“You’re fine,” she said, smiling.
The car drove what felt like the long way around, but I was beginning to wonder if London had a direct route between any two points.
“I wanted to ask you—I went to a lecture on vampire physiology, and there were no vampires in the audience. Aren’t you guys interested in that sort of thing? I figured one of you was sponsoring a research lab somewhere.”
“There isn’t really a tradition of funding scientific research among vampires,” she said. “Was it interesting?”
“It was a little over my head. A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic kind of thing. I took notes.”
“I think it may come down to vampires not really being interested in what mortals have to say about them.”
“Yeah, so I’ve gathered,” I said.
She fidgeted with the edge of her sweater. “It doesn’t even seem real sometimes. Some days I feel like I ought to be getting up in the morning and going to class. I’m still young by human standards, never mind vampire. It’s like I don’t know what I am.”
“But is it getting any … I don’t know. Easier doesn’t seem like the right word.”
“Alette says that in another ten years, when I stop relating to people who look my age, and the people my age start looking older, I’ll feel less torn. The old life slips away, and it really does feel like you’ve died. You move on. Ned says the same thing. So I guess I just have to wait a few more years before it starts to feel normal.”
Normal. How could we even use that word to describe our lives? Because normal was what you lived with every day, no matter what it was. Nobody had the same normal when you put it like that; normal didn’t exist.
“You look really good,” I said. “Have I mentioned that?”
She shrugged, but her expression brightened. “I’ll never have to worry about wrinkles, will I?”
We drove on.
Chapter 6
THE CAR turned a corner and maneuvered between buildings that must have been a couple of hundred years old—tall, looming, neoclassical. A cobbled space had been reclaimed into a small, exclusive parking lot, lit by muted orange streetlights. Expensive luxury cars, big sedans, a few elegant limos, all polished to a shine, were lined up. Uniformed drivers lingered nearby, vigilant. A couple of them were werewolves, who straightened when they saw Ben and me. I kept my chin up, my gaze steady, prepared for posturing. But they only watched.
There were a couple of makes of sports cars I didn’t even recognize. I had the sudden feeling I was on the set for the latest James Bond movie. This obviously had to be a meeting of mobsters, trust fund babies, or vampires.
“Holy shit, is that a Bugatti?” Ben said.
“What’s a Bugatti?” I said, thinking it was some kind of local wildlife.
“Two million dollar sports car,” he said.
“Yeah?” I looked to where he was staring, like a kid with his face pressed to the window of a candy shop.
Colored a shade of blue that verged on black, the thing was shaped like a teardrop and didn’t seem to have any hard edges. Even knowing nothing about cars I could tell it was impressive.
“Maybe you could ask Antony to let you drive it around the block,” Emma said.
“Antony?” he said.
“Yeah. He’s pretty laid back, for a vampire.”
Ned’s driver, Andy, guided us to the front door. The building standing before us was a neoclassical marvel, with wide columns of pale granite holding up a peaked roof that showed friezes of toga-draped figures reclining and dancing in various states of merriment. Many wore or carried masks, smiling and frowning. This was a theater, I realized. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Arms spread wide, Ned was waiting for us at the top of the wide steps that led to the theater’s ornate, brass-decked front doors. “Welcome! Thank you for joining us!”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said wryly, bracing for more vampire bullshit than I’d ever encountered in my entire life. Somehow, I had to make it through the rest of the evening without saying anything snarky. Too snarky, at least.
“It’s too late to back out, isn’t it?” Ben said.
“Never too late,” I said. “Just as long as we know where the exits are.”
He offered me the crook of his elbow, and I put my hand in it. Together, we climbed the stairs and met Ned. Emma followed.
“Any trouble?” Ned asked her.
“No,” she answered.
“Expecting any?” I said.
“Oh no, nothing apart from the usual.”
“What’s the usual?” I said, and he just smiled.
