Lucan’s violet stare was disconcerting. It seemed to see a great deal. Far more than it should have. Damien fought the urge to squirm. Finally, Lucan spoke, in a voice that was both resonant and cool.
“Something is wrong. Sammael has been taken, and Ariane is in danger.”
Damien stopped breathing at the words.
I should have been there. She asked me to come with her. I should have gone, damn it… I’m a fool, a bloody fool…
“What’s going on? What’s happened?” Damien’s words came out in a rush as he straightened and stepped closer to Lucan, his wariness of the Grigori vanishing in the face of the terrible knowledge that this had to be bad for Lucan to have sought him out.
These were not beings who overreacted.
“Shortly after I wakened, I felt my brother cry out to me.” For the first time, Lucan’s face changed, his expression shifting subtly. It was an unpleasant shock to see that the man was capable of fear after all.
“He has been taken below. I can no longer hear him. Whether he lives yet…” He trailed off, then shook his head. “The demon has truly wormed his way into Sariel’s mind. I fear Chaos has been allowed to waken. His sight reaches far. He will have seen what the Council members have waiting for Sariel, and warned him.” His eyes were burning, piercing things. “Ariane will not stand a chance. None of them will. They do not understand what he is.”
The words sent a sliver of ice directly through Damien’s heart. “Gods above and below… is he loose?” Damien rasped. “Has Sariel already set him loose?”
Lucan shook his head. “No. But it’s only a matter of time. We underestimated Chaos’s strength. Even half asleep, he has broken the one closest to him. Perhaps he would have managed it with any of us, had we chosen another to lead.” He sighed softly. “It’s too late to know.”
Damien tried to take it all in, all the implications. For the first time in memory, saving his own skin wasn’t the first thing he thought of. All he could see in his mind’s eye was Ariane, falling to a nightmare creature with raven wings. Terrified fury welled in his chest, so fast and powerful he felt as though it might tear a hole right through him.
“You bastard! You ignorant, pigheaded bastard! That thing is one of yours, isn’t it? Your brother! You kept him chained up and fed him people’s souls rather than do what you ought to have! This is your bloody fault, and now you’ve inflicted this mess on the rest of us!” He was shouting now, standing toe-to-toe with Lucan, his face turned up to the impassive giant.
“If anything happens to her, I swear I’ll find a way to destroy you. I’ll make sure your entire dynasty crumbles into dust. None of you will be safe. None of you.”
Lucan stared at him, his face contorting with momentary fury. Then, incredibly, he looked away.
“As unimpressed as I am with you, Shade, you speak the truth.”
Damien blinked. “What?”
“You speak the truth.” Lucan’s deep, melodious voice was strained. “When Chaos fell, he did it of his own free will. The destruction he caused was immense before we caught him, and by then he had found others to follow him. Dark things. Ones who fell so long ago that everything good had been consumed. In the beginning, we might have destroyed him, as we did the demons who didn’t go to ground quickly enough. But… he had been our brother. We thought perhaps, one day, he would return to us.” He closed his eyes. “That weakness may cost us everything.”
Damien bared his teeth. “You, and everyone else. You lot aren’t even human, are you? You never were. Not the ancients. Brother to a demon, all this about falling… you were never mortal.”
Lucan opened his eyes and looked at him, and Damien saw the truth.
“No wonder you can be so bloody formidable and still understand so little,” Damien spat, disgusted. He didn’t know where the Grigori had come from, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Every dynasty had been kissed by the gods, some of them very dark. A dynasty of creatures who were uncomfortably close to being gods had implications that he didn’t even want to consider right now. He had to stop what had been set in motion.
All that mattered was saving Ariane.
“What do we need to do?” Damien asked. “Get me to Ariane, right now. I don’t give a damn about Sammael—he’s the one who got her into this mess. But I won’t have her die.”
Even just saying the words out loud forced something to give way inside of him, the walls he’d built crumbling where they’d already cracked. He thought of his life before she had come, how it had often seemed as though all the music and color had leeched out of his existence. How nothing could fill him up, no matter how hard he tried. And then he had met Ariane, and everything had begun to change.
You offered her what you could, the self-interested voice deep within him hissed. You offered, and she rejected you. Get out of here, before you do something you can’t take back.
But he hadn’t offered what he could. He’d offered only that which he wasn’t afraid to, in return for the gift Ariane had offered: everything.
