Page 163 of Vampire's Choice
“To kill you and Lord Mason. One of our more well-heeled members fondly remembers the French Revolution. He had this reproduction made a couple years back and has been using it to finish off his food sources when he’s depleted them. He says it’s so they don’t suffer needlessly.” Grollner’s lips lifted in a grim smile. “But we all know that’s bullshit. He likes to use the damn thing. Likes its efficiency.”
“So you choose to use our children to achieve your objectives, instead of fighting us with honor.”
Grollner shrugged. “There’s too much emphasis on noble battles to the death. Different times call for different measures. We can return to the honorable ways afterward. No one calls a knight to exterminate rats.”
“Once you choose dishonor, there is no path back,” Jacob said quietly.
“A human’s opinion is worth nothing,” Grollner said to Lyssa, not deigning to look in Jacob’s direction. His smirk vanished, his lips tightening. “You have backup in the woods. Our friends say four of them. There’s a price for trickery, my lady.”
The vampire holding the lever on Farida shoved it to the halfway mark. The frame dropped like it was on greased rails.
With a roar of rage, Mason leaped forward. The bows came up, but Lyssa was faster. She put herself in his path, using a deftly wielded combination of strength and magic to hold the much larger male vampire at bay, though he snarled and his heels dug into the ground, trying to push past.
It took a moment before Lyssa’s murmured insistence, her restraining hands upon him, brought Mason back to himself, letting him see his daughter had not been impaled.
The frame had screeched to a stop, inches from the stakes. Even if Lyssa hadn’t tried to “trick” Grollner, there would have been some excuse concocted to do it, because he wanted them to see how rapidly the sentence could be carried out. To ensure obedience. Compliance.
Merc’s gaze narrowed. They had proven how rapidly it could happen.
Now he could calculate.
Lyssa glanced toward the forest and made a come out gesture.
“A wise decision, my lady. And impressive magic use. I thought we’d have the pleasure of seeing Lord Mason’s daughter weep after my vampires staked him with a half dozen arrows. Not as satisfying as the guillotine, but I wouldn’t want to lose any of my men to his pointless rage.”
Mason had regained control of himself, but his amber eyes on Grollner were the timer of a nuclear bomb, marking the seconds. His daughter’s rasping breaths as she controlled her own adrenaline surge punctuated the clearing. Merc suspected Mason felt every ragged breath as if it were cut glass in his own lungs.
Responding to Lyssa’s bidding, Maddock emerged from the south, Daegan and Gideon coming from the west. Merc slid out of his tree and moved into view on the eastern side of the camp. As Grollner examined all of them, Merc allowed a fog of his incubus power to roll out and drift through the campground, surrounding Grollner’s vampires. Getting their cocks hard, testing how open to distraction they were.
“A human sorcerer.” Grollner’s contempt toward Maddock was obvious. “A vampire warrior and his servant. And you…incubus.” His gaze flicked toward Merc. “Did you hope he could compel us to fuck each other to death, Lady Lyssa?”
“He’s a capable fighter,” Lyssa said, her expression flat.
“There’s nothing to fight. You could have left them at home.” Grollner was done with the preliminaries. His gaze latched onto Mason. “You first. Go to the guillotine, kneel and put your head into it. Lady Lyssa will follow.”
“You could have killed him on the island,” Lyssa said. “Why now?”
Grollner shrugged. “Our invisible friends wished to avoid being directly involved in the killing of a Council vampire.”
“They had no problem killing the owner of the island.”
“He was of low rank. Of no consequence.”
If Ruth had been here, Merc would have had to peel her off Grollner’s face. She would have come away with his clawed-out eyeballs in her clutched hands.
He thought of Mal’s love for his daughter, the straightforward intelligence and strength of the male. Of Elisa, the woman who’d nurtured Ruth and given her the courage to embrace her softer qualities, her submissive nature. Given him that gift.
Yes, someone was going to die here.
Grollner glanced back toward Mason. “Since we needed your blood, fresh, it was also important that you come to us, as you have done. The plan has had its hitching points, but it has succeeded.”
Lyssa’s lips thinned, but her jade eyes gleamed with a decisive light. “Your Fae allies can’t lie. It’s far easier to work around the question, ‘were you involved’ than ‘did you do it?’” She spat on the ground, an impressive act of contempt.
The Trad’s eyes glittered. “A distasteful alliance, but it was necessary to achieve our objective.”
Confirmed. Lyssa’s bluff had proven useful. Merc saw the brief flash of it in her gaze before it was gone. Too quick for Grollner to note it.
“And what is that objective?” she asked. “I’m sure you’ve practiced a speech about it to impress us.”