And then his gaze fell on Colin, standing so close to Sophia, and for one moment his eyes held their old sharpness. But then it was gone, and he smiled, baring discolored teeth.
“Yours, Sophia? I gave you my good taste, if nothing else, heh?” He chuckled dryly and then coughed, one hand hitting the wall as he staggered into it.
“Sandra love,” Lucien said, beckoning the Koepke woman to his side. She hurried over, her face wreathed in joy as she gazed up at the vampire lord’s ruined countenance.
“He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” she whispered, her fingers reaching upward to stroke his cheek, halting inches away as if not daring to despoil such perfection.
Lucien smiled and rested his hand on her arm as she guided him to a big upholstered chair in the corner as if he was a visiting prince.
“She doesn’t see him,” Sophia murmured, staring. The words were intended for Colin’s ears, but she knew every vampire in the room caught it, too. “He’s cast a glamour over her mind. She sees him in his glory, as he used to be.”
Sophia tore her gaze away from the spectacle of Koepke fawning all over Lucien, and studied Raphael, wondering what would happen next. She could feel the hunger rising from every vampire in the room. It was only the fact that Lucien was her Sire that kept her own hunger from joining theirs. Vampires were predators, all of them. But among vampire lords, that instinct reached soaring heights. Raphael was the epitome of Vampire, the predator’s predator. And Lucien had just shown himself to be prey.
“Why?” she asked suddenly, needing answers before Lucien died. She stared at him, demanding that he deal with her. “Why all this subterfuge? Why—” She struggled to find words for a concept she didn’t really understand. “Why diminish yourself like this?” She gestured at their modest surroundings, although her words encompassed so much more.
Koepke twisted around to glare at Sophia once more, but Lucien touched the human woman’s cheek, stroking it softly to pull her attention back to him. “I have spoken to her of you, Sophia,” he said without looking away from Koepke. “I’m afraid she is somewhat jealous. Gently, cherie,” he murmured to the human, and the familiar endearment on this old man’s lips filled Sophia with fear and disgust in equal measure.
That was all he said for some minutes, but then he raised his head and met Raphael’s gaze, as if asking for permission to tell his story. He had to know his situation was precarious, Sophia thought worriedly. But did he understand the extent of his danger? Did he know his actions had nearly cost the life of Raphael’s mate? It was a miracle, an act of supreme restraint on Raphael’s part, that Lucien still breathed.
Lucien was still staring at his fellow vampire lord, waiting. Raphael’s jaw tightened perceptibly, but he nodded, a short, sharp jerk of his chin.
Lucien seemed to relax, his breath running out in a sigh. He leaned back in the chair, one gnarled hand stroking Koepke’s head where she sat tucked up against his legs like a dog.
“It was a woman, of course,” Lucien began. “I’ve always had a weakness for beauty, although it never mattered whether it was man or woman, did it, Sophia? Remember that young man—ah, my apologies. We shouldn’t speak of such things in front of your human.”
A soft growl, little more than an audible vibration, emanated from Raphael where he stood near the empty fireplace.
“Quite right, old friend,” Lucien said quickly. “I am sorry for the deaths of your people. I never intended— Well, that’s not quite true.
“But the woman was lovely, and I was vain. Little to be vain about anymore, I suppose,” he added ruefully. “Although ma belle Sandra sees me as I was, don’t you, cherie?” he said, stroking her head once more.
“My story goes back to before I became what you see. And the woman—so beautiful, so very human—was charmingly shocked to discover that I was Vampire, that such a thing really existed. I know now it was all a pose, but I was too blinded by her flattery to recognize it. She was intrigued by everything—what I was, what I could do. And finally, by all of the others I held in my grasp. I boasted like a fool. I told her about the vampires living among humans, while neighbors, friends, even coworkers were none the wiser. I told her of our houses, our wealth.”
A pink tear rolled from his eye, losing itself in the deep creases of his cheeks.
“And I then I showed her. I showed her Giselle,” he said in a barely audible voice.
Sophia jerked at the name. Giselle. It had been her face Sophia had glimpsed in Curtis Jenkins’s dying memories. He’d been there when the Vancouver vampire and her housemates were murdered.
“You led them right to her,” she said, horrified. “They murdered her, Lucien. They killed all three of them while they lay helpless in sleep!”
Lucien looked away, refusing to meet her gaze. “To my great shame,” he said softly.
