His expression turned hungry, and he stepped toward her. She held firm, even when he bumped the metal-scented gun barrel into the soft underside of her chin, pressing it there as he lowered his face for a kiss.
She expected it to be as inexperienced and uncouth as he appeared to be in other things, but the kiss wasn't. If she hadn't been thoroughly disgusted by him, and distracted by the other things she had to tend to, she might have possibly enjoyed it. Possibly, but by no means certainly.
And therein lay the difference between him and Sebastian. Even when she was angry with Sebastian, she still enjoyed his kiss. Damn him.
As it was, she kissed George back with some enthusiasm in hopes of disarming him. When his free hand began to get a bit friendly, she pulled away from his mouth and asked, "Are you part of the Tutela, then?"
"I am, of course! I have attained the Third Level," he replied, sliding his hand over the front of her tunic and tracing her breast through the cloth. Any lower and he'd find her stakes… She didn't want anything to throw him off his stride and remind him that she wasn't an average Society woman.
"I would love to see your mark," she asked coyly, making it clear that that wasn't the only thing she wished to see.
"Would you now? And I would be most happy to show it to you. But first…" He reached into the satchel he was carrying and pulled out a coil of rope. "I hate to do this to you, my lovely, but I mustn't take any chances."
That was her opportunity. Victoria moved, quick as a flash, bending then rising up with a great twisting force to slam her head into his chin and her elbow into his abdomen.
The great, loud snap of his teeth coming together, followed by the whoosh of air from his lungs, were the only noises before he tumbled to the ground like a bag of stones: heathen hips.
Victoria pocketed the pistol he'd dropped, then set about tying him up. She bound him tightly; then, instead of leaving him on the floor in the room, where he might make noise and draw attention to himself, thus alerting the vampires to her presence, she slung his inert body over her shoulder and quickly made her way back down the narrow passageway and out the door. She dumped him unceremoniously in the bushes next to the small door by the hillock, hidden from view on all sides, and safely outside of the theater.
He would not gain consciousness in the near future; and if someone found him ahead of time, they would make no connection to her being in the opera theater.
George safely incapacitated, she hurried back inside to the room where she'd left her cloak and bow, knowing that it was past four o'clock and the time was drawing near. The sun would set in two hours.
The only clue she had to where she must go had been George's statement regarding going "down below." But which direction and where and how… she had no better idea than she had when she first arrived.
The creak of the door through which she'd just come, from the outside, snagged her attention, and Victoria peered out from behind the cracked door into the passageway.
A tall, golden-haired man walked casually down the hall toward her. Sebastian.
At last… the opportunity to take a page from his book and appear when he didn't expect it. Victoria stepped out of the room in front of him. "Why, Sebastian, I thought you'd still be searching the streets of Rome for me."
"I regret to inform you, my dear, that if you anticipated sending my heart into fast paces by jumping out in front of me, you sadly mistake my skill. I saw you moments ago, when you brought your… parcel… outside the theater and left it in the bushes. Incidentally, I sent the erstwhile Mr. Starcasset off with my coachman in an effort to keep his interference to a minimum. After that, it was rather convenient to find you so easily."
Blast! Would she never get one up on him?
"I hope you aren't here to stop me. You know how it ended last time you attempted it."
He looked at her steadily, and she was surprised to see acceptance in his gaze. "It is against my better judgment, but I will not attempt to stop you. I will, however, accompany you, if you are certain you wish to do this. Perhaps you are meant to be present for it all."
"Nedas is going to activate Akvan's Obelisk, and I am going to do my best to stop him. What do you expect to happen?"
"I'm not precisely certain, but I fear it is nothing I would choose to witness. Anything Nedas is involved with can only be repulsive."
"Do you know where to go, or would that be too much of an advantage to me?"
He smiled at her; but there was a lack of his old spirit. "I know of something better. A place where you can watch unnoticed."
Victoria thought of her bow and the wooden arrows. Unnoticed meant she might truly have the opportunity she needed. "Then let's be off."
As they started, she added, "Thank you, Sebastian."
He shook his head. "Save your gratitude, for you may well regret it later."
Victoria could hear voices as she crouched and followed Sebastian through a low, narrow opening. When she emerged, she found herself looking through a tiny aperture high in the shadows above a stage.
It was not the stage on which the opera she'd watched two nights ago had been performed; there were no box seats nor velvet-covered chairs arranged in rows in a half circle around it. The decor was not gilt and marble, but raw, rough wood and cracked plaster. A small square window studded one wall, near the ceiling just above her head, which, Victoria noticed, was made of open beams and covered with cobwebs.
"Where are we?" she breathed into Sebastian's ear.
"Second rehearsal stage, below the theater," he replied just as softly.
She looked back down to watch the people—mostly men, and many of them vampires—move about. They seemed to be congregating in a central area near the stage. The cold on the back of her neck had not relented; her skin there was so frigid it burned.
Victoria leaned toward Sebastian again and was just about to speak when he closed his fingers over her arm and pointed down. As he did, something changed in the air; it felt thick and expectant and metallic with evil.
A man was approaching the stage, and the others, Tutela and vampires alike, parted ways for him to pass through. She couldn't get a perfect look at him, but she absorbed the image of shiny black hair, worn short and close to the scalp, and his dark olive skin, much darker than an Italian's, and thick brows. It was hard to tell, but she thought he might be perhaps a few years older than she, in his middle twenties. His lips were thin and pinched, and the whites of his eyes were so white they nearly gleamed.
He looked nothing like his mother, whose skin was nearly translucent it was so pale, and her hair like coils of polished copper and ruby, it was so bright red.
She knew he must be Nedas, the son of Lilith, for no other creature would command such immediate and complete attention from the others. And Victoria felt the evil so strongly, she wanted to brush it off, wipe it away.
She'd been so intent on examining Nedas that at first she completely missed him. But then, as three other men joined Nedas on the stage and stood there in the blush of light coming from a myriad of candled sconces, she recognized Max.
It didn't surprise her. No, surprise was not what she felt when she saw him, his confident, easy figure towering over Nedas and the others next to him. She must have moved or caught her breath, for Sebastian touched her arm as if to comfort her.
Comfort. The last thing she needed—or wanted—was comfort.
She ignored Sebastian and watched Max's harsh, handsome face as it softened into a laugh at something Nedas said, tipping up toward the ceiling, exposing his throat as he basked in hilarity for a moment.
Victoria couldn't imagine for an instant what the evil creature could have said that was so funny.