Angie raced toward her without fear for her own safety, her eyes wide as she saw what only she could see. Her friend grasped her shoulders and Victoria slumped forward into the embrace. “Pan’s here,” Angie said. “Christian compelled him to fix a counter potion.”
“It’s too late,” Victoria whispered. “He only wanted me weak enough to invoke the blood magic.”
“Pan?” Christian and Angie said in unison.
“Leto.”
Christian exhaled. “Leto?”
She raised heavy eyes to them. “He’s the demon. He’s the creator of the Cruentus Curse, trapped in a cat’s body for millennia.”
“You’re not making sense, Tori,” Angie said. “Leto is your familiar.”
“Leto is a demon.”
Aliya joined them, nodding with slow understanding. “According to the Cruentus Curse legends, part of the Goddess Mother’s curse was for the demon to serve his descendants until the end of time. We assumed that was in spirit or it was a part of the story that had become myth instead of truth.” She shook herself. “I should have guessed. My familiar, Dante, sensed that Leto was an Ancient, only he isn’t the familiar successor of a witch queen. He is so much more than that.”
“No one could have known,” Victoria said weakly. “I used the amulet’s power to banish him to the château, but not before he invoked the blood magic. No one’s safe.”
Angie sucked in a breath, her eyes unfocusing as she used her special sight. “Tori, your aura is going all black and blotchy again.”
“What does that mean?” Freyja asked from behind them.
“It’s beyond bad,” Angie whispered, wide-eyed. “The curse has been invoked and it’s taking over everything that is her.”
“The curse?” Freyja gasped.
Angie nodded. “I saw it possess Christian once, and now it’s trying to do the same to her. With the effects of the neural toxin on Tori’s control, it has a chance.”
“What do you mean by possess?”
Christian answered Freyja’s question. “Victoria’s blood has a mind of its own, and it is consumed by a lust for power and its own immortality. Put simply, the blood magic is a beast that she must keep caged, and now that her mastery over it has been compromised, the beast is free.”
Angie’s eyes turned upward as the stone walls of the temple started to rattle. It felt like an earthquake was erupting beneath them, but Victoria knew that it was far more than that. It was by sheer force of will that she didn’t kill the people standing around her, but a half dozen witches, three vampires, and a warlock near the entrance collapsed, their figures drained to empty husks. The stolen magic surged into Victoria’s body like the purest drug. The high was exhilarating. Consuming. And heaven help her, she wanted more.
“Get. Everyone. Out. Of. Here.” Victoria’s words came in a violent staccato as if she could barely control her lips. Her eyes lifted to Christian’s, tears pouring from them. “Take … me home.”
Christian nodded to Aliya and the rest of the people behind him. “Do as she says,” he said before scooping Victoria into his arms. “Get the younglings to safety and rally anyone you can. The demon is at Fontainebleau. I’ll take her.”
Lucian’s voice cut through the fog of the panicked chatter. “Christian, what you are doing is suicide. She will kill you.”
“If that is my fate, then so be it. My life has always been bound to hers.”
TWENTY-TWO
The Rules of Survival
Christian held Victoria close as they flew through the night sky. She felt so fragile in his arms, but he knew that the power within her slim frame was capable of destroying the entire world around them. Her skin was cold, her fingers clasped in a death grip around her amulet. The scent of her blood was maddening. He knew he could resist her, but this was different. This was the same blood that had called to him, that had seduced him months before without a qualm. It was like an old lover offering herself and he could barely resist its siren song. Christian’s teeth grazed against his lower lip, and for the first time in weeks, hunger speared his insides with violent irascible touches.
“What are you going to do?” he asked close-lipped as they alighted on the lush manicured gardens of Fontainebleau.
Victoria’s fierce eyes were like pieces of onyx in the shifting moonlight at odds with the shaky tenor of her voice. “I’m going to kill it.”
“You can’t do that alone.”
She blinked, her hands gripping his as she fought for balance. “The demon only wants me.”
Christian shook his head, frowning. “I don’t understand.”
“He wants me to do what I was born to do. Take the power around me and feed it to him so that he can become strong. He was afraid of me … that’s why he made Pan do what he did so that he could control the blood magic.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the only one who can stop him.” She drew a shaky breath. “Who could have stopped him. Now my blood no longer answers to me—it bends to his command.”
Christian grabbed her by the shoulders, his fingers skimming down the softness of her bare arms. She was so cold, too cold. “You’re too weak. I can see what the blood magic is doing to you—it’s eating you alive.”
“I can do this, Christian,” she said. “I have to do this.”
“How?”
She didn’t answer him. Instead she knelt at his feet and placed her hands flat on the grass. Her eyes met his and he realized what she was going to do. “Protectum,” she whispered in his direction. The dark magic at his core responded to the power of the shield spell even as the grass at her fingertips faded to a rusty brown. The circle of death widened, sparing him because of her protection spell, as Victoria leached the life from around them. Trees wilted and withered before his very eyes. He could feel the life around him dying as she absorbed their living energies.
After several long minutes, Victoria stood. Her skin pulsed with stolen energy and her eyes were the color of gleaming jade. It almost scared him how easily she could take power from other living things to satisfy the insatiable thirst of the blood magic. She stepped toward him, the air about her crackling with electricity.
