“Shit,” Ashwini muttered. “Now she’s making me feel sorry for her.”
“Don’t,” Janvier said. “She made her choice. Now she’s trying to manipulate you.”
“Of course she is.” Ashwini smiled at the look he shot her. “Monique here is hoping I’ll stand up for her against Nazarach, which’ll likely get me killed and take the spotlight off her.”
A chill silence from the back. Then, “You’re smarter than you look, Guild Hunter.”
“Gee, thanks.” Snorting, she rotated her shoulders to resettle her bones. “They teach us well at Guild Academy. Know what one of the first rules of hunting is?”
“Enlighten me.” Ice dripped off the words.
“Never, ever, feel sorry for a vampire. They’ll take that pity and use it to rip out your throat, smiling all the while.”
“I was as human as you a year ago,” Monique said.
“The operative word is ‘was.’” She took out her cell phone. “Now you’ve been Made, and now you’re what Nazarach Made you.”
The angel was pleased to hear that his pet had been retrieved. “Bring her here, Guild Hunter. We have matters to discuss… and I’m sure she’s most anxious to reunite with her family.”
Ashwini recognized Antoine Beaumont and Simone Deschanel from their photos. Yet in none of the images she’d seen had their faces been sheened with a slick coating of pure, animal terror. Antoine hid it well, but his entire being was focused on the angel who stood so relaxed at the windows opposite the royal blue sofa where the other two sat. Simone, fragrant and sexy in a bright red dress, wasn’t as good at hiding her emotions. Her hands twisted over and over in her lap, while her eyes tracked Nazarach’s every tiny movement.
When Ashwini and Janvier walked in with Monique—having made one very quick pit stop to buy her a pair of jeans and a T-shirt—Antoine’s eyes jerked toward his many-times-removed granddaughter, but Simone continued to keep her gaze on the most dangerous predator in the room.
“Monique,” Nazarach said in a gentle voice that wrapped around Ashwini’s throat like a noose. “Come here, my sweet.”
The golden-haired vampire walked toward her master on halting feet. “Sire, I didn’t choose to break my Contract. Please believe me.”
“Hmm.” His eyes lifted up. “What say you, hunter?”
Ashwini forced herself to speak through the tightness in her throat. “I’ve done my task. My job ends with her return.”
“So politic.” Putting a hand on Monique’s head as she went to her knees in front of him, Nazarach smiled. “It matters little. I will have my answers. And you’ll stay for the banquet, of course.”
“I need to return to my duties at the Guild.”
Amber eyes held her frozen. “That was not an invitation, Guild Hunter.”
“He has no right to keep me here,” Ashwini muttered as she sat brushing her drying hair while Janvier examined his face in the mirror. Having showered and cleaned up, he looked even more gaunt than he had in the car, his cheekbones vicious blades against his skin. “How much blood do you need?”
“Enough that it’ll have to be direct from the vein this time. Stronger, richer, more nourishing.”
Her hand tightened on the handle of the brush. “Audrina?”
“If she offers.” A fluid shrug. “Would you ever offer, cher?”
“If you were dying in front of me, yeah.”
A small smile, his lips thin with strain. “You surprise me again. But no, I want no blood from you—not until we’re both sweaty and na**d and you’re screaming my name.”
Her mind formed the image far too easily, a hot, tangled thing that made inner muscles tighten in damp readiness. “Confident of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I simply know what I want.” Those bayou-born eyes took inventory of her from head to toe, with several lingering stops in between. “And as I said, there’s pleasure in a bite.”
She wondered if she could crave his touch any more than she did now. “It’s a temporary high.” A temporary madness.
“Not at orgasm,” he murmured. “Then, it makes the pleasure multiply and grow and grow until it takes over your entire self.”
Body starting to rebel against her control, she pointed the brush at him. “Go, feed. I need you healthy if we’re going to survive this banquet.”
“You trust me to come to your aid?”
“No. I just want to be able to use you as a shield—right now you’re barely wide enough to hide half of me.” And yet, in spite of it all, he was starkly handsome. As if he’d been stripped down to his very essentials.
“You are right.” Straightening, he headed toward the door. “When I return, we’ll talk. Nazarach’s banquets have a way of turning deadly without warning.”
