"Still no sign of them?' Lilith screeched as she blew open the doors of the Vampire Council Chambers and sauntered forward.
Her council stood to greet her and she eyed each member with suspicion. Fury at a lack of results had her in a stranglehold, and she turned her bitter venom on her two injured councilwomen first. Their injuries were a reminder of her Dark Realm's heavy losses. Sebastian had lost an arm, his conjuring arm; Elizabeth Bathory was burned beyond recognition. Lucrezia was a wreck. Revolted by Lucrezia Borgia's condition, Lilith shook her head.
Gorgeous, fire-red hair framed Lucrezia's delicate, porcelain white skin. No wonder Fallon had been so taken with her, enough to make her his mate. A pair of sensual, smoky green eyes stared back at Lilith, silently begging for mercy.There is no mercy in Hell, bitch . Lilith shot her a telepathic message, taunting Lucrezia as she strode forward and waved away the little gargoyle creatures that scampered at her feet looking for blood bits. The vampires waited, none breathing, to see what vicious course her foul mood might take.
The councilwoman seemed trapped by Lilith's glare, and Lilith allowed her to twist with uncomfortable anticipation as she filled her goblet with blood from the pentagram-shaped council table's veins. Lucrezia's picture-perfect nose balanced her once pretty features . . . Lilith shrugged. Sad that her lower jaw had been ripped away by her own husband to save her life. Silver poison at the hands of the Neterus made it necessary for Fallon to tear at the substance, wrest Lucrezia's esophagus out of her once lovely throat down to the stomach before the silver-laced blood damaged her dead heart.
"Have you no dignity?" Lilith said in a quiet, lethal tone as she spun away from the table and took a sip of blood. It was a rhetorical question, really. Lucrezia's vocal cords were gone.
She'd never expected an answer from her as she ascended her high-back, black marble throne and angrily sat. If Lucrezia had finally summoned enough energy to cover the hideous results of the Neteru poisoning with illusion, surely she would have. That was the thing that so enraged her-Lucrezia didn't have the strength to do so yet and might never-none of them did, at a time when the dark empire needed strong warriors.
Lilith's gaze narrowed as Fallon Nuit flung out his arm and covered his wife's face from the nose down with a heavily beaded veil. "Such a waste," she hissed and then glanced at Elizabeth, who had turned away to cover her burned face with gnarled hands.
"You were once Count Dracula's wife!" Lilith shrieked, suddenly standing. In a rage she sent her golden goblet crashing to the black marble floor, but even the ever-hungry Harpies dared not go near the spill now. "Look at you! How could you be so stupid to takea bloodbath topside in the gray-zone, or to feed, and not check for treason? It was arrogance and stupidity that allowed you to drop your guard."
There was no response to the diatribe as Lilith's searing gaze raked her subordinates. "You never depend on a man to save your carcass . . . had I depended solely on Lucifer all these millennia, where would I be? Exterminated! Where is your guile, your personal brand of treachery,your me -or-them survival instinct as agoddamned queen of the night! I am ashamed to call you mine. There's not even a coherent plot against the female Neteru to return the favor."
Lilith waved out her arm toward Fallon Nuit and Sebastian. "Fuck them! You two councilwomen should have come together to develop a foolproof plan to not only avenge yourselves and restore your honor, but to exterminate these two worthless bastards who were more interested in screwing you than ensuring your longevity and welfare! What has become of Hell?" Her gaze narrowed on both councilmen. "They wouldrue the day that something so horrific ever befell me . . . but you whimper for me to fix this travesty. It is your right and choice to do so-I don't have to sleep with them."
"He couldn't repair me, Madame Councilwoman," Elizabeth said in a piteous murmur. "He lost his conjuring arm and the prosthetic one he casts in illusion is powerless. His left is building strength now, but-"
"Did you have balls enough to ask my husband to repair your arm? Nuit was cut with a Neteru blade and lost a leg, and it was repaired! Did you even bargain for your conjuring limb?" Lilith shrieked, whirling on Sebastian, who ducked a black blast.
