44
The first meeting of the blades moved up Val’s arms as a shockwave. He felt the collision in his bones, in his back teeth, clenched so tight he thought they might crack. Vlad had always been the physically stronger of the two, and he was proving it now, well-fed, rested, fit from a strict training regimen.
But Val had the emotional advantage.
He was fee.
And his belly was warm with fresh human blood – he could weep with ecstasy to taste man-blood on his tongue for the first time in so long.
So Val braced his feet against the floor, met his brother’s next strike with a parry, and laughed, high and wild, the sound as bright and sharp as the meeting of the swords.
“You’re wounded, brother,” Val said, stepping back, blocking, parrying. “I can smell blood.”
Vlad grunted – disapproval, and not effort, Val thought.
“I hope it won’t affect your fighting.”
Vlad surged forward with an aggressive flurry of strikes.
Val deflected them, but he had to retreat seven steps backward, arms shaking with the effort. Shit, he wasn’t going to be able to keep this up for long. The long muscles in his back were already starting to burn.
But he grinned at his brother, even if his laugh was breathless. It was too fun not to goad him like this.
The next clang sent sharp bolts of pain shooting up Val’s arms, and he spun away, gasping, retreating.
Vlad granted him a moment, his own broad chest heaving. “What do you think is going to happen?” he asked, brows set at stern angles. “That you can overpower me? Because you can’t.”
Val panted; sweat on his palms made his sword grip slippery. The others, he noted – Nikita and sweet Sasha and their pack; and the mage and her Marine, her Gullinkambi – had left. He registered scuffles and barked orders, and much milling about out on the front steps. Heard, even, the distant crack of a rifle, and male shouts of alarm. They’d gotten away, then, all of them.
In that sense, he’d been victorious.
Even if his brother was about to run him through.
“How about this,” he said, struggling to get his breathing under control. Beneath his ratty clothes, sweat poured down his body. His left calf cramped up, sharp and sudden. “Let me leave, and you won’t have to see me again. You won’t even have to hear from me. All I want is to be left alone.”
He’d meant it as a jest, a challenge. But as soon as he said it, Val realized it was the truth. With a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, Val acknowledged that his aspirations of the past – to be seen as a worthy member of his famous family; to foster a peace between the Empire and Romania, not to help the Empire, as all his doubters had claimed, but to finally drag Romania out of an endless crusade; to gain some sort of brotherly affection from Vlad; to lead – were just that: past. All he wanted, all that he’d wanted for years now, was to lie down in spring grass and watch clouds scuttle across the sun. Feel the breeze. Smell modern cities, and the insides of restaurants, and eat until he was painfully full. He wanted to know the texture of Mia’s hair against his hand. To sit a horse again. To sleep on silk sheets, and know a willing sex partner, and run until his legs were jelly, the wind in his clean hair.
He was a purebred vampire prince. Romanian Royalty. Roman royalty.
And all he wanted was to disappear into the world, and never be reminded of those things again.
“Please,” he said, voice twisting piteously. “Just let me go.”
Vlad stared at him. Lifted his sword. Attacked.
Val brought his own up with arms that screamed in pain, and the strike sent his blade spinning out of his hands. He gave a wordless cry of alarm and pain, and reached for the gun he’d picked off a dead guard and jammed in his fraying waistband. He wasn’t sure he’d know how to use it, but he’d watched Rooster. It couldn’t be that hard…
Vlad’s blade caught him where his neck and shoulder joined. Cleaved him there. Cracked him open. The sword hit his sternum, on the inside, skidded around his heart, lodged in his ribs. Not fatal. But.
He didn’t register falling, or Vlad drawing the sword back out of his body. Didn’t hear or feel any of it.
Suddenly he was on his back, looking up at the high coffered ceiling, the heat and strength bleeding out of him, heart throbbing jaggedly. He couldn’t breathe. The light was fading.
Vlad’s face appeared above his. “A kill for a kill,” he said, emotionless.
“No.” His voice came out a thin rasp. His vision blacked over. “I never…wanted to kill you.”
And then he was gone.
~*~
Fulk vaulted over the railing, landed lightly on the balls of his feet, and entered the library just in time to see Vlad cut his little brother almost in half. He watched, sick to his stomach, as Val crumpled, and Vlad braced a fit on his hip, leaned back, and pulled his sword free with an awful sucking sound and a fresh arterial spray of blood.
Vlad stepped back, and watched Val twitch and spasm, and bleed all over the carpet without any expression.
Fulk couldn’t say that he liked Val, not the way that Anna did. But. This…
“Did you kill him?” Fulk asked, and Vlad whirled to face him, bloody sword lifting.
His dark eyes moved over Fulk, noted his own sword. “No. But he will sleep for a while. He can’t cause any more trouble.” His head tilted. “Maybe I should have killed him, yes?”
Fulk swallowed hard. He was aware, suddenly, that he’d done nothing of any use today. He hadn’t helped anyone escape, hadn’t taken Annabel and fled. He was still here, same as ever. His sword might as well have been a matchstick for all the good it had done.
“Do you hate him?” he asked, nodding toward Val, who it was hard to look at.
“No,” Vlad said, like it was obvious. “He has always been full of hate, and that is not useful. It is a waste.”
Fulk didn’t respond.
“What has happened to the wolf? Sasha?”
“I think he’s gone.”
“Ah.” Vlad looked at him and Fulk wanted to squirm. “Then it’s a good thing there are other wolves here, yes?”
~*~
“We need leverage,” Trina had said, and Jamie had understood. The best way to push back against a secret, sinister organization was to expose it.
He found the computer terminal on the main floor, in a room that looked like a parlor. It could have been nothing; it looked like an afterthought. But when he touched the mouse, the screen lit up, and oh. Yes, this was something.
He used the keycard he’d swiped to log in, plugged in the flash drive he’d brought, and started moving files.