hump of his ass until the lethal point pressed against a lower, far more vulnerable area. “Perhaps I should fuck you with this until you bleed on yourself, over and over. Bind you in a stock you couldn’t escape and watch for my pleasure. Would you like that? Would you?” Her voice ratcheted up into a snarl, startling in its abrupt jerk from silky murmur to abrasive threat. Carnal flinched as she tore the back seam of his trousers with the tip.
“No. No, my lady. I…I’ll leave. I concede. You are far above my station. I should not have presumed so much.”
Jacob saw something ripple over her skin, something between disgust and desire. It startled him, for the menace of it crawled over his own skin and stoked the room’s already uncomfortable heat. As she blinked and the wall sconces reflected crimson in her gaze, he realized what he was seeing was a war with her own bloodlust. Since she’d been alive for so many centuries, it rarely got a grip on her, but he saw it now. The desire to rip, destroy and wallow in the blood of her enemy. Carnal must have felt it, too, because at the end of his admission his voice had become unsteady. Jacob found himself fervently wishing his lady would lose her infamous control and tear him to pieces, even if she vanquished them all.
Carnal cried out in sudden fear as she jerked him up at a painful angle and sank her fangs into his neck. Took a scant swallow and then withdrew, wiping her mouth distastefully with the back of her hand.
“You thought I was weak,” she hissed. “That night had nothing to do with you. You were never his equal, never more than his toy. You were his bitch, because I wouldn’t be.”
Carnal made a low sound of anger, but it was like the hiss of a frightened cat. It subsided entirely when Lyssa added her knee to the small of his back.
“If I hear that you so much as took a wrong turn to get out of my territory, I will hunt you down. I will chain you inside a coffin with a handful of nettles stuffed in your mouth, your nostrils”—she flicked them with the tip of the arrow, earning a flinch—“and in your ass. I’ll tie them in knots around your cock. Then I won’t release you until I can stomach the sight of you. Which may mean forever. Your screams for mercy will be music to my ears. But not as much as your silence, when you realize you’re not important enough for anyone to interfere with my will on this.”
The venom in her threat was overpowering, touching everything within distance of it. Her whisper echoed in the hallway, pricking even Jacob’s bowels with fear. She meant every word, for her bloodlust was spilling into his mind, telling him how strong her desire was to do exactly as she’d said.
But in the time it took Jacob to move forward another step, though he was not sure what he was intending to do, she was standing back at the end of the hallway. Eerily in the same pose she’d held when they first saw her, haloed by the gentle St. Francis offering food
to the birds.
Slowly Carnal rose to his knees, his frightened eyes and the streaks of blood caused by the glass the only color in his face. He got to his feet awkwardly. Gone was the mocking smugness. He kept his eyes down as he backed away, and there was a tremor in his hands. When he turned toward his dead servant, he came toe-to-toe with Jacob.
“No,” Jacob said. “You won’t touch her.”
Submission to his lady apparently did not mean submission to a human servant’s insult. Carnal backhanded him. Or at least Jacob assumed that was what had happened, for it felt like he was struck in the face by a battering ram he never saw coming. He landed hard on his back nearly twenty feet from Melinda’s body. Rolled to his feet at the same time his lady uttered a sharp command. Perhaps his enraged mind wouldn’t have registered it, but she blasted it into his brain the way she’d done with Bran.
On your knees, Jacob. Facing me.
“My lady—”
“Now. Obey me.” Her attention flicked toward him. “Or you will regret it in ways you cannot even imagine.”
His jaw flexing with the effort, he dropped to one knee and bowed his head, though confusion throbbed in its clash with the force of the rage welling in him.
“You will leave your servant with us. Her blood is mine.” Her gaze remained tinged with red as she leveled it upon Carnal. “Get out. Now. I should have killed you the first time Rex brought you home.”
With a snarl, Carnal spun on his heel and stalked toward the end of the hallway.
“And Carnal?” When she snapped it out, Jacob had the satisfaction of seeing him jump, though the expression he turned to her was sullen.
“My lady?”
“In two minutes, I will release the dogs. That gives you enough time to get in your car and drive it off my property. Just. Don’t tarry.”
VQ 02 - The Mark of the Vampire Queen Page 12
