“Don’t.” Matthew might have let Chris get in a solid punch, but Baldwin had narrower views when it came to the privileges that should be afforded to warmbloods. He turned to Baldwin. “Leave. Jack is my blood and my problem.”
“And miss all the fun?” Baldwin bent Jack’s head to the side. Jack looked up at Baldwin, his expression black and deadly. “Quite a resemblance, Matthew.”
“I like to think so,” Matthew said coolly, giving Jack a tight smile. He took Lobero’s lead from Gallowglass. The dog quieted immediately. “Baldwin might be thirsty. Offer him a drink, Gallowglass.”
Maybe that would sweeten Baldwin’s mood long enough to get Jack safely away. Matthew could send him to Marcus’s house with Hubbard. It was a better alternative than Diana’s house on Court Street. If his wife got wind of Baldwin’s presence, she’d be on Wooster Square with a firedrake and a lightning bolt.
“I’ve got a full larder,” Gallowglass said. “Coffee, wine, water, blood. I’m sure I could scare up some hemlock and honey if you’d prefer that, Uncle.”
“What I require only the boy can provide.” Without warning or preamble, Baldwin’s teeth ripped into Jack’s neck. His bite was savage, deliberately so.
This was vampire justice—swift, unbending, remorseless. For minor infractions the sire’s punishment would consist only of this public show of submission. Through that blood the sire received a thin trickle of his progeny’s innermost thoughts and memories. The ritual stripped a vampire’s soul bare, making him shamefully vulnerable. Acquiring another creature’s secrets, by whatever means, sustained a vampire in much the same way the hunt did, nourishing that part of his soul that forever sought to possess more.
If the offenses were more significant, the ritual of submission would be followed by death. Killing another vampire was physically taxing, emotionally draining, and spiritually devastating. It was why most vampire sires appointed one of their kin to do it for them. Though Philippe and Hugh had polished the de Clermonts’ façade to a high sheen over the centuries, it was Matthew who had performed all of the house’s dirty maintenance.
There were hundreds of ways to kill a vampire, and Matthew knew them all. You could drink a vampire dry as he had Philippe. You could weaken a vampire physically by releasing his blood slowly and putting him in the dreaded state of suspension known as thrall. Unable to fight back, the vampire could be tortured into a confession or mercifully allowed to die. There was beheading and evisceration, though some preferred the more old-fashioned method of punching through the rib cage and wrenching out the heart. You could sever the carotid and the aorta, a method that Gerbert’s lovely assassin, Juliette, had tried and failed to use on him.
Matthew prayed that taking Jack’s blood and his memories would suffice for Baldwin tonight.
Too late, he remembered that Jack’s memories held tales best left untold.
Too late, he caught the scent of honeysuckle and summer storms.
Too late, he saw Diana release Corra.
Diana’s firedrake rose up from her mistress’s shoulders and into the air. Corra swooped down on Baldwin with a shriek, talons extended and wings aflame. Baldwin grabbed the firedrake by the foot with his free hand, wresting her body away. Corra hurtled into the wall, her wing crumpling at the impact. Diana bent double, grabbing at her own arm in sudden pain, but it didn’t shake her resolve.
“Take your hands. Off. My. Son.” Diana’s skin was gleaming, the subtle nimbus that was always visible without her disguising spell now appearing as a distinctive, prismatic light. Rainbows of color shot under her skin—not just the hands but up her arms, along the tendons of her neck, twisting and spiraling as though the cords in her fingers had extended through her whole body.
When Lobero lunged at the end of his lead, trying to get to Corra, Matthew let the dog go. Lobero crouched over the firedrake, licking at her face and nudging her with his nose as she struggled to get up and go to Diana’s aid.
But Diana didn’t need help—not from Matthew, not from Lobero, not even from Corra. His wife straightened, splayed out her left hand with the palm facing down, and directed her fingers at the floor. The wooden planks shattered and split, re-forming into thick canes that rose up and wound themselves around Baldwin’s feet, keeping him in place. Lethally long, sharp thorns sprang out of the shoots, digging through his clothes and into flesh.
Diana fixed her gaze on Baldwin, reached out with her right hand, and pulled. Jack’s wrist jerked out and to the side as if he were tethered to her. The rest of him followed, and in moments he was lying in a heap on the floor, out of Baldwin’s reach.
Matthew adopted a similar pose to Lobero’s, standing over Jack’s body to shield him.
“Enough, Baldwin.” Matthew’s hand sliced through the air.
“I’m sorry, Matthew,” Jack whispered, remaining on the floor. “He came out of nowhere and went straight for Gallowglass. When I’m surprised—” He stopped with a shudder, his knees drawing close to his chest. “I didn’t know who he was.”
Miriam came into the room. After studying the scene, she took charge. She pointed Gallowglass and Hubbard in Jack’s direction and cast a worried look at Diana, who stood unmoving and unblinking, as though she had taken root in the living room.
“Is Jack okay?” Chris asked, his voice strained.
“He’ll be fine. Every vampire alive has been bitten by their sire at least once,” Miriam said, trying to put his mind at rest. Chris didn’t seem comforted by this revelation about creature family life.
Matthew helped Jack up. The bite mark on his neck was shallow and would heal quickly, but at the moment it looked gruesome. Matthew touched it briefly, hoping to reassure Jack that he would, as Miriam promised, be fine.
“Can you see to Corra?” Matthew asked Miriam as he handed Jack off to Gallowglass and Hubbard.
Miriam nodded.
Matthew was already crossing the room, his hands wrapping around Baldwin’s throat.
“I want your word that if Diana lets you go, you will not touch her for what happened here tonight.” Matthew’s fingers tightened. “If not, I will kill you, Baldwin. Make no mistake about that.”
“We’re not finished here, Matthew,” Baldwin warned.
“I know.” Matthew locked his eyes on his brother until the man nodded.
Then he turned to Diana. The colors pulsing beneath her skin reminded him of the shining ball of energy she had gifted him in Madison before either of them knew she was a weaver. The colors were brightest at her fingertips, as though her magic were waiting there, ready to be released. Matthew knew how unpredictable his own blood rage could be when it was that close to the surface, and he treated his wife with caution.