by Karen Chance
There were about a hundred things I needed to do right then, but for a moment, I just stood there. My wrist was throbbing, my legs felt weak as water and a massive headache was building behind my right eye. But he was warm and his shirt was soft and he smelled so damn good. I felt my whole body relax.
He didn’t say anything, but his arms tightened. And despite strict orders to the contrary, my eyes slipped closed. All at once, I just wanted to curl up and—
“Well, this is cozy,” Ray said, from under my arm.
Louis-Cesare pulled back with a sigh just as the door banged open and Christine stumbled in. Her pink silk gown was liberally streaked with mud, and the priceless lace was a soggy mess. She was dragging a couple of mud-covered suitcases and muttering something under her breath. She didn’t even appear to notice us, just dropped the suitcases near a body, turned and went out again.
Louis-Cesare looked after her, his face blank. “What is Christine doing here?”
“She said you told her to go with me.”
“She said—” He stopped, his jaw tightening. “I believe she misunderstood.”
“If you aren’t here for her, why are you here?”
“Because ofsubrand,” he said, like that should in any way be obvious.
“How did you know he was going to attack?”
“He attacked last night, but did not achieve his objective. Why should he not return?”
“You skipped out on your murder trial on the chance he might show up?” I asked incredulously.
He frowned. Apparently, that hadn’t been the response he’d expected. “It appears fortunate that I did.”
“You’re supposed to be facing the Senate right now! What are you planning to tell them?”
“Nothing. There is no point. Whatever I say, the outcome has already been decided.”
“Mircea doesn’t seem to think so.”
“Mircea doesn’t know Anthony as well as I do.”
“Meaning what?” I demanded, as someone started stabbing at the doorbell. I stared at it a little desperately. “Now what?”
“The Senate’s men, in all probability.”
“You were bluffing.”
“Not about that. I assume it is whysubrand left so precipitously. His spies must have warned him that reinforcements were on the way.”
He started for the door, and I grabbed his shirt. “You called them?” I asked, hoping that the sinking in my gut was wrong.
“No.”
“Then why are they here?”
“To take me into custody, I should suspect.”
CHAPTER 27
He pulled away, and after a stunned second, I followed Louis-Cesare through the ruined vestibule. The wind had picked up, billowing out the antique lace curtains and letting in the rain. And a lot of flashing lights. They strobed the small room in disco colors of red and blue, sending a flickering rectangle of light across the walls and making the shadows of the furniture jump.
We had visitors, but not the Senate. At least, not yet.
Across the muddy tire tracks, car parts and half a ton of couture that littered the lawn, I could see a dozen neighbors lining the street in their nightclothes. They were staring at the mess and the wreck of a house beyond it with the sort of keen-eyed horror people usually reserve for traffic accidents. And across the street, a third police car had just pulled up.
I should have expected it. The wards had dropped and the glamourie had gone with them. And half a dozen vampires ripping a Lamborghini apart wasn’t exactly quiet. We’d probably woken up half the neighborhood.
“Christine!” Louis-Cesare called urgently. She’d been squelching around in ankle-deep mud, trying to rescue the rest of her wardrobe, but she looked up at her master’s voice. “Assemble a small bag, if you please. We are leaving.”
She stared at him in confusion, her arms full of muddy couture. “But… but my clothes…”
“I shall buy you new ones. Vite, s’il te plaît.”
Her lips tightened, and for a moment, I thought Louis-Cesare was going to have a rebellion on his hands. Night was fading, and Christine’s good humor was going with it. But after a moment, she threw down the clothes and stomped past us, still muttering.
Louis-Cesare started across the street, where Radu was talking to a couple of cops. But I knotted a fist in the fabric of his shirt and pulled him back. It didn’t sound like we had a lot of time, and I wanted some answers. “What did you mean about Anthony?”
He gave me an aggravated look, which I caught in glimpses. The cops’ lights were strobing his face along with the front of the battered old house. But he stayed put. “How much do you know about the European Senate?”
“Not a lot, why?”
“Because to understand Anthony, you have to understand how he rules.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“There is not time to go into specifics—”
“Then go with generalities! Just tell me.”
“Unlike other consuls, who have to work with their Senates, Anthony dictates to his,” Louis-Cesare said quickly. “He can do so because the senators know that they cannot lose their seats as long as they accede to his wishes. Any challengers for their positions are automatically referred to me.”
I stared at him, sure I’d heard wrong. “You’re saying you take all challenges?”
“Yes.”
“But every time you step into a ring, you can lose. I don’t care how good you are! It only takes one slip—”
“And then Anthony would have to find himself a new champion,” he agreed. “But that has not happened yet, and my reputation has grown to the point that there are few now who make the attempt.”
“Like Cheung.”
“Yes. The rumor is that he is good—very good. But he chose not to challenge, although he could easily have defeated Elyas and possibly three or four others on the Senate. But he knew he would not be facing them; and he chose not to face me.”
“But… why take that kind of risk for Anthony? You’re clearly not that fond of the guy, or you wouldn’t be trying to leave.”
