The Bitten

by L. A. Banks

  “Master Amin, and his lovely wife Alani.”

  He looked at Carlos and smiled, his head tilting as he assessed Damali, then he dipped into a slight bow to reach for her hand. “Legendary huntress,” he said, so sexy and with such authority that her hand quivered, “and Councilman, the pleasure is ours, to be sure.”

  Master Amin held her hand a bit longer than was appropriate, and she felt a swift mental invasion push inside her and spread outward to end in a sensual sweep over the entire surface of her skin. Bold! She spied Carlos from her peripheral vision. He was icy cool. She thought she’d pass out when Amin let her see a hint of fang, then drew back and allowed her hand to slowly fall away from his. An outright seduction attempt, in front of all the other masters, and Carlos—a councilman? African men were deep, dead or alive!

  Little flecks of light danced across her vision; too much adrenaline had hit her system all at once. The African master’s wife followed her husband up the stairs, but glanced back at Damali so cool, so calm, that Damali almost reached up to feel her throat to see if it had been cut. Oh, yeah, she was definitely not sitting next to her.

  “Well,” the Aussie said too enthusiastically. “I think that went rather well, given the circumstances.” He swallowed away a smile and sighed. “After everyone has checked their bags, changed clothes, and consumed the light refreshments in their rooms, we’ll begin the hunt.”

  Damali could feel the blood drain from her face . . . three new guests, diplomat status . . . light refreshments . . . oh, no, no, no, no, not—not three babies!

  Her eyes wide, she looked at Carlos.

  “How’s this transport thing work?” Carlos muttered, not answering her unspoken question.

  Damali studied his countenance. Her man had done the steely jaw, give them the no-fear grit thing, but was rattled beyond words. She could tell. But the babies!

  Too late, if that’s what they’ve been served. They’ve been upstairs now for ten minutes.

  The response was so low that she almost didn’t catch it.

  “We take choppers to the Heartland, and there we dismount and each get a vehicle, driver, and ammo. The pilots will drop a coupla carcasses and fire off a flare, then we wait until one of the roos goes for the body, and the chase is on to bring the bastard down,” McGuire said, oblivious to their exchange.

  “Are we taking five choppers?” Damali said, trying to act like she wasn’t worried any longer, and needing to talk about the next big concern she had, namely, being set up in a chopper without her blade.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Evelyn said, placing a consoling hand on Damali’s shoulder. “They’re all such bitches when you first meet them, but they do warm up after they get to know you. They are probably a little jealous that you’re so young and got made by a councilman. You know how this goes.”

  Yeah. Whateva. These weren’t some jealous chickens from around the way.

  “I am not traveling during the hunt with a group of women who disrespect me,” Damali said, her hands going to her hips. “It’s just not done where I come from.”

  “If the lady wants to fly solo after you’re on the ground, then I see no worries.” McGuire turned to Damali, his eyes watery as he wiped his nose with the back of his hand, obviously so high he’d forgotten about his breast-pocket handkerchief. “Usually the ladies all like to ride together so they can root for the guys, that’s all Evie meant. She wants you to feel included, but like I told you before, love, whatever you want . . . all you have to do is ask, and it’s so.”

  The fact that this master had called her love in front of Carlos—which was waaay out of order, and was sniffing like a cokehead, let her know immediately that her stress from the introductions had spiked the air. Shit. But Carlos was cool, hadn’t even twitched a muscle. It made her wonder what he was thinking. Was brother so pissed off that he was just gonna go out in a blaze of glory and try to whack these mugs one by one on the ground, or was he gonna be strategic? That was the important question.

  “Baby, what do you think?” Damali asked. If he said, yes, go with the ladies, then he sensed no threat. If he said, no, go solo, then she’d know that there was serious trouble brewing.

  “I think you should do what makes you feel most comfortable, honey.” Carlos’s voice was even, and he didn’t even look at her as he spoke. “McGuire will accommodate your choice.”

