"Why should I believe you?"
Moldavi sighed. "For an intelligent man, you're being tiresome. Have you not learned that I don't make mistakes, nor do I make empty threats?"
Giordan could hardly disagree. All along, he thought he'd been clever, but it appeared that Moldavi was a step ahead of him. "What do you want? My house in Paris? Four ships? Access to my bank accounts? You can have it all."
The other man continued as if he hadn't spoken. "She's perfectly content here, Giordan, truly. We've come to an arrangement after so many years and I rarely have to discipline her anymore. She's kept in comfort, like a princess, dressed in the most fashionable of clothing. She has everything she could want. And she hasn't lost a fencing match for years-except to you." His voice dropped and his eyes heated again. "I did particularly enjoy watching that."
"She's a prisoner."
"I prefer to think of it as house arrest," he replied with a smile that showed a tip of fang. "I have something else I'd like to show you. Something special I've had made for Narcise."
He walked over to a table. On top of it was a box, and Moldavi turned to lift the lid.
With a sharp jerk of his arm, Giordan had the stake through the loose cuff and into his hand. He launched himself across the room, and in a half breath he had Moldavi against the wall, slamming the slighter man there with his hand, the stake poised.
"By the Devil, you are magnificent," said Moldavi in a rough, breathless voice. His eyes burned with an orange glow.
"I want Narcise," Giordan said from between tight jaws.
"She isn't here," replied Moldavi, his gaze growing hotter. "I took the precaution of removing her from the premises." He looked up into Giordan's eyes, his lips parted slightly in a provocative show of fangs. "There's only one way for you to have her."
Revulsion and fury took hold, and Giordan slammed the stake down into Moldavi's chest, propelling himself closer with the effort. The man jolted, grunted against him but something stopped the pike from penetrating fully. Armor.
His adversary looked up at him, his pale, beringed hand suddenly fisted in Giordan's shirt, holding him still, leaning into him with his own vampiric strength. His fangs were fully visible, his breathing rough.
Luce's black soul.
Giordan pulled free and spun away. His heart was pounding, his stomach roiling, the stake useless in his hand. "What do you want?"
"Don't be a fool. You know what I want." Moldavi's voice was hard, and yet sensual at the same time. The words hung there for a moment.
He stepped away from the wall where he'd remained after the attack, and adjusted his waistcoat. "Perhaps you'd like a bit of incentive, Giordan? I wanted to show you what I've had made for Narcise. What she'll wear when I give her to Belial if you and I don't come to an agreement."
He turned back to the table and finished removing the top to the box. As Giordan watched, his host removed a lacy, filigree object that looked like the same black lace of Narcise's gown. It was a cloak or cape, and it shivered and flowed as Moldavi shook it out, holding it by the collars.
Then he turned it around so that Giordan could see the other side.
It was lined with brown feathers. Rows and rows of them.
"No," he whispered, turning to Moldavi in shock. "No, by hell."
"Now, then," he said. "Are you ready to negotiate?"
"Negotiate?" Giordan said. The numbness had eased away to cold fear and impotent anger. "You seem to hold all the cards."
Moldavi liked that, and he laughed with delight. "I do hold most of them, that's true. I spend much of my time arranging things."
"I want Narcise," Giordan said, his lungs aching, his knees watery. "Name your price. Whatever it takes to get her out of here."
Moldavi showed his fangs, a light dancing in his malevolent eyes. "I want you."
Even though he'd expected it, Giordan couldn't control the sharp, dark twist in his middle. "Be more specific," he managed to say.
"Three days and three nights. Naked. Willing." Moldavi's smile couldn't even be described as maniacal; it was too calm and controlled. Satisfied. "Is that specific enough?"
~ II ~
Liberty
Chapter 10
March 1804
Every so often, the memory came hurtling back into Narcise's mind.
Although it was more than ten years since Giordan Cale had destroyed her, every nuance of the moment, every sight, sound, color, scent...even the remembrance of the way her being simply stopped and then imploded...it all came back.
As if it were happening again.
Anything could trigger it: the sight of a piece of charcoal on her drawing table. The sound when her maid dropped a handful of hairpins that scattered on the floor. The glimpse of a head of brown curls. The scent of a peach.
Whatever it was would send her mind shooting back to that moment when she walked into Cezar's private chambers.
Even now, her belly shuddered, threatening to send her last meal spewing forth, but try as she might, Narcise couldn't keep herself from going back there, reliving the very minutiae of a time she'd kill to forget.
She'd been looking for her brother-something she generally avoided doing, but there was no help for it, for she hadn't had a fencing lesson or a painting session for three weeks, including a false one with Giordan Cale-and she wanted to find out if and why he'd canceled the meetings with her tutors.
Cezar had been unusually absent since the night he'd brought her back after she seduced Cale, and Narcise had welcomed the reprieve, knowing how difficult it would be to hide her feelings about Cale in front of her brother. Fortunately Cezar had been in a relatively fine humor and had actually released most of the children he'd had captive. Perhaps that should have been a warning sign to Narcise, but at the time, she was merely grateful those lives had been spared.
She'd also expected to hear from or to see Giordan himself...but three weeks had passed since she seduced him, and she'd seen and heard from no one. Including Monsieur David and her fencing instructor. But it was Giordan's absence, of course, that tortured her the most.
And that had her active mind making up scenarios and explanations-none of which were pleasant in the least. The worst of them all was the image of him with another woman, or women, perhaps...being the jovial, sensual host she knew him to be...and providing all form of hospitality.
Or perhaps now that she'd actually seduced him, that they'd actually been together, he'd moved on to another conquest. That was the Dracule way. Her heart grew cold at the thought.