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“You will not find him,” he gasped, “until it’s too late.”
“Tell me, you sonofabitch.” Father crouched down and shook his former lieutenant like a rag doll. “Where is he? What have you done to my son?”
“It’s over, my friend. Find your true mate. Not…that weak human you made…into a dhampir.”
“My true—?” Father released Tomas. “You’re insane. The blood madness.”
“Not…insane. Smart.” Something dark bubbled out of the staked man’s mouth. His skin had already blackened and begun flaking off. “Return to your true self. Your vampire self. Or you…will lose it…all.”
His lips peeled in a twisted, terrifying facsimile of smile, and then his eyes glazed over as he passed into the light.
Father stood back up. I moved closer, set a tentative hand on his back.
He exhaled slowly through his nose, but didn’t speak. Maybe he was as numb as I was.
At our feet, his closest friend began to crumble into soot and ash.
“Damn you.” Zoe’s shaking voice made me turn from Father. She knelt on the floor next to her mother. “You couldn’t just let it go, could you, Moth—” She stopped and shook her head.
I crouched beside Zoe. Victorine’s face was tight with agony.
My own mouth twisted.
“I will never harm Rafael, Zaquiel or Gabriel Kral by word or deed.”
Technically, she hadn’t broken her word. The bitch had probably planned to attack Father all along while Tomas took care of me.
She could barely speak, but her gaze was locked on Zoe. I don’t think she even knew I was there. “Say it,” she said in a scratchy voice.
“What?” asked Zoe.
“Mother. Say it.”
Zoe just stared stonily at her.
Victorine moistened her lips. “Please.”
“Why now?”
“Because. Just…because.”
Zoe closed her eyes. Pain etched her features.
Then she touched Victorine’s hand. “Mother,” she whispered.
Victorine’s lungs heaved. Her expression smoothed out, and then a fiery puff of smoke came out of her mouth and she went limp.
Zoe’s shoulders rose, then fell. I drew her to her feet. She turned into me and burrowed her face into my neck.
“I could never be good enough for her,” she said in a flat voice at odds with her shivering body. “No matter how hard I tried.”
“Shh, sweetheart.” I hugged her to me. “It’s over now. It’s over.”
29
ZAQ
Car doors slammed. A half-dozen of the Kral Syndicate’s best people pounded into the Hotel Garnet courtyard. The two enforcers who’d been left outside as guards brought them up to date with a few terse sentences.
