"The authorities cleared me of intentional death," the woman said,
Brice's dramatic come-hither lilt and low-cut blouse making my eye
twitch as she indolently lounged on the couch across the low coffee
table from me. She'd arrived first and was being careful, moving with an
exaggerated slowness to hide her vampire-quick reflexes and threatening
fangs, but it was that very wariness that had me on edge.
"I
assumed I was asked to come to extend my apology in person," she
finished mockingly, and the mousy man at the head of the table bristled.
"You can take your apology and cram it up your filthy, decaying hole of a-"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I interrupted, lifting a hand before it got out of
control. Again, I thought, stretching my arm to rub out the dull throb
gained while separating them the first time. "Victor, the I.S. doesn't
have the last word. Sit. Everyone take a breath. Have a drink."
Lip rising to show a spit-shiny fang, the onetime professor at Cincy's
university pushed back into his chair, a glass of orange juice in his
tight, undead grip. As the city's subrosa, mediating the minor power
struggles of Cincy's vamps was occasionally part of my job-especially
between the dead ones. Pike had wanted to bring them together with the
hope of finding restitution, and when two vampires disagreed, it was
best to bring the biggest guns you had. That would be me.
I
eased deeper into the indulgent leather chair, eyeing them both in a
wary annoyance as my old vampire scar began to tingle, the virus-laced
bite responding to the pheromones both undead vampires were kicking out.
Victor and Brice went silent, the former in frustration, the latter in
calculation. If I was feeling it, the living vampires downstairs were,
too, and I glanced across the room at Pike. Nodding, the living vampire
unfolded his length to go turn the air exchanger to high. Below us, the
rhythmic thump of a too-enthusiastic live band drifted up the wide, open
stairway along with the intoxicating scent of pizza and too many
vampires.
Piscary's on a Friday night, I thought as I glanced
over the large room. By rights, the band should be up here with the more
exuberant crowd to leave the sedate members to enjoy the calm, sipping
on wine and the subliminal boost from the party, but Pike had recently
begun to use the second floor as a semi-public space to mediate
arguments. Kisten had done the same thing with a pool table and dance
floor instead of a wet bar and a ring of chairs and couches around a low
table. That Kisten's pool table was now in my sanctuary serving as a
secondary spelling space would probably please him-even if the felt was
burned and the slate cracked.
"Sasha's death was not
accidental," Victor muttered, his eyes a dark pupil black, and I checked
my phone for the time. Ivy was bringing in Constance, and they were
late. "Brice lured Sasha into a situation where she had no control, and
then she killed her knowing full well I didn't have a second scion who
possessed enough stamina to sustain my needs."
It was a problem,
and whereas an accidental death was not a punishable offense in the
unwritten law of the undead, an outright culling of another's support
system was. "That is what we are here to determine," I said, sneaking a
glance at my phone again.
"Let me call down for another round of
drinks," Pike said, and I winced. Yeah, let's add more alcohol to the
mix, I thought, even as I acknowledged the logic behind it. Alcohol
wouldn't slow them down or mellow them out, but it would remind them of
what it was like to be living, and that might shift them into a more
amenable frame of mind.
He really does know what he's doing, I
mused as the heavily scarred man in his early thirties moved gracefully
to the stairway to beckon a bartender halfway up. His black hair was
wavy and short about his ears, and his summer tan was already beginning
to fade. No beard, but a midnight stubble gave him an attractive,
bad-boy cast. He was officially Constance's scion now that the undead
vampire was no longer a mouse. I knew the arrangement was tasteless to
both of them, for though the undead could survive on any living blood,
they craved that of their living kin, and if it was taken from someone
who loved them, it was almost enough to fill the hole the lack of a soul
left. Hence the tradition of cultivating living vampiric scions to
support their undead brethren.
And whereas it was obvious that
Pike didn't love Constance, he did enjoy the boost of power that sipping
on undead vampire left in his veins. Though powerful in their own
right, living vampires had only a portion of their undead kin's strength
and pull. After almost a month of sharing blood with the undead, Pike
had again regained the sexual lure and charisma he'd had when I'd first
met him.
