Promises to Keep dos-9

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  “It was his last work,” she replied, “and it may be the last thing you see, unless you explain what brings such a pedigreed hunter to our holiday.”

  He should probably have started with that explanation.

  “Nikolas invited me,” Jay answered. “He hoped he could convince my cousin, Sarah, to come if she knew someone else here.”

  Though he had been assured of Kendra’s fondness for Nikolas, the emotions Jay sensed from her in response to his name spoke of possession more than affection. Sarah’s name barely elicited a blip of recognition.

  “I have not seen Sarah. Nikolas left a few minutes ago. And you still smell of blood.”

  Honesty was a gamble, but Jay wasn’t good at bluffing. “That is why I am late.”

  With her skin touching his, Kendra’s thoughts were as clear as fine crystal as she considered what to do with him. Given the importance of her holiday, anyone of any consequence in the vampiric world was currently in this house. That meant Jay couldn’t have killed anyone terribly important tonight.

  She could kill him just on principle, but Nikolas probably had invited him, which meant the laws of hospitality applied.

  “Well,” she said, slowly releasing first his hair and then his wrist, before taking a step back, “I suppose every cherry tree needs its branches pruned now and again to produce the best fruit.”

  It took him a moment to realize that she had just given approval to his killing her kind.

  Moving his hand away from his knife, Jay turned, and found that the woman standing before him was every bit as regal and elegant as the huntress in the statue. Her lush blond hair and generous figure were showcased in a gown where silver and scarlet dragons cavorted on silk damask.

  Of course she wears dragons. No lesser creature could do her justice, Jay thought as he tried to untangle his tongue, focus despite the pure power assaulting his metaphysical senses, and say something intelligent.

  “My lady,” he managed.

  Amused, Kendra held out her hand, which Jay nervously accepted. He kissed the back, feeling slightly foolish but afraid to do anything less.

  Meanwhile, she sized him up critically. An hour before, he had thought he looked good. Now he was acutely aware that while the tux fit, it was not a handmade one-of-a-kind item, as Kendra’s gown no doubt was.

  “Your patron has already left for the evening,” she pointed out. “I assume you intend to do the same.”

  He spoke quickly, words prompted as much by the disdain he could sense from her as by his own intentions. “My invitation might have been for Sarah’s benefit, but I was still honored to receive it. Your holiday is famous for its art. I would hate to leave without a chance to take it all in.”

  She was skeptical, but she was also two thousand years old, and confident in her own immortality. She wasn’t afraid of him, or for her guests.

  “Enjoy yourself, Jay Marinitch,” she said at last. “Mind your manners.”

  She swept away and left him alone in the front hall, and only then did Jay become aware of the thundering of his own nervous pulse. As his family and other vampire hunters often reminded him, Jay had never been a paragon of common sense. They would have told him he had to be suicidal to have accepted Nikolas’s invitation in the first place, and that it was beyond insane to stay once he’d learned Nikolas was already gone. But in the moments when Kendra’s attention had been on him, Jay had been submerged in the most extraordinary aura he had ever experienced. He couldn’t stand to go back out in the cold. Not yet.

  Instead, he read the plaque at the base of the statue.

  LADY WITH A FALCON ON HER FIST

  LORD DARYL DI’BIRGETTA

  The vampire known as Lord Daryl had been killed two summers ago, an event shocking enough that news had traveled swiftly.

  Hunters frequently took down the young and the sloppy, vampires who had been changed by whim instead of thoughtful intent, who had relatively few connections to others of their kind, and who tended to surround themselves with attention-drawing kills. It was far rarer for a hunter to actually strike at the kind of individual who attended Kendra’s Heathen Holiday, who had allies, friends, and political connections throughout the vampiric world.

