"You know you love a man who exerts absolute power, you bitch, so let les ban temps rouler."
Lucrezia threw her head back and laughed, beginning to undulate with her living shackles. "What do you want to know?"
"How is the poisoning of the current pontiff going, my dear?"
She closed her eyes. "Such a simple request. . . he'll be dead in a week. I would have disclosed that in bed."
"Oui," Nuit murmured in Dananu. "And I love you for that." He walked closer to her and offered her a sip of blood from his goblet but didn't release her, and then slowly took her mouth. When he pulled away he licked the residue of ruby stain from her lips, allowing his left hand to gently fondle her pale pink nipple as he absently took another sip of blood.
"I think you just like to watch," she murmured into his mouth in Dananu.
"You know I do." He smiled.
"Be honest, Fallon," she murmured in the bargaining language, beginning to squirm against her holds as his touch sent pleasure waves into her skin. "Just being in this chamber has filled you with desire that you can barely contain . . . having access to Dante's war room, feeling his strategies crawling across the walls, coating every surface in his old, dark power with an open power abyss all the way down to Level Seven beneath his bed, has made you blind with passion."
He briefly closed his eyes and turned his head away from her for a moment as though she'd slapped him, but then quickly composed himself to respond to her with a smile. "Now that the Dalai Lama has been captured and his replacement named by the Chinese government, and with the sealed fate of the pope ... we must plan something equally as compelling for Judaism and Islam ... or we could simply allow those two branches of human devotion to implode in the war of the region. What do you think?"
"I think you're afraid to f**k me in Dante's old bed above the abyss for fear that the Dark Lord will ridicule you for lack of performance!"
Nuit laughed. "Is that what you think?" He wagged his finger at her and set down his goblet on the fireplace mantel, leaning on it and watching as she strained to break free. "I believe you are talking out of your head because you're so frustrated, my dear. All of that carnal power wafting up from the depths between your lovely legs. I am not the one welded to the marble that holds residual memory . . . and Dante was such a bad, bad boy." "Fallon, that's enough," she said in a desperate whisper in Dananu. "Let me go--or come to me."
His gaze hardened, even though his voice retained a seductive Dananu croon. "Do not forget that with power comes privilege ... I have been a vampire for so many years longer than you. And as desirous as I am of you at the moment, I own something right now that you don't--control." He took up his goblet and knocked the rest of it back, and then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Let's get back to politics."
Lucrezia closed her eyes and released a wail of frustration. "Only Pope Alexander VI, your father and old lover, can bring back all of the Machiavellian politics and sexual corruption of the Renaissance papacy that is fitting for the end of days. With the new religious replacement in Asia, the Middle Eastern sects and religions at war, Christian televangelists and megachurch pastors falling from their pulpits, thus grace, like flies... all we need is a new pope in our hip pocket. That should please those I have to keep appeased in order for you to enjoy the finer things in death, my dear."
"I hold no sway over reanimation, only blood in my veins from my father's old line. I told Lilith I would avail myself!" Lucrezia yelled, straining toward Nuit and trying to reach for him. "Darling, what do you want from me?"
"Lilith is busy . . . the more I can bring her without disturbing her, before Vlad brings her something that will excite her, better."
Tears rose in Lucrezia's crystal green eyes as a serpent struck her jugular. Her voice dropped low and husky as she arched. Please . . . make love to me before I lose my mind. Only Sebastian can reanimate!"
"Exactly."
Lucrezia stared at Fallon for a moment. "Nooo. . . don't you ' dare!"
"The man has been relegated to a eunuch down here. The Harpies will barely give him any, and his only outlet has been fantasizing about you and Elizabeth and jerking off when he thinks no one is around. The bats tell all."
"No!" she screamed as Nuit began to head toward the door. "I will never forgive you for this, Fallon! How can you do this to me?"
"Because absolute power corrupts absolutely . . . you have heard the quote before, I'm sure." He stopped walking and stared at her for a moment. "In this state, do you really care who attends your needs?"
She looked at him and didn't immediately answer.
"When Lilith commends you on a job well done and bestows more power on you--"which is what I am supposed to do as a husband, to ensure your success and your protection--will you hate me still or love me more for positioning you well, c/zen'e?" He blew Lucrezia a kiss from across the room that made her close her eyes. "Non," she murmured. "Je t'aime. When put that way, how could I hate you? But . . . after--soon after--promise me you'll return and finish? Sebastian is so ... not you."
"How could I resist such a lovely offer?" Nuit said, genuinely torn.
"What will you do while you're gone?" Lucrezia's eyes rolled back in her head as her eyelids fluttered shut again.
"Take a walkabout to retrace some of Rivera's old ground."
Elizabeth's fingers dug into Vlad's shoulders to massage away the tension, but he shrugged her off and stood. "A granite cell in the caverns of Hell for me and my wife is sacrilege, after all I've delivered to the empire."
"Only for now," she said, crossing the small, Spartan space to fill a goblet from a dead Harpy she'd cornered. "This is temporary."
"This is unacceptable!" he bellowed, and flung the goblet against the granite wall when she handed it to him.
Rage consumed him as he paced within the rock-hewn space. "Look around you, Elizabeth. This is a replica of a mausoleum chamber. A death slab of stone in the middle of a cavern ... no running blood facilities. This is what topside generals used to hide in below and regenerate briefly before going back to their more sumptuous lairs aboveground. And they expect me to waste illusion energy on outfitting my own chamber rather than use the dark core energy to save me the expense?"