We passed through the doors into a gorgeous carpeted lobby, where crystal chandeliers hung from ceilings painted with lush baroque murals, chubby rosy cupids pulling goddesses of love in golden chariots, that sort of thing. The box office windows had gilt bars over them, and the walls had mahogany wainscoting and elegant antique chairs with embroidered seats.
Ned admired me admiring the scene. “The Restoration of the English theater took place in palaces like this.”
“It’s amazing,” I agreed.
“You seem less impressed, Mr. O’Farrell.”
“It’s a little busy for my tastes,” he said.
“Ah, you’re minimalist, then. A Beckett man.”
“I don’t know that I’m an anything man.”
“That just means you haven’t had a chance to develop a taste for anything yet,” he said.
We crossed the lobby and Ned put his hand on the painted door that presumably led to the main part of the theater. Ben’s hand moved to mine, pressing it where it rested on his arm, just as my nose flared, taking in a thick, coppery smell that reached through the cracks around the door.
“I smell blood,” I said, hesitating. It was lots of blood, for me to scent it through the door like this.
Ned nodded. “Before we enter, you need to understand that there hasn’t been a meeting like this, a gathering of the Masters of Europe, in over a century. We’ve never had one that included so many from abroad. What you’re about to see … it’s a rare thing, and I must remind you that you are guests here.”
“Great. Warning taken,” I said, and Ned looked at me sidelong.
The Master of London opened the doors and led us down the central aisle of the theater.
The rows of seats, red plush and marked with brass number plates, were empty, and the house was dark. All the action was happening on the brightly lit stage, and I might have thought we were here to watch a play. There was a dinner party in progress, a dozen or so people sitting at long tables covered with brocade cloth, set in a horseshoe that faced the audience. The diners were looking out, and at each other. Gold candelabras held burgundy candles, dripping wax. The only silverware or place settings on the ornate tables were knives—slim, wickedly sharp steak knives, most of which were bloody.
A dozen bodies lay piled in the middle of the stage. Male and female, many of them were naked, arms and legs splayed, long hair tangled, heads thrown back, mouths hanging open. All had wounds clotting at their necks and wrists. The scene displayed baroque decadence taken to the ninth level of hell.
My stomach flipped and my throat closed on bile. Ned watched calmly, studying my reactions as he had since I’d met him, so I turned to Emma, my friend, reaching for her in despair and disbelief. “Emma?”
She stood back, just out of reach, and her expression seemed indifferent. The stink of blood stuck in the back of my throat, and it didn’t taste like food, like the feast and frenzy with which Wolf would normally react. It tasted like danger—we were in terrible danger. All those bodies, at the center of a vampire orgy. I looked at Ben, my eyes wide.
“Wait a minute,” Ben said close to my ear, keeping a tight grip on my arm. “They’re not dead.”
Letting my nose work, I searched past the bloody reek for other signs. Settling, tamping down the panic and rage, I could sense beyond the initial shock: all the
blood in the air was still warm—still alive. The bodies were flush and breathing, just unconscious. This was an orgy, but not at the ninth level. Maybe the seventh.
This was like something out of an overwrought opera or a story of Caligula. I needed a long, disbelieving minute to take it all in, and even then my mind shied away from the scene, and Wolf rattled the bars of her cage, fighting to break loose and flee. And still, there was more to see.
I breathed the room’s air until I could start to differentiate scents, between the antique furnishings, chill vampires, warm bodies, and spilled blood. The wild fur-and-skin scent was subtle under the onslaught of the rest of it. Those at the tables were all vampires. Two dozen or so more figures—vampires, lycanthropes, and mortal humans—stood in the positions of bodyguards and retainers behind the tables where the gathered Masters and Mistresses of Europe and beyond sat. They wore all manner of clothing—costumes—from loincloths and lingerie to ornate historical gowns and frock coats. Some were obviously bodyguards, fit men and women in suits who gazed watchfully, suspiciously. I smelled wolf, tiger, and another beast I couldn’t identify. A couple of them were ornaments, sleek women in skintight gowns and gold jewelry. There was a dark-haired, cinnamon-skinned woman whom I thought must have been a fox. Literally. But then … something else entirely.