Janvier’s words tumbled around and around in her head as she walked through the doors to the banquet room, the long table piled high with foodstuffs and bottles that gleamed dark red. Food and blood.
And flesh.
Monique kneeled demurely at Nazarach’s side where the angel sat in the chair at the head of the table, talking to Antoine. The former hostage, her hair a sheet of beaten gold, was dressed in an elegant dress that screamed couture. The vivid crimson fabric managed to cover her torso and leave the rest of her bare, while skirting away from appearing trashy.
Monique wasn’t the only one on display. Simone sat to Antoine’s left and she, too, was dressed like an invitation. In fact, all the female vampires around the table were clothed in a similar high-class, high-sex style except for T-shirt–clad Perida, who sat next to Callan. The enforcer’s gaze was pure molten fury when she spied Ashwini.
But Ashwini was more concerned about the fact that Nazarach had invited both factions—either he’d decided to end the standoff… or he was planning to play the most lethal of games.
The angel looked up at that moment, amber eyes filled with such screams that she wondered how he could sleep. “Guild Hunter.” He waved her toward a seat midpoint on the table. Janvier already sat on the opposite side, having been summoned earlier.
The tightness in her chest relaxed at seeing him unharmed. As she took her seat, she realized Nazarach had put her and Janvier right in the middle—to better hear and spread the word of his decisions, his cruelties? It was, she was forced to admit, an efficient method of getting the message across. No need to kill hundreds. Do one viciously enough and no one would dare rise up against you again.
The man next to Ashwini waited until Nazarach’s attention was elsewhere before speaking. “Bringing my sister back was the worst move you’ve ever made.”
Looking into that electric blue gaze, that perfect skin, she raised her eyebrows. “Is that a threat?”
“Of course not.” Frédéric Beaumont’s eyes were glacial when they met hers. “I’d never threaten a hunter Nazarach holds in favor.”
“Smart guy.” And he’d rip out her throat the instant he thought he could get away with it. That didn’t mean she couldn’t use him. “You’re into weapons, I hear.”
To his credit, Frédéric followed the abrupt shift in topic with ease. “Yes.”
“Do you know where I could get some handheld grenade launchers?”
A slight pause. “May I ask why you need them?”
“Just thinking they might come in useful one day.” The dreams had been odd, fragmented. All she could really remember was thinking that grenade launchers sure would’ve come in handy. And given her dreams… “I like to be prepared.”
“I may have the name of a supplier for you.” Frédéric continued to stare at her. “You’re slightly out of step with the world, aren’t you, hunter?”
“Or the world’s out of step with me,” she said as Janvier caught her eye.
Warning blazed in the green depths she was used to seeing filled with laughter, and the strength of it chilled her to the soul. Whatever the hell Nazarach had planned, Ashwini really didn’t want to be here for it. Briefly, she considered calling in the Guild pullout, but why put Kenji and Baden in danger if Nazarach only wanted her and Janvier as his audience?
A sudden pure silence.
Ashwini knew things had begun even before she turned to see Nazarach raising a wineglass. “To intelligent conversation and new beginnings.”
It took her a few seconds to figure out why those words drenched the room in fear. Antoine and Callan sat opposite each other, the old guard and the new. Only one, she thought, was meant to come out of this alive. “Survival of the fittest,” she muttered to herself.
But Frédéric answered. “Not always.” Leaning close, he brushed her shoulder with his. “Sometimes, it’s survival of those who can play the game best.”
She turned to him. “Your sister will get herself killed unless she learns.”
Full lips curved. “Monique is very good at making men do what she wants.”
“Yes, but Nazarach isn’t a man. And I think she might forget that one day.”
Two slow blinks. “She won’t die. Not tonight. Nazarach will humiliate her into submission and that will be enough.”
Ashwini heard an undercurrent of anger in his voice, and it was understandable, but there was something else, something that made her hidden senses recoil. Following his sensual gaze as it stroked over the bare curve of Monique’s shoulder, she shook her head. “Please tell me what I’m thinking is wrong.”
“Everyone else will die,” Frédéric whispered, his refined voice sandpaper against her skin. “It’s better to choose companions from those who’ll remain for eternity.”
Putting down her water glass, she swallowed her gorge. “That’s a unique way of thinking.”