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Prologue

Wherein Our Heroine Has a Rude Awakening

Victoria opened her eyes

A ring of faces looked down at her: Max, his face shadowed but sharp-eyed; Sebastian, golden-haired and tense; Wayren, near the foot of the bed, her pale oval face tight Ylito and Hannever stood above Victoria’s head, frozen and watchful She knew from the pattern on the stone walls behind them that she was in the Consiliu to the Venators The vampire hunters--of which she was the leader

"What--" Her head felt soupy and her eyelids heavy, and suddenly she reh the fuzziness, she tried to pull up, but her ankles and one of her wrists were caught fast So it pinned onto the bed beneath her, and before she could react with the anger and confusion erupting inside her, a splash of water caught her over the face

The cold seeped down into her hair and over the warm skin of her neck, and she jerked beneath her restraints "Why did you do that?" she said, glaring up at Ylito, who’d tipped the vial over her face She raised her free arm, near Sebastian, to brush some of the water fro in the roolanced at Wayren, as looking at Ylito over Victoria

"Is it possible?" asked the ringlet-haired man

"I don’t kno it can be, Ylito," Wayren replied

The tightness in her dear friend’s face had softened, and her countenance had taken on

What was happening?

And then the recognition of a searing pain in her neck, and the ht it all back to her Beauregardshe’d been with Beauregard, the master va into her fleshthe brush of skin against skinthe rusty taste of bloodon her lips Pooling, rich and heavy, on her tongue Filling her throat His hands, smooth and sureeverywhere

He’d bitten her, fed on her Had she drunk his blood? OhGod

Her heart was racing now, and she wanted to struggle, to whip off Max’s firm hold on her arm, to sit up and de, above her, around her, as if she wasn’t there

For a moment, Victoria was afraid to know

And then, Wayren was touching her, s her hands down over Victoria’s face, her wounded throat Light and warh her body As she touched her, Wayren hummed a chantlike prayer deep in the back of her throat, and Victoria felt the vibrations coh her body

"The two vis bullae" Max’s quiet voice broke into the charged silence He stepped back, releasing Victoria’s wrist and, she noticed for the first time, the stake that rested on the table next to him

Dear God, he’d been ready to stake her She understood in an instant: they’d feared Beauregard had turned her

Her mouth dried and she swiveled her face to look toward hi intently at Wayren "She wears two of them, does she not?" he asked

And then she realized what had happened, even as they discussed the situation above her head, above her prone body: it was only because of the two holy strength a to hunt va one of the very undead that she vowed to destroy

A chill wave rushed over her and Victoria closed her eyes, the conversation around her becoain, she found herself caught by Sebastian’s dark a down at her, a frozen expression on his handsome face

It took her a er at his betrayal to bubble up inside her aching body: he’d stolen from the Consilium, from the Venators

Her sometime lover, sometime enemy had deceived her in even more ways than she had expected

He was a Venator Born of the Gardella family tree

A Venator who had disdained his calling for years because of loyalty to his great-great-great-grandfather, Beauregard One of the htly as another scrap ofhi at her to leave, even as she shoved a stake ard into Sebastian’s shoulderand the blood, blood that wasn’t supposed to be thereShe saw the crusty bloom even now on his sweat-stained shirt

And then another memory consumed her A dark, liquid one, of heavy, deep pleasurelush shadows and dangerous pleasure and heathands, and lips, and tongueAnd Sebastian, again, his face pale and desperate, pleading with Beauregard for her release

And her own laugh, welling up from deep inside her, husky and low Derisive Dismissive