Fists clenched tightly, Andrus paced across the kitchen. “No,” he finally said in a hushed voice. “I would never punish you for something like that. But you should be thanking me for showing you what he’s really like. He let you go without batting an eyelash, and you were ready to spend eternity with him. He’s not the one for you.”
“What are you saying? That you are?” she asked bitterly.
He growled. “I am not worthy of anyone, least of all you.”
“Whatever! Then why are you doing this?” She screamed.
He ran his hands through his short, dark spikes. “You would never understand the truth, but this isn’t about revenge—not against you, anyway.”
Helena’s mind began sliding the pieces into place. Andrus was using her for revenge. Against who? Couldn’t be Niccolo. If that were the case, Andrus would have killed her. Or, killed Niccolo that first night in the hotel. So, if not Niccolo, then who?
Light bulb. “Dammit, Andrus! This is about her! Isn’t it?” Helena gave him an ineffective push.
Andrus’ face went from flushed to pale.
She was right. Helena wondered if maybe he still desired Reyna. Sometimes the lines between love and hate blurred.
“But I’ve never met the woman. What possible use could I be?”
He cleared his throat and stared down at Helena’s feet. “I’ve sent a letter to Niccolo, advising that you will be executed unless he brings Reyna to me tomorrow evening.”
“What!?” she screamed.
Andrus sighed. “I will not harm you, I vow it.”
Helena huffed. “Too fricking late.” Then a thought struck her…the queen was extremely powerful and dangerous. And bonkers. “Niccolo will be killed if he tries to take her on.”
Andrus shook his head. “The Execution—”
“Niccolo! His name is Niccolo! And if you knew anything about him, you’d realize he’s no different from you. He didn’t want to become a vampire anymore than you wanted to be a Demilord.” Why am I defending him? The jerk told me he loved me, tried to sleep with me, then abandoned me.
Andrus cleared his throat and nodded. “Niccolo is quite intelligent; he will bring her to me. I would go after her myself, but she’s impossible to track. This is the best solution.”
Helena hissed. What a total dirt bag! Was there no end to the parade of big, mean, untrustworthy immortal jerks?
“So you planned this all along? How did you even know about me in the first place? What are you going to do once you have the queen? You know I totally hate you, right?”
Andrus frowned. “Yes, this has been my plan all along. The Demilords have been watching Niccolo’s for a while; they found out there’d been a wedding dress maker visiting—a lucky discovery given how powerful of a bargaining chip a vampire’s bride can be. That is between her and me. And…yes. I know you hate me. Although, I hope you will forgive me.”
“Have I told you lately that you are a complete and utter—”
“Ass?” he cut in. “Easy on the compliments. You might over inflate my ego.”
Helena sizzled with anger. He’d never cared about helping her. “It was all a lie, wasn’t it? Everything you told me about yourself was just to get me to feel sorry for you so I’d come quietly, wasn’t it?”
Andrus stepped in closer. “No. Everything I told you was real, except…I do not know if our archives hold the key to breaking the bond with Niccolo.”
Jerk! How could she have been so stupid to trust this man? “So, you lured me here, intending to do what exactly?”
Andrus sucked in a breath. “Niccolo will bring me Reyna and get you in return.”
“Jeez. Thanks, Andrus. He’s going to come and save me—which I highly doubt, since he made it clear he doesn’t want me—but if he did, then I get to face the man who just broke my heart. Thanks bunches!”
He closed the gap between them and looked down at her, his golden eyes filled with powerful emotion. “I, too, was surprised. If you were mine, I would not have let go so easily. But, it was the best outcome—better than we hoped for. He was weakened from being out during the daytime, and with you in the room, we suspected he would not risk a fight. He had no way of winning.”
“Oh,” Helena responded. Was that why he let her go so easily? No. If that were the case, she would have expected Niccolo to say something like, “This isn’t over; I’ll get you back.” But no. He told her to go. She’d been dumped cold.
Andrus gripped her shoulders, “I’m sorry.”
