A shiver of the purest pleasure rippled down my back.
“Cora! You missed a fascinating breakfast. There were some lovely speakers talking about the sorts of things that are available for us to pass the time here in the Akasha. But tell me, who is your friend?” Her gaze flickered from where my fingers were twined through his to his face.
“This is Alec Darwin. He’s a vampire. He killed a woman several hundred years ago.” I bit back the words that my inner devil was trying to force out, hiding them deep in my psyche so Alec wouldn’t overhear them: And he’s not available.
“Hello, Alec,” Diamond said with a cheery smile.
He responded politely, then peered at her for a few seconds. She’s glowing.
She is? I glanced at her, my eyes widening. Oh, no, she is! Was she affected by me becoming the eyeball of Sauron?
Occio di Lucifer, and no, I don’t think it works that way. I could feel him turning the facts over in his mind. Did you say that Ulfur glowed, as well?
Yes.
And that he had stolen something from Bael?
Something gold, yes. It looked like a flattened disk when he showed it to me.
Before or after you were cast into the Akasha?
After.
Sins of the saints . . . Ulfur must have stolen all three Tools.
You think he’s an Occio, too?
No, it sounds like he’s the Anima di Lucifer. That used to be a dragon-shaped aquamanile. Which means that this woman must have been holding the third Tool.
“And you just met? ” Diamond interrupted my thoughts with a pointed look at where I still held Alec’s hand.
“Yes.” I pushed away the spike of jealousy, focusing on what was important. “Diamond, when we were at the house and you were in the basement, what were you doing? ”
“Taking pictures. You know that.”
“No, I mean right at the moment when suddenly we were zapped here.”
“Oh.” She looked thoughtful. “I was examining a very pretty goblet I found that had rolled beneath the stairs. It looked valuable, and I was going to bring it up to show you, when poof!”
“Goblet?” I asked Alec.
He nodded. “The Voce di Lucifer. All three of you were holding a Tool when Bael banished Ulfur.”
“Bael?” Diamond froze. “The demon lord Bael?”
“Yes.” Alec looked at her with speculation that was mirrored in my mind. “Do you know him?”
“Me? Merciful sovereign, no! But I know of him, of course. Everyone does,” she explained, her hands fluttering in the air as she spoke. “Are you saying Bael sent us here?”
“That’s what we think,” I said slowly. “Diamond, how come you know about the demon lord guy? Why didn’t you see him at the house? Why aren’t you freaking out about being here? And why were you so happy to go off to a breakfast of the damned without so much as wigging out one tiny little bit?”
“What is there to wig out about?” she asked with a bright smile shared between us. “It’s the Akasha, not Abaddon, Cora. I’ve never seen a demon lord before, so I didn’t know he was at the house, although it did feel as if there was a very old entrance to Abaddon somewhere on the premises. As for being here, well, I’ve always wanted to see the Akasha, and here we are! It’s so very fascinating, don’t you think? And the people here are so nice. Almost desperately pleased to have someone to talk to, if you know what I mean. Margaretta told me there were some informational meetings I could sit in on if I liked to see how things were done here, which sounds super fun, don’t you think?”
She’s deranged, I told Alec, staring at her in astonishment.
It’s tempting to agree, but I don’t think she is. I think she’s . . . hmm.
She’s what?
I’m not quite sure. She appears human, but that could be just a glamour. Whatever she is, I don’t believe she’s mundane.
Mundane?
Mortal.
I pinched his fingers. Are you saying I’m mundane, buster?
You are mortal, yes, he said with a mental leer. But you’re anything but mundane in every other sense of the word.
Warmth washed through me, which I strove to keep him from feeling, but I knew by the smug smile in his mind that he felt it nonetheless.
I seriously needed to get out of here and away from this man before I lost all my wits and ended up like Jas. “I think that this is just about the worst place I’ve ever been in, Diamond. I’ve asked Alec to help us get out of here, in fact, and I think maybe you should help us think of a way out.”
