by Karen Chance
Somebody gave a little scream.
I sighed, and opened my eye again.
And saw a woman—the one who'd screamed at a guess—trying to forge a path through the crowd to the back, only to discover that no one would let her in. That seemed to up the ante on the whole terror thing, leaving her plastered to the wall of people now all trying to hide behind each other. While yelling.
I blinked at them, and then at my reflection in a nearby, floor length mirror. Yes, dhampirs are the bogeymen—and women—of the vampire world, but right now, I wasn't doing much to uphold standards. The cap of short, dark hair was the same, as were the black eyes looking in confusion out of a face that should have been pleasingly olive, but was vamp-pale thanks to the whole daddy-was-a-bloodsucking-monster thing. But they were the only similarities.
Because my butt was in the air, my cheek was on the floor, and I was lacking my usual well-oiled accessories.
All of them.
My jeans, leather jacket and butt-kicking boots had been replaced by a frilly scrap of silk pretending to be a nightgown. It matched the thong wedged up the aforementioned butt, and was courtesy of the aforementioned boyfriend. Who had been born when men wore silks and laces, but who'd realized at some point that these things weren't considered manly in the 21st century.
So he'd started dumping them on me.
I would have had more to say about that, but the bastard could be persuasive. Like proffering the ridiculous nightwear on one finger, while prowling toward me with exactly nothing at all covering those hard muscles and sleek lines. And while those aristocratic features took on the half-heated, half-amused look he got when he was about to—
But that wasn't the point here.
The point was the group of terrified people crowding my closet.
I sat up.
"Ahhh! Ahhh!"
"Help us, oh Jesus!"
"Let me through, let me through!"
"I was here first!"
I grabbed my head, because it hurt. A lot. And the screaming wasn't helping.
"Shut up!" I finally yelled.
There was sudden, blissful silence.
And then somebody made a break for the door.
And despite some middle aged pudge and a pair of sagging, sans-a-belt slacks, it was a fast break, because he was a vamp. At least, I was pretty sure. I caught him by the leg and jerked him down.
Little fangs, bared in what looked like terror. A pulse beating frantically in his too pale neck, because he hadn’t learned that he didn’t need it yet. Wildly fluctuating power surges, if you could dignify the amount of energy he was giving off by that name. Skin far too cold, because he hadn’t eaten recently, and he needed to.
Because he wasn't just a vampire.
He was a baby.
They all were, I realized slowly, raising my head to survey them again. What were a bunch of baby vamps doing in my closet? And, for that matter, what was I?
"Stop that," I slurred at the ravenous infant, who appeared to be trying to gnaw off my arm.
Smacking his head away, I used the pudge as leverage to get back to my feet. The babies took a collective step back, which was a good trick considering that they were already hugging the wall. I surveyed them for a second, seeing the whites around their eyes, the panicked little breaths they didn’t need fluttering their clothes, and the tendency to lash out at each other like a pack of snarling dogs. I didn’t know where the hell their minders were, but I couldn’t very well leave them here. They might trash all this expensive frilly stuff and then that . . .
Well, that would be a shame.
I let myself dream for a moment, before coming back down to earth. The designer was still around, and might come up with something even worse next time. And the babies might rip each other to shreds in the process, and then I'd feel bad.
You know. Probably.
I sighed.
"All right, all of you. Out."
They got out.
"And stay together!" I yelled, as they stampeded through the bedroom and out the door to the hall. "Single file, down to the kitchen. Don’t make me come after you!"
I dragged the pudgy one with me, because he was easily the most far gone of the lot. Baby vamps were like baby humans; they needed to be fed on a regular basis or bad things happened. Only these bad things hurt like a bitch.
I finally got all of Pudgy's pointy bits facing outward, and frog marched him downstairs, to the vast, brand spanking new, ultra-modern kitchen that didn’t go at all with the Old World atmosphere of the rest of this place. Louis-Cesare, the boyfriend in question, had his main court in France. But due to some recent political maneuvering, he'd found himself part of the North American Vampire Senate instead of the European one, so a new court had been required. Only it looked like he'd brought the other one here, stone by stone, because this place did not reflect the usual architecture of upstate New York.
