The rage swelled inside me like a wave. My voice shook slightly. “I’m about to have a bloodbath on my hands.”
Gray lowered his voice. “This is coming down from above. We can’t get involved in a war between the Pack and the People. We don’t have the numbers or the firepower. We’d be slaughtered. I’m sorry, but this is between you and them.”
He wouldn’t help us. “You had a chance to make a difference today and you stepped back. Your authority is only good if you do something with it, and you chose to do nothing. Do that enough times and pretty soon nobody will acknowledge it at all. The next time you need my help, don’t call.”
I disconnected the call.
“Diplomatic,” Barabas said.
“Fuck diplomatic.”
The phone rang. I picked it up.
“This is a jurisdictional issue,” Gray said, his voice strained. “We have no jurisdiction over the Keep.”
He hung up.
Okay. “Who has jurisdiction over us?” I asked the room.
“Most of our lands are in DeKalb County,” Barabas said. “A little bit of Clayton, too.”
Neither the DeKalb nor Clayton County sheriff would help us. DeKalb didn’t care for us, and Clayton was severely understaffed.
“And Milton too, along the north edge,” Jim said.
Wait a minute. “Milton?”
He nodded.
The last time I had occasion to travel to Milton, it was because Andrea had gotten upset over some floozy flirting with Raphael, pulled a gun, and nearly drowned her in a hot tub. Beau Clayton, the Milton County sheriff, had personally talked her off the cliff and locked everyone up until I got there.
I punched his number into the phone. “Beau?”
“Kate.” A deep voice tinted with Georgia’s brand of country answered. “Funniest thing happened. One of my deputies just saw what he described as ‘a whole mess of undead’ moving in your general direction. Now, I am curious. Are you having a party?”
“Beau,” I said. “I need your help.”
• • •
I STOOD ON the wall of the Keep. The day was beautiful. The sun lit the turquoise sky, tinting it with a pale veil of gold. Before me a clear snowfield stretched to the jagged dark wall of the forest. Wind stirred a loose strand of my hair.
Behind me the Pack Council waited.
Something moved in the distance at the far-off tree line. A single skeletal shape emerged out of the brush, a dark squiggle against the white snow. The undead paused on all fours. Its magic brushed by me, revolting, like a smear of decomposing flesh on the surface of my mind.
Vampires poured out of the forest, their gaunt, grotesque bodies moving ridiculously fast. So many . . . Behind them four armored cars crept onto the field. Painted in fatigue colors and set on eight wheels, they looked like small tanks. And they were probably chock-full of navigators.
“The People got themselves some Strykers,” Andrea said. “Slat armor, full hull protection. These have a layer of steel, then a layer of ceramic armor against armor-piercing rounds, then more steel and then probably reactive armor tiles. You can fire a rocket launcher at that thing and it won’t even sneeze.”
“How heavy are they?” Martha asked.
“Little over sixteen tons,” Andrea said.
“So around thirty-three thousand pounds,” Robert murmured.
Martha shrugged. “Too heavy to roll.”
Prying Ghastek and his posse out of the Strykers would be a bitch.
The armored fighting vehicles rolled into position and stopped. The vampires formed around them.
Where are you, Curran? In my head I had thought he would somehow magically show up. But he wasn’t here. I was on my own.
I turned to the courtyard and waved at Roman and the witch next to him.
“Is that his sister?” Andrea asked to me.
“No.” I had spoken with both of them. “I’d asked her that. Her name is Alina, she isn’t his sister, and she feels deeply sorry for his sisters, because if she had to put up with being in his presence for longer than a day, she would throw herself off the nearest bridge just to end the agony.”
“Well,” Andrea said. “Glad she cleared that up.”
The dark volhv waved back at me and shouted, “Showtime!”
Alina sighed next to him. “What are you so happy about? We’re going to get killed.”
The two of them started toward the gates.
“It’s exciting,” Roman said. “Look at all of those shapeshifters and vampires. It’s a historic moment and the Pack will owe us.”
“How is it that you have no common sense? Were they all out when you were born?”
Roman indicated his face. “I don’t need common sense. I have a double helping of charm.”
“You mean a double helping of bullshit . . .”
They passed through the gates under us and Derek and two other shapeshifters barred them, lifting the enormous beam in place. The boy wonder, bald and pale, had decided that he’d had enough rest. I didn’t have the energy to fight with him about it.
Roman and the witch stopped about fifty feet from the gate. A single vampire emerged from the undead horde and ran over to them. Roman spoke to it. He would be listing our conditions: we would meet two Masters of the Dead in front of the gates and discuss the murder of Mulradin. Roman and the witch would act as impartial witnesses. And if Hugh got anywhere within fifty feet of that meeting, all negotiations would cease.
The vampire returned. The witch raised her head and spread her arms. A dark green spark pulsed from her and split into a thousand narrow ribbons of green. They shot from her, falling into the snow. Steam rose as the snow melted and the green burrowed into the ground, forming a perfect ring about fifty feet in diameter. Thin green stalks sprouted from the exposed ground and stretched upward, turning into knee-high thorns.
We had our meeting.
• • •
I WALKED OUT into the snowy field next to Jim. The gates of the Keep stood closed behind us. On the wall, Andrea stood with a power crossbow. She’d brought a sniper rifle in case the magic dropped.
The sea of vampires parted and Ghastek walked out, tall, slender, wearing a long military-style white jacket and white pants, strategically broken by small irregular splotches of brown. White boots and a helmet in the same pattern completed the outfit. Apparently he intended to bury himself in the snow and snipe at us from his cover. A woman followed him. She wore an identical uniform and the helmet hid her hair, but I’d know Rowena anywhere. She was in debt to the witches and she had been secretly supplying me with vampire blood. She didn’t know what I did with it, but if she ever found out, her helmet would fly right off her head because her hair would stand on end.