by Amy Lane
Nicky, who was on Bracken’s other side, snorted. “My parents should kiss your bloody feet, Cory. I’d throw her to that toothless guy who tried to whammy you.”
Rafael blinked and mouthed “toothless…” before turning and searching through the shadows. He saw Toothless Badass standing in the shadows staring blankly ahead, and turned to me in exasperation.
“What did you do to my enforcer?” he asked, his words compressing into a hard Hispanic accent in his excitement.
“Oh.” I tried to make my smile apologetic. “Not much…. We just told him to leave us alone, and—” How should I put this?
“And that if he ever hurt one of our people or anybody helpless again, his brains would liquefy and run out his nose,” Bracken supplied. I had used the threat when I’d mind-whammied Jack’s parents this past winter—and I’d liked it so much, I saved it for people who really pissed me off. We were all pretty sure it wouldn’t work, but it really did scare the shit out of people.
Rafael grimaced again. “That was the power I felt.” He glared at me. “Did anybody ever tell you that it’s bad form to ruin a master vampire’s enforcer without his permission?”
I glared back. “Did anybody ever tell you that it’s bad form to have an enforcer who backhands people just because they can?”
Ouch! That one got him where he lived. Well, score one for me, and score another for Rafael—he hadn’t liked his enforcer’s tactics either. Well, maybe we could help each other, then.
Still, there was face to be saved. “I don’t see you walking into Andres’s territory and mind-fucking his enforcer,” he grumbled. Bracken and Nicky both guffawed as I flushed.
“What?” he asked warily.
“That’s because she killed him instead,” Bracken said with grim relish. “Haven’t you wondered why you haven’t spoken to Robert in a year and a half?”
“He was going to eat us,” I defended. Great. So much for mutual sharing and simpatico. I was a vampire-slaying bitch from hell. Aces!
Rafael looked at me with sudden understanding. He’d tasted my blood, so he knew it was true. “I see.” He nodded. “I’d wondered why he was no longer Andres’s contact—you don’t like to ask.”
“So,” I tried brightly, “are we all scary now?”
Rafael looked back, his eyes painfully sober as he licked the wound at his wrist closed. “You are terrifying, little Goddess, don’t you ever doubt it.”
Oh Jesus. “Are we too scary to chat with?”
Rafael shook his head. “No, no. In fact, I think you’re too scary not to.”
Walter arrived with the appetizers, and I gave them both a thank-you and a cheeky grin and dug in.
Phase one complete!
Bracken: Queen Takes Rook
SOMETIMES I wish she could see herself through my eyes.
She had seen tonight’s performance as something she must do in order to achieve a desired effect. There had been no vanity in it, no awareness that the entire room had followed her, mesmerized, as she’d slunk around the room and laid claim by touch, blood, and song to every soul there who owed her fealty.
But I had seen. Our people would lie down and die for her.
There were people in Rafael’s care who would die to kill her.
And the look on the bitchy little human’s face, as the entire room silently bowed in homage to my beloved, warned that she would slaughter worlds to shed a drop of my beloved’s blood.
My due’ane didn’t care that she had the world at her feet and assassins at her back. She didn’t wield that power like a cosmic mace over the heads of these people who were not hers.
All she wanted was to find a cure, a cause, an action to take that would stop the abomination of child vampires from continuing.
And Rafael was being deliberately obtuse.
Cory ate some fried cheese and passed the plate to me and Nicky. We ate—partly to replace the blood the vampires had taken, and partly to show Rafael that we trusted him. I saw that appetizers were being delivered around the room and blessed Rafael’s tact. He’d had fried zucchini delivered to Lambent instead of those miserable chicken wings that Cory and Nicky were eating now that I had the deep-fried and delicious cheese. Nicky was cracking the bones and sucking the marrow moodily, and I thought he probably enjoyed wild game very much in his bird form. Did his parents know that about him?
I turned to my beloved, who was leaning over the bar and trying not to make it too obvious that she was afraid her breasts would spill out of the front of her minidress. They wouldn’t—Nicky and I had put double-sided tape on the sides, and they were still not that big, but I took her little capelet and fastened it around her shoulders at the neck anyway. She flashed me a truly grateful look, and I resisted the urge to touch her face.
