“By yourself? The streets are dangerous at night,” he said, leaning a bit closer.
What woman didn’t know that? “I’m not afraid.” That was the truth.
“Perhaps you might like an escort?” he asked.
“I think not,” she said, giving him a coy smile. “I don’t usually walk with strange men.” She rested some coins on the counter to give the impression that she had approached so as to settle her account. “Good night, sir.”
She was nearly out the door when she felt the chill at the back of her neck intensify. A knowing smile tickled her lips, and she slowed her pace so that he could catch up to her.
But just as she stepped onto the crooked street, she saw Sebastian and Brim approaching. Both were moving quickly, obviously to see who could win the wager.
“Victoria,” said Sebastian as they slowed next to her. She felt the scarred vampire move past her and slip into the shadows. Neither Brim nor Sebastian made any attempt to follow him. Instead of going into the pub, they stopped at the entrance next to her.
“I’m very sorry,” said Brim. “I’ve made a mistake.”
“A mistake?” Victoria frowned.
“I was looking for my tenth vampire, so I could win this wager with Vioget,” Brim explained. Victoria felt Sebastian’s eyes on her, and an odd chill went up her spine. Why was he looking at her that way?
Max. It had to be about Max. What had happened?
She swallowed and realized Brim was continuing his explanation. She forgot about the vampire and listened.
“I couldn’t find one, or sense one anywhere, and so I kept looking. I’d found the first nine rather quickly. But then, nothing. At last, I came to a small boarding-house and felt an undead was nearby. I found him. In one of the rooms, sleeping. Just as I staked him, I realized he was-”
“Tied up,” Victoria finished, her heart sinking.
“Tied up,” Brim repeated.
So Anton?n was gone.
She glanced toward T?n and nodded slowly.
That, she supposed, was what she deserved for attempting to interfere with divine will.
The gentle hand on his shoulder brought Max to reality.
He blinked, focused, swallowed, then breathed. A long, shuddering, deep breath.
The stones beneath his knees had long ceased paining him, but the moment he moved, the agony screamed along his joints. His legs felt leaden at first, and then as he moved them, nasty prickles traveled up and down and into his bu**ocks and down into his toes.
Colored light beams of red, blue, and gold glowed in the massive church nave, shining through stained glass and spilling over the altar and arches and pews. By their angle, he surmised that dusk was near.
The end of the third day.
Always knowing, always perceptive, Wayren had touched his shoulder to draw him from the deep meditation, then eased away to allow him time to come back to himself. Now he turned and saw her sitting in a pew beneath a low arch, where the only illumination was a few alms candles. For a moment, he saw a shimmer of light around her in the dusky church, and then it was gone.
He moved stiffly next to her and sat for the first time in three days.
“You’re here,” he said.
“I am indeed.”
“Do we have the third ring?”
She gave a brief nod. “We do. Now to finish here and to retrieve the other two from Lilith.”
He couldn’t think about that now. Not yet. One moment at a time. One task at a time.
Wayren seemed to understand, and she touched his hand, her fingers soft and cool against his rough ones. A surge of power sleeked through him. Power and peace. “You’re feverish. Are you ill?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been. A bit.”
She offered him a flask of water, and he drank. He’d never tasted anything more pure, more cold and clean. The heat burning through his limbs eased a bit, but it still raged beneath. He was ill and bloody weak. Yet he had work to do.
“Did you ask Ylito what he thought?”
Wayren nodded. “He agrees that you should not remove the vis bulla during the battle. There is no reason to, and yours is a special situation. Never have we had a Venator need to pass another Trial, wearing his own vis bulla . You do have your own back, don’t you?”
Max shoved away the memory of the exchange with Victoria, when she had returned his vis bulla , which she’d secretly been wearing, and he had given her back her own. Which he’d been wearing. “Yes.” He looked at Wayren. “Did you discuss with him the other matter?”
“He agrees that it would do no harm to try, Max. Normally, of course, we have the blood from the vampire waiting, with the vis bulla soaking in holy water. After the vampire is dead, then the vis is taken from the holy water and dipped in the dead vampire’s blood and then pierced through the flesh of the Venator. That is when the truth will out: either death or life as a Venator.
“But in your case, since you already wear the vis , Ylito believes you may be able to miss that step and finish the Trial sooner. We’ll pour holy water on the amulet before the battle. If blood from the vampire is wiped on the vis during the battle, it may indeed reactivate your Venator powers.”
“Or it may not.”
“Or it may not.”
Either way, the result would be the same. If it was meant to happen, it would happen, whether during the battle with the vampire, or after.
Max knew that he didn’t want to kill a vampire only to die afterward.
He didn’t want to die at all, he realized, for the first time in a long time. For the first time since he could remember.
But he might. And he was prepared. He stood. “I’m ready.”
Fourteen
The Trial Commences
When he walked in, Max didn’t look at Victoria.
She supposed she wasn’t surprised-after all, this was Max.
But what if he never came out of that pit again? What if this was the last time she’d see him? And he wouldn’t look at her.
Victoria dug her fingers into the palm of her hand and tried not to notice how gray he looked in the face, beneath his olive skin. How exhaustion pinched his mouth and lined his eyes. A sheen of moisture glazed his forehead and cheeks. Was he ill or simply worn down?
He moved easily, yet lacking the grace she was used to seeing from a man who could waltz like a creek flowing over rocks, or lift his feet and glide through the air while wielding a sword as though it were an extension of his arm.
She assumed he wore nothing but his breeches for safety purposes-for the same reason she’d cut her hair: to give his opponent nothing to grab on to-but for the moment, the sight of his square shoulders and powerful arms made her mouth dry. The vis bulla at his areola shone against dark skin and the hair on his muscular chest and arrowing down his belly. His feet, bare and wide and brown, moved silently across the room, taking him past her. She saw the brand of the Tutela on the back of his shoulder, a stylized, wiry canine burned into his flesh in an unforgiving reminder of his youthful mistake. He carried a stake. And as she watched, he poured a small vial of water-holy water, probably-over the silver vis , then drank long and deeply from a skin that Wayren handed him.