Ancient Blood: A Novel of the Hegemony (The Order Saga Book 1) (39 page)

I decided to continue to the center, where four corridors led into an open square featuring a statue on a pedestal. Sliding the statue to one side revealed the secret passage back to the wine cellar. If the people there hadn’t already been let out, I could fix that while heading up to the kitchen for a blood pack or two.

I heard gunfire a few corridors back as I turned the last corner and saw the statue that guarded the secret passage. I wondered if Sebastian was winning but had my doubts. If he hadn’t gotten the
Guaiwu
, Draco would have enlisted some of DeWinter’s commandoes.

As I reached the center, something appeared wrong with the statue. After another few steps, I figured out what: it was already slid aside to reveal the ladder to the passage.

I heard a whistle as something sliced my cheek open.

Slapping my hand to the wound, I turned to find Jean-Paul Valmont leaning against the wall, his rapier tracing lazy swirls in the air.

“I hoped you would come this way if Sebastian didn’t finish you,” he said. He chuckled at my surprise. “Oh, I’ve joined Sebastian on a hunt or two over the years, so I know my way around. Now, then, I believe we’ve left an item or two unfinished between us.”

I groaned and continued for the ladder. By the time I’d taken two steps, he crossed the distance between us and I found the blade of his rapier pressing against my throat.

“You are a very ill-mannered young man. Do you think I came all the way out here just so you could walk away from me again?”

“Do you think I give a fuck?”

He moved into my sight but kept the blade in position. “Give a fuck? Perhaps you shall, at that. I gave your repressed little mommy one, after all, so you could say that I’m owed.”

I was getting used to his little games by now but the remark still burned. “Then go back to your little mommy and living sex toys.”

“My pets are dead,” he said with a shrug. “
C’est le vivre
. I told them to go along quietly when Sebastian’s men came but they thought they could handle a superior opponent. A sentiment you seem to share.”

“Do you
try
to talk like a movie villain, or are you just cheesy like that?” Buffy would be proud.

He smiled but it was a little tight. “I am of the flamboyant ilk, yes but perhaps you are right and I should cut to the quick.”

“I’ve already told Caroline and Ash everything about your little secrets, so killing me will only get them revealed,” I said, surprised at how steady my voice was. Despite the strange abilities I knew he had, his unnatural strength, his position and his sword at my throat, I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. I hated him but I wasn’t afraid of him.

“As opposed to keeping you alive, which will somehow protect them,
non
?”

“I promised Flea we wouldn’t reveal them to anyone else. It was the only way she’d let us out of the brig.”

He studied me with the practiced disdain of a Los Angeles Maitre’d. “She was fool enough to believe such a promise and you are fool enough to keep it?”

“More for her sake than yours but yeah.”

He whipped the sword away from my neck and moved into my personal space, doing that tasting-the-air-with-his-tongue thing again. “Still so unmoved? I can tell those little chinks haven’t sucked on you this time, so where is that famous passion of yours?” He grabbed my chin, hard and I could see desperation rising to the surface behind his playful mask. “Did Sebastian piss on your high spirits when he beat you to a pulp? Is that what I’m seeing?”

The misinterpretation made me smile. “Maybe I’m just enjoying the view from the moral high ground.”

His eyes narrowed to slits and he shoved me backwards onto the ground. “You’ll find no satisfaction there, boy.”

Valmont had some kind of ego problem with people who ruined his illusion of irresistibility. His interest in me stemmed from the fact that he hadn’t been able to bend me yet and didn’t understand why. He wouldn’t want to kill me until after he’d cracked me. He may look like a sissy, give attitude like a queen and dress like the love child of Marilyn Manson and Liberace but his ego is still all male.

He strode a few paces away before turning coy again. “Since Sebastian proved too much for you, why not give me a try? Seeing as how circumstances have denied me the pleasure of watching the world plummet into chaos, I’m prepared to give you this opportunity to have your shot at me. There’s a pistol in your right leg pocket. Bring it out. Your gun against my sword, first to yield plays Pupil to the winner for a period of a lunar month.”