I stifled a shudder, enjoying watching Pike move about the room as Victor prattled on.
Living vampires were my Achilles' heel. All the benefits of the undead,
and only half the risk. Pike was clearly off-limits, not because he was
out of my league but because I knew better. And yet as my gaze drifted
back to him, I smiled, pleased to be able to call him my friend.
His slacks were black, and his matching lightweight shirt was classy
and sharp. Soft-soled shoes made his steps silent and his limp hardly
noticeable. The scars about his neck and arms, though, were mottled and
obvious. They weren't the bedroom-fun kind, rather the kill-you variety,
and he took no pains to hide them. In short, Pike had had a very hard
life evading his older brothers' lethal intentions. Which made the fact
that one of them, the worst, was currently sitting in a beanbag chair in
the corner, the older man focused on a handheld game with the intensity
of a ten-year-old. But then again, Brad was down to about a
ten-year-old's level of intellect, despite the man's temples beginning
to gray and the first lines showing about his eyes.
My smile
faltered at the flash of guilt. I needed an Atlantean mirror to break
the curse I'd put on him. That I'd thought it was a white curse at the
time was the only thing keeping me out of Alcatraz's high-security wing.
Now even that excuse was running thin, and the coven of moral and
ethical standards was on my case. Again.
"Orange juice and a
Bloody Mary," Pike said as he set the two drinks down, a soft shudder
making his hands shake when he breathed in their mix of anger and smug
satisfaction.
"That bitch of a woman stalked and lured my scion
away." The rim of brown around Victor's pupils narrowed further as his
eyes went entirely black. "I demand restitution. As the city master,
Constance has a responsibility to see that I get restitution."
Pike eased to halt behind my chair, not in protection but to watch the open stairway.
"You poor, deluded excuse of an undead," Brice mocked. "I didn't lure
Sasha away from you. She came to me. You are a disgrace. No wonder you
can't maintain a family."
"Don't you dare talk about my family!" Victor held his orange juice with a white-knuckled grip.
Brice shook her head, but it was exactly her seemingly reasonable
attitude that rubbed me wrong. Still, I smiled at her, stifling my
unease at her too-long canines and her unreal grace. She was faster than
me, too. "Poor Sasha," the undead woman said. "Victor had been
neglecting her. She wanted more aggressive bedroom play and he couldn't
provide."
"That's not true!" Victor's face went bloodless,
tension pulling him to a dangerous stiffness. "I loved Sasha. Her virus
levels weren't sufficient for what she wanted to give me. We were slowly
increasing them. She knew that. I didn't want to hurt her. I loved
her." Eyes narrowed, he focused on Brice stretching languorously in the
chair like a lioness. "And you killed her twice. Before her time."
"Easy," I said, glancing at my phone again. Where the Turn are you,
Ivy? Victor had undoubtably loved his scion-before he had died. Now all
he remembered was having loved her. The undead clung to that memory as
if it was their last vestige of humanity-which it was. Victor was right
to be upset. It usually took half a lifetime to gain the skill to
convince someone that they were loved, luring a new victim into risking
death as their scion to keep an undead in their semi-alive state. With
Sasha gone, Victor would likely perish before he figured it out. It was
the undead's tricky forty-year ceiling come early. Most didn't survive
it. Those who did were truly manipulative.
Like Brice, I thought
when the woman set her Bloody Mary down and leaned forward to show her
scar-decorated cleavage as Victor continued his derisive tirade. Brice
had died in the sixties during the Turn, and now that Constance was
again out in the open demonstrating her ineffectiveness, it seemed
likely that Brice's slow plotting to make a bid for the city had shifted
into overdrive.
Put simply, Constance wasn't a good city master
vampire-even as a front. It was why the DC vamps had sent her here in
the hope I'd off her in a fit of annoyance. It would have landed me in
jail and out of their hair-and Constance in a permanent grave. I'd
promised to protect the outclassed undead vampire from her kin if she'd
be the front to my control of Cincinnati, but the diminutive Black
vampire was erratic at the best of times.
