Invincible (A Centennial City Novel) (24 page)

But even he just shook his head. “I wish I knew. But I don’t. Vincent? Perhaps you would like to enlighten us?”

“Enlighten you?” he asked and then laughed softly. I wondered if they could hear us through the doors. “Enlighten you in what sort of way? Quite frankly, they are fascinated. And frightened. Not a particularly good combination in any sort of situation, I’m afraid to say. To be faced with such a anomaly that is protected by a member of an order with the sole purpose of exterminating our kind...can you understand why my people are...wary?”

A voice seeped through the cracks underneath the door and another hot wind pushed across my face, stinking of blood and something else, something that seemed not of this human world.

“We have been waiting for some time, Vincent. Do you seek to keep us waiting even longer?”

With a noncommittal shrug, he pulled the door open, letting in the faint candlelight that bespoke of presence of older vampires, the old ones who had, apparently, never warmed up to the idea of saving wax and relying on electricity like the rest of the world. “Do forgive us. We only thought to impress the importance of this meeting to our...guests.”

Someone snorted. “Guests? That’s only because they’re harder to kill than cockroaches.”

Jason smiled at me. “Cockroaches, they say. How do you like being called a pest?”

I matched him smile for smile. “That my prey would consider myself a nuisance merely means I am doing my job.”

Vincent gave me an odd glance. “Don’t misunderstand, hunter. Cockroaches are nothing but an insect. Stepping on one is no problem at all.”

I refused to feel cowed, opting to tilt my head up. “They say that if there is ever a nuclear war, the only things to survive are insects.”

His eyes narrowed. “A nuclear war. And is that how you think this will end?”

The threat was clear. “Isn’t that the end of everything?”

With a hand on my shoulder, Jason ushered me into the room that smelled thickly of metal and something else, something like flowers, incongruous with the smell of old blood.

The room was long, windows on both sides with a massive stone fireplace at the end, a large fire burning, although the heat did not seem to reach this close to the doors. The windows were covered in a heavy indigo damask curtains, none of them drawn, candles lit between each window.

The table filled a great deal of the room, chairs set at regular intervals, all of them occupied.

A man leaned forward, dressed like an actor with a large red tricorn hat and what appeared to be a parrot on one shoulder. The eyepatch on his left eye seemed laughably pretentious, but the darkness emanating from his body did not seem remotely hilarious. “You kept us waiting long enough.”

Vincent closed the door behind us and I felt the spot between my shoulder blades prickle almost insatiably. “My apologies. There were several things that needed to be said, that is all.”

The pirate leaned his chin on his one hand as he regarded us carefully. “So that’s him?”

Jason’s shoulders straightened as he pulled away from me. I wondered if it was intentional, this separation between us, as if to show that, above all, he stood alone. “I am of House Kumamoto. The Domina saw to my entrance personally.”

“Oh?” This time, a woman leaned into view, long dark hair pinned up in some elaborate fashion with long metallic sticks and ribbons strung between them. “And where is your Domina then? Did she run away because she was afraid?”

Vincent cleared his throat. “Annabelle? I would not speak further of Reiko’s involvement. We all know some...thing like him is completely up to chance. No one can dictate when something like our young
friend
here is brought over.”

The female vamp slapped a hand on the table and I watched a goblet fall further down the table, spilling a rich, dark liquid that I hoped was not blood. Still, what else could it have been? “Where is she? Why has she hidden herself from us then? It’s because she’s ashamed, Vincent, isn’t it? Are you trying to protect her?”

Jason took a step forward, drawing the entire attention of the table. “She is...indisposed at the moment.”

Annabelle hissed and her face turned paler, the skin stretched painfully thin over the delicate skull.

“You keep your mouth shut.”

He flinched and the skin split over one eyebrow, spilling a thin, almost dainty line of blood down his immobile face.

Involuntarily, my hand rushed up to the hilt straddling one shoulder. I had not even thought about it, but still my fingers clenched around the hilt and it drew the entire Committee’s attention on me.

Not the wisest move, unfortunately.

Annabelle’s eyes narrowed and she pushed herself out of her chair, fangs lengthening almost past her pointed chin. “Are you challenging me, human?”

My mouth went dry and I thought my heart would burst. “I seek only to protect my Master.”

Vincent drew in a deep breath. “Take your hand away from the sword. Slowly. Very slowly.”

I should have. But when I am pushed into a corner, I do not relinquish my position easily. “I cannot. Not until she sits down. Not until I can be assured of Jason’s safety.”

The pirate leaned back into view, a strange look on his face. I would have thought it was interest, but why he would have interest in me, I could not fathom. “How...novel! I thought she was of the Fellow...something or another. Aren’t they sworn to wipe us from the face of the earth or something like that?”

The pulse pounded almost unbearably loud in my mind. “We are.”

The parrot squawked and it made me jump a foot in the air. They saw it and I saw smiles on every face visible. They were not friendly smiles.

“Jumpy, are you?”

When in doubt, honesty is the best policy. “I’m not stupid. I know the chances of my survival here.”

“Fenrir, what are you getting at?” asked Vincent.

It must have been the pirate he referred to, for the man smoothed a hand down the parrot’s vibrant orange chest and leaned back, putting his feet up on the table. Of course, he wore boots. “I am just interested, Vincent. As are you. Reiko comes back to town after years and years of avoiding the rest of us, and that notoriously private little girl turns a human? Who then turns into a Sanguinate? Who then hires someone like that girl to be his Ailward? Am I the only one who finds all of this rather suspect?”

Annabelle sat back in her seat, her dark eyes on his and I let my hand drop slowly, degree by painful degree. “What are you getting at, you crazy man?”

