Page 13 of To Vanquish Darkness

"Amalie? Did your uncle throw you out?" She raced down the steps toward her, but Amalie held out her hands.

“Stay back. Please.” She reached for the door handle, but her hands were shaking so hard, she couldn’t grasp it. She needed to get back outside. She needed?—

“Amalie, stop.” Marcel’s voice was hard. “Turn around.” Amalie obeyed. He pulled her wrists behind her back, and she felt the rough burn of thick rope against her skin. When he’d tied a knot and pulled it tight, securing it to the support beam next to her, he stepped back. “There. That will buy us a few moments if you start lunging for our throats.”

Olivie’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”

Marcel pointed at her neck, and Olivie gasped. “A rope won’t stop her, Marcel?—”

“Start talking,” he growled.

Amalie swallowed the lump still choking her throat. "My uncle didn't need my proof. He's known of vampires all along."

Marcel let out a low chuckle. "’Course he has. They all do. They’re too cowardly to admit it."

"I don’t give a damn about your uncle, unless he was the cause of this. What happened?" Olivie was singularly focused, her eyes trained on the marks. She’d lost her brother to vampires. Seen him snatched from their doorstep just after dark. Marcel had lost his children. Louisa and Marc were stripped from him as he held their little hands.

“It doesn’t matter. I came here because I need you to kill me. Before I turn. Please.” Tears stung her eyes. How would they do it? Slit her throat? A bullet to the head? She hoped it would be quick. She hoped?—

“Where were you attacked?” Marcel paced in front of her.

“My bedroom, but it doesn’t matter! You need to?—”

“When?”

Amalie ground her teeth. “Less than an hour ago.”

“And you don’t feel any different? No added strength or strange thoughts?” Marcel tapped his temple.

“I just asked you to kill me, did I not?” If that wasn’t a strange thought, she didn’t know what was.

“We need to learn everything we can.” Marcel pulled a stake from the pocket of his overcoat hanging on the coat rack. “I can always kill you later.”

Her mind, which had been a mass of porridge, suddenly snapped into focus. “No. You can’t.” Marcel’s expression darkened, and Amalie’s mouth went dry. “You can’t kill me later. The vampire who attacked me in my room was Theo Vallon.”

“That’s impossible.”

Amalie let out a ragged laugh. “I know! Impossible! Yet I saw him with my own eyes. He gave me these marks, Olivie! He’s alive.”

Marcel’s eyes were predatory. “His blood was on the stones. You took his ring?—”

“It was him,” she groaned, her wrists aching from the pull of the rope.

“Did you fight him?”

Amalie bobbed her head. It was the answer she wanted to give. She’d tried, hadn’t she? Ice slid down her spine as she remembered the feel of his lips against her skin. The rough grasp of his hands on her waist. The fear coursing through her as his fangs broke into her flesh.

Bile rose in her throat at the swirl of clashing emotions. She’d been soothed by him. He’d tricked her. But she hadn’t wanted it.Had she?

Had that been a survival mechanism? Her body and mind blocking her from the pain and forcing her down from her conscious mind? She couldn't make sense of it. The lack of pain. The calm in her middle. The paralyzing fear of seeing Theo Vallon's face again. The dark desire to search him out again . . .

She was going to be sick.

“You’re saying a stake to the heart didn’t kill a vampire?” Marcel’s jaw worked.

She nodded. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“Then what will?” Olivie’s face was white. “Everything we’ve done. All the vampires we vanquished . . .” She lifted her hand, running her thumb over her arm where she kept her trophy marks.

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