Dark Heir

by Faith Hunter

  Was I morbid or what?

  I decided on a good offense being the best defense. “Evening, Leo. Two things. One, I need access to Adrianna. Two, Louisiana senators and representatives are flying in from Washington. A press conference with the Master of the City, at his Council Chambers, with the mayor and the governor would be good PR and might help to settle the humans.” Leo didn’t move, didn’t react, and I couldn’t tell by sight or smell if he was tense, terrified, or relaxed. “I’d like Jodi to arrange it.”

  Leo still didn’t react, and I hated it when vamps did that still-as-a-block-of-marble thing. It made me want to do something annoying. So I walked over to the gold chaise longue, jumped up into the air, and landed flat on my butt and legs. It made a satisfying creak of springs and a very solid whump, followed by a sound that might be best described as a sproo-OOO-ooiing. “Oops,” I said. “I think I broke your feeding couch.”

  Leo was watching me from the corners of heavy-lidded eyes, his mouth curled in amusement. “Yes. I do believe you did,” he said. He cocked his head and his black hair slid along the curve of his jaw, as soundless and gleaming as black silk, until it rested against the edge of his hand. I knew how it felt to touch that hair and curled my fingers under at the memory. “As of dusk tonight, you are no longer my Enforcer,” he said. “You cannot be bound. You are not a blood-servant, whose thoughts and loyalties are known to me. Tell me, Jane Yellowrock. Why do I keep your blood in your veins? Why do I allow your continued existence?”

  “I amuse you. And I’m valuable to you, both now, to catch Santana, and when the ESs get here.”

  “Ee-eses?” he asked.

  “European suckheads.”

  Leo let the small smile widen across his face. “Amusement is important to the very old among us,” he agreed. “You may not have access to Adrianna.” Which confirmed that she was still undead. Undead with scrambled brains, but undead.

  “Adelaide has collated what information I have on the Son of Darkness, though my people are still looking for a safe, filled with deeds, that was rescued from the clan home and delivered here.

  “You may inform your policewoman, who is the daughter of witches—do not think that I have forgotten that, my Jane—,” he added as an aside, “that I will meet with the senators, representatives, the governor, and the mayor, here, in time for the late-night news.” He pressed a button on his desk. “Adelaide, please see to it that the elected officials, state, local, and those arriving from Washington, are invited here for drinks and a private discussion, to be followed by a press announcement in the ballroom. Standard security precautions will apply to the press.”

  “I’ll arrange it all, Mr. Pellissier,” Del said. Her voice sounded dull and toneless. Competent, yes, but dull and toneless.

  “Thank you,” Leo said, ending the connection.

  I swiveled my body so I was sitting on the edge of the chaise and facing Leo. “Adelaide Mooney is a skilled and capable lawyer. In her last position to the blood-master of Clan Shaddock, she assisted with all manner of things political, legal, and”—I rolled my hand in the air—“vital stuff. Shaddock’s assistant did the secretarial things.”

  “What are you trying to say, my Jane? That I mistreat my primo?”

  “No. That you should use her for the important stuff and let your secundo do the invitation-level stuff. You’re wasting an asset, and that isn’t like you.” I propped my elbows on my knees and placed my fingertips together in front of my chin. I had a lot of subjects to cover and not much time, but this seemed important. “I’m betting that you’re sleeping with her, drinking from her, and making her feel worthless all at the same time. Stop being stupid, Leo. Send her flowers, one of those handwritten notes you do so well, and start treating her like she deserves.”

  “She deserves for me to be in love with her,” Leo said, stopping me. “Sadly, I am not.” And weirdly, he did sound sad, as if his life would be much easier if he was in love with Del.

  “So give her better jobs and stop sleeping with her. Let her develop a relationship with someone else, which won’t happen if all the other vamps know you’re poking her.”

  Leo murmured, “Poking her?” his words now laden with laughter. It was only now that I realized how stiff and tight his voice had been. The stress of dealing with the escape of Santana had to be wearing on him.

  “Yeah. Tell me more about the night Santana went missing.”

