Authors: Anthony Francis
Cinnamon looked like she’d swallowed a prune. “Do I gots to stay there?”
“Maybe. Maybe you’ll have to go back to the Palmottis, maybe not. I’m just hoping that you exercising your legal right to asylum will neutralize the effects of Mister Palmotti’s missing persons report, at least as far as our case is concerned.”
“Fuck!” Cinnamon said, then bit her lip. “I made things worse, didn’t I?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Let’s go make things better.”
Cinnamon and Tully rode with me all the way to the Vampire Consulate, Tully barely hanging on to the back of the Vespa. I don’t know how we didn’t get pulled over—two fugitives, another minor, and only one helmet between us. But we kept to surface streets, and eventually made it to Auburn Avenue, where we found the deconsecrated church that was the Lady Saffron’s home—and the old Victorian that held the Consulate offices.
“This is stupid,” Tully said, wavering. “We don’t needs to do this.”
“Yeah,” Cinnamon said slowly, looking at him for support. “Maybe we can—”
“No,” I said firmly, hopping off the scooter. “Pep talk’s over. You’re a missing person. I’m wanted by the police. Technically, I’m not even allowed to see you, and if I’m seen
with
you it will get you into trouble. So. We’re going into the Consulate, where you legitimately have the right to claim protection, and where Mister Palmotti can pick you up.”
They looked at me, uneasily, and I glared. “Cinnamon, I love you, and Tully, I can tell you love her, but the two of you don’t know how much trouble you’ve made,” I said. “Now let’s go inside and hope that between Saffron and Ellis and Lee, we can sort this all out.”
—
I took two steps across the street—then the Victorian
exploded
.
A flash of heat against my face. Purple flashbulbs dancing before my eyes. My body flying through the air and impacting the pavement, skull cracking against the curb. The squeal of tires, Cinnamon’s screams, Tully’s cries, rough voices shouting. I started to lift my head, opened my eyes—and saw the heel of a boot slam down into my face.
Ow.
When I came to, I was sitting in a long, low chair, in an elegant dressing room done all in yellow and sepia, like a picture in a faded newspaper. At first I thought something was wrong with my vision; then I saw a blue egg on the desk beside me, and picked it up.
The glass felt reassuringly heavy in my hand, very real, at the same time it held dreamy sweeps of subtle color. In the light it shifted from blue to purple to red, and I could see it was dotted with little white and yellow bubbles.
Clearly, nothing was wrong with my color vision, and I set it down on the table. It was the lampshade that was yellow glass; that, the drapes, the wallpaper, and the
pictures
—old newspapers, aging photographs, lithographs, pages of ancient books.
“Welcome back, envoy of the House Beyond Sleep.”
I looked over to see a man, all in black, sitting on an ottoman, hunched like a vulture, staring at me. His suit was exquisite. The gleaming tourbillion watch on his wrist looked more pricey than my dead car. His cropped black hair was styled into thin frosted spikes. He ground a toothpick between perfect human teeth—but his eyes were dead black points.
“I’d say back to the land of the living,” he said, hands parting briefly, then clasping back together in a wringing motion that made him look even more like a vulture. “But, you know.”
I glanced around me, then at myself: my feet were actually propped up on an ottoman like the one he sat on. Groaning, I tucked my legs down and kicked the ottoman forward so I could sit up. As I did so, the chain holding Transomnia’s pendant bounced against my chest.
“Good eye,” I said, staring down at it. “You or your men.”
“Or women,” he said, flat and uninterested. “Sexism in such a day and age.”
“Yeah, yeah, if you do have any women working for you thugs, I’ll apologize in person,” I said, feeling my face. I was sore, but not too bruised, and I felt back to find not one but two tender, swelling lumps on the back of my head. “We marking time until I’m conscious?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m conscious. Where’s Cinnamon?”
“Safe, though a little better off than her wolf cub,” Velazquez said, standing briskly. A bit of metal flashed inside the coat as he did so, something nasty in a shoulder holster. His hunched posture had hidden the weapon while keeping it in easy reach. “Can you stand?”
