by Raven Hart
It turned out Tilly was of much the same mind.
“She’s trouble,” Tilly said, not one to mince words. As always, she’d protected my secrets by waiting until I closed the library door behind us.
“Now, Tilly, you’re just jealous,” I teased.
She smiled and touched my face with her hand. “Maybe a little,” she admitted. “If I were only eighty years younger. But then, I had my chance, didn’t I?” She dropped her hand, not giving me time to reply, and made her way to a chair across the room. “Pour me a cup of tea, would you?”
I did as she asked. She waited for me to be seated near her and deliver the tea. After raising the cup with a surprisingly steady hand and taking a sip, she continued the conversation.
“Oh, she’s fine and all that, even with her…occupation. But not for a lifetime, or ten lifetimes…not forever. You deserve better.”
I had no response to her declaration. When it came to women, I’d always been the absolute worst at deciding what I deserved. I suppose Reedrek had decided for me. “I’m happy,” I said. “For the first time in—oh, I don’t know how long.”
“I can see that.” She drew herself up straighter. “So I won’t harass you about her. I’ve always wished you well.” She gave me an impish grin. “Now your friend Iban, on the other hand, him I like.”
“You’ve been flirting with him all evening.”
She gave an exaggerated sigh. “Of course I have. He’s as handsome and dashing as Zorro himself. And that lovely accent. I hope you’ll bring him back one evening soon so the three of us can sit and really talk.”
I noticed she’d left Eleanor out of the equation. “I’ll try. He should be here for a few weeks. We have some business to attend to, and then there’s his movie project.”
“Good.” She spent another long minute with her teacup before getting to her next point. “I wanted to ask if you remember your promise to me.”
Something near the region of my undead heart sank. “Of course I remember, but please don’t speak of it,” I answered. “I just hope the day never comes.”
“An impossibility, dear one,” she said as she stared into the fire. “I’m not looking forward to it. But some things are worse than death, you know?” After another moment she shook off her melancholy and held out the empty teacup to me. “Let me get back to my guests before they think we’re up to something in here. No use ruining both our reputations again, like in the good old days. It’s taken fifty years for people to forget.”
I set the cup aside, raised her to her feet, and kissed her lightly on her mouth. Her hands tightened on my arms. “Do you remember the nights you took me to the Cloister on Sea Island and we danced under the stars? Every woman on the property turned positively green with envy.”
“I remember that you were the most beautiful woman there,” I answered truthfully.
“Oh, we were such a scandal. What fun!” She smiled into my eyes. “Will you dance with me one more time when I call for you?”
“It would be my utmost pleasure, dearest.”
“I’m so glad to be out of there,” Eleanor said as we made our way down Tilly’s front walk.
“You mean you didn’t enjoy acting ‘normal’?” Iban teased. He slipped an arm around her for a brief embrace. “There was no danger. I would have protected you with my life.”
“I wasn’t afraid of them. I just didn’t enjoy the audience with the queen,” Eleanor said, frowning.
“Ah,” Iban replied and slid his arm from her shoulders. “That is something you must take up with William, then, although I enjoyed her very much.”
“What was that promise she mentioned as we were leaving?” Eleanor asked. I could feel her jealousy like heat from a well-stoked fire.
I smiled as Chandler opened the door of the limo for us. When I turned to look back toward the house, I could see Tilly standing in the window, watching us leave.
“She made me promise that I would kill her, of course.”
Both Eleanor and Iban stood dead still.
“What?” Eleanor asked.
“Why would she think you would kill her?” Iban asked.
“Because I killed her husband.”
Jack
“Why can’t I go to the meeting?” Werm whined, stomping his boot heel on the floor of the plantation’s veranda.
I wanted to say, Because you’re a whiny little dipshit, but I didn’t. I was trying to be a good mentor.
“We’ve been over this,” I said, watching the New York delegation pile out of a limo in the driveway. I’d heard from William’s man Tarney that he and his crew had unloaded enough luggage, not counting the coffins, out of these people’s private jet to last a month. They’d demanded to stay separate from everybody else “with a view of the sea,” according to William, so he’d put them up at his other mansion at Isle of Hope. Tonight they were here for introductions and preliminary discussions in advance of the meeting tomorrow. Tobey, Gerard, and Iban were already inside. “You’re lucky I don’t make you park cars,” I told Werm.
“But it’d be a great learning experience.”
That was a fact, all right. Only trouble was he would learn a lot more than he really wanted to know. Like how deep in doodoo we all were, potentially. He already knew about the big bad vamps in Europe. But as far as he knew the worst thing that could happen to you was eternal death. He didn’t know that Reedrek and his buddies preferred to keep you undead and bleeding. Eternal torture was their style. Why dispatch you to hell when they could keep you around and have a little fun?
