Shattered Circle c-6

by Linda Robertson

  After she swallowed, she said, “It was Talto checking in with me. Nothing eventful has happened.”

  Marveling at the ease of her lie and noting the confidence of her tone, he opened his bottle also. However, Giovanni did not drink. He let the aroma of the blood rise under his nose and he savored the smell. Though nothing would ever be as satisfying as drinking straight from a human, the development of a method to both bottle the fluid and later warm it for vampire consumption had made this manner of feeding less atrocious.

  He waited, feeling that pitiless hunger swelling within him and letting it filter throughout his body until it felt like his every molecule was quivering in anticipation. He grew hot. He had to have blood in his mouth, now. Right now.

  Only when he could not wait another second did he drink.

  Serenity in each swallow, he drained the bottle as he had drained victims in centuries past. As he longed to again. As he would when he ruled.

  For his greedy intake, Liyliy stared coldly at him.

  Lying bitch. He thought harshly of her duplicitous action, not telling him about the child within the haven.

  He wiped his mouth and smiled at her.

  He wanted her more than ever.

  But he could not have her now.

  He could not even dare to touch her. She might read his deception and know that he’d bugged the phones he gave her, and he would not risk that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  What are you doing here?” Johnny asked Jacques Lippencot Plympton.

  In the meager light from a slightly opened curtain, the diviza’s wrinkles deepened as he squinted. “Because I’ve heard me a rumor.”

  “What rumor?”

  “That our dear Aurelia has joined the ranks of the dead.”

  Johnny didn’t answer. He didn’t even move.

  Plympton sat forward and rubbed his hands together. “Betcha you’re a-wonderin’ who told me.”

  The moment wore on in silence, then Plympton laughed.

  “Well, c’mon in, m’boy. We have oodles to discuss . . . and besides, you’re a-lettin’ the draft in. I’m not fond of your northern November weather.”

  Johnny reached for the light switch.

  Plympton made a sound, one decidedly disapproving note, that stopped him. “Better to leave the lights off.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll have been seen a-entering the hotel. If these lights come on, that’ll only confirm that you’ve a-come to her room while she’s out.”

  Johnny let the door shut behind him but he stayed near it. “Who’s watching this room?” As he spoke he sensed around the room. No one else was here. His eyes had already adjusted to the darkness.

  “Maybe several people.” Plympton shrugged. “Maybe no one.”

  “Why would anyone watch her room?”

  As the diviza sat back in his chair, he was again in the slightly brighter portion of the room. It made his hair seem like a ghostly halo about his head. “Some like to watch lovely women. Some keep an eye on their friends. Some monitor their enemies. Others enjoy a-studying the ways of shit-stirrers like her.”

  Shifting his weight, Johnny repeated, “Shit-stirrer?”

  “She has—had—a knack for trouble. A-finding it. A-making it. A-using it to her gain.”

  “When I introduced you today I didn’t think you knew her.”

  “I don’t—I mean, didn’t.” Before Johnny could ask he added, “I hear rumors.”

  The gossip theme wasn’t to be missed. “What other hearsay has found its way to your ears?”

  “Come on and sit down, John.” He gestured to one side, then the other. “Chair there. Couch there.”

  One put Johnny’s back to the window. The other put him in line with other buildings beyond the slightly open curtain. Johnny’s most trusted pack mate, Kirk, was a former military sharpshooter. Johnny had learned a thing or three from him about what can and can’t be done with such rifles.

  Johnny knew he should sack the room, get the locker key Aurelia had told him about, and leave, but Plympton’s presence here and his knowledge of her death was enough to make Johnny alter his plan. Though Demeter was on her way and he needed to attend to Red, he had to see what the old man might reveal.

  Johnny wrapped his hand around the arm of the offered chair and dragged it to a more neutral position that suited him better. With his back to the wall and no structure to be seen through the gap in the window dressing, he sat.

