That I was still in control.It didn't quite work out that way. I wrapped my arms around his neck and let him pull me closer. I sensed his surprise, but when he drew back he smiled as though he'd won a great battle. "Now, that wasn't so terrible."

It wasn't. He leaned in for another when I heard the forgotten guard clear his throat. Annoyance danced across my sire's face, but he quickly covered it with a smile as he stood and straightened his shirt. "Roger, what would you say to another match?"

"Robert, sir. I would be honored." The guard tossed him his foil.

Cyrus caught it and gracefully took up a ready stance. "Dinner, in my chambers, 5:00 a.m.," he instructed me. "Please be on time." With that, he and the guard parried and thrusted their way out of the room.

I closed my eyes. It would have been all too easy to blame my submission on the blood tie, but I couldn't lie to myself. There was a magnetism about him that had nothing to do with his being a vampire. Despite the horrible way he'd treated me this morning, for a moment he'd made me believe he cared for me as something more than a possession.

It was the most dangerous tactic he'd employed in this battle so far.

Twelve

A Gift

W ith 5:00 a.m. fast approaching, I paced my bedroom floor in complete indecision as to what I should wear. A chastity belt would have been nice, but he hadn't included that item in my new wardrobe.

The absence of modern noise in our wing of the house, which had at first been pleasant, was beginning to drive me batty. I didn't relish the idea of hanging with the Fangs to listen to the radio, but the idea grew more appealing with each passing hour. I hoped to negotiate a TV in my room if I played my cards right. After the tedious night I'd had, the idea of prostituting myself for my cable fix didn't seem as wrong as it should.

I had almost settled on a plain black skirt to go with the turtleneck I wore when there was a soft knock at my door. Before I could open it, Clarence entered. He bore a plastic garment bag, which he dumped without a word on the bed.

"What's this?" I asked after him as he left the room.

"Read the card" was his only reply before I heard the outer door click shut.

"Thanks for your help," I muttered, looking down at the bag. A small envelope rested atop it. I slid the card out and read the elegant script.

I hope the gown is to your liking. It would please me greatly if you wore it this evening. Clarence will come to retrieve you at five o'clock.

Bracing myself for what I might find inside, I unzipped the bag. The dress wasn't what I had expected-though my expectations weren't terribly specific. Lifting the length of blush-colored satin, I grudgingly admitted Cyrus had good taste.

I would normally feel a little silly for being so overdressed, but I liked what I saw when I slipped into the gown and looked myself over in the mirror. The color complimented my blond hair, and though my skin had paled since I'd turned, it wasn't as obvious against such a delicate shade.

I usually wasn't so vain, but I hadn't gotten dressed up like this since my high school prom, and the sight of myself in something other than a lab coat or jeans enticed me to the mirror. I snuck a pair of diamond earrings from the stash in the armoire and let my hair down, brushing it until it fell in soft waves around my shoulders. I looked so good I would have given myself television privileges just for standing there.Now I look like something worth drawing, I thought, and instantly regretted it. After the T-shirt debacle, I'd taken care to hide Nathan's sketch, but it had felt like burying a dead friend. I wondered what he was doing now. If he missed me. Or if he was just biding his time until he got the chance to kill me.

I commanded myself to stop thinking of such morose things. Whatever might have begun between Nathan and I was over now. I could continue to cling to the past, or I could try to be happy in my new life.

Staring in the mirror, I barely recognized myself. In the past, I'd been lonely and unhappy. I'd defined my life by my career, and my heart hadn't even been in it. I'd had no idea who I was or any plans to find out. But now I had the opportunity. I couldn't waste it.

Clarence entered my sitting room just as the clock chimed for the fifth time. His face was somber as he led me down the hallway.

We stopped at the large double doors and waited while they were opened from within.

Cyrus's rooms were much larger than mine. The parlor boasted a painted ceiling where cherubs looked down from a sunny sky. It was a striking contrast to the marble statues of nude women in the grasps of winged demons that flanked the fireplace.

Cyrus was seated at a small table in the center of the room. There were no corpses, as promised. Two champagne flutes and a large crystal decanter full of blood were laid out before him. He stood when I entered.

"Look at you." His eyes glittered with genuine appreciation. "You're more beautiful every time I see you."

"You look pretty good yourself." It wasn't an empty compliment, though anything was better than his pirate outfit from before. He wore a simple, button-down black shirt and black pants, and his hair was tied back. He looked surprisingly modern, and I found it easy to imagine he was a different person from the man who'd wreaked so much havoc in my life.

