Froze, and was, indeed, still. Her eyes wide, shocked, her bloodless lips parted.
The green ash stake protruded from her skin, and Victoria had a last bit of consciousness left to yank it free, then drive it directly into the vampire queen’s heart.
Brushing away the last of the vampire ash, Max tucked the stake into his trousers and turned back to the door. Using a knife blade, he wedged it down under the metal to work the lock’s hasp free. He shoved and jimmied, and at last the groan of the brass came free. Working as fast as he could, he pulled the lock off and tore the door open.
The people poured out, more than a dozen of them, terrified and blank-eyed.
“This way,” Max said, trying not to think about what else was going on deep in the chambers of this mountain. She wears two, dammit. “Hurry.”
But something pushed at him, nagged… Impatience screamed as he urged the captives out of their prison; many of them stumbled or were too dazed from shock to understand. As they streamed out of the room, a vampire made the mistake of coming around the corner, apparently running from some other threat. The undead found himself skewered on Max’s stake before he realized it.
“Is that everyone?” Max asked one of the men who seemed somewhat lucid.
“Yes,” the man managed. “But this one can’t walk.”
Without another word, Max slung a tottering woman with glassy eyes up over his shoulder. “Here,” he said, fumbling for the cross around his neck. With a good yank, he broke the heavy chain and handed it to the man. “Hold this in front of you if you see any of them.”
He gave another woman a vial of holy water, and yet another vial to a second man. The back of his neck chilled, shifting, portending the approach of more undead. The would-be victims had moved out into the corridor, and he heard shrieks and screams as he came around the corner.
The prison behind him, a deadweight woman on his shoulder, Max found himself back in the melee again.
Stake in hand, he pushed through the terrified mob, which had been stopped by three large vampires blocking the corridor. Damn and blast.
“Throw the water!” he shouted as the crowd surged back, away from the vampires. He pushed forward, they stampeded back, and he felt the woman over his shoulder begin to awaken and fight his hold. The vampires lunged toward the group, fangs out, eyes burning, and the prisoners fell back, into Max, and he nearly lost his balance.
Bloody damn hell. Idiots.
“Let me through,” he bellowed, but no one heard him over the panic.
He couldn’t put the woman down, or she’d be trampled in a moment, but she severely limited his movements. And now she was fighting him, like a crazed cat, pummeling his back already sore from claws and talons.
And beneath all of that, also pounding at him, was the need to find Victoria.
He shoved the woman at the nearest man, ordering him fiercely, “Hold her!”
And he pushed his way through the surging crowd, ramming people into one another and the walls to get by, to get it through their thick heads that he was there to help them.
As he reached the trio of vampires in the front, he saw the tall, dark figure of Brim appear from behind them.
“Where is Victoria?” Max shouted, barely looking at the undead he was striking. The poof and subsequent explosion told him his black stake had done its trick as he sought Brim’s eyes.
Brim staked another of the undead from behind as his mouth tightened in worry. “Thought she was with you.”
Max’s world stopped, then released into the fury around him. “Take this,” he said, shoving the last vampire toward Brim, who easily dispatched the undead before Max had even passed him.
He calmed himself even as he ran off. She’d be all right. She had to be.
Twenty-five
The Temptation of Sebastian Vioget
The blood.
He breathed the iron scent, felt the driving need for it. A red haze filled the room, clouding his vision, his senses.
Victoria’s blood.
He swallowed, the unfamiliar fangs nipping his lips.
Oh God.
Could he even say that anymore, with a damned soul? Oh God?
Would He hear? Would He care?
No… Sebastian drew in a breath that felt like no breath he took when he lived. He wasn’t damned yet. Not yet.
It enraptured him… the smell … the sound, the faint whistle, of Lilith’s gentle sucking. Each low gulp pounded in his ears, drummed through his body.
He could fairly taste the thick, heavy iron, feel it running down his throat. His heart pounded, its rhythm matching that of his sire, of Lilith… but fighting to control Victoria’s. His hands closed around her slender ankles, holding her prisoner as she writhed and bucked and twisted.
The little noises she made under Lilith’s hands and mouth, the little gasps and heaving breaths, reminded him of other things, other writhing and bucking, and he felt the need pound through him even stronger.
The haze grew heavier. Darker. Burning.
Lilith pulled away from Victoria’s neck, leaving Sebastian with a full view of the hot crimson blood, shining in thick trickles down her flushed, damp skin. Her grimy shirt was torn away, by his own hands, and one white breast half bared from the struggle. Black hair plastered to her jaw and neck, a mass of curls on the pillow beneath her, and her lovely red lips parted, gasping and panting.
He swallowed again, felt the trembling of his fingers.
Lilith said something he barely heard, but he knew it was his turn. She wanted him to feed.
He wanted… Oh, he wanted.
He couldn’t.
But his mouth watered; his fingers shook. He felt the burn in his eyes grow hotter, stronger. His heart pounded, echoing through him to his fingers, his knees.
He had to. He must.
Then a sudden sharp movement from Victoria, her arm winging out from nowhere. Lilith froze, her eyes wide as she looked at him over her shoulder… and then, unbelievably, she jerked from some great force… and then… poof.
She was gone.
Unbelievably gone.
The control, the power over him waned… released. He breathed on his own. He smelled ash and roses and… blood.
Still, the blood.
The craving hadn’t eased. No, it pounded just as fiercely.
“Sebastian.” Victoria’s voice penetrated the haze, just a bit. She twisted and moved, and he saw that she was trying to free her manacled hand while she kept her eyes on him. She had a stake in her hand.
A stake that, he realized, could kill him now.
He didn’t remember moving, but then he was on her, his hands holding her delicate shoulder to the pillows stained with her blood, knocking the stake from her hand. His weight pressed her into the softness as he’d done before, and he smelled her… She surrounded him, her blood, her scent, her skin.