“Shut it, Fangs.”
The moon above was no more than a sliver in the sky. Tomorrow, it would be nothing. The castle had undergone some modernization efforts through the years, but unfortunately, that didn’t include any sort of exterior lighting past the entry gate. The last thing the Matron Council wanted was any way for the hueys in the valley below to get a better view of what happened on the mountaintop.
Inga’s eyesight, however, beat mine to Hell. “So, this is the infamous Schloss Wolfsretter?” She twisted in the passenger seat as the car pivoted up the switchback road. “Funny, I thought it’d be bigger.”
“You’ve never been here before?”
Inga looked at me like I’d just said the most ridiculous thing in the world. “Is there a reason I should have?”
“Just, you know... You’re one of the oldest vampires kicking it, and this is the center of the hood universe, so I just figured, you know, you big wigs getting together and such...”
“Vampires don’t have big wigs,” she said indifferently. “Except for Vlad, and then, only because he is a power-and-fame-hungry asshole who made himself renowned through infamy. I think Igor was here once, many centuries ago.”
“Really?” I pulled the car into a spot alongside a half-dozen other well-intentioned stealth mobiles. “Why?”
Inga shrugged. “The list of things my father has done of which I know little is long and varied. He’s always told me the knowledge of his acts would only be a burden, one he did not want to pass along to me. As time passed and I cultivated secrets of my own, I came to share that sentiment.”
“I’m a little jealous of that. My mom tells me everything. And I mean, EVERYTHING. What she ate, who she played poker with, when her bowels are giving her trouble.”
Inga’s face curdled.
“Just saying, if your dad could give my mom a little lecture on holding back, that would be just peaches and cream with me.”
For the first time in our acquaintance, Inga’s resolve broke. Her eyes went to her lap and her voice softened. “If he survives, I’ll be sure to pass along the request.”
A vampire playing the guilt card? That was new. “Look, Inga, I didn’t mean to...”
Her hand shot up, halting my words. “No need for platitudes, Mr. Kline. Every child expects their parent to proceed them in death. Just because mine is immortal does not change that.”
I leaned across the seat, placing a hand on Inga’s arm. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“My loss?” The vampire turned indignant. “Igor is still alive.”
Awkward. I pulled my hand back. “But he was buried underneath half a mansion with a blood-thirsty, egoistical maniac who thinks he’s the sultan of the vampire world.”
“Tobias was also buried, yet Gerwalta knows he survived.”
I didn’t hold out much hope of that, either. “I’m not sure Geri even knows what day it is. She’s barely come out of her room in the month we’ve been here. I’m all up for bitch-slapping her with reality if she doesn’t get out of the denial phase soon.”
“Gerwalta is not mourning Tobias.”
“What do you call barely talking or eating while sitting alone in your room, staring at the ceiling?”
“I call it, ‘coming to terms with a massive shift in your understanding of the world and your place in it,’” Inga said so plainly, I suddenly felt foolish. “She’s spent her whole life being trained to hate the very thing she’s found out she is. Even if she was rebellious and claimed to eschew many of those beliefs for herself, it does not mean others have. Not all hoods are as accepting as you are about her newly-revealed nature.”
I looked to the castle, wondering if Yan was inside. “I do know something about having your nature judged by society.”
“Then accept that Gerwalta knows what she’s talking about.” Inga opened the car door. “Tobias survives, as does Igor.”
Rebecca Krantz was part security guard, part old maid, and three parts den mother. One thing she was not, however, was spry. Not that I held that against her. It wasn’t like the olden days when the castellan had to actually be daytime caretaker and watchman for the castle, defending it with both sword and honor. Now, each sanjak was responsible for providing two hoods for a year of duty, young folk who staffed all the compound’s needs, from security detail to custodial service. Even the cooks were hoods. Rebecca just sort of... kept everyone in line.
