by Evie Byrne
“And Gunnar?”
“Gunnar stays in the car, to guarantee my safety.”
Wat considered. “Fair enough.” He waved off his people. They melted away into the darkness without argument.
She watched four previously invisible snipers shimmy down from the trees. How many others had remained aloft? But there was nothing to be done. If they shot her, they’d all die screaming once Alya caught up with them. They had to know that. At her nod, her men backed toward the cars, scanning the area, their hands still hovering near their weapons. Ruben opened the back of the lead car, pulled out a med kit, and began to treat Flitch’s arm.
She turned back to the woman. “Coffee?” Unfortunately, her teeth chattered, so it sounded like Caw-ca-coffee?
“Oh, I don’t drink the stuff myself.” The woman smiled. “But Wat would be happy to make you a cup. You two will be fine together.”
“Thanks, Maren,” Wat said, his voice dry. He gestured ahead. “My place is through the trees. You’re welcome, but your men stay here.”
With a flick of her hand she stifled Ruben’s protest. “You know that Alya does not negotiate for hostages?”
“We don’t take hostages,” Wat said, curt and bitter.
She believed him. “Lead on.”
Wat led her off the road, through a stand of brush, and into a small parking lot. She spun around and saw the cleverly camouflaged gate that hid the entryway. Wat gestured that she should continue. They walked around the few trucks parked in the driveway, past the partially disassembled carcass of a snowmobile, and then up a short flight of slippery wooden stairs.
At the top, Wat said, “Welcome to Brunnrheim.”
Eva's eyes went wide.
Chapter Two
She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Maybe more rickety shacks like the one out front, or perhaps some kind of end-times compound. Instead, Brunnrheim—she hadn’t even known it had a name—was a tidy village made up of the oddest houses she’d ever seen. At first sight, they seemed to be buried under freakishly deep snow. Then she realized that earth had been mounded over the rear portions of each house, creating little hillocks, and those mounds were blanketed with snow, leaving only the front facades exposed.
She counted fifteen houses gathered around a common yard and others, singletons, tucked around the perimeter. Each was a little different, but they all had in common a large central door bracketed by windows. Warm yellow light glowed from most of the windows. Multiple chimneys poked up through the snow on the roofs, as well as tufts of yellowed grass. Assorted outbuildings squatted around the houses—storage or work sheds, maybe. Or outhouses? She shuddered at the thought. Trails and channels cut through the snow, joining all the structures. There were no power lines visible, no electric lights on the porches, only lanterns.
She’d been told to expect trailer trash. Instead, this place had a quaint, Old World quality to it, and it reminded her of something…something she’d seen in a movie. Suddenly she remembered: Welcome to Hobbiton. At least the doors weren’t round. And these vamps were definitely not undersized.
Eva shot a glance at Wat, grimacing at his broad back and long legs. She had to trot to keep up with his strides. He wore tall, soft, skin boots tied around his legs with laces. He made no noise as he walked, while her every step made a loud crunch in the hard snow. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Setting aside the unexpected charm of her surroundings, she considered the problems facing her. Wat was reneging on the agreement. He’d brought her—and his prince—here under false pretenses. That deception gave her all the authorization she needed to call in reinforcements and finish the war right here and now—the brief, bloody war Wat’s people had already lost so badly. He didn’t have a hope if it came to fighting, and he didn’t have any basis for negotiation, either. This delay was a farce. Yet there was no need for her to come down with an iron fist. Not yet. Alya appreciated subtlety in her subordinates. It could be that Wat just needed a little reassurance, or perhaps she could make some token concessions so he could save face with his people. She’d listen.
He headed toward a house fronted with a broad porch; its foundations, almost buried in snow, were made of river rock. A wolf dog sat on the porch, thumping its tail. “I’ve got nothing,” he said to it, spreading his hands. “Go try Jacob.” As if it understood, the dog shot off into the night. Eva sighed with relief.
