Her eyebrows rose.
Roland’s lips twitched as he lowered his gaze to meet hers. “You stabbed him in the ass?”
Sarah shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
She wasn’t sure why Bastien felt the need to offer an explanation. He still seemed intent on killing Roland, moving steadily closer with drunken steps.
Sarah bent and retrieved Roland’s sai, then positioned herself in front of him, feet braced for an attack.
Bastien shook his head. “Step aside, Sarah. This is between me and Roland.”
“What is?” she challenged angrily. “Why are you doing this?”
Bastien turned his head and spat blood, then pointed his blade at Roland. “He killed my sister.”
She sucked in a shocked breath.
“What?” Roland asked behind her.
“You killed my sister, you bloody bastard!”
Drawing on what little strength remained, Bastien attacked with a burst of preternatural speed.
Roland grabbed his sai and shoved Sarah aside.
Blades clashed and the battle resumed, slowed nearly to mortal speed by the toll their wounds had taken.
It took only moments for Bastien to perceive he would lose. Roland’s swings gained in strength as his own continued to weaken, driving him incessantly backward. Every breath was like a knife in his chest.
“Was she a vampire’s minion?” Roland asked through gritted teeth.
“She was an innocent,” Bastien denied furiously.
Roland’s sai connected with his sword, swung, and propelled it out of his hand.
It landed with a clatter on the far side of the room, where Sarah hurriedly claimed it.
“Then I didn’t kill her,” Roland insisted evenly.
That he would deny it after savaging Cat the way he had infuriated Bastien.
With no other weapon left him, he drove his fist into Roland’s temple.
It must have hurt like hell on top of the skull fracture.
Bastien heard Sarah cry out.
Roland’s eyes flashed from brown to glowing amber.
A second later, pain crashed through Bastien’s back as Roland hurled him into the wall with the chains in the next room and pinned him there, one of the manacles digging into his shoulder blade, with a hand at his throat.
“It wasn’t me, Bastien. The only innocents I have ever killed were my wife and my brother.”
“Bullshit!” Sarah blurted from the other room.
Bastien felt Roland’s surprise and confusion as Sarah marched toward them.
“That bitch wasn’t innocent and neither was your brother. They were the ones who handed you over to the vampire who turned you. Damn it, Roland, I told you to stop feeling guilty about that!”
Love and amusement replaced Roland’s confusion but couldn’t quite blot out old guilt.
“I stand corrected,” he drawled. “They weren’t innocent.”
When Roland’s grip loosened, Bastien drew in several jagged breaths and rested a moment in hopes of rebuilding a final burst of strength. “My sister was innocent. She knew nothing of this world, yet you killed her.”
“Is that her?” Sarah asked, motioning to the painting.
It was a portrait of Cat and her husband, Blaise.
“Yes.”
He waited for Roland’s reaction as he looked at it, knowing his gift would tell him the truth regardless of any lies the immortal may spout.
“I don’t know her,” Roland said simply.
Bastien frowned. Unless his gift was failing him, Roland truly did not recall seeing her. Then …
There it was. A spark of recognition.
“You’re lying. I can feel it. You recognize her.”
Roland’s expression darkened as he stared at the painting. “Not her. Him. Who was he?”
“Her husband. He was like a brother to me. You turned him after you ripped her throat out and made him watch her die.”
Roland looked at him sharply. “Who told you that?”
“He did.”
“He lied, Bastien. In all of my nine and a half centuries of living, I have never transformed a human.”
Bastien stared at him in confusion. He was telling the truth, or seemed to be. He hadn’t turned Blaise.
Then the rest of Roland’s words hit him. “Nine and a half centuries?”“Yes.”
“That’s impossible.”
“No, it isn’t. There is an immortal fighting your men right now who is millennia older than I. Immortals live far longer than vampires.”
“Because you kill them!” he countered, incensed.
“Not all of them,” he denied, annoyingly calm. “We aren’t everywhere, Bastien. Vampires have always dramatically outnumbered us, finding safe havens wherever they could thrive unchallenged. Even so, the oldest vampire I have ever heard mention of had been a vampire a mere seventy-nine years.”
“What of me? I was transformed two centuries ago.”
Roland sighed and, releasing his hold, stepped back. “You aren’t a vampire. You’re an immortal.”
