"Drink this."
She sipped the wine slowly, feeling its warmth spread through her.
"All right, Chiavari, spill it. What aren't you telling us?"
"He's got Antoinette."
"How do you know?"
"I know," Grigori said.
"What's he done to her?"
"He put a stake through her heart. Her body lies in a crypt behind the church."
"Then she's dead but not destroyed," Edward remarked.
"What do you mean?" Marisa asked.
"All we have to do is pull the stake from her body and she'll rise again."
"She does not wish to rise again," Grigori said quietly.
"How do you know?" Edward asked, and then wished he hadn't. The vampire looked at him through the eyes of one enduring the pain and damnation of hell.
"I know."
"She said she wanted to avenge her children."
"She is at peace now. It is time to free her soul, before she takes a life, before the darkness destroys the light within her." Grigori paused a moment. "The name on the vault is Amadeo. I want you to make sure she can't rise again; then see that she's buried properly." A sadness shadowed his eyes. "My children are buried there, under a tree near the back wall. Put her beside them."
"Me? Why me?"
"I thought you would be eager to do the job," Grigori retorted caustically. "Isn't that what you live for, destroying my kind?"
Ramsey nodded. He would do what had to be done, but it wouldn't be easy. He had never dispatched a vampire he had known personally.
"The church is located about two miles south of here. You can't miss it."
"I'll take care of it first thing tomorrow morning. Where's Alexi?"
"I don't know. Antoinette drove a stake into his back, but she missed his heart. I think he has gone farther into the past to lick his wounds."
"So, we've accomplished nothing," Edward muttered.
The words nothing but Antoinette's death seemed to hover, unspoken, in the air.
"I want to go home," Marisa said softly. She gazed up at Grigori. "Please take me home."
"Tomorrow night," Grigori promised.
"And until then?"
"Until then we stay here."
Chapter Twenty
"Well, I'm beat," Ramsey muttered. "I think I'll turn in."
"Good night, Edward."
"Don't fail me tomorrow, Ramsey."
"Don't worry. I'll take care of it."
Grigori nodded.
"See you tomorrow," Edward said. He started out of the room, then paused and glanced over his shoulder at Marisa. "Which room do you want to sleep in?"
Marisa thought of trying to sleep in one of the children's beds and knew she couldn't do it, couldn't sleep in a bed where someone had died. Nor could she bring herself to sleep in the bed Grigori had shared with Antoinette. "I think I'll sleep out here on the bench."
"Okay. Good night."
"Night."
Grigori went to the tiny window in the front of the house and stared out into the darkness. As clearly as if it were day, he could see the fields beyond, the weeds that grew in the furrows where he had once planted the crops that had sustained his family. He heard the beat of mighty wings as an owl plummeted earthward, talons outstretched, heard the terrified shriek of the bird's prey. The hunter and the hunted. Predator and prey. The endless cycle of life and death.
All these years he had thought Antoinette dead. In his mind, he had buried her and grieved for her when she hadn't been dead at all. She had lived as Alexi's creature for two hundred years, and now, because of him, she would have to be destroyed. He wished that he had the right to pray, wished he could go into the village chapel where their children had been baptized and light a candle for Antoinette's immortal soul. But he had no right, no hope of being heard.
"Grigori?"
Slowly, he turned around to face Marisa. What a rare and wonderful creature she was. Such a fragile being, wrapped in her humanity. And yet her life, her warmth, drew him like a hearth fire on a winter night, beckoning to him, inviting him to come in from the dark and the cold.
"I'm sorry about Antoinette."
"It's not your fault."
"It's not yours, either."
"Isn't it?" Grief and guilt settled over him, entangling him in a web of regret from which there was no escape. He had given her the Dark Gift. He should be the one to destroy her, yet he dared not go into the crypt at night, not when he might encounter Alexi again. He was not strong enough to withstand another attack by the vampyre. And, deep in his heart, he feared he lacked the courage to do what must be done. How could he