She needed to be Green’s ou’e’eir, Adrian’s chosen successor, tonight, not the sweet woman who yielded to me in bed.
And now she turned to Rafael and became who she was meant to be.
“So,” she said, taking a dainty sip of her soda and pitching her voice throatily under the music from the stage, “Rafael, you’ll never in a hundred years guess what we are keeping in our basement right now.”
“A dragon with five legs?” he quipped.
“I might also be keeping a dragon with five legs in my house,” she quoted with an arch of her eyebrows, “but no one has ever seen it.”
Rafael’s eyes widened. “The Crucible,” he said with a genteel smile. “I didn’t know you liked literature, Lady Cory.”
Cory wrinkled her nose, and I suppressed a grimace. Sore subject.
“One of my degrees is going to be in English lit,” she said with a twist to her mouth. “Apparently I like it more than I suspected.”
“One?” Rafael asked, impressed, and Cory waved him off.
“Actually, Rafael, I’m less concerned with my next year in school than I am with the poppet in my basement.”
“Poppet?” he asked, confused.
“A small, pretty thing whose neck has been used as a pincushion,” she said, her voice hard.
Rafael’s expression became as closed as a virgin’s knees.
“You’re young, Lady, but not quite young enough for dolls.”
Cory narrowed her eyes, and I saw her fighting against taking a look at me. She didn’t have to—we both saw it.
“Well,” she said, pulling her lips inward in that playful grimace that usually meant her mind was working double-time, “since this doll can rip people apart and create undead wildlife, I’d say she’s more my speed than your average Raggedy Ann, you think?”
The sound of a harsh breath from a body that didn’t need to breathe can transcend the music of a crowded bar. Several vampires looked our way—either they heard Rafael’s gasp, or he just had a flash of panic that escaped his control. When he met Cory’s eyes this time, his face had become carved and gaunt in a moment.
“That’s a very dangerous toy, my lady,” Rafael said unhappily. “That kind of toy can be deadly if you’re not careful.”
Cory’s jaw clenched. “It’s not like I went out and bought that doll-baby on my own, Lord Vampire,” she retorted. “All we had to do was follow her pets back to her lair before tourist season in the foothills, and we discovered someone had left a mutant third-grade Barbie right on our doorstep. Now who would build that sort of toy, Rafael? And how would a conscientious toy collector fix such a thing so we don’t have to lock it in the basement anymore? Do you have any ideas?”
Rafael scrubbed his face with his hands and looked woefully at the closing wound on his wrist. He could lie to her all he wanted—and he very likely would—but she would know. She would know and would be within her rights to sweep his house clean with a sonic-bleach broom.
“Cory,” he said at last, turning to look her square in the eyes, “there are some things that are broken that cannot be fixed. It’s my understanding that the… basic flaw in the design is so massive, that this particular toy is one of them—
”
“Dammit, Lord Vampire!” Ah gods… her temper. Well, this was her barbecue. “We’re not talking about a fucking toy here, we’re talking about a little girl, and all she was doing was camping with her family, and now—”
“I know!” he all but shouted. Now his voice was loud enough that the music stopped, and there was a sudden hostile turning of over a hundred supernatural people as they became instantly aggressive toward Cory and everyone she’d announced as hers.
Jack and Teague stood up immediately, turning their attention outward as easy as breathing. Katy still sat, protected, between them. Lambent’s glow went sun-gold with anticipation, and the two Avians were nearly on their chairs, they were so ready to fight. Marcus and Phillip had returned and had already gone back-to-back with Kyle, and Max stood easily, his hand at the silver-shot loaded guns at his belt.
Renny changed into a giant tabby cat in a puddle of miniskirt and a black tank top that still fit over her fur. Well, we hadn’t exactly brought her along for her fighting skills.
In fact, the entire room went on alert—but not Cory. Not Rafael. And, by example, not Nicky and not me.
