“Victoria.” Max was moving behind her; she could hear him. But she kept going toward the stairs, moving as quickly as she could, her eyes now able to make out the faintest of shapes.

She came to the top of the stairs, her hand on the balustrade helping her to feel her way around the corner at the top of the landing. Suddenly something came out of the darkness in front of her.

It was strong and metal, and someone was poking it into the front of her shoulder. “How serendipitous,” came a familiar male voice. “What an unexpected prize our little trap has sprung.”

A candle flared to life in front of her, revealing Mr. George Starcasset…and Lady Sarafina Regalado.

Nine

In Which Three Ladies Are Set Loose upon the Villa

Max heard the soft click of a pistol being cocked, and he froze just as he realized the back of his neck had begun to prickle and chill.

Vampires…somewhere…but not in close proximity.The sudden flare of a candle lent a soft yellow glow from down the steps, just out of his sight. Then the light grew stronger and more yellow as three shadowy people moved up the stairs, into his view.

“And who were you—Ah! Maximilian!”

He knew that annoying voice all too well. Blast the chit.

“Sara.” He couldn’t bring himself to sound as delighted as his former fiancée did. “And Starcasset. What an unpleasant—yet not wholly unexpected—surprise.”

He saw that Victoria—whose face was streaked with two narrow rivulets of…tears?—was under the control of George Starcasset and his pistol. She was also giving him, Max, a most loathing glare, as if it were somehow his fault she’d stormed into the barrel of the firearm.

Before he could move Sarafina came toward him. She was the buxom blonde, with pretty brown eyes and a head filled with little but fashion sense and coy comments, that he’d squired about Roma and engaged in many more tête-à-têtes with her than he’d cared to do. She was a lovely, fluffy piece—just the kind of woman he should marry if he ever actually thought he would do the deed, except for her affinity for the undead. But her voice and simpering mannerisms tended to grate on his nerves when he was exposed to her for any length of time.

Of course, at the moment, that simpering, fluffy chit had a pistol in her hands, so he was going to have to watch his tongue.

When she reached toward his right shoulder he merely looked down at her in annoyance and faint amusement, wondering if she was about to pull him into a reunion embrace. But when Sarafina yanked on his collar, pulling it back from Max’s neck and exposing the raw bites there, he pushed her hand away, heedless of the pistol flailing about in her other grip.

“Good gad, watch that thing,” he snapped, flipping his wretchedly stiff collar back into place. “You’ll hurt someone, Sara. Put it away.”

Unsurprisingly, she kept the pistol and steadied it, pressing it right into his middle. Painfully. “So it is true. You did go to her.”

Max remembered belatedly that there was no fury like a woman scorned.

“Perhaps you could settle your lovers’ quarrel some other time,” Starcasset luckily interrupted. He must have jabbed his firearm into Victoria’s skin a bit more harshly, for she winced and jolted. Looking at Max, he added, “I’m certain you can appreciate the benefits of coming along quietly.”

Max nodded. “Indeed. It would not be in our interest to involve the other parties below in a skirmish.” He glanced at Victoria to make sure she understood that she couldn’t go blazing into a fight, but she was studiously looking away, her lips firmed with annoyance.

Surely she wasn’t concerned about their current predicament.

“Well put, Mr. Pesaro. Now, if you and your jilted fiancée would be so kind as to lead the way, Lady Rockley and I will follow.”

Thus they moved down the steps in pairs, remaining out of sight of the presumed party in the chamber beyond the anteroom where the stairs ended, Sara prodding him along in the opposite direction from which he and Victoria had come.

Max was armed with several stakes, including his favorite black one, and his own firearm, as well as a dagger sheathed in his boot. It was the mark of the amateurs who led them away that neither Starcasset nor Sara Regalado thought to check either of the Venators for weapons. Likely they thought vampire hunters would merely be carrying stakes and little else.

He would make certain they were far enough away not to alert or alarm the partygoers in the parlor before making his move. The last thing they needed was a hoard of frithering ladies and blustering would-be heroes getting in their way.

As they progressed, the sensations at the back of his neck grew colder and more intense, telling him that they were being taken to some conglomerate of vampires. They walked through a door, entering a large, dank room that appeared to be at least partially underground, if one judged by the greater chill in the air.

Obviously a contingent of undead had gathered in the Villa Palombara. Apparently that was the true purpose behind the ostensible treasure hunt: a harvesting of victims by the Tutela, likely for Sara Regalado’s father, the conte—and whatever minions he’d managed to gather around him after he was run off by Beauregard last fall in the wake of the destruction of Akvan’s Obelisk.

