by L. A. Banks
Hot tears from years of bottled-up anger streamed down her face. But when Carlos stepped forward, she leveled her blade at him and he stood very, very still.
“I have always been more than what people see, and dead or alive that still holds true!” She moved in a slow semicircle before the group, the tip of her blade bouncing from the energy running the length of her arm, down the blood groves, and arcing a current at the end of it. “I am a female master. I am the night itself to you whores. I am my own woman, equal to any master in this fucking room, and I won’t tolerate disrespect.”
With that she flipped the Isis blade so the point was to the floor and rammed it into the polished stone beneath the rug. She glanced up at Carlos, and then at her clothes with disdain, and instantly changed into a T-shirt and a pair of fatigues and combat boots. “I refuse to ride in the choppers and be a spectator. I want a Jeep, a driver, and a helluva serious load of ammo.”
“Councilman Rivera,” McGuire said slowly, not moving from his wife’s side. “It’s too dangerous—”
Before he could finish the sentence, Damali was standing in front of McGuire. “Why are you talking to him? He doesn’t run me, I choose to be with him. So you speak the fuck to me when I ask you a question. I am so tired of the paternalistic bullshit, McGuire, I will rip your punk heart out myself—and I’m supposed to come to your room? Pullease.”
The other masters stared at McGuire, their gazes slowly raking him, then Damali, before settling upon Carlos.
“If the lady isn’t pleased with your choice, Councilman,” Master Amin said, his eyes devouring Damali, “perhaps she would feel less agitated if you sent her to me?”
McGuire cast a nervous glance at Damali. “You’re not reconsid—”
“Get me a damned hunt car. Now!” she shouted, anger pulsing through her. “This is not open for discussion!”
“Mr. Councilman,” the Transylvanian master said, his voice serious, his eyes watery as he sniffed hard and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “She must place a wager, if—”
Suddenly Tetrosky’s head jerked back as though he’d been slapped. The sound of a hard strike echoed throughout the room, and the circle widened, each couple moving back as Damali walked forward, brushing past Carlos.
Her eyes narrowed and from a place of unknowing, words gathered, formed, translated, and were issued forth in a language she’d never been taught.
I told you to address me directly. Damali placed her hands on her hips. Tetrosky rubbed his jaw, his eyes on her as he shunted his wife aside, eyes glowing red, fangs now dripping saliva. I have something to wager. If anyone’s gonna bet my ass, it’s me, not him! she said, pointing back toward Carlos. You man enough? Winner takes all. London, if I win; first night after the hunt with me alone in your lair, if you win.
“You’ve taught her Dananu?” Tetrosky murmured, awe in his voice, his eyes riveted on Damali.
“She’s a master,” Carlos said quietly, pride lacing his comment. “She picked it up on her own.”
Tetrosky walked forward, reached into his breast pocket, and pulled out a thin scroll of parchment. He held the wager document for a moment, his eyes raking Damali as he took a liberal inhale, unrolled it with flair and caused a pop to echo through the room, and pressed his crest ring to his own wrist vein until it bled into the insignia.
Staring at Damali, he then stamped the document hard, leaving his bloody seal. The document sizzled where he’d left his mark, then the seal bubbled, raised, and dried to a consistency of cooled wax. With desire emanating from him like a slow strobe, he extended the document to her, hands trembling, his storm-gray eyes never leaving hers.
When Damali snatched the ancient stationery from him and pulled her Isis dagger from her hip pocket, the Transylvanian master visibly shuddered. She slowly slit her palm with the baby Isis, dipped her insignia ring of Carlos’s territory in her blood and stamped his paper hard, and thrust it back to him. Tetrosky dropped to his knees, leaned his head back, and opened his arms, closing his eyes. “Slit my throat and take London . . .”
Damali narrowed her eyes. “Gladly. Later.”
“Promise me . . . if I win.” His voice was gravelly, thick and hoarse.
“Yeah, whateva. I’ll cut your heart out in there if you keep fucking with me.” Damali gave his wife Kiersten a triumphant glance as she walked away from the Transylvanian and he stood slowly with his wife’s help. But she waited, somehow knowing that she needed a parchment, too, to make it legit. And as soon as she thought it, a stripe of fire opened in thin air before her, and a duplicate scroll vomited from it like a Hell-sent fax.
