Page 50 of The Curse of Eternity (Descendants of Helsing #1)

Power emanated from it, practically rippling outward in waves reminiscent of a mirage in the desert.

I didn’t get a chance to stare because the asshole guard behind me grasped my shoulder in one gauntlet, shoving me downward.

Pressure clamped over my collarbone, and I grimaced when my knees hit the hard floor.

Drake’s familiar voice turned savage, his words foreign, but their meaning obvious.

With a harsh inhale, I glanced to where Drake had also been forced to his knees.

Panic iced the breath in my lungs. He was way too far.

Maybe ten feet separated us, and the guards’ weapons could cut faster than I could move.

Wild fear lit behind his eyes, his expression more readable than I’d ever seen, revealing how much he cared about what happened to me.

More foreign words were spoken, this time by an unfamiliar feminine voice.

My glare settled on a woman with long black hair pulled daintily away from her pale face.

Pearls and sapphires adorned her violet gown beneath the white fur-lined cloak that covered her shoulders, its hem resting at her slippered feet.

All of them wore a similar version of the cape.

To her right, a much-taller man’s long curly brown hair and full beard appeared even darker contrasted to his silver suit.

Next to him, making up one side of the center, was a blonde vampire.

Her round face and cutting blue eyes complimented the indigo colors draped over her full figure.

Leaned forward on his lesser-throne, the blond vampire beside her seemed washed out in golds—from his hair to his trailing lion’s fur-lined cape.

Because of how brightly he dressed, the vampire on his right appeared shorter in stature.

Subdued by his hair—equally as dark as the first woman—and the heavy green suit he wore, its deep coloring contrasting his pale green eyes that stood out like some nocturnal animal.

The final member of the vampire ruling class, taking the third chair on the right but seemingly the furthest spaced out of the six of them, nearly made me flinch.

Sandy hair a similar color to Andrew’s fell stringy and missing in patches over a long scarred forehead.

Lines and signs of battle marked the vampire’s face, accentuated by the crimson color of his cape, flowing down from his shoulders like blood woven into fabric.

While the others’ postures were haughty, displaying their prestige for all who came to worship them, the man clad in red seemed more calculating.

It was the way he watched mine and Drake’s every move with narrowed eyes, anticipating our next actions before we could think of them.

Swallowing hard, but refusing to act meek, I straightened my back the best I could under the pressure of the guard’s painful grip.

After another flex of their fingers, the gauntlet fell away.

As the guard took a step back, my attention landed on the last unfamiliar person in the room.

Half-hidden in the deeper shadows behind the violet woman’s throne, a figure with a bent-back stood hunched over a gnarled cane.

She hobbled forward on noisy footfalls, her gray eyes blinded by cataracts.

Compared to the vampires, her tattered cloak was plain aside from the silver button fastening it around her wrinkled neck.

If the undead before us made up the Domnitori, then the wizened human could only have been one thing—their sorcerer.

Looking smug and self-important, Lucian’s hastened steps blurred his figure.

He fell to his knees before his evil overlords, almost kissing the ground at their feet while he murmured words I couldn’t interpret.

The vampire in gold spoke, his deep voice too quiet for me to pick up the vowels on his foreign tongue. Lucian’s subservient response was immediate. Meanwhile, Drake stared daggers like he was planning out how to annihilate every single one of them.

Fidgeting to keep the shackles from slipping off from between my sweaty fingers, I whispered, “What are they saying?”

Every pair of eyes in the room was suddenly on me.

“Lucian has revealed our intrusion to the bed chambers of their voievod ,” Drake answered, not bothering to whisper. “He remains clueless as to the ‘why’ behind it.”

Again, the Domnitori member in gold spoke.

His steady light brown eyes flickered to me, but he addressed only Drake.

My heart raced at the sound of his grave tone, but I jumped when the black-haired woman in violet laughed.

Her high-pitched glee revealed a glint of hunger within her expressive gaze.

I tensed, struggling to keep still while shivers shook my spine.

Drake opened his mouth to reply to whatever they’d said, but I was done with being a pawn.

