SNAP: New Talent (The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles)

by Michele Drier

  Boys and their adventures. Jean-Louis smiled. “Well, we lit it and we certainly hoped someone called. That was a big part of our plan. When the firefighters got there, they found the remains of a huge battle between two rival gangs. There were bodies on the grounds, naked and with no identification. We know they were weres. The Ukrainian cops think they were stripped by the Chechens so they couldn’t be ID’d.

  “Inside the house, the bodies were badly burned, but one of them was identified as a Chechen chief through tattoos. Voila! A shootout that meant a bunch of gangsters had gotten rid of each other. Everybody’s happy.”

  There were just a couple of points I didn’t understand.

  “What about Leonid? It’s his house. Was he killed?”

  “Oddly enough, he went out of town earlier that day. One of his servants confessed that he was being blackmailed by the Chechens and forced to let them use Leonid’s house for a high-level parlay. Their rivals, probably Russian Mafiosi, got wind of it and laid on an ambush. Which, as we know, went horribly wrong.” Jean-Louis could hardly contain his glee.

  I turned to Nik. “You’re the one who has to live here. Won’t there be repercussions? Won’t Leonid be after you?”

  “Probably not much more than before. He’s been recalled by Matthais and I’m sure is getting a stern talking to. When he gets back, he’ll be more vigilant but less likely to try something so public again. The Chechens are royally pissed, I imagine, losing so many of their own. Plus having this fight plastered all over the media.”

  “The media! I forgot all about the SNAP business card.”

  “Hmmmmm. Somebody called the SNAP Bureau Chief, Taras, while the firefight was going on and a crew from SNAP was right behind the firefighters at the scene. If SNAP is remembered in this whole thing, it’s more likely to be as the media that broke the story.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  It seemed like Nik and Jean-Louis had handily managed everything. I wrote a mental note not to cross them.

  A maid came in quietly to remove the remains of dinner. Jean-Louis was looking better and better. I knew that food and rest were the best remedies for healing but with him, I could almost watch the tissues regrowing and bones knitting.

  How did he do that?

  He and Nik exchanged a look again and then he smiled at me lazily, like a cat curling up before a fire. “I told you we had benefits.”

  “You did it again! You read my thought. That makes me crazy. OK, as long as we’re there, how do you do that.”

  “I told you, practice patience, keep yourself open to all forms of communication...”

  “No, that that! The healing. I can practically see the cells replicating and you getting stronger. That mark on your face. When you came in tonight, it was a red line, now it’s disappeared. Nobody heals that fast. “

  The two vampires all but giggled.

  “What’s so funny? I asked you a perfectly civil question.”

  Jean-Louis tried to put a sober expression on and failed. “It’s always such a treat to see a regular when they witness this for the first time. We’re not exactly sure how it happens. It just does. We think it has to do with getting nutrients through blood, it allows cells to reproduce quickly. And this.” He held up his right hand and I could see that the bruising was gone and the swelling decreased. “I think that by tomorrow or the next day, the bones will be healed.”

  My mind was swimming. Last night I thought he might die. And I was sure that he’d lost all use of his hand. Tonight, he had almost no trace of his horrendous injuries.

  “I told you we have benefits. We can come back to them again, if you still have questions.”

  Did I have questions? Lord yes, I’d always have questions about this vampire and his life. I was so confused and astounded that most times I couldn’t even articulate what I wanted to know. He was an onion. And every time I peeled off a layer, a new one popped up. I’d never get to the core and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to. Part of the allure, the overwhelming charm of this man was his unknowingness, his constant surprises and his otherness.

  “Yes, I can come back to them. For now, what’s going to happen next?”

  “If you mean with the Huszars, we’re going home and call a war council. The Baron and I, Nik, Francois, Bela, Milos, Pen, Carola, a few more. Maybe it’s time that Stefan and I talked about Felix and what we know. Our plan of assimilation with the dissidents isn’t moving fast enough to keep us out of these skirmishes.”