Maybe that's what I'd have to do. Live in denial to stand living at all. But I'd been doing that for far too long already.

I cleared my throat. "I'm glad to see the leather pants couldn't make a return appearance."

Clearly, he interpreted this as an insult. "I beg your pardon? Leather is very fashionable."

"In 1997." I sat in the chair Clarence pulled out for me and spread my napkin across my lap. "And I must tell you I'm not really big on the whole 'Satan Goes to Versailles' vibe you've got going on here." He ignored me and poured some of the blood into my glass. It fizzed slightly as it hit the glass.

"Let me guess. Poison?" Knowing better than that, I took a sip and let the fluid roll slowly across my tongue, savoring its sweet flavor.

"Champagne. Think of it as a bloody mimosa." He laughed at his own joke before he went on. "I thought we had reason to celebrate tonight." He filled his glass and took a long swallow.

I eyed him incredulously. "What are we celebrating exactly?"

A wickedly satisfied smirk stretched across his face. "Your fall from grace."

"Hold on there, buddy. I haven't done anything yet." I'd learned from past experience that he would try to tempt me, to appeal to the monster in me. I also knew I was more receptive to the possibility now than I had been when he'd tried to lure me before. But he didn't need to know that. Then again, he probably already did.

Cyrus took another drink, his eyes never leaving me. "I do like that dress. You'll have to wear it more often."

"I don't know." I smoothed my hands over the silky fabric. "When I get the chance, maybe. It's not really something I can wear around the house." "Why not?"

I laughed, until I realized he was serious. "Well, I'd feel overdressed, for one."

"No one would mention it." His champagne flute dangled from the tips of his fingers as he leaned back in his chair. "It befits your station."

I huffed in annoyance. "My station. Because you said you could make me a queen, right?"

"I can't make you a queen, that was a bit of a fib. More like a princess." He made the remark without a hint of humor. "You've read The Sanguinarius?"

"Only about half of it. My copy was lost when my apartment burned down."

"A pity. So, if I mentioned the name Jacob Seymour, you'd have no idea who I was speaking of?" Cyrus's eyes were fixed on my face, as if he were trying to register something in my reaction.

He'd find nothing there. "No clue at all. Why, is he someone important?"

"Yes, you could say so. He was my father."

I didn't know how to respond, so I merely waited for him to continue.

"My father was not a powerful man in life. He was an old man with two wives in the grave and ten grown children when he was turned. We were serfs, what you call peasants now. We farmed land owned by a wealthy lord and tithed most of our profit to the Crown."

"In England?" I took a sip from my glass, enjoying the effects of light-headedness from the champagne and satiation from the blood mixed with it.

Cyrus nodded. "The vampire who sired my father did so on the condition that he use all the powers gifted to him to grow strong and overcome those who would rule him. Father took it quite literally. First, he killed the noble family who enslaved us. Then he killed and fed from his sire, and finally, one by one, he sought out those of our kind already in existence. The oldest, the strongest, the most fearsome. My father slew them all. He drank their blood and stole their power.

"And then, of his seven living sons, he chose the one he felt was the most ruthless and calculating, and he sired him."

Cyrus straightened in his chair, pride transforming his face. "And while my brother slept, on the first day of his new vampire life, I killed him and stole his blood." He paused, and his brows furrowed as if he were trying to remember something. "Then I stabbed him in the heart and took a handful of his ashes to my father to show him what I'd done. That I deserved the place I'd been denied."

My heart racing, I reached for my glass and drank half of it down before I could speak again. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because my father has now successfully killed all the oldest known vampires. He is the leader of our kind." Though he said this in all seriousness, he shrugged it off rather quickly. "His blood runs in mine, and my blood runs in yours. We are royalty, Carrie."

I looked around helplessly as a tremor of-was that paternal affection?-passed across the blood tie.

"So, in a roundabout way, what I'm saying is that there's good reason for you to wear the dress again."

"I'll see what I can do," I breathed.

A new, frightening possibility entered my mind. What if Cyrus wasn't the man I thought he was at all, but merely a pawn under his father's control? How much of the evil he inflicted on others originated from his own brain? He'd been a vampire for so long now, perhaps he couldn't remember what it was like to be free from the blood tie.

Cocking his head, Cyrus regarded me with the amused smile of a man viewing a prize that was nearly his. "My God, but you're lovely."