He swished his sword and dared me with his eyes. What was his “passion” as Jade Tiger had called it? The answer came immediately, desire, lust. He wouldn’t have had any opportunities to feed since the meeting started. His offer was tempting, as he knew it would be but I didn’t think I could beat him with a gun.

“Sorry,” I told him, getting up. “Not interested.”

The blade whipped hard to the right. “Not interested in avenging your beloved? You’ll wish you had, in the nights to come, when you realize how she still longs for my touch, how I come to her again and again in her moments of darkest fantasy and how any pleasure you can give will forever be measured against those brief moments when every molecule of her unexceptional form burned with an ecstasy as bright as the sun!”

That brought my rage back. I fought against it, telling myself that it was what he wanted and it would only encourage him but I still felt it creep up out of my belly and wind its way into my veins.

I moved for the ladder again but Valmont followed and pressed his advantage. “No witty riposte this time? Surely that notion had already occurred to you? I found her so wet and ready a whore, that your rather limp response to the affair convinced me you’d all but given up on her—and if you so much as take hold of that ladder, I’ll drain you on the spot and leave your savaged carcass as evidence of Sebastian’s final victory.”

He meant it. Preferences aside, he wasn’t going to let me walk away from him this time. I’d beaten my rage against Sebastian just minutes before, I could hold back now. I would not let myself think about fighting him. I would not entertain the smallest fantasy about killing him.

“Come, now, let’s be honest,” he said, licking his lips in anticipation as his nostrils flared to inhale the feelings coming from me. “Isn’t that why Iago found it so easy to inflame your homicidal intentions? Because you saw Caroline for the cuckolding, manipulative little cunt that she is? No? Then, why this reluctance to defend her tarnished honor? What kind of man won’t even stand up to defend the woman he claims to love?”

He’d moved in very close and pushed at my chest with his fingers to emphasize his questions, another tactic to irritate me into wanting a fight. I forced myself to think about Caroline, my mother, the Goddess and what they would want. Simple. If I couldn’t succeed by fighting, then I shouldn’t fight. Words were just words, after all.

But it was so hard to resist!

“Come on, boy,” he whispered. “Stand up for yourself, stand up for her. Don’t be a pussy-whipped little weakling all your life. You know you want to kill me and I can feel it in you, struggling to break through this cowardice you’ve cloaked yourself in. How many times have you thought about how satisfying it would be to give me what I deserve?” I felt him inside me, grasping at those very desires and thoughts. I felt them drawn toward the surface, toward him. “Do it … let it all out…”

I was looking at his smug, effeminate face, his long hair and his pre-Revolutionary clothes. He was like the incarnation of the sexy modern vampire, dark hero of romantic fantasies the world over. Lestat, St. Germain, Jean-Claude from Anita Blake, Frank Langella’s Dracula, Gary Oldman’s Dracula, even the Dracula who showed up on Buffy, that oh-so-sexy dark lover, always perfect and suave and well-dressed with a cock that pleased as no mortal man’s could and a tongue that wouldn’t quit. Goddess, how I hated him!

Goddess, how I wanted to be him!

And then, out of nowhere, it occurred to me that Valmont’s face resembled the actor who played Dracula on
Buffy
. Just one of those random, stupid thoughts that pop up in my head when I’m tired or under stress but it started a chain-reaction. Valmont’s rap really wasn’t all that different from the one old Drac had been laying on the Buffster—give in to the Dark Side. That made me think of the Emperor and Vader in
Return of the Jedi
giving Luke the “give in to your hate” line.

It can’t be that simple, I thought. But stuff he’d said and done, said otherwise:

Trying to seduce me into feeding on the child.

“Because they are beautiful … and I can only abide so much of that in the world.”

Trying to seduce me into fucking his Dhampir.