The pirate’s eyes widened, comically so. “What if this were, quite simply, a coup?”

This created a flurry of activity in the room, and not one Vincent liked, judging from the way he cursed under his breath.

Someone sitting at the far end of the table held up a hand for attention. He got it, although it took some time. I thought it strange, almost polite his method of wanting the voice and eyes of those who sat at the table. “Fenrir, you are basing everything simply on speculation. Are you merely being dramatic?”

The pirate grinned. “You know me all too well.” Then, the smile faded away, replaced by an empty expression I trusted even less. “But that doesn’t change the fact there is something going on that hasn’t happened in a very long time. When was the last time we had a Sanguinate before us?”

Glasses glinted in the flickering candlelight as he placed folded hands in front of him on the table. I blinked. When was the last time I saw glasses on a vampire? “Almost a hundred years ago. But he was far gone. There was nothing we could do, nothing left in him to reason with. A hundred years ago, we had a monster on our hands. And that is why we have hunted them, haven’t we? For they were nothing but ravaging beasts. We, who have always prided ourselves on our dignity,” at this Annabelle snorted and he ignored, “had a monster that could not be quelled. So we hunted it down. And we killed it. That is the way a Sanguinate has always been. But look at the man standing there. Does he look like a slavering monster?”

All eyes turned to Jason who merely returned it with a tilt of his lips. He held out his arms to his sides and turned a slow circle. “The last time I drooled, I think I was two.”

No one laughed and the one with the glasses stood up. Dressed in a simple white dress shirt and dark pants, he looked the most normal out of everyone there, although his hair, straight and shoulder-length was beautiful as each strand seemed to glimmer like spun gold. “This man is of no threat to us.”

Vincent cleared his throat. “As much as I would like to agree with you, I’m afraid I cannot. He turned Vivienne’s throat into dog food. What he did to her throat...had Ryder and his Ailward not stopped him in time, he would have consumed her whole, Noir.”

Noir.

I felt like someone had slapped me across the face.

Next to me, I felt Jason stiffen.

“Don’t do it,” he whispered. “You’d never make it.”

And indeed, the thought had occurred to me. Conceivably, I could jump upon the table, dash down the long length, and bury my sword into his heart in less than five seconds.

Were he human, perhaps I could have killed him.

But he was not.

Still, I had little doubt this man was the one the Fellowship sought to eliminate. It seemed true, the fact that he seemed more civilized, perhaps even weaker than the other three Lords of the City, but watching him argue with Annabelle for the life of my Master, I realized only a fool could possibly mistake civility for weakness.

Someone sitting at the far end of the table stood up and it was not like how Noir had gained his turn at the conference. This one merely stood up and it was as though all sound had been sucked from the room.

You could have heard flowers bloom in the silence that issued from his acknowledged presence.

And when he spoke, it was with a low twang, an accent that put him south of Illinois, very much south. Perhaps Texas or Louisiana? I admit to a certain lack of knowledge in that area of the world.

“And while we sit here arguing for one’s life,” he said and leaned forward on his palms flat on the scarred, wooden table that seemed to weight a thousand pounds. “Did it not occur to any of you to think of the one standing next to him?”

All heads swiveled, as though on command, to Jason, and the person standing to his side.

Me.

So this was what it felt like, to be the snake in the eyes of a mongoose, the mouse in front of the cat, the prey before the hunter.

I felt as though I could choke on the thick, stifling air.

He pushed his seat back and proceeded to walk around the table. Towards me. I prayed he would keep his distance for even from this far away, I could smell his power, could smell the ages drifting from his body like the bouquet of the finest wine.

Even Vincent seemed to pale next to this individual who wore a dark coat buttoned to his chin, who kept his hair tied back mercilessly, not a single strand out of place.

“I find it rather interesting that she could stand there, and stay there for so long.”

Ryder spoke up, although his voice sounded quiet, which seemed unlike him. Was it respect or fear that kept his voice so low? “She lost it in the hallway.”

The stranger smirked. “Just once?”

Vincent stepped closer to me. For my protection? “Just once. What are you proposing, Matthias?”

He turned his head to one side and I saw a thin scar stretching from his temple almost to his jawline. Considering how well vampires healed from injuries, I found it interesting that he carried a scar. What sort of blow, what sort of weapon could have caused such a wound that even a vampire could not heal from?

But mercifully, he stopped behind Annabelle, more than half a table away and I let out a slow breath. Would that he not come any closer...

“We are all strong, aren’t we?” he asked in an almost casual voice, as though conversing about the weather or whatever vampires considered the mundane and ordinary. “Because we are old, because we are strong, we have formed this Committee here in America. I think it would not be a lie to say we are the Elders here, would it?”

Noir peered at him over the turned heads. “What are you getting at?”

He pointed at me and my skin felt as though it would jump off my muscles and scurry down some dark hole where it could possibly hide for the next century or so, however long it took for these monsters to forget about my very existence. “Vincent, I think you know what I’m talking about.”

The vampire in question sighed heavily. “I wish I didn’t. But I do. And I fear it will only mean her death.”

Jason drew in a sharp breath and abruptly stood in front of me, shielding me, hiding me. “What are you talking about?”

Annabelle laughed, a sharp, strident sound that reminded me of a bucket of glass being shook frenetically. “Well, well, well. How astute of you, to point such things out, Matthias. You always were the shadow behind the throne, weren’t you?”

“That she is with a Sanguinate, only make this situation even stranger,” he said mildly.

Vincent looked at me with what seemed to be regret in his bright eyes. “Even if we could have saved your Master, I’m afraid you have doomed yourself.”