“Oh, that’s no problem,” she said, waving away something so minor as permanent occupation in the Akasha. “My great-grandmother is very resourceful. I’m sure she’ll figure out something to get us out of here.”
Mentally, I shook my head at that comment, but so long as she wasn’t worried about being stuck here, I wasn’t going to push the point.
“In the meantime,” she continued happily, “I intend on enjoying myself. I think I’ll sit in on one of those meetings Margaretta told me about. Why don’t you and Alec come with me, and we can brainstorm if it will make you feel better?”
“Pass,” I told her, smiling to myself at Alec’s mental shudder. “We’ll just work on getting out of here. I’ll give you a yell if we find a way.”
“Suit yourself,” she said, giving Alec another once-over that had me shifting closer to him, which just made my inner devil giggle. “Then again, perhaps you are doing exactly that. Ta-ta!”
“Don’t say it,” I told Alec as he was about to make a comment that I knew would make me blush. Don’t even think it.
He laughed, and my stomach did a happy little quiver at the sound of it. Dammit, he had a wonderful laugh, warm and deep and filled with genuine amusement. “I won’t, but only because I’m doomed to disappoint you by not finding a magic solution to the problem of you being here.”
“All of us being here,” I said, allowing him to lead me out to a courtyard. It was the same shade of dusty brown as everything else, the building an anachronism of modernity in an otherwise blighted landscape. “You’ll have to come with us when we leave.”
“I can’t. I’ve been banished here by the Moravian Council. If I was to manage to find a way out, they’d simply send me back.”
I eyed him, leaning against yet another sharp, pointy rock. “What exactly did you do to piss off all the other vamps? ”
His gaze skittered away as he gently, but firmly, closed his mind. “Seduced my best friend’s Beloved, tried to have them both destroyed, and betrayed Dark Ones to those who would see us exterminated.”
His face was a mask of indifference, but his eyes, oh, those lovely eyes, they revealed the emotions he kept from me. Pain was in them, both self-loathing and pain caused by others. His words confirmed what I believed about vampires—that their characters were reprehensible and unworthy of my concern—but just as I knew that not every vampire was created equal, so I knew that Alec wasn’t truly any of those things.
“When you killed that woman, what were you thinking?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
It took him a minute to respond. I had the feeling he was far away in his thoughts. “The one who killed my Beloved? ”
I nodded.
His eyes closed for a few seconds as he struggled with the gut-searing agony that memory brought him. “I didn’t think. I saw the corpse burned and mangled, and knew the reaper had deliberately killed her. I struck out of instinct. It wasn’t until recently that I found out it had been an accident all along, and that the reaper hadn’t specifically targeted my Beloved.” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “All those centuries I spent convinced revenge would lessen the pain, all that wasted time . . .”
“I don’t believe you,” I told him, my emotions tangled up with one another, but his honor, at least, was something I didn’t doubt.
His expression hardened. “That doesn’t surprise me. No one else believes me; why should you?”
�
�I meant”—I slid my hand under his jacket, spreading my fingers out over where his heart beat true and strong—“I don’t believe what you said about betraying your own people. You didn’t.”
His gaze searched my face for signs I was mocking him. I let him feel the strength of my conviction. “No, I didn’t, but that didn’t stop them from condemning me for acts I didn’t commit.”
“Why didn’t you defend yourself?”
His lips twisted in a self-mocking smile. “Because I did betray my friend.”
“And seduced his Beloved?”
He rubbed his thumb along my bottom lip, his eyes on my mouth. “That was before I knew she was his Beloved, actually. Once she made it clear her choice was him, not me, I left her alone. Other than trying to have them killed, but even that plan had lost its charm.”
“So you’re martyring yourself because you were a bad friend?”
His gaze flitted away again, his hand dropping. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but ultimately, I was responsible for trying to ruin Kris’s life, and it’s only right I should pay for that.”