“You do not understand what the Senate was like when—” He stopped, staring across the street.
Radu appeared to be having trouble with one of the cops. The man must have had some mage blood somewhere, or else he was just exceptionally strong- minded. Either way, he wasn’t buying what Radu was trying to sell.
The others were nodding in time to ’Du’s somewhat-strident tones, but not him. His hand was on his gun, and he was shaking his head and backing toward his police car. Any minute now, he was going to—
He made a run for it, and ’Du started after him. Normally, it would have been no contest, but rain, mud and satin slippers don’t mix well. ’Du took off in one direction, his shoes went in the other and his face hit asphalt, hard.
“Don’t even think about it,” I told Louis-Cesare. He sighed and pushed damp hair out of his eyes. He’d lost the slide he usually used to keep it confined, and it was straggling around his face.
“When I joined the European Senate, it was in constant chaos,” he told me. “The numerous factions and the amount of infighting had almost frozen its ability to do anything, leading to disorder in its lands and rebelliousness by its subordinates. Some of the oldest senators were also some of the most intransigent and difficult to dislodge. And together, they were formidable enough to challenge Anthony’s authority.”
“But then he found you.”
“And thereby discovered a way out of the quagmire. The older senators were challenged, and one by one replaced by those more willing to work with his agenda. For a time, it led to a stronger, more unified Senate and better governance.”
“And now?”
“Anthony has had too much power for too long. He has become accustomed to having the Senate agree to any and all of his policies. Including those that are short-sighted or detrimental.”
“He’s become a tyrant, in other words.”
�
�Let us say that some of his actions have begun to worry me,” Louis-Cesare said drily. “And then I came here two months ago, to assist your consul in a duel, and saw a very different type of Senate. The senators were loud and unruly, and the consul had to flatter and cajole and threaten to get anywhere with them. Factionalism was rife and tempers were quick, and some measures had been stuck in debate for decades with very little movement. It was chaos.”
“Made you rethink your conclusion?”
“No. It made me realize how… sterile… our Senate had become. There is no debate anymore, no discussion, no need for compromise. All anyone wishes to know is what Anthony wants to do. And then I met you and—”
He was interrupted by a shout. It looked like the fall had broken Radu’s concentration—and his mental hold on the cops. Three of them were staring around like sleepwalkers waking up in an unfamiliar location. But a couple others had already shrugged it off. One of them had ’Du by the arm, while his colleague went for a CB.
“And?” I demanded.
“And by the time the date came for my return, I found that I did not wish to go.”
Rainwater was running down his face and spiking his lashes. His shirt was past soaked, and his hair was flattened against his head. For the first time, I noticed that his nose was a little big, and that there was a wash of freckles, so pale as to usually go unobserved, over those high cheekbones. But there was no guile in those blue eyes, just hope, uncertainty and maybe a little bit of fear.
His hands came up to frame my face, and he pushed my dripping bangs out of my eyes. “Dorina, there is something I—”
A shout broke out. Radu had thrown off the first cop’s hold and jumped the one with the CB, who had pulled a gun on him. So of course ’Du took the gun away and clocked him upside the head with it. Only to be tackled by the other semilucid cop. He disappeared behind the open door of the cop car in a flutter of orange silk. Louis-Cesare sighed.
“Wait,” I said, holding on as he tried to move away. “You still haven’t told me why you don’t think you can win against Anthony.”
He looked at me calmly. “Because unless I am very much mistaken, he killed Elyas.”
That surprised me enough that I let go of his shirt, and he strode off to rescue Radu. I started to follow, before realizing that I was wearing a thong, a sagging stocking and a few straps. And that half the neighborhood was staring at me.
And then an ambulance screeched to a halt, and a couple EMTs jumped out and ran up the drive. “We got a report of a car wreck,” one of them told me. “Were there any—”
“Holy shit!” the other one said, staring at me. Or to be more precise, at the severed head under my arm.
I decided the neighbors could bite me, and ran after Louis-Cesare. “Anthony wasn’t at the auction,” I reminded him, as he prized one of the cops off ’Du.
“Yes, but it is possible that Elyas’s death had nothing to do with the rune.”
“How do you figure that?”
“If Anthony loses me, he loses his stranglehold on the Senate. There would be at least five senators challenged almost immediately. Anthony has been able to promote his allies for hundreds of years, without concern for their fighting abilities, because he knew they should never need to utilize them.”
“And now he’s got a Senate full of people who can’t defend their seats.”
He nodded. “Those five would be defeated, no doubt by challengers who would be far less dependent on his goodwill. And possibly more.”
“That’s one of those Halloween things, right?” one of the EMTs asked. They’d followed me down from the house, and now one of them tentatively poked Ray in the cheek.
Ray’s eyes flew open. “Poke me again, and I’ll chew your finger off,” he said nastily. The guy scrambled back with a little scream.
I sighed. I couldn’t do mind control, at least not on the level needed here. They were going to have to get in line.
“But why kill Elyas?” I asked. “If Anthony was going to kill someone, he’d hardly make it a member of his own Senate!”
“Elyas was one of the five.”
