So why had he supported the genocide? Fuck. I pulled back and caught the soft creases around his eyes tighten before I turned toward the window. A bout of dizziness hit me, and I caught myself on a chair. Ewan came closer, and I waved him off, sitting down.
The demons stood silent, absorbed in their thoughts, and Lysander looked both disturbed and perplexed.
“Best you refrain from using your power. The chagur will grow, and once it circles your neck, possibly, or covers your chest, you will die unless you return to the demon realm,” Malthus said.
I rested my forehead in my hand and rubbed away the lingering dizziness. “But why? What’s wrong with removing the soul? I let it go. Both of you told me that necromancers used to remove souls so demons could possess them.”
“Eventually leading to the genocide. You demonstrated your ability to remove souls, and Ivo has surely taken note through the chagur,” Malthus said.
“I let it go,” I said, my voice quiet and even.
And Malthus didn’t skip a beat with his reply. “But you didn’t want to.”
Xavier cut in. “She took a baka. More difficult to expel. Ruby herself noted the taint of Delatte’s voodoo.” Malthus exchanged a look with Xavier that seemed to stretch across centuries of understanding or misunderstanding, most certainly pain and broken trust.
Oh my fucking hell, and here I was smack in the middle of the shit, in the middle of them.
“I have complete confidence in Ruby’s ability. I’m concerned about Ivo. He will not see things our way. He is fanatically opposed to necromancers manipulating souls,” Malthus said with a note of self-defense in his tone.
I rubbed my forehead again. “Forget Ivo and the chagur for now. Let’s discuss Delatte.”
“We will take care of Delatte,” Xavier said, his gaze still locked with Malthus. “Ewan can take the lead in tracking him down.”
Ewan nodded, his guarded eyes on Malthus, who neither acknowledged nor denied Xavier’s command.
“You said that before,” I said, frustration making my voice rise. “He’s gathering power and now has Dominic’s vampire soul which he intends to use to take mine. Maybe we should let him go for it. When he does, I’ll take his soul and find out Baron Samedi’s identity.”
Ewan just about jumped out of his seat at my suggestion. Malthus raised his hand to calm him down. “Absolutely not,” Malthus said in a timbre deep enough to trigger a low-grade earthquake tremor.
“You will go to the demon realm and placate Ivo,” Xavier cut in, eyeing both Malthus and Ewan warily.
“Screw Ivo,” I said.
“Play the game for now. Otherwise he will seek you out, and we don’t want him venturing to this realm,” Xavier said.
I slumped back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. Maybe I should give up and let them take over. I’d never find the Big Bad because he was continually one step ahead of me. A second trip to the demon realm might prove useful to interlock the puzzle pieces and make sense of all this new information. I slid a glance at Malthus. Maybe I could figure out why the hell he chose to slaughter necromancers, and check out the soul collector record. My mood brightened at the prospect.
“This is all good and well, but Dominic is dead, and the vampires are going to demand some justice. Right?” Ewan asked, his gaze directed at Lysander, his question spoken more like a challenge, as if daring the vampires to try.
Lysander nodded. He hadn’t said a word during the entire chat about chagurs and souls. He bore no love for Dominic. The two were at odds over some past transgression—an epidemic afflicting all the supes. But I didn’t understand his reticence now. He usually stayed cool, but this was different. Maybe he finally agreed I’d dragged him into my sordid life.
“You will explain about the bokor to the vampires?” Xavier asked Lysander, although his request came out more like an order.
Lysander didn’t fail to notice Xavier’s tone and raised a brow. “They’ll still demand an inquiry. The usual. A new Master will rise.”
My blood iced and everything shifted into place with nauseating clicks. I have the blood of a Master. Ly’s own words to Dominic. Ly’s cold observance of us . . . of me. He was no longer Lysander the bartender. A new Master. Lysander? I met his eyes, and the comprehension that things between us had altered irrevocably slammed into me. But would they degenerate to the point where I’d be dealing with a new, more powerful version of Dominic?