Because I was touching her thigh with my hand and Nicky was bumping my shoulder, we could both feel her revving enough power to blow up the building—but nobody else could.
“I know,” the master vampire repeated in a beleaguered voice. “It’s not a toy—it… she… was never meant to be a toy. But… but the last ‘toy maker’ I knew of, he… he promised that he had stopped.”
Cory sighed, and her field relaxed as well. Some of the threat must have left the air—the two leaders were talking quietly again, their backs to the facing armies—because the music started again and people began to stand down. I looked around and gave everybody a nod. Renny was a girl again, and with a quick pull of her miniskirt, she was even dressed. This was still civilized—this was still a favor between friends.
“Well, he lied, Rafael,” Cory said softly. “And not just about this one—we found bodies out at Lake Shasta. They’ve been reported already, and they’re not the only family in the last four months since we’ve found Gretchen.”
“Mother of God,” Rafael swore—and his horror was genuine. He’d had no idea, and it hurt him badly.
Cory paused very deliberately and let the import of his words sink in before she asked the next question. “Would you like us to put this toy maker out of business for you?”
Rafael looked at her, and I could see an almost wild inclination to say “Yes!” light up his eyes. I’d seen Cory look the same way—the terrible hope that someone, some grown-up could come along and do the hard task to make everything okay. Cory always squashed that light in herself, that yielding—not once had she ever given us the hard job because she didn’t want to do it herself.
And Rafael had been loved by Adrian. I had never met the man—he was from a time after Adrian and I had been exclusive—but Adrian had spoken highly of him. Redding was a rough crowd, Adrian had said time and again. Rafael was the sort of gentleman that a kiss like this one needed. Adrian had known people—he had known how to judge the best and the worst in them.
Adrian had been the first of us to look at Cory and see someone extraordinary.
He had not chosen wrong in his lieutenant.
“That is very kind of you to offer,” Rafael said now, carefully, “and I shall be happy to take you up on it if things become”—he grimaced—“difficult. But our toy maker is a… solitary worker. I think an invitation from family would be the best way to bring him in.”
Cory nodded and met my eyes. “Tomorrow?” she mouthed, and I held up two fingers. That settled, she turned back to the man we had decided to trust.
“Two days, Lord Vampire,” she said formally. “We’ll be back in two days, if that’s all right with you?”
Rafael nodded and flashed some relieved fangs. “Two days should be sufficient,” he said. “If for nothing else than to let you know the matter has been properly investigated.”
Cory pursed her lips. This was Rafael giving his people a way out and a way to stall. “Rafael, you seem like a good guy—a guy who wants to do his best for his people, right?”
The man nodded, and I realized that all traces of the handsome, insouciant club owner had been burned away by the heat of this painful conversation. He looked sharp and haggard and weary.
Well, good. This had happened on his watch—and it wasn’t a picnic for us either.
“Yes,” he said heavily. Cory wasn’t trying to be opaque.
“Well, then, you need to do more than prove that you ‘investigated the matter.’ Do you understand me? I get it—you took a friend’s promise for fact. That’s fair, and you don’t want to betray a friend to the big bad bitch in town—I understand that. This is one of your people, and you want to protect him. I get that too. But he signed on for this life. Gretchen, the kid in our basement, was raped, killed, and resurrected without a say in the matter. Do you know what happens to their minds, Rafael?”
Her voice started to break a little—in passion, in pain. We didn’t talk about Gretchen much, but she weighed heavy on our minds.
“She forgets that she killed her parents, and she asks us about them every day. And we’ve started to lie to her—we’ve started to tell her that they’re coming soon, you know? Because it just seems kinder that way. She’s started to imagine conversations with her brother—‘What happened to your doll, Gretchen? I thought you liked her?’—and she’ll start yelling for Marvin, because she’s sure she saw him come in and break the damned thing.”
Cory swallowed, and I put my hand on the small of her back. I didn’t go visit, and Cory never shared. Wasn’t it funny, the sorts of pain that could build up in our beloveds when we weren’t looking? Nicky’s pain, Cory’s pain… they knew it would hurt us, so they kept it to themselves. I wasn’t good at that. I figured Cory knew about all there was to know about the “secret” workings of my mind. I was as mysterious as a boulder in the sun.