“Bullshit,” I told him, causing his eyes to widen. “You’re having a good old-fashioned wallow in self-pity is all. I don’t say that you don’t have it coming to you, because I think you’ve done some things that you shouldn’t have done, but it seems to me that you’ve paid more than the price of your penance, and it’s time to move on. And that’s just what I intend to happen. We’re going to get out of here, all three of us, and no, I’m not going to leave you behind—”
The words were ripped from my mouth as if a giant hand had snatched me aside, and flung me down somewhere else entirely.
Which is basically what happened. I was aware of a momentary dropping sensation, and landed on my hands and knees on a wooden floor. I stared for a moment down at the grain of the wood, my brain stunned into a complete lack of cognizant thought, before I looked up to see a man and a woman standing before me.
We were in a room that looked like a library of some sort, all deep leather armchairs, and pretty bound books in floor-to-ceiling bookcases. I glanced at the people watching me.
The man was of middle height, with black hair and a goatee. The woman, who edged away from him, had a sunny face, curly red hair, and a friendly demeanor that made me address her rather than her companion. “What on earth just happened?”
“I summoned you,” the woman said. She had an English accent, and a nice smile as she gestured toward the man, who stood with his arms crossed, his eyes narrowed on me. “You have Mr. de Marco to thank for that, though, since he hired me. I’m a Guardian, you see. My name is Noelle. Do you know that you’re glowing ?”
“So I’ve been told. Why . . . wait, de Marco? You’re—” A shadow moved behind the man, coming forward and resolving itself. “Ulfur!”
“I am Alphonse de Marco, and you will give to me the Occio di Lucifer,” Ulfur’s boss said in a no-nonsense tone of voice that really just irritated me more than frightened me.
“The . . . oh. That.” I wondered how he’d feel if he knew the Tool was broken, and that I was the designated hitter. I glanced at Ulfur, but his expression gave nothing away.
Ulfur hadn’t told his boss what happened, I realized with a secret smile. Bless his heart, he used the fact that I had the Occio to convince his boss to pull me out of the Akasha.
Leaving Alec and Diamond behind.
“Do you have it? ” de Marco asked, his expression darkening into anger.
“Yes.” Hastily I assembled a plan that I hoped would rescue both Alec and Diamond. “I do.”
“I have summoned you out of the Akasha. In gratitude, you will give it to me,” he ordered, his bossy tone really starting to get under my skin.
I looked at the imperative hand he held out before me. “Well, you know, the Occio is a really big deal. It’s one-third of the Tools of Dale.”
“Bael,” Noelle the Guardian corrected.
“Bael, sorry.” De Marco’s eyes narrowed on me suspiciously. I cleared my throat and said with what I hoped was convincing insouciance, “I call him Dale. It’s a little thing we do.”
Ulfur rubbed his hand over his eyes, but said nothing.
“But that’s neither here nor there, and what is here is . . . well, actually, he’s there, not here. If you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean?”
“No,” de Marco growled.
“Oh. Well, it’s Alec.”
“Alec? Who is Alec?” De Marco was clearly getting angrier with each passing second.
Ulfur’s eyes widened as he glanced between his boss and me. I had the feeling he was trying to tell me something, but I didn’t know what it was.
“He’s a friend,” I said carefully, trying to suss what had Ulfur so agitated.
“I don’t care about your friends. I just want the Occio, and I want it now. Hand over the payment for your removal from the Akasha, or I will have you returned there immediately.”
“Hang on there, buster,” I said, deciding that the best way to deal with people like him was to bluff my way through his demands. “I will make a deal with you—you spring my two friends from the Akasha, and I’ll give you the Occio.”
Ulfur’s eyes just about bugged out of his head.
“You dare—” De Marco sucked in a huge amount of air just like he was inflatable or something. “You dare to defy me? Do you know who I am, mortal?”
“Yeah, you’re Ulfur’s boss, the guy who told him to steal the Tools from the frickin’ king of hell!”
“Prince, not king,” Noelle said, then looked away quickly, pretending interest in a picture on the wall.
