Two months ago there had been eight clans, divided into two groups according to clan affiliation, and a stable power structure. Then a few vamps wanted more of the pie for themselves and there had been a mini war—short, bloody, and decisive. Now there were four clans: Pellissier, Laurent, Bouvier, and Arceneau. The other vamps had either merged under a surviving clan or they were dead. Or in hiding and plotting a coup, if you believed the gossips, which I did. Only Clan Pellissier had any real power, the others were under Leo’s thumb. Or his fang. Pick an analogy.
Wrassler touched his earpiece and handed one to me. “We have guests.” The vamps had started to arrive. Without seeming to hurry, but with a lot of speed just the same, Wrassler and I left the electronic security monitoring system in the hands of V. Angel’s Tit and one of Wrassler’s ladies, a whip-thin, older woman built like a stiletto and with a tongue just as sharp. I placed my earpiece in and dropped the mike to my chin, hiding the receiver under the little cape next to the handgun as we reached the ballroom.
Neither Bruiser nor Leo was in sight. Right. In vamp politics Leo would be last to arrive, before the were-guests. I checked the ballroom one last time. It was ornate in a style all its own, a sort of colonial Moorish mix, with pointed arches and domed ceilings high overhead, held up with fluted columns painted with gilt. There were stained-glass insets in many of the domes, illuminated by artificial lights. No sunlight had ever been in this room, or in any of the council house rooms used by the vamps themselves.
Underfoot, the carpets were so rich my feet sank into them with each step, and where the carpets stopped was pink marble flooring, smooth as the inside of a pearl. Linen-draped tables and side chairs circled the walls, furniture that belonged in museums. Curio cabinets filled with exquisite objets d’art, interesting historical and archeological items donated by vamps, and the macabre, like the shrunken heads and human-skull drinking cups, handmade items of tribal life: flutes, stone hammers, small pieces of pottery that had been shaped without a potter’s wheel and fired in open fires, the unglazed sides charred with smoke in unusual patterns. Bouquets were everywhere, and the smell of roses and aromatic lilies and jasmine pervaded the air.
There was gold-plated serving ware and utensils, nothing silver to harm the vamps or weres. Tables laden with cheeses, fish, a dozen meats, and a boatload of tropical fruit sliced into bouquets were set up for the human servants, with an alcohol bar and a cute bartender blood-servant dressed in a red tux. The food smelled wonderful and my stomach growled. Evangelina’s steak was long gone, but I had a lot of work to do before I could get that sandwich waiting for me in the greenroom.
All the servers brought in by the caterer had been vetted and body-searched, and armed blood-servants loyal to Leo were stationed everywhere throughout the building. The media types were in place, cameras in three strategic places in the ballroom. The color girl—a reporter who would gather sound bites from the guests—and the on-air reporter were in place. The makeup guy—I had expected a girl and it felt odd to recognize my sexist tendencies—had commandeered a corner in the greenroom.
There was no blood bar with willing blood-slaves set up behind a curtain to provide the vamp partygoers their dinners, not with press present. Leo had made the proclamation: feed before you show. There were a thousand things that could go wrong tonight, but the smell of blood in the presence of two predator species wasn’t going to be one of them. The place was as safe and secure as I could make it. Still, the blood thrummed through my veins when the doors opened and the first vamps walked in.
Clan Laurent was this first arrival, meaning they got the best places for their scions and blood-servants, but this also put them at the bottom of the pecking order among the clans. That vamp one-upmanship stuff wasn’t my department. Bettina, clan master, entered alone, the petite woman standing in the doorway like a runway model. Bettina had once been clan master of Rousseau, but was taken down by rivals within her clan, not according to vamp law, in personal sanctioned combat, but outside proper channels. Gossip claimed that when her clan was disbanded, Bettina survived and called the sire of Clan Laurent to personal combat. She won, and Clan Laurent survived.
