by Faith Hunter
By the time my plate was empty, the men entered, smelling of various colognes and scented soaps and aftershaves. And endorphins. Yeah, they’d gotten happy.
They stopped in the foyer of the office proper, clustered in a fanghead/blood-meal group, and stared at me in what smelled like shock. I grinned up at them and licked my fingers again.
“Little Janie has suggested that we act the Petruchio to the Europeans’ Kate Minola,” Wrassler said, his voice toneless but his eyes dancing as he took in their reactions to my lazy sprawl. “American barbarians.”
Leo tilted his head, studying me, and he did that single-eyebrow-quirk thing that was so classy and that I totally could not do. I’d tried. In that moment he looked completely human, if a bit like he’d stepped out of the pages of a historical novel. He was wearing a shirt with draping sleeves and a round collar that tied at the throat, the ties hanging open. High-heeled leather boots went to his knees, with a pair of nubby silky pants tucked into them. Except for the boots, I’d seen him wear this outfit before. Either he had a dozen of them or he was wearing this pair out. I saluted the group with my beer and slurped, watching them.
Leo chuckled, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. When he laughed, he looked so normal, so human. It was uncanny and kinda scary that one of the most dangerous nonhumans I knew could appear so ordinary. He crossed the office proper and took up my deserted glass of wine. He drank deeply, his eyes still on me over the rim. “Barbarians, eh?”
“And tech experts. Modern people. Just a suggestion,” I said, and sucked the rest of the beer out of the bottle with one long, low-class glug. “So. Wha’s up, dudes?”
Chapter Two
It Is Done . . . Factum Est. Consummatum.
“We have a minimum of three months to prepare for our . . . visitors,” Leo said, the last word sounding forced, as if he’d rather have said invaders or attackers or enemies. Leo leaned over the desk, resting his weight on his fingertips, and studied us from his standing height. Leo wasn’t tall, but his posture gave him a command presence I had used myself.
Dominance posture, Beast murmured at me.
There were a bunch of us in the office, as I’d guessed: Adelaide (Del), who was Leo’s new primo; Bruiser, who was Onorio and Leo’s old primo; Grégoire and the bruised-up Onorio twins; the Mercy Blade, Gee DiMercy; and Derek Lee, Leo’s potential new full-time Enforcer. It was an eclectic group, not what I had been expecting in terms of attendees. Everyone was dressed in what I’d call Victorian Age Chic except for Derek, Adelaid, and me.
Derek was wearing casual slacks and a tailored shirt. Unlike me and my slump, the former marine was sitting upright in his wingback chair, taking notes on an electronic tablet, looking every inch the up-and-coming businessman that he was developing into. Well, except for the shadows in his eyes every time his gaze moved to Leo. He was having trouble adapting to the position of Enforcer, and the requirements that went with the job.
He said, “Six months might be long enough to get your people ready. Assuming that we have the same team here straight through. Rotating out teams means constant retraining. My men need to work with whatever security will be here then, to integrate a real team, people who can almost read each other’s minds in hazardous situations.”
Leo looked at Del, who was wearing a little black sheath dress and low heels, and she checked her own tablet. “Clan teams end their two-month rotations in two weeks. We’ll get a new batch then.”
I interrupted. “Why do you rotate out that way? Why every two months? Why not have a full-time crew here all the time?”
“It is the way things are done,” Grégoire said with a sniff.
It might have been a disdainful sniff, which made me smother a grin. “You mean, the way they did things back in feudal Mithran times?” I asked. “The way the Euro Vamps do things? The way that will let them know exactly what we are going to do and when?”
“Predictability is a liability,” Derek said, agreeing.
I expected Leo to differ, as he usually did when I suggested a change of plans or methodology. Old vamps get set in their ways, the school of thought that went, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” For centuries, sometimes. Instead he asked, “What alternatives do you suggest, my Enforcers?”
Coulda knocked me over with a Mercy Blade feather. If they ever showed their feathers to the world instead of the layered glamours they wrapped themselves in so they’d appear human. “Uhhh,” I said, not prepared for him being agreeable. “A permanent crew here would be good.”
