“I’m not leaving without you.” My voice was stubborn. “Who is Juliette?”
“I am Juliette Durand.” The melodious voice, accented with hints of French and something else, came from above. We both looked up. “What trouble you two have caused.”
A stunning vampire was perched on a thick branch of a nearby maple. Her skin was the color of milk with a splash of coffee, and her hair shone in a blend of brown and copper. Clad in the colors of autumn—brown, green, and gold—she looked like an extension of the tree. Wide hazel eyes sat atop slanted cheekbones, and her bones implied a delicacy that I knew misrepresented her strength.
“I’ve been watching you—listening, too. Your scents are all tangled up together.” She made a quiet sound of reproof.
I didn’t see her leave the branch, but Matthew did. He’d angled his body so that he would be in front of me when she landed. He faced her, lips curled in warning.
Juliette ignored him. “I have to study her.” She tilted her head to the right and lifted her chin a touch, staring at me intently.
I frowned.
She frowned back.
Matthew shivered.
I glanced at him in concern, and Juliette’s eyes followed mine.
She was imitating my every move. Her chin was jutting out at precisely the same angle as mine, her head was held at exactly the same incline. It was like looking into a mirror.
Panic flooded my system, filling my mouth with bitterness. I swallowed hard, and the vampire swallowed, too. Her nostrils flared, and she laughed, sharp and hard as diamonds.
“How have you resisted her, Matthew?” She took a long, slow breath. “The smell of her should drive you mad with hunger. Do you remember that frightened young woman we stalked in Rome? She smelled rather like this one, I think.”
Matthew remained silent, his eyes fixed on the vampire.
Juliette took a few steps to the right, forcing him to adjust his position. “You’re expecting Marcus,” she observed sadly. “I’m afraid he’s not coming. So handsome. I would have liked to see him again. The last time we met, he was so young and impressionable. It took us weeks to sort out the mess he’d made in New Orleans, didn’t it?”
An abyss opened before me. Had she killed Marcus? Sarah and Em?
“He’s on the phone,” she continued. “Gerbert wanted to be sure that your son understood the risk he’s taking. The Congregation’s anger is directed only at the two of you—now. But if you persist, others will pay the price as well.”
Marcus wasn’t dead. Despite the relief, my blood ran cold at the expression on her face.
There was still no response from Matthew.
“Why so quiet, my love?” Juliette’s warm voice belied the deadness of her eyes. “You should be glad to see me. I’m everything you want. Gerbert made sure of that.”
He still didn’t answer.
“Ah. You’re silent because I’ve surprised you,” Juliette said, her tone strangely fractured between music and malice. “You’ve surprised me, too. A witch?”
She feinted left, and Matthew swiveled to meet her. She somersaulted through the empty space where his head had been and landed at my side, fingers around my throat. I froze.
“I don’t understand why he wants you so much.” Juliette’s voice was petulant. “What it is that you do? What did Gerbert fail to teach me?”
“Juliette, let her be.” Matthew couldn’t risk a move in my direction for fear she’d snap my neck, but his legs were rigid with the effort to stay still.
“Patience, Matthew,” she said, bending her head.
I closed my eyes, expecting to feel teeth.
Instead cold lips pressed against mine. Juliette’s kiss was weirdly impersonal as she teased my mouth with her tongue, trying to get me to respond. When I didn’t, she made a sound of frustration.
“That should have helped me understand, but it didn’t.” Juliette flung me at Matthew but kept hold of one wrist, her razor-sharp nails poised above my veins. “Kiss her. I have to know how she’s done it.”
“Why not leave this alone, Juliette?” Matthew caught me in his cool grip.
“I must learn from my mistakes—Gerbert’s been saying so since you abandoned me in New York.” Juliette focused on Matthew with an avidity that made my flesh crawl.
“That was more than a hundred years ago. If you haven’t learned your mistake by now, you’re not going to.” Though Matthew’s anger was not directed at me, its power made me recoil nonetheless. He was simmering with it, the rage coming from him in waves.
Juliette’s nails cut into my arm. “Kiss her, Matthew, or I will make her bleed.”