  “I agree.” Nik headed toward the door. “These are just part of a war of attrition, trying to wear us down. We need to take a position of offense, bring this home to Matthais. I’m going down to make sure our guests are ready to leave. The girls will be taken to spots close to their homes. They’ll be found, safe, with no memory of what happened to them. Makov and the other Huszar will get shipped to Hungary tonight. As soon as Jean-Louis gets home, he’ll arrange for talks of reparation.”

  When the door closed on Nik’s back, Jean-Louis reached out and stroked my face. “The other thing that’s going to happen next is that I’m going to make love to you for a long, long time. Right now, that’s the best healing tool I can think of.”

  As he traced his fingers down my neck and over my breast, I quivered. “Oh my love, I was so afraid I’d lost you.”

  “You haven’t and you won’t. Come lie next to me and let me show you how well I’m healing.”

  I took care pulling his shirt off and stared at his chest. Last night there were two gaping wounds where the Chechen’s bullets had hit. Tonight there were two red, indented spots. I touched one. “Does that hurt?”

  “No, not hurt. It’s tender, like I imagine a bruise would be on you.”

  “I tried to tell them not to move you last night but they flipped you over on your stomach. That can’t have been good for you. Do you know why they did that?”

  He smiled at me. “I love that you were trying to protect me. It’s standard to look at the back, to see if there are exit wounds. It’s good if there are, it means the bullets passed through. They wouldn’t have to poke around inside looking for one.”

  I was resting my head on his chest and lifted up to ask him something that never got said. Instead, his mouth came down on mine so hard it took my breath away. Then my body responded. My mouth fell open to try and absorb all the hunger and desire that was in his kiss, I wrapped my arms around him and he rolled me over on my back. He broke off the kiss, pulled up to look at me and I felt a tremor run through his body.

  He nestled his head between my breasts and began kissing me as he worked his way down my body. This time, the tremor was mine and I couldn’t stop it until we both collapsed.

  What seemed like hours later, I finally got my thoughts to coalesce around what I wanted to ask.

  “You keep telling me that you can’t read minds, that it’s all careful observations and recognition of body language. But I’ve seen you and Nik. You communicate with each other and you both seem to know what’s on my mind, even when I try to keep still.”

  His voice said, “I know”. His mouth never moved. Now this was freaky. I knew he had some telekenetic communication skills.

  “See, you just did it! And at Leonid’s house, I started to go find you when all the shooting started and your voice said ‘Stay’, but you weren’t around.”

  This time he looked at me and smiled. “You’re right. I wanted to wait to tell, or maybe show, you this. As a regular, your mind was closed to much of our knowledge. You wouldn’t have understood, or been able to manage our techniques. Now, you’ve been around us, me, enough to see and learn some things. That command at Leonid’s house was a test. If you’d gone ahead and started toward the house, the demon had orders to pick you up and restrain you.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me? “

  “It’s not all of a piece. When I talked to you about observation, I meant it. We don’t have the ability to just speak to people in our heads. There are certain levels of telek
entic communication that we have with certain people and certain types of people. Within the family, we can read, or better is ‘see’, the other’s thoughts when emotions are concerned. We put what we see internally together with what we observe through sight, and understand what the other is saying or feeling.”

  I sat up and wrapped part of the duvet around me. He never felt the cold as much as I did.

  “What about other people? Regulars?”

  He pulled me and duvet down to lie against his shoulder. “We don’t bother trying to read regulars beyond observation. They, you, live in a loud and noisy world where most information comes through hearing. You’ve developed bells and whistles and sirens to tell one another to be careful or to announce danger. We use some of those as well. We also use silent warnings, silent commands. Not only does it keep our physical presence unknown, we can communicate over much longer distances.”

  He paused to pull me closer. “It’s easier to just take regulars at their level, far less confusing.”