  “You’re a-going to do all right, John. That’s not flattery. I really believe that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re cautious. You think about things. And it’s obvious you don’t really want it.” He cocked his head a little. “It’s the men who get all riled up and salivate ’cause they be a-wanting power and clout and influence . . . they’re the ones to watch with wary eyes. I have to wonder what it is that they’re a-wanting it for.”

  “You and me both,” Johnny muttered. “You have quite a lot of authority. What’s in it for you?”

  Plympton grinned and flicked the fingers of one hand as if he were dismissing Johnny. “I love me a big flea market, a peppy auction, or even a dingy garage sale. I love to haggle and negotiate. So much so that as a young man I broke into the business of mediation and arbitration. For countless legal situations, I was a neutral middleman a-helping both sides reach an agreement. Then folks found out I was a wærewolf and my phone stopped a-ringing. My business went bankrupt. Apparently, a man cannot be a wærewolf and be trusted to mediate fairly.”

  There was a hint of old bitterness in his voice, but bitterness that had been dealt with.

  “I’ve been a diviza for thirty years.” He sat forward again. “In that time, I’ve met thousands of wærewolves. Let’s just say that the best have tried to fool me, and failed. I can always tell what kind of person I’m a-dealing with.”

  Johnny waited. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing. I can guess what the three of you are a-planning.”

  Three. Plympton knows about me and Red and Menessos. He almost claimed they weren’t planning anything, but that would be a lie. Menessos was always planning something. Overwhelmed with his new roles as the Domn Lup and as a father, Johnny had lost sight of that.

  He’d nearly killed Meroveus—a powerful magic-using vamp. He’d thought earlier that with his tattoos unlocked and his full power at his disposal he could defeat Menessos if pushed into a confrontation with him again. Now, he was even more confident of that. Now, he could even tempt an encounter with Menessos to directly ask what the vamp’s endgame was.

  Besides, he thought, getting back on track with this moment, Plympton would not believe me if I denied that we had a plan. So, instead, he asked a question back. “Earlier, at the bridge, their lies enraged me . . . and you did something. What did you do?”

  Stretching his feet out before him, Plympton spoke. “Long, long years ago, when there was nary a wrinkle on this old face, I lived in a cabin on the bayou. I ate what I could catch. Fish. Fowl. Squirrel. The occasional ’gator. When you grow up in the bayou, you learn the ways of the swamp. When I was attacked there, I avoided the first pounce. Something chased me, but I used the bog. Had ropes in some of the trees. I made it to one and climbed up, a-wrapping the rope around my arm so it couldn’t follow or pull it and bring the branch, and me, down. But it nipped my heel.” Plympton paused there for a breath. “I’d heard the stories. I knew what it meant to be bitten. I knew what would be a-happening next. I didn’t want it. So . . . I paid a visit to a vodoun priestess.”

  His voice lowered slightly as he recounted the story. He’d shown her his wounds, and told her his fear. She had examined his injury with distaste and, he thought, disbelief. Then she wiped the stems of some dried blue flowers on his heel. His skin sizzled and burned like fire, leaving the edges blackened. He’d screamed and thrashed in pain, but he’d seen how her eyes widened, he’d seen her backpedal in fear. “What kind of damned flower
is that?” he’d asked.

  She whispered, “Wolfsbane.”

  He had begged for her help. She told him to return the following night. Aware that she might try to kill him, he did. “Whether she helped me or whether she killed me, I wouldn’t harm or turn others,” he’d reasoned. She’d given him a drink and he hoped the poison didn’t hurt. But she’d only drugged him.

  “The room spun around and everything blurred and stretched. But I didn’t black out. I felt it when I hit the floor. I felt the vibrations in the planking as she worked a-hammering spikes into the floor around me. She bound me to those spikes, spread-eagled. When she sat atop me, I knew something terrible was going to be a-happening, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Whatever she’d brewed into my drink left my mind a-working fine, but immobilized my body.”

  “What did she do to you?”

