the chairs on the balcony were made of metal.
It happened fast, during an eye blink. One instant he was standing beside me, tightening with anger, and the next there were popped rivets zinging everywhere and Madeline had been crushed to the floor of the balcony.
The air went cold. Thomas dropped the ruined chair. Madeline bounced up from the floor and threw a blow at Thomas’s jaw. He hunched and twisted, a boxer’s defense, and took it on the shoulder with a grunt of pain. Then he seized her ankle and slammed her in a half circle, smashing a 36-24-36 dent into the drywall.
Madeline cried out and her limbs went loose. Thomas swung her in another arc that brought her crashing down onto the low coffee table between the couches. She lay there and let out a single choked gasp, her eyes unfocused. Without pausing, my brother snatched both chopsticks from Justine’s hair, letting the white-silver locks tumble down her back.
Then, in two sharp, swift motions, he slammed the chopsticks through Madeline’s wrists and into the table beneath them, pinning her like a butterfly to a card.
“You’re right of course,” he snarled. “Lara couldn’t ignore one member of the family murdering another. It would make the King look weak.” His hand closed over Madeline’s face, and he pulled her head up toward his, making her arms strain at a painful angle. “I was bluffing.”
He shoved her back down against the table. “Of course,” he said, “you’re family. Families don’t murder one another.” He looked up at Justine and said, “They share.”
She met his eyes. A very small, very hard smile graced Justine’s features.
“You wanted to taste her,” Thomas said, his fingers twining with Justine’s rubber-clad ones. “Well, Madeline. Be my guest.”
Justine leaned over and kissed Madeline Raith’s forehead, her silken silver hair falling to veil them both.
The vampire screamed.
The sound was lost in the pounding rhythm and flashing lights.
Justine lifted her head a few seconds later, and swept her hair slowly down the length of Madeline’s form. The vampire writhed and screamed again, while Thomas held her pinned to the table. Wherever Justine’s hair glided over exposed fleshed, the skin sizzled and burned, blackening in some places, forming blisters and welts in others. She left a trail of ruin down one of Madeline’s legs and then rose together with Thomas, two bodies making one motion.
Madeline Raith’s face was a ruin of burn marks, and the imprint of Justine’s soft mouth was a perfect black brand on pale flesh in the center of her forehead. She lay on the table, still pinned by the chopsticks, and quivered in jerking little motions, gasping and breathless with the pain.
Thomas and Justine walked, hand in hand, to the stairs leading down from our platform. I followed them.
They passed beneath an air-conditioning outlet, and a few strands of Justine’s hair blew against Thomas’s naked arm and chest. Small bright lines of scarlet appeared. Thomas didn’t flinch.
I walked over to them and passed Justine a pair of pencils, taken from my coat pocket. She took them with a nod of thanks, and quickly bound up her hair again. I looked over my shoulder as she did.
Madeline Raith lay helpless and gasping—but her white eyes burned with hate.
Thomas took his T-shirt from where he’d stowed it on a belt loop, and put it back on. Then he slid his arms around Justine again and pulled her against his chest, holding her close.
“Will you be all right?” he asked.
Justine nodded, her eyes closed. “I’ll call the House. Lara will send someone for her.”
“You leave her there and it’s going to make trouble,” I told him.
He shrugged. “I couldn’t get away with killing her. But our House has rather stern views on poaching.” Something hard and hot entered his eyes. “Justine is mine. Madeline had to be shown that. She deserved it.”
Justine clung a little bit tighter to him. He returned the gesture.
We all started down the stairs together, and I was glad to be leaving Zero.
“Still,” I said. “Seeing her like that, I feel like maybe somebody went too far. I feel a little bit bad for her.”
Thomas arched an eyebrow and glanced back at me. “You do?”
“Yeah,” I said. I pursed my lips thoughtfully. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that Jessica Rabbit thing.”
Chapter Ten
The hot summer night outside Zero felt ten degrees cooler and a million times cleaner than what we’d left behind us. Thomas turned sharply to the right and walked until he’d found a spot of