“I got some of Grégoire’s new people in the swamps, training,” Derek said. I looked up at that. I knew he intended to integrate the two security forces—Grégoire’s Atlanta team and Leo’s New Orleans team—at some point, but not that it had already started. “Most of ’em washed out and got sent back to Atlanta. We still got a few sticking with it.”
“You training them like SEALs?” I asked, meaning was he wearing them down to skin and bones and guts, the way Uncle Sam trained his best fighters.
He grinned at me and said, “I’m trying not to kill any.”
“We could bring Grégoire’s crew in as permanent security,” I said to Leo. “We could also make the rotating clan home security teams’ cycles longer,” I suggested.
“Six months at a stretch,” Derek agreed. “And stagger them so that the council house doesn’t get a complete batch of new recruits all at once.”
His voice silky, Leo said, “My Enforcers have been plotting.”
“Nope,” I said. “Just great minds thinking alike.” To Derek, I said, “I’ve suggested that to him about ten times now. He’s kinda stuck in a European rut, doing things the old-country way.”
Leo and Derek both frowned, but Leo said to Del, “Adelaide, compose a letter addressed to the masters of the other clans, detailing the changes and asking if their own security or comfort will be negatively affected by such a modification to protocol.”
Derek frowned at me and I shrugged, even less prepared for Leo to capitulate. Maybe Leo had needed to hear it from a guy? Or maybe he was worried and finally listening to his paid troops? I was betting on the guy thing.
“George,” Leo said. “You will send my card to each of the other clan homes announcing an official visit. You and Adelaide will then deliver the letter requesting the protocol changes, by hand, and introduce my new primo.”
Del looked down at her lap, avoiding Bruiser’s eyes. Bruiser looked at me and smiled as he answered, “Yes, dominantem civitati—Master of this City and Hunting Territories. It shall be as you say.”
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that, spoken in Latin and archaic-sounding English words, words that seemed to have a power of some kind over the others in the room, because their scents changed, smelling bitter, of shock, and maybe a little of horror.
Yes . . . Master of this City . . . It shall be as you say . . . ? And then it hit me. Bruiser didn’t call Leo my master. The phrase he used showed respect to the master of a city, but no more respect or loyalty than anyone might use, anyone unassociated with a master’s household. And the phrase had been all formal, in Latin. Crap. Bruiser had just announced publicly that he was no longer Leo’s . . . employee? Dinner? Sex partner, if he had ever been that? I hadn’t been comfortable enough to ask. Still wasn’t. But the phrase said that he was certainly no longer Leo’s blood-servant. Bruiser’s eyes were warm on me, a little smile on his lips.
My cheeks heated and I couldn’t control the speed of my heart rate. I sure as heck couldn’t control the scent of my pheromones, which were suddenly all over the place. The vamps in the room looked from Bruiser to Leo and then to me, picking up cues from each of us that we might rather have wished kept private. What did this public announcement mean to and for Bruiser? In the odd silence of the room, he let his smile drop and turned to Leo, who was still leaning over the desk, maybe frozen there
in shock.
Leo held Bruiser’s gaze for a long moment before turning that predatory stare to me, his nostrils widening as he scented the air. I could feel the ice of Leo’s gaze as he spoke, but I kept my eyes on Bruiser. “Are you certain, primo quondam meus?”
“I am certain, dominantem civitati, magister quondam meus.”
“You give up much,” Leo said, his tone slightly hoarse. As if the words were pulled from him, as if they hurt as they left his mouth. I didn’t know what was going on, but it sounded important. Life-or-death important. And everyone in the room seemed to think so too. There were a lot of wide eyes and very little breathing, even from the humans.
Del, her face white with shock, mouthed a translation. Master of this City. My former master.
Holy Crap. Bruiser was really . . . quitting?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My editor, Jessica Wade. I made her promise me, the day we met in person, to edit the heck out of all of my books and stories. She took me up on that and I am a better writer today because of her insight and her gifts. She works tirelessly on all my projects—during business hours, after hours, between trying to have a life of her own.
My agent, Lucienne Diver, of the Knight Agency. I could not have a better agent and friend. Thank you for all the support.
Faith Hunter is the New York Times bestselling author of the Jane Yellowrock series, as well as the Rogue Mage novels. She lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