The sentiment was a bit too heartfelt to sit comfortably with me. "Why do you say things like that?"

He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. "Because I mean them."

I filed his words away under "Ploys to Disarm Me."

He nodded to Clarence, and the butler stepped forward to clear the table.

Still hungry, I handed my glass over with some reluctance. "Are we finished?"

Cyrus stood and moved to take my hand. "No. This was just an appetizer. Now we're on to the main course."

He stepped behind me and covered my eyes with his hands. The feeling of him so close, his body brushing against my back as he led me from the room, set my nerve endings on fire.

"Where are we going?" I asked as if I didn't know the answer.

"Look," he whispered as he removed his hands.

A huge bed on a raised dais dominated the room. Elegant curtains of sheer gold-and-cream fabric hung from the dark wood canopy, and in the center lay a young man, bound, gagged and shirtless.

Although his hair was clean and trimmed, and he wore trousers instead of jeans, I recognized him immediately.

Ziggy.

"He's for you." Cyrus walked over to the bed and held his hand out to me.

Don't react, I urged myself, picturing a brick wall in an attempt to keep Cyrus from seeing my thoughts. Pretend you don't know him. Deny you've ever met him. Just don't do anything to endanger him.

But my panic clearly transferred through the blood tie. His face full of concern, Cyrus moved from my side. "He's completely harmless."

Ziggy's eyes were wide, pupils dilated, but he didn't struggle. I stepped closer. "What's wrong with him?"

"Drugged." Cyrus sat on the edge of the bed and motioned for me to join him. "They tend to gain strength when fighting for their lives, and I wanted tonight to be perfect."

I stepped up cautiously, trying to cloak my thoughts from Cyrus while I frantically willed Ziggy not to show any sign of recognition.

Was it possible Cyrus didn't know who this was? It would be unlike him not to gloat about his prize, especially after the way he'd acted this morning. But it made no sense for Ziggy to be in the mansion at all.

"Who is he?" I croaked, fervently praying Cyrus didn't already know the answer.

To my immense relief, he yawned and reached up to unbind his hair. "I don't know. Some runaway. He showed up here a few hours ago. Isn't he breathtaking?"

The day before I wouldn't have exactly agreed with that statement, but groomed and divested of his various piercings and odd metal jewelry, Ziggy recalled a Renaissance portrait of youthful, male beauty.

Hesitantly, I climbed onto the bed. "Why is he here?"

"For you to feed from, dearest," Cyrus answered distractedly as he popped off his cuff links and shook out his sleeves.

"But he's conscious."

My mouth went a little dry as I watched Cyrus work the buttons of his shirt. "Well, that's the point, isn't it? No fun drinking from a victim who can't feel it. But you'll have to hurry. The paralytic will wear off soon."

I frowned. Paralyzing drugs were nothing to trifle with. Ziggy could die of suffocation if his lungs were affected. In the guise of lazily stroking his chest, I measured the rise and fall of the flesh beneath my hand. His respiration was labored, but not seriously.

"He can't be too paralyzed if he's breathing."

Cyrus reached for me over Ziggy's body, tracing a line up my arm, over my shoulder, to my neck. He pulled me forward. I rose on my knees and braced my hands against the smooth, cold skin of his chest beneath his open shirt.

I heard Ziggy's blood moving faster and faster through his veins between us. I remembered the rich taste of his blood and my stomach growled. Another hunger sprang to life in me, an ache that grew as Cyrus pushed my hair aside. He pressed his mouth to my neck, grazing his teeth over the surface.

"I should have bitten you that night," he rasped, one hand moving to cup my breast. "I should have ripped your flesh with my teeth and fed from you, rather than flee like a coward. If only I could have silenced your screams so I could have taken my time."

I moaned, dropping my head back to give him fuller access. Memories of the attack washed over me, some his, some my own.

But now they were not horrific. Now, when I saw his hand twisted in my hair, saw myself kneeling and praying-had I prayed?- at his feet, the images were searing and erotic.

I reminded myself of the blood tie, of the control he had over me, but I didn't care. This wouldn't be something that happened to me. This would be something that I chose to do.

Ziggy groaned at our knees. Moving behind me, Cyrus eased me onto the bed so I lay beside the boy. With one arm draped over my waist, my sire leaned close to my ear and whispered, "Drink, Carrie."

And God, how I wanted to. But it was Ziggy. "If I do, will it kill him?"