by Колин Глисон
“Do you plan to walk around the perimeter all night?” he asked brusquely. “Or would you like to see the battlefield?”
Victoria gave a small laugh. She felt a bit nervous, and wasn’t sure why she should. After all, this was just Max. “Yes, of course.” She turned abruptly toward one of the arches just as Max stopped walking, and she bumped forcefully into him. Her forehead slammed hard into his chin as her sudden movement pushed them into an unexpected embrace.
He caught her as they collided, his strong hands finding her arms and steadying her in the moment of her silent mortification. She’d forgotten how tall he was. “Pardon me,” she murmured formally, and pulled away to continue walking through the passage to the interior of the amphitheater. Her heart was beating harder; she couldn’t feel more foolish and clumsy.
“This entrance is called a vomitory,” Max was saying as if nothing untoward had happened—and indeed, nothing had, she reminded herself, except that for a moment she’d lost all of her Venatorial grace. In front of Max. “Because of the rapid ease with which the masses of people can enter or exit. Did you hurt your head?”
His chin had been just as hard and stubborn as it had always appeared, and it had indeed been painful to crash into. “I’m a Venator, so I think there will be no bruise.” Her voice was light with humor.
“The moss that grows here can be slippery,” he added as they emerged from the short tunnel. “Take care.”
“There’s moss everywhere, and plants,” Victoria commented, looking over the shadowy interior of what had once been a pristine arena. “It’s so overgrown.”
“Hannever finds many of the herbs and plants he uses in his medicinal treatments at the Consilium growing here. There are hundreds of them, presumably brought here purposely or accidentally from the far reaches of the Roman Empire over the centuries. It’s very fortunate for us that there is this great variety.”
She looked over at him. His face was turned to gaze over the field below, and his profile struck her. With his long, straight nose, prominent forehead, and sharp-planed face, he looked like one of the very gladiators who might have fought below. Or perhaps he looked more like a senator, who might have sat in this very same section. In either case he looked strong and powerful and Roman.
Max must have felt her staring, for he shifted and turned toward her. “What is it?”
“It’s just that you sound a bit like Zavier, expounding on the history of this place. I hadn’t expected it.”
“Yes, Zavier is quite fascinated with the history of our female Venators, among other things,” Max replied, his voice dry. He looked back out into the darkness. “But it is this place in particular that appeals to me. Down there, somewhere”—he cast his arm out to encompass the arena—“Gardeleus—the first Venator—died at the hand of a vampire. And set in motion this battle that has lasted for centuries.”
She looked down at the oval-shaped field, tufted with untouched grass and bushes on one side, and on the other rumpled and disrupted by a series of excavations in the form of dark holes. Aunt Eustacia had told her the story of Gardeleus and his final midnight battle with Judas Iscariot, the first vampire.
Max continued to stare down in silence. “It’s been a long time since I’ve visited this place,” he commented at last. “Born and raised a Roman, and yet I’ve forgotten the sacrifices made by him and the others through the ages.”
His words were so uncharacteristic and quiet, Victoria wasn’t certain that she’d heard them properly. She didn’t speak, didn’t want to break whatever spell had turned him into this pensive, thoughtful being.
At last he seemed to pull out of his thoughts. He turned and looked at her, and for a moment, as their eyes met, she couldn’t breathe. There was this vast area around them, this great space, and yet she felt small and crowded. As though everything had circled down to the space between them.
“Victoria,” Max said at last, “I never told you how sorry I am about what happened with Phillip.”
That was the last thing she’d expected him to say. He’d never mentioned Phillip, except to decry the fact that she’d planned to marry him, claiming that Venators couldn’t marry and that it would distract them from their duty.
Victoria was so shocked she couldn’t respond at first. Then, breaking his gaze, she looked down at her hands, small and pale and deadly. “I think of him every day. And Aunt Eustacia too.” Tears stung her dry eyes.
He moved, shifting his tall, graceful body so that he leaned back against the wall. “And yet you go on as if nothing has happened. You’re a strong woman.”
Victoria didn’t feel so very strong at that moment.
There were times when she was able to keep the grief at bay, to move through life as though she were whole, as if she’d never been torn apart as she had been that night she realized Phillip had been turned. There were even hours and perhaps, occasionally, a day where she might not have felt the weight of her loss—losses—and when, for a brief time, she could pretend that her life wasn’t preordained by duty to be defined by loneliness.
She let her knees buckle gently and lowered herself to the ground. Even when she was sitting, the sides of the walls were at her shoulder height, and she could still see around the arena. But she had something to lean against here, and suddenly she needed it. “How could I turn my back and walk away? Evil and danger are everywhere, and their power must be stopped or eventually it will take over the world. Of course I go on.”
She’d said nearly the same thing to Sebastian only months ago. He hadn’t understood.
“I know.” His voice was a low rumble, almost a breath, but she heard him.
She looked up at him looming above her, and her head brushed against the wall. Tiny crumbles of stone and a small shower of dirt and dried leaves filtered over her shoulder as the vampire dust had done earlier that evening. It was much easier to brush that away than the remains of an undead, easier to clean up a bit of dirt than the mess left by an immortal, damned for his desire to take and rape and devour the mortal version of itself.
