Afterglow (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #2) (6 page)

Daphne put out pots of hot coffee, herbal tea and spiced apple cider, as well as trays and trays of elegant snacks and bottles of wine. Everything smelled so good. I swiped a couple of canapés with smoked salmon, Swiss Alpine black caviar and
crème fraîche
on toast triangles.

I actually moaned when I took the first bite and Daphne laughed in delight. I fixed myself an actual heaping plate and dug in. Man, the chow here at Blackstone Castle was outstanding. I know Daphne and I didn’t see eye to eye sometimes, but she was some chef! And a decent vampire hunter in her own right, I had heard.

Ambra, Lucas, Griff and Jade had gone down to the sound studio to do some paperwork that Gabby had requested before she performed her concert. When Lucas came back upstairs, he was grim-faced.

He and Jade exchanged resigned glances and Jade made her way to her office with the papers in her hand.

Griff just sat heavily in a chair, like he was in shock.

“
What’s wrong, Lucas?” I asked.

Ambra was also chowing down and followed us with her plate and glass of wine.

He took Ambra and me aside into his library and looked at me, his eyes stone cold with fear and dread. “I think Gabrielle’s going to kill herself tonight during or after the opera performance.”

A needle of fear went through me and I put down my plate of food and my drink. So did Ambra. “What the hell are you talking about?” I said. “That doesn’t make any sense! She’s supposed to help us catch him.”

“Gabrielle just wrote her will, and signed over all of the royalty rights to her music—every song—to the wolf preserve business, which, as you know, is the front for our paychecks and property taxes, all of that.”

“
This is very bad,” I said. “We have to stop her. Does she have any silver weapons?”

“
Not unless she impales her heart on the silver door handle in her music studio downstairs,” Lucas replied.

“
We shouldn’t let her loose to perform,” I said. “We need to cancel the concert for security reasons. Even Samantha Moon said so. We Skyped earlier.”

“
Oh! I didn’t know you ever Skyped with Sam,” Lucas said.

“
She does bat for our team,” I replied. “Despite being a vampire.”

He nodded.

Ambra said, “Rand, she has made up her mind to leave us. We should let things play out.”

“
Play out?
Play out!
Are you serious?” I said. “She’s getting well.”

Lucas said, “Not in the way you think. It’s not just that she’s a vampire, Rand. Vlad Tepes did things to her, things that were far past cruel and inhuman. I cannot break her confidence by telling you the details, but she is extremely tormented, emotionally. Griff, her doctor, knows even more than I know, and that’s a lot. She has been through the equivalent of being a tortured POW at the hands of Vlad.”

I felt powerless. “Doesn’t counseling help her?”

“
No. We tried. She cannot escape the memories. It’s worse stuff than waterboarding.”

“
My God. Hypnotize her,” I suggested. “Or have Griff give her some happy drugs.”

“
None of that is working,” Lucas said.

“
So, you are willing to let her die? By her own hand? In front of us?” I was appalled.

“
It’s what she wants,” Ambra said. She averted her eyes from me.

“
Not you, too, Ambra.” I said. “Protecting life is what
we
are all about.”

She pressed her lips together and tears came to her eyes, ones that clung to her lashes and didn’t fall. “Human life. Her quality of life has taken a tailspin as a vampire. It
is
too late.”

“
We can help her. What are you two hiding?” I asked.

When neither of them replied, I tried to think of every possible scenario.

And then, suddenly, I thought I knew what it was, but I didn’t say it aloud. The thought was too painful:

Dear God, Gabby’s going to throw herself into the armed vampire trap.

Chapter Six

The care and feeding of a vampire, even one you like as a friend, and love like a near-sister, is complicated and a hell of a lot of work. When Griff went to the heated barn to draw blood for Gabby from Wilbur, the boar, he’d found him keeled over, dead, and as rigid as a huge slab of frozen bacon.

Griff hurried back to the castle and called an emergency meeting, including Corbin the werewolf. When we were all assembled, Griff broke the news:

“
A vampire has killed our pig.”

“
What the hell?” I said. “Are you sure?” I looked hard at Corbin.

“
Hey, I didn’t do it,” he said. “I don’t even like pork in my werewolf form.” He looked just as shocked as we were.

“
Maybe one of the wolves did it?” Ambra said. “Got into the barn?”

“
No, if it was a wolf, the boar’s neck would have been torn open and everything else, too. It is my opinion as a physician that Wilbur was killed by a vampire.”

“
So, we’ve got one on the grounds, then,” Ambra said grimly.

“
Yeah.”

“
Where’s Gabby?”

“
In her bunker. She’s waiting for me to bring her down some pig’s blood so she can have a full tummy while she sings her opera to us.”

“
We shouldn’t let her out now,” I said. “We need to cancel her concert. Or go downstairs to the bunker for it.”

“
No,” Lucas said. He looked at me. “Right now, the vampire, whoever it is, is lurking outside, and looking for a place to come inside.”

“
It will be dawn in an hour,” I said, “so in the next hour, we will get a visit from the vampire who killed the pig.”

Ambra said, “In any case, we needed to find a quick way to feed Gabrielle before we bring her up here.”

After a discussion of bleeding out a few of the meat rabbits from our hutches, Griff argued that their veins were too tiny and he knew nothing about rabbit physiology, whereas, he’d had experience with pigs as a previous medical researcher.

We all came to the same conclusion to the dilemma—we each lined up to contribute small amounts of blood into a solid gold goblet that I ending up holding. We each used our own scythes or blades to nick ourselves, which was only fitting. Afterward, Griff passed out the alcohol swabs and Band-Aids and that was that.

