Death's Mistress

by Karen Chance

  “I don’t know any vampires named Lutkin,” Marlowe said thoughtfully.

  “He’s a mage.” Everyone looked at Ray. “Their money spends, too,” he said defensively.

  “Lutkin was here tonight,” Louis-Cesare pointed out, tapping a name near the bottom of the list. “And Geminus. But none of the others.”

  Marlowe’s expression brightened. “We can blame it on the mage. The others are too prominent or too unreachable in any case.”

  “And if he did not do it?”

  Marlowe looked at him like he didn’t understand the question.

  “There were no silent bidders?” I asked Ray. “Nobody bidding by phone?”

  “No. Seller insisted on a binding spell. And that don’t work unless someone’s physically there.”

  “He was worried about fraud?” I asked incredulously. “With that group?”

  “He was worried period. The guy was freaking paranoid.”

  “He probably knew who was chasing him. He didn’t want to risk anyone using a glamourie and impersonating one of the bidders.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  I frowned. “So he knew he was being hunted, knew he was in serious jeopardy, yet he still let his guard down enough for someone to . . .”

  There was a sudden silence around the desk. I looked up to find everyone staring at me, a ring of bright, narrowed eyes. “Hunted by whom?” Mircea asked quietly.

  There was no point in postponing it. “subrand.”

  Louis-Cesare’s head jerked, like he’d been stung. “Comment?”

  “And you know this how?” Marlowe asked, his expression darkening.

  “He dropped by the house last night.”

  “Dropped by?” Mircea asked sharply.

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  Marlowe glared at me. “Our spies have reported no such escape.”

  “Then maybe you should get new ones.”

  “I don’t need new ones. You clearly mistook another fey for him.”

  “Doubt it,” I said drily.

  “You are sure?” Mircea pressed. “You saw him clearly?”

  “He was about an inch from my face while he was trying to kill me,” I said sarcastically. “So, yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

  “He tried to—” Mircea broke off, his jaw tightening.

  “Why did you say nothing of this?” That was Louis-Cesare.

  I shrugged. “It didn’t come up.”

  “It did not come up?”

  “What happened?” Mircea demanded.

  “I already told you: he tried to kill me; he failed. The point is that he’s here and he has a definite interest in the rune. His mother was the one who stole it in the first—”

  “Stole it from whom?”

  That was Marlowe, and if I hadn’t been so tired, I’d have really rubbed it in. The guy thought he knew everything. “The Blarestri royal house.”

  “The what?” Marlowe was the only guy I knew who could bellow in an undertone.

  I glanced at him impatiently. “Well, where the hell did you think they got it, Marlowe? Or didn’t you and Daddy bother to ask?”

  He flushed. “You’re telling me that the rune up for sale was a royal fey relic?”

  “Yeah. And they want it back.”

  “And how do you come to know this?”

  “I’m acting for the family.”

  “Another fact you failed to mention before now,” Mircea said pointedly.

  I smiled. “Like you failed to mention what you really wanted with Ray?”

  “That is hardly the same thing.”

  “It is exactly the same thing! You sent me after him under false pretenses.”

  “There were no false pretenses.”

  “You let me believe he was a smuggler.”

  “Which he is.”

  “And which had nothing to do with why you wanted him. If we’re going to keep working together, you have to—”

  “You do not work with Lord Mircea,” Marlowe informed me. “You work for him. It is not your place to question his commands.”

  “Is that how you think, too?” I asked Mircea.

  Before he could answer, the door opened, and several vamps walked in like they owned the place. Which one of them did, I realized, as Muttonchops’s head jerked up. “Master!”

  He obviously wasn’t talking to Elyas, so that cry could mean only one thing. Elyas’s servants hadn’t been the only ones to feel his passing. His master had done so, too.

  “Anthony,” Mircea said, straightening, as Muttonchops almost fell over himself trying to get around the table. “I thought we were meeting in an hour.”