Cupping my face with one careful, gentle hand, he struggled to push up the corners of his mouth into a smile. “It will be all right,
mon coeur
.” Matthew’s pupils were dots in a sea of gray-green. One thumb stroked my jaw as he bent nearer, his lips nearly touching mine. His kiss was slow and tender, a testament of feeling. Juliette stared at us coldly, drinking in the details. She crept closer as Matthew drew away from me.
“Ah.” Her voice was blank and bitter. “You like the way she responds when you touch her. But I can’t
feel
anymore.”
I’d seen Ysabeau’s anger and Baldwin’s ruthlessness. I’d felt Domenico’s desperation and smelled the unmistakable scent of evil that hung around Gerbert. But Juliette was different. Something fundamental was broken within her.
She released my arm and sprang out of Matthew’s reach. His hands squeezed my elbows, and his cold fingers touched my hips. With an infinitesimal push, Matthew gave me another silent command to leave.
But I had no intention of leaving my husband alone with a psychotic vampire. Deep within, something stirred. Though neither witchwind nor witchwater would be enough to kill Juliette, they might distract her long enough for us to get away—but both refused my unspoken commands. And any spells I had learned over the past few days, no matter how imperfectly, had flown from my mind.
“Don’t worry,” Juliette said softly to Matthew, her eyes bright. “It will be over very quickly. I would like to linger, of course, so that we could remember what we once were to each other. But none of my touches will drive her from your mind. Therefore I must kill you and take your witch to face Gerbert and the Congregation.”
“Let Diana go.” Matthew raised his hands in truce. “This is between us, Juliette.”
She shook her head, setting her heavy, burnished hair swaying. “I’m Gerbert’s instrument, Matthew. When he made me, he left no room for my desires. I didn’t want to learn philosophy or mathematics. But Gerbert insisted, so that I could please you. And I did please you, didn’t I?” Juliette’s attention was fixed on Matthew, and her voice was as rough as the fault lines in her broken mind.
“Yes, you pleased me.”
“I thought so. But Gerbert already owned me.” Juliette’s eyes turned to me. They were brilliant, suggesting she had fed recently. “He will possess you, too, Diana, in ways you cannot imagine. In ways only I know. You’ll be his, then, and lost to everyone else.”
“No.” Matthew lunged at Juliette, but she darted past.
“This is no time for games, Matthew,” said Juliette.
She moved quickly—too quickly for my eyes to see—then pulled slowly away from him with a look of triumph. There was a ripping sound, and blood welled darkly at his throat.
“That will do for a start,” she said with satisfaction.
There was a roaring in my head. Matthew stepped between me and Juliette. Even my imperfect warmblood nose could smell the metallic tang of his blood. It was soaking into his sweater, spreading in a dark stain across his chest.
“Don’t do this, Juliette. If you ever loved me, you’ll let her go. She doesn’t deserve Gerbert.”
Juliette answered in a blur of brown leather and muscle. Her leg swung high, and there was a crack as her foot connected with Matthew’s abdomen. He bent over like a felled tree.
“I didn’t
deserve
Gerbert either.” There was a hysterical edge to Juliette’s voice. “But I deserved
you
. You belong to me, Matthew.”
My hands felt heavy, and I knew without looking that they held a bow and arrow. I backed away from the two vampires, raising my arms.
“Run!” Matthew shouted.
“No,” I said in a voice that was not my own, squinting down the line of my left arm. Juliette was close to Matthew, but I could release the arrow without touching him. When my right hand flexed, Juliette would be dead. Still, I hesitated, never having killed anyone before
That moment was all Juliette needed. Her fingers punched through Matthew’s chest, nails tearing through fabric and flesh as if both were paper. He gasped at the pain, and Juliette roared in victory.
All hesitation gone, my right hand tightened and opened. A ball of fire arced from the extended tips of my left fingers. Juliette heard the explosion of flame and smelled the sulfur in the air. She turned, her nails withdrawing from the hole in Matthew’s chest. Disbelief showed in her eyes before the spitting ball of black, gold, and red enveloped her. Her hair caught fire first, and she reeled in panic. But I had anticipated her, and another ball of flame was waiting. She stepped right into it.