Christian felt something surge in his body. Even surrounded by the field of destruction she had created, she had never looked more beautiful. Or desirable. Her face was flushed, her blood rushing beneath the surface, its scent subtle and tantalizing. His teeth elongated in automatic visceral response as other parts of him lengthened, too. Embarrassed by the heated response of his body, Christian inhaled sharply, fighting to rein himself under control. It was a losing battle, especially when she closed the distance between them and plied the length of her body against his. Paralyzed, he held his breath, unwilling to tempt fate.
But Victoria had no such compunction. Her gaze captured his as if she felt the inexorable pull between them, too. Her free hand slid down the bunched muscle of his back to the rise of his buttocks. She kneaded gently, drawing him even closer to the heat of her own body. It made him think of thoughts he’d banished—thoughts of her lying half clothed in his bed. He closed his eyes, his shameless thoughts agonizing. Her hand slid around his hips to the front of his trousers.
“What are you doing?” he gritted, his jaw clenched.
The melting look in her eyes was his undoing even before she spoke, her voice husky with want. “Kiss me, Christian.”
His brows snapped together with confused restraint. “Kiss you now?”
“Yes.” The word was a growl as she grabbed the lapels of his coat and dragged his head down to hers. He sheathed his teeth, keeping his lips closed, but Victoria would have none of it. Her tongue pushed past them and forced his mouth open. And Christian was lost in the taste of her, the silky feel of her. His tongue slid against hers, their lips grinding together. The tips of his teeth grazed the inside of her mouth and he held his breath. It wouldn’t take much to break the fragile skin and one drop of blood was all it woul
d take to reduce him to a slave. She sighed against his mouth as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.
He pulled away, knowing he was losing her by the second. He could see flashes of the girl he knew in her eyes. “Tori—”
“I can control it, Christian. I’m already stronger from the magic—” Her voice faltered as if the thought of where she’d obtained the strength was too distressing to bear. “And Pan’s toxin won’t last much longer.”
“Take whatever dark magic I have. Use it.” Christian knew it was a gamble offering it to her, but he’d meant what he said—every last breath within him belonged to her and her alone.
“I’d hurt you.” She shook her head. “No, I can’t risk it.”
“You won’t.”
“How do you know?” she whispered.
“Because I trust you,” he said. “And I told you once that my life was yours. It still is and now you need it more than I do. I love you, Victoria. Now do what you need to do. Or else I will be forced to do something rash like attempt to drain your blood to keep it from harming you.”
She didn’t answer, but her eyes went wide with alarm. She, too, knew what her blood was capable of when it had possessed him before. After a long, charged moment, she leaned up to press a whisper soft kiss on his lips. Her eyes never left his. But he could feel the moment she started to absorb his energy. Pinpricks of burning light prickled his skin. He felt weightless and suspended, as if caught in a magnetic field, and he could feel his strength diminishing with each passing second. Her green eyes widened as his dark magic filled her. Christian’s body felt sapped as she drew her lips from his with an indrawn gasp. Wild and unhinged, his hunger returned in full force. His earlier lust was eclipsed by a need for blood and only blood.
“Is that better?” he gasped, falling to one knee, and stared at the ground. The hunger clawed at him, making him see red. The smell of her was torture, and Christian realized that if he so much as looked at her, he would rip her throat out. “Do you still feel weak?”
The woman in front of him laughed, the humorless sound brittle in the silence, and it made his stomach clench. “This host may be weak, but I am not, Your Grace.”
“Tori?” He frowned, but by the time he looked up, Victoria had already gone. He was alone. And ravenous. Christian loped into the surrounding forest with a single deadly intent—to feed.
Ten mindless minutes later, he wasn’t sure how much he’d consumed or how far he’d run, only that the dull insistent throb in his throat had finally disappeared. Sated, his senses sharpened with acute awareness. Christian knelt, placing his hands onto the damp earth of the Fontainebleau forest, letting the rich soil crumble through his fingers. He’d raced far beyond Victoria’s sphere of devastation, deep into the wood. He could hear the chatter of night animals, feel the pulse of life beneath and around him. The magic of the night called to him, and for a moment, he let himself be cradled in its embrace.
“Christian?” The voice was shocked.
He looked up to find his brother and Lena standing there watching him. Christian stood, feeling the life force of fresh blood coursing through his veins. For the first time, he noticed the grounded fear in both their gazes and frowned. “What is it?”
But they didn’t have to answer as his eyes took in what lay before him. Dead carcasses of every possible animal littered the forest floor, the landscape a bloody tableau—one far worse than Victoria’s brown canvas. How many had he killed? Despair struck him with the raw edge of its blade. The death toll sickened him, and he was the only one to blame. He had allowed this to happen.
David had cautioned that his hunger would be uncontrollable if he let it get too deep, and when Victoria had taken his energy, she had sapped him to the very bare bones of his humanity. His single grateful thought was that he’d been alone in the forest instead of in the middle of Paris. The body count would have been same, only it would have had a far different outcome. Raw power coursed through him and he flexed his arms, feeling its tensile strength as replenished dark magic shivered along the inside of his skin. Every inch of him felt alive.