Wat took the front steps in one leap. Up close, the house looked old. The front windows were made of many small panes, each one a little bigger than her hand, glowing faintly from the low light within. A bundle of evergreens, studded with pinecones and laced with lichen, hung above the door, pretty as an illustration on Christmas card. Yet right beside that stood a stark reminder of why she was there: a deer skin stretched on a rack.
He ate that thing. She grimaced at the idea of latching onto a dirty animal’s throat.
Wat stamped his boots on the mat and pushed the door open, motioning for her to go first. Following his example, she stamped her feet as well, and then proceeded inside to a small vestibule. A thick curtain of hide hung before her, presumably blocking drafts to the rest of the house. He pulled it aside. Her first impression was that this was a man’s house. It was the scent of the place. A particular musky, smoky scent. Not unpleasant.
The vestibule opened into a big room with a high, timber-framed ceiling. Candlesticks caged in deer horns hung from the ceiling. Thick, dark beams of wood jutted through walls of white plaster. A circular fire pit, perhaps six feet across, sat in the center, the heart of the house, dominating the room. Curved, high-backed benches piled with pillows and furs circled its perimeter. The fire had dwindled to a few red coals. A hammered bronze hood spread above it to capture the smoke.
“Sit, please,” Wat gestured to the benches. Stiff with cold, she perched on the edge of one. It was warmer inside the house than outside, but by no means toasty. She stripped off her gloves and buried her hands in the thick fur of some unknown beast.
He pushed back his deep hood and started to build up the fire. She stared at him. Wat was two-toned. His hair didn’t match his beard. It was blond instead of red. Actually, it was a dirty gold, a mass of thick, tangled curls that hadn’t met a comb for quite some time. He had a good face, strong face—intelligent, too, which was fortunate, since her career rested on his ability to see reason. If it weren’t for the beard, he’d be handsome. Beards were not sexy. And they made feeding a bitch. For some inexplicable reason, they’d become fashionable among young men in recent years. She’d had to let go some of her best feeders because they insisted on wearing beards.
He caught her staring. She lifted a brow back at him, shameless in her curiosity. Aren’t you the exotic one, Watkin? His eyes were as strange as his hair, almond-shaped and sharply canted over his broad cheekbones, rays of fine lines extending from the corners. Something about that configuration didn’t quite seem Caucasian, but the rest of him was relentlessly Germanic. His eyes were a pale green she’d seen on no human or vamp before, regardless of race. They were also oddly hypnotic…
He broke eye contact abruptly, and she turned away, disturbed. She didn’t think he’d been trying to fascinate her—she could tell when someone was exercising power— but his gaze had been mesmerizing. He cleared his throat and concentrated on the fire, building it to a sturdy blaze with an economy of motion that spoke of constant practice. She studied her surroundings. The room struck her as functional and comfortable, free of knickknacks or softening touches. This reaffirmed what her nose had told her: no women lived here, and there were no telltale signs of children, either. Wooden trunks lined one wall, and above them an assortment of tools and mysterious bundles hung from hooks. Two closed doors promised there was more house to explore.
As the heat of the fire began to thaw her frozen body, she shivered even harder. She tried to repress the shakes, but that only made them stronger.
Wat rose to light a wall lamp with a match. Vamps could see perfectly
well by firelight or even in complete darkness, but they liked light, and liked heat more, even the psychological warmth of a little oil lamp. She saw no computer, TV, or stereo, no electrical outlets or any of the other necessities of modern life.
She held her hands out to the jumping flames. Her fingers prickled and stung as they defrosted, but her toes remained numb. A small moan escaped her as she leaned into the heat, a mix of pleasure and frustration. Her people came from the South. The far South. She didn’t have the constitution for this climate.
Wat must have noticed her relief because his mouth twisted, maybe in humor, maybe in disdain, and he threw couple more logs onto the fire. The fresh wood caught with a violent surge that lit up the bones of his face and turned his hair as red as his beard. He looked like a Viking berserker.
“It’s interesting how you build your houses.”
“Buried, you mean? It’s a custom we kept from the Old Country.”
“Oh, and here I thought you were all Lord of the Rings fans.”
He looked perplexed. “Lord of what?”
“Never mind. So you say it’s an old style?”