  Lord Daryl had not been an ancient, but he had been a powerful figure in his domain, especially in the realm known as Midnight, an empire where humans—and occasionally witches or shapeshifters—had been bought and sold as slaves. When Midnight had fallen two centuries ago, another group had claimed leadership over all vampires and had supposedly outlawed their slave trade, but Daryl was proof that the laws hadn’t entirely worked. It was hard for a hunter like Jay to get solid information, but it had become clear in recent years that Midnight had been reborn and was gaining power once again.

  Rumors claimed that Daryl’s own slave had killed him.

  Jay shuddered, turning away from the statue. How could a man known for his viciousness as a trainer, whose career had been dedicated to transforming free souls into broken slaves, ever create such a powerful yet delicate work of art?

  Jay caught himself staring again.

  Move, Jay.

  Beyond the entry, the spectacle was overwhelming. Paint, ink, stone, clay, metal, glass, canvas, photo, paper, wood … Thousands of years of talent were showcased here, in every possible medium.

  The artistic creations were not the only works of beauty.

  The members of Kendra’s line, assembled together in full formal wear, were breathtaking. Nikolas had told him the dress code was “more or less black tie,” and now Jay understood what “more or less” meant. The vampires and bloodbonds in the room were from every century and every country. Tuxedo jackets and ball gowns moved among saris, mandarin gowns, and other apparel Jay couldn’t begin to name.

  Beyond clothes, skin had in many cases been used as a canvas. Many bloodbonds had been painted, some with elaborate masquerade-style face paint, but others with body art that complemented their attire. One glittering creature wore a dress with an open back that revealed shining painted butterfly wings.

  After letting out a squeak of disappointment when the mural he had been admiring moved away to mingle with the other guests, Jay reminded himself that he needed to pay attention to the people around him and not just the minds and art.

  Kendra alone had been overwhelming. Now Jay was surrounded by such powerful, brilliant minds that it was hard to even see the faces associated with them. In this kind of daze, if someone came at him with a blade, he might just smile at the way the light sparkled on it.

  Where am I? He had been wandering, paying no attention, but now found himself surrounded by music and movement.

  Colors blended as couples danced in a way Jay had only ever seen in movies, formal patterns responding to the arcing melodies of a string quartet. Standing among them was like standing in a surf, feeling the rhythm. He ducked out of the way when a pair nearly spun into him, and he ran into—

  Static. White noise.

  The mind he faced made Jay feel as though he’d been dunked in an icy lake. Dressed in immaculate black and white, the human before him was apparently one of the help, not a guest. His mind was oddly sterile, still, devoid of emotion or wanting.

  “Refreshment, sir?” the servant offered, nodding to the silver tray he carried, which was heavy with glasses of champagne and some unrecognizable finger food—probably caviar, or something equally vile. Jay doubted anyone here cared about underage drinking, but the last thing he needed was alcohol … or fish eggs.

  “Is there somewhere I could sit for a while?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. This way.”

  The servant led, and Jay followed with a shiver. It was like walking behind a ghost, something not altogether there.

  As they entered a quiet parlor, an unsettling thought nudged into his mind: maybe this man wasn’t a servant at all. After all, Kendra’s line was allied with Midnight, the heart of a lucrative slave trade. Though humankind in this country had stopped trading pe
ople more than a century before, many immortals had a different sensibility about the uses to which a life could be put.

  Midnight’s trainers had employed a bevy of methods designed to strip free will and any other vestiges of a soul from those they’d claimed to own, including many of Jay’s ancestors. Witches who went to Midnight intending to kill the trainers reappeared like zombies, intent only on obeying their new masters’ commands to murder their former kin. Was the static darkness in this servant’s mind the result of that same process?

  Except for the late Lord Daryl, the trainers were exclusively from one line—all immediately descended from the so-called Mistress Jeshickah herself. Jay dared to hope they didn’t share Kendra’s line’s love of art and so might not choose to attend Kendra’s soiree. Even so, the glow of his initial fascination had dimmed, putting him on edge.

  Jay found sharks, lions, polar bears, and crocodiles beautiful, each in their own way, but any one of them could turn into a man-eater given the wrong circumstances, so he tended to give them a wide berth. Beauty aside, why had he now put himself in a situation where some of the creatures around him might want just his blood, but some of them might actually want his soul?

