the time, because I was bound so tightly to him, but that were wrong. Evil, sometimes.”
He took a breath that shuddered through his chest. “I’m Onorio. I have . . . gifts. Yet I didn’t try to save Leo. Because of the way he used me, for so long, when the sword was striking, I hesitated. I could have reacted; might have saved him. But I didn’t move.” He sipped the amber liquid, scotch, I thought. Nasty stuff. “Leo made a weapon out of me. Made me a killer. And with Onorio magics, I was able to move as fast as a Mithran. Faster. And I let Leo die. I let my friend die out of pique and childish anger.”
“You were sworn not to interfere. The outclan priestess would have killed you instantly if you had tried to change the outcome of the duel.”
“Who’s life was the more valuable? Leo’s or mine?” Bruiser may have laughed, but the sound was too broken to be certain. “I thought I was doing the right things when I was blood-drunk. I thought it was the right thing when I used Onorio bindings on Nicolle, who is now pining for me, banished to Rosanne Romanello’s Sedona clan home. I thought it was the right thing to let Leo die. Just as I think it was the right thing to mind-bind that woman. But . . . my reason is so faulty, so defective, that I don’t know what is morally right and proper anymore.”
I squeezed his shoulders. Nicolle was a vamp Bruiser took from Grégoire’s home after she tortured some of the vampire’s people. That was the place I first smelled the scent and texture of Onorio magics, mostly hidden beneath the onslaught of other, more potent smells at the time. Softly, my breath featherlight on his skin, I said, “My grandmother did the same thing to me. I’ve often wondered if I would have been my grandmother’s willing assassin had I stayed with the tribe and not been thrust into the blizzard on the Trail of Tears. And I think I would have. I think the violence she bred into me when I was a child was addictive. I would have become more and more like her, until, or if, I finally saw the truth, like you have.”
“And what is that truth, my love?”
“That we are killers. Morally malfunctioning. But with the ways, means, abilities, power, and in the position to do the right thing in the end.”
“The end does not justify the means,” he said.
“We all have the potential to do awful things when our minds are not our own. Yours was not your own when Leo had you.”
A sudden thought came to me, and with it came the scent of shame. Rick’s mind hadn’t been his own when Paka spelled him and stole him away. Even though I caught the scent of magic, I let him leave with her instead of trying to find out what was wrong. I let him go because I was hurt and shocked and embarrassed at a public humiliation. That was something I needed to deal with.
“Now you have your eyes open,” I said. “You can go forward into the future with who you are now.”
“Meaning stop dwelling on the past and do the job that needs doing now.”
I shrugged against his back. He sipped again. I had the feeling this wasn’t his first scotch of the evening.
“Do you think the blood of the SOD made everything happen the way it did?” I asked as the liquor went down his throat with a soft sound. “I mean, Joses had been bitten by an arcenciel. They make vampires crazy. Leo’s uncle and then Leo himself drank from Joses, when he was raving insane, hanging on the basement wall. They imbibed dragon poison through the blood that they stole. That changed the way they thought, the plans they made, the alliances they made. Maybe even made them worse people than they would have been otherwise.” I felt surprise quiver through Bruiser. “And then you drank Leo’s blood as part of the primo binding. Not much, but maybe enough to make you think and be different from what you would have been otherwise.”
“I don’t know. Every time I close my eyes, I see another victim,” he said. “Remorse and regret and repentance. Onorio powers are to bind and kill. Even you.”
“What about me?”
“Leo used his magic on you, against you, trying to turn you to his own ends from