After the run-in with Reedrek, William had clued me in on what Reedrek had done to some friends of his, little things like cutting off limbs to watch them slowly grow back, or forcing offspring to feed off one another to a point just short of death. William sent some of the white-hatted good guy vamps to save them, but if I’d had to endure what they did I’d probably have begged my rescuers to go ahead and stake me. Knowing about this stuff finally made me understand why William kept me innocent all those years. In some ways, he’d been doing me a favor. I would do Werm the same courtesy and spare him the gory details. For now.
“Don’t worry. I’ll fill you in on whatever you need to know about vampire militias and elder councils later,” I said.
The delegation from the great state of New York swept by without so much as a nod acknowledging Werm’s and my presence. It had been a long time since William had imported their leader, Lucius Dru, along with a couple of his offspring. Lucius was one of the European blue bloods who’d treated me like the hired help. He acted like he was freakin’ Dracula himself. Old World and old school. Now he looked and dressed like a mafia don. His suit and shoes must have cost thousands. And the others with him were decked out, too.
He’d brought a whole entourage with him, including a few human staff members. More compadres, I guessed, or whatever they called them up in Yankeeland.
Chandler ushered the group into the foyer as Werm sat on the railing of the veranda. “What do they do for a living to afford those mink coats and expensive suits?” Werm asked. He was still struggling with the concept of making a living as a vampire. I think he imagined that once he became a bloodsucker, his money worries would be magically over. Before I’d threatened to drain him to a bag of dusty bones if he preyed on humans, he’d been planning to stalk people, suck their blood until they passed out, and then make off with their cash. After I’d told him to think real hard about waking up in the city lockup with sunshine pouring through the bars, he’d reconsidered his career choice and was still working part-time at Spencer’s at the mall—night shift, of course. We supplemented his income by paying him for the odd jobs we asked him to do. It was only fair.
“They run a bunch of art galleries and trade a lot of high-end paintings and sculpture. The clan lives in a block of apartments in the Dakota.” Melaphia said Lucius had taken a page out of William’s book and gotten his own import business started up—only he brought in priceless works
of European art and sculpture through New York Harbor instead of antiques and bloodsuckers.
“Wow,” breathed Werm. “That is so cool. I wish I lived in New York City.”
I shook my head. I’d heard you could walk down Park Avenue with a live chicken on your head in New York City or sing in the middle of Times Square in your underwear like that Naked Cowboy guy and nobody would spare you a second glance. No wonder Werm thought The City was a cool place.
In addition to selling the old masters, Lucius had developed homegrown contemporary painters and offered eternal life to the ones he thought had real staying power. William didn’t approve of making a lot of new vampires. After all, he’d made only three since he came to this continent—me, Werm, and Eleanor—and he was forced to make Werm. But once an imported vamp left William’s territory and protection, he was more or less a free agent.
Thinking about Eleanor gave me an uncomfortable stab of guilt. I’d pushed Olivia’s lie so far back in my mind that I’d almost forgotten. I had to get my unhappy thoughts squared away quick before William picked up on them and started asking questions. I had no intention of ending up twisting like Olivia, so I had to avoid an outright lie at all costs. That meant no questions.
Most of the vampires William had imported over the years had formed themselves into a handful of loosely aligned clans spread out all over the country. That’s what this gathering was all about. Representatives of each clan would be present at the meeting. Lucius represented New England and the eastern seaboard, Tobey had the Pacific Northwest, Iban had California and the rest of the West. Gerard, from his home base in Wisconsin, was here on behalf of the Midwest and Canada, and of course we had the South. The Southwest and lower Midwest were represented by the man who was just getting out of a taxi in the circular drive.
“Who’s that?” Werm asked.
“That must be Travis Rubio,” I told him.
“Don’t you know him? I thought you met all the vampires who came through Savannah from Europe.”
“I do, but this one isn’t an import. He’s a native.”
“Like Tobey,” Werm said, nodding. “You told me Tobey came from some ancient race of indigenous feral vamps who live in caves out in the Rockies. Is this guy one of those?”
“No. Not exactly. I really don’t know what his story is, but I’ve always wondered. I think he’s pretty old. He was at the Alamo, but he’d been around a long time before that.”
Rubio slung an old-style rucksack over one shoulder and headed toward the house. He was tall, even taller than me, and broad-shouldered. His shearling coat covered a checkered flannel shirt and blue jeans. He wore snakeskin boots and a weathered, flat-brimmed cowboy hat with a feather in the band. A long, jet black braid hung halfway down his back, and his facial bone structure—broad cheekbones and hawklike nose—shouted Native American. But not necessarily North American. He didn’t look like any Plains Indian I had ever seen. His face looked more like those you’d see in a National Geographic special about Central or maybe even South America. He climbed the steps and stopped in front of Werm and me.
