“Chief Guardsman Benvolio Duetti died in the infirmary from smoke over-inhalation twenty minutes ago.” Quindici responded levelly. “Imogene wasn’t directly involved in the raid, but she was a lookout outside the Grotto, and kept the Guards there heavily dosed with smoke until Ms. Price’s friends were captured. Hence, the Associate to Murder charge.”
Quindici glanced to Adrian, but his austere face held no emotion; not anger, wrath, nor fury. He held only the same coolness with which Layla had seen him manage the Hotel this past month, the same calculation with which he did everything. Rikyava had no sap-blood on her; all the Guardsmen had clean hands. Only Quindici’s were coated silver from what had clearly been his interrogation. As he glanced at Layla with his onyx eyes so perfectly calm and his russet hair still so perfectly coiffed, but his white hands so gruesomely filthy, Layla finally understood him.
The Barone Quindici DaPonti was not a creature of passion or emotion. He could brutalize one of their own Hotel family members and feel nothing. He was able to dissociate feelings from action, to calculate any situation no matter how heated passions got. Because deep down inside, his passions didn’t touch him. Suddenly, it wasn’t just Quindici’s grave-cool magic flowing over Layla’s skin that made her shudder, it was knowing they were aligned with someone far darker than she had ever suspected.
Knowing that Adrian was aligned with a bad guy – for reasons she still didn’t understand.
“Ms. Price, at last.” Quindici spoke as their gazes connected. Reaching over to a rose quartz table, he set the knife down among what Layla saw was a gruesome collection of torture implements – all silver and thoroughly etched with runes, most of them sap-coated. “Perhaps you will succeed where my efforts have failed. Something blocks her mind from me; I cannot access it. And she will not loose her tongue for all the pain in the Spanish Inquisition.”
“You can read minds?” Layla blinked, her Dragon coiling up inside her with a nasty growl, fangs bared at that information. She suddenly recalled their kiss in his office – and now wondered if that had all been a manipulation for some strange reason, maybe even a result of him reading her mind.
“I can read minds of lesser magic, yes. Usually.” Quindici’s onyx gaze was eloquent as he waved a hand at Imogene, her lean beauty sagging painfully in her manacles, though her dark eyes were open now, watchful. “I am curious what she has to say to you, since she says she will speak only withthe Royal Dragon Bind.”
Though Layla’s gut dropped further at everything she was learning about the Master Vampire who was supposedly their ally, she took a deep breath, turning and facing their resident Smoke Faunus. Imogene watched Layla with a dark intelligence, though neither said anything, the Faunus breathing hard from her interrogations.
“I’m here, Imogene. Talk.” Layla crossed her arms at her chest, staring the woman down.
“As if it was that simple…” Imogene Cereste laughed in her beautiful alto, though her voice was grating as if she’d spent a lot of time screaming in the past hours. Sap-blood trickled from her mouth and she looked pale as if she’d suffered tremendous blood loss. She’d been chained up over a drain in the floor, sap trickling down her shaggy hooves down through the grate.
Layla tore her gaze from the blood-drain, making herself meet Imogene’s dark eyes again. “It is simple. Tell me who took my friends, and maybe you’ll get to live.”
“I’m already dead.” Imogene laughed, then coughed in pain. “You heard them. Associate to Murder. No one lives charged with something like that. The Hotel Owners will make certain of it.”
“So why do it?” Layla pushed. “Why abduct my friends and risk yourself?”
“Because I had no choice.” Imogene spoke sadly, a bleak wistfulness taking her dark eyes. “What my High Priest asks for, he receives. He took your friends because he wants to meet you, Dragon Bind, and the newnullaxrisen among you. Your friends are collateral to ensure you’ll come to him. They will not be harmed… unless you don’t come.”
“So this guy you serve took my friends just to make sure I’d come talk to him?” Layla narrowed her eyes on Imogene, but the Smoke Faunus’ eyes were closed now, her head resting back against the wall as if she were about to pass out.
“Not just you,” Imogene breathed tiredly. “Him, also. Thenullax.”
“What is anullax?” Layla glanced to Adrian. “Some kind of Vampire?”
“It’s a Storm Dragon.” Watching the barely-conscious Imogene, Adrian had set his hands to his hips, his straight brows furrowed. “But not unlike a Vampire. They’re mystics of a religious sect called the White Chalice that used to be a problem in France, Britain, and Scandinavia. Their sect developed a method of draining magic from others by line-breeding Royal Storm Dragons with Vampire Revenants, creating a talent callednullax. The Chalice used theirnullax-power to break strong Blood and Storm Dragons from prominent clans throughout Europe for many thousands of years.”
“What does a Storm Dragon religious sect have to do with the Smoke Faunus?” Layla frowned, not understanding.
“The Faunus clans in Europe and Scandinavia used to have an alliance with the White Chalice.” Rikyava stepped forward now, horror upon her lovely face as she stared at Imogene. “The Faunus believed the Chalice were the strongest group that could protect their forests. In exchange, the Chalice used Faunus clans to seduce enemies and capture them. But that’s not been the case for hundreds of years since my uncle King Huttr Erdhelm and Queen Justine Toulet combined forces and routed the Chalice out.”
“Apparently, they weren’t routed thoroughly enough.” Quindici spoke, something in his cold aura sharpening beside Layla. “One sect must have survived. Tell us, traitor, do you serve the White Chalice?”
“Yes.” Imogene spoke softly, her beaten beauty tired now rather than defiant. “I must send the newnullaxto my High Priest, and the Dragon Bind also.”
“Who is this newnullaxthe White Chalice mystics wish to recruit?” Quindici was frigid now in his serene calm.
“He is strong.” Imogene raised her head, barely able to look at Quindici in her flickering fatigue. “My High Priest feels his awakening power, like the High Priests of old.”
“Who? Give us a name.” Quindici spoke quietly, dark and vicious.
Just then, the door to the vaulted hall chunked open, and Layla turned to see Luke being escorted in by two of Rikyava’s senior Guardsmen. He still wore his dark green suit from the evening, his bright emerald eyes red-rimmed as if he’d been crying. As his gaze met Layla’s he moved forward, not even glancing at anyone else in the room. She was already moving to him. She was in his arms, and his arms were around her, holding her tight. She felt a furious tremor in him, and just before she closed her eyes, swathed in Luke’s clean lemon-balm scent, she saw the bloodstone pendant upon his chest seethe with vicious twists of red in the green.
“Layla, thank god you’re ok!” Luke breathed by her ear.
“Luke, what happened?” She choked, gripping him close with her hands clutched in his slender suit jacket.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” His breath hitched as he spoke, and she felt that tremor of fury in him again. “I was pissed after your Courtesan’s auction and went back to my rooms, I didn’t go to the after-party Dusk arranged for us. I wasn’t there when Celia, Arron, and Charlie were taken. I should have been—”
“Thenullaxrages…” Imogene sighed from her chains, interrupting them.