Which was why Ivy and
Pike were handling her enforcement duties. As much as Victor was in
trouble, I was starting to suspect that we were the ones in danger.
Brice obviously had her eye on taking over the city. Perhaps the DC
vampires had put her up to it. They'd love to see me gone. I was doing a
better job of overseeing their people than they could, probably because
Ivy, Pike, and I didn't put the capricious demands on a vampire
population that a master vampire did.
"Where is Constance?"
Brice said, her curt voice cutting into Victor's latest accusation, and
my attention snapped to her. "This needs to be settled."
"She's
on her way." I forced my fist to ease even as I tensed. This entire
fiasco was Brice's plan to get her and Constance in the same room. Maybe
breaking the spell that had turned her into a mouse had been a mistake.
The hidden threat was always more convincing than the visible one.
I gathered myself to rise and find a quiet corner to call Ivy . . . and
then I blinked as Brice exhaled and every last thought I had seemed to
melt.
Pike's knees buckled. He caught himself against my chair,
his breath going shallow as he fought off the undead woman's sudden
pull. All my exposed skin was tingling with a delicious sizzing
sensation, and I froze as the memory of teeth sliding cleanly into me
surfaced, a pang of desire going right to my groin. I forced my hand
from my neck, embarrassed that I had put it there, one lone finger
tracing a delicious path to my clavicle as if I was a vampire junky.
Jenks would laugh his wings off if he were here.
"See?" Victor
pointed at Brice as the undead woman stared, her gaze black in a hungry
passion. "She's doing it again! What scion can resist that? I swear I'm
going to pull your fangs out and give them to my niece for her sweet
sixteen."
"I'm going downstairs," Brad said suddenly, his eyes
pupil black as he tossed his handheld game aside and stood. The
pheromones were hitting him hard. He was getting randy. The restaurant,
too, was getting loud. Between Brice and Victor, there were too many
vamp pheromones in here. The air system could not keep up.
My
hands trembled, and I didn't dare take anything more than a shallow
breath until I forced the memory of Ivy, and Kisten, and every undead
vampire I'd ever run into from my thoughts. Pike, too, had gotten
control of himself, and I felt a small flicker of victory even as Brad
started for the stairs. Brice was good, but I'd fought better. She
couldn't maintain her pheromone level, and the air was clearing already.
"You good here?" Pike said stiffly as he went after Brad. Having him up
here hadn't been the best idea; leaving him downstairs was a worse one.
The living vampire had no restraint, no memory-because of me.
I
have to fix this, I thought, using my guilt to pull me out from the
edge of Brice's ecstasy. "Nice try, Brice. Maybe in another fifty
years," I said as I dropped my gaze to my phone, and the undead woman's
expression became livid.
"Where are you?" I texted Ivy, one hand
on my phone, the other touching the butt of my cherry-red splat gun. It
fired spells, not bullets: a witch's ancient weapon made modern. Brice
was clearly upset that she'd given me her best shot and that both Pike
and I had brushed it away like the annoyance it was.
"She made me put on jewelry," came back immediately. "Be there soon."
Thank the Turn, I thought in relief as I set my phone on the table with
a little click. Constance equated jewelry with being civilized. The
vampire wore enough to bring down a camel. Quantity, not quality, was
her motto.
But Pike had used Brad as an excuse to surround
Brice, and the woman's eyes narrowed as she drummed her fingers once in a
tight, bloodred-nail staccato.
"Relax." I set my weapon beside
my phone in an unspoken threat. "Both of you. I will not tolerate
Constance walking in here with you at each other's throats." Because a
blood exchange between two undead vampires would kill them both, as the
two slightly different viruses that animated them battled with each
other. It was how I had lost Kisten, and a flicker of heartache took me.
Damn you, Elyse, for dangling the spell before me to bring him back. It
was a lie. It had to be a coven trick. Even Al didn't know the magic to
recover the undead, even as a ghost.
"Constance is a puppet."
Brice's expression held a mocking sureness. "Any justice you get from
her will be at a witch's grace, Victor. How sad. Going to a witch for
justice?"
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