16
The next evening, Astarion dressed carefully for the nightly hunt.
He was in the rare good mood that came from having successfully pulled off a heist, coupled with the fact that Cazador had been closeted in his study all night and the spawn had been left to their own devices.
He smoothed his embroidered jacket over his hips, adjusted the cuffs, and ran a hand through his hair.
It was a damn shame that he couldn’t see himself in a mirror. When I am finally made a true vampire, I shall keep a tame doppelganger on staff to mimic me so that I know precisely how good I look.
The unpleasant little voice in the back of his head pointed out that it was likely he’d never be made into a true vampire, but Astarion was in too good a mood and tuned it out.
Perhaps tonight he could even begin a hunt the old-fashioned way. A slow seduction, over the course of days or tendays. Like the early years, when Cazador expected only one or two victims a month, when a hunt involved craftsmanship, not simply leading drunken boors to their doom.
Like when he’d met—
Ah ah ah. He caught himself mentally before he could start down that road. It would spoil his pleasant mood. Don’t do that to yourself, darling. Focus on the hunting, and how good you’ll look doing it.
Astarion’s good cheer lasted until he turned down the corridor that led to the outside world and ran into an invisible brick wall. Then it ran out of him like blood from a slashed artery.
He knew immediately what had happened, but he tested the wall anyway. His hand went through the space in front of him just fine, but if he tried to walk forward, the air became as solid as stone.
Cazador had revoked his permission to leave the palace.
Dread rose up inside him as if some small, sharp-toothed creature were gnawing on the underside of his stomach. It might be nothing, he told himself. It might be that he had something else he wants me to do. It was just that the things he wanted Astarion to do almost always ended in screaming.
“It’s not just you,” Aurelia said, coming out of nowhere with a stealth that would have been alarming if he wasn’t so distracted. “Seems to be everyone.”
Astarion relaxed, but only slightly. Personalized attention was the worst, but there were only a few reasons that Cazador would want his spawn confined to the palace, and almost all of them were bad.
He might be bored and want to amuse himself by having the spawn act out torturous tableaus.
He might have found or manufactured some betrayal and wanted the others to watch the punishment he meted out.
Conceivably, he could have made a new spawn and wants to introduce us, but he only made Dalyria a few years ago.
And someone always winds up being humiliated for the new spawn’s edification, so that’s not the best scenario, either.
Regardless of the reason, there were a dozen ways out of Szarr Palace, and all of them were closed until Cazador gave his children leave to hunt again.
“I suppose we should go see what the old man wants,” he said, straightening his jacket. “Since he’s gone to so much trouble to keep us at home.”
Aurelia undoubtedly knew that his bravado was false, but as with so many other things, she said nothing. She simply fell into step beside him, garnet eyes as unreadable as ever.
He glanced over and saw the thin scar on the side of her neck. It vanished under the collar of her shirt, but he knew just how far down it went and exactly where it crossed the shoulder blade.
Aurelia had taken him to her bed half a dozen times, in the earliest days.
Not even Astarion’s well-trained ego could make him believe that he had seduced her.
It hadn’t felt like pity sex so much as mutual comfort, as if the sex were merely something they had to get through so that they could hold each other in the dark.
Like everything else in Szarr Palace, though, comfort had to be rationed out so that it could not be used against you.
It had been a long time now, and Astarion, at least, would rather sleep alone.
“Perhaps it has something to do with his dinner guest the other evening,” Aurelia said, breaking into his thoughts.
Astarion considered this. “I don’t know that that would be a good thing.”
“No,” Aurelia said somberly. “No, neither do I.”
* * *
—
They entered the great hall together, which from Aurelia might be a subtle show of solidarity or simply the fact that they had both arrived at the same time.
Cazador’s throne was empty. Violet was already there, sitting upside down in a chair with her legs draped over the back.
“?’Starion!” she crowed in her grating little-girl voice. “Aurry!”
Aurelia inclined her head a fraction of an inch in what might have been acknowledgment. Astarion ignored her completely.
“Wine,” he observed quietly, “but no food.” He did not need to say that it was a bad sign. Lack of food meant that Cazador was not planning a normal family evening, and that very rarely boded well.
Violet sat up. In a much more normal voice, she said, “I saw that, too.”
Aurelia picked up one of the goblets of wine and sniffed it, then dipped her tongue into the burgundy liquid. “If it’s drugged, I can’t tell.”
The three of them drew together, animosity briefly abandoned in the face of their common enemy.
Violet may be a wolf in spoiled brat’s clothing, but she understands what might happen next.
He had a vivid memory of Violet gazing down at a pile of her own severed fingers, her face dead white, her lips trembling.
It was Yousen who had coaxed her into laying her mangled hands flat on the table and who had set the fingers next to their corresponding stumps, Yousen who had held a cup of blood to her lips until the healing power could take effect and knit together bone and flesh.
She had never forgiven Yousen for helping her, and poor wretched Yousen would never understand why.
“Do you think he’s come up with something new?” Violet asked quietly.
Aurelia turned her burnt-garnet eyes on the other vampire spawn. “We thought perhaps it was related to his guest the other evening.”
“You spent more time with him than the rest of us,” Astarion said.
Violet shot him a brief burning glance. “Jealous?”
He feigned a yawn. “I can’t say I was terribly impressed with his technique.”
Violet started to reply hotly, but Aurelia set down her goblet, the clink of metal on marble ringing like a shout. Violet and Astarion watched the tiefling prowl around the throne, eyes narrowed, looking for clues.