One of the vampires seated at the end of a table held a pair of chains that led to collars, thick bands of steel secured around the necks of a man and a woman kneeling at his side. They were both naked, physically fit, muscular, well-tanned. They crouched like pets, and they were werewolves, chained and submissive.
“I’m not okay with this,” I said, feeling ill, panicked, furious. This wasn’t my world, and I didn’t want to be here.
“Ned says it’s so much better than it used to be,” Emma said softly. “Imagine what this must have been like in a culture where bearbaiting was like prime-time TV.”
“I’d rather not, thanks. You can’t defend this, Emma.”
“I’m not … it’s just—it’s the way things are.”
This was her world now, I reminded myself.
“I thought this was a meeting, not a horror show,” I snapped at Ned.
One of the vampires on stage, at the middle table, the place of power, stood and leaned forward. She had brick-red hair, curled and flowing down her back and over her shoulders. Her skin was fine china, her smile practiced, her gaze fierce. She wore a gown of midnight blue silk that molded to her figure, and my hackles rose at the sight of her: Mercedes Cook.
“I think we’ve damaged the girl’s modern sensibilities,” she said to her colleagues in her honeyed, purring voice. She actually winked at me, and I buried a growl.
Some of them chuckled in appreciation; others stayed quiet. All those gazes looked down on me, trapping me. I might have been the one on stage.
A few seats down, another of the vampires played with his knife, running the handle between his hands, spinning it. Wearing a suit with a brocade waistcoat and jacket with tails, he was polished and gorgeous, sharp features framed by slick black hair and a trimmed goatee, like a nineteenth-century villain, but he made the look work. He probably invented it. “Modern sensibilities? We are ancient creatures. What do human mores have to do with us?” His accent wasn’t British but rounder, lilting.
“It’s not like we kill anyone—civilized vampires don’t,” said a third, a man with long brown hair, Mediterranean features, a floofy poet’s shirt, loose tan pants, and knee-high boots. “Why kill mortals for their blood when they so obligingly make more?”
“Humans—a renewable resource.”
“We recycle! We’re green!”
Much laughter. Ha.
One of them didn’t laugh. He sat at the far end of the table from Mercedes and her cohort. He wore a simple suit jacket with a band collar shirt. On the stout side, he seemed careworn, his gaze tired, as if he’d seen it all.
“A werewolf with morals,” he said. “I never thought to see such a thing.” His voice was kind, his accent flat American. Him—I wanted to talk to him. I wondered if that was a trick he’d developed.
“Maybe it’s because I come from a country that fought a war to put an end to this sort of thing.” I pointed at the werewolves in chains and fumed. “God, what is this, the Dark Ages?”
Some of them laughed. Some of them looked at me as if I had asked a very silly question. The well, duh look. The last vampire who’d spoken, the careworn one, didn’t react at all.
“Mistress Norville, please settle. You’re under my protection here,” Ned Alleyn said.
“I didn’t ask for your protection,” I said.
How the hell were Ben and I going to hold our own against this? This whole setup—them on the stage, looking down on us, with no way for us to move to a dominant position—was contrived.
“We can always leave,” Ben said calmly. He stood straight and tall, chin up, not cringing a millimeter. It made me stretch a little taller, and I imagined my tail and ears standing up, superior.
We could leave. But as Ned said, this was supposed to be neutral ground, an opportunity to meet with each other without fear. When was I going to get another chance to size up the gathered vampire might of Europe?
“No,” I said, taking a breath, forcing myself to at least pretend that they hadn’t gotten my hackles up. “I haven’t asked any of them how old they are.”
He chuckled. “They never answer that.”
