“If she is bad and evil, should she not—?”
“No!” Guidon cried quickly. “She is good inside. But sometimes, the darkness her father gave her becomes too strong. She is trying to prove she can fight it. Mrs. Darkwell was given the task of finding true love for one hundred preternatural females. Once she completes this task, she will be set free.” Guidon’s face softened, and his eyes looked dreamy.
Octavia had seen such a look on love-struck young men at balls. The strange little vampire Guidon was obviously in love with Aphrodite’s dangerous, beautiful daughter.
Holding Lottie, Althea stood. “We must return to the Royal Society and prepare for our journey. We need to be properly armed to deal with vampires, werewolves, and warlocks.”
But in the carriage, Octavia took Lottie from her friend and cuddled her baby close. “All right, Althea. Why did you use the term
husbands?
” Then she thought she understood: Althea could have been a widow, and Lord Brookshire could be her second husband.
The true answer shocked her utterly.
“I have two husbands,” Althea said simply. “I was in love with both Yannick and Sebastien De Wynter. Though in the eyes of Society, I am the wife of Lord Brookshire, I am shared between both men. I love them both dearly, and they love me.”
“They share you?” She felt her eyes grow big as saucers with surprise. But she remembered the things she had seen at the orgy involving eight men and one courtesan.
“Yes.” Althea explained it, blushing delicately. The men were quite content to do it, which startled Octavia. The three of them had two children including the new baby, and both men looked on themselves as fathers. The men didn’t care who had actually sired the children.
“We are happy,” Althea said. “Though I had to make them understand how strong a love between three could be. Octavia, you could do the same thing. You could have Sutcliffe and another husband—a vampire. Or you could have other lovers, so Sutcliffe would be safe.”
Octavia shook her head. The thought made her heart feel empty. “I couldn’t. I don’t love anyone but him, and I couldn’t make love to another man. Matthew is all I want.”
“All right. Then we need another solution.”
But Althea remained quiet for the rest of the journey to Birdcage Walk. Octavia could see no solution. All she could think of was her mother. How frightened and desperate and unhappy she must have been to take her own life.
Father must have known what her mother was. Yet he had loved her anyway. It was such a tragedy.
Then there was Matthew’s father. He had loved her mother hopelessly—
The carriage pulled into the gate. Octavia went down the steps, then took Lottie from Althea. A footman hurried to them, his breath a frosty mist. He held out a note to Octavia. “This was delivered for you, my lady, by a young urchin.”
It couldn’t be from Matthew. Octavia quickly unfolded it. The words leapt out at her; her gloved hands shook around the note, and she could read, but she couldn’t quite think what the words were actually saying—
“What is it?” Althea asked.
“It is from Esmeralda,” Octavia answered. “She has taken my father, and she will kill him if I don’t go to her.”
They thought she was mad for going alone, but she had argued that Esmeralda needed her alive, not dead. Octavia did not think she was in danger of walking into a trap. But she feared if she brought anyone else, the vampiress would sense it, and Father would die.
Octavia hurried through Hyde Park, her fur-lined cloak swishing around her legs as she ran. The note had told her to come to the Serpentine at midnight.
Normally the
ton
flocked here in the spring afternoons— this was the place to see and be seen. At midnight in winter, it proved to be dark, still, quiet, and eerie.
The perfect place for vampires.
She hurried over frozen grass dusted with snow and reached the end of the small lake. The open water was blue-black, and some of it was frozen, covered with a silvery sheen.
The shadows moved, and five women stepped out of the darkness to stand in the moonlight. Octavia swallowed hard—this was not just about rescuing her father. These women expected to combine their powers tonight. They had brought her here to begin to take over the world.
How in heaven’s name did she rescue Father, yet defy these other powerful women?
She walked forward, her head high. The woman who had come into her dream stepped out, meeting her like a general on a battlefield. Esmeralda’s hair was loose, and she wore robes of black velvet trimmed with sable. A choker of diamonds glittered around her neck.
“I want my father,” Octavia said simply.
“All right.” Esmeralda shrugged. She snapped her fingers, and two large men in greatcoats and heavy boots dragged Father forward. He wore a coat over his clothes but no hat. His head hung down, as though he were too weak to lift it.
“Father.” She rushed to him, wrapped her arms around him, hugged him, then stepped back when the two male servants growled.
Her father lifted his head. He was eerily white, as though Esmeralda had drained his blood. “Octavia? Dear God, what are you doing here?”
She whirled. “What did you do to him? Have you turned him?”
“No,” Esmeralda answered. “I merely kept him weak and under control. I cannot imagine why your mother loved him so much, why she was willing to die to protect him.”
“Quiet, you monster,” Father roared with surprising strength. “Do not listen, Tavie. It is all lies.”
“I know it is true, Father. I know that I am like my mother. You did understand what she was?”
“Aye.” Deep lines ringed her father’s mouth, and dark shadows lay under his eyes. His cheeks were shrunken and hollow. “I did, and I did not care. I loved her dearly. But what I did not know was that loving her would mean my death. When I found out, I made my decision—I would risk dying to be with her. But instead, she believed she was a monster, and she . . . she killed herself. I am so sorry, Tavie. I couldn’t tell you.” Pained eyes gazed at her. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I thought you were mortal . . . like me.”
“I’m not. I am like my mother.”
“I should have told you, but I was afraid. You always seemed so happy, and I feared the knowledge would destroy that. Your mother said it was a horrible burden to be different. To have a power and duty that would be condemned by our world. She told me she had prayed you would not be like her.”
