Victoria caught her breath, sighed, and closed her eyes as the sweetness blazed through her. She met his rhythm, rose and fell, greedy and demanding—if she were going to take pleasure, she would take it all—until the wave finally rolled over, undulating through her core to her belly and out to every limb.

Sebastian arched into her with one last stroke, his hands leaving her shoulders to curl into the blanket, tangling painfully into her hair as he matched her.

And then there was nothing but their bodies collapsed together, breathing heavily, hot and damp and sated.

After a while Sebastian moved, lifting his face to look at her and using one finger to trace along her jaw. “Feel better?” he asked, his voice low and full of amusement.

Victoria shifted, and he let his weight slide onto the bed next to her. She smiled over at him and saw the way his eyes darkened from gold to brown when she did. “What is it?”

“Your smile is quite entrancing—all those tiny dimples—yet you don’t show it often enough.”

She sat up, working her chemise and corset up to cover her breasts again, and shrugged. “Perhaps I find little to smile about as of late.”

“At least you’re smiling about this. I thought perhaps you might hold my little secret against me, and deny both of us this pleasure.”

She looked at his vis bulla, the only cold, silvery relief on his bronze and gold figure, and some of her pleasure slid away. “You deny your fate and your duty. I can’t understand that any more than I can understand your leaving your grandfather—and other undead—to exist. You have a responsibility to take them out of this world.”

“And send them to Hell? For eternity? No, Victoria, I told you…I won’t have that on me. They were once mortals, fathers, sisters, lovers. I can’t damn them for something they cannot control.”

“But you have…you’ve done it, Sebastian, or you wouldn’t have this.” She brushed her fingers over the warm silver cross. “You had to have killed at least one vampire to get this.”

“Two. I’d killed two before…before last autumn, when the obelisk was destroyed. Exactly two vampires. And then…I killed another the night your aunt died. I told you, but you didn’t believe me.” He reached for his breeches, no longer looking at her, but at them.

It took her a moment to realize what he was talking about. “You said you saved Max’s life. That night? You killed a vampire to save him?” She paused in the action of reaching around to button her dress. Impossible to do alone. “Why? You and Max…”

“Despise each other? Hmmm…that word might be a bit strong…. No, no, it isn’t. Yes, there is quite a history between us. I didn’t do it to save him, Victoria.”

“Then why? Why shatter your own moral code, nonsensical as it might be, for a man you dislike?”

He pulled the trousers up over his hips, busied himself tying them. She waited until he looked up. And then she saw the answer in his eyes.

“For me?”

He reached over to pull on his boots.

“Sebastian.”

“He can be what I cannot. You need him.”

She stared at him, felt her face warming and stupefaction letting her jaw drop, just a little. “Need Max?”

“If you’re going to persist in this battle against the undead, you need someone like him. It pains me greatly to admit it, but he’s the best Venator alive. He can be what I cannot.”

“Will not, you mean to say. You will not.”

Suddenly the door rattled, sending Victoria leaping guiltily off the bed, her loose bodice flopping. She’d locked it, and a good thing, too, for they could have been interrupted at a much more compromising moment.

Dear God, she hoped it wasn’t Max on the other side, she thought as Sebastian quickly buttoned her.

But when she opened the door, it was to find Ilias there. “The sun is up,” he said. To his credit, he barely glanced at Sebastian and his dishabille. “You are needed, Illa Gardella.”

“I must go,” Sebastian said, standing and swiftly pulling his shirt back on.

“Wait,” she said, noticing the mark on the back of his shoulder. “What is that?” It was a small black mark, intricate and circular. It looked like the tattoo Max wore, signifying his membership in the Tutela. But the symbol on Sebastian’s golden skin was much different, and smaller.

“Beauregard’s mark.”

He looked at her steadily, and she understood. Her stomach soured, sending a nasty taste into the back of her mouth. He might wear the amulet of the Venators, but he also wore the mark of the vampires. And he would not choose between them.

Before she could stop him, he pushed past Ilias and strode down the passageway, leaving Victoria to gather up her shoes.