“What do you mean, better off than—ow,” I said, wincing. “Was he hurt—”
“He’s fine … for now,” Velasquez said firmly. “Sorry about the boot,
Lady
Frost. You did a good job going to ground; bandana-and-biker jacket doesn’t fit your description. If you hadn’t wandered into our little trap—”
“Trap—the
Consulate?
” I said, struggling to stand. “You blew it up to get to
me?
”
“Overkill, I know,” he said, spreading his hands. “But we’re tired of dicking around with you folk, and my mistress seemed to think you would be easier to capture if … disoriented.”
“I think that building was on the register,” I said, wincing. “You
bastard.
”
“The name’s Velazquez,” he said.
“You get everyone out before you blew it up,
Velasquez?
” I said, rubbing my head. He shrugged, and I cursed. “Then I’ll still keep calling you
bastard.
Who was still in there?”
“I didn’t take attendance,” Velasquez said, still flat. “You have a problem with our methods, take it up with the Lady Scara. I’m just your escort, envoy. Can you stand?”
I stood up and my head was whirling, and not just with dizziness: what had happened to Cinnamon, to Tully, to everyone in the Consulate? I swayed a little, and he stepped forward to steady me. I towered over him. He couldn’t be over five-six, but when he checked me out it was more of an appreciative glance than an ‘oh shit you’re tall,’ which I liked.
“You,” Velasquez said, “are in the court of Sir Leopold, vampire lord of Atlanta.”
“Lord Delancaster is the vampire lord of Atlanta,” I said.
“Only in his mind,” Velasquez said. “And on TV. The real power in Atlanta isn’t Lord Delancaster or his puppet queen at the Consulate. It’s Sir Leopold, and the Gentry.”
The Gentry.
Ever since this started, Saffron had been talking about static from the Gentry, and Calaphase had filled in the details—wealthy, ancient vampires who saw humans as little more than food. I even had a list of the Gentry vampires who had died. They were mad enough to have caused trouble at Cinnamon’s school just because she wore Saffron’s collar. They had a real stake in this—and yet I hadn’t given them any real thought. Why?
With a certain degree of horror, I realized that after I’d heard Calaphase call them old-school, I’d dismissed the Gentry as conservative yahoos who should get with the times—stupid of me, for two reasons. First, I should have learned from dating Philip that people were more than just the political (R) or (D) after their names—I should have made them allies in this fight.
And second … old-school implied forgotten knowledge: the precise kind of knowledge that I had looked for but Doug had dismissed. Could the
Gentry
be the source of the graffiti’s magic? It seemed unlikely, but regardless, forgotten knowledge was incredibly dangerous when the group kicking it consisted of people who’d lived forever and accumulated power for centuries. Against a two thousand year old undead Emperor Nero, me and Rush Limbaugh would be fighting on the same side. That thought scared me more than even the Gentry.
“—so Sir Leopold has eagerly awaited an audience with you,” Velasquez was saying. “And, as it turns out, he’s also curious about an envoy of a House of vampires he has never heard of. It’s best not to keep him waiting when he’s eager or curious. Let’s go.”
He motioned to the door. Suddenly I was remembering how many other vampires—Saffron, Calaphase, even Transomnia and Nyissa—had dropped nasty hints about the Gentry, and I
really
didn’t want to go through that door. “You first,” I said. “Lead the way.”
“Don’t get cute,” Velasquez said. “Move it.”
“Look,” I said, kneading my brow, not precisely stalling for time but gathering my thoughts. “First, do I have any weapons? You searched me, right?”
The toothpick whirled in his mouth. “You’re unarmed.”
“I knew you felt me up,” I said, and the toothpick twitched as his mouth quirked in a smile. “
Busted
. So I’m not a threat to your bosses. Second, do you have magic bullets?”
The toothpick stopped, but only for a second. “Silver hollow points,” he said slowly. “Dipped in wolfsbane.”
“Feh,” I said, folding my arms. “Not a threat. You know kung fu, or box, or anything?”
Velasquez shifted slightly, in a way which somehow, indefinably, made him more menacing. “Do you really want to get shot, Miss Frost?”
I stared at him coolly. “No, but I have been, twice recently, and here I still stand. So we’re both effectively unarmed, and I’ve got fifty pounds, six inches of reach and two different martial arts up on you. Lead the way, sweet cheeks.”
He laughed. “You think you can actually stop bullets?”
