by Faith Hunter
So I had come up with my own plan in the hours of my study of the Vampira Carta, a plan that was sure to tick off everyone but would give us adequate time to rescue Katie. Like maybe all the hours until dawn. I didn’t have to do it. I could just stand in my place and keep my mouth shut and hope for the best. I could take the easy way out. But I wouldn’t.
“Everyone, don’t forget to turn off your cells or leave them in the limo. That decreases any chance the Kid will waste valuable time tracking the wrong signals.”
Alex snorted, as if such a mistake was impossible. It probably was.
We pulled down the narrow roadway between perhaps a half dozen vehicles and up to the building. The Nunnery was an old-brick, Spanish-style warehouse with wrought-iron curlicues protecting the blown-glass windows, the lights inside wavering through like water. There were porches on each of its three floors, and the grounds were planted with semitropical flowers and shrubs. Heavy limbs of live oaks wound sinuously across the ground.
The car pulled to a stop and Eli murmured into his mic to Derek, who was not on the premises but was waiting to initiate the hunt for Katie. It felt seriously weird to have only limited access to the security channels, but I didn’t want to be distracted by com chatter, so I had elected to wear only the general channel in my earbud. I shook out my arms and rotated my head on my neck. I was tense—not healthy around vamps.
Wrassler opened the limo door and Eli was out like a flash, listening to security babble, moving fast through the night. A moment later, Wrassler assisted Leo and Grégoire out. George followed, and I was last, feeling totally off my game. Bruiser leaned in close and placed his lips at my ear, murmured, “This time, don’t play nice.”
My mouth curled up in the first real smile all day. His command was the exact opposite of the one he gave the last time we had attended an event at the Nunnery. “Are you telling me to do something really stupid, or really violent?”
“You are anything but stupid, Jane Yellowrock. Anything but. And you look dangerous and gorgeous and violent and deadly tonight.”
I knew it was absurd, and way too girlie for me, but I could I feel my nerves settle with his words. It was a description I could live with, even if the gorgeous part made no sense whatsoever.
Wrassler led the way, Leo behind him, and the rest of us followed like good little servants. Beast padded to the forefront of my mind and flooded me with her strength, speed, and night vision. The world went sharp and bright, full of greens and silvers and oddly tinted blues. The shadows lightened until I could see the men standing in them, Derek’s boys—one of whom might be a traitor. As we ascended the short steps, other cars began to arrive, the rest of Leo’s vamps and blood-servants showing up for the parley.
Inside, warm, dry air fought the sudden cool spell, dropping from overhead vents. The smell of vamp was muted but distinct, and it made my hackles rise. Beast peeled back her lips and showed me her teeth, hissing softly, eager and powerful. For this night, the Nunnery was neutral territory, where Leo might meet and parley with the invading master vamp.
The front half of the building was one huge open area with three-foot-thick brick walls, slate floor, and thirty-inch-diameter brick pillars holding up the second floor, which was fifteen feet overhead. As always, gas-flame sconces lit the area, flickering in the artificial breeze. The entry floor was used for entertaining, with a dining area to the right big enough to seat a hundred at the long table, which was pushed against the wall.
The last time I was here for a party, the air had been redolent of meat and spices. Tonight it just smelled empty, vampy, slightly moldy, and the chill that wafted off the old brick would have been uncomfortable except for Beast’s energy pulsing through me.
To the left of the entrance, where usually there was an area set up like a parlor with couches, chairs, tables, and a fireplace scaled to fit the warehouse, tonight there were two dozen chairs set up in two Vs, twelve facing twelve, with the apex chairs only six feet apart. The twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth chairs were between them, set back, on the opposite ends of a square. One was the place for Sabina, the priestess. The other one was for . . . I had no idea.
Before I could ask, I smelled the priestess arrive, her scent the aroma of old blood and dried rose petals and wind from a desert, stripped of moisture. It caught on the air currents and filled the lower floor. Her nunlike white robes swishing, her hands held clasped at her waist, hidden in her voluminous sleeves, she stepped through the doorway and Leo moved to her. He bowed from the waist in an old-world gesture, like something he might have done to royalty in his youth hundreds of years ago.
