“When did they leave? How long have they been gone?”
“N’more than two hours,” Verbena replied earnestly. “He said he’d take ’er for a drive. Th’ ladies ’ere thought he’d bring ’er h’ere, if he was gonna—y’see—hurt ’er, and since they’d been here for that party, they insisted on coming wi’ me.”
Her mother, in the clutches of Regalado. The thought made Victoria’s insides churn like a sea storm.
She focused her sharp mind, pushed away the worry that threatened to turn her senses frantic.
Were they at the villa? If so, it was a blessing that she was already here herself…but there were any number of places he could have taken her. Victoria realized Max was looking at her, that he’d stepped closer, almost as if to offer assistance. He’d help her comb through the villa, go with her to delve down into the underground lair of Akvan and search for her mother.
Victoria looked directly at him, her veins singing and her mind working furiously, and pushed the numbing worry back. She could fret later. It was getting darker by the moment. She made her decision in that instant.
“You’ll have to take that back to…back,” she finished firmly, looking at the bundle of papers he still had. “I’ll see to my mother.”
He looked as though he might argue, but it was only for a moment. Then he nodded. “It’s important that we get this safely to Wayren,” he said.
“Take them with you,” Victoria added, gesturing to the ladies, feeling the brittleness in her movements. “I don’t need them—”
“I ain’t leavin’ ye alone, milady,” Verbena said, stepping toward her.
“I daresay, you cannot think to order me about,” said Lady Winnie, looking down her humped nose at Victoria. “Melly could be in danger! I shall not rest until—”
“Shh!” Victoria snapped to attention as the rush of a chill moved over the back of her neck. She and Max exchanged glances; he felt it too. “Go,” she told him, gesturing toward the rear of the estate grounds, where the darkness seemed to be growing even faster. He would go out the way he and Victoria had come in.
With a last, steady look, followed by a sharp nod, he disappeared soundlessly into the overgrowth, leaving Victoria with three ill-prepared would-be vampire hunters.
Seventeen
Wherein the Merits of Italian Desserts Are Discussed After an Eventful Evening
Pulling the stake out of her pocket, Victoria edged along the wall in the direction of the villa.
The chill on the back of her neck wasn’t alarming in its intensity; she guessed there were no more than three undead in the vicinity. Whether one of them was Regalado, with Lady Melly, she would soon find out. She prayed, firmly keeping her thoughts from worrying that one of them was…and terrified that it wouldn’t be.Stake gripped comfortably, she slipped between some sort of prickly bush and the old stone wall, peering around its corner. The light had grown very dim, so she could see little more than shapes of blue and black and gray. But then she noticed a faint red glow in the distance: vampire eyes.
They disappeared. Either the creature had turned away or was now hiding. In either case, Victoria was not about to let the undead get away. She moved quickly and as quietly as the sagging branches and soggy grass would allow, peering into the darkness and wishing, once again, that one of the Venator powers was night vision.
A woman screamed in the distance—or tried to, before it was quickly muffled—and that set Victoria off more rapidly and carelessly through the brush. It didn’t sound like Melly…but, then again, Victoria had heard her mother scream only once, when a mouse had the audacity to scamper across her dressing room table.
She moved toward the sounds of struggles ahead, refusing to let herself contemplate what she might—or might not—find.
One step at a time. One battle at a time.
She ran along the side of the sprawling villa, between it and the tall enclosing wall that ran around the entire estate, toward the front, along overgrown paths and beneath unpruned trees. More screams and shouts from beyond gave her a burst of speed, and when she came near the front of the building, Victoria nearly ran into a bench that had been hidden in the lengthening shadows.
Swerving just in time to avoid cracking her leg against it, she paused, breathing heavily, and saw the cluster of moving shadows ahead. They were anonymous; she couldn’t tell if one of the struggling figures was her mother. She could see six of them: three pairs of red eyes—pure red, none of them the pink of Guardians or the magenta of Imperials, fortunately—and the three pale, frightened faces of their victims, thrashing about as they were dragged toward the front entrance of the villa as if they’d just arrived.
Victoria burst from the darkness and rushed one of the red-eyed vampires. The undead looked up in surprise, then delight, then shock as she saw the stake in Victoria’s hand. The female undead released her victim and roared forward, blocking the stake’s downward stroke with her forearm and grasping Victoria’s wrist.
Cursing herself for getting stopped by such an unoriginal move, Victoria lobbed the stake to her free hand, jerked forcefully with her other, and yanked the vampire toward her as she reached around to stab the undead’s heart through the back.
The vampire poofed, blasting dust over Victoria’s arm, and she spun slickly in the mud to face the others. Her foot slipped, but she caught herself in time to duck a blow from a male undead and again swiveled around to come at her target from behind, slamming the stake into the center of his back.
Just as he disintegrated into dust, the third vampire released his victim, shoving the sobbing woman to the side so hard that she tumbled to the ground. He faced Victoria, and she saw that he had a large, broken branch in his hand. With a mighty swipe he flung it whistling through the air, and it slammed into her shoulder hard enough to send her staggering back.
But she wasn’t down, and Victoria caught herself against a wet, prickly bush just as Verbena and Lady Winnie burst onto the scene. What came next happened so rapidly that Victoria wasn’t certain exactly how the events unfolded…but the next thing she knew, her target was blocked by the wide skirts covering the behind of the Duchess of Farnham…there was a sudden shriek of pain from the vampire…a flurry of activity, a splash, and then…suddenly…the satisfying poof! of the undead imploding into dust and ash.
And then there was nothing but the quiet sobbing of the woman—who, horribly, wasn’t Lady Melly—and the gasping of breaths from the other would-be victims, a man and a second woman, who, from the looks of their clothing, were returning from an evening out.