Helena jerked away and stepped aside. “I don’t want to hear it. Just tell me what to do so we can get this over with. Then I never have to see you or him again.”
He looked away. Was that regret in his eyes?
Oh, for heaven’s sake! Did he expect her to feel sorry for him? “Just tell me the truth, is there any chance I might be able to break the bond?” She watched closely to see if he’d do the blinking thing.
“I do not know.” He did not blink. Truth.
“If Niccolo doesn’t come for me, will you let me go?” she asked.
Andrus nodded. “Sure.” Blink, blink. Lie.
But what purpose could there be for him in keeping her. She would never trust him. There could never be anything between them. Oh, no! “Are you going to kill me?”
His head snapped up, his eyes wide. “Gods no! How could you speak such words?” No blinks.
Relieved, Helena mentally sighed. “Show me where the archive is.”
Step one: find a way to break the bond. Two: find a way to escape before Niccolo showed up with Reyna. She was done with them all!
***
Andrus silently led Helena back through the now empty dining room, through a large formal sitting room, to a hidden staircase behind the bookshelf. It was all just too Scooby Doo for her liking.
Andrus swiped the cobwebs from the doorway and hit the switch at the top of the stairs. An old, dusty bulb flickered on. Was the key to her freedom really down there? She sucked in a lung full of air over her shoulder, reacting to the stale, dank odor wafting up from the stairwell.
Unaffected, Andrus descended quickly. Helena, not wanting to be left alone, scurried close behind down the creaking stairs. They reached another doorway at the bottom where Andrus hit another light switch.
A long string of bulbs, which ran the length of the ceiling, illuminating the room. “It’s the size of an airplane hangar,” Helena mumbled under her breath.
Shelves, which covered every square inch of the brick walls, ran the length of the room. Freestanding wooden shelves, which nearly touched the ceiling, ran down the center of the cavernous room like stacked dominoes, leaving passages on either side.
“There must be hundreds of thousands of books,” Helena said, still unable to believe all this space was hidden beneath the Demilord mansion.
Andrus charged on, not bothering to look at Helena. About fifty yards later, toward the center of the library, the room opened up. Andrus stopped. “I’ll be back to check on you in a few hours. I’m locking the door so you don’t get any ideas.”
“Can you at least point me to the right shelf, for crying out loud?” she asked.
Andrus’ cold expression didn’t change. Was he upset because Helena had told him to pound sand? Wasn’t she the injured party?
He replied, “That wall contains records of vampires and other creatures we've extinguished. That wall”—he pointed behind him—“has all vampires we've been watching with the potential to turn Obscuro.” He pivoted on his heel and walked toward the nearest freestanding shelf. “The rows here hold the records on the queen's guards.”
Helena's curiosity piqued. What information would be there about Niccolo? “And the DIY section?”
Andrus looked confused.
She elaborated, “Do It Yourself? As in, divorce.”
He looked around the room and pointed to a shelf with twelve-inch thick books. “Those are the legends of the Ancient Ones. Start there.” He turned away coldly an
d left.
Bastard. For as long as she’d live, she’d never forgive him. His plan was to swap her for the queen or keep her. Helena didn’t like either of those lame plans.
She turned toward the shelves that held the information on the queen’s guards and stared at the books, thinking.
She stepped closer to the shelf and cocked her head to one side to read the bindings. They were organized by dates. 2,000 B.C. to 1000 B.C.?
“Christ—oops—before Christ! How old are these books?” she mumbled to herself. If Niccolo was really thirteen-hundred years old, it would mean he was born in…she counted backwards in her mind. The seven hundreds? No wonder he didn’t know who Tina Turner was. To him, Bach and Mozart were wild pop stars.
She reached for the book marked 1stCentury ~ 1,000 A.D. and eagerly carried it back to the desk. She flipped open the pages. It contained page after page of names in alphabetical order. She flipped until she reached DiConti, Niccolo. Her eyes locked on the page with his name in bold print at the header and began absorbing the words. Part of her felt like she was spying; the other part hoped she’d find something that would magically make her hate him; loving him wasn’t working out so well.