She was also the only permanent huey resident of Schloss Wolfsretter, and had been since she’d arrived as a teenager in 1945. By tradition, the Castellan had always been a human woman. A woman, because the hoods were a matriarchically society that held the so-called “fairer sex” as the dominant one. And a human, because no bloodline affiliation meant no bias towards or against any of the twelve houses.
She did have a soft spot for me, though.
“Bibi!” I threw his arms out wide on sight of the old woman looming in the doorway.
She feigned indifference, looking down her nose at me. “Come to tease me again? Butter me up with flattery and try to woo me into bed?”
I let my face screw up. “But, Bibi... You’re the one who hits on me.”
“Damn right, and I’m tired of getting the cold shoulder. Now get over here and lay one on me!”
Rebecca’s hands took a little tour south as she hugged me, letting my backside have a wee squeeze. Whatever. The old gal had survived a world war, the age of disco, and the holier-than-thou attitude of three Grand Matrons during her tenure. I wouldn’t berate her for a little harmless pinch.
As soon as I was free, Bibi turned her attention to the slender brunette behind me. “And what about this one? Someone Yan’s going to have to fight off?”
Inga examined her fingernails. “Not if he wants to retain his eyes.”
Rebecca ignored the comment. “He’s been asking about you, you know. Almost like he was expecting you, which I said was silly, since you were not officially recalled from Istanbul.”
“Not my fault. I’ve been writing to Aunt Brunnie for almost a month, asking her to give me clearance so I could haul tail up here. Or at the very least, give him permission to hike down to RotHaus so I could just plain get tail. I finally got tired of waiting. By the way, Bibi, this is Inga Rosethorn of the House of...”
“Inga will be fine,” Inga said, cutting in and holding out a hand in the modern custom. “You’re just a human.”
Rebecca’s face soured, sensing a backhanded compliment.
“Never mind her,” I said, putting my phone away again after shooting off a text to my boyfriend. “She’s not great with her people skills. Listen, Bibi,” I pulled the old woman aside, “why’s Chin on duty? I thought Reyhan was in charge?”
“The Matron of the House of Black left a few weeks ago,” Rebecca said matter-of-factly. “Apparently, there’s been some unrest in the Bosporus.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Yeah, we might have had something to do with that. Whatever. If Chin is the one here, then I need to see her and ASAP.”
“Who’s Asap?” Rebecca asked.
Inga cast her rolling eyes to the sky. “And I’m the one who’s out of touch?”
Rebecca’s spine stiffened. “Now, listen here, youngin’. I’ve been the castellan of this schloss since before you were in diapers.”
Two gleaming fang daggers jutted out of Inga’s mouth. “No, you listen here, youngin’,” she spit back. “When I was in diapers, your great, great, great, great, great, great...”
My spidey senses told me to move the hungry vampire away from the blood-filled human. “And... we’re walking. Bibi, page Chin, won’t you? Inga’s getting a little cranky. I’ll need to get her home soon and put her down for a nap.”
“But, Markus dear, the council is in session. Matron Chin won’t come out, not unless it’s an emergency.”
“Oh, it’s an emergency. Please, sweetie?”
The sugar sealed the deal. Rebecca grinned. “Okay, dearie. If you think i
t merits it, but they will want to know exactly what kind of emergency.” She leaned forward, into the gossip, as it were.
I sucked on my lip for a moment as I paced out an explanation. “The slayers aren’t extinct, but they will be without help. Currently, the twenty or so left are holed-up in Aunt Brunnie’s house down in the village.”
“Slayers? Well, I haven’t seen one of them... Must be about fifty years, since that one stayed here that one time for a while.” Rebecca nodded. “I’ll announce you at once.”
“Thanks, babe. Please also let them know that Ms. Rosethorn will be accompanying me in.”
Rebecca clicked her heels like the soldiers of yore before shuffling off.
Inga swiveled. “I have no intention of appearing before the Matron Council.”
She was kidding, right? “Then why in the hell did you insist... and I mean insist, that you come along?”
“To protect you in case the Ravens were lying in wait. They were not, and you made it into the compound safely. I am a vampire, it is not my place to assert myself in the midst of hood governance, as long as you’ll get the council to issue them aid and defense.”