Matthew dropped to his knees, his hands pressing the blood-soaked sweater into the spot where she had punctured the skin over his heart. Screaming, Juliette reached out, trying to draw him into the inferno.
At a flick of my wrist and a word to the wind, she was picked up and carried several feet from where Matthew was collapsing into the earth. She fell onto her back, her body alight.
I wanted to run to him but continued to watch Juliette as her vampire bones and flesh resisted the flames. Her hair was gone and her skin was black and leathery, but even then she wasn’t dead. Her mouth kept moving, calling Matthew’s name.
My hands remained raised, ready for her to defy the odds. She lumbered to her feet once, and I released another bolt. It hit her in the middle of the chest, went through her rib cage, and came out the other side, shattering the tough skin as it passed and turning her ribs and lungs to coal. Her mouth twisted into a rictus of horror. She was beyond recovery now, no matter the strength of her vampire blood.
I rushed to Matthew’s side and dropped to the ground. He could no longer keep himself upright and was lying on his back, knees bent. There was blood everywhere, pulsing out of the hole in his chest in deep purple waves and flowing more evenly from his neck, so dark it was like pitch.
“What should I do?” I frantically pressed my fingers against his throat. His white hands were still locked around the wound in his chest, but the strength was leaching out of them with each passing moment.
“Will you hold me?” he whispered.
My back to the oak tree, I pulled him between my legs.
“I’m cold,” he said with dull amazement. “How strange.”
“You can’t leave me,” I said fiercely. “I won’t have it.”
“There’s nothing to be done about that now. Death has me in his grip.” Matthew was talking in a way that had not been heard in a thousand years, his fading voice rising and falling in an ancient cadence.
“No.” I fought back my tears. “You have to fight, Matthew.”
“I
have
fought, Diana. And you are safe. Marcus will have you away from here before the Congregation knows what has happened.”
“I won’t go anywhere without you.”
“You must.” He struggled in my arms, shifting so that he could see my face.
“I can’t lose you, Matthew. Please hold on until Marcus gets here.” The chain inside me swayed, its links loosening one by one. I tried to resist by keeping him tight against my heart.
“Hush,” he said softly, raising a bloody finger to touch my lips. They tingled and went numb as his freezing blood came into contact with my skin. “Marcus and Baldwin know what to do. They will see you safe to Ysabeau. Without me the Congregation will find it harder to act against you. The vampires and witches will not like it, but you are a de Clermont now, with my family’s protection as well as that of the Knights of Lazarus.”
“Stay with me, Matthew.” I bent my head and pressed my lips against his, willing him to keep breathing. He did—barely—but his eyelids had closed.
“From birth I have searched for you,” Matthew whispered with a smile, his accent strongly French. “Since finding you I have been able to hold you in my arms, have heard your heart beat against mine. It would have been a terrible thing to die without knowing what it feels like to truly love.” Tiny shudders swept over him from head to toe and then subsided.
“Matthew!” I cried, but he could no longer respond. “Marcus!” I screamed into the trees, praying to the goddess all the while. By the time his son reached us, I’d already thought several times that Matthew was dead.
“Holy God,” Marcus said, taking in Juliette’s charred body and Matthew’s bloody form.
“The bleeding won’t stop,” I said. “Where is it all coming from?”
“I need to examine him to know, Diana.” Marcus took a tentative step toward me.
Tightening my arms around my husband, I felt my eyes turn cold. The wind began to rise where I sat.
“I’m not asking you to let go of him,” Marcus said, instinctively understanding the problem, “but I have to look at his chest.”
He crouched next to us and tore gently at his father’s black sweater. With a horrible rending noise, the fabric gave way. A long gash crossed from Matthew’s jugular vein to his heart. Next to the heart was a deep gouge where Juliette had tried to punch through to the aorta.
“The jugular is nearly severed, and the aorta has been damaged. Not even Matthew’s blood can work fast enough to heal him in both places.” Marcus spoke quietly, but he didn’t need to speak at all. Juliette had given Matthew a death blow.
My aunts were here now, Sarah puffing slightly. Miriam appeared, white-faced, behind them. After only a glance, she turned on her heel, dashing back to the house.