Masters of the Night (27 page)

28.

“I’m not taking
another step until you answer me, Henri De
LaCroix
,”
Angie said, planting her shoes solidly in the dirt. “I want to know what
Natalia told you.”

“So do
I
,” James said. “We have to the right
to know what we’re getting into here if Dracula is involved.”

“Dracula?”
Angie blurted.
“But he’s dead—isn’t he?”

“He’s died more times than I can count, pardon the pun,” Henri
answered.

“It was known the Count had two descendent nephews,” Henri began
resignedly. “Apparently, there is a third.
You.
After
you—procreate with Angie, the Realm is giving you to Jane and taking Angie. The
Realm offered Jane protection for her lands in exchange for arranging a joining
of the Black Rose with the Count’s bloodline. And right now you’re the
bloodline conveniently located.”

Both Angie and James fell silent.

“Sure you don’t want to go hide in my hole with me?” Henri smirked
toward James.

“Why did she agree to their offer?” Angie asked. “She struck me as
being an independent selfish vamp, not the needing kind.”

“No one refuses an offer by the Realm,” Henri said simply.

His night bird sailed noiselessly onto his shoulder.

Angie stepped back a little, watching it warily. The bird had a thing
for eyes.

“Is the
crowish
princess coming with us?” she
asked.

“She may prove—useful,” Henri said.

As they slipped into the house through the servants’ entrance, the bird
flew ahead, disappearing into the recesses of an endless, crooked hallway that
wound through the wings crawling all over the hill.

“I don’t know which I’m
hating
the most—the
Lady Jane, or this interminable house!” Angie exclaimed, her breathing become
rapid in the close, uncertain corridors.

Henri glanced at her worriedly. The collar of her shirt was becoming
moist with perspiration. “Do not yield to the fingers of evil playing on your
heart’s strings right now.”

“I’m terrified.”

“So am I. I lived with her.”

The bird returned and made several soft clacking sounds.

Henri turned to Angie. “Eleanor has found the slayers wandering without
direction in the tunnels. They broke free of their captors.” He pointed to the
far end of the hall.
“Through that set of doors.
Hurry.”

They ran.

But the unseen breath of cold that hit James as he shoved two massive
oak doors ajar made him halt abruptly and wince.
“God!
I hate that ghost!”

They edged into a dingy dining hall. Tarnished silver candelabras
huddled on a long table, remnants of the grandeur of a lost past.

“Angie!
Above you!”
Henri warned, pulling his
rapier from its sheath.

The
vampyre
dropped from a dusty chandelier,
fangs bared. Angie stifled her screams and her fear, and moved like lightning.
Pulling him from her like a monkey spider, she threw him to the floor, breaking
every bone in his body.

Henri’s eyebrow arched appreciatively.

“Did you forget something before checking out?” James said, kneeling
beside him with a stake.

“Just a taste,” the
vampyre
said, groping
with a broken hand toward Angie as he died.

“Stay here, you two,” Henri said, meaning every word of it. “I am going
to fly with Eleanor and configure a way in, so we don’t run into any more
guests. Do not leave this room.”

It was not a request.

After he had flashed though the door and the room was silent, Angie
turned to James. “No offense, but I’m not going to have sex with you.”

“None taken,” he said with a grin, and placed his hands on her
shoulders reassuringly. “Look, Angie, I don’t know how this is going to play
out, but I promise
,
I would never hurt you.”

“I know,” she said in a small, shaky voice.

“Care for a bit of libation,
m’lady
?” he said
in a light tease, picking up an ancient, cobwebby flask as he plopped into a
carved, high back chair and rested his foot on the table.
“While
we wait for the Court’s Royal to return?”

“The Court’s Royal?” she asked quizzically.

“He hasn’t told you?” James said, sitting forward in surprise. “Damn,
girl! You might want to know who you’re sleeping with.”

Henri was returning. Angie ran to him and clasped his hand hard. “Did
you find them?”

“There are grated gates in the tunnels, sealed with Jane’s power. I
will need our combined strength to release the bars.” He opened a window with
shredded drapes and released his bird. “Fly my winged pet. You are free now.”

Henri closed the window quickly and ushered James and Angie into the
hall toward a narrow flight of cellar stairs. Once in the stairwell at Henri’s
silent signal, their flashlights began to glow.

Angie clung to him, her flashlight quaking in her hand. She didn’t want
to die here. The stone-vaulted recesses of the descending well were chilly and
damp with water seeping through the mortar in the walls.

And she didn’t want to conceive a child here in this God-forsaken
cobweb cave—then be given to the Count afterward.
To become a
forever-after sex toy.

The mystic glow, he called it, the power that would pleasure him, every
part of him.

Henri had left that part out. But she knew. She knew what they had in
store for her. She had caught it within Henri’s knowledge, as he told them
Natalia’s dirty little secrets. She had seen the Count’s plans for the
mythical, mystical Black Rose.

