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“Aren’t you worried that Gaius will find what you’ve done to his precious son?”
Constance did not have a chance to answer. I felt something coming from behind me. I wasn’t a real feeling but just a puff of pressure in the psychic music that had been so calm all around us. Instantly I reacted.
One moment I was sitting in my chair, and the next I had shoved the chair back and I was on my feet with my sword in my hand just as Marielle appeared out of nowhere, coming for me with murder in her eyes. My sword arced through the air as she charged, and I watched in fascinated horror as it sliced her arm clean off. She screeched, arcing her body away from that deadly blade. She fell to the ground, clutching her severed upper arm.
She kicked her legs and scuttled away from me like a beetle, her eyes fixed on the sword. She was panting with fury. She was looking at Audriett and not at me.
“I knew it!” she shrieked. “I knew you would meet her to pay her off! Why couldn’t you just keep quiet? She’ll tell them that Rodrigge killed that girl! Once she has the money, she’ll tell them the truth!”
Marielle reached out to grab the hem of Audriett’s dress, but Audriett kicked her away in disgust.
“He did it for me!” Marielle screamed. “He got rid of Steffane because he loved me. You were always jealous that Rodrigge loved me!”
“You foolish creature,” Audriett said. “All these years you thought Rodrigge was the one that killed Leonie?”
Marielle did not realize that this was a question. “Leonie deserved it. She flirted with him and then she laughed at him and rejected him,” she shouted. She pointed at me. “We can’t let this bitch live. She’ll tell the Agency the truth about Rodrigge. If Gaius ever finds out that Rodrigge framed Steffane, Gaius will kill Rodrigge! You can’t let that happen! Please!”
“You fool!” sneered Audriett. “Gaius is no threat to us! Did you really think that he has been in seclusion all this time?”
Of all the things she had said, this shocked me most. “You’ve been keeping him sick!” I gasped.
“My was my master. He would have mesmerized me and found out what I had done to Steffane. He would have killed me. I had no other choice.”
“What do you mean?” Marielle wailed, her eyes wild. She still was not fully sure what was going on.
“It was so easy to keep him tamed in the end.” Audriett sneered. “For so many years I had been in thrall to him, so afraid and awed by his power. And in the end it was his mighty ego that reduced him into my puppet. He thinks he has never recovered from that one Vaerus X infection six years ago! He thinks I inject him with a medicine potion to keep the sickness from getting worse. The fool has no idea I inject him with the Vaerus X and colloidal silver to keep him weak. He is so ashamed of his affliction and inability to recover that he won’t allow anyone else to see him in that state except me. Isn’t it amusing?”
She seemed relieved to have finally been able to tell someone this after so long. She almost seemed to be boasting, proud of how she had brought her great master down low.
She turned to me. “How much do your people want to keep quiet?” She named an outrageous sum, and then she astonished me by adding, “Each.”
“No!” Marielle screeched. “No! No! No!”
She launched herself at me again so fast that if the sword had not tugged my arm into her direction, she might have got me this time. Instead, the blade of the sword went right through her chest. Through her heart. The sword seemed to ring with a mighty satisfaction. I could feel it radiating from the blade through the hilt and into my hand that was holding it. Marielle did not even screech. Something awful was happening to her. Her body was blackening before my eyes, and her face was frozen in a rictus of shock. Her mouth was open, as if she had been about to scream. No sound came out.
Her body turned black as ash and stiff as a coal, and then suddenly it just collapsed into a fine ash that drifted softly onto the ground. I couldn’t believe it. In that shocking moment, I thought that Audriett might try to attack me, but she merely said, “Well, that was unexpected.”
I didn’t say anything. I’d didn’t trust my voice to come out sounding anything but shocked. The sword was happy. The sword had done what it wanted. The sword was sending an emotion pulsing into me that made me want to dance about with joy and leap in victory. It was telling me I’d killed a bad bad thing and I should be celebrating. Perhaps if I hadn’t been so stunned by the suddenness of it I would be celebrating.
“Are we agreed on an amount?” said Audriett Ronin.
I pointed the tip of the sword right at her heart. “Sorry,” I said. “I already made a deal with your son Steffane.”
Chapter 29
DIANA
Five days had passed since Audriett Ronin h
ad made her confession and I had marched her at sword point up to the top floor of her house where Storm had been waiting to arrest her. It had taken five days to arrange and agree all the details of Steffane Ronin’s release with the various authorities involved.
The chief had been very pleased on his return to work on Monday with the team’s result, and even happier to be able to tell the vampire council and the embassy people how wrong they’d been.
It was Friday mid-morning and we were preparing to pick up Steffane Ronin from the prison and take him to a safe house. The plan was that Storm and I would be in the front of the car, and Leo would be in the back with Ronin. Storm had not wanted to take me along, but Ronin had insisted that his deal had been with me and he was only going to speak to me alone about the Devil Claw Killer.
I was jittery with excitement. It wasn’t so much the desperate urge to kill anymore. That had no longer been keeping me up at nights. Killing Marielle Ronin had quenched my thirst for blood for a while. Like before, the sword had suddenly vanished from my hand after Storm had secured Audriett Ronin. Storm had asked where I had got it and I had told him it was magic that I was unable to tell him anything about. That had not satisfied him. I could tell that he was burning with curiosity.
It served him right to be the one burning to know something about me for once.
