Masters of the Night (23 page)

“I am empowering you to fight her. Is that not what you wanted?” he
said, drawing back quickly, confused. “She’s an Old World
vampyre
,
a powerful one.”

He reeled and drew his hand across his chest. He had lost his
heartbeat.

“Am I your minion now?” she asked weakly.

“Do you feel like a minion?” he smirked slightly, emanating mystical
essence all over the room as the streams sparkled in his veins.

“I think I should slap you.”

“Then you’re definitely not my minion.”

23.

The door to the
mountain lair kicked open.

Carrying an elaborately carved stake of mahogany wood infused with
silver and engraved with Latin symbols, Andre, with the Shadows behind him,
rushed the room.

Henri was on the sofa, his arm draped around Angie’s shoulders.

“That’s a little excess avant-garde, don’t you think,
DuPre
?” Henri smirked as he looked at the demolished door.
“The door wasn’t locked.”

Andre glared as he caught sight of Angie’s blouse, then his gaze burned
toward the
vampyre
.

“Give her to me!” Andre demanded, his eyes blazing as he held out his
hand.

Henri pulled her close, his arm tightening. He didn’t want to give her
up.

“Release her!
Now!”
Andre
said,
his hand curling around the stake in a tight grip.

James’s crossbow became taut, ready to send a bolt. But he did not want
to risk hitting Angie if she moved to protect the Royal.

Which she did.

Angie lunged, threw herself in front of the
vampyre’s
chest. “Don’t hurt him!”

“Go to them, Angie,” Henri said, reluctantly releasing her.

“Don’t kill him, Andre,” Angie pleaded in torrents of tears. “He didn’t
understand. And God help us, Henri De
LaCroix
is in
atonement.”

James looked at her neck, and his eyes shone with a hard glint. “That
doesn’t look like much atonement.”

“You would be killing an atoner,” Angie cried in a sob. “You’re sworn
to safeguard them.”

With his arm tight around Angie’s waist, Andre began pulling her with
him backward toward the door while his troupe kept an eye on the
vampyre
empowered with mystic strength.

His stake remained ready in his hand.

Henri moved toward the window. “I will not engage you, Andre,” he said.

Andre studied him curiously. There was a strange tone in his voice.
Sorrow?
Sadness?

Henri became a visage of fog. The window slid open. The fog rolled away
and down the outside wall just as a sliver of sun began casting a gold net
across the thick canopy of old growth forest.

Andre began pulling Angie down the porch stairs and toward the
drive—she resisted him, looking back desperately.

“That
Lammer
thing will kill him,” she
sobbed.

“Get us out of here,” Andre said, tossing his keys to James.

Andre threw her onto the back seat,
then
slid
in beside her while they sped away with her.

“We should have staked him,” James said as he glanced back at Angie’s
blouse streaked with blood. “Look what he did to her, Andre! And you let him
live?”

“No. She let him live. She swore he’s in atonement.”

“He thought it was what I wanted,” Angie sighed, then leaned her head
against her guardian’s shoulder as her thoughts began to mingle with Henri’s
and the venom seeped.

At the next stop light, she undid her seat belt and tried to lunge out
of the van.

“He’s calling to her,” Andre said, pulling her back against the seat.
“Hurry, James.”

“He isn’t calling me. We have to help him, Andre. He’s betrayed Jane.
And the Realm.”

“You can’t help him if you’re half-vamp,” Andre said. “We have to burn
the venom.”

As soon as they reached the apartments, Andre flew up the stairs with
her to his rooms. Tossing her onto the bed, he shouted for Mack, told James to
hold her down, then turned her face to the side and smoothed her hair away from
her neck to appraise the damage. The sight of the two punctures buried in
purplish bruises made him swear hate for the
vampyre
with a vengeance, atonement or not. “I’m so sorry, Angie,” he whispered
sorrowfully.

The bedroom door flew open and Mack hurried in. Angie looked up to find
the other slayers standing just outside the door, their gazes intense.

She closed her eyes, drifting somewhere between space and time and
Henri.

The Shadows’ voices became far away.

“I can’t believe he once let her live.
Then
did—that—to her.”

Then Andre’s resolute words.
“If either of
those
vampyres
tries to call to her and she tries to
go to either of them, tie her down.”

A sigh.
From
James.

Andre’s voice again. “Let’s get it done.”

Mack pressed her arms against the bed. Angie bolted up against the arms
holding her down. “Where is Henri? He’ll kill him. He’ll kill you all!”

“Right now we have to keep from killing you,” Andre said. He motioned
urgently to James as he took a small wooden box from a locked drawer.
“Hurry.”

Taking a wooden-handled iron in the form of a cross from the box, Andre
ran to the kitchenette.

When he returned, the tiny branding iron was glowing red-hot, and his
instructions to Mack and James were simple. “Hold her down.”

They each took an arm, and held them pressed against the mattress. But
they did not have to use much pressure.

“I know the routine,” Angie said.

Mack studied the deep punctures. “The bastard did a number on her.”

“In a moment, she’s going to be fighting us like a cornered wildcat,”
James said.