“Are you okay?” Lucian asked.
“Fine.” Christian shook away the remnants of self-disgust and met his brother’s eyes. There was something in there he’d never seen before—a measure of respect. It surprised him. Lucian’s expression where he was concerned was primarily loathing. Lucian stepped forward and handed him his signet ring, which he placed on his finger with a nod. A third figure stood in the shrouded darkness, whom he hadn’t noticed, likely because she hadn’t posed a threat. Angie. “Where are the others?”
“They have come en masse.”
“Have you seen Victoria?” he asked, even though he knew she was close. He could feel the pull of her like the barest brush against his senses. His brother shook his head. Christian’s gaze slid to Angie, who stood beside Lena. He didn’t bother to disguise his surprise.
Lucian quirked an eyebrow at his unspoken question. “She impressed me.”
“She tends to do that,” Christian agreed, remembering that it had been Angie who had come to him with Victoria’s whereabouts last year. Her courage had saved them all. She met his stare with an even one of her own. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
“Are you?”
“I think so. What do you see?”
She cocked her head as her irises unfocused. “I see power.” Her eyes widened. “And magic. So many tendrils of it, tethering you to the earth and to the shadow.”
“Am I strong enough?”
She stared at him. “To face Tori?” He nodded, and Angie frowned. “I don’t know. You’re strong, but there’s still a part of her in you. I can still see it—webs of stringy black slithering just below the surface.” Her gaze slammed into him as if she belatedly realized why he was asking the question. “Why?”
Christian cleared his throat. “If she becomes lost to the curse, I will be the only one who can retrieve her.”
“She’ll kill you.”
“I’ve heard that before,” he said with a crooked smile. “Shall we?”
Angie hefted her crossbow. “We follow you, Your Grace.”
†††
Victoria entered the dungeons of the château, following the tingling in the pit of her stomach. Cool, stale air rushed against her face along with the smell of long decayed death. Leto had passed through here. She could see the malevolent taint of him like little breadcrumbs left behind for her to find. He knew she would follow, after all.
Her body felt tight and coiled, bursting with the power she had stolen … and been given. Christian’s magic had shocked her—he had grown more powerful than she had guessed. But he was the descendant of a Reii. She’d had an inkling of what that meant, but until she had drawn his energy into herself, she hadn’t truly known. Christian was stronger than strong. As a vampire, he had superhuman gifts—ones that made him a fearsome predator and a force to be reckoned with. As a Reii, his powers superseded those and more. She shook her head. She’d always been a little bit afraid that she could hurt him, but now she thought that maybe they would have a chance.
If she didn’t die.
He’d told her that he still loved her, but impending doom had a way of making you say things that you wouldn’t say in ordinary circumstances. She had told him the truth. She’d give anything to take back the choice she’d made … and choose to stay with him instead of being afraid. In the end, the very people she’d put ahead of him had betrayed her. Lost in her own insecurities, she’d fallen prey to Madame Starke’s lies.
Victoria stopped at a point where two tunnels broke off from the main passageway and closed her eyes. The air was thick and musty. She focused her energy on Leto’s essence and chose the right-most corridor. It was the narrower of the two and seemed to suck the darkness toward it. As a precaution, she removed the amulet from her neck and placed it upon a nearby stone ledge. She knew it was a risk facing Leto without it, but it was a
lso her only way out if things went bad. Heaving a deep breath, she ducked and took tentative steps into the space.
“Illustro,” she murmured and a ball of light flickered to life in the center of her palm. Smears of what looked like caked blood covered the cobwebbed walls. Despite herself, she shivered. Monsters, she could handle. Vampires, no problem. But spiders were part of a whole other universe of nasty.
The skin on the back of her neck tingled as a webbed skein caught against her collar and she fought to keep from gagging. The spiders down here wouldn’t be small either. They’d be monstrous. As if on cue, something skittered at her feet and she throttled the scream in her throat.
“Focus,” she hissed to herself. Spiders should be the last of her worries. She should be worrying about the rogue demon lord that was the father of the Cruentus Curse—the one who had possessed her familiar’s body and been trapped within it for millennia. He was still bound by his corporeal feline form, which meant that his power was not at its peak. But that would not last long. He’d slaughtered hundreds of supernatural creatures over the past few months, absorbing their energy and growing stronger with each kill.
Gabriel had unwittingly fragmented the curse when he’d tortured Leto last year, and since then, the demon within had been fighting to break loose. And to do that, he needed power—lots and lots of otherworldly power. Sure, he could have taken it from humans—they had magic, too, in minuscule amounts—but when a dozen humans equated to one supernatural creature, he’d chosen to go for quality rather than quantity. It’d been a relief to Victoria that he hadn’t opted to kill people. The death toll would have been staggering and would have drawn more attention from the humans than they could handle. And fear drove people—even supernatural ones—to do reckless things.
The blood surged beneath her skin. It resisted her control, testing her will for weaknesses like a beast trapped within a cage. It was responding to the presence of its true father—the blood was part of his, after all.
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