  “Can you teach me? I’m not sure I want to read your mind, but I’d like a way to keep some of my thoughts private. Even from you.”

  An odd expression flitted across his face, then, “Yes, I can do that. There are two sides to this. One is to be able to understand what someone else is thinking and the other is to shield your mind from showing what you’re thinking. That’s a little harder for regulars, because they give so much away in other ways, like body language.”

  Suddenly, I was overcome with exhaustion. The drain of the adrenaline that had kept me alert—actually hyper-alert—for the last 30 hours left me wrung out. Jean-Louis noticed, although it may have been the enormous yawn while he was talking that tipped him off. A demon came in, probably called by Jean-Louis’ non-ability to send nonverbal messages, Jean-Louis asked him to carry me to my room and I was out of there and in my own bed before I could yawn again.

  No medication tonight, I was unconscious before the door closed.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  We put the tutorial on hold until we got back to the Baron’s and then, of course, there were a myriad of details to get the war council together. Getting many of the senior editors of SNAP to leave their offices and gather in Hungary on a moment’s notice was iffy. Schedules were rearranged, planes were readied, demons were called back home.

  I had a day to myself and used it to take a long walk around this place that I was calling home.

  With two weeks to go until winter, and almost to the Christmas season, activities were ramping up. Our coverage of holiday parties, the minor royal wedding, frantic shopping, kept all of our staff and free-lancers busy.

  And the vampires were busy and euphoric, too. After the winter solstice, the days would incrementally grow longer, so this run-up was a heady time for them as well. Villagers were often seen at the castle in the long evenings, chatting with Stefan and Pen, giving Jean-Louis hearty handshakes and exchanging small tokens, usually a piece of jewelry.

  The grounds around the castle were headed for hibernation. We’d had one night of snow and the trees looked stark against the gunmetal gray sky and the pristine snowy ground. Firs still held some snow on their branches, glistening like Christmas trees when hit with a ray of sun.

  I didn’t know the name of the demon who escorted –guarded?—me, but I was taking them more for granted now and not bothered by the anonymity. The air was cold against my nose and throat and burned the tips of my ears, but I relished it.

  Jean-Louis had opened me up to sensations and sensual pleasures. This walk in the cold, still air, knowing that warmth, big fires and hot drinks were going to follow, brought tears because of the enormous simplicity of it.

  How odd to be taught to live in the now by someone with eternal life. Maybe if we lacked a knowledge of death and the finite length of our regular lives, we could let go of the frenetic pace of how we lived.

  When the demon and I came in through the armory, stomping the snow from our boots and with me clapping my hands together to jumpstart circulation, Sandor was there taking inventory.

  “Elise has been waiting for you. She said you need to get ready for dinner.”

  I didn’t bristle, I didn’t snap. Sandor was just the messenger. A few days ago I may have been annoyed at being given an order, but now I was absorbing the text and subtext and beginning to weed out my instant emotions.

  A hot shower warmed my outside, a hot brandy warmed my inside and I was ready to go when Jean-Louis tapped on the door and came in.

  “You look lovely. Is that a new dress? It suits you.”

  He had ceased to surprise me with his observations of small things. I was slowly understanding that he vacuumed his surroundings, taking in all that was there, using the relevant and discarding the rest.

  “Thanks, yes. Jazz had it sent from Saks. That personal shopper is almost always spot-on. I’ve only sent two things back.”

  This particular choice was winter-white soft wool, high-necked but sleeveless with a drapy golden belt that hung on my hips. It hit the curves in the right places, but was loose enough to allow easy movement.

  “What’s the agenda for tonight? Will we have some time for ourselves?”

  He gathered me up in his arms and licked my earlobe. “Yes, we’ll have time.”

  I sucked my breath in and moved back from him. “Not for that, well, yes for that, but I meant for my next lesson in mind-reading.”