Andre took a vial of olive oil, centuries old, from the wooden box and
placed it next to him on the night stand.

Then pressed the hot iron against the punctures.

Angie screamed and fought them, struggling to be free. Unable to break
their grasp, she dug her fingers into the bed covers, clinching the folds into
her hands.

The slayers held her down.

Finally, she sank against the pillows, paralyzed, paralyzed by liquid
fire.

“Easy, Angie,” Mack whispered. “Come back easy.” He looked frantically,
helplessly, at Andre. “Why is it taking so long?”

“It just feels long, Mack,” Andre said quietly as Angie continued to
cry out, her body tensing into hard spasms.

After what seemed an eternity, her breathing finally calmed, and the
muscles in her arms relaxed.

She gazed at him, through sobs and tears. “It hurts, Andre. It hurts.”

“I
know,
bébé
. I
know.”

“I’m not afraid to go after him, Andre,” James said, his tone angry,
demanding justice for her.

“No!” Angie cried.

Mumbling, “The Lady Weston’s niece.
Her niece,”
through a foggy voice, she let the pillows carry her away again. When she
opened her eyes, Andre was uncapping the vial of oil and putting several drops
on his fingertips.

“If it burns, you are a
vampyre
and will have
to die, Angie,” Andre said quietly.

She closed her eyes, not wanting to see the silver dagger James was
easing from its sheath at his belt.

For several moments, the tears rolled, unfettered, from under her
lashes.

Then she felt James move close to her. He would be swift and merciful,
but that didn’t help the fear that made her begin to shake uncontrollably.

Andre rubbed the holy oil across the burned punctures.

Then faced his Shadow warriors.
“Angie is deeply
in love with this creature. If she has given herself to his darkness, we will
have to—destroy her. Losing a Shadow is not something we want to contemplate,
but the possibility does exist.”

A silence as heavy as a lead apron fell across the room.

He turned back to Angie. The oil was cool against her skin.

Drawing back, he exhaled with relief. They had not been too late.

He poured the rest into the wound, the antidote for the venom.

“Welcome back,
Anj
,” James said, putting away
the dagger. “That was too close for comfort.”

Angie forced herself up, bracing herself on her elbows. She had to make
them listen, make them understand. “He’s dangerous, Andre,” she sobbed.

“You said Henri is in atonement.”

“No. Not Henri. Nicholas.”

“What are you saying?”

“Nicholas is Jane’s lover. He wavers. He may kill you all.
For her.
To take—me.
If she finds
out I’m still alive.” Her voice trailed off. “So will the assassin.”

“She’s in some kind of delirium,” James said.
“From
the venom?”

“Are you the descendent of The Lady Jane Weston?” Andre asked in awe.

“That nasty spider is not a lady!” Angie cried. “She wants to sell me
to the Realm! And Nicholas is her lover.
If he doesn’t sell
me himself, to that
Lammie
thing.”

Andre’s eyes shot through with a sweep of emotions Angie couldn’t
identify, and his voice was like gravel. “He walked right into our midst, to
mock us.”

“Henri kept calling him a vanguard?” Angie queried.

“A vanguard is the warrior who goes in first, the front line,” Andre
said. “The
vampyre
vanguards of legend are cunning,
evil. They go in with well-planned deceptions, to deviously cloud the senses,
clearing a path for those who would follow.”

“The evil thing offered us his wine, and we drank it,”
Taniesha
said.

“You’re the Royal mystic,” Andre breathed, then addressed his warriors.
“
Anjanette
Carter is the missing royal babe. And a
Royal
vampyre
stumbled onto her in a park. Destiny
had a hand in this.”

Weakened from the loss of blood, Angie sank into her pillows and closed
her eyes, to rest.
Just a moment or two.

When she opened her eyes, it was nearly midnight.

The slayers were still in Andre’s room, watching over her.

Then suddenly, moving like lightning, they slung open Andre’s closet
and began assembling their weapons of war.

“What’s going on?” Angie asked, staring in open astonishment. These
were not belt packs. They were spears of wood, javelins of silver welded with
splinters of wood, crossbows, holy water in sprayer tanks, and one golden
cross.

“The cross seems so small,” she said.

“The mustard seed,” Andre said. “The smallest can often be the
strongest. This belongs to Stephen De
LaCroix
. ”

The slayers were exchanging glances but saying nothing.

“Why are you …?” Angie began,
then
her senses
sparked, into a pyrotechnic explosion. “Henri! He’s here.”

Taniesha
glanced toward the
door, beyond which was the stairs, beyond which was the
vampyre
.
“Do you think she would go to him?”

“Oh, for crying out,” Angie began and started to get up.

Andre blocked her. “Stay with her,
Taniesha
.
If he’s here for her, she may have a struggle resisting his call. She’s still
weak,
and still reeling from her experience with him.”

“The bastard has come right to our front door,” James said, his jaw
clinched tight.

Weapons at their sides, the slayers descended the stairs to confront
the Royal.

Stepping from the shadows, Henri glided into the apartment lamp light.

“You have four slayers ready to kill you at my command, Henri. Why are
you here?” Andre demanded in a tight, but controlled voice.