“I never could persuade you differently, but at least after this night, you won’t be able to incite the rabble against me and my followers ever again.”
Adrien felt the weight of Silas’s millennia, an oppressive sensation that he’d despised from the time he could remember. Daniel had a similar feel to his bones. And now Adrien was headed down that path irrevocably as well, becoming one of a rare group of powerful vampires in his world, an Ancestral.
Sweat broke out on his forehead. Would he become like his own father and find the level of his power so intoxicating that he had to rule the world instead of serve?
Without warning, Silas turned his power toward Lily, focusing all his attention on her. And because of the bonding chains, Adrien could feel Lily’s response, a sudden impulse to go to Silas.
Adrien placed his arm in front of her, a physical act that preceded a mental one, as he drove his thoughts into hers and created a shield over her mind.
He almost had me, Lily’s appalled telepathic voice returned to him.
I know. Ancestrals have tremendous power, especially ones like Silas who are very old. Trying to control you is a massive perversion of his power.
Silas shifted his gaze slowly, methodically to Adrien. “So you’ve finally taken your first infant step in our direction. Interesting. I suppose this human prompted the move, am I right?”
“Call it self-preservation.”
Silas narrowed his gaze at Adrien. “You care about her. You’ve been with her just a couple of nights and you care, very deeply.”
“Doesn’t matter. You can’t have her, Silas. Not today. Not ever.”
“I’ve had several visions that this one—” He gestured with an elegant wave of his hand toward Lily, the sleeve of his gown flapping “—destroys our race. I think it an appropriate exchange: one million vampire souls for one human, don’t you?”
“I think the moment we start trading lives one for another, no matter the number, that’s the day we deserve to disappear from the face of the earth.”
He clucked his tongue. “Four hundred years old and still so naive. Have it as you will.” He began to back up slowly. As he did his minions, bearing chains and daggers, advanced on them.
Adrien turned in a circle, holding Lily against him. How the hell was he supposed to fight thirty vampires?
He knew the men in front of him lacked battle experience by the way they moved, the way they held their blades and battle chains. Several began to spin the long six-foot chains, hoping to catch either him or Lily about the neck and end things quickly. The long chains also had razor-sharp points at the tips, as many as six at one end, which could do a tremendous amount of damage.
He spoke into Lily’s mind. In order to keep you safe, I have to get a wall behind us. I’m going to swing you up onto my back. Wrap your arms around my neck, your legs around my waist, and pin yourself to me like a monkey.
A monkey? How inelegant, she responded. But she made him smile.
Ready?
Do it.
Using his left arm, he reached for her left arm, dipped, and with a swift, smooth jerk flipped her into the air, turning her at the same time, until she slid down his back. She locked her arms around his neck, her legs around his hips. With two of his own chains spinning and with speed just short of altered flight, he moved backward, past the nearest fanatics. He heard the cries of those men who got cut by his whirring chains.
Lily’s arms and legs clung to him like a vise. He dropped his chains and drew two blades. “Slide down my back and make yourself small. I have some deviants to off.”
He felt her drop to the smooth crystal floor at his feet. He moved with lightning speed, so that those who reached him first had little chance against his trained reflexes. He caught the first of the long chains, above the whirling points, gave a jerk and brought the assailant to him. He drove his dagger into the back of his neck so fast that as he let the man go, the last word the vampire muttered was, “What?”
Before the first man hit the crystal floor, Adrien sank the blade in and out of the throat of the closest vampire to his left, then his right, grabbed another chain, jerked, sank another blade into yet another neck. The fanatics fell, grabbing at their throats and moaning.
But the bastards kept coming, stepping over the dying bodies so that Adrien was forced to inch backward, closer and closer to Lily. As fast as he killed, two more launched at him. He shunted one body aside, then another.
His speed made the kills a simple matter, but at some point, either he’d be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, or someone would get behind him and slay Lily.
CHAPTER 12
The thump of Lily’s heartbeat drowned out the sounds of the moans all around her, one small mercy. She met the gaze of the nearest fallen vampire, blood oozing from his mouth as he blinked. His eyes seemed to clear for a moment as he met her gaze and said, “Sorry. Not my fault.” Then he was gone.
Not his fault? He’d come here to kill her but it wasn’t his fault?
Lily knew she had maybe thirty seconds left to live. Adrien fought cleanly and efficiently, but where the wall curved to each side of her, several fanatics were moving in close, stealing in behind Adrien.
She had to do something, but what?
On instinct, she put her hand over her chain, and despite the desperate nature of the moment, her revisiting power called to her. She let it come, the edges of the horror-filled room beginning to swirl so that an entirely different image of the same space opened.
She felt the time sequence: one hour earlier. She saw the same vampires sitting in easy groups around the crystal floor, chatting, some playing cards, rolling dice, a friendly scene, in fact, not fanatical at all.
Then Silas entered the vaulted cavern from the middle tunnel and with strange, stiff movements, one by one, the men rose to their feet and stood at attention. But there was nothing normal about what they were doing as they packed up their dice and cards and donned the robes that Silas passed out to them.
Their lethargy helped Lily to understand that these vampires weren’t acting on their own.
Not my fault rang in her head.
Then she got it and everything made sense.
Adrien, she said forcefully, mind to mind. Silas enthralled these vampires, all of them. I’ve just seen it in a revisiting vision. They didn’t know they’d come here to fight.
Fuck, came back to her.
Blood now pooled in too many places over the beautiful crystal floor. Adrien was about to slice open another throat when he stopped suddenly and held his arms wide. The vampires closest to him launched then seemed to be repelled away from him at the exact same moment.