They were silent again. This time it was a comfortable quiet, laced with sorrow, but without the underlying tension that always seemed to crop up between them. At last Victoria was moved to ask something that had been niggling at her mind.
“Did you truly intend to marry Sarafina Regalado?” she asked, thinking of the months he’d spent pretending to be a member of the Tutela and being engaged to the young woman, remembering the time she’d come upon him with his neckcloth loosened and his hair mussed after an obvious tête-à-tête with his fiancée.
Instead of looking down at the field, he’d turned his face up and was looking toward the dark sky. She wasn’t certain, but it appeared as though his lashes closed and his lips moved into a slender line. He gave one bare nod. “If it was necessary, I would have.”
She wasn’t surprised. Max would do what had to be done in the fight against Lilith and her vampires, no matter the sacrifice or pain. Would she ever be that cold and emotionless?
She nodded, and more dust sprinkled over her shoulder.
“The right decision isn’t always easy or evident. You’ll find yourself making more and more of those choices as time goes on.”
“I know it.”
Max drew in his breath, and there in the silent, dark night let it out slowly. “I miss her too, Victoria.”
“I know.” Victoria realized he meant Aunt Eustacia.
Again they were quiet for a time. At last, Victoria saw the faint lightening of the sky in the east and realized dawn was near.
How odd to have spent a night in Max’s company without once wielding a stake, and with very few razorlike comments. She began to pull to her feet, her legs stiff, and he reached his hand to offer her assistance.
Strong fingers and an impossibly warm, square palm closed over her small hands, easily bringing her to her feet. He released her hand immediately and started toward the exit, the vomitory, and she followed. All without spe
aking.
As they walked, she realized something that had been glossed over: He was wearing a vis bulla.
“Max.” Her voice stopped him ahead of her in the dark passageway. Victoria looked at him, studying him closely. “How did you get a vis bulla?”
“It’s of no consequence. The sun is rising, and it’s time for me to find my bed. Good night, Victoria.” He turned away, walking with his confident, long-loped stride.
“Max.” Her quiet voice stopped him, and once again he turned to look at her. “Does this mean you’re back?”
His arms hung from his sides in an uncharacteristically useless way. “I don’t know.”
Seven
In Which a Small Red Jar Becomes the Topic of Conversation
“You went to Lilith? Alone?”
Max looked at Wayren, who’d straightened up in her chair. Unsure how the other Venators would react toward him after Eustacia’s death, he hadn’t wanted to go to the Consilium to see her. He had invited Wayren to the small room he’d rented.
“That’s what I said. I had nothing to lose, Wayren.”
“I know, Max. I know how much you want to be rid of her. But to take such a chance!”
“It’s not as if I haven’t been alone with her in the past.” He knew his words came out harshly, but, bloody hell, the memories weren’t pleasant ones. Blast it that he had to remind Wayren of them.
For all her calmness, all of her knowledge and wisdom, she was a bit absentminded at times. Now, realizing what she’d said, Wayren softened and merely looked at him. Behind the perfectly square spectacles she wore, her wise eyes filled with understanding. “Of course. I’m sorry.”
“She gave me a salve she claims will release me from her thrall…but at a price.” He pulled the small garnet jar from his coat pocket and set it on the table between them. Though his fingers itched to open it, he’d not done so yet. During the last months he’d kept it with him at all times, but had never opened the shiny pot, which was made from a walnut-size jewel.
It had weighted his coat. Burned his hand when he brushed it. Called to him when he emptied his pockets at night. One morning he’d awakened with it clutched in his hand.
That was when he knew it was time to return to Roma, to speak to Wayren.
Wayren looked at it, but made no move to pick it up. Then she shifted her attention back to Max, and contemplated him as if she knew what he was going to say next.
“If I use the salve I’ll lose my Venatorial powers, and because her bites have tainted my blood, I cannot regain them, even if I attempt the trial again. I’ll forget everything I know of that world. As if I never had the knowledge in the first place.”
“Like a Gardella who has been called and refuses the call—as Victoria’s mother did—you’ll be ignorant and simply a man.”
Simply a man.
He couldn’t even imagine what that would be like.
“You wish to be free of Lilith, but you haven’t used it yet,” Wayren commented.
“I’ve decided not to.”
There were times, as now, when he was convinced Wayren could read minds, perhaps even see the future. God knew she’d been around long enough to have learned the skill, if indeed it could be learned. She looked at him, her blue-gray eyes calm and penetrating. “You’ve done enough, Max. You’ve given seventeen years of your life in penance for what happened to your father and sister. You can be free.”
Dear God, Lilith had said nearly the same thing. The vampire queen had tempted him. Now Wayren was giving him permission.
He knew it was true. He’d meditated on it, prayed on it, agonized over it…all these weeks since leaving Lilith’s stronghold he’d thought of little else. But…“Free? But what would I leave behind? More deaths? More destruction and evil?”
And what would he lose in the process?
“You’d no longer have the memories. It would all be gone. You could truly be free.”
“Don’t you think I know that? How tempting is the thought of not having this bloody nagging on my neck all the time? The pain that comes at her every damned whim?”