Ain’t
gonna
happen,
she swore
silently.
I’m not glowing for anybody.

At the bottom of the narrow steps, James opened a door, slipped through
and was swallowed by the dark.

“Don’t let go of my hand,” Henri told Angie firmly.

She let go. Her hand fell away from his when she dropped her
flashlight.

The door behind her slammed shut.
Slamming Henri on
the other side.

“James? Henri?” she ventured in a small voice into the dark.

No answer.

As she groped in the darkness for the flashlight, she heard a pair of
boots running through the shelves, followed by a sound like a bag of cement
being dragged across the floor.

Then nothing.
Only
deafening silence.

Angie felt around on the floor, found the flashlight, shook it, and a
tiny amber glow wavered in the globe, briefly, then darkness again. She shook
it again, tapped on the glass cover. A bit of yellow light glowed dimly, then
out, then on.

When in doubt—hide
, she heard smack her thoughts.

Henri.
Sending threads.

She crawled into a dank corner and pulled her knees up to her chin and
hid, shaking with cold and fear. She did not feel very powerful. She felt—

Alone.

An unexpected vision of herself in the black depths of the earth,
sitting like this in rags, her knees drawn up to her chin, waiting for the next
“procreation,” ripped Angie with terror.

She clenched her fists. She would die before she would yield, she swore
silently.

She could hear the plop, plop of water onto the stone flooring and a
scratching, scurrying sound within the wall beside her.

Then a hand, electric hot, jerked her flat to the cement while another
hand moved swiftly over her mouth to stifle her cry of surprise.

“
Shh
!” Henri whispered. “Jane’s minions have
taken James and now they search for you. I couldn’t reach you because Nicholas
sealed the door. I had to crawl through a crack in the mortar as a mouse!”

She scooted on her belly with him backward into a grated vent in the
cellar wall. “Hurry,” he said, pulling her in.

Beyond the grating, he retrieved his rapier from a crack where he’d
stashed it.
Then pulled out a bag of arsenal for her.
“Found these on the floor,” he said.

The pouch was Brandi’s.

Sinewy strength rippled through his shirt in warm slashes against her
as he enfolded her tightly. They clung to the tunnel walls, inching along in
the dark. “Just in case we don’t die,” she said, “I’m—”

“In love with me.
Yes, I know,” he
said, kissing her quick, hard, wanting her to live,
fiercely
wanting her to live. He helped her up a set of ladder-like steps. “These lead
upward into an acreage of weeds and thicket Jane affectionately likes to call
her estate garden.”

“Insane Jane,” Angie smirked.

“We have to get to your friends without placing you in peril. We can go
through the gardens.”

They climbed from the lightless manhole—

Into a circle of shapes of twisted smiles, glowing eyes and rakes of
bone with wing.

And all were in those rich, wondrous capes the color of night …

And none of them were happy with Henri De
LaCroix
.

“You betrayed us, De
LaCroix
.”

Angie and Henri drew their weapons.

“We need to stop this insidious murdering of innocents,” Henri said.

“Mortals have been torturing and murdering and warring with each other
for centuries. Without concern for those they kill. The percentage we take is
no more than a thimbleful compared to their own bloodletting.”

“Except to those who love them.”

“Love,” a voice within the ranks scoffed.

The familiar voice shocked both Angie and Henri.

The circle of wings parted, and the librarian from the English library
stepped forward out of a swirling mist of fog.

“You have brought a mystic into our midst, a mortal mystic. Do you love
her, Henri? We are going to take her as our prisoner.
For
eternity.
But you—we’re going to kill you. You’ve committed high
treason. Through you she knows our secret places, and you refused to send her
into death.” She paused. “Of course, that did work out to our advantage.”

Angie felt her blood turn to ice in her veins.

The woman pushed a stray strand of gray hair back behind her ear and
returned to the mists.

The
vampyres
advanced.

“You are the darkest beings of this world,” Henri said, drawing his
sword from its scabbard.

The
vampyres
converged to subdue him. And
take the mystic.

Henri hacked at them, killing as many as he could while Angie fought
beside him, agile as she whirled with blades and stakes blazing.

Screams, unearthly wails, pelted the countryside.
Followed
by yells to take Henri alive, shouts to burn him alive in a sun well.
He
whirled and turned and leaped and flew—his sword blade flashed with blackened
blood that flowed down his arms and onto the ground in rivers of burnished red
liquid.

But there were too many …

Standing back to back, Angie and Henri let their weapons drop.

Turning her toward him, Henri held her tightly and sent a single
thought spiraling through space and time before the circle of angry capes
closed in.

Angie, I—love you.

29.

Chloroform.

Angie recognized the sickly sweet scent.