An argument could be made, Max reflected as he ambled along next to Sara, that being brought closer to where the vampires were waiting would make their efforts to subdue them more efficient.

A sudden movement behind decided him. Knowing it was Victoria who’d somehow managed to catch Starcasset, the brainless devil, off guard, he swung into action as soon as Sara’s attention was diverted and the pressure lifted from his ribs.

There was a fine line between disarming a woman and causing her hurt, and so Max allowed himself a bit of flair in this battle. He slid to the side, his feet lifting from the ground in the long, gliding leap of a qinggong movement, and came up and around Sara, Victoria, and Starcasset, executing the maneuver even in the low-ceilinged chamber.

The room was a blur as he spun and floated, leaped and glided, clocking Starcasset neatly at the back of his head with a well-aimed boot toe (he had no such qualms about injuring the dandy), and then coasting around to snag Sara around the waist and toss her through a nearby doorway.

In the midst of this effortless and liberating activity, Max saw a flash of pink that was Victoria, dashing away in the frilly gown she’d chosen for this occasion. It wasn’t like her to run from a fight, so he knew precisely why she’d taken off.

Feet back on the ground, Max tossed Starcasset in after Sara, then shoved a heavy table in front of the door, wedging it under the knob, and started off after Victoria. His neck was cold; his fingers tingled. There were undead nearby, and many of them, if his senses were accurate.

And they always were.

The only reason he caught up to Victoria was because she’d taken a wrong turn—no surprise—and ended up in a dead-end hall.

He didn’t have to ask where she was going; she turned on him and said, “My mother!” Her eyes were worried and her mouth set in an anxious line as she pushed past him.

“This way.”

However, they’d not gone very far back when they turned a corner and were running down yet another hall just as a second door opened. More than a dozen creatures streamed in, at least some of them vampires.

Max saw Victoria run right into one of them, and before she could react another creature had leaped on her from behind. She went down in a bundle of pink lace and red rosettes, bringing the vampire with her and helping him on his way over her head.

He saw nothing else after that, however, for he was, of necessity, fully engaged with the four who leaped on him. He quickly dispatched one with his stake, but two more took its place. Something slammed into Max’s legs from behind, sending his knees buckling and him collapsing to the floor.

He reared up, swinging, just as a sharp report echoed through the room. A blinding pain drilled into his shoulder, just above the scapula, and then another flash of pain skimmed his boot top, above his knee. Breathless with agony, Max lurched forward, bringing his injured leg up behind to slam into the creature as he tried to catch himself on his good arm.

Rolling to the side, he jerked to his feet just as something crashed onto the top of his head and the world went black.

“I vow, I expect a vampire to leap out at us any moment!” Lady Nilly whispered loudly. She was clasping a slender hand to her flat bosom as she led the way down a dark, dusty hall, lit only by the candle she held aloft.The passageway was wide enough for the three of them to walk abreast, if they so chose, although the occasional table they passed might have necessitated that one of them temporarily fall behind. Vases or statues, many of them broken or lying on their sides, decorated the random furnishings. The ceiling was high, the walls lined with wainscoting, and everything was cobwebbed and dusty. More than once the ladies were startled by the sudden appearance of a cloudy mirror reflecting their progress along the hall.

“Vampire?” Lady Winnie gasped, slapping her own hand to her chest with a loud thunk and a poof of powder. She crowded up behind her slight friend and the safety of her light. “I’m not wearing my cross! And I’ve left my reticule with garlic at home! And my stake!”

“Hush, Winnie,” came Lady Melly’s voice behind them. “I scarcely need remind you that there aren’t any such things as vampires, and it’s just as well you aren’t wearing that ridiculous cross. It’s too large and bangs against you every time you move. It sounds like a morbid heartbeat, and it’s so big it’s dangerous.”

“It was supposed to be dangerous,” Winnie replied, her voice bordering on a wail. She’d grasped the back of Nilly’s gown and was holding a fistful of silk. “To the vampires.”

“This is just the perfect house for the undead to be lurking about,” Nilly said, turning to look back at her friends with wide eyes. The single candlestick she held made a yellow glow about her face, lighting her wispy blond curls. “I can feel it! The restlessness in the air…the sensation of dark shadows, moving toward us…the sound of bat wings flapping—”