  “Aahh...I do wish you wouldn’t call it that.” He was miffed, not really angry. “You make it sound like some carney side-show attraction. ‘Come into my tent and let me read your mind for only $1.’ That’s not what this is about.”

  After a moment of silence, “Yes, we’ll have some time for that, and for this.” He leaned over and kissed me, hard. “Let’s go, now.”

  And we went.

  Tonight, there were twenty-seven for dinner. I was stunned to see the table stretched to accommodate everyone, but the sheer size made it difficult to talk with anyone beyond immediate neighbors. Stefan was at one end, with Pen on his right, and Jean-Louis was at the other, with me at his right, a bold statement for those who weren’t privy to our relationship. Many of the family, for these were all members, knew that Jean-Louis and I were a number, but this announced that I was trusted and permanent.

  Gatherings like this showed off the castle and the Kandeskys to their best. Although there was wi-fi in every room and satellite communications, flat-screens and smart phones, a closet full of servers and firewalls as good as the National Security Agency, tonight the huge dining room was lit by a massive fireplace and a rank of candelabras marching down the table.

  The flickering light prismed off cut crystal that was red with Bull’s Blood and reflected pools of crimson on the white linen. My consommé, chicken vol-au-vente and salad paled on the bone china in comparison to borscht and steak tartre.

  With dinner over, the crowd moved into the screening room and arranged themselves around a massive conference table. The screen was pulled down and what looked like piles of corporate reports had been dealt out to each place. Stefan and Jean-Louis took their seats in front of the screen and the war council of the Kandesky vampires began.

  “As many of you know, I’ve just returned from Kiev,” Jean-Louis began. “Nikoly called for help with a problem he assumed was Huszar related. When we got there, we found that Nik was right.”

  Nikoly, seated along one side of the table, stood. “We’d heard rumors that not only had the Huszars teamed up with the Chechen again, as when they tried to grab Maxie in Paris, but they’d gone a step further. They’d begun abducting young women from around the Kiev area. They were planning to turn some of them to use as bait for SNAP coverage. The Chechens could keep the others, probably to sell as sex slaves. Our demons and I followed their movement for a few days and we were convinced that Leonid had the girls stashed in his house.”

  Jean-Louis took up the narrative. “Nik was right, we found ten young women kept as prisoners in L
eonid’s basement. Three of them had recent bites on their necks, so the turning process had begun. The Chechens were dropping hints and forensic clues that SNAP was involved in the kidnappings and this had to stop immediately.”

  The room lights dimmed and video of the fight at Leonid’s house was thrown up on the screen. “As you can see,” Nik pointed out areas in the house, “even before the fire there was severe damage. Once we started the fire, there wasn’t enough left to conduct any forensic testing and besides, why bother? The entire episode was written off to gang rivalry, supported by the stripped bodies on the grounds.”

  Stefan stepped up to the head of the table. “We’ve called this council together to figure out how best to stop these predations once and for all. These are skirmishes, but if we have to fight enough of them, we’ll be unprepared when a true battle breaks out.

  “I’m announcing that the Kandeskys have to go on the offensive and declare war.”

  There was silence. This was a family of vampires who had spent the last several hundred years peacefully counting their money and living well, if quietly. They’d all killed at some point and understood the necessity of it, especially on a one-to-one basis with a rogue Huszar. And they all had pride of family. A full war, though? This was not a comfortable idea.

  Francois stood. “I’m aware of their techniques. I was supposed to be with Maxie when she was attacked in Paris. I agree these have to stop, but isn’t there some way of negotiating a truce? We’re brighter, have more money, have more position...”

  “Yes,” another vampire broke in, another whom I didn’t know. “Why do we have to fight these 15th century idiots on their terms? Why can’t we bring them to ours?”

  A chorus of voices broke out, pushing for a negotiated peace rather than all-out war. Jean-Louis let it run its course and when the room was quiet again, said “Let me tell you what we’ve been doing.”