  He then turned and walked up the steps. She stared at Carlos’s back in pure disbelief as McGuire put an arm over Evelyn’s shoulders and threaded another arm around her waist. She moved with the Aussie master who held her in to him tightly. Slack-jawed, she couldn’t even speak as she walked up the steps. Nor did she push away the very amorous male whose nose and fangs were just a bit too close to her hair, almost nuzzling it. His hand caressed her waist. Her thoughts were on Carlos’s unreadable expression when the introductions had been made. Did he pick up any tracer that would lead them to the key?

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you smell so damned good, Mistress Rivera?”

  Damali kept walking.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE WAIT in the grand parlor was interminable. Evelyn’s talk about home decoration, coupled with innuendo about the agreed upon post-concert tryst, was drilling a hole into Damali’s brain. But that wasn’t as bad as having to continue to strategically reposition herself during the conversation just to get away from McGuire’s blatant advances.

  When he finally left the room to join the other males in his study—so they could casually carve up the world over cigars and blood-spiked brandy—Damali sat hard on the sofa, exhaustion making her limbs feel heavy. She was too tired to delicately turn aside any more sly propositions, offers, and/or seductions.

  And if the males were all drawing straws on the fate of the world, then naturally the wives gathered to chitchat about the merits of suckling baby as a delicacy versus pre-pubescent boys. But she wasn’t fooled into thinking that this was a wickedly genteel meeting of the vampire ladies’ home and garden club. There was some serious power pulsing throughout this room.

  Not to mention, the other ambassadors’ wives were so cool toward her that they were straight-up icy. Mistress Xe was on the far side of the room sipping blood from a cordial glass, careful not to stain her white linen sundress. Mistress Tetrosky sat next to Evelyn on the love seat, carefully smoothing her impeccably tailored navy and white summer skirt ensemble. She spoke only to the Aussie first lady, practically ignoring all the other first ladies in the room, and acting as though Damali wasn’t there, which forced Evelyn to work hard to continue drawing Damali into a conversation she didn’t want to be in anyway.

  But Mistress Amin was blatant with her distain. She flashed a bit of fang as she brushed nonexistent lint from her coral-hued linen wrap-dress and passed Damali to take a seat in the overstuffed Queen Anne chair by the fireplace. The whole gathering looked like a Beverly Hills tea party.

  Damali stood and went to the elaborate bookshelf and began scanning the volumes. She wasn’t crazy. Even though she’d turned her back to them, her guard was up. She had to let them know she wasn’t afraid of them and by turning her back on them sent the message—just try it.

  What did vampires read, anyway, she wondered, zoning out on the boring madness the pampered pets of diplomats were discussing. She wanted so badly to be in the room with the big boys, at the table, hardball negotiating, witnessing how Carlos handled himself at high-stakes poker.

  “And we want to thank you so much, Evelyn, for providing the human helper in our room. That was a lovely appetizer before the banquet tonight. Ursula and I got on famously. And can you imagine, she was begging to be turned?”

  Damali cringed. But she felt much better knowing that at least it hadn’t been a baby. If some human adult had made a choice to roll with these predators, then, hey, that was their choice. But what choice or chance did a little baby have?

  She caught Mistress Xe eyeing her from the far side of the room.

  “Yes, Eve
lyn,” Mistress Xe said, her voice like silk. “The way you bound her hands and let her dangle from a wall hook over the crystal blood decanter was so clever.” She gave Damali a nasty smile. “Some people do not appreciate the finer things in life.”

  Was that bitch signifying? Damali glanced over her shoulder and let the comment pass.

  “Where did you find the women, Evelyn?” Mistress Amin said, her eyes on Damali the entire time she spoke. “A brothel?”

  Again, Damali ignored her.

  “Mistress Rivera,” the sheer blonde from Transylvania said, “you didn’t enjoy your plaything?”

  “I had a baby earlier, and that was enough,” Damali muttered, and tried to focus on the bookcase.

  When dead silence surrounded her, Damali turned around and stared at them.