Damali shook her head as she reached for the parchment, ripping it away from the sulfur slit, which immediately closed once the agreement was removed. She read it over carefully as she walked. Slimy, cheating bastards to the very end—like she wasn’t smart enough to know that if it wasn’t in writing, the agreement didn’t exist. Hell always had a contract.
“Am I in the game, boys, or what?” She went up to the African diplomat and raked him with a hot gaze until his wife moved from his side, her eyes blazing with fury. “You in? Madagascar for a night? I like the beach.”
“Madagascar, Ghana, Senegal, the Middle Passage routes . . . Name it.” He wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his forearm and sniffed hard. He came toward her in a slow, seductive lope, held her gaze with a sensual aura thickening the air around her, and slowly dragged a cut the length of his palm with a fang. He let the blood ooze into the cup of his hand, first staring at it and then slowly bringing his gaze up to hold hers, and dipped his ring in it. “Any time, Huntress,” he murmured, his voice husky. “My territory is very large. Trust me.”
Damali nodded and stamped his parchment. “Size matters,” she said, her eyes roving him. “If they told you different, brother, they lied.”
“I’ll put South Africa on the table, too,” he said, moving closer to her.
“That’s a fair trade, since there’s never been a female master topside in your existence. If I lose, then I’ll have to make it worth your while for the sizeable territory wagered.” She gave him a sly smile. “Put it in writing, motherfucker.” Then she glanced at McGuire as her copy spit from scorched air. “Don’t worry, I haven’t given your night away, but you’ll have to earn it the old-fashioned way, no side deals—say, the Outback?”
He glanced at Carlos nervously. “The Outback?”
“Maybe you didn’t hear the woman,” Carlos said calmly. “She told you to talk to her. This is her negotiation, not mine. I traded for Tasmania and Indonesia. Apparently, the territory I’d bet wasn’t mine wholesale as majority owner. My bad. I’ll throw in the Hawaiian Islands, and a coupla Caribbean ones instead.”
McGuire nodded. “The Outback . . . worth every square inch of her.”
She walked away from the African diplomat, accepted McGuire’s deal with a rip from the air, and looked at the Asian master. He was taking in long, steady breaths and his eyes were now closed. Perspiration dotted his brow, and he spoke methodically as though struggling to breathe. “Hong Kong, Tibet . . . Name it.”
“For your ass, both,” Damali said, her voice tight as she remembered his wife’s disrespect.
With lightning swiftness he struck his wife’s cheek with a backhanded slap that caused her to fall to her knees, instantly filling his crest with her blood, and then calmly walked up to Damali and presented her with his parchment to stamp. “Worthy competitor,” he said, deadly sexuality threading through every word, “she has lost face, and therefore my favor. I add Vietnam . . . so that when you lose to me, no disrespect will linger to shadow our evening.”
Damali allowed her voice to drop to a seductive octave as she accepted the paper from him, her stamp hovering over it. “Skill is also something a lady can’t take for granted.” She stared at him, watching his inhales slow to a standstill and then suddenly deepen. “What good is size,” she murmured, “if you don’t know how to work it?”
“I assure you the cadre of skills I possess from several thousand years of vast dynasties will make you feel as though you had won the match. I add North Korea.”
“Throw in Japan, because, as I said, size does matter, baby . . . and I promise you I won’t remember jack about what your bitch wife had to say to me.”
“Done.”
When she stamped his parchment and thrust it against his chest, he closed his eyes and accepted it, taking a moment before stepping away from her. Then she calmly strolled away from him, accepting another bargain from the air.
Her gaze raked the group as she stuffed the papers into the back pocket of her pants, taking her time, knowing that they could feel her ass as their papers slid against it through her fatigues. She put away her dagger and folded her arms over her chest, satisfied. “What’s a girl gotta do to get a drink around here?”
Tetrosky ripped the collar of his T-shirt under his flack jacket away from his throat and walked forward, but stopped suddenly at Carlos’s low, warning growl.
