bending under the pressure.
He couldnât break it. Impossâ
Like a whip, it snapped free as he charged across the room for the doorâthe door where she stood. As she stared in disbelief, the radiator trailed in his wake, destroying everything in its wildly sweeping path.
Suddenly, the underfloor web of attached heating pipes burst up through the floor, foot after foot of groaning metal and exploding marble and splinters.
The three men dove for him once more, the pile of them skidding to a stop right at her slippers.
She gaped. Her home, her beloved home. In fifteen minutes, the madman had wrought more destruction to Elancourt than it had sustained in the last eighty years.
Her hands fisted. Control it. But her hair had already begun to swirl about her face, rose petals floating in a tempest around her body. Outside, the wind kicked up, streaming through the holes in the high windows, sweeping the grit and dust until she was able to see all the destruction.
The marble! When her eyes watered with frustration, rain poured outside.
Tamp it down.
Too late. Lightning bombarded the house, illuminating the night like successive bomb blasts. From under the pile of men, Conrad yanked his head up at her.
In a flash, Néomi twisted round, sweeping her hair over her face as she dissipated. Reemerging on the landing, she gazed down at him.
Conrad continued to stare at the spot where sheâd stood, blinking and easing his struggles as if dumbfounded.
Had heâ¦had he possibly seen her?
No one ever had before. Ever. Sheâd been so uniformly ignored for so long that sheâd begun to wonder if she truly existed.
Up close, sheâd been able to see that the whites of his eyes wereâ¦red. Sheâd thought heâd been injured, with burst blood vessels shooting across, but in fact, they were wholly glazed with red.
What were these beings? Could they truly be⦠vampires ? Even in light of what sheâd become, she still struggled to believe in anything supernatural.
With a shake of his head, Conrad frenziedly renewed his flight for the door, gaining inches, even as the three wrestled with him.
âI didnât want to have to do this, Conrad!â Nikolai said, digging into his jacket pocket. As the others pinned Conrad, he bit the end off what appeared to be a syringe and injected its contents into Conradâs arm.
Whatever it was slowed him, making him blink his red eyes again and again.
âWhat did you give him?â Sebastian asked.
âItâs a concoction from the witchesâpart medical, part mystickal. It should knock him out.â
For how long would it knock Conrad out? How long were they expecting him to stay here? To spit across her floor and roar within her halls? Sheâd be damned if she allowed another of Louisâs ilk to taint her home once more! This Conrad was an animal. He should be put down. Or at the very least, put out .
Sheâd show these trespassers power like theyâd never seen, sweeping them into the yard like trash! Sheâd toss them by their feet all the way to the bayou! Néomi would demonstrate what happened when a ghost went poltergeistâ
âWhereâ¦is she?â Conrad grated between heaving breaths.
Néomi froze. He couldnât be talking about her, couldnât have seen her.
âWho, Conrad?â Nikolai demanded.
Just before the shot knocked him unconscious, he rasped, âFemale⦠beautiful. â
3
D awn had come and gone, and still Néomi was reeling. Because apparently Elancourt was filled to the rafters with real vampires.
Any lingering doubt had evaporated when sheâd seen the brothers vanish and reappear as theyâd gone about repairing parts of the house.
And this wasnât even the most astonishing development of the night. When Conrad had said, âFemaleâ¦beautiful,â had he possibly been talking about her?
Now she could only wait impatiently for him to
Hilda Newman and Tim Tate