A shadow moves through the enclosure with startling speed. Several of Cleo VII’s impeccably-arranged sleeping rocks skid acrossthe ground. I’m knocked back against the wall by an impossible force. The toad container flies from my hands.
“Hello, Arabella,” a voice rasps as a shadow envelops me. A face emerges from the gloom of a dark hood.
The face of a ghost.
No, not a ghost. Someoneverymuch alive, with his hands around my throat, not squeezing but holding tight enough that I’m aware of his obscene strength.
Someone who makes my already cool blood freeze in my veins.
Someone who issupposedto be dead.
The scar across his face breaks open as his charred skin twists into a mockery of a grin. Lord John Astor, my sire, speaks in a voice thick with grave dust and satisfaction. “My dear, sweet Arabella. You are mine once more.”
49
Arabella
Celeste:Arabella, please come to Black Crag tonight with me, Dora and Winnie. Beth won’t be there to remind you about the importance of self-care, so I will. We’ll light chocolate-scented candles, do facials, and summon a demon to take vengeance on all who have wronged us while we snuggle beneath a blanket fort. That’s what Beth means by self-care, right?
ASTOR HAD ONCE BEEN HANDSOME– the most eligible man in the fashionable Cairo circles I ran in. As a young, naive courtesan, I thought his beauty, money and influence would be my ticket to an easy life. Instead, he took my life – and my innocence – from me.
Why do all the men who wrong me keep coming back from the dead?
Fear twists inside me – a physical, palpable weapon that blows out my chest and lodges in my throat. I try to think, but my mind is a blank sheet of white terror.
This isn’t possible.
“How are you here?” I whisper.
“Do you mean, existentially, how do vampires exist?” Astor tilts his head to the side, amused by his joke. “Or do you mean, how amIherein your lovely home in Argleton after you cut off my head, burned my body, drank of my blood, and stole my property?”
I snap my mouth shut. Anything I say will betray my fear. I won’t allow him the satisfaction.
He must have opened the outer door of Cleo VII’s enclosure and climbed up the tree that twists inside it. All those blips in the Sanctus security system. The beheaded songbirds. They were from him.
But that still doesn’t explain how he’s alive.
Astor smirks. “I see my little songbird has gone silent. I do so love surprising you. You thought you were so clever, training yourself to endure the sunlight, hiding that blade, tempting me into bed one final time. I must admit, it was quite a shock to wake up with my head separated from my body. But one doesn’t get to my age without taking precautions. A vampire is most vulnerable during his dreamless sleep, and I’ve seen enough persecutions to know that I could not trust my immortality to chance and good breeding. Some time ago, I had amulets sewn inside the lining of my coffin – a forbidden type of Dusk magic that would keep me alive even after a sneaky, disloyal concubine cut off my head.”
My mistake blares like a trumpet inside my skull. Astor was high up within the Dusk Court – the court of magic and secrets. I never saw him use anything other than lesser magic to entertain his guests or close a drawer from across the room. It never occurred to me that he’d be capable of this sorcery.
I’ve never heard of a vampire bringing themselves back from death, but I guess that’s because the Dusk Court hold their secrets close.
“You left me beheaded and burning,” Astor continues mildly, as if we’re exchanging pleasantries at a cocktail party. “My maid came home and put out the fire before it consumed me completely. I lay inside the coffin, alive but wishing I were dead, in an agony you could only dream of, while my body knitted itself together again overmonths. It was a full year before I could even rise from the coffin. By then, you’d disappeared, and the amulets and my natural vampiric healing could only do so much. I needed another magical item – one as old as I am – to return me to my full splendour. But you had stolen it.”
The necklace.
That’s why Astor has that hideous scar – it’s from when I slashed blindly at his face. Beneath the collar of his shirt is another bulging, jagged scar from where I hacked through his neck. He’s burned all over from being sealed inside the coffin I set alight.
He couldn’t repair himself completely.
“You see now, don’t you?” he hisses, his fingers tightening around my throat, pushing against my windpipe so I gasp for breath. “Cleopatra of the Blood Ptolemy filled her court with Dusk vampires, including yours truly. She knew her position with Rome was precarious. She craved more power, more beauty, moreimmortality. At her command, we poured our magic into that collar, creating a spell so powerful that it could return a vanquished Upyr to perfect health. But, like a foolish woman, she had to go and get herself captured before the spell was complete. She killed herself, not with a snake as the legends claim, but with the only type of poison to work on Upyr, hidden in a hollow hair comb. We were supposed to use the necklace to bring her back, but a fight broke out among us over who would present it to her, and one of my brethren threw the collar into the ocean. There it remained until the seventeenth century, when I heard it had resurfaced and spent a fortune to possess it once more. It hung around many pretty necks before yours, sweet Arabella, and now, your pretty neck belongs to me.Give me the necklace.”
“It’s gone,” I choke out. Red welts dance in front of my eyes. I rake my sharp nails across his hands, trying to relieve the pressure on my windpipe. But that only makes him grip me tighter, shoving my head back into the kitchen wall so hard that my crystal wine glasses topple from their stand and smash on the floor.
“Mmmm. I wouldn’t lie if I were you.” Astor flicks his wrist, jerking my head to the side with savage force. Lord Astor leans in close, his breath reeking of death, andlicksa trail down my cheek with his cold, coarse tongue. “I can smell it. The magic calls me. The necklace is close. But never mind, I don’t need you alive to take it from you. I have been hunting you for a long time, Arabella Macquart. I promised myself that when I found you, I wouldn’t just kill you. I wouldtormentyouthe way you tormented me. We’re going to have such fun. We’ll pick up where I left off in Paris. I was just getting started with you and your little theatre when you disappeared without a trace.”
He lets go. I drop to the floor, my knees slamming against the Italian tile with such force that it cracks. Cleo VII slithers out of the way, disappearing behind the kitchen cabinet.