  Leo went still again, but this time it was the stillness of a rabbit caught out in the open. He hadn’t expected me to ask about that, or at least not then.

  “Tell me about the arcenciel and the broken crystal prison and the dead body at Acton House. You sent me there, so you had to know what we’d find.”

  Leo took a breath, filling his lungs, his eyes far away as if he gazed into the past. He said, “To tell you about the night the Son of Darkness did not rise is to tell you about only the end.” Leo’s tone and words slid into that mesmerizing vamp cadence, the tonal qualities like silk velvet, stroking the listener’s very soul. “It would be like telling you only about the finale of a film, without telling you about the first three acts, without telling you of the conflicts that arose and were resolved, or the dialogue, or the musical score.” His eyes were dark, the irises nearly as black as the pupils, his lashes long and full, Frenchy black. His jaw was firm and his olive skin smooth, if far too pale and perfect for a human. Leo Pellissier was beautiful, as most vamps were, and he wasn’t above using that beauty to get what he wanted, but there was no tug of compulsion now, no sense of deceit or of spin. Instead there was bewilderment and more than a hint of worry. “But we have no time to share all that happened, to allow you to see, and understand, and know for certain the nuances that made his visitation and his disappearance so devastating.”

  “Disappearance,” I said evenly.

  Leo shrugged a languid shoulder, rolling, but it looked staged, planned, something to make me think he was relaxed when he really wasn’t. “Disappearance is what we called it for so long, to protect us. It feels right to call it thus, even now, with the truth revealed. The might and weight of years.”

  “Okay. I get that. So just start with the twenty-four hours before the sunset when he was discovered to be . . . not himself.”

  “It feels strange to speak it aloud,” he mused, “this secret I have kept so long and so well.” He shook his head as if shaking away his bemusement and settled his body into the desk chair, the motion so human and yet so graceful. “I remember few details about the week prior. It was Mardi Gras, and there were feasting and dancing and balls aplenty. There were parties at each of the clan homes. One in particular in Mearkanis Clan Home. There were two women there that Santana liked, both human blood-slaves, sisters, twins. They were tiny and Asian, their blood a rare vintage even for him. He was besotted and wanted to add the Ming sisters to his stable.”

  I took note of the word stable (as if the women had been horses) and the location, filing both away.

  “He offered their master a goodly price for them both, with a promise of immortality, but was refused. The humans became a bone of contention between Santana and Mearkanis Clan blood-master Mishael Chrysostomos. He turned the women and made them his scions to keep them out of Santana’s clutches, and both later rose to great power among the Mithrans, one as blood-master to Clan Mearkanis. Had Blood-Master Ming herself not disappeared, we might not be facing such calamities now.”

  “Wait,” I interrupted, not able to help myself, and putting two and two together with my known history of the clans. “The former Blood-Master Ming, of Clan Mearkanis, started out as a blood-slave? And . . . her name was Ming? Like the blood-master of Clan Glass in Knoxville?”

  “Yes. It is rare that one addicted to Mithran blood will rise to such leadership positions, but both Ming sisters were strong. Though Clan Mearkanis is no more, the name Ming still rings with power. Ming is remembered.” He said the last word as if it had meaning in a ceremonial sense. “If Ming�
�s heir did not deface them, there are paintings of Ming and one of Joseph Santana in the rooms she once claimed as her own.”

  I wanted to ask all about the Mings, but I needed to hear the story of Santana, and it seemed like Leo was being a little more forthcoming than usual.

  Leo leaned over and pressed a button on his desk, ringing for tea to be brought up. When he was done he rearranged his features into a more pedantic cast, and I knew that the storytelling was ended and the business of recalling the past, with its myriad slants and biases, had begun.

  “Though I did not attend, there was un petit bal at Mearkanis Clan Home, full of pomp and ceremony, but according to those who attended, it was tout à fait ennuyeux.” He translated without my asking, “It was utterly boring. It began at ten of the evening and ended two hours after midnight, which made it a dismal failure.”