  “Decorum, ladies,” Evelyn said, her expression nervous, tight, and on-guard.

  Mistress Xe walked deeper into the center of the room, anger heating her words. “You offered her a baby?”

  Mistress Amin was on her feet. “I am highly offended, Evelyn! How could you present her with such a delicacy like that and snub the other wives?”

  “She’s the councilman’s wife,” Evelyn said nervously. “Some things are protocol, ladies. To do any less would be a grave offense.”

  Standing quickly, Mistress Tetrosky folded her arms over her chest and sneered down at Evelyn. “Wait until Gustav hears about this. I never—” She spun on Damali, her eyes blazing. “Someone of her ilk would know nothing about what to do with a suckling infant.”

  Oh, yeah . . . it was on. Damali could feel a very dark part of herself concentrating, being amplified by the oppressive energies in the castle, and drawing power from every cell in her body all the way to the marrow. It was such an old rage, so visceral, and so familiar, one she’d lived with as a child, people thinking they were better than her for no other reason than the accident of birth. It was as though the castle itself was bringing out the worst in her. And then she realized that it wasn’t just the environment, these bitches had been quietly working on her head.

  “Her, Evelyn?” Mistress Xe hissed, adding more venom to her argument. “I can trace my lineage all the way back to the Ming Dynasty, and Alani can go back to Kemet! Kiersten hails from the time before the Druids.” Her gaze narrowed on Damali as she pointed at her. “And this little bitch probably doesn’t even know who her own mother or grandmother was—just like you Aussies can’t go back worth a damn!”

  An image slammed into Damali that brought tears to her eyes. One of the females had shown her her mother in the dirt, crying and screaming in the driveway of their home on her hands and knees, pleading for her father to come back. Instantly, another hurtful image slammed into Damali’s mind. She tried to ward it off, but her mother’s ritual to call up Nuit came crashing into her head. Just as that image faded, she saw her foster father coming at her, then his face blurred and became her father’s with fangs.

  “She comes from pure human trash,” Mistress Li said with a sly smile, “and you wasted a baby on her?”

  The rage that had been building within Damali propelled her forward, stole her will, and eclipsed all judgment. They were talking about her dead parents—a real sore subject. Worse, they’d gotten into her mind. The tears burned away. Bad form, as Evelyn called it, from where she came from, too. Mass gathered in her bloodstream. Yeah, from her world a nasty comment about your momma meant a sho’ nuff beat down. But laughing at her family tragedy wasn’t even done among vamps of the same level, so she’d been told. Instantly, the image of Carlos with the were-demon in Brazil shot into her mind’s eye. Oh, no . . . they had not taken her there . . . They’d thrown down the gauntlet. If she let this pass, they’d attack her for sure. Something within her snapped like a twig. It was on.

  “Who you calling a bitch, bitch?”

  Instantly, Lai Xe transformed. Suddenly she had six arms, three on each side, and her head moved hypnotically from side to side with a serpent’s grace.

  Evelyn was on her feet in a flash. “Ladies, please, let’s not ruin—”

  “Shut up, Evelyn,” Alani Amin snarled, transforming instantly. What had once been a regal, statuesque beauty was now a fanged creature with the woman’s face, but crouched low, the upper body of a woman, lower body of a lion, a twitching spaded tail, and large leathery wings.

  Damali didn’t move. It wasn’t fear that held her, but strategy. If they’d transformed into forms stronger than regular vamp females with fangs, it meant that they were unsure of her strength. She watched them. They seemed to be waiting for her to show them her best shape-shift. Damali smiled. The fact that she was holding nonfang-bearing human form was messing with their minds. She could feel it as they began posturing for an attack, using the transformative abilities like were-demons from the realms above level six.

  “I’ve had enough of this human scented pretender to the throne,” Mistress Tetrosky roared, then threw her head back, shot a funnel of fire, and transformed into a griffin. “No council-level master should be tethered to a low-bred bitch like this—a waste of a valuable male resource in the empire!”

