Chapter 12 #2
Her nostrils flared as she drew in the scent, her attention focused on his cut. Then she seemed to refocus, shaking her head a bit and stepping back with an odd smile.
He was certain he was in no imminent danger of anything more than Lerina’s nonstop chatter and further displays of temper.
Moldavi had to be behind this, and Dimitri presumed the man would want to have a moment of glory in front of his victim before otherwise dispatching him—or whatever his plan was.
“Since you won’t ask me, I’ll tell you all,” Lerina announced.
“Just the basics, please. No need to…embroider the details.” He was finding it more difficult to remain easy and keep his voice strong.
Annoyance flared in her eyes, a bright glow ringing blue irises. “Very well,” she said, mercifully stepping back. Her hand fluttered as she posed for what promised to be a dramatic soliloquy.
“Cezar ensured I was made Dracule,” she said, as if it were some great pronouncement.
When he gave no discernible reaction—he would have rolled his eyes if he’d had the energy—her mouth tightened and then she continued, “I wanted you to sire me, Dimitri. We would have lived very happily together for eternity. But you refused.”
“Thank the Fates,” he muttered.
Her face darkened again. “You always were a testy, cutting person,” she said. “Attractive as you are in…other ways. It’s no wonder Meg left you after she got what she wanted. But I would have stayed. All you needed was to make me immortal, and I would have loved you forever.”
Dimitri ignored the stab of surprise and pain at her easy mention of Meg. More than one hundred thirty years, and the memory of his foolish love could still twist his belly. Because of the foolishness, not so much the love.
“Cezar heard it from Meg, and then he told me the entire story. About how you pulled her out of the fire and as you both were lying there, dying, you asked for help. You’d give anything for you both to survive. Such a romantic sentiment, Dimitri, darling.”
He resisted the urge to close his eyes against the image.
But the memory, though vague, hadn’t fully left him.
What he’d believed to be his deepest desire had been answered that night, in the midst of pain-filled, swirling half-dreams, by a visit from Lucifer.
He’d hardly known what he’d agreed to. He hadn’t realized until later the miracle was not a miracle at all.
“Did you try to pull me out of the fire in Vienna, Dimitri?” she asked with exaggerated coyness. “Or did you not love me enough?”
He declined to answer, allowing a blaze in his eyes to give her his response. As if he would have stood by watching anyone perish. Especially since fire was merely uncomfortable to a Dracule, and not at all life-threatening.
“You probably would have…and then dropped me like a hot potato, no?” She was wandering in front of him, pacing back and forth.
“Did you think I hadn’t seen the signs? Why do you think I went with Cezar that night?
I knew it would either make you realize how much you loved me—pah!
—or I would have found a new protector. And we both know how that ended. ”
Again, he remained silent.
“So you saved Meg’s life, helped her to become a Dracule…and then she left you. Once she realized the power of her immortality and the liaison with Lucifer, she left you.”
Dimitri concentrated very hard and managed a negligent shrug. “And you wonder why…I wouldn’t make the same mistake…twice.”
“Your poor broken heart. Has she ruined you for every other woman? It would seem so.” She smoothed her hands over the generous bodice of her gown as if to remind him of what she offered. He grimaced.
“Meg’s dead, Dimitri. Did you know that?” Lerina leaned toward him again, bringing those shimmering, lethal rubies along with a scent of bitterness. “Cezar killed her himself.”
The rumor he’d long believed was true, then.
A rush of relief surged through him, overshadowing a surprising dearth of pain, and was followed by a flicker of sorrow.
He supposed he had loved her, in a youthful, clumsy way, even if she hadn’t loved him.
Or at least, loved him enough. Now, she was with Luce in Hell. Never to leave.
Thanks, in part, to him. He closed his eyes.
“Poor darling,” Lerina said, her voice bringing him back.
Her eyes shifted, focusing on the wound on his face.
Before he could brace himself, she bent forward, rubies and all, and, grabbing his shoulders, pressed her lips to the oozing cut.
The necklaces swung against him and Dimitri jolted as they slammed into his chest and throat, burning through his shirt like a dozen white-hot pokers.
He gasped in spite of himself, in spite of the hot, wet mouth covering his cheek.
She sucked and licked the blood from his skin, her tongue making sensual circles over his flesh as he tried to keep his breath even. Then Lerina slid her blood-soaked lips to his, covering his mouth with her own, breathing his own bloodscent into him.
