Free Vanquished by Nancy Holder, Debbie Viguié Page B

what he looked like. His face was purple and white with scars, and his eyes were completely black except for two small circles of crimson at their centers. His eyeteeth lengthened and sharpened like vampire fangs. But when he bit someone, it wasn’t the blood he was after. He wasn’t even sure what it was he took. A piece of their soul? Their life essence?
    He didn’t know, but he was fascinated by it. He’d participated in the Hell Fire Caves gatherings, where eager young Cursed Ones, dazzled by magicks, had mingled with witches both White and Dark. The witches had enchanted the blood from the Cursed Ones’ veins, and the vampires had drunk it from goblets, savoring the unusual, otherworldly taste of the magick. Then they’d offered it to the witches, too. Estefan had eagerly swallowed the strange sweetness.
    After he’d met Skye, he’d taken her with him to the revels. It had required a trance to get her to participate. But one night she’d snapped awake, and she’d set him on fire in an attempt to flee.
    She went to Spain, and so did he—leaving with one of his vampire companions to join Aurora’s court—not in hopes of becoming a Cursed One but to discover what made them so strong and immortal. He studied mixtures of magick and vampiric blood, but drew no conclusions. He tried to discuss it with Aurora, but she was a bit of a disappointment in that regard. She had no curiosity about what made vampires tick.
    However, her lover, Sergio Almodóvar, was another matter. Sergio owned an amazing Book of Spells, compiled by a vampire interested in magick. It included spells of power and transformation—magicks too strong for Estefan to master.
    At first.
    Aurora had stolen the book from Sergio, not because she wanted it but because she knew it would enrage him. It was a trophy the two of them fought over during their spats, which had apparently been going on for decades if not centuries. So Estefan stayed in Aurora’s court, perusing the black-and-maroon leather book whenever possible. He dedicated himself to working these strange new magicks, confused about why, if he had drunk vampire blood, he hadn’t been transformed into one. It was his magicks, he decided, that somehow protected him. And made him different enough, he figured, to withstand any magicks that little White bitch leveled at him.
    He had never forgotten the agony of the fire she had flung at him that first time in the caves, nor the ridicule of his coven brothers for being dumped by a little fourteen-year-old. And so he worked his magicks.
    Then Antonio de la Cruz killed Sergio at the battle of Salamanca, and Skye was there too. The timing was perfect; Estefan had enough power for payback—or so he had thought. Little Skye had surprised him.
    He had lost access to Sergio’s Book of Spells, but withhis coven brothers back in England, and all the changes he’d gone through to make himself more powerful, more like a Cursed One, he was certain he could track her down.
    And make her scream until she died.
L AKE C OMO , I TALY
A URORA , L UCIFER , AND D ANTALION
    Aurora wrapped her furs around herself, not because she was cold, but because ermine contrasted so beautifully with her black hair, and because she had no one to hold on to as she made her grand entrance into the great hall of her sire’s villa on Lake Como.
    The walls were covered with weapons from eons of warfare, and black velvet drapes were looped back from the magnificent windows overlooking the water. They would be closed soon, to block out the rising sun.
    Lucifer rose from a carved chair at the far end of the room and came to her. He was wearing a perfectly tailored white suit in honor of Sergio, and with his mane of white hair and piercing red eyes, he was startlingly attractive. Yes, Sergio had been Aurora’s lover, but Lucifer was her morning star. There was no vampire more magnificent. Nor more terrifying.
    He took her in his arms and held her. Trembling, she melted against