As her head cleared, she realized she was on the floor, flopped against
the edge of a dilapidated bed. A candle in a broken pewter plate clung to life
on a wobbly-legged, grime-encrusted table next to it.

The only window in the whole place was a tiny rectangle far above her.

She was in the tower.

She was also laced with bite marks. They had delighted in her while she
was unconscious.

“Angie,” a voice whispered.

She looked up toward the high window. “Henri?” Her heart spilled with a
cascade of happy heartbeats. He was alive!

“
Shh
.”

“How did you escape?” she whispered excitedly.

“A
vampyre
named
Pighead
likes me. He arranged my escape. I gave him one of my castles.”

“You gave him one of your castles.”

One of his castles.
Of
course.

“I’m going to help you escape,” he said. “But not just right now. Her
roadies are thick as thieves, and wary. And her power has this room sealed. We
will have to wait. Can you play the game?”

“I will try.”

He looked through the bars around the room. “I used to live in this
room.”

He had explored that room towering into the sky in countless forlorn
attempts to find escape. Night after night, he would pace back and forth in the
room in the impenetrable darkness, and in the echo of his footsteps, he could
hear the steps of the shadow that kept pace with him. She had sent a phantom to
warn her of any attempts at freedom. Night would deepen into a black abyss, and
the phantom would be joined by a chorus of shadows—every morbid creature at her
command—
to torture and torment him. If a stranger
passing by the House of a Hundred Rooms came to investigate the torturous cries
that could be heard across the courtyard, he soon ran away in terror.

The black tower became Henri’s universe. She sealed him in, waiting for
his hunger to become unbearable. Then and only then would she bring the release
his condemned soul was driven to seek—a tavern wench or liquor-drenched
beggar,or
runaway … He fell farther into her hands, into
her dark world, letting her have him while he grew stronger in the strange,
unassailable power that accompanied his crimes in the tower and claimed his
soul.

Not even Jane had realized how quickly, how massively his power was growing,
fueled by the fire she herself had created—hatred.

Henri had discovered he could simply become a vapor that could slip
under the tower door, or that he could push the door from its hinges if he
chose—or become as tiny as a starling and leave the iron bars of the window
behind.

He chose to fly …

“She’s coming,” he warned, and his face disappeared from the window.

A floor-length, blood-red hooded cape lined in black satin floated in
through the door and to the bed.

“A mystic slayer in love with a Royal.
Intriguing,” the
cape said, without expression.

The hood fell away from the face.

In spite of her attempts to remain hardened, Angie was awestruck by the
oval, angelic, ivory face framed in waves and waves of raven tresses that
showered down her back. Her ancestral aunt’s violet eyes seemed to shine from a
light of their own and her lips, parted in a slight pout, were a perfect
rosebud—sensuous—the color deep as though her blood or whatever blood she
happened to be using at the moment ran perpetually hot.

The reckless, flawless beauty of a Gothic heroine.

Only she was not the heroine.

She was the villain.

“Auntie Jane, I presume?” Angie said thinly. “Did you kill my mother?”

The violet eyes rested on her neck, on Henri’s bruising punctures. “No
wonder the Realm and the Master Slayer are up in arms! A joining no one wants.”
She laughed, lightly. “You are giving them rabid fits, my dear!”

“Where are the Shadows?” Angie demanded tearfully.

The words that followed rolled from the
vampira’s
rosebud lips like honey. “Do you not wish to know where Henri is? He did not
fly very far after he left your window,
Rapunzel
.”

Angie felt her heart smash into her throat. “What have you done with
him?” she cried.

The heavy tower door groaned on its iron hinges and opened, and James
was tossed into the room by four
vampyres
, tall, with
sunken eyes as though emaciated, bluish-gray in their pallor.

James’ hair was matted, his clothes torn, his body tatted with
lacerations and bruises—but no punctures. Apparently Jane had commanded he be
left pure.

As he spotted Angie, fairly littered with puncture holes, James’ eyes
flickered, but only briefly.

Jane’s smile became a tight purple line at being denied the pleasure of
seeing human distress even crease his cheeks.

He pulled himself from the floor.

“If you take one step toward me, to kill me, James,” she warned, taking
an instinctive step back, “Nicholas will kiss her,
then
kill her. Behave yourself and she will live.”

Nicholas slipped into the room and took hold of his arm.

“If she kills the Count’s mystic, there will be nowhere on God’s green
earth she can hide. Does she realize that?” James said in a lowered voice.

“I’m sure she knows that,” he said.

“Will she keep her word?”

“You have no choice at the moment, but to believe she will.”

“I want your bloodline, James. But you must first take—her,” Jane said,
her voice filled with disgust for the mystic. “Afterward, I want a master
slayer of slayers. Andre and his troupe are running around in the tunnels like
lost rabbits. It should be easy for you.”

“You’re so damned crazy.”