“Hood governance?” I echoed. “Inga, this isn’t the UN. You’re not Belgium and I’m not Barbados, appealing for aid. This is a cross-section of the supernatural world coming together to prevent the exploitation of an oppressed and endangered... Oh, actually, it is kinda like the UN, huh?”
Inga ignored my screed. “As I said, not my place. I’ve lost too much time already. Now that I know the slayers will be protected, I must go.”
“Go?”
She looked at me like I had two heads, neither of them particularly attractive. “To rescue Igor, of course.”
“To rescue Igor?”
Inga spat what I assumed was an ancient Wallachian curse. “I swear, you are worse than a parrot.”
“How in the hell are you going to rescue Igor? You can’t kill a Raven without killing yourself. Plus, it’s not like they’re going to just be hanging out in Istanbul. They’ve moved on, and you have no idea where. It took you weeks just to find out which house they were in when you were in the same city, and that was only because I tracked them when they tried to kidnap Geri.”
“Actually, I have some idea.”
“Great then. Share with the class, Rosethorn.”
“I am not your teacher, Mr. Kline, and I’m certainly not your friend.”
“Which leads me to wonder, what are you exactly?” I crossed my arms, fixing her with a withering glare. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way your hungry eyes keep sizing up Geri. She might be too down in the pits of despair to notice, but I’m not. You could drink any huey in town. Hell, you keep drinking Caleb. I know, I saw the fang marks, even though he’s trying to hide them.”
The vampire raised an eyebrow. “Spend much time starring at men’s necks, don’t you?”
“Caleb is a hottie. I stare at his everything!” I retorted. “Stay on topic. What’s your stake in this, Inga?”
The crack was fleeting. So fleeting I’d bet that she didn’t think I saw it. But I did; that tiny flash in her eyes, a look of pain, a look that begged for mercy.
But a moment later, the stonehearted vamp swept away the cameo of humanity. She turned on her heel. “I will call if I discover anything about the wolf’s whereabouts. Tell Geri that I promise that much.”
Before I could get another word in edgewise, the daughter of Dracula became a pillar of smoke and dissipated before my eyes.
At which juncture, Rebecca returned. “They’re ready for you, Markus. Have to say, the news about the slayers caused quite a stir.” She scanned the bailey. “Where’s that woman?”
Shaking my head, I made for the inner gates. “Stepped out for a smoke.”
TWO
GERI
The sky cried openly, even if I could not.
More fall leaves rusted away by the day. I sat and stared out my third-floor window, as the eroding canvas of trees laid a carpet over the span of the village to the west, to a point where the earth swelled up from the valley floor. Beyond that, a mountain, one which seemed out of place with its stark cliff towering over the land below. Schloss Wolfsretter looked like building blocks arranged by a child at this distance: a rectangle, a cone, a few squares. In my mind’s eye, however, I could see its marble entry way, the stone-floored council chambers with its antique throne and tapestries reveling of the glories of the House of Red past. I could envision myself running across the chess board of its inner bailey. Tasting hazelnut soup on my tongue and hearing the wind twist its lithe fingers up the cliff when I fell asleep at night, cloistered in the Grand Matron’s residence at the top of the tower.
A few years ago, teenaged me had despised that place, saw it as a center for indoctrination that bred hate for the man I loved. Now, my heart ached for it, knowing that I might never walk its halls again. A werewolf hadn’t set foot inside in half a century, as far as I knew. What sane wolf would? The ghosts of their ancestors may still haunt the corridors and passageways. If they were unlucky, they may join them.
The street beyond the walls of my mother’s private villa away from the compound, RotHaus, glistened under the street lamp, a spotlight that stood achingly empty. Wishing to see Tobias’s form fill in the shadow and stride toward my door was foolish on so many levels, not the least of which was that he had no idea this house existed. Even if he’d managed to escape the Ravens, how would he find me?
