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?”
With one voice the vamps murmured, “We are agreed.”
Leo stepped into the room, his scions behind him, ten blood-servants behind them, Bruiser at the forefront. He looked pale. They all did. Leo had fed well on his most trusted. I hoped they didn’t all pass out from blood loss.
As the group cleared the open doorway, two other forms stepped into the opening, one from the left, one from the right. A voice from the back of the room announced, “Sabina Delgado y Aguilar, priestess, and Bethany Salazar y Medina. Outclan, keepers of the histories, the Blood Cross, and artifacts of power.”
I watched as the two women, who studiously ignored one another, stepped into the room. I mentally filed away the surnames of Bethany, as they weren’t in any dossier the cops had on her. Once again, I had to wonder, as I had over the last few weeks, how and where the women had gotten the last names, as neither was from a Spanish region, and neither surname had likely been around a fraction of the centuries they had.
The women walked with heads high and feet soundless into the reception room. They were as different as two women could be, Sabina looking matronly but starved, chaste, and set apart in her white, nun-style dress and wimple, her skin the pale olive of her Mediterranean origins. Bethany was dressed in African splendor with ivory and gold necklaces, earrings, rings, and bracelets. Her body was swathed in a billowing red silk shawl over a full, apple-green silk skirt and a tight matching top that seemed to make her dark skin glow. She was barefooted and gold rings were on her toes. She flowed to Leo and kissed his cheeks, holding his face between her palms. Sabina came behind her and kissed Leo as well, murmuring, “The outclan honor the Master of the City.”
Leo kissed the women in the same fashion and said, “The Mithrans honor the outclan.” More softly he said, “Let us welcome our guests.”
Two lesser blood-servants stepped to a different doorway and unlatched the double doors; they swung inward, heavy and stately on silent hinges. On the other side stood Kemnebi, the black were-leopard I’d seen change on TV. He was ebony black with the sculpted features of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. His lips were full, his tip-tilted eyes were blacker than a moonless night. He was dressed in the flowing white outer robe of an Arabian prince; beneath it, a full black silk shirt was gathered into black trousers. Black boots polished to a sheen threw back the light. His head was uncovered, black hair shaved close. He wore a gold torque around his neck centered with an image of a falcon. I was sure the falcon was the Egyptian god Horus, which was confusing, because the goddess, who had supposedly cursed the weres, was Greek.
Behind him stood a woman, wearing a long full coat woven of shimmering cloth of gold, that hung open from her midriff to reveal a white silk skirt and tunic. Hair—blue-black, lustrous, and glistening—hung from either side of her white headdress to her thighs. I had long hair, but this girl had me beat. Her skin and features looked Mediterranean, not African, and her bare feet showed in raffia sandals, toenails polished deep purple. She had henna tattoos on the backs of her hands and up her feet, disappearing beneath her clothing. The smell of cat, perfume, and faintly of dead fish wafted from her.
I felt Beast rise from deep inside me and stare out at the weres, curious, questing. Like Beast? she thought. I didn’t know, but my attention held to them with a laserlike focus. They were the closest thing to a skinwalker I had encountered since the insane liver-eater skinwalker who had been masquerading as Leo’s son. And him, I had killed.
“The International Association of Weres and the Party of African Weres greets the Louisiana Council of Mithrans. I am Kemnebi; this is my assistant Safia. We are black were-leopards from the African Congo, of the country of humans called Gabon, from the region of the Rapides Mabila, and from the tribe of the leopards who reside there. We come to parley with you.”