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Before Esteban could overwhelm him and rampage through his mind, Dominique blasted him with his memories of Kambyses, his turning, their battles, and his ultimate victory over the five-thousand-year-old blood-drinker. He took care to abstract the actual transfer of the ancient essence, lest Adilla be tempted to try the same with him. Then he slammed the mental gates shut and jerked out of the startled Esteban’s relaxing grip.
Esteban hissed. Several others, probably his younglings, shifted in their seats as they bore witness to what Dominique showed their sire.
“He knows the great one as he says,” Esteban said aloud for those without telepathic links to him. “But he was not forged of his blood.” He looked around. Their audience was wide-eyed and pale, even for vampires. “He claims to have slayed Kambyses and taken within himself the essence of our kind.”
“As he wished,” Dominique burst out. His head still rang from the assault, and the blistering burn in his wrists crawled up his forearms. The raw wounds didn’t try to heal anymore. They just bled.
Adilla’s eyes reverted to their shadowy moss green. “Brazen pup,” he whispered.
Dominique’s mouth twisted. “My most endearing trait, according to Kambyses.” Taking Adilla’s silence as a sign he might be getting somewhere, he pushed onward. “He gave me his kingdom to do with as I wished. And I wish there to be love and peace, not horror and fear. But it’s not automatic. I need blood-drinkers like you, Adilla—old ones with great experience and wisdom—to help me make this happen.” Adilla’s chin rose slightly at the obsequious words. Dominique turned to the others. “Your lives are already bound to mine, but for you to hear me, too, you need to be re-sired by me.”Merde, his arms were on fire. He had to convince someone to take the silver off him soon or he would go mad and act madder.
“Re-sire?” Adilla repeated. Calm. Glacially calm. “You wish to re-sire…me?”
Dominique got to his feet yet again. When Esteban reached for him, he snarled, but couldn’t prevent being yanked back down. “I do, and I will,” he promised through a pained grunt.
“I’m a prince who has known eleven hundred years of night, and you are what? A delusional youngling held by a mere pair of silver shackles?” His face distorted into a contemptuous sneer. “You are not worthy to gaze upon me, much less to receive my blood. Foranypurpose.”
The speculative whispers in the hall died away into stillness.
Calm again, Adilla settled into his throne, wrapping himself in royal dignity, along with his robe. “You seem convinced that you did this thing. This taking of the essence from Kambyses.”
“I did. Esteban saw it in my memories. You saw it through him.”
Dominique bit his tongue until he tasted blood. Not to keep from saying more, but to distract himself from the agony in his arms and now shoulder blades. He fought not to tremble with it.
Adilla stroked a fingertip across his lower lip in thought. “Fortunately for you, young fool, I have spent centuries with Kambyses and know his ways like no other. I know the true extent of his power. If he wants you to believe that you killed him—”
“I did,” Dominique hissed.
“—he can make it so. It is sadly obvious that you are his pawn, and your purpose is to test my loyalty to him.” Adilla gestured with his bejeweled hands. “Will I believe and bow to you? Or will I doubt and kill you? These are the concerns he would want answered before he returns into my presence. And he is near,” he concluded with an ominous air that drew several gasps. “I have felt his presence these past few nights.”
For several seconds, Dominique even doubted himself and his own memories of what had happened. Then he realized Adilla was the first full child of Kambyses he had encountered since the transfer. It was possible that Adilla sensed Dominique—or no one at all.
The wild murmurings racing through the crowd seemed to please their lord, for his smile grew a little wider, a little less venomous, and a little more smug. Looking at the awe shining in their beautiful faces, it was easy to see that one of Adilla’s charms for his followers was that he was sired by—and presumably had the favor of—the most powerful of them all. This was not an advantage Adilla would relinquish without a fight.
It was a privilege he would kill to preserve.
Aubrey had died for merely suggesting that another—a mere youngling, no less—had been more favored by the great one. “Of course, my loyalty is above reproach,” Adilla said when the commotion faded to a low simmer. “So I will most certainly not yield to you. However, since we appear to be brothers of sorts”—he flapped one hand, dismissive—“I will grant you the opportunity to dispense with this charade and retract your claims. If you do, I will invite you to join my family.” This with an expansive gesture to include the hall and everyone in it.
Cheers erupted, and somewhere in the haze of pain, Dominique understood why Adilla still suffered him to live. It was Adilla’s greatest fear: the displeasure of Kambyses.
And what would displease the Lord of Night more than murdering his chosen emissary?
Too late, Dominique thought, displeased beyond measure.
Adilla continued speaking over the tumult. “I have made my colony the largest of its kind anywhere in the world. It is also, because of my wise guidance, by far the most prosperous.” He paused, and adulation poured forth on cue. “My strategies and projects will bring us millennia of greatness. And you, dear young one, are welcome here. As is Kambyses himself, should he decide to grace us with his presence.”
The cheering escalated. Only Markandeya did not appear to be a fan. No expression whatsoever registered on his face.
“So what do you say, brother?” The soft sneer on that last word wasn’t lost on Dominique, who suddenly saw his true predicament. Adilla would not kill Kambyses’s supposed messenger, not with hundreds of witnesses, and not without an excuse as solid as the rock walls. He was all but begging Dominique to give him that excuse by refusing his oh-so-benevolent offer. If Dominique accepted, Adilla would count it as a victory in the eyes of his devotees—and find another way to dispose of him in short order.
It was a game. A deadly and sadly typical game in the world of night as it used to be. Dominique had played a few of his own.
But no more.
Again, he leapt to his feet, and this time spun away from Esteban’s lightning-fast grab. Between the pain and outrage, his control had reached its limits. “I say that I kneel before no one,” he snarled. “Ever.”
Silence again, thick as quicksand. In Dominique’s expanding vision, a constellation of white blood-drinker auras glowed.
