Chapter 27 #2
Rowan’s chest barely moved. Each breath looked shallower than the last. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. I’d seen enough death in my previous life to recognize its approach.
Before I could think better of it, I spoke. “Please.” My voice came out raw, destroyed by screaming. “Please, can you save him?”
Natalia’s attention shifted to me with the weight of a physical blow. Her eyes were so dark blue they appeared black, and looking into them felt like falling into a bottomless well. “Save him? Why would I do that?”
“Because. . .” I swallowed. “Because he’s no good to you dead.”
She laughed, soft and genuinely amused. “Oh, little fighter. Death is hardly an impediment to my desires. Some things are actually more cooperative afterward.”
The casual mention of her cruelty, delivered with such nonchalance, forced bile to rise in my throat. But I pressed on. “I’ll do anything,” I begged. “If you save him, I’ll do anything you want.”
Jules’s arms tightened around me, a warning I ignored.
Natalia turned back, one perfect eyebrow arched. “Anything? Do you understand what that word means to someone like me?”
No, I don’t. How can I? But I don’t care. “He doesn’t deserve to die. He was only walking Jules home. To keep her safe. If you want payment, if you want. . . entertainment? Then take it from me. Please. You would do the same for Alice, wouldn’t you?”
“Violet, no,” Jules whispered.
Natalia’s demeanor changed then. Her spine straightened, and the look of amusement on her face turned to fury as she approached with slow, measured steps.
The twins scrambled back and away from her, still prostrated in the filthy water.
She stopped just outside of arm’s reach, studying me with her impossibly bottomless eyes.
“You should take care using her name in my presence.” Her voice was cold as stone, but I heard the hidden meaning. Don’t you dare bring Alice into this. She continued. “You would trade yourself for him?”
“Yes.”
“You would suffer for him?”
“Yes.”
“You would die for him?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. No calculation. I was astonished at how true it was.
She smiled then, and I understood why the twins feared her. It wasn’t her beauty or power. It was the complete absence of anything recognizably human in that expression. It was like seeing a spider smile.
“How tediously romantic,” she said with a yawn. She glanced back at Rowan, who had gone still except for the barest rise and fall of his chest. “Though I confess, I’m curious what kind of man inspires such devotion.”
She moved towards him again, and this time she did touch him, fingers pressed to his throat where the twins had fed. Rowan didn’t react. He was beyond such things now, balanced on the knife’s edge between life and whatever came after.
“Still warm,” she mused. “Still technically alive, though barely. The twins have always been such greedy feeders.”
“Please,” I whispered. The word was all I had left.
Natalia’s hand remained on Rowan’s throat for a long moment. Then she stood, brushing imaginary dust from her skirt.
“No,” she said simply.
The word slammed into me. I sagged in Jules’s arms, all fight leaving me at once. Rowan was going to die. I was going to watch him die. And there was nothing, nothing I could do about it.
“However,” Natalia continued, and hope sparked painfully in my chest, “I might be able to be persuaded. . .” She gestured to the ground at her feet. “Crawl to me, little fighter. Crawl over here and lick my boots clean. Show me how much his life means to you.”
Heat flooded my face despite the cold rain. Crawl and lick. Crawl through the garbage and blood and filthy water, then lick away the same from her feet. Debase myself for her amusement while Rowan died inches away.
I knew this game. I knew the pleasure some took in humiliation, in making you complicit in your own degradation.
Edward had been a master of it. He’d make me thank him for things that broke me.
He’d made me beg for things no sane person would ever actually want.
He’d made me perform countless sexual acts with a zeal and eagerness I didn’t feel.
This bitch may be some ancient vampyre badass, but Edward was a world-class grandmaster sadist. She’s got nothing on him.
I pulled away from Jules to drop to my knees, but her grip tightened.
She anchored me to stand with her. “No,” she said quietly, “I refuse to allow you to bend to her whims. The Pax Tacere be damned. You let me handle this.” Then, with a formality I’d never heard from the bubbly, ditzy Jules, she practically shouted, “I greet you, Natalia, Little Mistress of the Wallachia family.”
The words rang in the alley with a weight I didn’t understand. The barest recognition of the name flickered in my mind, then I recalled Rowan explaining the world of the supernaturals. “There are four reigning families, Violet. We must take care to never run into one of them.”
Wallachia. . . one of those four reigning families had been named Wallachia.
Well, shit.
Jules released me and stepped forward, dropping into a perfect curtsy; the formal etiquette of it looked ridiculous in an alley filled with soaking wet garbage.
In the same formal tone she used before, Jules said, “Your men broke etiquette after he declared peace in the old tongue. This was a flagrant violation of the Pax Tacere.”
The change in Natalia was instant and terrifying. The lazy amusement vanished, replaced by something ancient and angry. Her eyes flashed gold—literally flashed—like sunlight behind stained glass. “Is this true?” She asked the question so quietly that I barely heard her over the rain.
One-Eye raised his head slightly, trembling. He cupped his hands up towards Natalia, lips trembling, as if he were begging for salvation. “He. . . he spoke the words. But he is a nobody! He is—”
“A patron of Oubliette,” Jules interrupted, still holding that perfect curtsy. “As well as a guest of the Second Circle. In fact,” she emphasized her next words, “these two were meant to meet Him tomorrow.”
Natalia’s demeanor flashed from quiet anger briefly to panicked terror, before whipping into an incendiary rage.
It dawned on me that when Jules said, “Him,” she must have meant the proprietor of Oubliette, Damien.
That realization did not, however, help me understand what was happening.