  Plympton said, “She had a coarse, ancient version of tattoo needles . . . she drew on my palms with boiling ink and molten silver. It burned in temperature, but the very substance left me feeling like I was being dipped in acid. There was some kind of magic in it; the stuff fused with my skin, into the very cells. Since I had not yet transformed, the beast within me wasn’t yet afflicted by the witches’ use of that power.” He showed Johnny the strange dark symbols in the center of each palm. “She told me to envision myself a-choking the beast, twisting its neck to breaking. Then she told me to see the beast dying and pushed a needle into my eye.” He tapped his blind eye. “I’ve been told that the heated drop cooled under the flesh of my eye and it’s lodged in something called the ‘aqueous humor.’ ”

  “It didn’t keep you from becoming a wærewolf.”

  “No. Since I’d not yet a-had my first change, I revert to this after each full moon. My body has adjusted to the silver in my flesh. But my beast hasn’t. I’ve had my transformation and kenneling time videotaped. Comparing that with footage of other wæres, the silver clearly makes my transformation a bitch. Every second that I’m a wolf appears to be painful as hell. My pack’s caregivers tranquilize me each full moon.”

  “You knew that touching my arm would have an effect.”

  Plympton half smiled. “The old Rege could make his hands shift when he was quite angry.”

  Johnny nodded. He’d seen it up close, but wasn’t going to bring that up.

  “From time to time, he found reason to be quite angry with me,” the old Cajun added, staring into his palms. “That was a-how I learned that with a touch of my silvered palm I can turn away or reverse a transformation . . . at least momentarily.” He breathed deep. “Your changing would not have helped us right then.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll tell you something else, sire . . . a secret.” He tapped his silvered eye and whispered, “I can see the beasts. Even now, I see yours.”

  Johnny waited, sure the man would go on.

  “While I am in human form, I can tell a submissive wolf from a dominant one. They usually match their human counterpart in temperament . . . but not always. Yours is doubtless a king among wolves. To master him, I daresay, is impossible. But to contain him, to coexist with him harmoniously . . . that will be the trick that tries you. Not ruling. You’re a man of character, you have ethics and a-see things in black and white. You’ll learn to navigate the gray area in between.” He snorted a small laugh. “But you already know all that, don’t you?”

  “What do you want, Jacques?”

  “I feel very fortunate to have been able to come here and meet you in person, to handle this building situation with you.” Plympton stood. He paced to the left, put his hands in his pockets and jingled change, then paced to the right. “There’s a reason you stepped up now and are accepting the position as Domn Lup. These are thorny times . . . with the demise of the Rege—and the dreadful method of it—the upper ranks are all a-dragging around their suspicions of you. There are rumors that you’re on the Lustrata’s right arm and that the vampire Menessos is on her left. The speculation and curiosity surrounding you has the court a-buzz like never before. When the news of Aurelia’s death reaches them, their doubts will go a-doubling.”

  There was a long pause and Johnny asked his question again.

  “Some fear you are a fraud, a creation of the witches’ fancy. But I have seen your beast. He’s not the product of sorcery.” He paused. “There are some who know what I can do. I’ll back you up, John. My pledge will be golden. They will assure others.”

  A third time, Johnny asked, “But what do you want?”

  Plympton pulled his hand from his pocket and held up a small item. It was the key to a paid locker. “I want you to tell me where the locker for this key is located.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Talto sat in front of a computer. The screen’s light was the only illumination in the room. In the darkness beside her was Liam, who in his late thirties was oddly older than most of his Offerling peers. He was good-looking, but not exactly the heart-stopping kind of gorgeous that was required of most of the second-tier vampire servants. She’d discovered he hadn’t been given the prestigious role for his looks; he was a haven member due to his IQ alone.

  She heard a quiet splat and turned to see the drool that was running off his chin had dripped to the tile floor.

  Not that his IQ is shining so bright right now.

  She frowned in disgust. Probing into people’s minds was a nasty thing to do . . . at least the aftermath of it was.