“My poison flower is clever and deceitful, greedy and hateful. She is all things that are perfection to my eye.”

Trying to rape the sadness and pity out of Julia.

“Was I wrong in using subtlety and human nature? Nuclear war just always seemed so … inelegant.”

I burst out laughing.

Valmont jumped back like I’d given him an electric shock, his expression furious. “So, now you think this is funny?”

I just nodded, laughing too hard to talk. His sword flashed in the moonlight, slicing my arm as it whistled through the air. “Ow!” I cried between laughs.

I held up my hand for him to give me a minute as I tried to stop long enough to catch a breath. Seeing no better option, Valmont laid his sword on his shoulder and paced back and forth. The peevish look on his face just made me laugh harder.

I had to sit down on the edge of the pedestal base. My legs just wouldn’t hold me up anymore. “I finally … I finally got it!” I gasped between chuckles.

“Got what?”

“You! I figured out what’s wrong with you!”

“I’m pleased you find the idea so amusing.” He didn’t sound pleased at all.

Taking deep breaths, I managed to stop laughing but the grin wouldn’t leave my face. “You want me to give in to the Dark Side!” I giggled again. “You’re one of those corruption and evil guys, like some lame-ass Satanist from the Hellfire Club or a Christopher Lee movie!”

For just a moment, he went blank with shock before putting the mask back in place. “That’s ludicrous. Besides, what would a child like you even know of such things?”

Gotcha.
“Because I
read
, you asshole! Chelsea Quinn Yarbo had guys like you in her first St. Germain novel! Hell, even Anne Rice has them! To think that behind all your slick bullshit is just a pathetic little Catholic trying to score points with the devil because he thinks he’s damned. Dude, that is so cheesy! Sad too but mostly cheesy.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“Then why are you getting so worked up about it?”

“I am not getting ‘worked up!’”

“You so fucking are! ‘Behold the power of cheese!’ ”

The rapier whipped through the air again, he marched toward me. “I think it’s time to end this inane argument once and for all…”

I resisted the impulse to go for my gun. I was not gonna let the Queen of the Damned get his advantage back. “Go ahead but you know as well as I do that killing me won’t stop you from being as cheesy as cheddar. Or should that be Roquefort? No, no, Limburger!”

He brought the point of the blade to my Adam’s apple, his eyes were blazing. “Shut up, damn you!”

“Shouldn’t you say ‘bless you?’ ” I dissolved into another fit of giggles, paying no attention to the sword at my throat. “ ‘It ain’t easy being cheesy!’ ”

He actually trembled as he shoved his sword in its sheath. “Death now would be far too quick for you but you’ll wish I’d killed you, you little—”

“Mouse?” That and the expression on his face brought me to belly-laughs.

“Remember this night!”

“You betcha … Mayor McCheese!” I fell on the ground, my body aching, tears streaming out of my eyes. I heard him backing away, as if it hurt him to even be near me.

“Your little bitch is now one of my special projects!” he shouted at me, like a kid throwing a temper tantrum. “No matter where she goes or whose protection she’s under, I shall make her life an utter misery! You will stand by, impotent, as I defile every part of her that is dear to you! Helpless as I bring to ruin her every dream and accomplishment! Your ruination shall be in watching hers, for you will know that you could have stopped me here and saved her!”

He stomped back into the maze, the way I’d come in. I heard him, of course but was too light headed and punchy to take him seriously. After another minute or so of hiccupping, I got up and brushed myself off. I needed those blood packs now.

And to think the night wasn’t even done yet.

* * * * *

Draco had Sebastian’s head mounted on top of the security bunker’s flagpole after his group returned from the maze. A warning to all who would dare threaten The Game.

The servants and house staff had already been released from their confinement in the cellar by the time I got there, so I went right up. Caroline rushed into the kitchen to embrace me, then demanded to know what I’d been thinking when I ran off like that. I just shrugged; embarrassed to admit it had been something other than her.