Lily stood on the platform with Arsinöe, feeling a thin rivulet of cold sweat trickle down between her breasts. She’d been unaware she had stage fright before tonight, since it wasn’t a position she’d ever put herself in, but apparently, she had a bad case.
At least, if her nausea and dizziness were any indication. But then, she’d also never had hundreds of hungry vampires staring at her.
Arsinöe’s hands were on her shoulders as she stood behind her, and all Lily could think of was that curved silver blade coming down across Lilith’s throat from a very similar position. Her mark continued to pulse and throb beneath her shirt, and her power, dark, unharnessed, without direction, was roiling ominously within her. She could feel it, threatening to spill out in some horrible way. And then she’d be set upon, torn to pieces by a furious crowd of Ptolemy.
“Tonight, we find the source of the Mulo!” Arsinöe cried, and the crowd erupted in a roar. “Tonight, we begin the war that will wipe our enemies from the face of the night and show all the dynasties that nothing,
nothing
, can dim the glory that is the Ptolemy, the most ancient, the most powerful, the most
revered
of all!”
Their faces swam before Lily, blending into one glowing-eyed, sharp-toothed monster. What the hell did they think she was going to do? Turn into a pillar of fire and lead them to Vlad Dracul’s doorstep? What if her vision didn’t make any sense?
What if she couldn’t even
have
a vision?
Her stomach cramped painfully.
Then the crowd stilled, going deathly quiet without even a word from their queen. It was as though they knew it was time. The air crackled with expectation. And Lily’s worst nightmare was coming true. She was alone, Ty was gone, and she had no idea what to do.
The queen’s voice was warm and soft in her ear.
“It’s time. Do you need my assistance?”
“Whatever you can do,” Lily said, perfectly honest. “I’ve never tried to do this before. You can help me?”
“Of course. I may not be able to See, but I have seen the process enough times to know how it’s done. Listen to my voice. I will guide you.”
“Okay,” Lily said. What could she say? It was this or certain annihilation. She wished for something, anything, to come on its own, but all she saw, all she could think of, was the one man she knew she should try to forget.
Ty’s face. Ty’s eyes. Ty’s voice.
“Relax.” Arsinöe’s voice was commanding but was as warm and smooth as rich cream.
It was surprisingly easy to fall under her sway once she let her guard down. Surprisingly easy to forget that it wasn’t only the two of them in the room.
“Focus on my voice. Let everything else go.”
The queen took her through the slow relaxation of each limb, the concentration on nothing but breaths. It was a little like what Lily knew of hypnosis, except that this was less about introspection and suggestion. At last, she drifted languidly in the space between waking and sleep, fully aware but utterly at peace, her busy mind quiet, waiting, it seemed, for instruction. Arsinöe gave it. And her voice rose so that the audience could hear her well.
“I seek the body that holds the curse of my people, the corpse from which the Mulo springs, commanded by another to destroy the great dynasty of Ptolemy. Open your Eye, Seer, and find where the Mulo rests.”
Incredibly, Lily felt something inside of her, something that seemed to be located between her eyes, open up like a flower. Her third eye. The gift and curse of the truly psychic.
And then she saw as she had never seen before, flying over trees and mountains, rocks and earth, soaring above all that was and had been and ever would be. Joy swelled in her chest at the sudden freedom, unlike anything she had ever known.
“Seek the Mulo, Seer. You do not fly this night for your own pleasure!”
The voice was a tight snap, pulling Lily’s thoughts back to the matter at hand. She drifted above the world, waiting for something that would tell her where to go, filling her mind with what Arsinöe had told her to look for. Instantly, something pulled at her, dragging her down through the
night air, past tight clusters of homes, their lights glowing ghostly bright, through open fields that whispered with brisk wind, and finally, into a massive and aging relic of a house, a darkened husk without lights. She didn’t want to go in but knew she had to and allowed herself to be pulled inside. Lily got a fleeting glimpse of sheet-draped furniture, empty halls, before being pulled down, down into a hidden room in the moldering basement, so unlike the aging beauty of the rest of the house.