"No, milady.I suspected that you were both too busy attending to the more important matter of the heir's survival. My arm is nothing. I felt it best to wait until a more auspicious time to approach him . . . as I'm sure his level of frustration is high now." Sebastian kept his head low like his simpering tone, cringing on his throne.
"Get your f**king arm repaired by the only one who can! I need your spells, not excuses." Lilith hissed and then spit black blood. It sizzled on the hot floor and she folded her arms over her voluptuous chest, now speaking through battle-length fangs as she returned her withering gaze to her councilwomen.
"You two bitches are worthless to me while you cower in the darkness of Chambers and convalesce. Sebastian . . .look at your wife, who was once the beloved of Vlad the Impaler. She was a Hungarian queen, a goddess of beauty and refinement, but look at her now. An old hag! Vampire females never succumb to the loss of beauty at any cost-and most assuredly it is unbefitting a councilwoman!"
Trembling with fury, Lilith spun on Sebastian again and offered him an evil smile. "Necromancer . . . shall I raise Dracula and see what he thinks of Elizabeth's once lily-white skin charred and twisted so that her dark hair and eyes are all that is left of what he once remembered? I am so tempted-"
"No! I will go to the Dark Lord and get my limb restored!" Sebastian shouted, coming around the table to genuflect before Lilith. "Madame Chairwoman, please, that won't be necessary-I will redress this injustice, like Fallon will-"
"Do notdare speak my name in this transaction," Fallon Nuit said coolly inDananu . He strode around the table, uttering in the bargaining language of his kind. "The question of whether or not to raise Dracula should be Elizabeth's, not yours, since you allowed her to be harmed."
"And you have not allowed your wife to be! Look at Lucrezia's face!"
Nuit bowed but took no offense. "My senses were duped by the Neterus, just like yours, my friend-but I cuckolded no one's wife. Vlad was a monstrous general in his prime . . . and one of Lucrezia's relatives, whowas adept in debauchery and deception, was a pope. We must begin to look at the long list of resources we have yet to employ,n'est-ce pas? If your actions standon their own then what have you to fear?"
"I don't fear making the necessary request, it was simply the timing." Sebastian's eyes glittered with hatred as Nuit glared at him with contempt.
"I've had a limb restored down on Level Seven," Nuit said coolly, "and if that process doesn't make a man out of you, nothing else will,monami . Although, from the look in your eyes, my bet is that you'll put off the inevitable as long as possible . . . maybe Elizabeth would be better off if the Count were back in his full glory, hmm?"
"Raise him," Elizabeth whispered, her voice strained. She turned her disfigured face toward Lilith, tears rising in her large, brown eyes. "We are linked, and Vlad would be strong enough to heal me."
"I will take that under consideration," Lilith said dismissively while studying her French manicure. "My only concern is that Vlad is impulsive and would make a run at my throne . . . which would mean I'd have to exterminate him permanently."
"You have the power to heal them both . . . and me," Sebastian offered quietly.
Lilith stared at him for a moment and then laughed cruelly. "Yes, I do, don't I? But what have you assumed I've been doing all this time?" From her peripheral vision she saw Fallon, Lucrezia, and Elizabeth draw away ever so slightly as she approached Sebastian.
"You were healing the heir," Sebastian said quickly. "That was the sum total of your focus, milady."
"Good answer," Lilith said in a hissing whisper. "Could it be that I was also waiting to see whatyou could do on your own?" Her voice rose on a powerful crescendo that sent the transporter cloud of bats in the vaulted ceiling into a screeching frenzy. "My husband has been making world leaders offers they cannot refuse, positioning. The Unnamed One, our Dark Lord, has been f**king with the weather, crashing economies, bringing humankind to the brink of world war and nuclear destruction-thus sending you dark cover to aid an ambush . . . what have you done with this time!"
"Built a media empire that assaults the human spirit with shadow elementals and demon principalities that will later make them susceptible to the plagues wrought when the pale horse is released with the breakage of the next biblical seal," Nuit said with unwavering resolve. "I have driven humankind mad, simply put. Leveraging the natural disasters with human insanity shall surely drive the Neterus out of hiding."
"Explain," Lilith screeched, sweeping away from a cowering Sebastian. She stood before Nuit and studied his expression for signs of fraud.