“That’s for every year you were gone,” D growled, bending near her ear. She kicked and screamed, fighting him, but he held her fast, immovable and ironfisted, trapping both her hands in one of his, leaning his weight onto her back with his forearm.

Then he spanked her another three times. Her scream of outrage was drowned by the delighted, uproarious cheers of the spectators.

“That’s for calling me a liar, a murderer, and a traitor.”

Her cheeks burned molten hot. She couldn’t get away, she was at his complete mercy—

He spanked her again, three more hard, humiliating times, then lifted her up, took her in his arms, and said, “And that’s for the next three things you’re going to do that will annoy the hell out of me.”

Then he pulled her against him and kissed her again, in full view of everyone, his hands in her hair and his mouth hot on hers and a low purr of pleasure rumbling deep in his chest.

“Not cool,” Alexi said from somewhere nearby. “So not cool.”

She came to her senses and shoved him away just as the crowd broke suddenly apart and began a wild, careening stampede toward the numerous shadowed tunnels that led out of New Harmony.

“Cataflics!” someone shouted, pushing by.

Police.

Eliana leapt to her feet and bounded away, flashing through the crowd, using the chaos to her advantage to duck into a low access tunnel that was rarely used because of the treacherous, unmarked pits that would suddenly appear in the uneven floor, plunging down into darkness.

She knew without looking that Demetrius followed not far behind.

The prostitute was a blonde, as Silas promised, but not his favorite blonde, the one who screamed with such beautiful abandon, the one whose milky pale skin welted to the perfect berry pink, bruised to the most gorgeous mottled purple.

She wasn’t his favorite, no. She wasn’t young, or pretty, or thin.

She wasn’t moving at the moment, either.

Standing at the end of the bed fully dressed, Caesar regarded her in the bleak fluorescent light of the bedside lamp. She lay facedown on the stained and rumpled coverlet, spread-eagle, naked.

He cocked his head, inspecting her with the cold, clinical calculation of a collector, of a connoisseur. There was good naked and bad naked and everything in between, but the worst was ugly naked, the kind where even a hospital nurse, used to seeing people steeped in shit and blood and vomit, would recoil.

This bitch was definitely ugly naked.

Angry red ligature marks marred her wrists and her ankles from where he’d bound her, and a splatter of blood decorated the fleshy, dimpled arch of her hip. Her back was dusted with freckles, soft as a sifting of cinnamon against her pasty skin. Her lank yellow hair—thin, he hated thin hair—lay in limp strands across the pillow and her face, hiding her eyes. Open? Closed? It didn’t matter. He didn’t want to see her eyes, anyway. He always liked to cover their eyes; it was only their screams he wanted.

This thin-haired whore had given those to him in spades. The plastic ball gag he’d cinched around her mouth and neck had done little to muffle them.

The hotel room was in the red-light district on the outskirts of Montmartre, seedy and glum, visited by a certain caliber of men who moved furtively through shadows, scurrying like rats. It reeked of sweat and piss and cigarette smoke, of pain and desperation. It was all Caesar could do to block it out. At times like these he cursed his heightened senses, one of the few differences between himself and those ratlike men.

Perhaps the only difference, if truth be told.

He lifted his foot and gave the lumpy mattress a sharp kick. The whore didn’t react, didn’t make a sound, just rolled slightly with the bed and then settled back a little too quickly to heavy, unnatural stillness. Her skin was beginning to show the faintest tinge of gray. Outside in the parking lot, unseen beyond the drawn drapes, someone screamed something unintelligible and slammed a car door. Off in the distance, a dog barked three times.

Yellow hair. Gods, he hated her hair.

Folded on an old rattan chair against a wall stained and peeling was a blanket, threadbare, patchy, and plain. Caesar spied it and allowed his gaze to linger, arrested, appreciating the only thing of beauty in the room. The color of it. The beautiful, saturated hue.

Indigo. He’d never really realized how beautiful that particular shade of blue was before.

His mouth watered. Another erection—much firmer than the one he’d inflicted on the whore—stirred to life in his pants.

Slowly, enjoying the anticipation, lust and rage simmering in his blood like a rising fever, Caesar crossed from the bed to the chair against the wall. He took up the blanket in his hands. He pressed it to his nose, his lips. He moved to the bed, where he stood over the dead prostitute and looked down at her, repulsed. But once he’d carefully arranged the blanket over her head—blocking out her face, her eyes, her ugly yellow hair, everything personal about her—he felt better.

He felt right.

He returned to his place at the foot of the bed and admired his handiwork.

He imagined the blue blanket wasn’t a blanket at all, but hair. Hair so thick and dark and lovely it could never be rendered plain by an indifferent cut, an inexperienced dye job.

Hair so midnight blue it mimicked the heavens and should be crowned with stars.

Hair like…his sister’s.

Mouth watering, heart pounding in his chest, Caesar began, slowly, to work open the buckle of his belt.

“Everything is arranged for the meeting?”

The man in the fedora inclined his head, murmured respectfully, “Ita, domine meus.”

Yes, my lord. How Silas loved the unchanging ways of the Church. Everyone spoke Latin, no one questioned authority, underlings knew their place. He’d refused to speak Latin since he’d left the Roman catacombs, but he supposed he could bend that rule today, this being a special occasion.

After all, it wasn’t every day you arranged to meet the pope.

“Excellens,” he answered, and the man in the fedora smiled.

Their meeting place was a tiny café with strong espresso, surly waitstaff, and an excellent view of the Place du Tertre, a cobblestoned square ringed by small shops topped with tidy red awnings. Strung through the bare branches of trees all around were tiny blue lights, and sparkling white along curbs and windowsills was a confectioner’s dusting of snow. In spite of the hour and the dropping temperature, the square still buzzed with shoppers and diners and row after row of artists with easels, hawking portraits to all the tourists. This close to Christmas everything stayed open late.

To the slight, smiling man in the fedora and cloak sitting across from him at the scrolled iron café table, Silas said, “The timing is very important. Just before his Christmas morning speech would be ideal. We won’t keep His Holiness long, of course. He has so many important matters to attend to that day.”

Silas sent a little nudge along with these words, a hint of agreeability that had the man nodding.

“Il papa is eager to meet you, domine meus. He had only the highest respect for your predecessor, and he knows the work you do is necessary to our Mother the Church. To keep her safe from the evil that would prevail were we not so vigilant.” His face darkened. “These devils are everywhere these days.”

Oh, he really had no idea. Silas had to work hard to keep a straight face. “Give the cardinal my warm regards, will you? Please thank him for arranging the meeting and for his service. He will be rewarded handsomely for his loyalty. As will you all.”