Page 138 of Vampire So Vengeful

“I don’t care,” Antoine ground out. “I still refuse.”

“Good,” Roberto said. “Then I will entomb you again, this time for defying a demand of your Curia, and claim her anyway.”

“That you cannot do.” Belle spoke at last, reaching up to sweep back her hood, her posture changing as she straightened. “Rejecting such an archaic decree does not warrant entombment.”

“Lady Belle!” Roberto’s pale face somehow seemed to pale further, but anger swiftly replaced his shock. Beside him, Tobias flinched, taking a half-step back. “Why are you here? You should be in Europe!”

“I go where I please.”

“Withhim?” Roberto gestured with a fat thumb toward Antoine. Then his eyes narrowed. “Are you hissire?”

Belle gave him her best imperious look. “What I am is a Curia member of greater rank, and you would do well to remember it.”

“Yet you enter my domain without announcement!”

She huffed a bored sigh. “As I never left, there was no need.”

“You have no sway here,” Roberto blustered. “I do what I want in Boston. If I choose to entomb a vampire in my territory, that is my right.”

“If you do,” Belle replied, “I’ll invokecensura,and expel you from your seat. Then what will it matter?”

His mouth fell open. “You can’t… You have no right!”

Belle waved one hand airily. “It may not be a custom practiced in centuries, but it’s still valid.”

Roberto glared at her, glinting little eyes full of hate as she stole his moment of triumph. The tableau held, neither Roberto nor Belle looking away, until at last Roberto let out a slow breath, and leaned back once more in his chair. His gaze shifted to Antoine. “You still refuse?”

“Obviously.”

“Then I enactexpropriatio terrae.” He jabbed a finger toward Antoine. “By Curia right, I strip you of your territory and brand you Outcast. Henceforth your domain is dissolved, divided between Dedham and Milton. From this night, if you are found within Boston, you may be slain without consequence.” He scoffed at Belle while Tobias grinned, flashing his fangs. “You can’t stop that.”

The decree came steeped in contempt, and Antoine’s blood flared hot as the words sank in, despair and fury colliding as his hands clenched into fists. Could Belle truly do nothing? He held his breath, waiting for her to intervene again.

“Indeed I can’t,” she said instead, as if the whole business were beneath her, and what hope Antoine had was snuffed out. “However, it is customary to give the outcast time to leave. The minimum is—”

“Seven nights,” Roberto said through clenched teeth, as though his intent had been to attack immediately. “Now begone,Outcast.”

Antoine held his gaze, his back straight in defiance, memorizing every line and plane of Roberto’s face in this moment. Hate and contempt urged him to issue a challenge on the spot, but Belle’s caution was a leash on his fury. Roberto was still too strong. Yet part of him felt relief at the banishment; there was an appeal to taking Cally and starting a new life somewhere away from all of this petty politics.

Except he knew he wouldn’t; he couldn’t. Not until Roberto was dead.

He said nothing, only turned on his heel and strode from the chamber, Belle following in his wake, while Roberto’s chuckles echoed around him.

Thirty-Nine

“What will you do now?” Belle asked as she drove him back.

“Not sure yet.” It was raining again, the oncoming headlights fracturing into starbursts across the wet glass. Antoine stared through them, unseeing, grateful that Cally hadn’t been anywhere near Roberto, but now faced with the prospect of explaining they had to leave her home city.

“You could stay with me,” Belle suggested, an uncharacteristically tentative note in her voice.

“Go back to France?” He couldn’t help the scoff that slipped out. “Just what you wanted.”

“No, I meant stay at my house. It would keep you here, in Boston. A base of operations while you plan whatever comes next.”

He blinked. “At your house?”

“Well, the one I’m renting.” Her eyes stayed fixed on the road. “It’s in Fisher Hill.”