But he hadn’t escaped. How did I know? I didn’t. But in the quiet moments between waking and dreams, I felt his presence in a way that couldn’t be explained by logic, sensed his desperation and loneliness. He was alive, but I didn’t know why or for how much longer.
Amy walked up from behind, putting a hand on my shoulder. “They’re going to say yes. They have to.”
She’d confused my wistful street-staring for worry over the fate of the slayers. I couldn’t blame her for it; it was where my thought should be. A month ago, we’d rescued the last members of a supernatural species thought to be extinct, from imprisonment by the very creatures they were meant to balance. If not for the Istanbul wolf pack, we’d never have made it out with our lives. Here, we were hardly safer than if we stood in the middle of the street, protected only so much as the Ravens feared venturing so closely to the center of the hood world. Our only hope was to get the Council of Matrons to accept the slayers as refugees.
Which should have been as easy as asking, but anything involving a single matron never was, let alone a dozen of them. Markus was the only righteous hood among us, the only one who could appeal to the council. But to do that, he needed an official invite. One we expected to come soon after he relayed a message to my mother that he’d returned from Turkey. One that never came.
“No, they don’t.” I wasn’t being pessimistic; I was making a projection based on years of keen observation. “Hoods are very insular. Outside of dealing with wolves as much as they need to, they keep to themselves. It’s like a cult.”
Amy cocked a hip. “Then why send Markus to ask? Why don’t we just keep running? All we’re doing by sitting here is giving those vampire creeps a chance to catch up to us at as leisurely a pace as they want.”
When I’d told my cousin I thought we were wasting time approaching the council, it wasn’t simply because I felt defeated (which I did) or tired (which I was) or indifferent about what the hell they would decide to do (which I was earnestly trying to convince myself was true.) In the absence of slayers, there had been occasional appeals for help when a vampire got too big in his fangs for comfort, but only when another of his kind didn’t solve the problem first. Now that the slayers were back, not extinct, and in need of consolation and protection? Great, but they wouldn’t consider it their problem.
“We’re here because this is our best hope of finding the slayers shelter,” I said. “They need sanctuary, aid, resources. The women know how to use their power, but the men don’t. Half of th
em can’t even walk up the stairs without getting winded. They need rehabilitation, rest, and the money we were able to pool together is running out.”
Amy, however, thrived on positivity. How could she not? She found a new boyfriend with the changing of the month, each time hopeful he was “the one” until the homme du jour proved a disappointment. That never ended the cycle though, one powered and buoyed by the fact that Amy always had faith in one time being the time.
The blonde crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, even if they do say no, so what? If the hoods won’t help, we’ll just find someone who will.”
“Like who?” I pulled my brown hair, a rambled mess without definition, out of my face as I looked up. “The vampires certainly aren’t going to do anything. Even if most of them are decent, none of them are going to take on the Ravens.”
“The wolves then.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, right, the wolves. Like that’s going to happen, them going against the Matron Council and their Machiavellian edicts.”
Amy sat down beside me. “We help ourselves, then.”
“We?” I fixed my friend with a withering stare. “Amy, you’re not a part of this. You’re not a hood, not a wolf, and you certainly aren’t a slayer. Your best bet would be getting the hell away from us and setting yourself up off the grid for a while. Unless you want to discuss the process for becoming a vampire, I’d watch how we use the term ‘we.’ This is a supe crisis, and you’re just a tourist.”
The blonde’s blood boiled, reddening her cheeks and sending her shooting from the room. A stray impulse told me to jump up and chase her, apologize for being rude. The wiser part of me knew what I said had been the truth.
Caleb slipped into the door, because apparently no one trusted me to be on my own for too long. Great, yet another person with whom I had a complicated relationship coming to comfort/lecture me. I turned back to the window, but this time, not because I was looking desperately for any sign of Markus, but because I couldn’t bring myself to look at the slayer who had confessed his love for me, asked me to marry him, then got cozy in the harem before my ‘no’ grew cold.
Rebellious Hood Page 2