Tears leaked to her cheeks. How could she blame him for not telling her?
“Even when you became sick, I tried to pretend it did not mean you were like your mother. I should have accepted it. I could have helped you.”
“You did the best you could—” She broke off. “But if you had the suspicion I was like Mother, you knew what would save me.” She could not say it to her father. But she realized he had known what she had needed but he had been willing to let her die, rather than let her survive as a succubus. If she had not seduced Matthew, she would have died. And Father would have preferred that.
It told her what he thought of her.
It stunned her to her soul.
She had wanted to hide what she was. She had feared Matthew would not be able to accept it. She had never dreamed her own father would not.
Esmeralda smiled confidently. Her face was a pale oval above her sumptuous cloak. “Now you know, Octavia, why you must join with us. Never will this world accept you. Never will men, who have the power in this world, accept you. We must create a new world, where women who have special powers are not persecuted and killed.”
“It is not just women,” Octavia protested. “Men who are different are hunted, too.”
“Then we can change that. But we must take control to do it. That is why you are here. I am Esmeralda, and I am Number One.”
One by one, the women stepped forward. The werewolf female quickly changed into her wolf form and paced ahead on nimble paws, her silver and black fur rippling in the cold wind. Then she changed back. “I am Number Two.”
The third was a tiny, slender woman with flame red hair. She bowed her head, and her body writhed in what looked like agony. Wings exploded from her back, and a tail grew from her spine, a long, mobile tail with an arrowhead-shaped scale on the end. Scales covered her skin, multiplying at a stunning rate. She turned into a dragon, then opened her jaws, and a small, precise line of flame shot out. The woman changed back. “I am the last of a rare family of dragon-shifters called the Fiorenze. I am the third.”
The fourth laughed gently, then wrapped her arms around herself and bowed her head. Suddenly her arms became huge wings of gray and brown. They unfurled, and the hawk-shifter soared. She flew back to the others, became human again. “I am the fourth.”
Mrs. Darkwell had spoken of a witch and a demoness. Octavia had thought she was the witch. Now she wasn’t sure.
The fifth woman stepped forward. Octavia gasped—the woman looked like her. She wore a plain gown of green, had long blond hair twisted in a bun at the nape of her neck and large blue eyes. “I am Number Five, the witch.”
That meant she—Octavia—was the demoness, because she was a succubus.
“Now,” Esmeralda said. “We begin.”
“No, I have not agreed,” Octavia cried, but her words were drowned out by a deep, cold, masculine voice that barked, “No. Let her go, damn you, Esmeralda. Let Octavia and her father go free.”
Matthew—it was his voice, which meant he had survived at the castle. She whirled around. He was striding out from the shadows of a grove of trees.
“I told you to come alone,” Esmeralda snapped. She rounded on her two male servants. “Kill her father—”
“Stop,” Matthew growled. He held up his hand, and the two servants stopped in their tracks, holding her father between them. “She did come alone. I followed her. I can scent her, and I tracked her here.”
Esmeralda seemed to grow taller, like a giant snake rearing up. “Are
you
alone, Sutcliffe?”
“Of course.” He shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. “I thought you might be willing to bargain with me if I were willing to put myself in danger.”
Octavia gasped.
“He does not truly love you,” Esmeralda said. “You are a succubus, and you have an allure that makes men desire you. He fears his love for you is not real. He wanted to harden his heart to love, to protect his heart, so he would not make the same foolish mistake as his father. So now that he cares for you, he does not know if it is because of Lucifer’s power, or if it is real.”
“I—I don’t believe you.”
“Then let us see.” Esmeralda turned to Matthew. “You knew your father died because he loved a woman he could not have. That woman was Octavia’s mother.”
Matthew recoiled. The wind sent his greatcoat snapping around him like enormous wings, as he snarled at the vampiress. “That’s a lie.”
Esmeralda laughed—soft, evil laughter that seemed to echo all around them. “It is the truth, isn’t it, Octavia?”
She couldn’t lie. “Yes,” she said softly. “It is true.”
Matthew looked stunned. “You knew this, yet you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t know until you took me to the castle. I found the letters you had kept, the ones sent to your father. I recognized my mother’s handwriting.”
“Her mother was a powerful succubus. Perhaps that was what drew your father to her and that was what made him love her so intensely he lost all rational thought. Perhaps he never would have loved her, certainly never would have taken his own life, if she had not been a succubus.”
Octavia stared at her husband. “But it might not be . . . He might have just loved her.” She hated Esmeralda. The only reason his father would have killed himself, if not because he was caught by a succubus’s allure, would be because he was unstable, weak, mad. Would Matthew think that about his own father, or would he rather believe the man had been bewitched—and destroyed—by a succubus?
She feared it would be the latter. Surely he would rather think succubi were dangerous, that they drove men to madness.
It might be true. What if he really did only love her because of her succubus powers?
“There, you see, Octavia. He is filled with doubts now. You can never trust a man. Men were afraid of me, and they hurt me,” Esmeralda said. “They tried to destroy me. If any man is allowed to have power, he becomes a brute with it.”
“I don’t think that is true,” Octavia said.
Esmeralda turned to the dragon-shifter. “You must begin the fire that will meld our powers.”
Fire? The woman shifted shape and sent out a blast of flame as Esmeralda spoke an incantation. The fire suddenly grew, but it was burning two feet off the ground.
“How does the fire meld our powers?” Octavia asked.
“Surely you can guess,” Esmeralda answered. “We all walk into the fire together, and it melts us, changes us, bonds us together. We will emerge as a new, stronger being.”