“Dale likes me to call him king in our private moments,” I lied, trying to look like someone who dated Satan. “So here’s the thing, de Marco: You want Dale’s Occio, you can have it . . . just as soon as you get Alec and Diamond out of the Akasha.”
“I am not an Akashic removal service!” de Marco snarled, his black eyebrows pulled down to form a unibrow. I was tempted to tell him it wasn’t a good look for him, but felt he wouldn’t be receptive to such criticism. “You owe me, mortal, not the other way around. You will hand over the Occio now.”
“Or what?” I said, buffing a fingernail on my jeans.
“Or I’ll make you sorry you ever drew breath,” he snarled.
“Hello? Who has the eyeball of Dale? That’s right, I do, and that means you can’t hurt me.” I fervently prayed that was true.
Ulfur weaved a little, like he might pass out. Noelle looked startled.
Maybe it wasn’t true.
De Marco seemed to swell again, then let out a scream of sheer frustration. “One.”
“Huh?” I stopped edging toward Noelle, who was in turn sliding covertly away from de Marco.
“One.” His nostrils flared. “I will have the Guardian summon one more person, but that is it.”
“But . . . I have two friends there.”
“Then you will choose between them. Now!”
I swallowed back a little zing of fear at the look in his eyes. He didn’t strike me as being too mentally stable. “Um . . .” I thought frantically. Diamond, I should tell him to get Diamond out. She was my friend . . . of a sort . . . and she didn’t do anything to deserve being banished to the Akasha. I would get Diamond out.
Leaving Alec behind.
Alone.
With no one to feed him.
And worse, he would know I hadn’t cared enough about him to rescue him, too.
But he was a murdering vampire and, by his own admission, had betrayed his friend. He had accepted the punishment meted out to him. He was resigned to being in the Akasha.
“All right,” I said, sending a little prayer that Alec would understand why I had no choice but to pick Diamond. “I’ve decided.”
“Give the name to the Guardian, and let us be through with this!” de Marco snapped.
“Noelle, would you please summon . . . ?” I looked at her. She looked at me, wa
iting. I thought of Diamond. My inner devil wept and called me all sorts of names.
No one had ever tended Alec’s wounds.
“Summon Alec Darwin, please,” I heard someone say, and to my astonishment—and inner devil’s joy—it was my mouth that spoke the words.
Chapter Seven
Alec stared at the spot where, seconds before, Corazon had stood. He narrowed his eyes. He put out a hand to touch nothing but empty air.
She wasn’t there. Just like that, she was gone.
Someone must have summoned her.
“Good riddance,” he said defiantly, not wishing to admit to the hurt that spiked through him as sharp as a dagger. It was annoyance, not pain, he told himself. She was simply someone put there to torment him, and he’d be damned if he gave her the power to hurt him.
She had left him, just left him, without so much as a backward glance, or one last jab at his appearance. She hadn’t even called him a murdering bloodsucker before she left, dammit, and he was beginning to be fond of the way she caressed the words in her mind.
“Very well,” he said aloud to no one, gritting his teeth and looking around for a new spot in which he could almost die. “So be it. She’s gone. I’m here. That’s all there is to it.”
But it wasn’t all there was to it. Cora was out in the mortal world with no one to protect her, no one to keep her safe from anyone who might want to use her.
“I don’t care,” he told the nearest rock, stomping off to find a new resting spot. “She’s not my problem anymore. I don’t mind at all never seeing her again, never smelling her, never watching those hips that know how to make me hard with just a little twitch, never letting her suck my tongue almost out of my head, never making her hum with ecstasy. I don’t need her or her blood. I’m quite happy being miserable here on my own.”
He kicked a rock, defying it to dispute his words, knowing he was a fool, but in too much pain to care.
She had left him.
He spotted a rock that he felt would suit as a spot where he could perch and be even more miserable than he already was by admitting that her defection had, in fact, hurt him as deeply as anything could, but just as he was approaching it, the world shifted, gathered itself up, and punched him in the gut.
Much Ado About Vampires do-10 Page 8