“Why didn’t you send for me?” Max growled, trying to shake off the grogginess. “And what in the bloody hell did you give me last night?” He hadn’t slept so hard and dreamlessly for more than a year.Wayren, as quiet and calm as she always was, merely looked at him. Her face was a bit more drawn than usual, and instead of flowing in long strands over her shoulders, her pale blond hair was pulled back into a wrist-thick braid.

Max didn’t ache as much as he’d suspected he would, after two bullet wounds and innumerable punches and cuts. Perhaps whatever she’d given him to help him sleep had also leached away the pain. Regardless, as a Venator, he’d be completely healed within a matter of days.

Still. “I should have been there. So close to Santo Quirinus? And the Consilium? You could have sent Myza for me.”

“She’s a pigeon, Max. Myza wouldn’t have been able to wake you, even by tapping her beak on the window.”

“You made damned certain of that.” He sat up and gulped down a mug of watered wine. “You said there was something else.”

Wayren didn’t blink. “Sebastian Vioget was in the Consilium with Victoria.”

Max stopped the mental barrage of thoughts and questions that image brought and focused on the important one. “Beauregard?”

She shook her head. “No, he didn’t bring him. He—”

But Max didn’t want to hear her platitudes about Vioget. “If he betrayed us, I’ll kill him.”

“He’s a Venator—”

“Then I need say no more.”

Wayren pursed her lips in a sign of annoyance, but didn’t comment further on his interruption. Instead she continued, “He had Eustacia’s armband, Max. We have the last key to the Door of Alchemy.”

“Bloody nice of him to return it.”

“He could have given it to Beauregard,” she replied with just a bit of archness in her tone.

Max gritted his teeth but said nothing.

“Victoria will want you to go with them to attempt to open the door, most likely later tonight, when it’s still dark but nearing dawn. You’ll be less noticeable, and the undead will be seeking shelter from the sun.”

Ah, yes, he’d be one of the contingency: Zavier, Vioget, Michalas, Ylito, himself. Was that what Victoria thought?

Max realized he must have grimaced when Wayren asked, “Do her bites pain you?”

“Of course they do. You know that.” His hand went involuntarily to the never-healing scars on his neck. There were new ones, too, only a month old, on the tender part of his shoulder.

“How often do you feel her pull, Max? Tell me the truth.”

Unreasoning rage bubbled in him. “I don’t want to discuss it.”

“I’m not asking, Max. I’m demanding to know. We have to rid you of it.” Now she was beginning to sound like Eustacia.

“She doesn’t control me. She’d like to; she finds it amusing to play at it.” Bitterness sat in his mouth. “She’s not made me do anything against my will.” At least, not to anyone else’s knowledge.

“Akvan is back, Max. You know she must have realized that when you destroyed his obelisk, Akvan would be called back to earth.”

The grogginess had completely slid away, leaving his mind sharp again. “At one time I would have disagreed…but now I know better. She would rather battle a demon than her own son. Her son, who tried to unleash the powers of the obelisk, could have taken over Lilith’s reign—or at least weakened it. Whereas a demon would cause all of the vampires to unite behind her.”

“Indeed. I believe you are absolutely correct. All of the vampires would unite with Lilith except those few who have allied themselves with Regalado since the downfall of Nedas. Even Beauregard and his minions would join Lilith; he’s no fool.”

“True. There are few vampires who will join the ranks of a demon, or support one in any way, unless they have some grief or complaint with their own vampire leader. Regalado has managed to convince only a relatively small number to join him. Then, too, there are some members of the Tutela, those who are still mortals and who were led by Regalado, who are still loyal to him.”

“Indeed,” Wayren agreed again. “The battle for Hell rages between the demons and the undead, and there are few who cross from one side to the other.”

“Thus the threat from Akvan must be great enough to convince at least some undead—and Regalado himself—to join his ranks.”

“His power is very great. When he was still ensconced in Hell and only his obelisk was here, there was the chance that the obelisk could be roused to imbue its possessor with great power—the power to raise the souls of the dead into an immortal army. Of course, that was Nedas’s plan, which you foiled by destroying the obelisk—at Lilith’s request. Now Akvan is here, and his presence brings that same power, but it’s already inherent in his being. It doesn’t need to be activated.”

“Then why, if he’s been back for more than three months, have we seen no sign of him?”

“He is still weak. He’s gathering his strength, likely with the help of the Tutela and Regalado and his followers.”