  “Yes, I received your message,” the dark- haired vamp said carelessly. He wasn’t tall, maybe five nine, and his features were handsome but not outstanding. His nose looked like it had been broken at some point, and his skin was a little weather-beaten. It meant he wasn’t exerting power to alter his appearance, which was strange, considering how much he had to spare. It felt like it seared my skin, even from this far away.

  “Anthony?” I asked Louis- Cesare, who was looking a little ill suddenly.

  “My consul.”

  Oh. That Anthony.

  The vamp circled the desk, taking his time, getting a look at the body. “Oh, don’t mind me,” he said, looking up with a smile. “Continue with what you were doing.”

  “We’ve already examined the body,” Mircea told him. “You are, of course, welcome to do so yourself—”

  “How kind of you,” Anthony murmured.

  “But we will be reporting the findings shortly.”

  “Really? To whom?”

  “To the Senate.”

  “And which Senate would that be, Mircea?” Anthony asked, whiskey eyes gleaming as they looked up from examining the gory throat.

  I felt Marlowe tense beside me, but Mircea showed no outward change. “This happened on North American soil.”

  “But Elyas belonged to the European Senate.” He smiled. “As does Louis-Cesare.”

  “That is under discussion,” Mircea said sharply, which was news to me.

  “Yes. But you have not stolen him away from me yet.” The smile didn’t slip, but the tension in the room suddenly ratcheted up about a hundred notches. “Therefore he will be judged by his peers—not his family.”

  “And defended by whom?” Mircea demanded.

  “Whomever he likes.” Anthony waved over his companion—a young vamp with long, dark hair spilling over the shoulders of a tailored gray suit. “As Elyas’s master, Jérôme will, of course, be prosecuting.”

  Not so young, then, I thought, staring at the vamp. I wouldn’t have guessed. Big eyes that matched his suit almost exactly in color, pretty, almost feminine features, delicate white hands—and a power signature no greater than that of the vamp I’d nailed to the bathroom wall at Ray’s. It was hardly even discernible next to the inferno of Anthony’s, like a single candle next to a bonfire.

  But if he was prosecuting, he had to be a Senate member. So the signature was a lie. He had to be one of those rare vamps who could hide his true strength. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have mistaken him for a baby, something that would have gotten me killed very fast—if I was lucky.

  “And you?” Mircea demanded.

  “Oh, didn’t I say?” Anthony’s smile broadened slightly, showing some fang. “I’m the judge.”

  Nobody moved; nobody blinked. But the air was starting to feel a little thick in my lungs. I suddenly really, really wanted to be somewhere else.

  Luckily, Anthony agreed.

  “And now, if you wouldn’t mind, we would appreciate the same recourse to the body you have enjoyed.”

  No one had anything to say to that, so we retired to the adjacent sitting room. Or at least I tried to, before I was waylaid by an angry vampire and jerked into the hall. Christine had followed us out, and started to say something, then saw Louis-Cesare’s face and shied back.

  “I—I thought I wo
uld go pack,” she said quickly, in French.

  Louis-Cesare glanced at her, and his expression softened. “Yes, yes, please.” It was gentle enough, but she all but fled down the corridor. Too bad I couldn’t go, too, but I appeared to be trapped between his body and the wall.

  “What bug crawled up your ass?” I demanded.

  “If you mean, why I am upset? I should think that would be obvious!”

  It took me a second, but I got it. “Oh, come on. You’re not still pissed about—you did the same damn thing to me!”

  He had the utter gall to look offended. “I did nothing of the sort—”

  I stared at him. “And just how do you figure that? You stripped me butt naked, diddled me over a desk and stole my duffel bag. And my clothes!”

  Somebody made a choking sound. I glanced up to find the door to the study open, and the old vamp looking scandalized. “Diddled?” Anthony asked, apparently delighted. Mircea closed his eyes.