Except for the kitchen.
The old stone countertops and big wooden table I'd seen on my first visit had been upgraded—to the galley of the Starship Enterprise. If it was shiny, stainless steel, or high tech, the chef had it in spades. And he obviously didn't like having his pristine command center sullied by a bunch of snarling baby monsters.
"Lady Dorina! I must protest!"
"Dory," I told him, for something like the tenth time. "And where are the minders?"
I was talking about the older vamps who acted as nursemaids for the fanged tots. At least they did in most families. I hadn’t been around this one long enough to find out how they dealt with their babies, or why Louis-Cesare's paternal instincts had kicked in to the tune of whatever-tuplets it is when you have a couple dozen of them.
Herd, I thought, watching the babies stagger around, and jump back from their own reflections in the shiny surfaces, because their VampVisionTM didn't work properly yet. The zoom feature could send buildings, people, and fridges suddenly speeding toward them like a freight train. Or like an out of control dhampir, which might explain some of the screaming earlier.
"We're working on it," the harassed chef told me. Verrell was a Chef Boyardee clone with a food appreciative gut and big dark eyes. They matched the curls escaping from under his toque, and the so-French-it-hurt little stash on his upper lip. He slammed a rolling pin down on a counter top, and a baby vamp snatched his hand back.
And started to cry.
"Mon Dieu," the chef muttered, and looked mournfully at me.
"Tell me about it," I said, while struggling with the vamp I’d decided to rename Bitey. "Or, better yet, tell Louis-Cesare. Where is he?"
"Paris."
"Paris?"
Verrell nodded in what looked like envy. "He left yesterday, in ze great hurry."
"You mean . . . Paris, France?"
Verrell blinked in confusion. "Zere is anozzer?"
Yeah, but I doubted Louis-Cesare had suddenly gotten a hankering to visit Texas. "Did he say why?"
"You 'ave to ask?" He waved a spoon around crazily. "Ze senate, zey dump all zese babies on us, wiz no warning, and wiz ze house in such a state—"
That state apparently being pristine mansion, because I'd yet to see so much as a speck of dust anywhere. I vaguely wondered what Verrell had thought of my place when he'd visited. I decided not to ask.
"The senate?" I said instead. "Then these aren't Louis-Cesare's?"
Verrell wrinkled his nose, and pried a young blonde out of his truffle drawer. She had wild eyes and a jam and truffle wreathed mouth, and Verrell regarded her with disdain. "We are not one of zose families. We 'ave ze standards."
I gave up. "When will Louis-Cesare be back?"
"If he is smart? Nevair," the chef muttered, and released the girl in order to dive after a couple of vamps who were destroying his pantry.
It wasn't unusual at that age: they needed food, their starvation-addled brains knew that much. But in their current state, they couldn't think well enough to remember that the normal stuff wouldn’t help any
more. No matter how much of it they ate, I thought, watching as thousands of dollars' worth of caviar, fine oysters and well-aged cheese went down hatches to stomachs that didn’t know what to do with it anymore. The remainder splattered everywhere, causing the chef to go ballistic with the roiling pin, along with his two white-garbed helpers.
"We need to contain them somewhere!" I said, and got only crazed looks in return. Because yeah. It was like herding cats.
"Where?"
"You don’t have minders?"
"Zey 'ave not arrived yet—"
"Then a room—a shielded one," I added, because otherwise, they'd claw through the damned plaster.
"Eet won’t help," Verrell told me dolefully. "Zey are babies. Zere power ees too . . ." He waved his hands around. "Unstable, yes?"
"So?"
"So, 'ow do you set zee ward? Too low and zey walk right through eet, when zere power spikes. Too high and—zee bug zappair."
"The what?"
"Like at zee picnic, comprenez-vous?"
