Something moved in his periphery and he looked over to see Moldavi, who’d shifted into his line of vision. He was with a young woman who seemed to stumble as she walked along with him.
“I have my own special armor,” Moldavi said without preamble, directing the woman to sit on a chair directly in front of Chas.
“My informants neglected to share that detail with me,” Chas replied wryly. “If they even knew.”
“It’s saved my life more than a dozen times. Would you like to see it?” Moldavi pulled off his shirt to reveal a slender, ashen-gray chest dusted with shiny dark hair.
The man was slender, nearly skeletal, and at first Chas saw nothing that could be considered armor except for a dark circular shape over the center of his chest. It gleamed and he saw that it was metal…set into his skin.
“Look more closely,” Moldavi said, leaning toward him, gesturing to his breastbone. “Do you see?”
And then Chas understood. The faint octagonal outline on—no, beneath—his skin, covering the entire breastbone and over his chest, was larger than that which was exposed beneath the skin. No larger than the spread of a hand, the whole was nevertheless generous enough to protect the heart from any stake.
“It’s… Your skin has grown over it?” Chas asked, fascinated and horrified at the same time.
Moldavi nodded complacently. “Some years ago I realized how prudent it would be to have a permanent protection. We Dracule heal so quickly, of course, and so I made a place for the medallions of protection—I have one on my back as well, of course—by cutting a place for it in my skin. Oh, it didn’t hurt, don’t be concerned. And it makes me feel quite powerful. I kept the medallions there until the skin grew back over them—most of the way, as you can see, some of it is still exposed. I rather like the appearance of it. I have similar protection in my neck, of course. For, you see, now I can’t be killed. Even by the fearsome Chas Woodmore.”
Moldavi shifted, now standing behind the woman. He moved her hair away, leaving a shoulder and the side of her neck bare. “You come from London, do you not, Chas Woodmore? Where you live with your three very lovely sisters?”
A shock of fear speared his insides. “You seem to be more familiar with me than I am with you.”
“Oh, I am very familiar with you, Monsieur Woodmore, and Maia, Angelica and…Sophia? What was her name?” He gave a brief smile, licked his lips, then bent slightly to sink his fangs into the bare shoulder of his companion. She tensed, stiffening at the pain, then relaxed.
The spike of worry for his sisters turned into a deep, heavy bolt of revulsion as Chas watched Moldavi gulp the coursing blood. His throat, visible above an elaborate neckcloth, convulsed as his jaw moved in the same rhythm—as if he couldn’t get enough of it fast enough. The woman’s reaction was nearly as unsettling: she closed her eyes, her face tightening with some expression that was neither wholly pain nor wholly pleasure.
As he fed, Moldavi watched Chas, his burning red-gold eyes fastened on him as if gauging his response. Chas wanted to look away, but he could not, and he felt his own body begin to stir in response.
No. He tried to force his attention away, but found himself trapped by the hypnotic gaze. The sounds of rushing blood and the quiet kuhn-kuhn-kuhn of Moldavi’s drinking filled his ears. Chas knew he was being enthralled, but in his weakened state, he could hardly drag his eyes away. Desire tingled inside him, teasing and coaxing a deeper response and Chas tried to focus on the pain throbbing through him instead.
Moldavi released the pinch of pale flesh between his fangs, lifting his face with a slow smile. Blood stained his gums and the edges of his teeth, and Chas fancied he could even smell it on his breath.
“Very satisfying,” Moldavi said, looking at him. “Would you care to sample?” He smoothed his finger over the oozing wounds on the woman’s shoulder, offering a red-tipped digit to Chas.
He turned his face away, noting the pillow behind his head. His heart pounded rampantly as his stomach squeezed with queasiness.
“No? Perhaps another time then. I hope you won’t think me rude, dining in front of you, but I offered to share, and you declined.” Moldavi licked the woman’s shoulder, which Chas didn’t see, but he could hear the sounds. Sloppy and wet, yet sensual.
He swallowed, his throat prickly and rough. His cock had begun to fill and he willed it to subside.
“Now,” said Moldavi, pulling the woman’s hair back over her shoulders, patting it into place and then giving her a sharp gesture to leave, “back to the matter at hand. London…and your informants. I must assume Dimitri has sent you here.”
“No one sends me,” Chas managed to say, relieved that the feeding was over. The tightness in his belly released just that little bit, and he began to focus on his wrists…if there was anything that might be loose or weak. “I go where I will.”
“But it is well known that you and Dimitri—what does he call himself in England? Corvindale?—are associates. I find it unlikely that he hasn’t at least encouraged you to find me. There was an incident in Vienna, you see, some years back…and Dimitri hasn’t quite gotten over it.”
“I needed no encouragement to come after a child-bleeder,” Chas told him.
“Oh, who has been telling tales? Tsk.” Moldavi stood and turned toward the blazing fire. When he shifted back around, he was holding a slender metal spike, hardly thicker than the tine of a fork. It glowed white-hot for a moment, then settled into red, then black.
A ripple of fear coursed along his spine, and Chas steadied his breath. This is going to be unpleasant.
“Perhaps you might tell me a bit more information about Corvindale. What his recent investments are, perhaps?” Moldavi smiled and that slender spike moved closer to Chas.
He steeled himself, his heart ramming furiously. “I’m not privy to that information,” he said.
Moldavi’s fingers curled around Chas’s immobile arm, the digits ashen in color next to his olive skin. “I’m certain you know something.”
Chas shook his head, and groaned at the sharp pain as the spike slid through the soft part of the side of his arm and emerged on the other side. He closed his eyes, shuddering as the little rod burned his flesh, inside and out. Agony reverberated from that center of pain, dulling his thoughts and thickening his mind.
“Perhaps you might know when he is going to leave the country again? I’ve found it impossible to send anyone inside Blackmont Hall, for he has it well secured. If he travels, it will be much easier for me to…renew old acquaintances.”
Through the haze of pain, Chas saw that Moldavi had turned to the fire, and then back again, holding another of the slender metal spikes. “Anything you can tell me will speed things up a bit here,” Moldavi said with a smile.
Chas managed to shake his head, and wondered yet again what Narcise had been thinking to say I’ll save you. Help me.
The woman was obviously addled, or else she was a consummate actress. Just as unpleasant and self-serving as her brother.
Moldavi pinched a piece of flesh at Chas’s side, along his firm belly. “My,” he said, his voice shifting lower, “there isn’t much here to work with, is there, Woodmore? Nevertheless, I shall prevail.”
He looked at his victim and said, “What about Giordan Cale?”
Chas tried to shrug, but feared it came across as more of a convulsion than anything else. He braced himself, but it wasn’t enough to prepare for the sharp, searing pain as the thick needle went through the flesh of his abdomen.
“Giordan Cale,” said Moldavi again, more urgently. His eyes glittered. “I understand he is in London now. What do you know of him?”