He couldn't break it. Imposs -
Like a whip, it snapped free as he charged across the room for the door - the 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 she'd stood, blinking and easing his struggles as if dumbfounded.
Had he... had he possibly seen her?
No one ever had before. Ever. She'd been so uniformly ignored for so long that she'd begun to wonder if she truly existed.
Up close, she'd been able to see that the whites of his eyes were... red. She'd thought he'd 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 she'd 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.
"I didn't want to have to do this, Conrad!" 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 Conrad's arm.
Whatever it was slowed him, making him blink his red eyes again and again.
"What did you give him?" Sebastian asked.
"It's a concoction from the witches - part medical, part mystickal. It should knock him out."
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? She'd be damned if she allowed another of Louis's ilk to taint her home once more! This Conrad was an animal. He should be put down. Or at the very least, put out.
She'd show these trespassers power like they'd never seen, sweeping them into the yard like trash! She'd toss them by their feet all the way to the bayou! Néomi would demonstrate what happened when a ghost went poltergeist -
"Where... is she?" Conrad grated between heaving breaths.
Néomi froze. He couldn't be talking about her, couldn't have seen her.
"Who, Conrad?" Nikolai demanded.
Just before the shot knocked him unconscious, he rasped, "Female... beautiful."
3
Dawn 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 she'd seen the brothers vanish and reappear as they'd gone about repairing parts of the house.
And this wasn't even the most astonishing development of the night. When Conrad had said, "Female... beautiful," had he possibly been talking about her?
Now she could only wait impatiently for him to regain consciousness so she could find out.
He remained as the brothers had left him last night - lying on the new mattress they'd brought in for him, with his wrists chained together behind him, his muddy boots and the ankle restraints removed. His ripped clothing had dried, the material stiff with dirt. The angry red gashes on his chest had healed within mere hours.
She floated in a sitting position above the foot of the bed wondering how much longer he would be out. She'd thought all vampires would be comatose during the day, but his brothers were in and out downstairs, busily teleporting goods into the manor.
This waiting was unbearable. Because he possibly... saw me. Yes, no one ever had before, and, yes, this development was based solely on the idea that he'd deemed her beautiful. Maybe if he wasn't one to quibble about pink cheeks and the appearance of blooming health... ?
Néomi didn't necessarily seek an acknowledgment of her presence. She could float a sheet spray-painted with "Bonjour! from le spectre!" if she wanted bad attention, or a possible exorcism. No, she wanted to be seen. She yearned to converse.
The possibility of this meant that all her grand plans to evict them had evaporated, her rancor over the damage to Elancourt temporarily soothed. Now she wanted to keep them close - especially Conrad.
Curiosity ruled her. Why after eighty years of sporadic tenants had the blood-spitting vampire been able to see her? Why not his brothers? When they'd been chaining up Conrad for the day, she'd waved her hands, yelling as loud as she could. She'd even thrown herself through their torsos, to no effect.
Was Conrad able to see her because he alone had red eyes?
She stood to float from one peeling blue wall to the other. The brothers had unerringly chosen for Conrad the Blue Room, the most masculine of all the guest rooms. The heavy curtains were a deep navy, and the spare pieces of furniture - the bedstead, the nightstand, and a high-backed chair by the fireplace - were dark and stout.