Chapter Seventeen
I HAD TO EXCHANGE blood with Lysander. It was my new Sunday evening benediction.
Worse, I wanted to exchange blood with Lysander.
I hesitated before stepping out of the elevator to the roof of the vampire club. Once Dominic’s domain, it was now the territory of the new Master Vampire, Lysander. After the shit storm at the ball, Xavier had arranged for me to travel to the demon realm tonight while they searched for Delatte. I was curious that he took the reins all of a sudden, but decided go with the flow. Lysander had insisted, however, on a blood exchange before I left. Xavier thought it a good idea for me to come and feel out the new Master. I wasn’t sure about Ly’s motivations, but welcomed the opportunity to talk to him alone, maybe understand how this transformation would impact him and our relationship.
Usually, vampires sulked about in the pool, at the bar, in the hot tub, sucking on human cocktails. Tonight, it was empty. I stood still, wondering if he’d try to thrall me with his power, as Dominic had done the first time I met him on this rooftop.
I spotted Ly seated on a bench next to the fire pit.
“Come to me, Ruby,” he said, scouring me with his stare.
No thrall, but very commanding . . . and compelling. I approached and paused a few careful inches in front of him. He was different. He’d even shed his usual jeans for leather pants and his T-shirt for a white cotton button shirt open to mid-chest. He scared me. And turned me on.
He reached for a belt loop on my green khakis and pulled me between his spread legs. I had no idea what was happening to me. Lysander had sucked my blood before, but an erotic impulse unlike anything I’d ever felt coursed through me, something close to a Marquis de Sade wet dream. My breath came out in shivers, and desire roiled through me, smoking my nerve endings.
“What are you doing?” My voice came out shaky.
He licked his fang and gave me the devil’s smile, and my stomach quivered. Christ. “You’re different,” I said, still shaky.
“Are you afraid?” He seemed to take pleasure in that possibility. Bartender Ly was playful and sexy, but Master Ly was downright frightening.
“I’m not sure what to make of the new Master vamp.”
“And I’m not sure what to make of the soul-sucking necromancer.” He spoke in an even tone without humor or censure, only carrying a hint of curiosity. He turned me around and guided me onto his lap, splayed one hand on my stomach, catching the edge of my breast with the tip of his thumb. He sucked on my neck, his fang scratching my skin, and I moaned at the electric pulse that extended from my neck down to my core then cried out softly when he pierced my skin. I arched off his lap, but he pushed me back down. My body split into multiple shards, each one bursting into flame before coming back together in a smoldering heap on his lap. I tried to get my labored breathing under control, my speeding heartbeat down to the legal limit, except that line had become blurred. My eyelids drooped, and I rested my head back on his shoulder, letting the languid pleasure wash over me. He withdrew his fangs with a wet slide and kissed the broken skin to seal the punctures.
“How did it feel taking that soul?” he asked while lightly caressing my neck with his fingertips.
Could I tell him the truth? He sucked people’s blood with an almost vicious hunger. If a vampire couldn’t understand without passing judgment, no one would.
“At first it felt wrong, but once it
settled, I latched onto it. Out of control almost.”
“Sounds like when we latch onto that vein,” he said, while circling the fluttering pulse on my neck.
“You have to drink from me now,” he said, turning me to face him. “Let me help you. I know you hate drinking blood.”
Yeah, after soaking in my mom’s blood when she’d slit her wrists. I’d drunk his blood to save his life, but I didn’t want to repeat the act. Could I trust him? I sighed and stared into his eyes, seeing brief sparks of the old Lysander behind the new layer of silvery steel. I nodded. He kissed me, explored my mouth with his tongue, and I immediately lapsed into the hypnotic buzz of a vampire’s thrall, unaware of anything except a raging need to suck his blood. I grabbed the bleeding wrist he held out and sucked hard, and this time the blood tasted wonderful, like an aged, spicy wine. I had no idea how long I drank, only emitted a soft whimper when he finally withdrew his wrist. I licked the smear off my lips.
“Better?” he asked, kissing a small spot of blood I’d missed from my lower lip.