There, on a stone slab, was a decaying corpse. The putrid scent of it made bile rise in Lily’s throat. She gasped and gagged, the foul stench filling her lungs.
“Are you there? Do you see it?” Arsinöe’s voice was intense, urgent. Murmurs and gasps from the vampires, so far away now.
“Yes,” Lily heard herself choke out, though her voice sounded strangely distant. She wanted so badly to go, to fly from here, and yet, still she was pulled forward, compelled to look upon the fleshy ruin of a thing that housed the tormented soul the queen sought. Rotting flesh hung off of bone, lips peeled back over yellowed teeth. The eyes, likely glued shut, had sunken into their sockets.
Then the eyelids flew open, and Lily saw nothing but twin flames burning back at her. It
saw
her…. It hungered
Want you… eat you…
Something rose from the body, something like a black mist with vile red eyes, sometimes shaped like a man and sometimes a shapeless, roiling mass of hatred. It reached for her.
Lily’s eyes flew open as she gave a tortured scream. She scrambled backward, still trying to get away from the thing that had reached toward her, and sprawled gracelessly at
the feet of the queen. Slowly, she realized where she was, but she made no move to get up. She only sat there on the floor, trembling. The incredible hunger she’d felt from that thing, the immense and terrible power, and she’d only just escaped it.
“You saw it!” Arsinöe cried.
Lily looked up to see the queen looming over her, those deep eyes no less hungry in their own way than what she’d just escaped. “Tell me what you saw, where it was! Tell me!”
Fingers dug into Lily’s arms, and she was lifted to her feet as though she weighed nothing. Then she stood, swaying slightly, before Arsinöe.
“It was so awful,” Lily murmured, clutching herself tightly. “It tried to get me.”
Arsinöe slapped her smartly across the face. “You stupid little bitch, I don’t care what it tried to do. Tell me what I need to know!”
The shock of it had tears springing to Lily’s eyes, but somehow she held it together. She would not be weak in front of this creature. She would
not
.
“There was a house,” Lily managed, hating the quaver she heard in her voice. It echoed around the room as the assembled crowd shifted and murmured, listening. “It was a big old Victorian in the country. Like an estate, but fallen into some disrepair. Deserted. The furniture was all covered in sheets. The corpse… it was on a slab. In the basement. A hidden room.”
“And? That’s all?”
Lily didn’t want to say it, much less think it, but she had to finish what she had seen.
“It… looked at me. It came out of its body,” Lily said,
beginning to shake again. “It said it wanted me. It was hungry…. ”
The doors at the far end of the ballroom slammed open with such force that for a moment, Lily was sure it was the Mulo, come to find the woman who had disturbed its rest. And the initial shrieks and cries of the vampires at first registered as fear.
Then she realized it was outrage.
“What is the meaning of this? Get this gutterblood out of here!”
Until that moment, Lily hadn’t realized what people meant when they said their hearts soared. Without even seeing him, she knew: Ty had come for her. She started forward, unthinking, her first instinct being to go to him. But Arsinöe’s hand caught her arm.
“I don’t think so,” she said smoothly, though when Lily turned to look at the queen, she saw raw fury burning in those dark eyes.
“Arsinöe, queen of the Ptolemy! Vlad, leader of the Dracul, demands an audience!
Immediately!
”
There were shouts and curses at the demand, delivered in a full and throaty voice that was clipped and cool, British but with a hint of his Romanian homeland. It wasn’t Ty, Lily realized, and her heart plummeted as quickly as it had risen. Still, it was something unexpected, and she couldn’t contain her curiosity. It was a wonderful distraction from abject terror.
Lily still craned her neck, watching to get her first glimpse of the man Arsinöe hated so much. There was quite a commotion at the back of the room, and she couldn’t see.
Arsinöe hissed a breath out. “Let him come to me. Maybe he wishes to surrender preemptively.”