She flew at him angrily and slapped him full on the face.
Then bared her fangs.

A thrust of heart stopping terror rose up in Angie’s throat. “No!” she
screamed, grabbing the bed post to help her get up.

“Hold her!” Jane ordered her minions sharply. “Or I will have you for
breakfast!”

The
vampyres
moved like lightning and
squeezed Angie’s arms into their bone-thin, icy hands.

Angie cried out in pain.
Henri, where are
you? Where is your strength?

Jane’s eyes blackened. “Sedate her! She’s trying to call up his power.”

They slapped a rag soaked with chloroform across her face.
Just enough.

Jane drew her fingertips coyly across the slayer’s shirt front.
“And would you not want me to share your bloodline at least a
little with me before you bed with her?
You’re so strong, James, so
virile.”

Angie shook with sobs while the creature with flaming, hungry eyes let
her fangs drop.

Jane scraped her lips and fangs against the nape of James’ neck,
closing her eyes as she felt the pulse, strong and even, but fast.

“You’re afraid,” she whispered.

“Terror’s a better word,” he said unflinchingly.

“But you are intrigued by your terror, studying it,” she said gaily,
bringing her face to his. “You are enjoying the way your heart is racing.”

“Do it,” he said, pulling her into his arms roughly.

She laughed. “When I first lighted in this city, it was to find and
sell that horrid niece. But this, this is an added gift.”

She drew his eyes into hers.

He surrendered. She weaved back and forth softly in front of him,
watching as his eyes followed the violet command to yield his will. “You’re
enjoying this!” She pushed him away. “We will join when you’re finished with
the mystic.”

Within moments, the foul group was gone and a heavy lock could be heard
sliding into place.

Angie stood in the middle of the room, angry tears of betrayal
streaming from her eyes. “What happens now, James?
Sex and
the new race?
Then fun and blood games with Jane?”

He sighed. “I played the game to buy us time, Angie. I’m a Shadow, a
stealth fighter, remember?” He began feeling the walls, the door, the handle,
looking for a way out.
“Any ideas on De
LaCroix’s
whereabouts?
We need him. Can you thread?”

The streams to Henri were vacant. “Nothing,” she said in agony, hope
against hope. “Why would there be nothing?”

“It doesn’t mean he’s dead,” James assured her. “It just means Nicholas
and Jane and the lamb hawk
have
sealed the house.” He
placed his hands on her shoulders. “This isn’t easy for either of us. We’re
both trying to recover from the shock of our pasts without any time to absorb
the shock, and now we’ve ended up here and we don’t even know if either of the
beings we love
are
still alive. But we have to assume
they are.”

He looked into her eyes, and his gaze was one of resignation. “We don’t
have a choice in this, Angie.”

“James, I can’t,” she began.

He placed her fingertips over her lips. “It’s the only way to get us
the hell out of this room. We can’t fight the enemy from in here.”

She could feel him hard and ready. She felt her legs go weak, her
heart’s promise of forever love to Henri being torn from her, sacrificed.

“I’m gentle, Angie. I promise,” James murmured.

“It’s not that. It’s giving them the child they want,” she said,
putting her hand against his chest. “Would you want your child raised for
breeding if she’s a girl, or become a
vampyre
if it’s
a boy? They want to create a race.
A race of powerful beings.
To dominate us.
To make humans their
serviles
.
And I would be their Eve, to begin
the creation of their weapon of mass destruction.”

“Then our friends will die, and so will we,” he sighed.

“The lives of the few to save the future lives of many.”

“I have two brothers or cousins or whatever they are still out there,
Angie. And what’s to stop the Realm from finding another mystic royal? It has
to end here, now. Alive, we have a chance to end it. Dead, no one will even
know their plot and we will have died senselessly. We will have saved no one.”

His arguments held substance she could not deny.

They waited. An hour later, the lock on the outside of the door
released.

The Lady Jane floated into the room. James uttered a cry of pain as she
sank her fangs into the nape of his neck—and drank deeply.

She jerked back, retching, spitting out his tainted blood all over her
impeccable white satin gown.

Andre had sworn the
vampyre
who fought him
and won would regret it. He ingested the concoction religiously that he said
would taste like poison to the
vampyre
stupid enough
to bite him. And James drank with him every night.

Enraged, the scorned, hungry creature turned on her
victm
in fury, lifting her hands in a fierce gesture as if to rip him to shreds.

Then her hands dropped. “I will take you when you’re cleansed,” she
said.

Angie felt talons of sorrow grip her heart.

James Lauren.
The quiet, strong, mystery slayer who
had an undercurrent that ran silent, yet oh so deep—the Count’s bloodline.

If he became a
vampyre
…

Where is Henri?
Angie thought helplessly.

Nicholas, in a cape of royal blue, glided back into the room, toward
her, his hand outstretched.