I frowned and tried to ignore my evil inner voice.
Then I felt a hand close around my upper arm and I couldn’t hold on to Gideon any longer. My eyes widened when I saw it was Veronique. She pushed me—just a small shove, but her strength was great enough to make me stagger backward and fall on my ass on the empty dance floor.
I had no idea she was that strong.
The wounds at her wrists—from where she’d offered me her blood and from being secured with silver—were already healing.
Gideon coughed and sputtered and touched his tender throat.
“Not so happy with me anymore, Sarah?” he managed after a moment. “I suppose I can understand that.”
I scrambled up off the hard floor and moved toward him again, but Veronique stepped into my path to stop me.
“What are you doing?” Her strange behavior was really throwing me off. “And how did you get out of the handcuffs?”
“With a key,” she said simply, her expression unreadable.
“A key? What key?”
“The key Gideon gave me earlier.” She said it very matter-of-factly. “I’m sorry. But as I said before, survival is my only goal.”
“What are you talking about?”
Gideon came to Veronique’s side. He took her hand in his and brought her healing wrist to his lips to kiss it. “Poor Veronique. I’m sorry about the pain.”
“It is nothing.”
My vision had grown shaky, but that might be because I was trembling all over. “What in the hell is going on here?”
Gideon smiled at me. “Do you remember the woman I told you about? The vampire who seduced me years ago to save her own neck?”
“Best sex of your life?” I did recall that little fable. Then my gaze shot to Veronique as I remembered Gideon’s rumpled bedsheets from yesterday afternoon. I shook my head.
“No. I don’t believe it.”
“I’m sure you won’t understand,” she said simply, “but Gideon is very powerful and will only become more so after he is sired tonight, along with having a new outlook on what it means to be a vampire. As I said before, survival is my only goal. How can I not align myself with him, especially now? No one has to get hurt. You never would have drunk from me without duress if you thought I knew about all of this. This is the best decision for everyone involved. Trust me, my dear. I don’t do this to hurt you or anyone else.”
Veronique was with Gideon? I could understand, although only partially, sleeping with him in the past to distract him from killing her—he was pretty hot—but to do so willingly now?
I was stunned, but as the moments ticked by it made more sense to me. Veronique was always selfish. She valued her existence. She was one of the oldest vampires in the entire world. She was a survivor—no matter what it took.
And I knew firsthand how very charming and convincing Gideon could be when he wanted something.
Even though I resented her role in Thierry’s life, I’d believed in her. Hell, I even looked up to her a bit. Like a much, much… much… older sister. I was disappointed in her.
“I have to get out of here,” I said shakily. “If I wanted to deal with a major daytime drama
I would have set my TiVo.”
Gideon shook his head. “It’s the middle of a very sunny day. Without your chain, I don’t advise that you go anywhere until after sunset.”
I stepped slowly toward him again. He didn’t flinch away from me.
“Are you going to attempt to kill me again?” he asked.
“No.” I reached down to take his hand in mine. “I was a bit upset about you breaking my chain and, you know, burning my chance to break my curse. But killing you or getting mad about that won’t help, will it?”
“No, it won’t.”
With one quick yank, I pulled off the magically glamourizing watch from his wrist. A pulse of light moved across him and an instant later his scars had fully returned.
His eyes narrowed. “Give that back to me.”
“This?” I held the watch out to him for a second, but then stepped back out of his reach, dropped the timepiece on the floor, and stomped on it with the heel of my shoe. “Oops.
Sorry, about that. I slipped.”
It was petty, but it felt so good.
He reached up to touch his scarred face and cringed. Veronique looked at him with shock.
“Now I’m leaving.” I backed away from them toward the entrance. “Are you going to stop me?”
His jaw tightened. “Sarah, don’t do this. Stay here. Don’t put yourself in harm’s way just to prove a point.”
“Screw you, Gideon.”
Yeah, real eloquent. I know.
Without another word, I turned my back and walked out into the used bookstore.
“I’ll find you, wherever you go,” Gideon called after me. “The ritual will go on as scheduled. A simple glamour won’t matter then. My scars will be healed for real when you sire me.”
A tear of anger and frustration trickled down my right cheek as I pushed open the front door, but it was burned away the moment I emerged onto the sidewalk outside the club and the blazing sunlight hit me full-on.
Chapter 16
I f I can explain what it feels like to be a nightwalker out in bright daylight it would be like this:
Sheer agony.
Multiplied by a billion.
It might sound like an exaggeration, but I assure you, it wasn’t. Sun and nightwalkers do not go together. At all. Prolonged exposure, and we’re only really talking ten to fifteen seconds, would be enough to make me burst into flames and run around flailing my arms until I turned into the contents of a dirty ashtray to scatter over the sidewalk. And even then I’d probably still be screaming.
So when I emerged from Darkside into the hot death sunshine, I pulled my shirt up over my head and ran like an Olympic sprinter toward the nearest subway entrance. I staggered down the stairs into the blissful darkness and tried to ignore the strange stares I was getting, for a moment, as my skin glowed red and wisps of smoke rose into the air.