“It took ten years for my opportunity to come. And he left me a mighty legacy—his secrets, repeated in front of me, his vaults and bank accounts and all the things that made him the Spider, operating from behind the scenes.
“But the greatest legacy he left me was his blood. I’m much stronger than you remember. Much, much, much stronger.”
Lucien looked at him, the full horror finally breaking across his face. He looked around his ballroom, empty except for enemy guards and the video cameras looking down on him. The video cameras that were recording all of this.
“When did you know?” Gavriel asked Tana conversationally.
“Just now, really,” she said.
“Did I ever tell you how I met her?” Gavriel asked Lucien, his chest a mess of dark blood. He seemed to barely notice the wounds, didn’t even wince as he took a few steps across the marble floor. She thought of what Jameson had said about crows letting ants sting their wings because they’d grown addicted to the burn of acid. She wondered if you could be hurt so often that you might miss it.
Lucien didn’t answer, but the arrogance was gone from his face.
Gavriel smiled, gesturing casually with his hands as he spoke, the knife in one cutting through the air. “After the Spider was dead, I still wasn’t myself for a long time. I seemed to wake, lying on the cold floor, surrounded by what remained of my captors. And I realized that with the Spider dead, I commanded all his resources. And then I thought of you, Lucien.
“I landed in the Boston Harbor without letting myself heal, half mad and half starved. I looked very much like I was truly on the run, I think. And you sent Elisabet after me immediately once you heard I’d arrived, didn’t you? Right around the time you sent a letter to the Spider vowing to recapture me.
“Elisabet and her churls caught up with me by the side of the Blackstone River. I’d forgotten how beautiful she was.” He smiled with the memory. “She trapped me easily. I was exhausted and I had no reason to fight very hard—after all, she intended to bring me right to your side. In fact, wrapped in steel chains, thrown in the back of their black-windowed limousine, I slept as I had not slept in a decade.
“When I woke, they were dragging me toward a farmhouse. They hadn’t been out of Coldtown in so long that they decided to have a feast. Elisabet and the others were drunk with blood, bloated and slow, laughing over what they’d done. And they brought me into the back room, hungry as I was, to show me a boy, already bitten. They’d tied him to the bed and chained me so that he was just out of reach. She said that if I was good, I could have him in the morning. So I sat and watched him writhe.
“Is it still you in there?’ she’d asked me, tapping her knuckles against my head, before she went to ground in the basement. ‘Do you remember all the good times we had?’
I didn’t reply.
“They covered the windows and left me there, the smell of the boy’s blood filling my thoughts. I watched the boy, reminding myself why I needed to wait for dark, but the reasons made less and less sense in my addled mind. Then Tana came in.” He looked over at her. “And she made a plan to save the boy—and to save me. Can you imagine that, Lucien? Who in the world would allow me to be saved?”
“No one with any sense,” said Lucien. “But why did you go? You were being brought directly to me by Elisabet. That was your plan, wasn’t it? Why go on some circuitous road trip with a pair of teenagers?”
Gavriel shrugged, grinning a wide and terrible grin. “I liked the way they looked at me. I liked driving. And I wanted to see what would happen.”
“You’re mad,” Lucien said. “You really are insane.”
“I really am,” Gavriel said. “And I really am here to avenge myself on you. I just took the long way.”
“So kill me then.” Lucien pulled open his shirt, showing pale white skin. “Do it.”
Gavriel took a step closer and hesitated.
Lucien was his maker, the keeper of memories of people and places long gone, the monster who’d seen in Gavriel a talent for monstrousness. Tana thought about what Lucien had said the last time they’d stood in this room, weapons drawn. Every hero is the villain of his own story. She bet that right then, about to kill his maker, Gavriel felt pretty villainous.
And in that half second of hesitation, Lucien lunged for Tana. He got hold of her throat, lifting her high off the ground. She was choking, panicked, lashing the air. She’d seen people do this before in movies, but she’d never guessed how painful it was. She couldn’t breathe, her windpipe crushing inward. Lucien grinned.
“Throw that knife and I break her neck,” Lucien said slowly. “Any of your people move and I break her neck. Say something clever and I break her neck.”
Gavriel nodded, pressing his hands together as if in prayer. “What would you have me do?”
No, she thought, but couldn’t choke out. Don’t let him go. My sister. My sister isn’t safe.