  But Liam had been a banker-turned-hacker once. He’d miraculously escaped a police raid on foot, but the hounds were closing in and he literally crossed the path of Menessos, who agreed to save him from a lifetime behind bars in exchange for his services.

  In Liam’s mind resided many methods of committing crimes electronically. Menessos had required the man to act within the parameters of the law, but that did not mean Liam didn’t know how to break those laws.

  Talto had taken what she’d needed.

  Presently, she had set up a series of new bank accounts in various banks in various countries, and had established a schedule to filter funds from one to another. In a few days, the haven would be reduced to the minimal funding provided by the networks of VEIN, but Menessos’s private and very deep financial pockets would be empty.

  She opened her phone and typed the word NOW in the body of a text message to Ailo, then hit Send.

  • • •

  Ailo ran across the stage, through the doorway, and crossed the backstage area to pound on the Haven Master’s door. The guard dropped his phone, jumped from his seat, and forcibly restrained her even as she tried the knob and discovered it was locked.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  She twisted in his grip. “I must see the Haven Master immediately! He is still in there, isn’t he?”

  “He is, but you can’t barge in like a madwoman.” He noticed her necklace and it seemed he remembered who he was dealing with. He released her immediately, keeping himself between her and the door. “Allow me,” he said, and knocked more politely on the door.

  Nothing happened.

  “I thought you said he was in there,” she snapped.

  “He is.”

  “Menessos, too?”

  He nodded.

  “Is it normal for the door to be locked?”

  “They do what they think is fit. Nobody questions them. That includes you.”

  “And what do you do when they think it is fit to not answer their door and a crisis is occurring?”

  They glared at each other for another minute with nothing happening.

  Ailo needed to get Menessos to catch Talto in the act. She couldn’t leave her sister sitting there for hours. “Are you certain they are in there?” she pressed, crossing her arms.

  “Yes.”

  “You get so focused on your stupid phone game, perhaps they have left and you didn’t even notice.”

  “Hey. I focus, but that doesn’t mean I’d miss my Haven Master leaving.”

  T
he door opened slightly. Goliath stood in near darkness within, his gaunt features rather terrifying. “What do you want?”

  The guard pointed at Ailo. “She is rather determined to see you.”

  Goliath’s eyes flicked from the guard to Ailo and back. “Get four Beholders in here for feeding. Immediately.” To Ailo he said, “When the Beholders leave, you may enter.”

  “But—”

  “Not until.”

  The door shut.

  Her crossed arms fell into fists at her sides.

  The guard retrieved his phone and made a call. Seconds later, a quartet of Beholders hurried into the room and entered the Haven Master’s suite.

  As she waited, paced, and grumbled to herself, Ailo gazed up at the entry to the Erus Veneficus’s rooms. Behind that heavy door lay the answer to all her hopes and dreams. Freedom. Splendor. Control of her own destiny. She could live anywhere in the world. She could surround herself with anything and everything she wanted. She’d have vases of the most beautiful flowers in every room. She’d have colorful birds in cages. She would clothe herself in something other than gray. . . .

  Maintaining the safety and happiness of the child would be no easy feat, but she could make the child adore her. Fancy gifts would satisfy any child, and when she grew bored of those, Ailo would buy her more. She would spoil the girl so no one else could satisfy her.

  The Beholders finally filed out of the Haven Master’s suite, each with gauze pads held compressed to either their necks or their wrists.

  Ailo made for the door. The inside remained dark except for a single candle near the door. “Are you here?”

  “What do you need, Ailo?”

  Menessos’s weary voice emitted from the darkened far side of the room.

  She sighed angrily. “Unless your delay has allowed her to complete her scheme, my sister is presently stealing the haven’s money.”

  She heard movement instantly. “How?” Goliath demanded.

  “She’s been talking to me about trying to find out who manages the finances here. She’s spent the evening stealing touches off people, looking for this information. I saw her following one of the Offerlings. I’m sure she’s mesmerized him, read him.”