Bettina was an exquisite woman with mixed-race heritage, mostly African and European, and once she had been so sensual that lust wafted off her like steam above a volcano. Now, she was colder, more introverted, and when her eyes flashed fire, it was the fire of anger, not sex. Her heir and two other master vamps stepped to her from either side in choreographed pacing. They moved into the room, their blood-servants behind them, two blood-servants per vamp, the number allowed by Leo. The stink of vamp was swept up by the air conditioner and filled the room, smelling like dried herbs and fresh blood, the way an old-fashioned herb shop might smell if someone slit a human’s throat in it. The first twelve visitors had arrived.
Next in the pecking order was Arceneau, with four master vampires: Grégoire with his heir Dominique on his arm, both blond with chiseled faces, and two African masters to either side, Kabisa and Karimu, twins, both female, tall and regal, like walking Egyptian statues wearing flowing creations unmistakably made by Madame Melisende,
Modiste des Mithrans
, my dressmaker. Both women were soldiers. I recognized the gait, surefooted and assertive, though nothing in their dossiers suggested battle training. Arceneau’s scions and blood-servants fanned out around them and moved into the ballroom. I smelled fresh mint from them, overlaid by a hint of rosemary. It wasn’t a scent I’d have associated with a vamp, but vamp pheromones were mutable, like a human’s.
I looked at the clock to see 11:27. Two clans to go, then my first look at were-cats up close and personal. My Beast was prowling inside, slow sinuous steps like a lion in a cage. Which she was, in a way, caged inside me.
The third clan was Bouvier, its new co-masters Innara and Jena, who were mind-joined Anamchara, and who had been loyal to Leo during the recent unpleasantness, stood in the entry to the ballroom. They were little things, the tallest standing five-four in heels. Their master had been killed true-dead by the opposing camp and the girls had swept up his power base in their cute but deadly little hands. They were going for the gay twenties look tonight in contrasting teal and aqua silk sheaths embroidered with beads, crystals dangling and catching the light. The silk hems ended at their shins, but the crystals formed pointed Vs that hung lower, accenting the crystal shoes each wore. Which looked really uncomfortable. The outfits were perfect with their bobbed hair, one dark blond and one darker brown. Their clan heir, Roland, who was a big guy by vamp standards, stood behind them, arms crossed, showing muscle through the cloth of his long tunic, which was vaguely Arabian in style. Behind him, another master and all eight blood-servants filled the open doorway. They looked charming and implacable as they moved into the room, blood-servants spreading out and posturing for position. The air took on a vamp stink so strong that my nose itched and stung. I needed to sneeze out the reek, but the next breath would only be worse.
The on-air reporter, who was standing near me, gasped and backed away. I glanced at her and back at the vamps and almost shook my head. She was no twenty-something ditzy girl, but an older woman, a seasoned reporter, likely retired from a bigger network, let go because of age, but that experience was nothing in the face of vamp mesmerism. Her lips hung slightly open, her eyes glued to Roland.
I looked back at the vamps. Yeah. Vamps were gorgeous all right. Pitcher plants or Venus flytraps, ready for fresh blood and willing flesh—or a victim stupid enough or susceptible enough to fall for them.
The reporter moved toward Roland, her mike in front of her—a shield and a sword. Or an offering. He turned to her and smiled, his face looking almost beatific. And hungry, in spite of the edict to eat before showing up here. He held out an arm and slid it round her when she reached him. She fell back against the iron-band strength of it, her throat exposed.
Prey
, Beast whispered in my mind.
Roland kissed the side of the reporter’s neck. Teasing. But his fangs stayed snapped back in his mouth and he released her with a kiss and promise I heard across twenty feet of pink marble floor and Oriental rugs. “Later, my lovely. I’ll come to you before dawn.” She was toast, but she was a big girl. I had other worries. Like the cameras capturing too much. Not too much of the vamps—that was a job for the spin doctors—but too much about the layout of vamp HQ. It could be dangerous for the security of the place.
Unlike other vamp parties I’d attended, no one went immediately for food or alcohol, but took up positions around the room, as if keeping sharp for trouble.
Crap
. What did they think was gonna happen? I was suddenly conscious of the blades on my thighs and the weight of the H&K at the small of my back. Possible collateral damage was everywhere. My mouth went dry.
