A Kiss of Blood(47)

Guards opened the doors to him, bowing with deference, their expressions tense and unhappy though respect filled their eyes.

"Arturo," each murmured warmly.

"Gil, Jorge." Arturo entered the mansion's ivory marble foyer, surprised at the lack of activity and stunned by the fear hanging heavy in the air. He'd expected anxiety, yes. It was the equinox. But this was different. This was dark and rancid, the fear of vampires, not humans. And never had he tasted its like within these walls.

He followed the sound of low voices coming from the billiards room, accompanied by the tap of cue to ball and found, in addition to the two playing pool, half a dozen vampires lazing atop the velvet benches like whores after a good night. But there was no sense of happy repletion in the air. Nothing but that thick taste of fear.

Cristoff's angry shout carried from above, followed quickly by a man's cry of agony, and Arturo understood. Cristoff was a pain-feeder and fed well on the Slavas he brought in several times a day for his pleasure. But this cry was no feeding. And he'd wager the victim was no Slava. No, Cristoff released his fury on the guards he blamed for losing the sorceress.

At the far end of the billiards room, staring out the window, he caught sight of Bram and went to talk to his friend.

Bram heard him approach, threw back the whiskey in his glass, and turned to him. His gray eyes had a bloodshot, slightly wild look that Arturo didn't like. Blood splattered his gunmetal gray T-shirt and his jeans. And while vampire beards grew slowly, Bram had a healthy stubble that spoke of weeks of ignoring a razor, which was so unlike this male.

"Did you find her?" Bram growled, his mouth compressed, his jaw tight as if it had become welded in that position over the past two years.

"Briefly." Even a few weeks ago, he'd never have lied to him, one of his most trusted friends, but Bram was too close to Cristoff these days, and he couldn't risk it. "She was hiding at Fabian's Palace, but she's acquired the ability to disappear, and I lost her again."

"Dammit." Bram lifted his empty glass to his mouth, then scowled, clearly forgetting he'd already tossed back its contents. Instead, he threw the glass at the pool table, shattering it into a hundred pieces.

"Amico mio," Arturo said quietly.

"I'm losing it, Ax." Bram ran both hands through close-cropped dark hair. "We're all losing it, Cristoff most of all. Even when he's not punishing anyone, he's feeding almost constantly, now. Blood, pain. Mostly pain. It's an illness, Ax. He can't stop."

"And you?" Arturo asked carefully.

"I'm not as far gone, not nearly. But the hunger grows. The more I'm around him, the more I feed, and the hungrier I become."

"Leave here. At least for a while."

"I have. I do. I wander the streets, but the hunger no longer comes upon me as a slow thing but hits me like a hammer. I'm suddenly violently hungry, with little control. I need pain. And I won't cause it, Ax. I can't."

Arturo squeezed his friend's shoulder. "I know. I'm glad. It tells me your soul has not been compromised."

"Not my soul perhaps, not yet. But I'm losing my fucking mind. If this doesn't stop soon, I'm going to turn into as much of a raving sadist as our master."

"I'll find the sorceress. I'll see the magic renewed. I promise."

"If you don't . . . if you can't . . . don't let me become like him." Bram's gaze caught Arturo's, hard as steel. "Promise me, Ax. If I start causing the pain, you will end this worthless excuse for a life of mine. And you can do it. We both know it. Promise me."

Arturo nodded. "It won't come to that."

"I hope not."

As Bram turned away, Arturo retraced his steps through the billiards room. As he crossed the foyer to the stairs, a second male began to scream, his cries in stereo with the first. Two of them. Below the males' cries, he could hear the softer sounds of female agony. An agony that weighed on his soul. When had he begun to block out the sounds of others' suffering? How had he gone so long without feeling . . . and not known it?

In a way, he missed that numbness. Life was far easier for a man . . . a creature . . . who must feed from humans when he couldn't feel the suffering of others. But that wasn't the man he was. Nor was it the man he wished to be.

With heavy steps, he climbed the stairs and strode down the hall to the massive doors of Cristoff's throne room. Stepping inside, he took in the sight, blinking, careful not to reveal his shock. Four of Cristoff's vampire guards had been strung up by their wrists. Two of them had been assholes loyal to Ivan even before the failing of the magic. Two had once been honorable males. Blood ran from the ears of all four, dripping from their jawbones onto their shoulders.