When he was at the lowest point of his bow, Sabina said, “Tonight, I am not your outclan priestess, Leonard Eugène Zacharie Pellissier, Blood Master of New Orleans. I am the emissary of the Outclan Council of Mithrans.”
If Leo had been human, he would have started. As he was a vamp, he just did that still-as-death thing they do. I knew Leo had contacted the council, but I’d thought it would be a long time before they responded. Until last night, I hadn’t known that Sabina had a phone line or cell at the cemetery where she slept by day. Now she talked to the council? By his slight pause, I knew Leo had been factoring this new info into his plans for the evening, plans that included trickery and deceit. Things one did not do when the Outclan Council was involved. Only a heartbeat too slowly, he rose and smiled at her. I had no clue if all this was a good thing or a bad thing.
I slid my eyes to Bruiser, but he was watching Leo like a hawk, and then his gaze moved to the entrance, and his eyes widened. I felt de Allyon as much as saw him, his power firing into the room like a torch, like a dozen lasers, like a flashbang going off. His energies prickled against my skin and made the hair on the back of my neck want to curl up and hide. And then I smelled him, that odd, beery scent that seemed all wrong for vamps, the scent on the man I’d killed in my hotel room, the death of the Enforcer that had started all this. Crap. I knew what it was. It was the scent of a blood-drunk master vamp. A Naturaleza who had been drinking his fill of humans for centuries was going up against Leo, who had been drained to the point of insanity recently. I remembered the note he’d left on the dead body in the Learjet: “You killed my Enforcer, Ramondo Pitri. You will die with your Master, in a massacre such as you have never seen. This, at a time of my choosing.”
Except that it would be at a time of my choosing, not his. Some of the tension eased out of my body at the thought. My choosing. Not his.
Lucas Vazquez de Allyon was dressed in a tuxedo, the cummerbund and one of those little handkerchiefs in the color of old blood. His black beard was the same pointy Vandyke style he’d worn in the small pen-and-inks of him in the history book. He looked like a modern-day version of the devil. Satan in Armani. Death’s Rival in a ten-thousand-dollar suit that caressed his body like living hands.
As he stepped closer, the power in the room ratcheted up, my skin feeling parched and prickly. Now I wished I had broken down and asked Leo to translate the text in the book for me. This guy wasn’t just a master vamp. He was something more, something other. Arrogance and condescension oozed from every pore—assuming that vamps had pores. It occurred to me that drinking all that skinwalker blood so long ago might have done something to him. I looked at Leo, wondering what my blood had done to him, and if the old master would be able to tell. If so, then he would know that Katie had sipped a little too. So much to know; no time to discover anything useful. Without raising my head, I scanned the room and located the air vents, making certain that I stood well away from any that might take my scent to my enemy.
I remembered that Sabina had spoken inside my head, telling me that my enemy would know me by my scent. And he would if I got close enough, if he hadn’t forgotten what skinwalkers smelled like. I surely would not be that lucky.
Leo and Sabina stood their ground, letting the conquistador cross the room to them, his footsteps oddly hushed in the suddenly silent room, his people fanning out behind him. T
hey were all vamps, all vamped out, showing the three-inch fangs and long talons of the old, old, old vamp. As they all entered, the sense of power grew; I could feel it pressing against me, hot and electric. I knew that Leo’s legal team had stipulated a maximum of twelve vamps, the rest blood-slaves and the new Enforcer. Somebody had come prepared to make a point or start a blood-feud in earnest. Maybe both.
De Allyon met Leo and Sabina in the center of the huge room, the beery stink of blood-drunk vamps, dried herbs, funeral flowers, dissipation, and the scent of sickness whooshing ahead of them. Our visitors had brought sick vamps with them, but none of the others seemed to notice. I found it odd that the vamps couldn’t smell the only disease that could kill them. I touched my mouthpiece for the first time tonight and informed the crew, including Bruiser, that some of our guests were less than healthy.
“Acknowledged,” Bruiser said into his mouthpiece. “Can you tell numbers? Which ones?”