  Louis-Cesare made some indeterminate French sound and dragged me farther down the hall. A bedroom was empty, so he shoved me inside, which was a complete waste of effort. If it wasn’t soundproofed—and I doubted Elyas had wasted an expensive spell on a guest room—the others could hear us perfectly well.

  But Louis-Cesare didn’t look much like he cared.

  “I was speaking ofsubrand. You knew you were in danger, yet you said nothing.”

  “Why should I have? It was none of your business.”

  “If someone is attempting to murder you, it is most certainly my business.”

  “Why?” He didn’t say anything, which pissed me off. I was tired and starving, and I must have bumped my hurt wrist somewhere, because it throbbed in time to every heartbeat. I was in no mood for games.

  “Why is it your business, Louis-Cesare?”

  “You know damn well why!”

  “No, I don’t know. I don’t know a goddamned thing. Maybe you should try spelling it out for once.”

  “And perhaps both of you should try learning some discretion,” Marlowe hissed. He came in and slammed the door behind him. It wouldn’t help with privacy; I think he was just pissed off.

  “We would like some time alone,” Louis-Cesare snapped.

  “It seems to me you’ve had too much of that already.” Marlowe stared back and forth between the two of us. “I don’t know what’s going on here—and I really do not wish to know. But now is not the time to hand Anthony more ammunition.”

  Louis-Cesare didn’t even look at him. “What did he do to you?” he demanded.

  “Maybe I should get it on a T-shirt,” I said, crossing my arms. “None of your—”

  “You have been favoring your left hand all night. Is that why?” Trust a swordsman to notice.

  When I didn’t say anything, he pulled me to him and began running his hands over me—as if he hadn’t done enough of that already.

  I was about to knock his hand away when Marlowe did it for me. Louis-Cesare’s usually sunny blue eyes suddenly went chrome—cold, flat and dangerous. “Have a care, Kit.”

  “I am not the one who needs to take care. Have you gone mad? She is dhampir!” Marlowe said it in the same tone someone in medieval Europe might have used for leper, which was fair, since that was pretty much the way he’d meant it.

  I don’t know what would have happened next, because both men were crackling with energy, and neither was the type to back down. But then Mircea walked through the door. “Your consul wishes a word,” he told Louis-Cesare mildly.

  Louis-Cesare cursed under his breath and started to say something, but Mircea held up a hand. “This is bad enough as it is. Provoking the man for no reason would be foolish, do you not think?”

  Apparently he did think, because he went, after shooting me a look that said this wasn’t over. He’d barely gotten out the door when Marlowe rounded on me. “What in the hell game are you—”

  “Kit. I think we have given Anthony enough amusement tonight, don’t you?” Mircea asked.

  “More than! Do you know what this will—”

  “Yes. We’ll discuss it in a moment.”

  Marlowe sent me a final glare and left. I’d have been right behind him, but Mircea was between me and the exit, and he showed no sign of moving.

  “Don’t you think it’s time we talked?” he asked with a smile.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “What about?” I asked warily.

  Mircea leaned against the door, casual, elegant, like he had all night. Fortunately, I knew that wasn’t true. Unfortunately, diving out the window wasn’t a real possibility at this level. Maybe the roof . . .

  “I do not want to play word games with you, Dorina. Tell me what happened last night.”

  “I’ve told you—”

  “Nothing. Other than the bald fact that a very dangerous creature attempted for the second time to kill you. What you have not told me is why.”

  “He tried to kill me before—”

  “Because you were in his way. Are you again?”

  Nobody ever won a verbal sparring match with Mircea by taking the defensive, so I ignored that. “Are you going to tell me why you wanted the rune so badly that you practically threatened Louis-Cesare’s life tonight?”

  “I did nothing of the kind. And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Not in so many words, maybe. But the intention was conveyed. And you didn’t answer mine.”

  “When you start being honest with me, perhaps I will.”

  I just stared at him, too shocked to speak for a moment. Because of all the people to chastise me for a lack of honesty or trust, Mircea’s name should have been last on the list. In fact, it shouldn’t have been on the damn list at all.

