"I'm not quite as capricious as my dearly departed companion," he replied. "But I am much stronger and faster."
Then he was there, across the room, next to her, reaching for her throat. Victoria spun back, but he grabbed at her arm, and he was indeed strong.
She tried to wrench away, caught in his suddenly glowing red eyes, and felt the sofa against her legs. She pretended to stumble, dodged, and knocked him off balance. He came after her again, close behind, without giving her a chance to catch her breath, and the next thing she knew, she was whirling back to face him.
Raising her stake at shoulder level, she lifted her face to look at him, ready to slam it home, and faltered. Phillip.
It was Phillip.
It was as if her body had turned to ice, and then raging fire. The stake fell from her limp fingers, and the scream was knocked out of her as he shoved her aside, sending her to the floor.
On the rug, dragging dust and lint into her panicked breaths, Victoria looked up at the figure looming over her. How?
But it wasn't Phillip who bent over her. It was the same nondescript man, now with glowing eyes and a determined line for a mouth.
She scrabbled for her stake… surely it hadn't rolled far on the rug. He lunged for her and she twisted away, suddenly trapped against the edge of the sofa. She felt something under her hip, round and hard and long, and rolled sharply to the right, toward his feet, grabbing the stake.
The force of her motion sent him off balance, and Victoria propelled herself to her feet, stick in hand. She turned, using the momentum of her leg to whip around, then shifted her center of balance as she plunged the stake into the center of his chest. She pulled it away, stepping back to watch him dust to the floor.
Nothing happened.
And he came at her again, his mouth drawn in a frightening, feral smile.
Victoria recoiled in shock, stumbling backward, and tripped over the flipped-up corner of the thick Persian rug. She tumbled to the floor, slamming her head against the wall as she fell, and stared up at the red-eyed man who advanced toward her.
Calm and steady he moved, and Victoria could barely get her mind around the fact that she'd stabbed him, sunk a stake into his chest, and nothing had happened. Neither blood nor dust… he'd just come after her again.
As she gaped up at him sprawled against the tapestried wall, readying the stake for another plunge, his face turned toward her again.
"Phillip?" she cried softly.
"Venator," he said, sweeping down toward her. "Come now… relax… I shan't hurt you."
"No!" she grunted, slamming the stake upward with all of her might.
She stopped him, impaled his body on the wooden pike, but he did not disintegrate. His movements slowed… but he did not die. With a scream of horror and desperation, she used the stake and her hand to shove him away. The stake came free, and she bolted to her feet.
She needed another weapon. The pistol in her pocket… she pulled it out, aimed it at the creature, and squeezed the trigger. The explosion kicked the gun in her hand, and the bullet slammed into the chest of her attacker.
The focused part of her was not surprised when he barely paused… drew himself to his feet, and came at her again.
Victoria launched herself backward over the sofa, frantically looking for something that could be used as a weapon… but what?
He was so fast, so strong… she had no chance.
He was after her, on top of her, and they rolled on the floor, slamming into furniture. The sharp-edged silver tray of brandy and sherry clattered to the rug, spilling the sharp-scented liquors.
Through the fog of panic and shock, Victoria's mind scrambled through a warren of possibilities, of the need to survive, of the anger at being taken by surprise. She felt the heavy tray behind her, and closed her fingers around its sharp edge. Not certain she knew what she was doing, Victoria pulled it up and over her head, slamming it down onto the skull of the man bending toward her.
He staggered, losing his footing, and she shot to her feet, still clutching the tray. Grabbing the sofa, he propelled himself around toward her, his eyes back to burning red, his mouth grim. Victoria said a prayer and swung the tray in a mighty blow, into and through his neck, severing the head in one powerful, ragged stroke.
His eyes rolled back and his head lopped to the floor, and Victoria braced herself, waiting, trembling, panting as though she'd fought ten vampires.
As she watched, the face changed… it shrank and deflated, turning leathery brown with sunken eyes and shriveled lips, and metamorphosed into ribbony black… then sank into the floor and disappeared.
Chapter 2
In Which Lady Rockley Disdains a Discussion Regarding Fashion and Becomes Overset
"It had to have been some sort of demon," Victoria said when she finished describing her experience. It was early the morning after she had visited the Silver Chalice, and she had slipped out of St. Heath's Row long before most of the ton would have been stirring. "Even though I've never met one before, and there haven't been any in England for centuries, it couldn't be a vampire. I couldn't kill him with a stake. And he changed appearance."Aunt Eustacia, whose glittering eyes had grown worried during the telling of the tale, nodded. "A stake to the heart will always kill a vampire, cam; you are correct. Even Lilith would fall to that, though it might be difficult to drive it into her."
Her blue-black hair, still without a trace of gray in its coiled coiffure, gleamed and rippled like ink. Even her face, more than eight decades old, bore little sign of her age… but her hands—the ones that held the small metal amulet Victoria had given her—twisted old and gnarled, with arthritic joints that made it difficult for her to grasp a stake.
"I stabbed him two times," Victoria continued. Her heartbeat still hastened when she remembered those moments of panic. Unlike the time in the alley of The Dials, where it had been all too easy to nearly kill a man, this had been a nightmare in which she couldn't kill a vampire. "Two times, full in the chest… it slowed him, but when I removed the stake it was as if nothing had happened."
"You say he was with a vampire? That is peculiar. Demons will never coexist with vampires if they can help it. They are as much enemies as we are."
"I don't see why they wouldn't, for both races do the bidding of Lucifer."
Aunt Eustacia nodded. "One would think. But we are fortunate that they are too jealous of the other to do so. Both races vie so mightily for the partiality of Lucifer that they would never wish to allow the other to attain any great favor from him."