As Shadows Fade Read Free Page A

she added coyly, looking at her beau, who was eyeing her from across the room, “Jellington has already proposed to me. Six times.”
    Victoria gaped at her. “Why on earth haven’t you accepted? We could be planning your wedding.”
    Melly tapped Victoria lightly with her folded fan. “But it’s so much more fun to plan yours, my dear. What about Mr. Killington? You already have a title, and he—”
    â€œHas no hair, and breath so bad I’d swear it’s rotting his teeth. No, thank you, Mother,” Victoria replied, back to the formality.
    â€œYou aren’t serious about that Monsieur Vioget, are you? He hasn’t asked you to marry him, has he?” Melly’s horror had gone from dying her hair green to shaving it all off and dashing through Almack’s naked.
    â€œAs a matter of fact, he has,” Victoria said breezily. “Excuse me, Mother. I think I see…” And she let her voice trail off as she hurried away, grinning at her mother’s dismay.
    To be fair, Sebastian hadn’t actually asked her to marry him. But that didn’t bother Victoria one whit. After what had happened with Phillip, who, like most of London, had been unaware vampires existed— let alone of his wife’s calling as a Venator—Victoria realized that she would never marry again. She couldn’t put someone she loved in danger as she had done to Phillip—although men like Sebastian and Max were already in danger by virtue of who they were.
    Just as she was.
    But she’d also recently realized that, as Summa Gardella and the last of the direct line from Gardeleus—the first Venator—it was incumbent upon her to continue that direct lineage. Certainly, there were far-flung branches of the Gardella family throughout the world, where Venators born to the family legacy were called…but the most powerful of them, and the leader of the vampire hunters, descended only from the direct line. Aunt Eustacia and her brother, Victoria’s grandfather, had been the last two directly descended Venators. But he had declined the legacy, passing his powers on to Lady Melly, who had also chosen not to be a Venator, and who now lived in blissful ignorance of the undead.
    Victoria had received two generations’ worth of Venator skills, and now that Aunt Eustacia was gone, there was only Victoria.
    â€œWhy, Victoria, how lovely you look tonight!” exclaimed Duchess Winnie.
    Victoria blinked, wondering why she hadn’t noticed her before nearly running into her, for the duchess had chosen a frock in a bright tangerine hue. It blazed like a beacon among the softer pinks and blues and greens of the other attendees.
    And right smack in the middle of the duchess’s massive bosom was an equally massive silver cross.
    Victoria stared at the pendant. She knew the duchess had been known to carry garlic and to wear crosses in an effort to stave off potential vampire attacks, but this was absurd. Duchess Winnie, like the rest of London Society, didn’t know the undead even existed beyond the fertile imagination of John Polidori. His story, The Vampyre, had taken London by storm a few years ago, and from that had evolved the fashionable superstition of vampires.
    Little did most of London know that vampires weren’t like the mysterious, elegant Lord Ruthven portrayed in Polidori’s work, but bloodthirsty demons who tore into humans with no remorse. Victoria had seen the remnants of vampire attacks, and it wasn’t pretty.
    â€œThat is a lovely cross,” she ventured to the duchess.
    Winnie clapped her hand over the ornament. “I’m taking no chances,” she said in a low voice, her row of chins wobbling as she looked over the guests. She leaned closer to Victoria, bringing with her a subtle whiff of…garlic. Tinged with hyacinth. “The rumors about Rockley’s disappearance claim it was a vampire that took him. If the