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Serge’s hands grabbed at Dominique’s wrists, clawing, tearing, and pulling, but accomplishing nothing. His eyes, round and large enough to consume his face, locked on Dominique, not blinking even when a wave foamed over him. The old fool’s fear of drowning apparently paled compared to the terror that seized him now: terror of Dominique. Dominique, who was suddenly the far stronger blood-drinker and could now snuff out three centuries of life in an instant.
For an ecstatic moment, he hungered to tear open the bobbing gullet and drink until nothing but an empty husk remained of his friend and mentor. Know me!
You hear my call every time you pierce a vein.
The memory of Kambyses’s words acted like a cold slap to his face. This craving…this was his sire’s will. More potent than ever perhaps, but not his.
Never his.
He released Serge. His almost-victim scrambled away as he sat and stared at his shaking hands. Hunger, rage, and helplessness pulsed through him, one after the other, over and over, until finally the cycle slowed, the beast subsided, and only Dominique remained.
Several waves broke around him, drenching him, filling his boots and leathers with water and sand. He had never felt so omnipotent. Or so vulnerable.
And…empty.
Serge was back at his boat. Soggy and trembling, he huddled in the sail’s moon shadow. His bugging eyes tracked him up the beach, for once clearly focused on the present. Dominique sat on a pontoon with his back to his friend.
“Did you know what would happen? And do not tell me again that whatever will be, will be.” His tone was devoid of all emotion, but the implied threat of his words was more real than any he had ever made.
Sand crunched under Serge’s bare feet as he gingerly moved around the boat to Dominique’s side. “Not exactly,” he admitted. “I never see the details. Only the outlines, the possibilities.”
“You could have warned her, stopped her. Stopped us. Even I believed that if it came to it, her blood…could…” He made a noise of sheer frustration. The fiberglass squeaked where his hands clamped onto the boat. “It made no difference at all. Now he has her where I have no hope of reaching her.”
“What…it’s…I mean—”
Dominique shot him a warning look, and Serge made a desolate little sound. “But you…you received something else you always wanted. Did you not?”
“His blood? Oh, yes. No one in their right mind should ever want five-thousand-year-old blood.”
Serge recoiled, but his chin lifted a little as he sniffed for the new smoky edge in Dominique’s scent. “What did you see?” His voice was barely audible with awe. When Dominique shook his head, Serge took the hint and changed the subject. “You will need that strength, blood-child,” he proclaimed. “You will be glad for it.”
“I already know that all this vile power is not enough against him. What can I possibly do with it to save Cassidy from whatever fate he has in store for her?”
Serge’s mouth flattened as though fighting to hold back a swarm of wasps.
“You know, don’t you? If my having his blood is so important, you must have seen this”—he made air quotes with one hand—“outline. And you know that without Cassidy, there is no me. Without her, there is no future for you to claim as so critical. So how do I do it? How do I save her?” He leaned closer and dropped his voice. “How do I save the peace I have only just found?”
Serge fiddled the buttons on his shirt. “That peace is gone, blood-child. That, you lost the moment you took his blood. Your destiny is now…set.”
“To hunt him for a thousand years?” Dominique sneered. “Come now, oracle. You can do better than that.”
Serge shrugged, first one shoulder, then the other. “I could, but—”
Dominique reached out with one hand and seized Serge by his wet collar. “No ‘but!’ I am done walking into one catastrophe after another in the name of your damned prophecy.”
“But don’t you see? Whatever I tell you will change what you do and so change everything. I’m only the witness. Not a doer.”
“But don’t you see?” Dominique mocked on a hiss and pulled Serge so close their noses almost touched. “You are the one who started it all the night you couldn’t keep your filthy fangs off Cassidy. Without your interference—yes, interference,” he snapped when Serge cringed “—she would not have left Jackson, and we would have never crossed paths. My destiny exists because of her and, therefore, because of you. Now finish what you started and tell me what I must do.”
Serge shook as if his ribcage contained a rotor spinning off balance. “If I d-do that, you will n-never see her again.”
Dominique released him with a disgusted shove, stood, and glared down at the wretched creature. “You are worse than useless.”
“I can’t tell you what you’re not ready to hear.” Serge slid off the pontoon and onto unsteady legs. “Or what you already know.”
“I know nothing. Why else would I be here trying to get you to talk sense?”
Serge nodded, hesitant at first, then with more vigor. “Good. This is good. You do know that you need help.”