“I am not that progressive,” Carlos said to Tetrosky, then he gave Damali a threatening glare. His mind seized hers in a hard private message. Yeah, baby. You got game. But do not even think about disrespecting me like that in front of my masters!
He let her go mentally and then produced a black bottle, holding it tightly by the neck. She gave him a blasé shrug when he tossed it to her and she caught it. But he didn’t say a word while watching as she opened it easily with her thumb and turned it up to her mouth and swallowed. The private chat still held a charge, the touch a burning transmission, and yet it also sent valuable information into his awareness that gave him the control he required.
From his peripheral vision he could see the other masters almost swallow with each one of hers. Their cool was blown; their wives were pissed off, but cowed. As his rage simmered and died down, the effect of watching Damali feed shifted his focus. He could actually feel Damali working with the dark energy of the house, using it to her advantage, creating lovely chaos, not resisting in order to maintain her balance . . . ride it, flip it to make the outcome good.
He chided himself—she’d told him about this process. Had said to leverage the dark within. It made so much sense after watching her do it. All-pro . . . airtight game. The castle had the most madcrazy energy, the female vamps had tapped into it and had also been affected by her heavy Neteru scent so close to their mates. Damali was relatively unarmed and outnumbered when they’d fanged on her. The masters’ reaction to Damali was like gasoline on a flame to the wives.
Yeah, he got the picture. Under normal circumstances, these vampire ladies were smooth and shrewd enough to have laid in the cut for her, and would not have been so open . . . would have slit Damali’s throat quietly, one-on-one in a ladies’ room somewhere, would not have exposed their true feelings to foolishly bum-rush her in public in front of any turned-on master. Damali had sensed that, and had drawn them out into the open where she could fight better . . . just like a seasoned Neteru huntress would have. Made them reveal themselves, and then worked the protective strength of their masters against them to the bone—drawing it from them to guard her as a prize. They were diplomat’s wives, but had been reduced to their base element by the combo. Carlos almost laughed. Pure instinct. He should have seen it coming.
As he watched her drain the bottle, he monitored the growing lust that was sweat-charging the room. He could almost feel the other masters’ knees buckle from her slow, deliberate feed. Adrenaline and testosterone was clouding their judgment, strangling their control, blinding their focus about the hunt—or what they should have been doing, trying to kill her . . . but then, they’d pissed her off more than they’d frightened her. Bad move, gentlemen—if they would have asked him, he would have told them, Damali was not the one.
Carlos glanced around, also needing to distract himself from watching her leisurely feed. In this house, the split-second priority shift had created a vacuum, nature abhorred a vacuum . . . yes, since this was an unnatural environment, the dark transformation had pulled into her like a lightning rod, super-charging her . . . this wasn’t a passion turn in his arms, she’d gone into it in battle mode. He almost laughed out loud, might have, if a nagging doubt didn’t eat away at the back of his mind. Her fluxes with him were brought on by something pure—passion. This was fueled by something dark and with a lot more kick—anger. He just hoped that there was no permanent damage.
He shook off the worry, and stared at her. No. Don’t lose focus. This was beyond beautiful. A variable wild card, and Damali was as wild as they got. His baby was gorgeous with her head back, eyes closed, the veins standing up in her neck from the sudden fury, the air stained darker than he’d ever seen it around her, the adrenaline kick to it . . . with fangs . . . a residue of Neteru bloodlust battle-heat on, having beat down four vamp females—or nearly so, and then amassing more territory in one wager than he ever could—without giving away one plot of dirt . . . dayum. Respect. And she’d spoken in Dananu and slapped a master’s face from across the room . . . oh hell yeah, winner take all. He couldn’t be angry with the masters around him, their wives, or Damali, about any of it. She’d played this hand well, and they’d played themselves.