There was a ripple of nervous laughter as the crowd parted. Lily watched, fascinated, as the most reviled vampire leader strode toward them. With his name, she’d expected the movie cliché: dark widow’s peak, slashing brows, maybe a bow tie and a cape. Instead, what she saw walking toward them was a tall, fit man with pale blond hair and ice-blue eyes she could see glowing all the way from where she stood. He wore an expensive-looking suit, charcoal gray, with a dark plum tie over a black shirt. The severe colors set off his fair looks beautifully, which she was sure he knew.
His features were fine, dashingly aristocratic, with a slightly stubborn chin and large, deep-set eyes that betrayed no emotion as he ascended the platform. He glanced at Lily, then fixed his attention on Arsinöe.
“I don’t recall inviting you, Vlad. The only animals allowed here are servants.”
He gave her a thin smile. “How amusing. I see I’ve interrupted you trying to pin your dynasty’s troubles on my people.”
Arsinöe stepped toward Vlad, and when she did, Lily stepped back. Whatever this was going to be, she was pretty sure she ought to get out of the line of fire. She took another step back as Arsinöe glared up into the face of her nemesis.
“In fact, you’re a little late. The Seer has just described a house I know very well. It was mine, after all, before you bought it and then let it fall into disrepair. There, the corpse of the Mulo rests. A Gypsy curse only your kind knows, hidden in a house you own. If there were any question you were responsible, and there was little, there’s none now. You chose a poor battle to fight, Vlad Dracul.”
Lily felt something brush against her ankle as she took
another step back, toward the curtains that hid a small stage.
“Please,” Vlad snapped, his voice resonating through the room. “You may hate me, Arsinöe, but I’m not a fool. How fascinating that a Mulo sits in an abandoned house of
mine
, just waiting for you to discover it. How lucky that it’s a curse everyone associates with
my
people. If you’d received a poorly typed confession note with something that looked like my signature on it, would you take that as proof as well? You would use any excuse to get rid of us!”
Something brushed her ankle again, harder this time, and Lily looked down. It was hard to contain her gasp as she took in the sight of a huge black cat, winding around her legs. It could have been any of them, she told herself. Anyone.
But the silver eyes that looked up at her were Ty’s.
It was all she could do not to throw her arms around him. He shook his head very clearly, back and forth once.
No.
She looked away from him only with great effort, but she understood. Exhilaration mingled with fear as she glanced around, looking for signs of other Cait Sith, other Dracul… other
anyone
. Surely these two couldn’t have come alone!
Arsinöe was shouting furiously up into Vlad’s face, and the crowd moved restlessly as they strained to hear, discussing amongst themselves whether it would matter if they just killed the leader of the Dracul tonight.
“You slaughter my people!” she cried, and Lily noted that she seemed truly anguished over it. She certainly had feeling for her own blood. It was everyone else’s that was the problem for her, Lily supposed.
“Lies! I have come tonight because I have proof that
your people are slaughtered by one of your own. Stop this madness before one more drop of innocent blood is shed. Hear me out, Arsinöe.”
That shut her up. Arsinöe gaped at Vlad for a moment while the crowd erupted in furious disbelief.
“Bastard,” Lily heard her say softly. “Whatever sick game you’re trying to play, I want no part of it. Get out of here. None of my people have the power, nor the sickness of mind it would take to do such a thing.”
Vlad sighed, and for a moment, his features softened, making a sharp and handsome face into that of an angel. His words surprised Lily, but she didn’t harbor the same prejudices as Arsinöe toward him, and the idea of an inside job made as much sense as anything. In fact… she wondered….
Her eyes sought Nero, who had been hovering near the platform, but he had vanished. It gave her a very bad feeling about all of this.
“I have the Shade who was hired to kill Tynan MacGillivray and Lily Quinn,” Vlad said. “Come here, Damien.”
A cat leaped out of nowhere to land on the stage, prompting hisses and filthy insults. The cat, for his part, looked unconcerned. He glared at the crowd for a moment, then stood and became, with a shift of movement and light, a man.