“It no longer tastes like castor oil.” I smiled. “So what will happen the more we exchange blood?” I wasn’t worried about turning vamp, but I could already feel certain twinges, a raised consciousness whenever I was around him.
“I’ll feel possessive toward you and the desire to drink more. It’ll be hard to resist you . . . but that’s something I’ve grown used to. Your blood is—” He licked his lips. “Very intoxicating.”
“What happens when you officially become the Master Vampire?”
“I become the sum of all vampires.”
“When you offered to exchange blood with me in Dominic’s stead, you said you could; your blood was powerful enough. Why was Dominic the Master and not you?”
“I’ve always been stronger than Dominic. He hated me because I took a woman he loved away from him. A human woman. I made her a vampire.”
I stared at him, almost unsure I’d heard correctly. Dominic had loved a human woman? I wasn’t sure what surprised me more. That he’d loved someone, or that his paramour had been human, or that he hadn’t wanted Lysander to turn her. And now he was dead, before I could understand this more sympathetic side to the snarling vamp.
I looked down at his waist. I had to ask why he’d turned Dominic’s lover, but was unsure I’d like the answer. “Why?”
“She was dying of cancer and asked me. Dominic wouldn’t.”
“Where is she?”
“She killed herself when she realized she couldn’t handle life as a vampire.” A shadow of sorrow crossed his eyes.
“That’s terrible,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “You had no idea she’d kill herself.”
He caressed my chin, smoothed my cheek with his thumb. “I should have said no when she asked me.”
“We all should have done a lot of things. So how does that translate to his ascension to Master?”
“He never forgave me. The whole situation twisted him up, and I wasn’t going to fight him for Master. Partly I didn’t want it. Becoming Master amplifies everything—power, emotion, passion. That’s why you feel—” he smiled—“what you feel. It’s my desire for you seeping out.”
I lowered my lashes, not wanting him to see just how much his amplified passion affected me. I had to remind myself that while he wasn’t Dominic, he was no longer Lysander the bartender either. He was still definitely a vampire. More so, he was their Master. “Maybe you can use your status to change things.”
“At one time I thought I could change the way vampires ruled themselves. Bring them into the new world, but too many chose to remain in the shadows, sucking blood like animals. I guess it makes them feel like predators when in reality they’re nothing but pathetic animals, hiding, living the glory of the old days when people believed in superstitions, in the Nosferatu or Vampyr sense. Such a creature never existed then, and doesn’t now.” He paused. “I sought my own way to live among the vampires, but it’s difficult to escape the cynicism wrought by immortality. Makes you realize how ineffectual you really are.”
“But now you’re the Master.”
“Now I’m the Master,” he said with a chilling finality.
I splayed my fingers on his chest, afraid, but wanting to connect back to the old Ly. He covered my hand with his.
“You have to get rid of this bokor, or we’ll have to take things in our own hands. If we find that road leads back to the demons . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t want things to end up this way. What we shared . . . it’s too dangerous for us. You’re right. I am different, changed when I assumed Master status. I don’t want to hurt you.”
I applied pressure on his chest, as if I could press through to his soul.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Trying to feel, see if the old Ly is in there somewhere.” I tried to smile, but the heaviness in my heart weighed my lips down.
His eyes clouded over with the same despondent, sad look from the courtyard when he’d stood over Dominic’s body. He lifted the hand covering mine, but said nothing.
“We still have to exchange blood,” I said.
“Yes, but that, I can control. Vampire politics, less so. We are all bound by our allegiances even though we act like we have freedom.”
Almost the same words Dominic had uttered before Delatte hollowed him out. Lysander had sequestered himself from Dominic and vampire politics, but he also chose to bartend at the club, remaining plugged into the vamp enclave. Why wouldn’t he? He was a vampire and had a community, even if that community was sometimes unscrupulous. Necromancers were an endangered, dispersed supernatural race with little to no allegiances, although the demons wanted to change that. I guess it remained to be seen what allegiances would rear up and bite my ass.