“Ned did. Can’t stop trying now.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Thanks. So, how about it? Any of you up to telling me how old you are? How about if I promise not to tell anyone else?” I raised my voice and scanned the table, looking at every one of them—not meeting their gazes, but making it clear I had noted them, and remembered. Seated at the table were three women and eleven men, plus retainers, servants, and pets. Plus the victims of the dinner. I pointed at the guy in the poet shirt. “You—I bet you’re going to try to tell me you knew Lord Byron, right?”
He laughed, a point in his favor. Guy with a sense of humor couldn’t be all bad. The rest of them regarded me with expressions ranging from amusement to disbelief. Even Ned stood aside, hand to his chin, intrigued. I had a sudden feeling they were feeding me rope, waiting for me to hang myself with it.
“Nobody? Aw, come on, I thought you were all supposed to be badass. What’re you afraid of?” Ben, bless him, smirked at them all right along with me, though I imagined he was mentally slapping his forehead. Did I have to poke quite so much? Yeah, I did.
It kept my gaze from falling to the stack of bodies in the middle of the stage.
The impeccable anachronistic guy with the goatee made an obvious sniff, nostrils flaring, and wrinkled his nose. “The bitch is in heat.”
Ben stepped forward, putting himself in front of me, and bared his teeth in challenge. I put a calming hand on his arm and moved back into view. “Well, that’s a little personal. Ned, if we’re going to be sharing like this do you want to at least introduce everyone to me? I thought you guys were into all that formality and crap.”
Ned started to speak, but the goateed vampire sneered and said, “Too much barking. It’s obscene.” He turned away from us as if disgusted.
“You hear that, honey? I’m obscene,” I said to Ben. “I think that means we win.”
“High five,” he said, holding up his hand. I slapped it and held it.
“High paw.”
Yeah, they were definitely looking at us like we were the ones on stage, now. The figures on the fringes, the bodyguards and such, had pressed forward to watch, even. I didn’t know how much longer we could keep up the banter and hold their attention.
“I don’t think you understand your position here, young lady,” said another of them, a man with dark skin and an Arabic-looking robe of white linen tied with an embroidered sash. “You are here at our pleasure. Our sufferance.”
“See, what does that even mean?” I said, my arms out. “Yo
u think I’m going to go along with that, just because you expect it?”
“Has no one taught you manners?” he said in a disappointed tone, as if he was lamenting the fallen state of the world, where a lowly werewolf could talk smack to a vampire.
“Yeah, you should ask the vampires back home about that. I’m real popular.”
“She is,” Ben said. “That eye rolling thing you’re doing? She gets that all the time.”
I looked at him. “Really?”
“Just trying to help.”
Man, the two of us should go on the road. Some of the retainers standing in the wings had begun to fidget. I hoped I was making them nervous.
Ned stepped forward. “If I could make those introductions now—”
The goateed vampire slapped the table, causing knives to rattle and candle flames to flicker. “Edward, you are a terrible host for allowing one of the wolves to speak so out of turn.”
Ned smiled. “She’s not mine to command, Jan. You know that.”
“It’s the principle—”
Ned countered, “If you’re offended—”
“Oh, I’m not offended,” one of the other women said. She had black hair and wore a rhinestone-studded ball gown that glittered like shattered glass. “I thought this was the evening’s entertainment.” That got a few more laughs. Several of them started talking and laughing over each other, leaving Ned cut off in the middle of his intervention.
Enough of this. I looked at Mercedes and raised my voice.
“How many of you are carrying the coins of Dux Bellorum?” I said, loud and sure to carry.
The room fell still, quiet, and every vampiric gaze, thick with power, turned on me. Mercedes actually took a step back. Well, hallelujah.
“What did you say?” The flip guy in the poet’s shirt asked this softly.
“You heard me,” I said.
Again, the long silence and studious gazes dominated. I kept still, chin up, eyes steady. I did not slouch. Neither did Ben. We weren’t the strongest ones here; it was us against all of them, the whole room. But we had startled them. We had an advantage.
Kitty Steals the Show Page 6