  She didn’t care what they’d turned into, there was nothing more dangerous than a pissed-off sister from ’round the way. Then Evelyn reluctantly dropped to all fours and transformed into a crocodile. Oh, so it was like that? Punk whore. She was supposed to have her back, had practically asked outright to go down on her in the parlor. But when it came time to stand her ground, Evelyn was with her girls.

  Damali gripped the Isis handle so tightly that she could feel her palm bleed. Every affront she’d ever experienced, every clique she’d been shunned from, and every humiliation ever thrust upon her, galvanized in one central battle cry. “Bring it, bitch!”

  Damali threw her head back, her voice now a weapon of its own, blood-spiked colors behind her shut lids. She could feel something happening to her, a bloodlust ramping into a vampiric flux, and the sensation was both disorienting and exhilarating at the same time. Her heart stopped for a second and then beat an erratic seizure against her breastbone, her gums ripped, and when she opened her eyes to lunge, she saw the females before her backing up. Near-stroke-level fury made her shudder as her voice drew density, velocity. The air began to stain red, then mix with an eerie purple magenta fusion. Male vampires instantly came through the walls into the room from all directions, forming a ring at the outskirts. Carlos rushed toward her and then stopped within a few feet of her. Their male presence, fangs in full battle mode, dredged a rage-induced scream which she let loose at the top of her lungs.

  The huge bay window blew out, the bookcase rippled and shed its thick leatherbound classics like missiles, and the chandelier quaked and began separating from the ceiling. Tiffany lamps exploded as Damali’s line of vision swept every male protecting a female vamp in the room, sending shards of colored glass everywhere. Words seized in her throat, she couldn’t draw in enough air fast enough as the rage almost made her levitate off the ground.

  “You bitches have no concept of who you are fucking with tonight!”

  Instantly, the Hell-hounds flew through the window, snarling and barking, sensing she was in danger, making the group back up, as they landed between Carlos and Damali, and the others, holding the other masters at bay.

  “Go back on guard,” Damali shouted at the animals, making them give her a confused glance, but then they sulked away and took flight out of the window.

  “Baby . . .” a low, too-serene male voice said.

  She whirled on the speaker. “Fuck detente!”

  Carlos stepped back. Damali reached out her hand toward Mistress Tetrosky, her will pulling her from across the room. It was a standoff for a second, the woman trembling between them as her husband’s hold loosened, and Damali’s gained more strength against the magnetic force her husband was struggling to maintain to keep the woman at his side. A loud crack sounded as though a tree limb had been felled. Instantly, Damali drew the Transylvanian diplom
at’s wife from across the room, grabbed her throat, gripping it, causing her to transform back into the fragile blonde. Damali body slammed her on the Oriental carpet, raised the Isis with both hands tight at the handle, and stood over her, legs apart with the Isis pointed toward the center of the female vampire’s chest.

  “I may not be able to trace back to the Druids, bitch, but I will tell you this: your ass will respect me! And when you disrespect me, you disrespect my man—and that I ain’t having from none of y’all!”

  “Damali, baby . . .” Carlos said, very carefully.

  Damali took two deep breaths, then angrily stepped away, grumbling about the momma comment. She stalked away from the female vamp and allowed her to scramble back to her husband’s side. She looked at the Transylvanian master hard. “You’d better keep that bitch in check.” She paced back and forth like a caged animal in front of the sofa, her gaze narrowing on the African diplomat’s wife as she huddled against her man.

  As Damali railed, the air in the room got darker and darker with the deep magenta-purple stain of her rage. Damali stalked back to the bookcase, punched it, making four more volumes fall as a shelf splintered, and then came back to the center of the room. What had begun as strategic theater had gotten a stranglehold on her. It was as though the castle and the mind dredge combined with the eminent threat all around her was producing an incredible flux between ultimate Neteru battle mode and vamp attack.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t stop herself. Words formed in her mouth and she spat them out as the strange flux imploded within her system.