  His brother Vlad had killed a lot of people in his short reign of terror, one of whom had happened to be my mother. Mircea had wiped that little fact from my adolescent head, afraid I’d go after my crazy uncle and get killed. Or so he said. I had no independent way of verifying that since wiped memories are gone for good.

  “I don’t think you’re really one to talk. Do you?” I finally asked softly.

  “I have never kept anything from you that was not necessary.”

  “In your opinion! Did it never occur to you that I might not agree? That I might have wanted those memories, however unpleasant?”

  Mircea hesitated, taking a half second to adjust to the conversational leap. Not that it was much of one. Our history of deception had started almost as soon as our relationship had. “They would have done you little good had you died because of them.”

  “That was my decision!”

  “You were too young to make that decision. It was my duty to make it for you.”

  “A duty you’ve kept up ever since.” I rubbed my eyes, suddenly weary in more ways than one. I was tired of it—of the constant games and the verbal matches, of wanting to trust him but never knowing whether I could, or how far. I’d spent years avoiding a relationship with him for exactly those reasons, and I should have known better than to think that anything was ever going to change.

  I’d told them all I could aboutsubrand’s attack. There was nothing more I could do here. “This is a waste of time,” I said, and headed for the hall door.

  Mircea didn’t budge, but his fingers bit into my arms. “Running away again, Dorina?”

  I stared up at him, angry and tired and hurt. “I don’t run from my problems!”

  “Unless they include me. In which case you never do anything else.”

  “What else is there to do?” I demanded angrily. “Nothing changes, Mircea. We go on this same merry-go-round, over and over, until I’m dizzy. You manipulate me, lie to me—”

  “I have never lied to you.”

  “Just twist things around to say what you want them to say, instead of the truth.”

  His jaw tightened. “Sometimes, the truth can be dangerous. If I had allowed you to retain your memories about Vlad, you would be dead. Merely another of his victims.”
/>
  “And what’s the excuse now? Because I’m sure you have one, and I’m sure it will sound perfectly plausible. And I’m equally sure it will be bullshit!”

  “And do you not do the same to me?” he asked, a spark of amber lighting the deep brown of his eyes. That wasn’t a good sign, but I was too pissed to care. “You almost died last night, practically under my nose, and you said nothing?”

  “There were extenuating circumstances.”

  “There always are with us, it seems.”

  I started to shoot back a reply, but stopped. He looked tired suddenly, hollowed out and drained, in a way that was terribly familiar. It could be another game; it probably was another game. But it stopped me anyway.

  “If you don’t start to trust me, this is never going to work,” I told him simply.

  “And what is ‘this’?” he asked carefully.

  “Whatever the hell it is we’re doing here. You wanted me to work with you, or so you said. And now Marlowe seems to think you meant for you, and I think he may be right. Because all I do is the same menial crap you could send any of your boys to do just as easily, and you never tell me a damn thing. It’s been a month, and we’ve yet to work with each other even once!”

  I expected another excuse, a platitude, an elegant brush-off. Mircea was the master at that sort of thing, and so smooth that half the time, the people who had been put off didn’t even realize it. With vampires it was always smarter to pay attention to what they did rather than what they said, especially this one.

  But he surprised me. Without a word, he turned and opened the door, indicating with a gesture for me to precede him. I walked out, and then he led the way back to the soundproofed sitting room, where Marlowe was pacing. His head jerked up as we came in the door, and his expression darkened when he saw me.

  “This is a very bad idea,” he said, low and intense.

  “And not telling her would be a worse one.” Mircea went to the tall windows and drew the full-length drapes. Just in case someone had scaled the side of the building in order to lip-read, I presumed.

  “I don’t see how.”

  “You do not have a daughter, Kit.”

  “I do not—” Marlowe broke off, a look of disbelief spreading over his face. “That’s your reason? You would risk—”