Victoria tried to follow the wall so she could keep her bearings in the chamber and investigate every part of the room.

Suddenly she heard voices, and the cold prickles at the back of her neck increased. Before she could think of anything to do that might be proactive, a door opened across the room from her. Immediately Victoria sagged against the wall, half closing her eyes, pretending to be unconscious. Even a moment’s reprieve could help her make a decision or gather more information that would help her escape.

With the opening of the door a bit of light spilled into the room. Shadows blocked the entrance, and the rotting death-smell of the demon became a bit stronger—but not enough to alarm her. Whoever or wherever it was, it was not standing in the doorway.

Through her slitted eyes, Victoria saw that the chamber was not much larger than a parlor, and it was fairly empty. There was a large, lumpy shadow halfway across the room that spiked her concern for Max; if she’d kept going on her path around the perimeter, she would have brushed against it at one point. There were no furnishings, one door, and nothing else.

All of this she had taken in during the instant after the door opened. Now Victoria waited, her muscles tense, forcing her breathing to steady.

And suddenly something large and unwieldy came tumbling into the room. It landed on the floor in the middle of the chamber in an ignominious heap, barely illuminated by a small lantern hanging beyond the door.

“Do not fear,” said a voice from the entrance. It sounded familiar, but Victoria couldn’t see enough to recognize the speaker. “You won’t be here long. Akvan will soon be ready for you.”

Akvan? Good grief…was that the demon she smelled?

Before Victoria could react, the door closed. She heard the heavy grating of a bolt being drawn.

“Ouch,” grumbled the heap on the floor. “Wasn’t beating me enough? Why did they have to pitch me in like a horseshoe?”

Victoria’s mouth fell open; fortunately, it was too dark for him to see what must be incredulous shock on her face. “Sebastian? Is that you?”

“In the flesh. Or, rather, what’s bloody left of me.”

“How on earth did you get here?”

“Why are you so surprised to see—er, hear—me? I was under the impression that you were looking for me. Or, be still my heart…was that nothing but a false rumor?”

“I had hoped to see you in a more…conventional situation. But, yes, I was looking for you. I have to ask you something.” She was scooting on her rump as quickly as she could toward where she remembered seeing him fall. The room was, of course, dark now, but that short while of illumination had helped to orient her. At least she knew the location of the door, and how large the chamber was. And if that big lump was indeed Max, she could do more to help him if her hands were untied. “Did he say that Akvan was ready for you?”

“Yes, he—Ow!” he snapped when her shoe rapped sharply against something…soft. “I appreciate your delight in seeing me, Victoria, but can you take a bit more care? That was my…er—”

“Never mind,” she replied, feeling her face heat in the dark. “If you would untie me? Then perhaps we can figure some way out of here.”

“Despite the fact that I find the thought of you tied up and restrained remarkably titillating, I would be happy to release you…if only I could. You see, I am just as bound as you are. Perhaps more so, as apparently my feet are tied, while yours are not. Which was why I found it remarkably insulting that they had to throw me in here.”

Blast it. She’d realized when scooting across the floor that the knife that had been strapped to her thigh was no longer there…and she hoped, profusely, that it had been Sara Regalado who had removed it instead of George Starcasset. Or anyone else. “Sit up then, and we can move back-to-back and work on each other’s knots,” she said.

With much groaning and huffing of breath, Sebastian managed to hike himself up into a sitting position, leaning heavily against Victoria, who’d planted her feet on the ground, knees bent, in order to stabilize herself for him. He was warm and solid against her, smelling familiarly of spicy cloves and a tinge of sweat, along with a faint rusty scent. Their shoulders brushed, the fabric of what must be his shirt against the bareness of her upper back. It was damp.

“I thought Akvan was dead,” she said after he seemed to be settled against her. She groped around behind, feeling his arms as he did the same, and at last their fingers touched. His were slick, but he managed to curl them around to gently stroke the center of her palm in a tantalizing caress. Slip, swirl, stroke.

Surprised at the innate eroticism of this unexpected, simple touch, Victoria swallowed as the light tickle traveled from her palm up along her wrist and arm and made her feel…warm and sensitive, even here in this dark, dank dungeon.

Then his fingers—and again she realized that they felt wet—began to move with purpose, feeling around for the knots in the rope. She sniffed and smelled blood. “Is that blood all over your hands? And your shirt?”

