Jonathan reluctantly accepted the offering. “You want me to hit you?”
“Yes.” Marcus shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it aside. “I’m not asking, brother.” A whip-thin scarlet tendril emerged from Marcus’s neck and rose above his head. “Do not make me force you.”
Jonathan gulped. Marcus never used his power to control his own blood against any member of the nest. With numb fingers, Jonathan tied the cravat around his right hand. Then he slammed his fist into Marcus’s nose. His brother grunted but said nothing as blood trickled down his face and dripped to the ground. Jonathan continued to pummel his brother, striking so quickly that Marcus’s wounds barely had time to heal. Through it all, Marcus remained silent.
Eventually, Jonathan’s arms grew tired, and his usually sluggish heart thundered in his chest. The rattle of carriage wheels outside was drowned out by a high-pitched whine in his head. He bent over and watched the pool of Marcus’s spilled blood climb the polished leather surface of his boot, then vanish beneath the hem of his trousers.
“Now that you’ve spent your fury,” Marcus said as he re-donned his discarded jacket, “let me tell you what is going to happen. First, you are going to rest until sunset. Then, you will attempt to escape the haven. If you somehow succeed, I will send one of our siblings to drag you back.”
Jonathan wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand. “They can try.” He couldn’t levitate like Lucina or pry open a mind like Seraphina, but he had the advantage of speed, and he knew the city better than any of them. Before Marguerite had turned him, he’d been one of the most successful thieves on the Continent.
“Don’t do this,” Marcus said. “Let her go.”
Jonathan turned his back. “Never.”
His maker might have convinced the rest of the nest that she was going to die, but he knew she was too powerful and cunning to have given up so easily. She had something else planned.
And he wouldn’t stop searching until he found her and figured it out.
Chapter One
October 29th, 1873, London
In two days,the people of London would learn vampires were real.
Felicity Sorrow carefully ascended a rickety ladder and rubbed a cloth across the surface of an oval mirror. Spread beneath it was a table filled with five determined years of effort.
The Sloan House was not the ideal host for her exhibit, but it was the only museum that had not outright dismissed her. The curator, Mr. Blackwood, was fascinated by the occult. He’d accepted his post shortly after an Act of Parliament had transformed the former home of the eccentric architect Sir William Sloan into a museum.
She nudged the gold-edged frame of a painting beside the mirror into a better position so that the faint light from the hallway reflected better on the face of the man in the portrait.
The Earl of Kingsbury, Marcus Deville.
She clenched her teeth. If it hadn’t been for that blackguard, the artifacts in her exhibit would have been in a Glasgow museum, she wouldn’t have lost her brother, uncle, and best friend. Almost six years had passed since that awful night, but she’d never forget the warmth of Vincent’s severed head clutched to her chest, the patter of blood raining from UncleEthan’s body, and the confused expression on Winifred’s face as she’d tumbled out a window.
Now Felicity had no one, and Great-Uncle Ezra, who had returned to take over the family, had forbidden her from joining the nightly patrols as punishment for failing to kill the earl when she’d had the chance. Instead of scoring a resounding victory against one of the most powerful vampires in Britain, her actions had resulted in Lord Kingsbury being declared off-limits.
“It’s a remarkable likeness,” a familiar voice said from behind her.
A chill went down Felicity’s spine.It can’t be.She looked in the mirror at her own pale reflection. There was no one else in the room. Yet when she turned her head, the woman who had once been her best friend was standing in the open doorway to the hall with her arms crossed and her head tilted.
The cloth slipped out of Felicity’s limp hands.
Winifred Deville, now Countess of Kingsbury, was almost unrecognizable in an emerald silk evening gown with an off-the-shoulder neckline and elbow-length cream silk gloves. Her usually uncontrollable brown curls were artfully arranged around her heart-shaped face, and her skin was much paler than Felicity remembered. The sun-shaped scar between her collarbones was also strangely absent, but that could have been the work of a determined lady’s maid and a powder puff.
Tears welled in Felicity’s eyes, and she almost jumped off the ladder to embrace her friend, until she noticed Winifred’s irises. Instead of light brown, they were bright blue.
“No,” Felicity whispered. She returned her gaze to the mirror. The door was open, with no one standing between her and the window on the other side of the hallway. Winifred had no reflection. “Please, God, no…”
After everything Felicity had been through, now she had to deal with the fact that Winifred was a vampire. She grabbedthe crossbow sitting on the table, hastily slotted it with a silver-tipped arrow, and leveled it at her cousin’s heart. “Don’t move.”
Winifred winced. “There’s no need for that, Fel. I would never hurt you. I wish only to talk.”
Felicity’s hands trembled, but she kept her finger firmly on the trigger, just as Uncle Ethan had trained her, before Winifred’s husband had skewered him on a tree of solidified blood.
Not Winifred, Felicity thought.
The physical form of her cousin was the same, but there was no longer a soul inside. What lived in Winifred’s body was an immortal beast, a creature without conscience that drank the blood of the innocent and possessed abilities no human could master.