“Not without getting a lot closer than I want,” I said. Which brought up an image of a big dog sticking his snout into a vamp’s crotch. Then of me doing the same thing. Bet that would liven up the proceedings. I curled my bottom lip in and bit down slightly to keep from grinning. The level of tension Bruiser had reduced with his compliment earlier decreased another notch, and my shoulders relaxed. I took a few steps back from the group clustered around Leo. Studying. Planning. Waiting.
De Allyon got in the first sally. “We are Lucas Vazquez de Allyon, Master of the Cities of Atlanta, Sedona, Boston, and Seattle. We present our heir, Hellene de Romanova, our secondo heir, Adam Jonas, and our Enforcer, Jude Talley.” The royal “we” was a bit much, and de Allyon did it unconsciously, as if he considered himself the king of, well, of America. Which was a scary thought.
Point to de Allyon.
His heir and spare were an odd couple, Hellene looking like the bust off an ancient Greek coin, from the shape of her nose to the light brown braids woven around her head, while Adam’s ethnicity was indeterminate. He looked Mediterranean European, as though he had been swarthy skinned when he was turned.
Leo inclined his head to indicate he had heard and spoke his title. “Leonard Eugène Zacharie Pellissier, master of the territory of Southeastern United States, south of the Mason-Dixon Line, east of the Texas border at the Sabine River to the Atlantic, and south to the Gulf, with the exception of Florida and Atlanta.” He paused a bare moment, and added, “the largest single hunting territory in these United States.” De Allyon didn’t react and Leo went on. “My heir you have met and shackled. My acting secondo scion is Koun.” He gestured to the Celt.
“Acting secondo?” de Allyon asked. The room went quiet. Interrupting a vamp while he’s speaking is a gross offense. Leo didn’t react except to let a small smile touch his face.
“Grégoire is occupied elsewhere.” Meaning that unlike their guest, he’d not put all his eggs in one basket. De Allyon blinked slowly, realizing that if he had miscalculated, if Leo attacked and won, he could lose his entire crew tonight.
Leo’s smile widened and he went on. “And my dual Enforcers, George Dumas and Jane Yellowrock. Yellowrock who has been accused of murder, yet who first was attacked, unprovoked, in her hotel room.”
Point to Leo. And a line that worked toward my plan. Thank you, Leo.
Before de Allyon could respond to the claim, Sabina said, “I am Sabina Delgado y Aguilar, outclan, and emissary of the Outclan Council.” De Allyon’s reaction was even less intense than Leo’s, but his scent changed. In fact, the scents of all his people changed, growing tart as they calculated the meaning of a hurried response from the Europeans. No one had known the council was getting involved in this little war. Point to Sabina, and maybe to Leo. We would see.
“Lucas Vazquez de Allyon,” Sabina said, “you have broken truce. Twelve of your scions may stay. Choose which Mithrans you keep at your side, and which will go. If you refuse, then I will choose.”
De Allyon’s Enforcer, a big man with oiled black skin, a bald head, and weapons up the wazoo, stepped slightly to the side, as if he was getting ready to rumble if his master needed muscle. Bruiser shadowed his moves. I didn’t bother. I knew how powerful Sabina was, and if she said she was in charge, then she was totally in charge, and she had the metaphysical weapons to back up her claim.
“And how would you enforce such a demand?” de Allyon asked. It sounded like real curiosity, not a taunt, but his facial expression didn’t shift from arrogant, and I got the feeling that de Allyon thought he could take the priestess. Dumb-ass.
“I am the bearer of the BloodCross.” Sabina pulled her hands from the sleeves of her habitlike robe, revealing that she wore thick gloves. In one gloved hand was a black cloth, which she allowed to drop to the floor. “Behold the sliver of the all-powerful BloodCross.” The sliver of wood she had hidden beneath the cloth began to glow. De Allyon threw up a warding hand and took two steps back before he caught himself. His people cringed even farther, leaving a space around the old vamp. “I have wielded this weapon for millennia,” Sabina said, “and should you refuse my will, while I act as the emissary of the Outclan Council of Mithrans, I will thrust it into your flesh until you burn brightly.” The room suddenly smelled of fear pheromones, the odd, musky, old herb scent of most vamps growing stronger, bitter.
