6
That morning I had the dream again. The same one I’d had at least once a week since that fateful night in New Orleans. The night everything changed.
I am tied to a cold marble slab.
“Look at what you’ve done to them,” Lavinia whispers. I jerk my head, desperate to block out the sight of Maisie’s red-and-black head bobbing against Adam’s chest.
So much blood. Too much. Adam’s face contorts into a grimace of pain. Lavinia’s fingernails dig into the soft skin around my eyes, drawing blood. But I am too crazed with guilt and horror to register the pain. If anything, the red blurring my vision is a blessing. “Oh, no, you must watch and understand. Your existence brings pain to all unfortunate enough to meet you.”
Here the dream deviates from memory. Instead of calling on the powers of Lilith and Hekate for aid as I did that night, I rise from the slab under my own power. The shackles fall away. I inhale Lavinia into me until she is me and I am her.
As I rise, the walls of the temple fall away and reveal a dusty crossroads with Adam and Maisie in the center, locked in their bloody embrace.
“Sabina!” Adam shouts, but his voice shatters and disperses like blood mist. I run toward him, but it’s like running through a deep tide. When I finally manage to reach them, Maisie looks up.
I still and my heart stops. It’s not Maisie who looks up. It’s me. My face is smeared with Adam’s blood. I smile and flash my sharp, red fangs at myself.
Cain appears. His red hair flashes brighter than arterial blood and his green eyes glow with evil intent. “Finish him,” the father of the vampire race says. “Finish him, Lamashtu, and we can finally be together.”
For a moment, I inhabit my vampire half’s mind and I look up at my mage self. I pity her with her tears and sickening vulnerability. I can’t blame her for her weakness for the mage, though. His blood tastes like candy. Like a drug I can never quit. I raise an eyebrow and smile at my mage self. Once I’m sure she’s looking, I go back for more.
I slam back into my mage self. The greedy slurping sounds make my stomach turn. “No! Stop! You’re killing him.”
“Why do you deny yourself?” Cain whispers in my ear. “You are a killer.”
I shake my head. “Not anymore.”
A sword appears in my hand, as if summoned. I white-knuckle the grip. Adam sags as my vampire drains his life away drop by drop. Tears wet my face. Indecision shatters me.
Adam’s face is pale, too pale. His eyes burn into mine, pleading. “Kill her, Sabina. One last time and then you will be free.”
I peer down at the bloodthirsty incarnation of myself. The self I’d known for fifty-four years. The one whose past was soaked in blood and anger. I barely recognize her now. She’s all fangs and hunger. A wild thing. Uncontrollable. Savage.
“Don’t listen to him,” Lavinia’s voice comes from the vampire-me’s lips. “Without me you’ll fade to nothing.”
“Sabina,” Adam pleads. “I love you.”
Those three words work on me like a spell. Like a sleeper awakened, I know what I must do. My vampire self is a cancer. And like all cancer, it must be excised before life can flourish. The blade glints on its downward path. Slices clean through the neck. I feel the impact severing the umbilical cord connecting my two halves. My vampire explodes in a cloud of black smoke and flame.
The instant she is dead, Lavinia’s soul rises from the ashes like a phoenix—or an exorcized demon. Adam falls forward into my arms. I cling to him like he’d just saved me instead of the other way around. Cain towers over us. But when I look up at him, he’s transparent.
I wake with Cain’s parting words on my lips. “We aren’t finished.”
7
The summons came at the butt crack of dusk. Adam was already awake and had received the note from Orpheus’s assistant. When he woke me up and showed it to me, I cursed.
“Please tell me this is about Giguhl peeing in the flower beds again,” I groaned.
“We both know what it’s about.” Adam slapped my ass. “Come on, get up. It’ll only be worse if we keep him waiting.”
“Worse for you, maybe. He’s not my boss.” Adam was a Pythian Guard, sort of a mage version of the secret service and special forces rolled into one. Part of Orpheus’s role as the leader of the Hekate Council was to be the commander in chief of the guards. But in addition to being his boss, the ancient mage was also a father figure and mentor to Adam.
“Stop it,” Adam said, losing his patience. “He’s as much your boss as mine now, Miss High Priestess of the Blood Moon.”
I shot a sour look in his direction. “Technically, Rhea is in charge of the priestesses. Besides, it’s not like that’s my job.” In fact, I didn’t have a job at all, except for twice-weekly magic lessons, which didn’t earn me anything other than some cool new party tricks.
“Let’s make a deal, then. If you get up and into the shower, I’ll bring you a huge mug of coffee.”
With a martyred sigh, I made a production of hefting myself out of the bed. “Fine, but make sure to put a shot of whisky in it. If this is really about the murders, I’m going to need some liquid fortification.”
Thirty minutes later, we walked into the office of High Councilman Orpheus—no last name, like Sting, only with less tantric sex—of the Ancient Venerable Hekate Council. But it wasn’t Orpheus who drew my gaze and made me stop in my tracks.
Slade had mentioned she was in town, but I certainly hadn’t expected to see her right then: Tanith Severinus, Exalted Despina of the Lilim. She’d given herself the fancy title when she became sole ruler of the vampire race two months earlier. I’m not sure how her closest friends referred to her now, but I still called her “the Bitch.”
For an ancient vampiress with total power over an entire race, you’d figure she’d have enough money to do something about her unfortunate appearance. Between the rusty mess of curls on her head, the bulbous Roman nose, and the cleft chin that resembled a butt crack, she’d lost the beauty lottery and then been beaten with the ugly stick for good measure. I wish I could say her insides made up for the unfortunate outsides, but they didn’t. I’m not sure if the doctors surgically inserted the bug up her ass or if she’d been born with it, but a less personable vampire I’d never met—with the exception of my own grandmother, but even she managed to crack a smile every now and then in between attempts on my life.