Perhaps it shamed Violet, or perhaps she simply realized how little time they had left until someone else arrived. “He was in service to Mephistopheles, but that was all he could say. Apparently, Mephistopheles and Father are conducting…negotiations.”
Aurelia’s head came up at that. Her face was still as calm as ever, but her slit pupils expanded until her eyes were nearly black. “That is not welcome news.”
“You know of him?”
“A high lord of Hell.” She shrugged, and Astarion might have been fooled by the casual gesture if her eyes had not still been dilated into obsidian. “Any bargain he makes will come with a heavy price.”
Violet swallowed hard, and Astarion guessed she was only now realizing that it might not have been wise to come to the attention of one of the archdevil’s minions.
A wash of cologne heralded the arrival of Petras. Violet immediately rounded on him, smiling her girlish smile. “Petras! Have you come to play?”
“Save it.” Petras stalked into the room, trailing a cloud of cologne after him. Of course it would be sandalwood and musk. How very cliché.
“A new scent, brother?”
Petras picked up a cup of wine. “What if it is?”
“It suits you.”
The spawn frowned slightly, clearly trying to find the insult hiding in Astarion’s words. “It’s from the perfumer in the Temples District.”
“I shall have to make note of them.” And avoid them like the plague.
Petras took a swallow of wine and picked nonexistent lint off his sleeve. “I take it no one else could leave, either.”
“I couldn’t,” Yousen said, materializing seemingly out of the wall. It was one of the rock gnome’s more annoying habits. Astarion wondered how long he’d been there. Of course, I’d avoid being alone with Violet, too, if I were him.
“I wonder what Father has planned,” Petras said.
“We have been wondering that, too.” Astarion drifted across the room, seemingly at random, to a position that put Petras between him and the throne.
The spawn stood in gloomy silence for a moment. Then all five lifted their heads, almost in unison, and turned toward the door.
“Most excellent,” Cazador said, striding in. “You are all here. I have the most marvelous plan for you.”
Dalyria followed him, carrying a small chest. Astarion watched her expression closely. He was expecting a grim set to her lips, but she looked oddly…pleased?
“Set it down there, my dear.” Cazador gestured, and Dalyria placed the chest on the marble table that held the wine, flipping up the lid. Cazador reached in and pulled out an empty glass tube.
“It has occurred to me,” the vampire said, turning the tube between his fingers, “that it has been a long time since I have made a new vampire.”
Six sets of eyes were immediately riveted on him. Astarion ran his tongue across the points of his fangs. Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t this.
“But you are all so dear to me, my children. How can I choose who shall be first among you?”
“Me!” squealed Violet, clapping her hands. “Oh, me, me, me, Father!”
“Patience, daughter.” Cazador smiled indulgently. “I cannot possibly choose among my children. But dear Dalyria”—he leaned over and ran his fingernails up her throat, as if stroking a cat—“has given me a perfect idea.”
Astarion switched his attention to Dalyria.
She wasn’t looking at Cazador. She was looking at the empty vial he held with the same expression of desire and fear of disappointment that she had worn when Astarion delivered the unicorn blood.
The same look Sebastian had worn, more than a century ago, when Astarion sat down at his table and smiled—
Stop that. You can wallow in self-pity some other time, when the old bastard isn’t talking about making someone a vampire.
“What unites us?” Cazador asked, beginning to pace back and forth in front of his throne. “What force is it that brought us together as a family?”
You, you sadistic old goat. Fortunately, this appeared to be a rhetorical question, because Cazador turned suddenly to face his spawn, his cloak flaring dramatically.
“Blood, of course. It is the blood that brought us together and made us what we are. And thus, it is the blood that will decide who among you will be the first to become a true vampire.”
The room was so utterly silent that Astarion didn’t think his fellow spawn were even breathing.
“Ah…” Cazador said, clearly enjoying drawing out the suspense.
He picked up a goblet and drank from it, lips stained sanguine.
“Delicious, of course. But so familiar. I have tasted virtually every vintage that Baldur’s Gate has to offer. Elf, orc, human, dwarf…They all begin to blend together. What I long for now is something new.”
He brandished the vial in his hand, a slow smile spreading across his face.
“Each of you will take a vial from this box. And in…hmm…let us say five days’ time, you will return it to me, filled with blood. The enchantment upon the vials shall keep it as fresh as when it was taken from the vein.”
His smile grew, showing his fangs. “Bring me the most precious blood that you can. I want to taste angels, unicorns, kings. The bearer of the most exquisite vial…”
Cazador spread his hands. “Well. I think I have made myself clear, have I not?”
Dead silence reigned for an instant, then the spawn scrambled for the wooden box. Violet tried to snatch up two vials, and Astarion’s hand closed over her wrist like a vise. She snarled at him, and he bared his teeth. “Dear sister, you simply must learn to share.”
He plucked the extra vial from her fingers and released her, pleased to see the livid marks he’d left behind. She rubbed her wrist and glared. “There’s no point in Yousen having one,” she muttered. “Or Dalyria. What are they going to do, walk down the street and beg for handouts?”
Astarion half suspected she was right, but he certainly wasn’t going to let Violet have multiple chances at true vampirehood.
Yousen and Dalyria had grabbed their vials from the box while Astarion tackled Violet, and they were rapidly fleeing for the door.
Astarion glanced around and realized that he and Violet were in danger of being left alone with Cazador, a situation with a great deal of potential, all of it dreadful.
He sauntered toward the door, turned, and swept his most dramatic bow to the vampire lord.
If he’d been wearing the ridiculous hat he’d taken from the bard, its feathers would have brushed the floor.
And then he was through the doorway, and the only things standing between him and freedom were five siblings and a source of exotic blood.
* * *