“So better to lose one guy who would probably be defeated in a challenge anyway than his champion?” Louis-Cesare nodded.
From a strictly profit-and-loss standpoint, it made sense. If Louis-Cesare was convicted of the murder, Anthony could enslave him and never have to worry about his defection again. But if he just let him leave, Elyas was dead meat anyway as soon as he was challenged.
“But why Elyas?” I still wanted this to be about the rune. Otherwise, my task of finding it had just gotten a lot harder. There was a limited pool of suspects at the apartment, but anyone could have shown up at the club. Not to mention that, if Louis-Cesare was right, he was screwed. How did a person win a court case when the judge had set him up?
“He needed someone with whom I had a grievance, and he knew that Elyas had Christine. No senator would take on such a favor for another consul without first alerting his own. Such a thing could easily cause a rift within his own Senate.”
One of the EMTs was trying to make a call. I reached in the side of the truck, yanked out the CB cord and handed it to him. “Okay, but why tonight?”
“Anthony likely has spies within Elyas’s household, who could have informed him that I was expected.”
“But you were late. If Anthony set things up for your original appointment time, Elyas would have been dead before you arrived.”
“Yes, but he could have waited, concealed somewhere, and acted when he saw me arrive.”
I frowned. “But you said that you were only in the waiting room a couple of minutes at most.”
“About that, yes.”
“So in less than two minutes, Anthony kills Elyas, sets you up and has time to steal the rune he didn’t even know existed?”
Louis-Cesare shot me a frustrated look. “Why are you arguing so strongly against this?”
“Because it’s a worst-case scenario! Why are you so set on it?”
“Because I scented him when I first entered the room.”
“You scented Anthony?”
“Yes. It was vague, merely a trace. But that was most likely due to the window. It was open. The scent would not have lingered long.”
“Why didn’t you mention this?”
“I have no proof, Dorina! And there is nothing your father or Kit can do against a consul. I do not wish them to make an enemy needlessly on my behalf.”
“But… if it can’t be proven, how do you—”
“I did not say it cannot be proven, merely that they cannot do so. There is a chance—” His head jerked up.
“What now?”
“The Senate’s men. Where is Christine?”
“In the house, I guess.”
He licked his lips. “Dorina, it will be much easier to elude them if I do not have her with me. I know it is much to ask—”
“She can stay here,” I said, wondering about my sanity. “I’ll explain to Claire, assuming I ever find her again. But that’s not—”
“Promise me you will look after her, that you will not leave her alone. There is only another hour or so until sunrise, and she will sleep all day. I will arrange for her security by tomorrow night.”
“Why does she need—”
“Promise me.”
“Yes, fine. But you haven’t said what you plan to—” I blinked and realized I was talking to air. Louis-Cesare was gone.
Two large black vans screeched around the corner and skidded to a halt at the curb. They hadn’t even stopped moving when something like twenty guards piled out. I watched them with a strange sort of detachment. The night had reached the point where it would be difficult to get any worse.
Then a familiar curly head emerged from the front of the lead van.
Okay. It was worse.
“It’s that woman,” ’Du informed me. “She’s been back less than a day, and look at us. We’ll probably all be dead by tomorrow.”
>
“You’re already dead.”
“There’s no reason to be facetious, Dory,” he snapped, as a grim-faced Marlowe stopped in front of me.
“I knew it,” he hissed.
“Knew what?” I asked wearily.
“Knew you would be involved in this. Where is he?”
“By now?” I shrugged.
“Sir, should we—” one of the vamps began, then quickly shut up.
The rotating lights painted Marlowe’s hair with color and glinted in his narrowed brown eyes. “You’re hiding him.”
I waved the hand not holding Ray. “Yeah. Because this is where you come when you want to be inconspicuous.”
“You deny that he was here?”
“You can scent him. You know damned well he was here.”
“Yes, instead of standing trial to save his life!”
“He seems to think a trial isn’t going to get him anywhere.”
“And this is?”
“If he finds the killer.”
“In twenty-four hours,” Marlowe told me harshly, “Louis-Cesare will be declared a fugitive, and the Senate will rule against him. Flight is as good as an admission of guilt. If you want to help him, you will tell me where he is.”
“He’s a first- level master. He’s wherever the hell he wants to be.”
Marlowe glanced up at the huge guard looming behind him. “Search the house.”
He looked at me, like he was waiting for a reaction. I just stood there and dripped at him. For once, there were no big dark secrets to find. The only ones I’d had, I’d already chucked at the fey.
“He’ll trash it, just to be vindictive,” Radu said darkly, as Marlowe gave up and stomped off.
I shrugged and started after him. “Too late.”
CHAPTER 28
Marlowe glanced at me suspiciously as we passed through the front door, but I wasn’t interested in checking up on him. I assumed that he’d bug the place, and that I would remove them as soon as he left. I just wanted something dry to wear.
I headed for the stairs before I remembered—we no longer had any. So I swerved into the living room for a blanket instead. I found one that didn’t smell too much like troll, wrapped it sarong-style around me and started back for the hall. And stopped.