The first few pages detailed his hometown, near Genoa, Italy. Like Niccolo had told her, he’d left home at a young age to fight in the north with his brothers. At the age of thirty-two, he’d disappeared from the human world, but reemerged by the ninth century. Niccolo’s reputation in the vampire world was well established as a brutal, savage, unbeatable warrior.
The thousands of accounts of his battles and extermination of rogue vampires were legendary. In one particular battle, during the 1200s, Niccolo had been taken by surprise when he and his men arrived in the Amazons expecting to find a group of thirty Obscuros who’d been snacking on the local population. Sadly, communication in those days was slow and word had not reached Niccolo until twelve months after the outbreak. When they arrived, he and his men found that the Obscuros had been busy creating an army. They were confronted by over three-hundred, vicious vampires. They were outnumbered with reinforcements months away. He instructed his men to retreat into the jungle. There, they would regroup. But Obscuros seized two of his men before they could get away.
“You may take me in their place, and I will not fight you,” Niccolo had said according to witnesses. “If you keep them, I will leave here now. But I will return with an army of one thousand, and you will not be killed. We will remove your limbs and let you experience the excruciating pain of your body being bloodless and helpless. Then we will transport you to the queen’s dungeons where you will live for an eternity deprived of blood so you will not heal.”
His threat worked. The Obscuros agreed to the swap and released his men. The story said that Niccolo spent the next few months being tortured and drained repeatedly by the Obscuros who used his blood to become stronger. Helena cringed. She couldn’t imagine enduring so much pain. When reinforcement finally arrived to rescue Niccolo, the Obscuros were a hundred times stronger than before. The battle between the queen’s army and the evil vampires raged on night after night, each side retreating during the day to recover.
On the sixth night, Niccolo, who had been entombed underground, finally escaped. Witnesses say he clawed his way from the ground, sifted behind the leader of the Obscuros, and took his head. The entire army of Obscuros turned to ash within seconds.
“Why would they die just because their leader died?” Helena wondered aloud. She quickly flipped through the pages to find another story, then another and another. All three were accounts of battles where Niccolo had won by capturing and killing the evil vampires’ leaders.
That's it! Helena gasped. “Oh my God.” Andrus hated the queen. He’d told her once that he planned to kill the evil bitch. Crap, Andrus was going to kill Reyna, and with her, every vampire she’d ever made would die.
She hopped up from the desk and ran down the side of library, up the stairwell, and then pounded furiously on the door. “Andrus! Open this door! I won’t let you! Open the goddamned door!” She kicked and threw her fists at the thick wooden door for over ten minutes, but no one came. Finally, she sank to the step.
Chapter 17
The car radio was hammering some odd House music, when Viktor noticed Niccolo clutching the sides of his head in the passenger seat. “Are you all right?”
Niccolo shook his head. “She’s in so much pain, I can’t think straight.”
“Oh. Thought you were going to lecture me again about the timeless, soul-enriching traits of Bach. Or, as I call him…Baaahhhhch.” Viktor made a sour face.
Niccolo did not laugh.
“You need to feed, my friend.” Viktor handed him a bag of cold blood from a small cooler in the backseat. “Here, this will help you keep up your strength.”
The thought of tasting anyone but Helena made his stomach churn. Yet, drinking her blood, changing her into a vampire made his heart crack into two. What on earth was he going to do? Focus. Bring her back safely first, he reminded himself.
“I will be fine.”
Viktor shook his head. “You are far from fine. As your friend, I am telling you that you are a liability. You couldn’t even kill an annoying Cocker Spaniel. You’re too weak.”
Viktor was right. Always the voice of reason. But it was Niccolo’s decision to defy Andrus’ instructions. Niccolo wasn’t stupid enough to hand Reyna over. If anything happened to that crazy shrew, he and his men would die. Niccolo also didn’t believe for one moment that Andrus would kill Helena as the note said. Not after he’d seen Andrus kissing her so passionately in the bar a few nights ago. The memory made him grind his teeth.
