Bound At Midnight

Chapter Three

The Voss estate was not what Sera had expected, she didn’t know exactly what she’d expected, something gothic and obvious, probably iron gates shaped like screaming faces, or gargoyles.

The kind of architectural overcompensation that old, powerful things sometimes indulged in to remind the world of what they were.

What she got was a three-story greek revival mansion on Esplanade Avenue, set back behind a wrought iron fence draped in Confederate jasmine, white blooms open in the dark like small quiet stars. The kind of house that appeared in architecture books.

The kind of house that had been standing so long it had become part of the city’s bones. Of course a six-hundred-year-old vampire would live somewhere that looked like old money and smelled like history.

She followed Lazarus through the front gate without touching it, her good hand curled at her side, her cut palm wrapped now in a strip of cloth she’d torn from her jacket lining. The bleeding had slowed but the magic was still humming under her skin , restless and unsettled, the way it always was when she was somewhere new and didn’t know all the exits.

The entrance hall was high-ceilinged and dimly lit, warm amber light from iron fixtures casting everything in gold and shadow, dark hardwood floors, a staircase that swept upward with quiet grandeur, old paintings on the wall, she could feel the age rolling off the canvas — and shelves of books that lined every wall she could see.

There were no curtains or chains, no skulls decorating the mantelpiece, just a house that felt like it had seen everything and forgotten more.

“Disappointed?” Lazarus said without turning around, he was already moving toward a room off the main hallway, unhurried, as though he’d already decided she would follow.

She followed, hating herself a little for it,

“Reserving judgment,” she said.

The room he led her into was a study, a fireplace on the far wall burned low and steady, two chairs faced each other across a dark wooden table and he gestured to one with a motion that was almost courteous — almost — before folding himself into the other with the particular economy of movement that very old vampires had, no wasted action, every motion was deliberate, but Sera did not sit.

She stood behind the chair and put both hands on the back of it and looked at him across the table. “Terms,” she said. “Let’s hear them.”

His grey eyes tracked her for a moment, the firelight turned them briefly amber, almost human, almost.

“The Ashen Order wants your blood for a ritual called the Eternal Rite.” He said, in a way someone would say the name of a thing they’ve been watching move through the world for a long time — with recognition and with gravity. “Are you familiar with it?”

The name moved through her like cold water.

She was, Maven had mentioned it once, years ago, in that way she had of mentioning dangerous things , indirectly and briefly, as though saying too much would make them more real. There is an old working, Sera.

Older than covens and older than covenants, it requires a bloodline of pure cast — the rarest kind, don’t ever let anyone test your blood.

She hadn’t understood then, she was beginning to understand now.

“Enough,” she said carefully.

“Then you know that if they complete it, every coven, every covenant, every pack in this country falls under the dominion of whoever performs it.” His jaw was tight, for the first time she saw something beneath the composure — not fear, exactly.

Lazarus Voss did not look like a man who feared things, but something adjacent to it, something cold and resolved. “The Voss Covenant falls, my people fall, and everything I have spent six centuries building gets handed to Silas Grey and his Order of fanatics.” He met her eyes, “That is not going to happen.”

“So this is about protecting your empire,” Sera said, “Not about protecting me.”

“It can be both.”

She searched his face, this time, he didn’t look away, whatever he was, she could say this — he wasn’t a liar.

She had a sense for liars; her magic had always been attuned to intention, to the small tells that the body gave when the mouth was being dishonest.

Lazarus Voss was the most controlled person she had ever stood in a room with, but underneath that control, the intention was clear.

He meant it.

She pulled out the chair and sat, “If I stay here,” she said slowly, “I need access to your library, i have research i’ve been building for ten years and i need resources that i don’t have.”

“Granted.”

“My friend Cressida Monroe — she’s part of my coven, she needs to know where I am.”

“She can be informed , she cannot come here, not until I’ve verified she hasn’t been compromised.”

Sera bristled but nodded, “Fine, and the binding word you gave me, it extends to your entire household, every vampire under this roof.”

Something crossed his face, an approval, perhaps.

The swift acknowledgment of someone who respected thoroughness “Agreed,” he said. He extended his hand across the table, pale and steady, “We have a deal, Miss Calloway.”

Sera looked at that hand for one long moment.

Then she reached out and took it.

The moment their skin met, the fire in the hearth surged, a sharp, bright flare of heat that lasted only a second before settling back down.

They both looked at it, either of them spoke, but Sera felt it — a vibration moving through her palm, through the cut that had not fully closed, her blood suddenly singing at a frequency she had never felt before, like recognition, like something ancient acknowledging something it had been waiting for a very long time to find.

She pulled her hand back and kept her face perfectly still.

And made a private, furious note to herself to ask Maven exactly what happened when blood magic made contact with the oldest vampire in North America.

First, however, she needed to survive the night.

A sound from the hallway outside stopped the thought cold, footsteps — and then a voice, male, bright with surprise:

“Brother You’re back early, and you’ve brought — “ A pause, the door opened and a man leaned in, dark-eyed and sharp-smiled, looking between them with undisguised delight. “Well. A witch.”

Lazarus didn’t turn around, “Dorian.”

“Don’t ‘Dorian’ me in that tone, this is the most interesting thing that’s happened in this house in thirty years.” The man — Dorian — grinned, wide and unguarded, a startling contrast to every ounce of his older brother’s energy, he looked at Sera directly. “I’m Dorian Voss. I’m the better-looking one.”

“You’re the younger one,” Lazarus said.

“Younger and better-looking.” He kept his eyes on Sera, and the grin softened into something more genuine. “Are you staying?”

“Apparently,” Sera said.

Dorian nodded slowly, like he was taking stock of something significant, then he turned to the hallway and called back down it, his voice dropping just enough to make the warmth drain from it entirely:

“Then somebody needs to tell her that Evangeline just arrived at the gate.”

The temperature in the room changed,

Lazarus was on his feet before Sera could track the movement.