Sweating, higher pulse, goose bumps—all of those would have been a mortal’s response. Roger was glad that he could smother his fears behind the mental wall of his mind rather than have his body betray him. But when he caught sight of Anton’s grin in the corner of his mind, he knew that the ancient vampire could feel every twitch of his inner psyche.Do what Zack and Takashi would do. Get information.
“That’s the second time you’ve referenced cheating,” Roger said.
“It is. I always knew you were twice as clever as you were pretending to be.” Anton beamed at him. “But then you pretended to have all the wit of a worm in a rainstorm.”
“You and Seamus scratch your itches with whoever you like, and I doubt that you have love in your heart for anyone else.” Roger hoped to spot someone familiar in the crowd, someone who might come to his rescue, but they were moving too quickly. “The only other cheat I can think of is a game.”
“Very close!” Anton said patronizingly. “Haven’t you ever wondered how you and Dmitri have survived these long centuries? How it is that other vampires died? That some few slipped away from Seamus and I?”
“I only know of one who got away.”
Anton rolled his eyes. “Josefina. Formally. Butinformally, vampires have slipped away from time to time. My little rings stop working after fifty miles. You simply haven’t heard of them again because they change their name. Two of your own sirelings have vanished that way, Roger. James and Phoenix. I think Phoenix is even still in the city! Have you gone looking for them?”
“No,” Roger said shortly.
“No, because you don’t want them caught in your hell.” Anton pouted his bottom lip and dramatically batted his eyes.“You would have never made it back to the city except for the bet.”
Startled, Roger tried to stop the dance, but Anton tugged him onward. “Bet?”
“I’m not supposed to say. Goes against the rules, but then, the gamble has been decisively settled.” Anton pulled Roger close so that they were cheek to cheek, and Roger fought the urge to fight Anton in the middle of the dance floor. Continuing in a whisper, Anton said, “We were going through sirelings like tissue paper. One after another. Oh, we had a few loyal ones we liked that had their own ships but no constant companions other than each other. One of us would make someone, then the other would get jealous, and then, oops, we had another dead sireling. We were driving each other insane.”
Roger could remember the echoing voices in the dead of night overcoming the creaking of the ship on the waves. The crew, save for what few were needed, would be sleeping. Seamus and Anton would shout at each other in the captain’s quarters until a crescendo struck. Most times, there would be another kind of noise after. One that Roger had never stopped to analyze. They could’ve been having sex. Or they could’ve been torturing someone. On rare occasion, it had been him, and he had never chalked it up to torture.But I never truly chose to join them in those years.
“Dmitri and I,” Roger rasped, “we were some gamble between you?”
“Sirelings made on the same night, buried as near to the same grave as possible so that we could see whose would live longest,” Anton crooned. “One for him, one for me. We had very few terms. No one was ever supposed to know—that would ruin it entirely. And we weren’t allowed to kill the other one’s sireling. Anything else could. I grew very cross with you in the 1800s. I can’t remember the reason. But you should have died in thehouse fire that hunter set. Of course, Seamus found out I had an indirect hand in that, and, well, I did have to make up for that little stunt. It’s a good thing you survived.”
“Our lives have been agameto you?” Roger growled.
“The very best,” Anton replied with glee. “And look at you! I thought you were neutered and declawed. Instead, you demonstrated a level of skill this evening that I didn’t think you had the balls to do, let alone the ability. But after centuries, you are finally using those fine little points to tear holes in the fabric of our coven. You might think you can knit something new from the scraps, but you won’t have the chance.”
Roger tried to pull away, but Anton had locked his arm around him.
Anton’s voice grew colder, a low rumble reverberating through him. “You have finally pissed him off, and with the bet settled, he has nothing more to gain from your continued existence. You have become a nuisance he won’t tolerate. Which is a shame. You are so very pretty.”
The song came to a close, and Anton released Roger in the center of the floor. All around him, other dancers were finding their next partner or deciding to remain with the one they had. Anton walked backward into the crowd, vanishing between other partygoers in less than the blink of an eye.
A gamble. Awager. Roger’s immortality had been nothing but a game to the two bastards. Every bit of pain, every trick he’d learned to dazzle and delight them in order to keep them from hurting him further—all of that had been futile because they had made up their minds the night they’d turned him. So long as Dmitri lived, Roger lived. That was it. The two sadistic monsters had merely been trying to prove something to each other. Roger’s life had been a lie. His traumas had been their entertainment, not his route to survival.
We can’t wait. We need to be armed. We need to kill him tonight. Roger clenched his fist. Someone nearby let out a small shout, and glass shattered. There was some chaos about that, but Roger ignored it and made his way toward Takashi. Without breaking stride, he pivoted toward the direction Zack had hinted he was going.
“We’re leaving,” Roger told Takashi. “Now.”
“I’ll gather Kit and Carver and meet you at the door.”
Roger nodded once and then continued forward.
The vicious waltz that he maintained to please his master was over.
Roger had never felt such freedom. Such anger.
Or so fucking terrified.
CHAPTER 36
The hallway led farther into the Chateau and reconnected with the main floor. The sitting rooms closest to the ballroom still had plenty of people mingling in them, mostly taking the chance to sit down. Zack started down the longer hall, then ran the math on how far Seamus could have gotten, only to reappear a short time later.Could be doing this for an ungrateful shit.
But something’s not right. Zack stopped near a junction. The second floor would probably have privacy on a night with a massive ball going on, but the staircases were too far. Seamus had the benefit of speed, and he could have dragged Vincent anywhere in the place. Assuming he had done something to him and Vincent hadn’t wandered off to the bathroom.
