Night's Cold Kiss (28 page)

She climbed to her feet and straightened her shoulders. Oberon stared at her, his expression full of concern and anger. But Christian’s gaze was firmly locked on the first guy. Antoinette looked again. A large puckered scar ran down the side of his face. This must be the man who shot Williams.

They lifted Dante onto the gurney and pulled a gag across his mouth. They secured his feet with more handcuffs. The slight stench of burning flesh meant the cuffs were silver.

Then just as quickly as they came, they were gone.

Christian knew Dante deserved everything he got and more, but his look of sheer terror was unnerving. What kind of research did Lucian do down here that it would terrify a monster like Dante? Obviously it wasn’t good and probably illegal if he was prepared to imprison two Department agents.

Oberon began pacing again. Each time he turned, he gave a little growling grunt, his eyes darting around. The bear in Oberon didn’t like being confined.

“We’ve gotta get out,” Oberon growled and punched the wall at the back of the cage, bones snapping with the impact. He cursed and held his hand up in front of his face. “It’s not healing as fast as it should. We must find a way out.”

“No one ever escapes my brother.”

They all turned to find Hector standing behind a strange little girl, around seven or eight years old. Her dress had been in fashion in the early nineteen hundreds and her long pale blond hair hung in ringlets down her back with a large pink ribbon at the crown of her head.

The girl walked with the confidence of someone much older. He sensed in her presence and power.

“Go watch for Lucian,” she told the servant. He nodded and bowed slightly. Christian caught the gentleness in the
servant’s eyes when he looked at the little girl. It was the first time he’d seen any humanity in the large man.

She walked to a pedestal on top of which was set a stone tablet with symbols and runes carved into the surface. “With this talisman Lucian dampens powers of those confined here.” She touched one of the symbols. Oberon held up his injured hand, ripples moved beneath the skin like dozens of dancing bugs and he finally flexed his hand open and shut as normal.

“So that’s why Dante didn’t use his telekinetic powers,” Antoinette said.

The little girl touched the symbol again and crossed to the floor in front of Antoinette’s cell. “You must be the Petrescu girl Lucian talked about.”

Antoinette tilted her head to the side and stared at the little girl.

Abomination.
“Who are you?” Christian asked.

She turned her large, sad, but very intelligent green eyes on him. “My name is Elisabeta, but my brother, Lucian, calls me Lisbet.” Her annunciation sounded oddly formal, as if she’d been taught to speak by an English professor, each vowel perfectly formed.

“If Lucian’s your brother…” Oberon said. “Why does he keep you down here with all the other caged animals?”

“Because she’s one of us,” Christian said.

“Sort of.” Lisbet smiled her oddly ancient little-girl smile. “I am a special case, you see—another animal to be kept in a cage.” She moved to Oberon’s cage and looked up at him. “My mother was embraced while I was still in her womb. I’m what the Aeternus call an abomination.”

Christian sat down heavily on the bench. “Then, according to your size and appearance, you must be over a hundred years old.”

Lisbet smiled sadly. “Yes, one hundred and twenty in a few months.”

“Then how can Lucian be your brother? He’s human,” Antoinette said.

“Yes, he’s human and he is my brother, my natural, older brother.”

Understanding hit Christian square in the chest—it was so fantastical, but it all fit. The way Lucian smelt slightly strange. He was the Old One Williams had been talking about, not Dante. The final pieces fell into place.

“Antoinette, meet your cousin—your very distant cousin—the daughter of Emil and Elisabeta Petrescu,” Christian said.

Antoinette tilted her head to the side, her brow creasing with confusion.

“My brother said you were smart. He hates you almost as much as he hates her.” Lisbet tossed her head in Antoinette’s direction.

“Why would he hate me?” Antoinette asked.

“Because you are the descendant of the betrayer, Nicolae. Lucian cannot understand how our uncle could hand over his own brother to the Crimson Executioner.” Her eyes pierced Christian. “Yes, I know who you are too and believe it or not, my brother understands your need for vengeance, respects it even. But what he cannot understand is why you would work for Intel and keep the treaty in place. He has been working for decades to find away to destroy that treaty and all those who supported it.”

“If Lucian is Emil’s son, and human, how has he survived so long?” Oberon asked.