Andrus likely wanted her for himself once he got Reyna and Niccolo out of the picture. How could he have let Helena go off with that cretin? Yes, Niccolo felt devastated by what he’d almost done to her in bed. But his need to keep her safe caused him to overreact, a fact he sorely regretted.
Niccolo turned his head and stared out the window towards the wrought iron fence that surrounded the entire Demilord compound. Somewhere on the other side of the thicket was their mansion. And Helena. No vampire had ever successfully penetrated the grounds. It was warded in every possible way. Some even said mosquitoes could not enter.
“I cannot let you go in alone,” Niccolo groaned, barely able to speak from the throbbing pain in his head. “She is my bride. My responsibility.”
“I won’t be alone. We are twenty.” Viktor sighed. “My friend, over the centuries you have saved my life in battle more times than I care to count. You kept my family safe so that I could watch my children and grandchildren grow. You stayed by my side when I had to watch each of them die from old age, unable to comfort or help them. You saved me from a life of darkness. Please, brother, it is my time to do this one thing for you.”
Niccolo knew Viktor would go regardless, once he’d made up his mind, he didn’t change it. Stubborn bastard. That’s why he liked him so much.
“Buon, be careful. If anything happens, we shall rendezvous at our meeting spot.”
Viktor nodded. “I hope this works.” Viktor glanced at Niccolo’s tattooed arm.
Niccolo lifted the sleeve of his black t-shirt. “What else could it be for?”
“A useless decoration?”
Niccolo shook his head. “No. Cimil is known for pulling this kind of crap. Did I ever tell you how I found her? About the legend of the Spanish monk I uncovered in an old text?”
Viktor’s brows furrowed. “Not sure I want to know.”
“Word had traveled to the church about a Mayan legend of a powerful seer in southern Mexico. The monk had been plagued by years of violent dreams of his brothers turning on one and other in a murderous rampage. Desperate to stop his nightmares from becoming reality, the monk traveled for months to reach her. And when he finally did, she merely said, ‘Sorry. Can’t give you the time of day.’ But the determined monk wouldn’t give up. He stayed in the jungle, living at the edge of the
cenote—her portal—waiting for her to pass through, which she did on numerous occasions. Each time, she simply repeated her words.”
“I’m guessing the story doesn’t end well,” Viktor frowned.
Niccolo’s eyes grew darker. “The poor monk died of a fever, but the local priest documented that there was a date tattooed across the monk’s chest. At his burial, an agitated, strange redhead appeared out of nowhere. She said, ‘What the hell happened to him? I gave the guy the date of the massacre so he could stop it! I tattooed the goddamned thing on his chest so he wouldn’t forget. I mean, really, just because I didn’t know the exact time of day. Men!”
Niccolo paused. “I’m guessing Cimil gives people help when they ask, but doesn’t provide detailed instructions. Either that, or she simply enjoys watching them squirm.”
Viktor nodded. “Well, now that I’m feeling inspired by your uplifting story, I guess we should test your theory.”
Niccolo nodded and re-read the tattoo on his arm. It translated as, “True to the gods, you shall enter. I brake for leather pants and garage sales.”
Niccolo once again felt his stomach churn. Cimil had a cruel sense of humor to create a spell using those words, but she was beyond twisted for tattooing the damned thing on his arm. He focused his thoughts away from throttling her. If luck smiled upon him, there’d be time for that diversion later. For the moment, he had no choice but to trust that she’d carefully planned this moment.
“But are you certain you translated the symbols correctly?”
Niccolo nodded. “Sì. And when I see her again, she’s going to pay. Especially if I find out her little spell doesn’t work.”
Viktor opened the car door and stepped onto the dark street. The other men, who’d been eagerly waiting in a row of black vans behind them, exited their vehicles and melted into the night.