My foot was halfway through its motion before I stopped and said, “Definitely, don’t shoot.”
“She ain’t one of the vamps that work on the normal crews, that’s for sure. We need to call this in.” He had the sound of implacable determination in his voice. Lowering his rifle, he withdrew his radio.
“No need to do that,” she said with a light smile. “Put that away. And you,” she said to the other soldier. “Put your gun away.” Power reached out from her and calmed their rapidly beating hearts and caressed their minds into doing what she said. My Second Sight allowed me to see the lilac color of her aura, shot through with the black of vampires, as it uncoiled and moved through the air around us. They obeyed with no more objection than the slight tightening of the man’s jaw as he slung his rifle. He knew he shouldn’t, years of experience told him not to, but he was powerless to resist. My own training grabbed onto that sight and put it away, to be brought up in my memory later when I needed reminding of what a vampire like her could do. “Now why don’t you two fine young gentlemen go for a walk? It’s such a lovely day for one, don’t you agree?” They both nodded mechanically before doing an about-face and walking back the way we had come.
The serpents on my stomach woke and tasted their surroundings, gauging, assessing. Satisfied that none of the power in the air was directed at me, they calmed and settled into a watchful silence. I watched the soldiers begin their walk before turning back to Clara. “Using mind magic is against the law you know.”
“So arrest me,” she said, and shrugged. “Though I see you no longer have those enchanted manacles on your wrists. What happened to them?”
“It’s a long story.” And one that involved a close call with necromancy that I had no interest in reliving. Part of me was glad that Christian hadn’t shown up yet and hoped he never would. It secretly wished he would simply vanish, disappear never to be seen again. But that part of my brain still believes in the tooth fairy so guess how much attention I pay it.
“Is Frank short for Francis or Franklin?”
Frowning at the odd question, I replied, “Franklin, why?”
“When I was prowling around the STS building I heard that nurse refer to the wizard as Benjamin. It seemed so…intimate to use a full name like that.” She took two tentative steps towards me, her shirt flexing with every muscle that she used. My brain felt like it was full of pudding. “I would like to call you Franklin. Would you mind?”
“Franklin’s fine,” I mumbled.
Another step closer. That one maddening stream of hair still clung to her face defiantly, daring me, begging me to reach out and smooth it back with the rest. Rain drops sparkled like diamonds on her skin. I couldn’t take it anymore. She was right there. I reached out slowly, as if I was at the bottom of the ocean, moving my hand through the currents of purple energy that swirled about her. There was no resistance, just a pleasant buzzing sensation along my fingertips. She closed her eyes as my fingers brushed her face and kept them closed as I splayed those same fingers through her mane of blond hair, slowly bringing my hand down to cup the side of her face in my palm. She breathed in deeply and looked at me through half-closed eyes. God, she was beautiful.
“Frank,” a voice said from behind me. It was cold and distant, alien yet familiar.
I cursed under my breath as the spell was irrevocably broken. Clara’s eyes flickered to the speaker and filled with the heat of anger. The muscles of her jaw tensed under my fingers.
“Simon,” she said, making the name sound like a curse.
My hand fell away from her reluctantly, and I shut down my Sight. The rapidly shifting colors of Clara’s aura were threatening to give me a headache. I looked over at Simon as he walked up next to me. His hands were thrust into the pockets of his overcoat and his jaw was set as if he expected a punch to be thrown. I half expected to hear teeth crack.
“You are in danger of breaking the Accords, Clara.” His voice was an angry whisper.
Clara’s hands clenched into fists. She regained her composure quickly, relaxing her stance and smoothing down the wrinkles in her shirt. “He came to me willingly, Inquisitor.” She put all the venom she could muster behind the title.
“She’s right, Simon.” His eyes shifted to me as I spoke. I looked at the ground like a guilty child, hand caught in the proverbial cookie jar. “She didn’t use any mental tricks on me,” I assured him. “They wouldn’t have worked anyway.”
He turned back to face her, dismissing me. “True. But after centuries of practice at manipulating the opposite sex, and looking the way she does, the mind games are almost redundant. Isn’t that right?” She didn’t respond. “Besides, she can’t make the same claims with the two guards she sent off.”
“I needed to talk to Mr. Goldman alone.”
Simon snorted. “I can see that. I wonder what you two would have talked about if I hadn’t interrupted.”
A sudden bout of imagination showed me exactly what would have happened. Brief flashes of a pale stomach and sinuous musculature filled my mind and caused my heart to speed up. I mentally shook myself and said, “Simon, I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine and so are the guards.”
“Little brother,” he said sadly. “You don’t know what this one is capable of.” He jerked his head towards Clara. “I do. She is very dangerous.”
Clara allowed herself a small smile. “Why thank you, Simon. I think that’s the most respect you’ve ever accorded me. But those days are in the past, ancient history as it were. Just like my rivalry with you.”
He glared at her. “I don’t buy that for a second. That ankh around your neck means nothing to me.”
“That is where we differ,” she replied sedately. “It means everything to me.”