I couldn’t process the politics and protocols playing out while Rowan bled on the pavement.
But I did understand power, and the power dynamics had just shifted completely.
Despite Natalia being of the Wallachia family—and despite that apparently being a big deal—she seemed beside herself at the thought of angering some nightclub owner.
Then Natalia disappeared.
At least, that’s what it looked like. In truth, she moved faster than my eyes could follow.
One moment she was standing still looking at me and Jules, then the next she had One-Eye by the throat, lifted off the ground as if he weighed nothing.
His feet kicked uselessly in the air. One of his arms hung limp and broken at his side.
Fear weighed heavily within the alleyway, coating the twins in a sheen of sweat that mirrored the droplets of rain.
Even from a distance, I saw his eyes wide and his chest heaving in gulping gasps of air.
I think I’m about to find out if vampyres can piss themselves.
“You fed on a patron of Oubliette?” Each word was precisely enunciated and as cold as a winter wind. “On a guest no less? You broke our peace with the Second Circle?”
One-Eye tried to speak but only managed a gurgle. One of his hands clawed at her grip, drawing no blood despite his inhuman strength.
“Mistress, please!” The other twin begged for his brother’s life on his knees in the filthy water.
Natalia wrapped her free hand in One-Eye’s long black hair, gathering it like reins. Then she swung him. His body became a weapon, a living flail that slammed into his brother with a wet thud.
“Holy shit,” I muttered, caught between fear and amazement as Jules remained stoic. It was as if she were immune to the violent display of power.
Meanwhile, Natalia shouted while she swung repeatedly. “You.” Thud. “Fed.” Thud. “On.” Thud. “A guest.” Thud. “Of his?” Each word was punctuated by swinging one brother into the other.
One-Eye sobbed, begging between impacts, his broken arm flopping uselessly. The one on the ground being beaten tried to crawl away, but Natalia followed, relentless, using one twin to bludgeon the other.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The casual violence of it, the way she wielded an entire person like a weapon, triggered every trauma response from my previous life. I craved Rowan then, his safety, his calming presence, his gifted hands tying me up.
And he’s dying while this is happening.
The twins were both sobbing now, inhuman creatures reduced to weeping children, pleading in languages I didn’t recognize. Blood ran from split lips and broken noses, but still Natalia continued, methodical and cold despite their quivering bodies.
“Please!” The twin on the ground managed between hits. “Mercy! We beg your mercy!”
“Mercy?” She paused, holding the hanging twin still for a moment. His hair was wrapped so tightly around her fist that patches had torn from his scalp. “You would have me show you mercy when you’ve potentially started a war with someone even my father would pay obeisance to?”
She brought One-Eye down one more time, harder than before.
Both twins screamed in harmony, a sound that would live in my nightmares forever.
Then she dropped the one she’d been holding, letting him splash into the standing water beside his brother.
They lay there gasping, sobbing, trying to crawl towards each other, but too broken to manage it.
My body wanted to run, to hide, to make myself small and unnoticeable. But Jules’s hand found mine, and she squeezed, either in warning or in comfort, to keep me anchored and still.
Natalia turned back to us, not a speck of blood on her despite what she’d just done. “The Wallachia family will pay recompense for this failure. Tell your master he may name his price.”
Jules finally straightened from her curtsy, and when she spoke, she sounded nothing like the Jules I knew. “As you command, Mistress Natalia.”
The white-haired vampyre looked at Rowan one last time, something like regret flickering across her perfect features. “A waste. He would have been. . . a formidable ally.”
She turned and walked towards the twins. They cowered before her, too injured to flee, as she reached down and grabbed fistfuls of hair: a twin in each hand. Then she walked towards a shadowed corner of the alley, dragging the kicking and screaming twins behind her like luggage.
Then she was gone. They were gone. As if the darkness were a doorway, she stepped into the shadows without breaking stride and vanished. Only the scent of jasmine lingered, already fading in the rain.
Jules let out a shuddering breath. “Oh, thank god she left. Quick, we need to get him inside.”
Inside. Inside where? Rowan was barely breathing anymore. The rising and falling of his chest had slowed while monsters played politics over his corpse. I dropped to my knees beside him, hands hovering over his body, afraid to touch and confirm what I already knew.
“He’s going to die,” I whispered. The words felt unreal in my mouth.
“He sure is,” Jules said, “If we don’t get him inside Oubliette.” She crouched down next to me. “Come on, sweetie. We need to move him. We need to get help. We need. . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked down the length of the alley towards Oubliette.
I forced myself to tear my eyes away from Rowan to follow her gaze.
There was a man standing at the entrance to the alley.
Oubliette was visible over his shoulder.
He stood in a perfect circle of light from a streetlamp over his head, almost angelic.
No, not an angel. Deep down, I knew. Mere men didn’t look like that.
Men didn’t have features carved by some deity’s fevered dream of temptation.
Men didn’t cause you to forget how to breathe simply by existing near you.
Men didn’t cause the filthiest fantasies to flash through your mind while your closest and dearest friend bled out at your feet.
Desires made manifest, Jules had said, and I didn’t understand what she meant the first time I met him.
But now, the words resounded within me as I watched him approach, dressed in a suit the color of crimson.
His dark hair swept back from a face that was all sharp angles and dangerous beauty—features carved in warm bronze, with gilded eyes that somehow held depths of light even from a distance.
As he approached, his footsteps measured and unhurried, I whispered, “Is that who I think it is?”
“That,” she said with reverent awe and relief, “is Damien.”