“My blood,” Lisbet said. “My mother was attacked late in her pregnancy as retaliation on my father. Struggling through the change brought on my birth and killed her. This is the reason my father was filled with so much hatred toward the Aeternus.”

“Embracing
a pregnant woman is against the edict from the Council of Elders as there are too many risks to both the mother and child,” Christian said. “However, if it’s done early in the pregnancy, within the first trimester, and successfully turns the mother, then the baby may be born as a normal Aeternus baby. Any later, you get what you see before you.”

Lisbet flinched at his last words.

Antoinette’s frown deepened. “Then against all the odds, Lisbet has survived. But how has this helped Lucian?”

Lisbet walked around the room, running her hand over the surface of the table. “Lucian was six at the time, and when our father was executed the doctor who delivered me took us in, but not out of kindness…” Lisbet paused, a tiny frown gracing her smooth pale brow. “He made Lucian his apprentice, but he was no more than a slave really. And I became a specimen…” Her troubled frown deepened. “Let’s just say, Lucian learned his craft well from the good doctor.”

Antoinette gasped. “But you were just a baby.”

Christian didn’t sense any hatred from Lisbet. “You don’t share your brother’s thoughts of vengeance?”

She shook her head, her ringlets bouncing. “From my experience vengeance only begets vengeance—a perpetual cycle of destruction spiraling to uncontrollable fury, sweeping away everyone and everything in its devastating path.”

Such profound words spilling from such an innocent mouth seemed obscene. Lisbet was a living paradox—neither child nor woman.

“Why don’t you leave him?” Antoinette asked. “Leave here?”

Lisbet’s childlike laugh tinkled with irony. “As the bear-man so aptly put it, animals in cages—I’m as much a prisoner as you. From my blood the doctor develop a serum he hoped would extend his life. He experimented on Lucian, and when it seemed to work he tried it on himself. He died horribly. Lucian perfected it, but it only works for him because we share the same blood. The serum must be made fresh and cannot be stored or it degrades beyond use within a couple of days. He’d never let me leave.” Lisbet turned the full force of her gaze on Christian. “Anyway, where would I go? I know what your kind would do to me.”

“That was long ago—the Council of Elders has changed since the treaty was developed. They’ve become more influenced by human compassion.”

“What are you talking about?” Antoinette asked.

Lisbet sighed. “Most of those born like me don’t survive past their first birthday—because the Council of Elders has them slaughtered.”

Christian met Antoinette’s accusing glare squarely. He wasn’t responsible for things that happened in the past, he felt no guilt.

“A century ago the world was a different place—it’s all changed now,” Oberon said, coming to Christian’s defense.

Lisbet’s eyes darted around the room, doubt beginning to creep into them.

“They’re right,” Antoinette said. “The Council of Elders answers to CHaPR, just like all the other aligned parahuman ruling bodies. That’s the purpose of the treaty.”

Lisbet’s eyes widened with surprise. “Lucian said the treaty imprisoned mankind to be nothing but slaves to the parahuman races. But you’re telling me the races are now more accountable?”

Hector burst through the door, gesturing wildly.

“I must go. My brother is coming and he cannot find me here. Please don’t tell him you saw me.” The girl raced from the room, her hair streaming behind her.

Hector followed, returning seconds later with a serving cart loaded with red liquid-filled bags, plastic dinner trays, and a little fresh fruit and vegetables. Food for parahumans.

Antoinette spotted Lisbet’s pink ribbon on the floor not far from the door—it must’ve fallen from her hair when she ran from the room. Antoinette opened her mouth to warn Hector, but Lucian came into the room. She held her breath. He walked right over it, his attention captured by Hector fumbling with the serving cart.

“Haven’t you finished yet?” Lucian sneered.

Hector followed his master with solemn, sunken eyes. Antoinette willed the servant to look down. Christian tilted his head to the side frowning at her, so she quickly glanced at the silk ribbon on the floor. His eyes widened and darted to Lucian.

“When you’ve finished here, I’ll be working in my study. Bring me some coffee,” Lucian ordered as he picked up some files from the counter at the back of the room.

He would see the hair ribbon on the way out for sure. She had to stall him. As she racked her brains for something to say, Christian came to her rescue.