  CHAPTER 3

  JAY WAS FOOLISH and impulsive at times, but even he wouldn’t have come into this crowd alone as a hunter. He also wouldn’t have come just to see Sarah—he could see his cousin easily enough in a safer environment. But he might never have another chance to see this, the awesome whirl that was thousands of years of artistic talent.

  Now that he had tasted the rotten pit in the center of this sweet fruit, however, he needed to move on, before he stumbled across something he couldn’t stand to ignore.

  He was on his way to the door when his plan was hijacked by a set of paintings.

  According to the plaques that accompanied the series, the woman depicted was the Norse goddess Freyja, “a lover, a mother, a witch, and a warrior,” who rode at the front of the Valkyries as they collected the souls of the bravest fighters.

  Momentarily alone in the room, Jay took in the dramatic, sweeping paintings, some depicting scenes of battle and others explicit enough to make him blush. His drive to leave eroded. He had never known that oil on canvas could be so powerful. As he stared at a depiction of Freyja near her slain husband, it took him several moments to realize that the sorrow he was feeling wasn’t coming from paint.

  He turned to discover that a woman now occupied the couch he had abandoned. Her elaborate gown was rumpled and stained with paint. Her feet were tucked up next to her, and she laid her head on the armrest. Jay could see bare toes peeking out from her torn skirt hem.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, kneeling down to retrieve an ivory hair comb that had fallen next to her. Like the gown and the dark ringlets falling around her shoulders, the comb was streaked with dried paint.

  “I’m fine,” she lied. She took the comb from him but made no move to place it back in her hair. “I thought no one was in here.”

  “I was admiring the paintings,” he said, “but I’ll leave if …” He trailed off; his reference to the paintings had triggered a trickle of something other than bone-deep sorrow. “Are these yours?” he asked.

  She nodded, and the pinprick of light inside her flared briefly.

  “They’re …” He wanted to bring that light back, but he didn’t have the words he needed to express the way the art around him made him feel.

  “They’re trash,” she interrupted, the spark snuffed. She stood and brushed past him to critically examine her own work. “Tripe hung to please Kendra, or Kaleo, but certainly not me.” She lifted a hand to touch the face of Freyja’s dead husband before snapping, “Go. Go away.”

  At a loss, Jay obeyed, though guilt nagged at him for walking away when she so obviously needed somebody. If he had known how to comfort her, he would have.

  The adjacent room was occupied by a small but rowdy group engaged in an intense debate. There were no servant-slaves among them, though someone had left two plates of appetizers on what was probably a priceless antique table.

  Jay leaned against the wall, taking a moment to soak up the friendly atmosphere. This group’s energy and enthusiasm felt cleansing after the artist’s melancholy.

  “I’m only saying,” a human man protested as he leaned over the table to swipe a snack from the tray, “that working with Rikai is like working with some kind of venomous animal. She’s perfectly lovely right until she tries to eat me. I know you two are close, but I must express concern on behalf of your actors—myself included.”

  “Concern noted,” the vampire in the middle of the group answered.

  Rikai! Jay tuned into the conversation with interest when he heard the name. Rikai was a Triste, a creature who had studied and trained beneath another of her kind and had gained a vampire’s near-immortality and a witch’s ability to manipulate raw power. She was supposed to be an expert in the study of power of all kinds but was also said to be vicious in her quest for knowledge, willing to exploit anyone who gave her opportunity—except, perhaps, the two others in her elite group.

  Given the context, the vampire discussing Rikai had to be Xeke. They were both part of a group called the Wild Cards, a trio of artists whose irreverent works ranged from mildly irritating to frighteningly infuriating. Their third compatriot had once been a witch, like Jay, but had broken those ties long before his birth. Now she was a writer, telling the stories no one wanted her to share. Xeke was supposed to be the most cautious and polite of the three, the one who maintained the greatest number of political and social ties. Jay had never met him but had followed his exploits from a distance.

