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“Wouldn’t. Not at first. Told him to. Lucius wouldn’t, so I told the judge to. He wouldn’t, either. Said he was being good now, and no touching allowed.” She smiled, thin and cold. “But I changed his mind. Told him what I wanted. All the naughty things in my mind. Told him, and touched him, and then he did them. Naughty and nice, and all for me. Do you want me to tell you, too?”
“No.” The bitch frowned, as if she didn’t like the story. “Luke went after him to protect you.”
“Sweet, sweet Lucius,” she said. “I got there first.”
“Because you knew that Luke would cover for you. Knew that he’d put himself at risk for you.”
“He loves me. Had to show me. I had to know.” She took a step toward the bed. “So you see, he can’t be yours. He’s already mine. He always will be.”
Tasha smiled, and drew a stake from the folds of her gown. “I think it’s time to say good-bye now.”
“I don’t,” the bitch said, and suddenly she didn’t seem so small and vulnerable. Suddenly, she was up in the bed, a stake in her hand, too, and she had it aimed right at Tasha.
Tasha laughed. “You think you’re a match for me? For us? Newly made against one so strong with theAzag Mahruinside?”
“No,” the bitch said. “I don’t.”
“But I am.”
Lucius!
He spoke from behind Tasha, having moved to her with lightning speed, the edge of his sword now pressed hard against her neck. She turned slowly, eyes wide. “Lucius…Where—”
“Closet,” he said, flicking his head only slightly to where he’d waited and watched and listened.
“But you went away. You drove off to get me. I saw you. I saw you leave.”
Luke thought of the Mercedes with its tinted windows, and Ryan Doyle in the driver’s seat. “Psych,” he said.
She closed her eyes in concentration—then opened them again, surprised.
“Hematite sword,” he said. “You’re not transforming, Tasha. You’re staying right here.”
Fear colored her face, and he steeled himself. Remembering what she was. What she’d done. To Sara. To those murdered young girls.
“Lucius, no. Please. It’s me. It’s Tasha. You love me. You protect me. You watch over me. I’m yours, yours, yours.”
“You are,” he said, remembering the snowy night when he’d succumbed to the horror of what he was—a night when he’d tried to find redemption for the death of his daughter in the immortality of this injured, traumatized young woman. His hubris had been dwarfed only by his pain, and he’d made a foolish choice, then compounded it by arguing so vigorously for special dispensation.
He’d looked at Tasha and seen Livia. He’d looked at her and seen life and love and the promise of a future without the pain of his errors hanging over his head.
He’d been a fool, and now they were both paying the price. And though it tortured him, he knew that now it was time to step up and do what he had not had the strength to do so many centuries before.
“You are mine,” he repeated. “My child. My ward. My responsibility.” And with preternatural speed, he swung the sword out and around, the razor-sharp blade slicing through the skin and tendon and bone of her neck. “You are,” he repeated as the body collapsed to the ground. “And I do now what I must.”
He closed his eyes, steadying himself, letting go of regret and loss and sadness. And then he looked at Sara through tear-filled eyes. “There will be no trial,” he said. “No court. This is your justice, right here, rendered by my hand.” He looked at her, saw the anguish in her face, and knew they’d reached a line across which Sara might not follow. “Can you stand for that?”
She looked from him to the lifeless body of Tasha, the child who’d been his surrogate daughter. The vampire who had betrayed him.
Then she moved across the room and pressed her hand into his. “I stand with you,” she said, and relief poured through him. “And I always will.”
* * *
Moonlight cascaded through the leaves, casting long shadows across the graveyard as Tasha’s casket stood closed, ready to be moved into Luke’s crypt. Sara stood by Luke’s side as he looked down at the simple steel box, her fingers twined with his, so overwhelmed with love it took her breath away. She wished she could make this night easier for him, and at the same time, she knew that he had to do this. Had to say good-bye to the young woman he’d once thought to save, the young woman he’d once loved and protected.
“Not all of her was vile,” he said, looking not at Sara, but at their reflection on the polished metal lid. “There were moments when it was truly Tasha under my protection.” He shifted, then met her eyes. “I have to believe that.”
“And you should.” She thought of the girl he’d once described to her. A girl who’d danced on the beach and played with her dolls, and in her heart she knew that he was right. The real Tasha, that poor tortured child, was hidden somewhere beneath the serpent. “You freed her, Luke,” she said, then blinked back tears. “No matter what else happened in that room, the Tasha you once loved is free now.”