"No."
Verrell suddenly started twitching and flailing about, wildly enough that even a couple of the babies paused to stare at him. And then he stopped, to do the same to me. "Zappair, zappair! Zee leetle bug, it gets too close and—" More flailing.
Light dawned. "And we don’t want to zappair the babies."
Verrell's pink lips pursed.
It looked like he was thinking about it.
It didn’t help that, as the minutes stretched from their last feeding, more and more of the babies were losing it. New vamps are half crazy anyway, and that's when they're well-fed. Starving ones . . .
Starving wasn't good.
Some were tearing open cabinets, stuffing their faces and cutting their lips, because they hadn’t remembered to retract their fangs. Others were sitting in widening puddles of wine and melting ice cream, crying because the hunger wouldn’t abate. Still others had reached the crazy stage, like Bitey, forcing me to have to keep hold of him while he snapped and snarled and tried to eat anyone within reach.
Like the vision in blue satin who appeared in the doorway a moment later, regarding the panting mass of hate in my arms with a slightly raised eyebrow.
"Oh, there you are, Dory. I've been looking everywhere."
"Radu, would you please—"
I tried to pass the crazed thing in my arms to Louis-Cesare's Sire, so I could help round up the others, but he wasn't having it. "My dear. He's drooling."
"I know he's drooling! He's also trying to bite my arm off!"
"He probably needs to be fed."
"I know he needs to be fed!"
"There's no reason to shout," Radu said mildly, as he swanned through the mess, wafting away snarling babies with a few motions of his well-manicured hands, in order to reach the house phone.
Why he needed it, I didn’t know. With his long, shiny dark hair, satin-draped body and languid stroll, he looked like a male supermodel freshly arrived from the seventeenth century. But behind those limpid, turquoise eyes was the mind of a second-level master vamp, meaning that he could communicate mentally with almost anyone he chose.
Except for them, I realized a moment later, when a bunch of human servants came running through the main door.
And then just as quickly turned and started out again, because 'Du had forgotten one little thing.
"No, no, no," he said crossly, as the babies stampeded by him. "Gently!"
But the babies weren't interested in gentle; the babies were interested in blood. And the fact that there was plenty to go around, and that it was being freely offered, didn’t matter to creatures more or less out of their minds. Shit, I thought, and threw Bitey at them.
"Get out!" I yelled, while Bitey took out half a dozen of his friends in a crazed frenzy, sending them staggering and stumbling and sliding on the ice cream-slick floor. They went down like a bunch of bowling pins, but the rest were still coming, launching themselves with blood-crazed madness at the now petrified human servants. Who were used to donating blood, but not to being hunted by what amounted to a pack of salivating wolves.
"Go!" I repeated, with a vamp in either hand, while trying to block access to the door by wedging myself between the wall and the nearest counter. But the babies outnumbered me, and they were rapidly losing their fear to blood madness. I roared at them, an ear shattering sound that bared my own tiny fangs, and caused a few of the still-somewhat-rational ones to rear back in alarm, only to get trampled by the crazies behind.
And then it got worse.
The tall, muscly blond Radu usually introduced as his bodyguard despite the rolled eyes that produced, came through the door. But Gunther wasn't all blond good looks; he could fight, too, which is why I assumed he'd just pulled a knife. Until the knife went in his tanned forearm, and a dishtowel soaked up the bright splatter it produced. And every baby's nose in the place suddenly turned up at the scent of warm, fresh, life-giving—
"Blood," Bitey growled, and tore out of my grip.
He leapt over a counter, following the blood soaked rag, and the human waving it like a red flag in front of a whole herd of bulls. And the others followed. Including the two I had in hand, who almost towed me over the counter before I released them.
"In here!" The chef panted, jerking open a large door I hadn’t noticed, because the stainless all tended to melt together. In went the rag, while Gunther ducked behind the chef's two assistants, who cut off the babies and herded them toward the door.
And then through it, before the chef slammed it shut behind them, and threw the latch.
