Free The Rest Falls Away by Colleen Gleason Page A

that they appear to fly. Their eyes are dark red-purple, and although they do not have the poison that the Guardians do, they are the most fearsome of the vampires. And the rarest.”
    â€œAnd that is why I did not feel you needed to know that so soon.” Eustacia looked over at Max. “I did not expect them to be so bold. Usually the Guardians stay close by Lilith, and Max has not fought an Imperial for two years.”
    â€œIt was obvious they were looking for Victoria. They sought her out at the ball.”
    â€œDid you kill them?” Eustacia asked as she bent toward Victoria’s neck, bringing a lamp so close it heated her skin. “You did well, Max,” she added, brushing her fingers over the sore area. “Your salted holy water will make this much less painful.”
    â€œVictoria staked the one who was biting her. I happened to stop the other.” Max appeared to be perusing the page of an open book quite studiously. The page whisked as he turned it.
    Eustacia gaped at Max, then at Victoria. “You staked the Guardian who bit you? Sorprendente! Kritanu, the ointment.”
    â€œYes…they were both attacking me, but he pushed the woman away. Then when he…” She glanced at Max, who looked as disinterested as if she were describing a new gown. Nevertheless, she dropped her voice. She didn’t want the depths of her weakness to be so evident. “When he bent to bite me…I let him. He…hypnotized me, I think. I felt him pulling at me, his gaze— Yeow !” She didn’t even think about how mortifying the sound was. It hurt.
    The ointment wasn’t merely cold and putrid-smelling…it stung as if it were drilling into her skin. It burned ten times worse than Max’s salt water, and Victoria couldn’t hold back the tears of pain.
    â€œI know it’s uncomfortable, my dear, but this will keep the scarring to a minimum and destroy most, if not all, of the Guardian poison. With any luck, it will look like no more than some faint blemishes. And along with the fact that you executed the vampire who did it…well, there should be no harmful effects.”
    Victoria resisted the urge to look at Max, who had turned three more pages. He’d retied his shirt collar and rearranged his cravat. But she remembered the scars on his neck. His were much more noticeable than a faint blemish. The man was fortunate that high starched collars were in style.
    Eustacia turned away to clean her hands, and Kritanu gently wrapped a cloth around Victoria’s neck, covering the paste that still felt as if it were ravaging her skin. “Breathe deeply and slowly, in and out,” he told her quietly. “In and out. It will help to ease the discomfort.”
    Victoria did as he suggested, and it did, indeed, lessen the pain.
    â€œYou’ll want to sleep here tonight,” Eustacia told her. “I’ve sent word to the Dunsteads for your mother, so she won’t be alarmed. I’ll tell her I sent a coach for you myself, for if I know Melly, if she ever found out you’d ridden alone with Max, she would be quite beside herself.”
    She took Victoria’s hands. “You staked a Guardian vampire while he was biting you. If I had any reservation at all about your calling as a Venator, Victoria Gardella Grantworth, it would be gone now. As it is, I suspected from the beginning that you were special. Now I know you are. If anyone can stop Lilith, it will be you.”

+ 5 +
    In Which Miss Grantworth Finds an Unexpected Ally
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    â€œMy lady! You’ve been bit by a vampire!” Verbena’s eyes goggled in the mirror over Victoria’s shoulder. With her round face and abominably frizzy red-blond hair, the maid looked like a babe just awakened from her sleep.
    Before Victoria could think how to respond, let alone grasp that her maid had recognized the bite, Verbena bent to look closer. “It looks like it’ll heal