Everything was ready for Leo. But seconds passed. Minutes. The vamps were immovable as marble headstones, not bothering to breathe, since they didn’t have to talk. The blood-servants mimicked them. Except for the breathing/heart beating part. It was unnerving. But at least the vamped reporter had regained her equilibrium. She was standing in the corner having her makeup touched up, casting confused and nervous glances at Roland, who was ignoring her. Cat and mouse. Literally. A vamp playing with his dinner.
At twelve minutes to twelve, Leo was standing in the entrance, his authority a nimbus around him, crackling with electricity that lifted his shoulder-length black hair on a breeze of power. I hadn’t seen him move there. No one had.
CHAPTER 9
He Got a Whiff of Me
The blood-servants’ breathing changed. The younger vamps blinked, startled. Leo stood, still as pale marble, his skin glowing with recent feeding, drawing power from all the vamps in the room. His eyes were bright, as if lit from within, with an odd sheen to them, as if they swam with precious oil. The scent pattern in the room changed as Leo stood there, demonstrating his power, siphoning off theirs, his own peppery scent overpowering all the other vamp smells. Every eye in the ballroom was on him.
Leo had no heir, and as MOC, he was entitled to additional scions, so there was no surprise when four master vamps stepped behind him in a semicircle, all males. I wondered if—under different circumstances—my landlady, Katie, who had been Leo’s lover in the past, would have stood behind him, a lone woman in the midst of the men.
All of Leo’s henchmen were familiar. I’d learned their names after they tried to burn down my house. Alejandro and Estavan, both of Spanish origin, but different centuries; Hildebert, a German guy whose name meant bright battle; and Koun, who claimed to be pure British Celt by birth, though history said his people were destroyed long before the first vamps appeared in the British Isles. Hildebert and Koun were the warriors of Clan Pellissier, and I’d really rather not have to face either one in battle. The fact that Leo brought them with him instead of someone prettier and more delicate was significant. My heart rate sped. Leo moved his eyes across the room until he found me, searching me out as if he could hear my blood pound and place me by the sound of my heartbeat.
Crap. Maybe he could.
Staring at me, he said, “The Council of the Mithrans is ...
gathered
.” The word reverberated through the room; shivers raced over my skin, raising to sharp pricks of pain. For the vamps, there was
power
in the word
gather
. When they
gathered
, they joined in some arcane way, cooperating to make decisions and conduct business. It was mystical in ways that I couldn’t understand. Leo inhaled and I exhaled, as if sharing with him my breath. Another breath followed. And another. It was intimate and intense, his eyes holding mine, and when Beast again placed a clawed paw on my psyche I caught myself, holding my breath a moment to break the exchange. I hadn’t given my blood to him. I hadn’t fallen in thrall to him. Which meant that Leo shouldn’t be able to draw power from me. Yet, I could feel the strands of his power sucking something from me, even now, even with Beast’s intervention. This was freaky, and maybe tied to the magics I’d been exposed to, like radiation poisoning, weakening me.
The Master of the City stared at me for a long moment, assessing my independence and self-containment before sliding his eyes away. When he did, something snapped inside me, like a dried stick breaking, audible and sharp. I put out a hand and caught myself on the nearest doorframe, my balance unsteady for a moment. I glanced around the room to see every vamp and blood-servant staring at Leo, mesmerized. Yeah, freaky.
Leo looked them over, breathing in their scents. His eyes closed and he raised his face in something like ecstasy. He jerked his head to the right and opened his eyes, searching the ceiling and the perimeters of the room. Confusion and anger etched his face for an instant before it melted away to the usual expressionless manifestation of vamp-dom. I had no idea what he had smelled or what his reaction meant. He took a breath, this time so he could speak.
“We will meet and treat with our ancient enemies, the Cursed of Artemis,” Leo said. “We will parley and be bound by the treaty that we sign in blood. We will be bound as the fathers of all Mithrans, the Sons of Darkness, are bound, by honor and by duty. By command of the Sons of Darkness, this night begins cooperation between species on this hemisphere, as it has already begun in Europe and elsewhere. The humans have grown strong, too strong to battle. They have not constrained their population growth, and our territory shrinks. The Cursed of Artemis and the Mithrans have
no choice
but to parley.” The words “no choice,” were spoken without inflection, yet still managed to sound forced and unwilling. “Are we agreed?”