“What are you going to do with us, Moretti?”

Lucian’s creased brow smoothed and a smile lifted the thin line of his lips. Why hadn’t she seen the cruel cast to his mouth before…surely it must have been there?

“All in good time.” Lucian stepped closer to Christian’s bars.

While Christian had Lucian’s interest, she gestured carefully to Hector to look down at the ribbon near his foot. When he saw it, he looked back at her then at Lucian before knocking a bag of blood from the cart. As he picked it up, he secreted the hair ribbon into his pocket.

“How many parahumans have you killed and tortured down here?” Christian asked, keeping Lucian’s attention on him.

“Not all are here against their will. Some of them are quite grateful for the care and shelter I’ve given them.”

“Like Dante Rubins?” Christian shot back.

Lucian shrugged. “Dante was special. He had his drawbacks, his little quirks, but he also had his uses.”

“Like having him assassinate Sir Roger, giving you an alibi and a clear line to the ambassadorship in CHaPR. And you are clearly above suspicion with the injury you sustained trying to defend him in front of an unbiased witness.”

Lucian raised an eyebrow. “Well, Laroque, you are a sharp one.”

“But it goes back way beyond that, doesn’t it, Lucian?” Christian said.

Lucian appeared smugly dismissive. “You’re the one telling the story.”

“You’ve plotted and murdered your way to the top, but Marianna Petrescu was supposed to bring the great Petrescu
family into disrepute when Grigore went renegade. However, you didn’t bank on him tracking down your pet and almost killing him.”

“Dante was seriously injured and it took him over a decade to recover from the burns. But in the end it helped further my cause. A truly unexpected and delightful side effect. I had some new rules implemented in the Guild despite the objection from doom-mongers like Sergei.”

Antoinette’s head snapped up. “The parahuman admission to the Guild.”

“That was among one of them. As I said before what better way to study parahumans weaknesses than by letting them think they were working with us?” Lucian’s smug expression taunted her. “And being able to get back at your family was just an extremely delicious bonus. Who knew your father would come up with the same disappearing trick that we’d pulled on him? I was most surprised when that fool Williams let slip that he’d seen Grigore.”

“You knew about that?” Antoinette asked.

“Of course I did, who do you think had that fool Dushic shot? My man is quite the marksman. Wouldn’t you agree, Christian? I mean, he dispatched Andrew Williams on a busy airport in your custody.”

Christian turned to stone, pale and deathly still. Lucian had in that one simple statement taunted Christian with the knowledge he was responsible for Viktor’s death and given him the identity of man who pulled the trigger.

Lucian was evil—pure, utterly complete evil. In all Antoinette’s years hunting dreniacs she’d never come across such malevolence. And despite his age and reliance on his sister’s blood, Lucian was still substantively human.

“What’ve you done to my father?” she demanded.

He waved away her question. “You needn’t worry about that. You should be more concerned about yourself.”

“I’m going to kill you, Moretti,” Oberon growled.

“So you keep saying bear-man,” Lucian laughed. “But you’re still the one in a cage.”

Hector knocked over the cart, whether on purpose or by accident, she couldn’t say, the contents spilled all over the floor. Oberon roared with laughter and Lucian’s face darkened.

“You clumsy idiot,” he yelled at Hector. “Get this mess cleaned up and those animals fed.” He scowled around the room and focused on Antoinette, smiling with malevolence. “But nothing for these three. Let’s see how cheerful they are after a couple of days without sustenance.”

Oberon sobered instantly. Lucian thundered out of the room in a sweeping fury as Hector bent to clean the mess.

But Antoinette had other things on her mind. “Hector, have you seen my father?”

The large butler gave one slow nod of his head.

“Is he still alive?”

Again, a single dip of his head was the only answer.

Joy warmed an extra beat in her heart.
Thank God
. She closed her eyes and let out a shaky breath. “Can you take me to him?”

He slowly moved his head left then right and back to her.

“But he is here?”

A nod.

“Can you bring him to me?” she pleaded, desperate now.

He repeated the negative movement of his head and bowed imperceptibly before leaving with the cart. Long after he was gone Antoinette watched the doorway, hoping he’d come back with her father. But he didn’t.