  A faint smile crossed Leo’s face and his voice began to sound more French as he took the trip into his past. “Successful parties of the time lasted through the night and often into the next day, taken into lairs and . . .” Leo waved the thought away with an indolent hand, but I got the idea. Caligula had nothing on the vamps.

  “You weren’t there?”

  “No. J’ai eu d’autres plans.” When I raised my eyebrows in question, he added, “I had other plans. In the early evening I was with Adrianna and one of her friends. Adrianna wanted something, I no longer remember what. When I refused her, she and her paramour left in a righteous fury.”

  “You drank from them and boinked them and then turned them down.”

  Leo shook his head, his black hair swinging until he tucked it behind his ear. “Americans have such crass names for lovemaking.”

  It didn’t sound like lovemaking to me, but I kept my opinion to myself.

  “Later in the evening, I was with Katie and one of her new girls. In the days after, I discovered that when Adrianna and her friend left my apartments, they went to the Mearkanis bal. Santana left the party with them, ce qui a peut-être contribué à l’éclatement de la soirée. Forgive me. Which may have contributed to the breakup of the evening.

  “In those times of horse and carriage, travel across the city was time-consuming and often used for business or lovemaking or even sleep. We know that when the trio arrived at Acton House, their clothing was awry and the scent of blood was strong in the closed confines of the carriage. Santana ordered tea and a small repast to be prepared, and the three retired to his room. They were later joined by others, but these were not seen by the maître d’hôtel. There was clearly a scuffle, though no one heard anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Of course, with vamps, screams and loud noises were commonplace.”

  “Oui, oui. Vous dîtes la vérité. When the maître d’hôtel, Professor Acton, brought breakfast just after sunset—a young mulatto boy, as ordered—he discovered the room, with the body of Adrianna’s paramour on the floor, and Santana, who was on the bed. The professor sent the boy to collect me in my rooms, and I sent word to Amaury, who was across the river in the clan home.”

  A young mulatto boy, as ordered. A boy. For breakfast. It took effort, but I kept my face clear of my thoughts, and my heartbeat even and steady. Not easy when I really wanted to smack Leo for his callous cruelty. “What shape was Santana in?” I asked, my words flat.

  “Pardon?”

  At Leo’s polite query, I clarified. “When I saw him in your dungeon, he was a bag of leather-covered bones. What did he look like when you found him?”

  “Physically, he was thin, his flesh rough and browned, as if scarred, what is called keloid scarring. He had lost the ability of coherent speech. He had lost the ability to control his bowels. He was raving and dangerous, and when my uncle arrived he established control and sent us into action. We gathered Santana up in his coach and carried him to the Council Chambers, which were much smaller and less stately than now, but which had the deep basements spelled to keep out groundwater. We removed the scions from the lowest basement and secured them in a separate scion lair. We prepared the wall for Santana. Amaury sent me back to seal the room at Acton House, and he put out the word that . . . le Fils des Ténèbres avait disparu avec les marées. Meaning that Santana had sailed on the tide.”

  “So who was the fourth person at Santana’s party?”

  “I do not know. No one does.”

  I knew. Immanuel. Not that I’d tell Leo that his son had been there. Too much angst where the dead heir was concerned. “And the young boy? The one who was supposed to be breakfast?”

  Leo’s eyes lost the glossy light of distant memories and focused on me, taking in my body language and scent. His eyes went steely. “He entered my uncle’s employ, where he served, happily, until the end of his days.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure he did.” And this time I couldn’t keep the loathing out of my voice.

  “Times were different then, mon chat,” Leo said, his words laced with threat. “Social and political mores were different then. It was nothing to see such a boy selling himself in the streets to buy a crust of bread. Do not judge what you cannot comprehend from your easy life in this day and time.”

  To which I had nothing to say. Nothing at all. Not I, who had helped my grandmother kill a man when I was five, more than a hundred fifty years ago.

  “You are dismissed.”

  I stood and left the room, but not because he had told me to.