He used every effort to wade through the pain and tear his face away from her, but Lerina’s hands held him tightly, and the rubies were potent. Her fingers dug into the back of his skull, pulling his hair, her incisors sharp and sleek as she mauled his lips.
When she pulled back, her red lips glistened with blood and saliva and her eyes glowed like coals. He met her gaze defiantly, cold and filled with disgust, and when she saw his loathing, she drew back sharply. And then she slapped him again, on the other cheek this time.
“And you wonder why I wouldn’t sire you,” he managed to growl.
“That was your chance,” she said, stepping back and taking the evil, glittering rubies with her. “I was willing to give you an opportunity to see your error. Foolish, Dimitri. You’ve learned nothing about women in the last hundred years.”
She walked away, and he was able to draw a relatively easy breath for a moment. Then she turned, contemplating him. Her eyes burned with loathing…and something else. His skin prickled.
“Moldavi is in Paris?” he asked in an effort to distract her and to confirm his suspicions.
“Yes. He’s waiting for word from me that you’ve become cooperative.
” She fondled one of the strands of rubies.
There were perhaps a dozen of them, each the size of his thumbnail, set in a gold chain.
She wore three necklaces like that, each of different length, and each finished off with a large pendant ruby.
“I’ve learned so much from him. So much about how to get what I want. ”
“You’re taking me to Paris,” Dimitri said, sniffing and again smelling the river. “To Moldavi.”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head, smiling. “No, you aren’t of interest to him. Not any longer, anyway. Not since we agreed you belonged to me, and I would take care of you.”
She was close to him again, leaning forward, roped in gemstones. That hungry look was back in her eyes, and as she caught his gaze, Lerina lifted one of the ropes of rubies from her neck.
Dimitri’s breathing shifted and he struggled to move…
but they were too close, too many of them.
Too powerful. He could do nothing as she wrapped the chain around one of his arms, binding it to the arm of the chair.
Rolling pain undulated along his arm to his shoulder, battling with that of Lucifer’s Mark.
The room was turning red, his vision colored with struggle.
She came closer and he was dimly aware of her busy fingers tugging at the ties of his shirt, warm and quick.
He marshaled all his waning strength and gave a sudden heave.
He managed to jolt her, but Lerina was quick and she whipped off a second necklace and bound his other arm.
Her knee wedged onto the chair next to his thigh as he struggled against this new onslaught of pain.
Sweat, warm and thick, trickled from his temple to mingle with the blood on his cheeks.
“You see, Moldavi is more interested in getting his sister back. And destroying Chas Woodmore for taking her,” Lerina continued.
Her voice was almost singsong, but her eyes blazed hot and furious.
She was very close now, nearly sitting on his lap.
“Once you were out of the way, and otherwise occupied, he could obtain the prize he truly wanted.”
Dimitri was vaguely aware of his shirt opening, the cooler air brushing his hot skin. Her hands, once familiar, now spread over his shoulders like spidery fingers, pulling the shirt wide. She grasped the opening and yanked. The sound of the linen tearing was like thunder in his waterlogged ears.
“Prize?” he managed to gasp, despite the fact that he had a sudden horrible feeling he knew what. No, who.
No.
Lerina smiled. Her fangs were fully extended. Her breath smelled like his blood. Her fingers curled up into the hair that clung to his damp neck, lifting it so she could blow on his hot skin.
“I’ve dreamed of this moment,” she said. Her voice penetrated the black and red clouds filling his vision and clogging his nostrils. “Since the first time you fed on me.”
“Prize?” he demanded with his last bit of breath.
“The girls, of course,” she whispered near his ear. “The sisters. The only way to get to Chas.”
Maia.
He gathered all of his strength and tugged, groaning deep in his throat with the effort. But the paralysis was complete.
She slammed her fangs into his shoulder.
He gasped, his body shuddering even as it remained horribly immobile.
The release of the pressure in his veins, the surge of blood flowing into her warm mouth, had him trembling.
His fingers couldn’t grasp the arm of the chair and he could no longer keep his eyes open.
The little tugs of pleasure as she sucked were lost in the vortex of pain. He didn’t have even the energy to pull at his bindings, to kick or twist away. Maia.
And so he closed his eyes and screamed inside his mind: Help me. Wayren, damn it, I’m ready.