Wayren gave a gentle shrug. “Max, to live with guilt for one’s entire life, to use it as a shield against truly living, an excuse for feeling…is that so much better? It’s not something anyone is required to do for all his days.”
He looked at her and realized she didn’t really understand. “The guilt doesn’t burden me any longer, Wayren. It’s Lilith’s thrall that burdens me. I don’t flay myself for what I did, for the choices I made. Those decisions are in the past and cannot be undone, and I’ve done everything I can think of to atone for them.
“But as easy as it might be to contemplate the freedom of ignorance, I can’t do it. I know I’m needed. How can I live in ignorance when I’m needed? How many deaths can I prevent by staying? I have no right to turn my back when I am one of the few who can prevent them.”
Wayren had folded her slender fingers in her lap and was watching him during this impassioned speech. “You were not called to be a Venator. You made the choice. You aren’t obligated as those Gardellas who are called.”
“Do you not understand? I became obligated the moment I turned Father and Giulia over to the Tutela.” His jaw cracked beneath his teeth.
“You were barely more than a child. You thought you were giving your family a gift—immortality—which is precisely what the Tutela led you to believe. That’s how they draw in strong, smart young men like yourself.”
“You dare to excuse what I did? Feeding my father and sister to the vampires? At sixteen, I knew what was wrong and what was right. Yet I was blinded by the chance for power and wealth and immortality.”
“And for the next seventeen years, at the risk of your life, you’ve worn the vis bulla. You’ve paid your penance, and then some.”
Max stopped suddenly and glared at Wayren. Wayren, who had been as close to him as Eustacia. Wayren, who, with her wisdom and calm, gentle ways, had been more of a mother figure to him than even Eustacia had. Eustacia had mentored and challenged him as a fighter; Wayren had touched and taught him as a young man.
She had been the one to help him through the life-threatening trial of attaining the vis bulla. She’d been there when he reached the point where he would either live and wear the amulet of the Venators, or die when it was pierced into his flesh.
“Why do you want me to use the salve?” he asked abruptly. “Do you think I’m no longer fit to be a Venator? After what happened with Eustacia?” His throat was dry, his hand tightly fisted into itself.
“No, Max. No.” She stood, coming to him, resting her slender hand on his arm. Some of his tension eased at her touch, as it always did. “I fear only that one day Lilith’s hold on you will become too strong for even you to fight. Already she has caused you to do her work of destroying Akvan’s Obelisk, bringing about the death of her rival and son. You could just as easily have failed as succeeded. What will she require of you the next time? And the next?”
The anger and annoyance that had whipped up inside him settled as he listened to her reasoning. “I do not know. But she has yet to control me as she would like.” Max stepped away and walked across the small room. On a small table next to the narrow bed was his favorite black-painted stake. It was sleek and heavy and it fit his hand perfectly. A cross was carved into the blunt end and inlaid with silver. “Victoria told me about the Door of Alchemy. You’ll need me if they get the keys.”
“You spoke to Victoria?”
“Last night. Briefly.”
“I’m certain she was glad you’ve returned. It’s not been an easy few months for her—losing her husband, and then Eustacia, and you as well. Just as you disappeared after Phillip died, you disappeared after Eustacia’s death. This inconstancy is becoming a habit of yours.” Her head tilted to the side like a little wren’s, her bright eyes watching him.
Max put the stake back with a soft clatter and glowered at Wayren. “I was not fit to be here, to wear t
he vis.”
“It was very difficult for her to lose you, someone she knows and trusts, during a time of such pain and upheaval.”
“Trusts? I hardly think she’s foolish enough to trust me any longer. And she was not alone. You were there, and Ilias, and others.”
Wayren stood abruptly. “That is true, Max. You’re right. She has taken over her role as Illa Gardella with little trouble. A bit of grief, perhaps, some sorrowful moments…but overall, she is an amazing Venator. It’s become her life. She’s made some difficult decisions. In fact, she insisted that no one know that Eustacia died by your hand—in order to protect you and your legacy. She carries on with her life as though unburdened with grief. It’s rather astonishing how well she has adapted to the sacrifices and changes this life has brought her.”
Wayren looked down at the little jar on the table, reaching to touch it with her slender finger. “I would like to take this, if you do not plan to use it, Max. Perhaps I can learn what it is that would sap your Venator powers while severing your ties to Lilith.”
“Take the damned thing.”
She picked it up and slipped it into a small pouch that dangled from her silver-link girdle. “I presume you will join us at the Consilium tonight, now that you have returned. And are wearing a vis bulla again.” Behind her square spectacles, she looked at him shrewdly.
Max picked up his favorite stake and traced the silver cross. Victoria had protected him. Bloody hell. “Of course I will be there. I am ever the dutiful soldier.”
Victoria was in a quandary by the time she reached Santo Quirinus late the next day.
Having been awake until dawn, she’d slept well past noon and met up with the ladies Melly, Winnie, and Nilly over a lunch filled with raptures about the hospitality of the Tarruscellis, the lovely view of the extinguishing ceremony from their balcony, and regret that there would be very little society during the next forty days of Lent.