And then looked at me and screamed, flailing his chubby hands around, because I don’t think this sort of thing was on his usual agenda.
I stared back, still half-draped over the counter, but I wasn't looking at him. I was looking behind him, to where Gunther was trying to staunch the blood flowing down his arm. And seeing him again, holding the dishtowel high over his head, and running like a madman—
A cold wind swept across the kitchen, ruffling my hair and sending goosebumps sliding up my arms. My eyes crossed as they tried to take in two different places at once. And two different times.
"Well, shit," I said thickly, and fell over.
Chapter Three
1457, Mircea
A tiny wart of a house in Venice, Italy
Rain lashed the little structure, sending it shuddering as if in pain with every gust. Mircea ignored it, concentrating on Jerome, who was never going to heal if he kept bleeding like a stuck pig. But it was hard to avoid that when half your guts were on the floor, like bloody worms scrawling over the stained wood. And Mircea couldn’t put them back where they belonged, because Jerome had come out of his trance and was fighting him—
And he was fighting hard.
A delirious master vampire is one of the most deadly creatures on Earth. As demonstrated when Mircea was thrown across the room, hitting the wall and then landing in a sprawl of paint and canvass. So much for his latest artistic effort, he thought, and flung it at Jerome. Not because it would help, but because he didn’t have anything else.
But the distraction was seized by Nicolò, who slammed a meaty fist into the side of Jerome's blond head a second later, only to go sailing himself. Through the side of the house, and into the wildly frothing waters of the sea outside, making a new entrance in the process. Several of the other vamps just stood there, staring after him, while another ran wildly for the front door.
Mircea couldn’t really blame him.
He swallowed, staring at Jerome's bloody face, at glowing copper eyes and long, bared fangs, and wondered if this had been the best idea. Even Marsilia, who had shown up a couple minutes before, was now plastered against the wall, waiting for him to do something. Because age doesn’t always equal power, and even after all these years, she was barely a master. While Jerome . . . well, Mircea wasn't sure what his level was, but it was safe to say it was higher than theirs.
And then he lunged.
; Several vamps dove out of the way, Mircea threw out a hand, trying vainly to get into Jerome's deranged brain, and Marsilia screamed.
And then, suddenly, everything stopped.
For a second, all Mircea saw was a tableaux worthy of artists who commanded much higher fees than he: vamps hugging the walls or desperately trying to fit through the door; a dripping Nicolò, pausing half in, half out of the wall, his face furious; Marsilia, her ruby lips parted in shock; Horatiu, Mircea's old manservant, silhouetted in the door to the kitchen, his gnarled hand clutching a frying pan.
And a tiny, barefoot child in a white chemise, one still too long for her because Mircea had gotten it from a second hand stall, standing on the stairs.
Jerome paused, bloody mouth agape, and stared at the girl. She looked like a tiny angel, her long dark hair a sleep-rumpled mass tumbling to her waist, her dark eyes large and watchful, her cheeks pale but her lips pink. Mircea's heart leapt to his throat, because of all his nightmares, this was the worst. He tensed, ready to throw himself at his friend, ready to kill or die, ready to do anything to save her—
"Stop it," she told Jerome, frowning.
And Jerome stopped. All of a sudden, the fight seemed to flood out of him, like the blood that stained the floor where he collapsed. For a second, the whole room just stared.
And then everything snapped back into full color and speed.
Mircea grabbed his daughter, hugging her to him, while every other vampire in the place gazed at them in shock, the spine-tingling run-run-run feeling of their only natural predator screaming in the air around them. Mircea swallowed again, but looked back defiantly. And wondered what happened now.
* * *
"Dhampir." Nicolò said nothing else, but he didn’t need to. It was all in his eyes, the same mix of emotion that Mircea had encountered every time he'd heard that word. It had been hard to accept that the daughter he cherished was considered a monster by the people of his new world, and viewed the same way that humans viewed them: with anger, loathing, hatred.
