“. . . not . . . ’etrayal . . .” Ian got out, the words garbled.
Vlad’s grip on his throat didn’t loosen. I touched his arm. “At least let him explain.” Then I gave Ian a warning look. “And it had better be good.”
After a moment, Vlad let go of Ian’s neck. “Talk.”
Ian rubbed his throat where a blistered handprint now faded as his skin healed with vampiric swiftness. “For starters, I didn’t tell you because you gave me no other choice.”
I braced for Vlad to blow Ian to kingdom come, but all he did was say, “These may be your last words, so choose them well.”
“You’re used to being the most powerful person in the room, but in this world, you’re not,” Ian said, sound highly irritated. “Not that you’d take my word for it. That’s why I took you to a place with more posers than practitioners. Knew you’d storm in with your ‘I’m Vlad the Impaler, bow before me’ approach, and you didn’t disappoint. You also didn’t listen when I told you not to kill Elena, and you wouldn’t have listened if I’d warned you about her fail-safe. Besides all that”—a shrug—“if we couldn’t survive a mid-level practitioner’s booby trap, we bloody well couldn’t survive real sorcerers. Now that we have, perhaps you’ll heed my advice instead of continuing to assume that you know more about this world than I do.”
Vlad stared at Ian. Ian stared back, oozing a mixture of aggravation and defiance. On one hand, I wanted to kill Ian myself for his show-don’t-tell approach that had almost ended all our lives tonight. On the other hand . . .
“He’s right,” I said, shooting Vlad an apologetic glance. “You probably wouldn’t have listened if Ian had warned you in advance. For that matter, I wouldn’t have, either. How would I know a mid-level witch could cause the ground to swallow half a city block? We’re both learning as we go, so for now, we need to trust that Ian knows better than we do.”
Vlad didn’t say anything. At last, he smiled at Ian. Not his charming, you’re-about-to-die grin, but a flash of teeth that struck me as one predator acknowledging another.
“You are correct,” he said. “I would’ve assumed cowardice made you exaggerate Elena’s abilities since Mencheres had to force you into accompanying us. But since he did trust you for this task, I suppose I should’ve known there was more to you than the insipid whore you present yourself to be.”
Instead of being insulted, Ian smiled almost flirtatiously. “Oh, I am all the whore you can imagine and more, but I do have other talents. Few people see them, although you and your lovely wife are about to.”
“Then for now, we’ll follow your lead, and you’ll take us to where the true sorcerers gather,” Vlad replied, his tone silky with challenge. “Once there, we will see if any of your supposed other talents can actually impress me.”
If there was any good news about our disastrous visit to Selenites, it was that we were probably the only people to make it out alive. In addition to decimating the underground bar, Elena’s spell had also claimed most of the city block above it, so the human bartender and the customers at the decoy bar had died, too. Thus, it was doubtful that anyone knew Ian had shown up at Selenites with one vampire who could manifest fire and another who could electrocute people. Our secret partnership with Ian was safe.
Then again, even if word had filtered out, no one would believe we were the same people in The Pirate’s House parking lot in Savannah, Georgia, with Ian the next night. For starters, Vlad now looked like a short-haired redhead with a square face, a crooked nose, and light blue eyes. His lean, muscular frame had also expanded to a stocky build, and he’d lost over an inch in height. I, too, had a new face complete with shoulder-length blond hair, brown eyes, pouty lips, and a body with even more curves than Marilyn Monroe.
Ian had brushed off my admiration over his appearance-altering spell, saying that “glamour” was only mid-level magic and the effects would wear off by dawn. Since glamour wasn’t rare magic, he had reminded us that we needed something else to disguise ourselves. Something no one would question.
“Unless you want the sorcerers you seek to know that you’re swimming in their waters, we need to hide your identities, agreed?” Ian had asked the night before.
“Of course,” Vlad had said impatiently. “But I’m known to many people, as Klaus proved, and since vampires can spot theater makeup or a mask, I assume real sorcerers can spot those, too.”
“Oh, easily,” Ian had agreed.
Vlad’s gaze had narrowed. “I am not staying behind, if that’s what you’re hinting at.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ian had replied with a smirk.
That smirk had raised my suspicions. “You know a way around this, don’t you?” I asked.
“First, let’s establish that you’d do anything to find a sorcerer strong enough to break the spell on your wife, yes?” Ian said, not answering my question.
“Yes,” Vlad replied without hesitation.
“Depends,” I amended. When Ian’s smirk widened into a full-fledged grin, I knew that my suspicions were well founded.
So here I was, about to play my role as part of a happy, horny threesome. As Ian reminded us, no one would believe that the homicidally possessive Vlad the Impaler would be into such a thing. Hell, Vlad had blown a guy’s head off for merely grabbing my ass, and I’m sure word of that had made the undead rounds because he’d done it in front of hundreds of people.