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I frowned. My head hurt; my heart hurt. I wasn’t up for this
.
And Louis-Cesare didn’t look any happier. “If I’d stopped, even for a moment,” he said, his eyes distant. “But there he was, leering at me from underneath one of those black masks, having evaded death yet again. He took off and I went after him—immediately, not pausing to think that of course it was a trap. But not for me.”
“Or for me.” I put my head on his chest. “They wanted Dorina. They left me lying in the street, while eight or ten of them shoved her through that portal.”
“I know. I saw. I tried to reach her, but I wasn’t fast enough.”
Neither was I, I thought, and shivered. His arms tightened. “I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “We shouldn’t be talking about this now.”
“Except that I want to talk about this now. I need—”
I stopped because I wasn’t sure what I needed. I hadn’t felt like this since I lost my mother, all those centuries ago. I’d found the village where she’d lived blackened and corpse-like, under a blanket of new fallen snow. Plague, they’d said. It had had to be burned.
They’d lied.
She’d been murdered, and I hadn’t been there to save her. She’d been lost to me, because I was too slow in tracking her down. I’d been nine at the time, a skinny, pale, dark eyed waif, but a dhampir nonetheless. The Roma, who had taken me in as a baby after she was forced to give me up, had known what I’d become: a predator, one who could fight off their enemies.
But I hadn’t been able to save them in the end, any more than I had her. I didn’t seem to be able to save anyone. And, suddenly, the torrent of emotions I’d felt then burned through my veins again: fear, anger, hatred, loss. I suddenly knew what I wanted, as I had all those years ago, and it wasn’t sitting here grieving uselessly.
I wanted a target.
And now I had one.
Chapter Four
Dory, Cairo
“No,” Louis-Cesare said, his voice hard as I struggled against his hold. “No!” he said, as I fought to get out of bed, to find the bastard who had done this to my family. “No!” he said, as I swore to make Jonathan bleed.
“Why are you doing this?” I yelled in my lover’s face, because try as I might, I couldn’t break that iron grip.
“I failed you!” he said, his color high. “I failed you tonight, and as a direct result, you lost two whom you love. You lost a part of yourself. I won’t fail you again!”
“Then get off me!”
“Dory.” I found my face captured between two huge hands. Sometimes I forgot just how big Louis-Cesare was. Before I met him, I’d usually gone for shorter men. At five foot two, nearly everyone was tall to me, and it made the height difference less ridiculous. Yet who had I married?
A six-foot-four-inch giant with matching hands and body, the latter of which was pressing me down into the mattress, forcing me to listen. I didn’t want to listen. And while I’m not as strong, I’m wily.
A second later, Louis-Cesare was sprawled on the bed, face up because I’d just flipped us. “I’m going after him!” I snarled.
I found myself flipped back again, and this time, he had a foot hooked under the bed, giving him leverage. Damned long legs! “I understand,” he said tightly, “You’re angry, and rightfully so. But you’re not thinking—”
“I don’t want to think! I want to kill something!”
“I know. I’ve been there. And I’ve seen others who experienced the loss of a Child. But I’ve also seen more than one master dead because they didn’t stop to heal—”
“I’m not a master,” I said, fighting him. “I’m not even a vampire. Without Dorina, I’m nothing—”
“That’s not true—”
“It’s completely true and you know it! Nobody gave a damn about me until they found out about her, so what difference does it make—”
I stopped, but not because he had said anything. But because he hadn’t. Not a word, yet the expression on his face was eloquent.
I had rarely seen Louis-Cesare angry. When you’re as powerful as he is, that sort of thing is dangerous. He usually kept himself on a tight leash.