“Já, the oldest. In the homeland, this style of architecture dates back before recorded history.” That “já” caught her attention. He had a faint accent, the same as that woman who suggested coffee—Maren. Eva was no expert on Europe, but his voice sounded vaguely Nordic. Not too pronounced, just a hint of sing-song in the rhythm of the words and some strangeness in the vowels. Gunnar didn’t have this accent. Why was that?
While she pondered the accent, Wat seemed to warm to explaining architectural details, and his manner became didactic, a cross between a tour guide and a professor. His voice was deep, but soft, almost husky. “The design is very practical. Earthen-walled, sod-roofed houses are cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Our front windows face south and collect heat while we’re sleeping in the back, where it’s dark and snug. It’s not a vamp invention—at least I don’t think so—but it may well have been designed with us in mind.”
He picked up a black kettle that sat on the rim of the fire pit, gave it a shake to test its contents and, satisfied, placed it on a little iron stand in the pit. Using tongs, he scraped coals around the stand. A small, hardbound book lay on the seat next to him. The spine said Seneca. The name sounded familiar, but her piecemeal education failed her. She’d have to ask Dominick who that was. He knew everything.
“So, where do you live?” he said.
“Los Angeles.”
“I gathered that. I mean, what kind of house do you live in?”
That surprised a laugh out of her. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Plenty. Where we live forms us as much as it reflects us. I want to know who I’m dealing with.”
She shrugged. “Fair enough. I just bought a house last year, actually.” To celebrate her promotion to Hand. “It’s high on a hill, built in the 60s, and made mostly of glass.”
“Vamps in glass houses—” he began.
“Shouldn’t engage in fire fights,” she finished.
He smiled, a quick flash of teeth. “I take it you folks don’t lean toward the practical.”
It was sort of crazy, she had to admit, but in recent years these modernist glass boxes had become the housing of choice for the up-and-coming vamp. A glass house was an extended middle finger to the sun—and their enemies. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she told another part of the truth. “It’s for the view. I live in the hills above Hollywood.” She assumed he’d heard of Hollywood. “At night I can see all the city lights stretched out beneath me. It’s the next best thing to flying.”
“I suppose I get that. Do you live alone in this glass house of yours?”
“Yes.” Was that a probe to find out if she was single?
“Sounds lonely. Sounds like a fairy tale. You know, the maiden trapped in the ice castle on the high hill.”
Maiden. Ha! For an instant, she could not help but remember certain lonely nights, when she stood alone, wine glass in her hand, looking down at a world that was not, in the end, her own. “That’s very romantic, but the truth is, I don’t spend much time at home, and when I do, I have company.”
“Well, that’s good, then.” Wat unfastened his coat—it was made of some kind of oily skin and held closed by what looked like pieces of bone—revealing a glimpse of a leather shirt beneath. Did they make all their own clothes?
He settled down and stretched out his long legs. “So.”
“So.”
“We’ve got a situation here.”
She shrugged. “You’ve created a situation, Wat. A serious one.”
“I have a proposition.”
“I’m all ears.” She scrunched her defrosting toes and tried not to wince.
“Stay a bit. Let me show you how we live. How it’s harming no one. Then you can tell your people what you learn here. Help me change their minds.”
You don’t even begin to know what we think about you. If you did, you’d know their plans were hopeless. Eva took a deep breath. “Wat, you seem like a sincere guy, but your cause has no traction at home, and after what Halverson did, you’ve got no good will to bank on. Nocturnal society has spoken. It demands you fall in line with the rest of us.”
“As if it were that simple. As if feeding on animals was just a bad habit.” Rising, he went to a low wooden cupboard and pulled out a French press, a bag of coffee, and a pair of surprisingly delicate white china cups. “You know nothing of the way we live, or why we do the things we do, and yet you’re willing to destroy a way of life that’s lasted for generations.” He snorted, disdainful. “But I suppose you’re just following orders.”
Eva sighed. Already she was a Nazi. Great. “We ignored you until you caused trouble.”
“Halverson caused trouble. He made bad decisions, but he’s dead now.”