  When Jay made inappropriately intrusive remarks, people called him young and impulsive, unable to control his empathy. When Xeke put the same kind of remarks on film, people called it art. Jay owned several of Xeke’s more controversial videos, and had once written a fan letter that he suddenly hoped Xeke had never received.

  “Oh, hell, it’s late. I’ve got to run, luv, if I’m going to get back on set in time.” The blond human kissed Xeke on the cheek and then darted out of the room, nearly colliding with Jay.

  Jay tried not to blush as he felt Xeke’s attention turn to him. The vampire stood to greet him with a warm “Welcome” that betrayed both curiosity and interest. His thoughts had a predatory flavor but a neutral tone that Jay tended to find in nature, as opposed to the hostile aggression he associated with most humans and once-humans when they stalked their prey.

  “Hi.” Real clever. He tried to ride the coattails of Xeke’s calm-and-collected-ness.

  “You look a little overwhelmed,” Xeke observed.

  “Is any of this art yours?” Jay said, the first polite question he could summon.

  “Some of the photos,” the vampire answered, “but most of my work is in cinema.” He glanced at the clock and remarked, “It’s rather late for your kind to be here.”

  Jay followed the vampire’s attention, and realized it was only a few minutes from midnight. Known as the Devil’s Hour at gatherings such as this, midnight was traditionally when the vampires fed. Xeke could smell that Jay was a witch. He was intrigued but also distinctly wary.

  “Are you asking?” Jay asked.

  “Pardon?”

  Oh. He had done that thing where he responded to something not said out loud, skipping ahead in the conversation.

  Jay reached a little more toward the vampire’s mind, getting a more solid sense of him, and asked, “You’re Xeke, right?”

  “I am,” the vampire answered. “And you are?”

  “Jay Marinitch.”

  “A full-blooded witch at Kendra’s gala?” Xeke asked, no doubt recognizing Jay’s family name. Voice somewhat cooler, he added, “And a hunter, if I’m not mistaken. Surely you aren’t intending to do something stupid?”

  “I try to avoid stupid things,” Jay responded. Occasionally successfully, he thought. He was going to get an earful about coming here once Sarah g
ot wind of it. “I’m here as a guest, not to hunt.”

  “Yet you’re armed.”

  “Of course I’m armed. You can’t ask a cat to shed its claws.”

  “Are you a pet?” Xeke asked, his mood lightening in the face of Jay’s honesty. “Or more of a wild animal?”

  “Depends on how I’m feeling,” Jay replied. Sometimes he was a lizard, or a fox. Sometimes he wanted to be a kitten. “What are you looking for?”

  He hadn’t intended the words to be flirtatious, but as Xeke quirked one brow and the images in his mind answered for him, Jay knew the vampire had taken them as such. It was hard not to flirt with someone whose mind exuded confidence and frank interest.

  Aloud Xeke said, “Your knife makes me nervous.”

  Jay took a step away, and then turned his back on the vampire so it wouldn’t be taken as a threat when he drew his knife.

  This blade wasn’t just a weapon; it was an anchor. Generations of magic imbued in the silver helped Jay ground himself and focus, despite his limited ability to filter what his empathy picked up. Without it, he might still be staring, slack-jawed, at Kendra, lost in her mind.

  He could probably live without it for a few minutes.

  He flipped the knife around so he was holding it by the blade, and offered it to the vampire.

  “Put it somewhere safe, or give it to someone you trust to get it back to me after.”

  The offer shocked Xeke. Voice laconic but mind nervous, he asked, “Isn’t this violating some kind of ancient law?”

  Jay laughed, shaking his head. “You’re thinking of Vida’s line. Mine trusts us to make up our own minds. I know you’ll get it back to me.”

  “How?” the vampire asked.

  “I just know.”

  And he did. There were mysteries in Xeke’s mind, but he would honor any deal he made, and any power relinquished to him willingly would never be abused.