“What happened to the human woman?” Raphael demanded harshly.
“When I found out what she’d done, I stripped her mind and then I killed her,” Lucien said calmly. “It was too late for my Giselle and her lovers, Damon and Benjamin. Such beauty gone forever,” he said sadly, “and all because of me.”
His voice ached with regret, but it only infuriated Sophie. What good was his regret to the vampires who had died, both here in and Vancouver?
“But killing the woman who seduced me wasn’t enough,” Lucien continued. “I knew she had told others everything I’d shared with her. I might be a fool, but not so big a fool that I thought she had the stomach to do the killing herself. I took the identity of the killers from her mind. I sought them out and charmed them. And I discovered how little they knew of what we are and what we can do. They were killers, certainly. But there was no subtlety in what they did. They hated and they killed.
“So I persuaded them to move their butchery out of Vancouver and into the U.S. Into your territory, Raphael, although they didn’t know that. I let them believe it was simply a matter of convenience, why kill in Canada, when they could do their killing right here at home?”
Raphael had become frighteningly still, his silver-flecked eyes staring unblinking at Lucien, who seemed unaware of his danger.
“But why?” Sophia interjected, hoping he would redeem himself somehow, that he would tell them he’d done more than simply shove his murderous problem onto others—including her—to take care of. “Why send them here to kill even more, my lord? Why not stop them?”
Lucien looked up at her, his eyes sunken and shadowed, and yet there was a light of compassion there, as if he knew she was hoping for an answer he couldn’t give her.
“Because I knew I couldn’t defeat them,” he told her gently. “They’d brought in someone new—this McWaters fellow. And where the others were disorganized and mindless in their killing, he was not. He was a strategist and more than just a killer—he was a highly trained, intelligent killer who hated everything we were. I had been hard pressed to deal with them before, but I didn’t stand a chance once McWaters became their leader. Even worse, he brought more humans with him. Far too many for me to deal with alone.
“But it was painfully easy to turn McWaters’s hatred back on the ones he despised most. It took so little encouragement on my part, just a few hints about where to look and what to look for. It was the reason he’d come to Vancouver in the first place, to learn how to find and kill the vampires who’d sullied his home town.”
He shifted his gaze to Raphael and continued, “My vampires were so much easier to kill than yours. You know me well, Raphael. You used to chastise me for my lax ways back when we were both new to this continent, for not having even a pretense of security.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied his fellow vampire lord, becoming shrewd and calculating. “But I know you, too, old friend. And I knew you could defeat them. Even more, I knew nothing would stop you once they’d killed one of yours.”
Raphael moved faster than even Sophia’s eye could follow, his eyes shooting silver sparks as he grabbed Lucien by the throat and ripped him from the chair. The human woman screamed, finding herself shoved aside where she huddled whimpering against the wall.
Raphael’s rage filled the room in a rush, crushing Sophia’s chest and hurting her ears as it threatened to displace every ounce of air in the small house. She raised a small cone of power, for Colin’s protection even more than her own.
“They nearly killed my mate,” Raphael growled, his voice so deep it rattled the dishes in the kitchen. “They butchered two of mine and nearly raped another to death.”
His power grew along with his fury, becoming a storm of energy that sent furniture scraping across the floor to shatter against walls, pictures crashing to the floor with the chime of breaking glass.
“Wait,” Sophia cried. “Wait. Please, Lord Raphael.”
He turned to stare at her and she wasn’t certain he could see her anymore. His eyes had gone solid silver, and even Duncan and the others had backed away.
Sophia was exquisitely aware of Colin standing next to her, of his terrible vulnerability if Raphael unleashed even a fraction of the power swirling around them. She tightened her own power ruthlessly. It was like knives of red-hot steel clawing at her insides, demanding to be set free, to respond to Raphael’s overwhelming threat and defend what was hers. She wanted to scream in agony, to shred her own skin in a bid to release the unbearable pressure. But Colin’s life, and probably hers, as well, depended on her ability to seem harmless, to offer no challenge to Raphael’s execution of the vampire who had caused so much pain and loss to Raphael’s children, and God save them all, to his mate.
“A question, my lord,” she pled. “Please.”
Raphael stared at her, unmoving. And then he blinked. “Make it fast,” he grated out and dropped Lucien back into the chair.
Sweat was pouring from Sophia’s skin, soaking her clothes as she turned to face her Sire. “Why me, Lucien? Why call me back here?”