“Gunnar’s alive.”
“Paul went astray. Gunnar will return to the fold.”
“The fold? Is this a cult?”
He set down the coffee makings and bent low to look her in the eye. “This is our culture. This is our whole world.”
Eva met his gaze, but did not waver in her own. She read his intensity, but it didn’t let it affect her. “I understand.”
He ended the staring contest with a bitter laugh. “How could you? You don’t know the first thing about us.”
She spread her hands wide. “They didn’t send me here because I’m big and strong.”
Once again he sat down. “Look, the Halverson’s plan was—”
“Cowardly?” she offered. A preemptive assassination of one prince by another was nothing but cowardly. Hers were fighting words, but she couldn’t hold back. Like everyone else in the civilized world, she’d been appalled that Paul Halverson, Gunnar’s father, had kidnapped and attempted to murder Alya and her mate, Mikhail Faustin. Vampire politics were often bloody, but there were rules and standards. Feeding on animals was bad enough, but the Halverson’s actions were those of a rogue.
Wat surprised her by nodding in agreement.
“Yes, cowardly. I didn’t like the idea either. But look at it from our side. Adad was aggressing on us. We didn’t have the strength for a war with her. If Paul had killed Adad and slipped away, no one would have known who’d done it. In the aftermath, everyone would have been pointing fingers or grabbing for territory. I don’t know how Faustin got caught in their trap, but to Paul’s thinking, his death would have been a bonus. More chaos.”
“And in the midst of this chaos, the problematic Northwoods Territory would be forgotten.” She leaned back and folded her arms. “A leadership vacuum on both coasts. Civil war as an expedient. Lovely.”
“It was a high-risk, high-reward scheme. One that failed.” Pained lines creased his face as he frowned. “The Halversons died knowing that they’d destroyed their people.” He looked down at his hands.
Eva leaned forward, beginning to see his position. “And you’re l
eft to clean up the mess.”
“Under normal conditions, I’d not be in line to rule, but everyone else is dead since—” He stopped, his eyes closing briefly, as if fighting a memory. He shook it off and took a deep breath. “This new title of mine—Regent—means nothing. Gunnar is prince in name alone. This territory belongs to Adad now. My only role, apparently, is to convince everyone to pack and move South.”
“Is that such a bad thing?”
He laughed, a choking sound, lifting his face to the ceiling. “Bad? Bad, she asks? Half of my people will kill themselves before they leave. The rest have sworn to die fighting. I’ve got all of a hundred souls in my care. Oldsters, women, and children. My kin. Up here, we’re self-sufficient. Down South, we have no resources, and we’ll be outcasts. Why would they go? How would they live? If I sign that treaty, I’m signing their death warrants. If I refuse, I’m doing the same.”
“Christ, Wat.” She heard the sincerity in his voice and recognized the well-worn lines of pain on his face and knew she was dealing with an honest man. She’d met very few of the species, but her gut told her this was one. It would have been easier to deal with an asshole.
“Why were Adad and Faustin even interested in Minnesota? I just don’t get it.”
Back when they were enemies instead of mates, Alya Adad and Mikhail Faustin had both made power grabs in Minnesota. They'd focused on the more valuable cities in the southern part of the state. Eva was pretty sure the purpose of all that aggression had been to annoy one another. Princely foreplay? Perhaps. The mind boggled. When Alya and Mikhail had gotten together, they’d agreed, as a peace token of sorts, not to fight over the hapless state anymore, and negotiated truces with the leaders in the Twin Cities. Alya had kept only the Northwoods Territory as her battle prize after the assassination attempt.
There was the irony. Halverson’s panic had been premature, his attack unnecessary. Even if Alya had taken half of Minnesota, she would never have looked twice at his tiny, obscure, dirt-poor territory if he hadn’t attacked her first. Even the general outrage over their animal eating wouldn’t have stirred Alya to take personal action. She wasn’t into enforcing moral standards, but at the same time, she wasn’t above playing to public opinion. Simply put, it was Halverson’s own damn fault that Alya was making an example of his territory.