And in return, all she’d wanted, all she’d ever really wanted, was him. Such a simple and terrifying request, to share all the broken pieces of himself with another. But in that moment, Damien realized he wanted nothing more than that. He could think of no one he would rather entrust his heart to… the heart she alone had been able to remind him he had.
“I won’t have her die,” Damien said again, his voice breaking. “She’s mine.”
I love her.
But those last words remained unspoken. Those were for her.
Lucan looked at him, and Damien saw a flicker of what might have been some ancient and fathomless longing before it vanished, leaving the taciturn Grigori to give a curt nod.
“That is why I came. I was not impressed with Ariane’s choice, but… you share a bond now. You share blood. And you have a great deal of ability. The wolf and the cat are admirable, but they can’t reach the Council in time.”
“Can we?” Damien asked.
“I fear we may have to go on to the desert,” Lucan said. “The strength of the Council, and of Ariane, will be irresistible to Chaos. We have kept him weak. His Rising will require many souls, the more powerful, the better. That process, I fear, has already begun.”
“Hell,” Damien said. “He’ll take them all.”
Lucan’s eyes turned bleak. “If he rises, there are others he will wake—”
“No,” Damien snapped. Everything in him, every fiber of his being, was screaming at him to get to Ariane now. “We stop this, end of story.”
“Then come,” Lucan said. “I will carry you. We’ve wasted enough time.”
Damien followed Lucan toward the stairs, knowing they were heading for the roof. He tried to take comfort in his skill, in the weight of the daggers sitting at his hips. Neither had ever truly failed him. But he had never tried to stop a demon that might be impossible to kill.
For the first time, he fully embraced the bond he’d forged with Ariane, not just physical, but mental. Those vampires who shared a mark could communicate without words. And in all the world, he and Ariane were the only two who wore both the Grigori wings and the Cait Sith cats. They had shared blood. She wasn’t just his… he was hers.
Ariane, he thought, shouting the silent message to her with all the ability he had. I’m coming. Be careful. I’m sorry… and I’m on my way.
Ariane huddled in the small, hidden alcove behind one of the many tapestries lining the circular stone room beneath Vlad’s mansion. It wasn’t comfortable, and she was terrified someone was going to turn around and point accusingly right at where she was hiding, but so far so good.
The room was lit by what looked to be a very old, very large iron chandelier hung from the ceiling. Beyond that, the room contained only the tapestries on the wall and five long, curved benches with crimson velvet cushions arranged in a broken circle around the middle of the room.
Upon the cushioned benches sat the leaders of the American-based vampire dynasties, with the exception of Sariel.
He was late. And as the hour grew later, the tension in the room had increased. Sariel had been a constant presence at the Council, never shirking his duties. He had assured Vlad he would come tonight, aware as any of them how important the future of the Empusae was. And yet… nothing.
Ariane shifted uneasily. She’d been warned not to emerge until Sariel had been contained, but she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. To stop herself from going over all the things that could go wrong again, she moved the heavy fabric just enough so that she could look out again.
She saw Lily and Ty talking quietly to one another. Across from them, giving the pair the most openly poisonous glare Ariane had ever seen, was a beautiful, exotic woman with kohl-rimmed eyes and jet-black hair cut in a sleek bob. She wore a sleeveless low-cut top of red silk and skinny black pants… and a great deal of gold jewelry that managed to set off her dark beauty instead of overpowering it. Arsinöe, as intimidating in real life as she was whispered to be in legend. On either side of her were people Ariane assumed were favored courtiers, a man and woman, sleek and beautiful and silent, each wearing black with a splash of red. Beside them were three women, including Diana, who wore diaphanous chitons, short togas of pure white that fastened over one shoulder with a golden clip. They whispered nervously among themselves, and Ariane didn’t think any of the three were Mormo. And finally there was Vlad, leonine in a dark charcoal suit and a tie that matched his eyes, standing and speaking to Ludo, who nodded at whatever he had said and vanished through the arched doorway to the left.
Arsinöe appeared to have had enough.
“Vlad,” she purred, and Ariane could hear the venom running just beneath the surface of her words, “we’ve all taken time out of our schedules for this with very little notice. Sariel has either found something better to do, or he suspects what will happen to him if he shows himself. Either way, the result is the same. There are enough of us here to do what must be done. If Sariel wishes to be hunted, he shall have it. So if the Empusa hasn’t died, do you think we could get on with it?”