Bastien almost laughed. “Now I know you’re lying.” He wasn’t an immortal. He hated immortals. Had despised them ever since he had found a hysterical Blaise weeping over Cat’s torn and bloody body and learned that an immortal had killed her.
“It’s true,” Sarah interjected softly.
When Bastien looked at her, he felt a stab of unease.
There was pity in her gaze.
“That’s why Roland and the others haven’t killed you. You’re one of them, Bastien. They just didn’t know it until after you attacked him.”
A sick feeling slithered through him as he recalled the way Roland had intentionally avoided striking a killing blow. Though he had scored numerous hits during the fight, not one of the wounds Roland had spawned was fatal.
“I’m a vampire,” he insisted. The fact that none of them had ever met another two-hundred-year-old vampire didn’t mean they didn’t exist. It couldn’t.
“You were different even as a human,” Roland went on, “possessed gifts or abilities you hid from others, gifts your friend Blaise did not.”
How did he know that?
“Perhaps you … read minds or can discern the emotions of others with a touch?”
Bastien’s heart began to pound.
Roland was studying him intently. “All immortals were different as humans. No doubt your sister had special gifts as well.”
She had. She had been born with psychometric abilities, receiving glimpses of past events that were related to objects she touched.
“Except immortals were never human,” Bastien uttered numbly. “Their … your DNA is different from ours.”
Roland’s gaze sharpened. “That isn’t common knowledge amongst vampires. How did you know that?”
“I took a sample of your blood, remember? I had it tested.”
Roland exchanged a grim glance with Sarah. “By whom?”
“A biochemist who is helping me search for a cure. He said you were different, that you aren’t human and never were.”
“If he didn’t say the same of you, then he hasn’t tested your blood yet.”
He hadn’t. Always nervous around Bastien, Keegan had said Casey’s blood would suffice.
“Have you ever met a vampire who had gifts like yours?”
Not one. But Bastien didn’t say so.
“All immortals possess them, though the gifts differ from person to person. They did not acquire them after the transformation. They were born with them, as you were.”
Sarah took a step forward, then stopped when Roland motioned for her to stay back. “You even look like them, Bastien. Same hair. Same eyes. Similar features.”
It sounded as if she thought he was lucky. What was that about?
Mentally, he shook himself. “It doesn’t matter whether I’m vampire or immortal.” The hell it didn’t. “Roland killed my sister and turned her husband. He—”
“I’ve never seen that woman before!” Roland shouted.
Sarah waved the sword to gain their attention. “Your friend told you Roland turned him?”
“Yes.”
“He mentioned Roland specifically by name?”
Roland made a sound of irritation. “He already said he did, Sarah.”
“No, he didn’t. I know you’re grumpy, honey, but be patient and let me finish.”
Bastien was shocked when Roland immediately backed down.
“Bastien, did your brother-in-law mention Roland by name when he told you what had happened and that he had been transformed?”
“He didn’t know Roland’s name then. Only his face.” He curled his lip as he eyed Roland distastefully. “He said he’d never forget it as long as he lived.”
Sarah spoke before Roland could. “When did he tell you it was Roland?”
“Five years later. We were in London. Blaise had been out feeding and returned white as a sheet. He said he had seen the one who’d turned him and, over the next two weeks, claimed the immortal was hunting him. The night Blaise was killed, I arrived as Roland was leaving and later uncovered his name myself.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient,” Roland said contemptuously. “For years, he couldn’t tell you who transformed him, then suddenly decided it was me when he realized I was hunting his sorry ass. Your friend was full of shit. He was slaughtering women in the rookery. When I followed the trail of bodies to him, he got scared and pointed his bloody finger at me, probably hoping you’d kill me.”
“Bullshit! He wasn’t the one killing women. You were!” And Roland had started by killing sweet Cat.
Roland emitted a mocking laugh. “I suppose he told you that, too?”
Bastien swung at him, wanting to knock the disparaging smile from Roland’s face.
Roland dodged his fist, then shoved him up against the wall again. Raising his sai, Roland pressed the tip to Bastien’s chest above his uninjured lung. “Did he also tell you I found him crouched over a pregnant woman whose throat was missing? Her blood was all over his face. Her pulse gone. The babe in her belly dead.”