She realized she couldn't catch her breath, that it had escaped and was jolting her body into deep heaves with each inhale. Her shoulders jerked up and down; her lungs burned. Her arms and legs shook. Her eyes and nose leaked.
Victoria looked down. She was holding a knife, not a stake. A knife dripping with blood. Her hand was not only streaked, but dotted, splattered with blood in a horrific pattern. She was kneeling… kneeling over a massive body that no longer moved.
His eyes were open, dull and glassy, and blood covered his chin and cheeks, even his lips, in the same ghastly pattern that was on her hands. His chest barely rose and fell.
Victoria stared down at him and gingerly pushed to her feet.
She looked at the knife. She would have dropped it, but her fingers would not release the hilt. She shoved it into her pocket, still clutching it, and looked around.
The girl. She dimly remembered the girl.
But there was no one. No one to see what she'd wrought, what the rage and devastation had done when it erupted from her.
Victoria looked down at her hands again. She'd killed before… but she'd never had blood on her hands.
Eustacia Gardella heard the noise before the man sleeping beside her did. She reached automatically for the stake she kept beside the bed, rolling off the mattress with an agility that belied her eighty-one years. Kritanu, his black hair shining in the moonlight beaming through the window, shifted and woke at her movement.
He saw the stake in her hand and then his dark eyes met hers, silent; then he too slid his wiry body from beneath the sheets. He reached for the knife, and Eustacia felt him behind her as she turned to slip from the room.
The noise had been faint, but her sensitivity as a Venator allowed her to recognize and process danger and warning much more acutely than an average mortal. She had heard something once, and then nothing more.
Despite the fact that she did not sense the presence of an undead, Eustacia gripped the stake like the hand of her lover, and moved down the stairs swiftly and in silence. There was only one other servant, Charley, and he would not have awakened.
She had half descended the stairs when she saw the figure standing in the grand entrance of her home, recognized her, and her breath seized.
"Victoria!" she cried, lifting her night rail, bunching its soft linen with her grip on the stake. "What has happened?"
Her great-niece stood in the foyer, looking up at her in the dim light always left burning in the gold lamp beside the stairs. Dark streaks on her face and hands, and the wide, shocked eyes that stared up at her told Eustacia part of the story.
"I didn't want to go home looking like this." Victoria's voice sounded remarkably calm. "What would the servants say?"
"Cam, what has happened?" Eustacia wrapped her gnarled fingers around Victoria's cold, stained ones and gently tugged her toward the sitting room.
Kritanu, bless him, had whisked a blanket from its trunk and settled it around Victoria's shoulders. "I shall make some tea," he said in a voice just as soothing as the Darjeeling he would no doubt bring.
"I nearly killed him," Victoria said, looking at Eustacia with eyes like olive pits. "There was a lot of blood. I didn't know what to do."
The words were simple, calm, logical. She stood straight and relaxed. But the expression in those eyes had Eustacia's brows drawing together. She directed her niece onto the davenport and settled herself next to her. "Tell me what happened, Victoria."
"I went out tonight. I didn't expect to find any vampires—I know Lilith took them all with her—but I went out anyway. I needed to."
"You needed to do something." She repeated the words purposely, hoping they would help drain the shock from her great-niece's eyes. "Of course you did. You are a Venator."
A brief smile flitted over Victoria's face. "Max said that. The night Phillip… died. He said I was truly a Venator."
"Did he?" Eustacia's protege, Max, had left for Italy immediately after the tragedy, and she had not yet heard from him. The tension between him, an experienced Venator, and Victoria had been palpable. She found it interesting that Max had given her niece such a compliment; for he'd been so adamant that she would be more concerned about beaux and balls than vampires and stakes. "So you went out. Tell me what happened. Whose blood is this?"
"I almost killed a man. I don't remember doing it, Aunt Eustacia. He was going to rape a woman, a girl, and I stopped him. He was very big, much bigger than I. We started to fight, and when he pulled out a knife, I took mine out too… and the next thing I knew he wasn't fighting back. There was blood everywhere. There's never been blood." Her eyes were vacant again, and Eustacia's heart squeezed as she looked into her niece's beautiful face. Her brave, smart, strong, lost niece.
How many times had she regretted making her a Venator and bringing her into this world? This world of violence and evil?
But she was here, and they needed her. She and Max and the other Venators needed Victoria if they were ever going to destroy Lilith, Queen of the Vampires. The destruction of the evil that stalked their world was worth every sacrifice, great and small. Eustacia had lived this truth for more than sixty years.
Victoria would live it too. Eustacia just wished she had not experienced such a great sacrifice, and so very, very early.
"No, there's never any blood," she replied, selecting the last comment to respond to.
"It sickened me. He… I left him there. I didn't know what to do."
"Victoria. Listen to me. The man was attacking a girl, and you saved her. You helped her. And he would have cut you if you hadn't cut him. You had to protect yourself."
"I did. But I didn't have to slice him to ribbons!" Then, finally, the tears came.
Eustacia held her, feeling the jerks and heaves of her delicate shoulders as if they were her own sobs. This had been a long time in coming, since Phillip's death, and she was relieved Victoria had finally released the grief and anger that had built up inside of her. Losing her husband less than a month after marrying him, and in a horrific way, had caused her to withdraw and cloister herself away. At least tonight she had found a way to confront some of those emotions.
But what a terrible way to do it.
After a very long time, after the heaves turned to small jerks and then to gentle little hiccups, Victoria pulled away. Her eyes were swollen, her cheeks blotchy. Tiny brown ovals splattered her face, and one long streak edged her jaw. Some of her dark curls had come loose from their single braid, curling wildly around her face.
Victoria began fumbling with the shirt tucked into her man's trousers, yanking it free and pulling it up and away from her belly. Eustacia cast a quick glance, but Kritanu hadn't yet returned.
"I can't wear this. I can't let it control me."
Eustacia knew what she was talking about. Victoria lifted the shirt and there, resting in the hollow of her navel, was the vis bulla, the holy strength amulet worn by Venators. Vampire hunters. Crafted of silver from the Holy Lands, the small cross had been soaked in holy water from Rome before its small matching hoop was pierced through the top of Victoria's navel, just as Eustacia's own vis bulla had been when she had accepted her duty as part of the Gardella family legacy. She still wore hers, of course. A Venator never removed the vis.
She and Victoria were Venators, born, trained, and blessed. A select few were asked, and even fewer accepted. There were only a hundred or so Venators in the world who had actually passed the test and wore the vis bulla.
And now Victoria wished to give it back. Eustacia opened her mouth to speak, but her niece interrupted.
"Do not fear, Aunt. I will take it again—when I can be sure I will not abuse it. I terrified myself tonight, but I learned that I am not yet ready to hunt again. It is one thing to kill an undead, an immortal evil being… but I do not wish to see human blood on my hands again."