Six more guards stood at attention around the throne room, their backs ramrod straight, fear sharp in their eyes. For once, no other vampire joined their master in this feeding. The room was empty but for Cristoff and his guards.

Cristoff stood with his back to the door, facing his captives. As Arturo watched, the vampire master lifted his hands.

"Where is the sorceress?" he shouted, his voice hot with fury.

The captives eyed him with varying degrees of terror and resignation. But all were clearly in agony.

"I don't know," one gasped. "I had nothing to do with her disappearance."

In response, Cristoff raised his hands and pressed his fingers against the male's forehead. Seconds later, the guard was screaming at the tops of his lungs, the blood gushing from his ears and nose.

No wonder fear hung thick on the air throughout the castle. Every member of the kovena worried that he or she could be the next to hang from those chains as Cristoff sought his traitor.

Guilt lashed Arturo that innocent men were suffering for his own actions. He couldn't confess, not with Quinn's life on the line. But perhaps he could distract.

"Master."

Cristoff whirled on him, a wild gleam in his eyes that punched Arturo in the gut. A gleam quickly masked.

"News," Cristoff snapped.

Arturo spun his lies as quickly and cleanly as always. "I found the sorceress in Fabian Neptune's palace."

Cristoff's eyes lit with excitement. "You have her."

"No. She's acquired power, a gift of invisibility, or perhaps phasing. But she escaped, disappearing into thin air."

Cristoff's jaw turned to granite, his eyes narrowing, his face growing red with fury, and Arturo began to wonder if he, too, might soon be joining the guards hanging from the rafters.

Instead, the vampire master whirled back and palmed the heads of the two whom Arturo knew to have been decent males at one time. The pair screamed with an agony Arturo had rarely heard. The agony of having one's brain fried by a mind blast.

But Cristoff wasn't simply making them suffer this time. He held on to them as their screams intensified, as first one, then the other, fell unconscious.

No, not unconscious. Cristoff stepped back and Arturo watched, stunned, as the limp forms of the guards disintegrated, one after the other. Dead. He'd killed them, two of his own.

The fear of those watching surged a hundredfold.

Cristoff strode to the other two. "Tell me where she is!" But though they professed not to know, Cristoff palmed their heads as he had the first pair, and moments later, they, too, were gone.

The room turned silent as a tomb, terror pulsing beneath the hush. Slowly, Cristoff turned back to Arturo. "Where is she?"

Arturo met his master's gaze with a fa?ade of calm certainty. "She's gone back to the real world. I nearly caught her this morning, then lost her when the sunbeams broke through, and she escaped through one of them."

"You saw it with your own eyes. Her escape from thin air." As Cristoff stared at him, the hot fury slowly left his eyes to be replaced with something far more disturbing. The gleam of fanaticism. Madness.

"I did."

"And did you see her disappear?"

"No. She was in the room, a small windowless bedchamber. There was no escape. And yet when I turned around, she was gone."

Inexplicably, Cristoff grinned, then motioned Arturo to follow as he strode toward the back hallway.

His pulse pounding unsteadily, Arturo complied. With his mind blast, Cristoff had always been one of the most deadly vampires alive. But he'd been calm, fair, and intensely loyal to his own. Today, he'd proved himself none of those things. Deadly, unpredictable, dangerous, now, in the extreme. And Arturo knew he'd been sliding toward this for a long time. Arturo had simply been unable to see it.

Cristoff led him to his own private bathing room, a room Arturo had once enjoyed the comforts of on a regular basis. The room was furnished in bright blue tile with fixtures of gold, the bath more pool than tub, a good ten foot by ten foot square. Steam rose from the citrus-scented water, and around the tub stood four scantily clad female Slavas, their jeweled nipples peeking out from beneath sheer sleeveless gowns.

Cristoff stripped off his robe and sank into the water. As he leaned back against the side with a sigh, he motioned to Arturo.

"Join me, mio figlio leale." My loyal son.

His heart heavy from what he'd just witnessed, Arturo sat on a nearby stool to pull off his boots.

"Tell me about the sorceress," Cristoff said, resting his arms along the sides of the tub, his tone warm. "Tell me everything."

Arturo undressed slowly as he took a moment to collect his thoughts, to decide what Cristoff really wanted to know, and to plan his lies. Then he slid into the heated pool across from his master until their legs were parallel, though not touching. One of the Slavas knelt at Arturo's side and began soaping his chest with soft, slender hands. Slender hands through which he felt no sunshine; hands that left him cold.