XAVIER ARRANGED for Ewan to accompany me to the demon realm where I’d have to bear Ivo’s exaggerated accusations and label as the necromancer spawn of Satan. I’d wanted Malthus to take me so I could ask him why he’d supported the genocide. I had a strong suspicion that something had forced the decision upon him. I’d spent enough time with Malthus to understand he buttressed his decisions and actions with very specific justifications, even if I didn’t agree with them. I might not be ready, but I had to hear his reasons, and trust in the fact that Cora must have known, and she’d still loved him.
The moment I took the first step up the stairs to the demon lair entrance, a high-pitched squeal pierced my head. I pressed my hand against my forehead where the scream had originated, but it had come from the demons or something demon, a creature . . . Myyr.
I hopped up then halted when stone fragments tumbled past me, almost causing me to trip. A low growl sounded above me. It was definitely not in my head. I looked up slowly and encountered glowing green eyes and a set of spiked teeth. I took a slow step back.
The supposed stone gargoyle that stood guard on the balustrade now puffed its breath, laced with sulfuric hotness, in my face. It stomped a foot to shake off more stone, causing the balustrade to crack and the stairs under my feet to tremble slightly. If I hadn’t known better, if I hadn’t been staring at this cross between a Chinese and fairytale dragon poised five feet above me, I would have thought an earthquake had trembled. But the only things trembling were the stairs, my legs and my arms. The gargoyle arched its back and rippled its scales in a gorgeous multicolored hue. I caught a subtle gleam from its eyes, a hint of familiarity, as if it too had remembered my touch. It chuffed in what I could only describe as amusement before opening its wings, layered with gleaming white scales, then lifted off the balustrade, and swooped toward the closed door, smashing it off its hinges and leaving a huge hole in a perfect outline of its outstretched wings and body.
I sprinted past the crumbled front entrance, past the foyer, and skipped down the stairs to the basement. Another squeal rip
ped through my head, and a sharp pang hit my chest. I skidded to a halt at the entrance to the basement right into Jax’s outstretched arm. “You need to leave,” he shouted, before ducking and shoving me down with his arm to avoid a projectile that crashed into the wall behind me. He pushed me back. “Go!”
“No. Where’s Ewan?”
“In the realm, fending off the rest,” Jax answered.
“The rest?” What the hell was going on? The scene crashing around me tested even demon limits for monster mayhem. A huge troll-like creature swung ginormous fists, disproportionate to the rest of his pulpy body. In one of the fists, he held the bloody remains of poor Myyr. The rest of my zombie demon lay strewn about the basement. The brave, slithering beast had saved my life twice. The nasty troll tossed Myyr’s tail into the wall and went after the gargoyle who, unable to take flight in the enclosed space, hopped around boxer-style to avoid each meaty swipe. I didn’t know how much more carnage the basement could withstand. The portal flashed and sparked behind the battling demons, sounding like a chorus of light bulbs sparking out.
“What is that thing?”
“It’s a jaezai.” Jax said, wiping his brow. I’d never seen the suave Jax panicked, and that bothered me more than the creatures tearing up the demon lair. I’d yet to see Ewan or Jax concerned over a foe. They’ve sweated and groaned, but panic? Demons never panicked.
“These things . . . they are creatures that roam the forgotten parts of our realm, the places no civilized demon ventures. I have no idea how it crossed the portal,” he said.
“Can you do anything?”
“I’m not a warrior. My powers are pretty useless against this thing. Until Damon gets here, Thaai can handle the bastard.” He shouted something in demon to the gargoyle, Thaai, who skipped to the side just in time to evade the troll’s fist. The jaezai flailed and screeched as it wrestled with its fist stuck in the bricks, eventually destroying the entire wall in a feat worthy of a wrecking ball. Jax pushed me back again. I landed with a thud on my ass and raised my arms to shield me from debris about to pummel my face, but a feathered wing appeared just in time to block the concrete missiles. Gus crouched next to me. Still decrepit, but with one glorious wing stretched around me.
The Necromancer's Betrayal Page 19