The old conquistador kept his head averted from the sliver of wood and lifted one finger at his secondo. The man quickly pointed at the vamps he was kicking out of the proceedings. I might be wrong, but I thought they looked relieved to be sent away. They didn’t scurry like rats from a sinking ship, but they didn’t dawdle either. By the change in scent, I could tell that most of the sick vamps had left the building. I was guessing that the secondo wanted to keep the healthy ones around for a fight that now had even odds.
When the numbers of vamps were equal, Sabina snapped her fingers and de Allyon’s secondo bent to the floor, rising with the black cloth. I was pretty sure he hadn’t planned to bend and pick it up. The look of shock on his face was pure comic relief, and when he backed away, he ended up in the back of the crowd, his eyes on Sabina. Sabina tucked the glowing length of wood back into its covering and slid her arms into her sleeves.
“There is no reason for the Outclan Council to interfere in this parlay,” de Allyon said. Which took a lot of nerve, I thought.
“You drew the eyes of the legal apparatus of this nation with the debacle in Natchez. You will be judged and governed no matter the outcome of this parley. Take your seats.” Sabina walked between the enemies and across the room. Sat in her chair. Point to the priestess.
I held my breath, waiting, watching the thoughts flit across de Allyon’s face. Moments passed, and I let my hand drop to my hip and the weapon there. But the old conquistador knew when to fight and when to talk. He moved after Sabina and took the seat to her right. Leo took the seat to her left. Their vamps filled in the places in the expanding rows behind them.
“We are now gathered,” Sabina said. Cold energy sparked through the air as her power shot out, and I heard gasps from de Allyon’s people. Yeah. Go, Sabina. “De Allyon has issued accusation of murder against the Enforcer of Pellissier. Therefore de Allyon has first salvo.”
And that was my cue, which had come way too early. Bruiser’s men had better be rescuing Katie. “Point of order,” I said from the back of the room.
Leo turned shocked eyes to me. Surprise must be a difficult thing for an old vamp to experience. After a few centuries of life, there is nothing new. Right? Wrong.
“While acting as Pellissier’s Enforcer, I was attacked, without cause, without proper challenge. I was forced to act in my own self-defense. That unwise action on de Allyon’s part precipitated a blood-feud and this accusation of murder. Therefore, as per the history of the Sedorov versus Nikitn blood-feud of the fourteenth century, and the Sergius versus Giovanni murder trial of the tenth century, I challenge the new Enforcer of the Master of the City of Atlanta to personal mortal combat, as a way to dete
rmine my innocence or guilt.”
The place went dead silent, not a vamp breathing, everyone thinking, putting together what I had just done. Sabina blinked once, an unusual motion on the face of the ancient priestess. Then she turned her head to me and smiled. It was not a happy moment for me. I was hoping she had figured out what I was trying to do and approved, but she was just as likely to be happy that I was about to be killed.
“Does anyone wish to speak to this point of order?” Sabina asked.
Bruiser, his voice careful and measured, said, “I wish to speak to the point of order. The challenge of mortal combat as a means to determine innocence or guilt is an outdated legal concept.”
Sabina said, “Outdated, but well within her rights.” The place went silent again, and I could feel the weight of Bruiser’s eyes on me. He was ticked, and I had no idea if he would understand what I was doing or why.
Whether I lived or died, Leo would win, because my challenge, if accepted, would force de Allyon back under the directives of the Vampira Carta. Of course, if de Allyon didn’t accept, we were back where we started, with me going to trial, but I was betting on hubris and ego to make him accept, and also betting that he didn’t know what was in the VC codicil about personal mortal combat.
The Enforcer, Jude Talley, raised his eyes to me and grinned, exposing huge, white fangs.
Crap. De Allyon’s new Enforcer was a vamp, an old, powerful vamp. I had fought a master vamp once, and I would have lost had Leo not been snared in the insanity of grief, and run off. This guy was at least as old as Leo, and better trained. A warrior.
Beast pressed down on my mind. Beast is not afraid, she thought at me. We will hunt him and eat his heart. His mass will make him slower than other vampires. I/we are fast, have silver-edged claws and Beast strength.
