A Kiss of Blood (Vamp City #2)(83)

“Briefly.” Even a few weeks ago, he’d never have lied to him, one of his most trusted friends, but Bram was too close to Cristoff these days, and he couldn’t risk it. “She was hiding at Fabian’s Palace, but she’s acquired the ability to disappear, and I lost her again.”

“Dammit.” Bram lifted his empty glass to his mouth, then scowled, clearly forgetting he’d already tossed back its contents. Instead, he threw the glass at the pool table, shattering it into a hundred pieces.

“Amico mio,” Arturo said quietly.

“I’m losing it, Ax.” Bram ran both hands through close-cropped dark hair. “We’re all losing it, Cristoff most of all. Even when he’s not punishing anyone, he’s feeding almost constantly, now. Blood, pain. Mostly pain. It’s an illness, Ax. He can’t stop.”

“And you?” Arturo asked carefully.

“I’m not as far gone, not nearly. But the hunger grows. The more I’m around him, the more I feed, and the hungrier I become.”

“Leave here. At least for a while.”

“I have. I do. I wander the streets, but the hunger no longer comes upon me as a slow thing but hits me like a hammer. I’m suddenly violently hungry, with little control. I need pain. And I won’t cause it, Ax. I can’t.”

Arturo squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “I know. I’m glad. It tells me your soul has not been compromised.”

“Not my soul perhaps, not yet. But I’m losing my f**king mind. If this doesn’t stop soon, I’m going to turn into as much of a raving sadist as our master.”

“I’ll find the sorceress. I’ll see the magic renewed. I promise.”

“If you don’t . . . if you can’t . . . don’t let me become like him.” Bram’s gaze caught Arturo’s, hard as steel. “Promise me, Ax. If I start causing the pain, you will end this worthless excuse for a life of mine. And you can do it. We both know it. Promise me.”

Arturo nodded. “It won’t come to that.”

“I hope not.”

As Bram turned away, Arturo retraced his steps through the billiards room. As he crossed the foyer to the stairs, a second male began to scream, his cries in stereo with the first. Two of them. Below the males’ cries, he could hear the softer sounds of female agony. An agony that weighed on his soul. When had he begun to block out the sounds of others’ suffering? How had he gone so long without feeling . . . and not known it?

In a way, he missed that numbness. Life was far easier for a man . . . a creature . . . who must feed from humans when he couldn’t feel the suffering of others. But that wasn’t the man he was. Nor was it the man he wished to be.

With heavy steps, he climbed the stairs and strode down the hall to the massive doors of Cristoff’s throne room. Stepping inside, he took in the sight, blinking, careful not to reveal his shock. Four of Cristoff’s vampire guards had been strung up by their wrists. Two of them had been ass**les loyal to Ivan even before the failing of the magic. Two had once been honorable males. Blood ran from the ears of all four, dripping from their jawbones onto their shoulders.

Six more guards stood at attention around the throne room, their backs ramrod straight, fear sharp in their eyes. For once, no other vampire joined their master in this feeding. The room was empty but for Cristoff and his guards.

Cristoff stood with his back to the door, facing his captives. As Arturo watched, the vampire master lifted his hands.

“Where is the sorceress?” he shouted, his voice hot with fury.

The captives eyed him with varying degrees of terror and resignation. But all were clearly in agony.

“I don’t know,” one gasped. “I had nothing to do with her disappearance.”

In response, Cristoff raised his hands and pressed his fingers against the male’s forehead. Seconds later, the guard was screaming at the tops of his lungs, the blood gushing from his ears and nose.

No wonder fear hung thick on the air throughout the castle. Every member of the kovena worried that he or she could be the next to hang from those chains as Cristoff sought his traitor.

Guilt lashed Arturo that innocent men were suffering for his own actions. He couldn’t confess, not with Quinn’s life on the line. But perhaps he could distract.

“Master.”

Cristoff whirled on him, a wild gleam in his eyes that punched Arturo in the gut. A gleam quickly masked.

“News,” Cristoff snapped.

Arturo spun his lies as quickly and cleanly as always. “I found the sorceress in Fabian Neptune’s palace.”

Cristoff’s eyes lit with excitement. “You have her.”

“No. She’s acquired power, a gift of invisibility, or perhaps phasing. But she escaped, disappearing into thin air.”

Cristoff’s jaw turned to granite, his eyes narrowing, his face growing red with fury, and Arturo began to wonder if he, too, might soon be joining the guards hanging from the rafters.

Instead, the vampire master whirled back and palmed the heads of the two whom Arturo knew to have been decent males at one time. The pair screamed with an agony Arturo had rarely heard. The agony of having one’s brain fried by a mind blast.

But Cristoff wasn’t simply making them suffer this time. He held on to them as their screams intensified, as first one, then the other, fell unconscious.