Ambra and Lucas went downstairs to get her.

When Lucas and Ambra brought Gabrielle up to the great hall, we gathered around her somberly. Not a one of us said anything about Wilbur getting killed by another vampire and Gabby didn’t even question that we were giving her human blood.

She sniffed it and said, “Merci, my friends. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

I was the one who handed her the gold goblet and said to her, “This is from all of us. To your health, Gabby.”

“Hear, hear!” they all said.

I couldn’t choke out anything else. It was incomprehensible to me that we were going to feed her shortly before she committed suicide, and that there was a vampire outside that wanted to come inside. But there it was, our senseless act of love, from us to her.

One would have thought it was Christmas when Gabby smiled as she put her nose in the cup and sipped human blood instead of pig’s blood. If a vampire can indeed beam, she did. Her smile was warm. Even though her eyes were vampirey and creepy.

“
I taste you all and I taste the love in which you gave this blood to me. I didn’t expect this honor and sacrifice. I don’t know where I am going to go next, but I hope it will be a peaceful place where I can remember all of you with joy in my heart. Thank you, friends.”

Now everyone knew what she was planning and not a one of us, not even me, tried to stop what was now in motion. I was choked up. Ambra, too—her blonde lashes were spiked with unshed tears.

Gabby drank it all down, her eyes never moving from us. We watched her drink every drop of our blood and lick her lips clean.

My throat choked with emotion as she handed back the empty goblet and I set it down on a table. I suddenly noticed she was wearing her silver scythe necklace, which floored me. Where had she hidden it all of these weeks, no months? Certainly, she hadn’t worn it when she had come back to us and collapsed at the gate of Black Stone Castle. And certainly, that silver must be burning her skin and weakening her.

“Gabby, why are you wearing silver?” I asked.

“
To weaken myself around all of you,” she said.

I saw the blisters on her skin. It must have hurt her something awful.
Burned.

I glanced at Ambra. Her eyes looked terrified. I noticed something else.
Her
necklace was missing. I realized who was wearing Ambra’s scythe necklace.
Gabby
was. Things were going too fast for me to put things together, yet, somehow, I believed that Ambra had done the right thing. Again, I didn’t try to stop what was in motion. My heart was breaking for Gabby, for me, for us, and even, for Rudolph, my beloved dead brother.

I didn’t know what was going on, or why, but Ambra had never made a single mistake, not as long as I had known her—she was aiding and abetting this plan of Gabby’s to off herself. Not in her personal life and not as a vampire hunter had Ambra ever failed at anything. I was just going to have to trust her.

In wearing Ambra’s silver scythe necklace, she was almost one of us again—in solidarity—by wearing the piece of lethal jewelry that had defined her life for many years.

“
Please everyone, sit down,” Gabby said. “I have all of the music tracks recorded, with many digital instruments, even the occasional
didgeridoo
sound. I am also going to sing live with it, even though my voice is on the tracks. I hope you will have an unforgettable musical experience. And please, when you hear it again in the days to come, think fondly of me.”

We all sat down and Gabby took off her hooded, black satin cape to reveal that she wore one of her old performance gowns, one that I recognized from an album cover. It was made of red velvet, in the décolleté style of bygone days, and so low-cut that I felt myself blush and tried to keep my eyes on her eyes. Even as a vampire, she was a fiery redhead with classic facial features like a 1940s movie star.

The dress went well with her red hair and her pale complexion. Gabby was almost gaunt now, poor woman—I remembered how the night I’d met her she had apologized for being fat and I’d reassured her that she was perfectly curvy.

By now, there were few curves left on Gabby’s former hourglass figure, except the cleavage, which seemed to have survived her vampirism. I was pretty sure that I saw hipbones through the dress. Her cheeks were a bit sunken and she had deep purple circles under her eyes, as if she rarely, if ever, slept. Her eyes lacked sparkle and it was clear to me now that Gabrielle Dubois wanted to end her suffering as a vampire—one who had been shut up in a recording studio for quite some time.

Mikhail got behind the video camera tripod and turned it on. Gabby’s image wouldn’t show up on the video of course, but her clothes would and we would have an audio of tonight, one that we would never forget.

At her nod, I clicked on a remote that Gabby handed me, one that started the recorded opera, both inside and outside the castle through the PA system. She had wanted the wolves outside to hear it, she’d said. I didn’t understand, but I went with it. I wonder if she also knew that another vampire was outside. I wondered if she could somehow feel the presence of the others.

As the rising music began, she curtsied low and stated the date, which surprised me. And then she said, “My name is Gabrielle Dubois. Welcome to
Vampiress of the Opera.
”

What happened next floored all of us, I think. She sang beautifully, and the music was haunting, original, and the type of compelling score that one would expect from a fine Broadway musical show. However, it was the
lyrics
that shocked me, indeed, stunned me to the core.

I was likely not the only one who listened and held back shouts of anger and disgust. To my shock, the entire opera was a tribute and love ballad to Vlad the Impaler. It was all about the blood lust and his power, his sexual prowess and his dark sexual dominance.

I didn’t understand!
I wanted to be wrong, to be misinterpreting what she was singing.

But no, this opera was clearly a vampire love call to the infamous and nefarious Vlad the Impaler.

I was about to jump up and leave, because I could take no more when Gabby stopped singing live and just let the recording do all of the work. Her voice kept going because it was one of the tracks.

She got up off the chaise lounge where she had been sitting to sing and began to walk through the great hall in smooth, gliding steps. She came and kissed each one of us on the cheek. I felt her cold lips on my face and nearly screamed in horror at the turn things were taking with Gabrielle Dubois.