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Instead, his eyes dart over my shoulder, and his salacious grin vanishes at something behind me. My fingers tighten around the bloody stake. I hardly dare hope. I hardly darebreathe. Turning slowly, I follow his gaze across the aviary, but it is not Odessa who steps through the door. It is not Monsieur Marc or Dimitri or Michal either.

No.

The two gentlemen from the street tip their hats to me, devastatingly handsome, followed by the woman with the lover. All three stare at the blood on my chest with palpable hunger. “Oh dear.” Extending his handkerchief with long, graceful fingers, the raven-haired vampire clicks his tongue sympathetically. His smile, however, is pure evil. “You seem to be bleeding.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

A Natural Aphrodisiac

The vampire beside me snarls, every muscle in his body taut and tense. “I found her first,” he tells the others, his guttural voice dropping another octave. Near unintelligible now. Blood still spills down his chin, and I choke back bile at the sight of it. At thescent. “She is mine.”

The raven-haired vampire’s eyes never leave my face. His handkerchief remains extended. “Nonsense. I marked her on the street half an hour ago.” To me, he purrs, “Ignore the others. Come to me, ma douce, before you waste another drop of that lovely ichor. I shall take your pain away.”

He shall take my pain away.

The words are delicious, lovely and warm and—andcompelling. When my head starts to empty and my feet begin to move, I wrench my gaze away and seize the rim of the basin. Pain radiates up my leg, down my arm, but I force myself to feel it, to remain in control, and stare determinedly at my scraped knuckles. I cannot run. I cannot evenwalk. The stake still bites into my palm, but the possibility of stabbing even a single vampire with it was slim; the possibility of stabbing four is nonexistent. The reality of the situation washes over me, and with it, my knees threaten to buckle.

I am going to die here, after all.

I can only pray Coco receives my note.

“Odessa will be here any moment.” Swaying on my feet, I lie through my teeth. “She just needed to finish up a bit of business with Monsieur Marc, but she said she’d be along soon. You don’t want to anger Odessa.” The last I deliver with as much bravado as I can muster. It’s what Jean Luc would do, what Lou and Reid and Coco would do too. They’d stare Death in the face, perhaps laugh at him, before striding into the afterlife with their chins held high.

I force my own chin up as the woman’s brow furrows.

“Fortunately for me, this will only take a moment.” The second gentleman removes his hat and gloves, draping them across the nearest cage. “Unfortunately for all other parties, however, etiquette dictates that you belong to the first vampire who marked you, and I’ve been tracking you since you crawled out of that hole in the Old City. Whatwereyou thinking?”

The feral vampire sinks into a half crouch before I can answer. “I don’t care for etiquette.”

The second gentleman glances at the ceiling—at the mutilated corpse still dangling high above us—in distaste. “Clearly.”

“Gentlemen,” the woman says warily. “She doesn’t look willing.”

“I don’tcare,” the feral vampire repeats with a snarl, sinking lower.

The raven-haired vampire sighs in resignation. “Let us be civil about this. Etiquette is subjective, of course, but I should still hate to destroy other vampires. The girl is no more than a mouthful—hardly enough to satisfy any one of us—so perhaps we canshareher. I personally favor the femoral artery in the thigh.” He lickshis lips, staring at my legs, and inches closer. “Which leaves her underarm and throat unattended, as well as thatdelectablewound above her heart.”

“I suppose the bloodismuch sweeter under the arm,” the second gentleman says grudgingly. He looks to the feral vampire. “What say you, Yannick? We shall even allow you first bite.”

The feral vampire hisses in agreement.

All three turn to the woman. “Madeleine?” the raven-haired vampire asks.

But the woman, Madeleine, edges toward the door, shaking her head with thinly veiled fear. “If what she says is true—if Odessa tracks her to us—Michal will not be far behind.” She waves a brown hand in my direction, inhaling deep. “Can you not smell the castle on her? She is his guest.”

The raven-haired vampire strolls toward me with an elegant shrug. “He has not yet bitten her. She remains unclaimed.”

Hesitating, Madeleine swallows hard and glances once more at my bleeding chest. “Michal will not like this.”

“Michal is nothere,” the other gentleman says impatiently, “but if you so fear him, by all means... leave her to us. I am hungry. Yannick?” Cold hands seize my shoulders from behind, and I cannot help it—I close my eyes, the last of my bluster vanishing. Because I am not Jean Luc or Lou or Reid, and I cannot laugh in Death’s face, cannot pretend to be brave as the feral vampire lowers his mouth to my throat. His breath is foul.

I will not be quick, he promised.

I tense, waiting for the first brutal lash of pain—and something streaks past my ear instead.

It imbeds in Yannick’s skull.

My eyes snap open as he releases me, as his head quite literallyexplodesin a shower of blood and gore. It douses my face, my throat, my chest in cold viscera. Whirling—clamping my mouth shut, clutching the basin for dear life—I watch a wooden stake clatter from the carnage to the ground, followed by his decapitated body. Before my very eyes, his figure begins to age, to desiccate, until it resembles not a man but a shriveled husk several hundred years old.His true age.