“Oh, this damn conversation again,” I said, slipping my hands into my jacket pockets and casually letting out my breath to activate my shield. “
Phooo
, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can stop bullets. I could even show
you
how, though it takes years of training and a
shitload
of magic tattoos.”
“Huh,” he said, the toothpick twirling. “I may take you up on that.”
“Dial the Rogue Unicorn, ask for Dakota Frost,” I said.
“You are unreal,” Velasquez said—and then he smiled grimly. “And it
would
be a big fucking insult for an envoy to go in unannounced—and Sir Leopold definitely wants me to announce you as an envoy. Time to face the music,
Lady
Frost.”
He opened the door on a room the size of a small banquet hall, with heavy stone walls and flickering gas lights. Someone had tried to add a civilizing touch—there were long yellowed curtains and brown tapestries, and even the huge wooden beams across the ceiling added to the sepia tones—but the huge stone blocks left an unmistakable impression of
fortress
.
Then my vision focused on the people in the room, and I stopped short, trying to grok what I saw. In that moment of speechlessness, Velasquez introduced me. “Lords and Ladies of the Gentry,” he said, “it is my pleasure to present the Lady Frost, Envoy of the House Beyond Sleep.” When he finished, I started forward, alternately enraged and horrified.
They looked like giant art pieces: two huge wine bottles wrapped in blood red cloth, each standing beneath a giant ice pick. Then the cloth twitched, and the scale shifted in my eyes. They were man-sized cages shrouded in red curtains, standing beneath huge metal spikes.
The curtains twitched again: someone was inside each cage. My gaze lifted from the hidden prisoners to the cruel metal spikes, each taller than a man and thick as my wrist. Atop the spikes were
massive
stone weights, dangling precariously from single ropes rising to the rafters.
Those thin ropes each led to a winch on either side of the hall, each guarded by a black-suited man. A simple pull of a lever would end the life of whoever was imprisoned within—and then the stones could be winched back up for the next victim.
Between the execution cages, steps led up a raised dais towards three thrones. Lord Delancaster sat regally to the left of the center throne, blond tresses flowing down behind him. Cinnamon sat on the right, visibly trembling, head snapping periodically.
A black-suited man stood behind her, silver-quarreled crossbow at the ready. Behind Lord Delancaster, a similar black-suited woman stood, wooden stake in her crossbow. On the center of the dais, Tully lay bleeding, bound in silver barbed wire, between a tall white man and a short black woman—both in formal dress, both pale for their race—and both eyeing his blood.
Physically dominating the center of the room was a massive freestanding chunk of wall like the one at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, ensconced within a magic circle. But dominating my attention was a flaming coffin—and standing before it, a withered vampire lord. But the fires rippling up behind him were not yellow and natural: they were artistic, rainbow graffiti flames.
Oh,
shit.
The Gentry
was
in control of the graffiti.
The lord of the hall was all that I imagined a vampire would
really
be like. His skin was white as bone, infinitely wrinkled, almost corrugated, and yet so gaunt his features were little more than a skull. His ears were huge, misshapen, at once batlike and distorted as a cauliflower; his nose was a huge, hawkish beak that came down almost to his lip, a thin excuse that peeled back over a massive set of fangs, half piranha, half Rottweiler. Black rivulets of hair were slicked back over his nearly bald dome; beneath his wrinkled brow, two caterpillar eyebrows guarded the pits of his eyes, and their twin points of white flame.
When he moved, he crackled, like the rustling of aged newspaper or the cracking of an old book’s spine. I
knew
this condition—I
had
read Saffron’s paper. His human cells had been completely consumed by the vampiric fungus: he was
truly
undead, a lich.
The lich walked the length of the black enameled coffin, lit eerily by the wall of rainbow fire roiling up behind him, then he turned to me, bony claws clasped before him, voice a breathy hiss. “So … Dakota Frost,” he said. “The black widow wanders into our web at last.”
“Excuse me?” I said, baffled. I had not expected that. “Black
what?
”
The lich’s burning eyes bored into me, an odd amusement spreading over his face. “Surely you know the term—a lethal lover,” he said. “You
are
Dakota Frost, in public the paramour of the so-called queen of the vampires—and in secret, I’m told, her slayer.”