This was definitely a way to bust up any alliances, he almost shook his head at the pure treachery of it . . . brilliance. She was a master, could have them all kill each other and wind up ruling the world with a council seat to go with it. Woman, thy name is evil. The seventh level probably didn’t have nothin’ for this . . . Yet she’d also fucked up the four competitors’ confidence . . . it was a male thing that rippled through the room. Damali was also getting stronger, the more she drank, the longer she stayed in the room in vampire mode, just like he was getting stronger from the environment, enhancing his vocabulary, polishing it to more cultured diplomatic levels . . . feeling his throne-seat powers weigh in.
Plus, she’d told them that she’d chosen him, the one who had turned her, and if she was his female counterpart, they had to be wondering what the hell he could do when provoked. It was in their eyes, they way they looked at her, but they also lowered their gaze when assessing him. Yeah, any man in his right mind would wonder what it would take to harness that type of energy . . . crazy part that they would never be able to fathom was, he couldn’t—it was her choice. It was easier to control the wind than to try to control her. But after what they’d just witnessed, the likelihood of a direct challenge was very slim.
As she chugged the last of the bottle, he could feel the masters around the room losing the last of their focus on the hunt, becoming concentrated on winning her favor as they openly sent her images that were about everything but the hunt. Dangling seductive offers of their realms to her, casting diamonds at her feet in their minds, and she blithely ignored their growing insistence, some offers of land so tempting that even he was shocked. The whole fucking continent, brother, if she’ll go exclusive with you for a century? Damn . . . Russia . . . if she’ll come whenever you call? Carlos shook his head, as all of India came up on his mental radar with a proposed exchange for a divorce and new bride bite, and Master Xe’s wife stormed out of the room. Hey . . . what could he say? He could dig it. He’d put up all of North America and Canada, just so none of them could have her.
Damali wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and tossed the bottle into the fireplace, smashing it, then gazed at the group as though considering what had been put before her. “Evelyn, I swear, if you bring another baby into this castle for these ungrateful hoes . . . From now on, they get full, willing, adult vamp-helper at the banquet—I don’t even want a baby, now, I’m so pissed off! In fact, I don’t want to see that shit, either—just bottles! None of you deserve squat beyond that. Not even.” She walked to the window and gave them all her back. “I have never been so offended in my life! I don’t even want to eat here, much less stay another night.”
Carlos watched her closely as the images went raw from the maste
rs to her, each now descending on the erotic burn she’d created, murmuring to her seductively in Dananu in their thoughts, sending graphic images of what a night alone could entail . . . sending a fight charge through him that made him drop fang. Then she turned around, smiled and licked her bottom lip, and looked at him.
“What did you bet?”
Momentarily stunned by the question, Carlos took a second to regroup. “What do you mean, what did I bet?” He could feel his shoulders becoming tight, gaining bulk as outrage threaded through his system, and the other masters’ expressions became hopeful—too hopeful.
“Yeah, what did you bet?” she asked low, seductive, walking toward him. “You put my ass on the line . . . so now I’m going to ask you again, Councilman Rivera—what did you bet?” She paused, and allowed her gaze to run the length of him. “Because you don’t get this for free anymore . . . there are too many tender offers on the table, and this franchise is about to go public. Talk to me.”
Fury flooded his system, meeting the outright lust she siphoned from him. This woman was not an obsession. She was an addiction, a dangerous one, right down to his core where his pride resided. She was a physical craving, a need, a part of his bloodstream, the very marrow in his bones. The combination was lethal.
The entire territory, plus a throne! He hollered in Dananu against his better judgment. Silence captured every halted breath. No other master breathed. Carlos’s hand went to her throat: and if I win, I want more than you’ve put on the table for the others—because what I’m willing to lose they don’t even have to offer!
Mr. Councilman, she purred in Dananu, every other territory I’ll win in the match, plus a night that will scorch your mind for an eternity . . . and anything else you want from me—on demand. She stood up on her tiptoes and took his mouth tenderly, sending the private image of the baby to him. Play well tonight, and I’ll die again in your arms . . . let the best man win. She pulled her mouth away from his, wet, and let her lids slide closed to half-mast. “Stamp it in blood, baby, so I know you’re not playing with me.” Then she sucked in air between her teeth, making the sound of a slow hiss as her head dropped back, exposing her throat to him. “I want some so bad right now, I could be compromised.”