“Why don’t you just ask me why we’re here?” I squared my shoulders, wincing from my aching back. The Domnitori stared at me, the emotions crossing their faces varying from unresponsive to disgusted, but the man in crimson looked curious. Yeah, like that wasn’t creepy as shit.

The pale blonde woman in indigo narrowed her eyes with mistrust before she replied in her heavily-accented voice, “You are English.”

“I’m American, actually.” That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. The woman actually sneered.

“Doamn? Milica has always loathed the New World, and its inhabitants,” Drake murmured, and Lucian’s lip curled.

“Domn Nikolai enjoys them.” The black-haired woman in violet glanced at the vampire reduced to shadows beside the golden one. Her keen gaze was intent, never leaving mine while she spoke in stilted English. “The blood of the Americans is so…thick.”

“ T?cere , Doamn? Irina.” When the man in gold spoke, Irina obeyed.

Not even a hint of displeasure crossed her face at being silenced, and my brow furrowed.

These vampires had to have existed alongside each other for centuries.

Their allegiance was unbreakable, that was obvious, and once again, I struggled not to cower under the oppressive knowledge that my family and I were more than outclassed by these killers.

The gold-clad vampire paused, like he was translating his sentences ahead of speaking them. “You are a descendant of the slayer, we know this. Have you come to slay us ?” He didn’t sound afraid, and by the slight smirk on Milica’s round face, they seemed to think it was a funny notion.

“No, I didn’t.” Which was true, not that they could tell my truths from lies considering how hard my blood was pumping just being in front of these freaks. I glanced at Drake to gauge his reaction, but he’d shut down anything that wasn’t pure hatred from showing on his face.

Surrounded by not only lycans with medieval weaponry, but several vampires—plenty capable of ripping our heads off in mere seconds—our only shot at survival was buying time. Which meant keeping them talking, or at the very least unsettling them. Closing my eyes tight, I made up my mind.

I opened my eyes, wedged my pinky finger into my back pocket, and fished out the ring. It fell from my fumbling hold instantly, tumbling to the carpet on its edge only to roll forward. The vibrations of its centrifugal force turned deafening when it reached the marbled section of floor.

“I came to steal the rings.”

Surprise surged across every vampire’s face when the realization settled in—even Drake’s—but only the unnamed one with the blood-red cape showed a flicker of fear.

Sweet satisfaction filled my chest at the dawning comprehension on Lucian’s narrow face when his gaze darted from the ring to me, and then Drake.

In the blink of an eye, he suddenly stood behind Drake and bent to grasp my vampire’s clenched fist.

A flash of irritation crossed Drake’s features when Lucian wrenched open his tensed fingers.

The second ring fell from his grasp, but before it could drop to the floor, Lucian snatched it from thin air.

Startled, I flinched when Lucian’s figure made a blurred trail to kneel in front of the vampire in gold.

Before the gaudy undead leader could reach for the offered ring, the one in crimson finally spoke.

“Domn Petru…” The rest of his words were too fast to catch, damn my stupid brain!

I glanced at Drake, who could understand them, but the only reaction I could glean was the curious furrow to his brow.

Petru nodded, his expression neutral when he handed the larger ring back to Lucian, who scurried over to drop it in the expectant scarred hand of the crimson-caped vampire.

An instant later, and the first ring that I’d dropped joined its pair.

“Descendant of Helsing,” the vampire in silver addressed me, his curling brown locks utterly still while he spoke.

“Magick has enabled your invasion thus far on the blood which ties you to our voievod —long rest his bartered soul.” It was tacked on, like the sentiment was rehearsed, but the insincerity of his loyalty to Dracula’s memory didn’t ease the foreboding that prickled the hairs along my arms. “So shall this become your final resting place. Once you have been thoroughly excised for any information you possess that may be of interest.”

“What about Drake?” My fingernails pressed painfully into the cold iron of my loose shackles, and my fingers shook. “What’s going to happen to him?”

“The rebellion of an immortal is unprecedented.” Irina turned, facing her five compatriots on her left. “As legiuitor , I propose endless calcification.”

My eyes widened. All of Drake’s blood would have to be drained from him in order for him to calcify. How long would he be forced to go without replenishing his body’s source of blood? Horror took root in me as Drake’s jaw clenched, appearing ready for the end.