  * * *

  My head full of Leo’s voice, like velvet sliding along my mind, I left the office and followed Eli to sub-four, tracking him by smell to the odd little room I had discovered once before. That time, I had entered through a hidden stairway that opened in the closet, to find everything rotted and hanging off the hangers. The room beyond had been in as bad a condition, so dusty it was a health hazard. It had been sealed off, as if a shrine to someone departed. Only later had I learned that the room had been Adrianna’s. I’d had the secret stairway access closed off and sent someone in to clean out the place, but I hadn’t been back to inspect it.

  I came in through the hallway. The room was totally different, with new carpet, the walls painted with shiny golden tones. There were new, copper-toned linens on the modern, Swedish-style, black-painted bed, the furniture having sleek lines and contemporary chic. I sniffed, picking up Eli’s scent and the slightly older but still powerful scent of Adrianna. She had spent enough time there to imprint on the room, she and two human blood-servants. No one had mentioned them, and I had a feeling that they were among the humans who had been laid out on the sub-five floor, drained and happy, and then turned. They’d be no use to me for at least ten years, when they finished the curing process and reemerged as fangheads.

  Eli was standing at the foot of the unmade bed, a new, wheeled, lightweight, carry-on piece of luggage in a floral pattern opened out on the mattress before him. He had shed his leather jacket and stood where he could see every angle of the room, wearing T-shirt, leather pants, combat boots, and headset. “Been calling you, babe,” he said, mildly. “Pinged your cell, which you didn’t answer. Called you on the headset. Which you didn’t answer. Ten more minutes and I’d have been forced to come looking for you.”

  Which, in Eli’s lingo, meant a search and rescue with dead vamp bodies left behind as he pulled me from the resultant carnage. I pulled out the small ear- and mouthpiece and looked it over. It showed a missed call. I tossed it to Eli. “When I’m with Leo, I try not to answer the cell,” I said. “It would be like a soldier answering his cell when he’s visiting in the Oval Office.”

  Eli nodded, not appeased but accepting, and tossed the headset back. “Remember to charge it. Batteries are low.” His hands went back to feeling along the inside of the suitcase. “Adrianna and her blood-servants were planning a quick getaway,” he said. “Packed, papers ready”—he tossed a packet to the bed and four passports slid out—“four first-class airline tickets to France.”

  “Which is where the European vamp council meets,” I said. I watched him,
studying the room. It was awfully neat for anything Adrianna touched. “Why four airline tickets? And whose is the fourth passport?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “Thought you’d never ask,” Eli said, flipping the suitcase over, checking the zippered pouches. “Joseph Santana.” He glanced up and back to the work, now searching the bed.

  “They planned to take him out of here,” I said, only a little surprised. “How’d they get a passport for a vamp who’s been missing for decades?”

  “I have Alex working on that, but I’d be surprised if the Kid gets anywhere. Joseph’s papers originated in France, with an entrance stamp for last month. It’s real and legitimate.”

  “Last month?”

  “Yes. Adrianna’s visit to Leo had to originate with the European vamps.”

  I blinked, watching Eli’s hands as he continued the search into the drawers and the closet. “Yeah. That makes sense.”

  “Been thinking about our need to track all visitors while they’re in HQ,” he said. “Armbands are still our best bet, with locator chips we can ping as needed, and that send out an alarm if cut off. Maybe headsets too, but both could be removed. I’ve had Alex looking into feasibility and cost estimates.”

  “Getting European suckheads to wear tracking bracelets will be tricky.”

  “They’ll think it’s insulting,” he agreed.

  “Okay. Add that to the list of things to ‘Figure out Before Suckheads Arrive.’ FOBSA.”

  “No one’s touched this room since we saw Adrianna last,” Eli said, concentrating on the task at hand. “She packed light. A corset, silk jammies, a silk dress, and lots of lacy underthings.” He held up a demi-bra that was wired, constructed to provide lots of lift, and was mostly see-through lace. It had to itch. I made a face that said yuck. Eli gave me his business grin, a twitch that went nowhere, and lifted a thong with one finger of the other hand. Double itch.