The comment threw me, but Simon ignored it and pressed on. “Is this storm your work?”
“It is a gift from my Mistress so that I could enter undetected. It seems to only have partially succeeded though.”
Frowning, Simon said, “Selena can’t control the weather.”
“You presume to know her power?” Clara smiled. “It has been a long time since you have been allowed in her court. Much has changed since then.”
He took a step forward, his hands still securely in his pockets as if he feared what would happen if he allowed them near her. “Then what about you marking him with your blood?”
She gave nothing away, her features as fixed as her posture. “What about it?”
He smiled mirthlessly. “It seems rather petty of her to have you do that just to insult the two of us. Maybe not as much has changed as you would like to think.”
“Insult?” she asked, clearly perplexed. I watched her face as she worked through the implications of Simon’s words in her head. It was normally extremely difficult to get an insight into what a vampire was feeling. They were very guarded with their emotions since they could be seen as signs of weakness. And the older ones like Clara had become masters at concealment. At least under normal circumstances. I watched as the confusion left her face to be replaced by a dawning realization of what Simon was suggesting. Her eyes glowed as the rage boiled over. “You arrogant bastard! You think that Selena ordered me to mark him?” A faint accent crept into her voice as she railed at him. I couldn’t place it, but since I didn’t normally hear it I was guessing it only became noticeable when she was really, really angry. “To what end? To hurt your pride? Are you that conceited to believe that we do things solely for your benefit?” She then rattled off a string of words in a foreign language that I guessed were curses, a guess that I took to be confirmed by Simon’s souring expression. “You disgust me!” she yelled, and with the speed of a striking snake thrust her palm out and struck him in the center of the chest. With a grunt he hurled backward, but landed on his feet and skidded to a stop in a puddle. His eyes practically glowed crimson as his hands sprang from his pockets, a glimmering blade clutched in each. Clara crouched, ready to counter his inevitable attack.
&nbs
p; “Whoa!” I yelled, stepping between them with my hands up. “Fighters back to their corners. Both of you calm down, and Simon, sheath those knives.” He hesitated, but continued to stare at my chest as if he could see through me to Clara. “Simon,” I said icily. The training filled me with a languid calm that I shouldn’t have felt standing between two vampires that wanted to tear into each other. It knew that showing fear might set them off, so it took the fear and set it aside. There was now a nice little place in my brain where I ran around in a circle screaming at the top of my lungs. But the real me simply said, “Put the knives away and take a walk.” He blinked, the burning eyes losing some of their heat.
“Frank, I—”
“I’m still Inquisitor here until I get a memo that says otherwise,” I said, cutting him off. “So please do as I ask.”
Straightening from his fighting stance, he looked at his hands as if he didn’t recognize them. “Of course,” he mumbled. The blades disappeared back into his coat. “Be careful, brother.” With that, he spun around, the back of his coat flapping out behind him as if waving goodbye to us, and walked away.
Once he had disappeared around the closest corner, Clara said, “I’m sorry you had to see that. Simon is the only man I’ve ever known who could make me forget myself, for good or bad.” She stepped up next to me, both of us watching the spot where he had disappeared from sight. “You realize he’ll just sulk in the shadows listening to us, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said, a small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. I felt a surge of relief in knowing that she was right, that Simon would be watching my back even though I had chastised him in front of his enemy. It said something about him as a man, something that made me proud that he called me ‘brother.’ I hoped I could return the favor sometime. But right now I had some questions I wanted answered.
The rain had let up and turned into a light drizzle, the clouds turning from coal-colored to a silver-gray. “Let’s walk, shall we?” I asked. She nodded, and I led the way down the street opposite the way Simon had gone. We came to an intersection and turned right towards the bay. The cawing of a raven floated on the light breeze. “So why are you here, Clara?”
“I thought I made that clear to you before. The necromancer is a problem for everyone, not just your people. I will help you rid this city of him in any way I can.”
“Selena ordered you to help me?”
Clara smiled and looked away for a moment before answering. “No. She is a tad upset that Simon is here, and would have gladly turned a blind eye to this whole affair. Unless it grew out of control, of course, but by then it would be too late for us to do anything about it. I asked her for permission to pursue this on my own. She gave it, grudgingly, and told me that this,” she waved her hand above her to indicate the storm, “was the only help I’d receive from her.”
“That seems kind of harsh, seeing as how you’re acting in her interests. If Christian gets his hands on the Book…” I let the rest go unspoken.
“I know, but you must understand that older beings such as Selena and I have seen these things happen dozens of times before.” She turned those luminous eyes on me to gauge my reaction, see if I understood. “It has never been this particular scenario, but they never are quite the same. Necromancers, dark wizards, rival Masters, the original Inquisition, I’ve survived them all.” We walked past a row of squat warehouses and stopped once the bay was in view. Boats of all sizes scuttled about in and out of ports, large tankers sat out to sea, small dark blurs on the horizon. “I’ve also seen an old man with nothing but a handmade cross beat off an attack by a dozen of my brothers and sisters. You remind me of him. You have the same look in your eyes that he did, that strange calm that tells the world that you will not fall, will not retreat no matter what.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I remained silent.