“Ah, well,” Sebastian said lightly, although she noticed a bit more strain than usual in his charming voice, “the vampires became a bit overzealous in their attempts to keep me from finding y—where they were hidden, and I became rather…bloody in the process. I will endeavor to keep from staining your gown, but our positions might make that difficult.”

“They didn’t bite you,” Victoria said. It wasn’t a question.

“No, they didn’t dare. I am, after all, the grandson of Beauregard, as you well know. A fact that didn’t keep me from being relegated to these unwelcome accommodations, but at least it kept me from getting my throat torn out. At least for now. And…Akvan was dead, or at least living in Hell,” he said, at last addressing her question, “until Pesaro destroyed his obelisk. When it was shattered last autumn, Akvan was recalled back here to earth—to Rome, to be more precise, in a weakened form, as I understand it. He’s spent the last four months building up his strength.”

“So he is here? And so how did you get here? Do stop it and let me try your knots, Sebastian,” she said at last. “You’ve done little but pinch me in the…well, somewhere you shouldn’t be pinching me, and you’re obviously hurt.”

“Ah, the hero fails to save the damsel in distress.” Sebastian sighed dramatically, but his fingers fell away and she thought she sensed an air of relief in his voice.

“Well, it isn’t the first time, and I’m certain it shan’t be the last,” Victoria replied, groping around to try to locate the knots at his wrists. His skin was warm, but sticky, and even with the tips of her fingers she could feel the brush of hair that grew under his cuffs.

“But of course…since you are the Venator,” Sebastian replied in a cool voice. “I am here because my grandfather set me to watch the Door of Alchemy over the last days. Apparently he is certain someone is about to open it—and it appears that Akvan and his fiends are the ones. I saw Pesaro skulking around it earlier this evening, and when I learned that there were several…shall we say, civilians invited within the villa, I thought perhaps I should investigate. I didn’t expect to find you here as well.”

Victoria had found the bulk of rope and begun to try to pry it loose, but the knots were tight and she was in an awkward position. “You decided to investigate, or was your real intent to find some way of bedeviling Max?”

“Why should I bedevil him?” Sebastian asked, his voice properly shocked. “In fact, he owes me his life.”

“Indeed? Somehow I cannot imagine that.” She couldn’t get a good fix on the knots; her fingers were chilled from the dampness, and her wrists sore from bending nearly double and trying to manipulate the rope, which was thick and difficult to grasp.

And then, with a twinge of annoyance with herself for forgetting, she remembered the special corset Miro had made for her, the corset he’d executed at Verbena’s suggestion. Her maid and Oliver had tried to create something similar at first themselves. But without the skills of the weapons master, it had been a disaster. Knives and stakes had protruded from every angle, and when she tried it on a blade had slipped from its place and sliced through the delicate shift to her skin. However, Miro had taken the idea and created the corset, and Victoria was wearing it right now.

But the problem was…she would need help accessing it.

“Max wasn’t terribly pleased,” Sebastian was saying. “In fact, I do believe he offered to damn me for staking the vampire that was about to maul him—it was last autumn, that night the obelisk was destroyed.”

“You?” Victoria couldn’t help a chuckle—it was a nervous one, partly because of what she was going to have to ask him to do. “You don’t stake vampires, Sebastian. Even if you could, you wouldn’t. Now I know you’re lying.” It was true—Sebastian loved his grandfather Beauregard, and as a result of his relationship with him and the knowledge that every single vampire had once been a mortal being, with family and loved ones, Sebastian refused to stake the undead, because of the eternal damnation that awaited them after their demise.

I can’t send someone’s father or sister to Hell for eternity, he’d once told her. I won’t be responsible for that.

“Shall we stop this nonsense?” she said sharply. “I want to get out of these ropes, and I think that might be Max over there on the floor—but he hasn’t moved or made a sound since I woke up. And I’m sure if he were conscious, he would have had some scathing comment for you and your melodramatics by now.”

“Oh, dear. Then my sacrifice last autumn will have been in vain.”

“I have a knife,” she said, ignoring his comment. “You’ll need to help me get to it.”

Sebastian laughed. “I’m sure they’ve taken all of your weapons, Victoria, just as they did mine. I haven’t anything but my boots and clothes.”