You, who love her--she starved you and flayed the skin from you.
How can you support her now?" Stefan didn't reply.
And I knew, with absolute certainty, that I was right to trust him to protect me and not turn me into his mindless slave.
Stefan didn't turn on those he loved.
No matter what.
Estelle threw up her hands.
"Idiot.
Fool.
She will go down, either by my hand or by Bernard's.
And you know that the seethe will do better in my hands than in that fool Bernard's.
I have contacts.
I can make us grow and thrive until not even the courts of Italy will rival what we build." Stefan quit leaning against the van.
He spat on the ground with deliberate slowness.
She tensed, furious at the insult, and he smiled grimly.
"Do it," he said--and, with a flick of his wrist and the magic of a Highlander episode, he held a sword in one hand.
It was efficient-looking rather than beautiful: deadly.
"Soldier, you'll regret this," Estelle said.
"I regret many things," he replied, his voice sharpening with a cold, roiling anger.
"Letting you walk off tonight might be another one.
Maybe I shouldn't do it." "Soldier," she said.
"Remember who it was who betrayed you.
You know how to reach me--don't wait until it is too late." The vampires left with preternatural speed, their human bait running after them.
Stefan waited, sword in hand, while a car purred to life and one of the seethe's black Mercedes lit up.
It roared past us and disappeared into the night.
He looked around, then asked me, "Do you smell anything, Mercy?" I tested the air, but, except for Stefan, the vampires were gone ...
or upwind.
I shook my head and trotted back to the van.
Stefan, gentleman that he had once been, stayed outside until I was dressed.
"That was interesting," I said, as he got in and put the van in gear.
"She's a fool." "Marsilia?" Stefan shook his head.