She let out a small laugh. “After all of the vampire hunters and the spell casters with their torches and stakes and magic that could incinerate a village in seconds, I didn’t think anything could kill me. I felt truly immortal instead of simply ageless. And then this old man who had a bad limp in his left leg and looked like easy prey came and crushed that illusion. I was scared to death of him because I knew no matter what we threw at him, how many we sent at him, he would never break. Never.”
“What happened to him?” I asked quietly.
“I don’t know. We ran away and never went back.” She smiled at me and I found myself laughing, slowly at first, but before I knew it I was bent nearly double and sucking in the salty air. “You’re laughing at me,” she said with a pout that was betrayed by a small grin.
Regaining my breath, I straightened up and waved my hands in front of me. “No, no. It’s just so rare to hear a story so honest, so human from someone—”
“From a vampire you mean?”
“Well, yes actually. The only Bloodletter I have to compare you to is Ezekiel, and his talks always ended up with him describing how he was going to mutilate me before he killed me.”
“He always was a charmer,” Clara said dryly.
“And Selena is so obsessed with appearances that she would never admit to something like that, let alone to me.”
“She is Master of this city,” Clara said with pride. “Any indication of weaknesses could be set upon by challengers. Ezekiel was constantly looking for some chink in her armor, but Selena has learned quickly and applied her power judiciously. I have served many Masters before, I’ve even been one for a short time, but Selena is the best I’ve seen. It’s quite remarkable for one so young. But I shouldn’t be surprised; she has greatness in her blood.”
“Wait,” I said, shaking my head. “Young? Isn’t Selena five hundred years old?”
“Close enough,” Clara said, shrugging. “Usually only the Elders like me can attain the kind of power she already has.”
My mouth hung open in astonishment as I looked at the young woman next to me. An Elder vampire was classified as one that had lived for more than a thousand years. They were also well known for being recluses, fervently protecting an unnatural life by shutting themselves off from everyone else. The powers they wielded tended to be of a higher order than most of the vamps you would run into in the Second City, but when I had looked at Clara in my Second Sight there hadn’t been an extraordinary amount of power about her. For her to have lived out in the open as long as she had she must have been powerful. Selena, I knew, hid her power from the senses through some ability she had. Could Clara do the same?
“You’re an Elder? How come I couldn’t tell?”
She smiled at me and brushed some hair back behind her ear. “I use good moisturizers.” The smile died and was replaced by her stoic visage as she looked back out to sea. I could imagine the scenes being replayed in her mind as she said, “I was old when Selena was first turned. In fact, the Aztecs as a people didn’t even exist when mine were sailing the seas conquering far lands. They were faraway places back then at least, now you can hop on a plane and be there in half a day.”
My mind traveled along the timeline she painted, the clues she dropped, her appearance, and the accent that I now recognized from when she was yelling at Simon. “Vikings,” I said, awe tingeing my voice.
“Indeed. You would be surprised how long one of my kind could go unnoticed among their warriors.”
Through some unspoken agreement we left the harbor and continued down the road, past a row of dark olive-colored jeeps and hummers, towards the barracks. The smell of ozone hung in the air like a blanket. Our feet slapping wet pavement and the rumble of a far off engine were the only sounds as we walked in companionable silence.
“Go ahead and ask,” Clara said suddenly. “I know its burning you up not knowing, so just ask.”
There were so many more questions whizzing around my head, but I knew the one she was referring to. I took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “Okay. Why did you mark me? Was Simon right?”
We
both stopped and faced each other. She looked into my eyes and didn’t blink, which after a few seconds became kind of unnerving in and of itself. “I’d be lying if I said Simon was entirely wrong. The thought of upsetting him gave me a kind of thrill. He thinks of everything as a competition and he can’t stand to lose. That’s why he lost Selena, because he viewed her as a prize to be won, not as someone to be cherished.” I frowned in confusion at the obvious emotion in her voice. It almost seemed as if Clara had taken as much offense to Simon’s behavior as Selena did. “I know what I did was childish, but it was just a fringe benefit. The real reason I did it was because of this.” She pulled the ankh from under her shirt and held it up for me to see. “Some of my kind have taken this as a symbol. It would be wrong to call it a religion, but it is a belief structure. We believe that there is a balance to be maintained. Nothing can be taken and not be repaid. After centuries of taking whatever I wanted and destroying anything that got in my way, I realized that that was the true path of evil. Ezekiel and those like him walk that path, reveling in what they’ve become. I know what I was and wish to make amends for it, to restore the balance. It is an unachievable goal, I know. I can never give back what I have taken, but I can change what I am now.”
“That’s admirable, but what does it have to do with me?”
“When you killed Ezekiel you gave a gift to Selena. It needed to be repaid.”
“I didn’t do it for her,” I said. “Ezekiel was a monster. I could only imagine what would have happened to Oakland if he became Master.”
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