There was a brief, heavenly smell of mustard flowers in the rain, and Cory took a deep shuddery breath and kept going. Bless Green—he really would have felt her misery from two hundred miles away.
“Anyway,” she continued, dashing her hand in front of her eyes, “I respect you, Rafael. I like you. And I don’t want your kiss. They’re yours. But you had better not underestimate the havoc I’ll wreak—or the bodies I’ll leave in my wake—to make sure that there is never another vampire like Gretchen. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”
Rafael nodded and stood. If he hadn’t been vampire pale already, I think her anger would have drained him of color completely.
“I understand, my lady,” he said quietly, and then he put his fist to his heart and bowed. “I would be honored if your people would stay and enjoy their evening. However, when two a.m. comes….”
“We’re mice and pumpkins. I understand.” She hopped up from her stool and bowed back. “Thank you, Rafael. I’ll see you the night after tomorrow.”
He nodded and left. The deejay, sensing that karaoke night was over, put in a power ballad for slow dancing.
She put up no resistance as I led her to the floor.
When we got there, Max and Renny were on the floor already, and Jacky and Katy as well. Marcus and Phillip had each politely asked local shape-shifters, and so had Mario. Lambent moved out of the crowd to the back corner of the dance floor, Kyle had shifted to the opposite corner, and LaMark took an empty table toward the front center. Nicky joined him with an extra soda in his hand to share.
It was smoothly done and completely natural—we wanted to dance, so our people covered for us—and I knew Cory noticed.
I also knew it bothered her.
“They didn’t need to do that,” she said against my chest. REO Speedwagon blared “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” and I slid my hand under her capelet to touch the skin on her back.
“They wanted to—it makes us look impressive.”
Sh
e grunted. “I’m tired of theater.” There was a trembling in her limbs, an adrenaline bleed, that showed me—and me alone—what her interview had taken from her. “I want to go back to the cabin and just sit and look at the stars, and maybe talk to Green on the phone.”
“Maybe go swimming?” I asked dreamily. That brought a laugh from her.
“You’re really going to miss that lake, aren’t you?” In that moment, everything disappeared for her but my face in her vision and the feel of my body under hers. I’d die for this, I thought hazily. It was truth.
“You have no idea,” I said through a tight throat. She leaned her head low on my chest, and for a moment I felt the weight of everything we had done this night resting on me because I could hold it.
“Junkie,” she chided, and I laughed, mostly so she could hear the rumble of my voice.
We danced for a little while more, even when the tempo went up and even when it went more country than rock. There was an impromptu two-step lesson to Chris Isaak’s “Diddly Daddy” that had the three women in the party being whirled from man to man and enough laughter among all of us to lure more of Rafael’s people onto the dance floor.
After that there was another slow song, and as Jack left the dance floor, his shoulder brushed up against Teague. There was enough softness in the touch that even as Teague held on to Katy, their sham of “heterosexual” space completely dissolved. I thought that maybe it was time to go.
Cory noticed it too and nodded at me from Nicky’s loose embrace. When the song wound down, I stood and everyone gathered together, and we left as a group. Many of Rafael’s people wished us a noisy good-bye as we left, and there were smiles and waves and a couple of bows. There were also silent wishes of death—and we could feel those too.
The humid darkness outside was different from the stifling darkness inside. The stars arched above us in a magic canopy of wishes, and although we stayed on alert, there was the relief of tension flooding out of us. I didn’t have to look to know that while one of Teague’s arms was draped around Katy’s shoulders, his other hand was locked firmly in Jacky’s. Phillip and Marcus were side-by-side. Their hands weren’t linked, but their shoulders bumped often. Lambent’s glow softened, and the heat radiating from his body eased back as he relaxed—and Renny gave up all pretense of being a girl and became a giant cat in a tank top again. Max grunted softly and bent down to pick up her miniskirt and pretty sandals before catching up.