“Travis Rubio?” I asked, extending my hand.
“That’s right,” he said, fixing me with his black eyes, which seemed to take in everything at once without judgment. His handshake was firm and warmer than mine.
“I’m Jack McShane, and this here’s Lamar Von Werm, but everybody calls him Werm.”
Rubio shook Werm’s hand as well and lowered the canvas sack. “William’s told me a lot about you, Jack. It’s good to finally meet you.”
“Same here. I hope we get a chance to get acquainted while you’re here. I’m an old soldier myself.”
“Ah, a warrior.” His dark eyes seemed to go out of focus for a few seconds. “We could have used one like you to protect our cities of gold.” He shifted back to the present and smiled sadly. “But they are all gone now. The jungle hides their graves. I have outlived my bloodline.”
Cities of gold? I thought about that research Werm did for me on the Maya. Maybe Travis knew something that could shed light on Connie’s background. Before I could say anything else, Chandler stood in the doorway and beckoned Travis to come in.
Werm didn’t seem as impressed with Travis as he’d been with the New Yorkers. Maybe it was the fashion thing. “Why don’t you run along home,” I told him. “Nothing much is gonna happen here tonight besides kicking back a few glasses of blood, going over the agenda, bylaws, stuff like that. You don’t have to come back tomorrow since you’re not coming to the meeting. Everything looks like it’s under control.”
Werm got a sly look on his face. “I think I’ll come back and just hang out. You might have some more errands for me.”
That was mighty strange. Werm had been complaining about being everybody’s errand boy for weeks. And now he wanted more. I’d grown to know him well enough to know he was up to something. “How did your voodoo ceremony go, anyway? You never said.”
“Oh, it went all right. Better than yours, I’d say.” He smirked.
“Don’t be a wise guy. Huey’s working out fine at the garage. Picked right up where he left off.”
“When he’s not picking up body parts after they fall off, you mean.”
“I told you. He’s fine.” And he was. Except for an incident with the minister’s wife, and he’d seemed to understand when Rennie told him not to sniff the customers anymore, no matter how tasty they looked. Werm was trying to change the subject and I figured there was a reason for that. And there must have been a reason he wanted to hang around the meeting even when he wasn’t invited. “That reminds me,” I said. “There is an errand you can do for me.”
Even though he’d just volunteered, Werm looked put out. I ignored him. “I want you to go over to the main house and get this special elixir from Mel. She will, ah, administer it to you. It has some properties what will give you extra protection from these strange vamps, should they turn out to be not as trustworthy as William thinks they are. Oh, and it’s top secret, so don’t tell anybody about it.”
“Okay,” Werm said, perking up a little and hopping down from the porch railing.
As he made his way out to his beat-up Nissan parked in the infield of the circular drive, I took my flip phone off the clip on my belt and dialed the number at the main house. Mel answered as Werm was driving away. “Mel. Listen, Werm’s on his way over there. Here’s what I want you to do…”
William
“I’d like to welcome each of you back to my home and to the largest gathering of North American…sanguinarians in history.” I reached for Eleanor’s hand and pulled her closer. “And I’d like to introduce you to my—to Eleanor.”
As the men nodded their greetings I turned to watch Eleanor’s reaction. She looked particularly fetching tonight in an off-the-shoulder, form-fitting top made from a shimmering black material. The kind of shimmer that would make every man in the room, human or vampire, want to touch it.
“Good evening. Before you begin your business, I want you to know we’ve set up a suite in the Royal downtown for your use after the meeting. If there is…anything you need,” she offered, “I’ll be more than happy to make those arrangements.”
Blood, sex, pain.
Her thoughts, loud and clear to me, sent a whisper of desire along my skin. She who must be obeyed was back in her element: in charge. I remembered well the nights at her house on River Street and the delights she’d arranged for my pleasure. It was patently obvious I needed to get Eleanor’s house rebuilt as soon as possible, for her business and for our pleasure. I enjoyed my body’s reaction for a few seconds before leading her to a chair near Iban.
“I’ve dismissed all the human staff. Shall we begin, gentlemen?”
The pleasantries had been observed, drinks served, old friendships renewed. Now it was time to get down to business.
“We have several things to discuss. We can only assume that Reedrek’s unsuccessful mission to regain control of me, or, failing that,
to kill me and raid my kin, has opened the door to others who may want to recover offspring. Each of you has a blood connection left behind that you wish to avoid at all costs. I’ve come to the conclusion that we can no longer depend on secrecy.” I looked at the serious faces around the room. “We must form an alliance, a vigilant and possibly very public defense. After all, the humans are at risk as well. There’s no estimating the damage a few of the old sires could do. And we don’t know how many of the sires may have joined together.”
A distant muffled howl echoed in my mind. So Reedrek wanted to add his malicious two cents. Too damned bad. Shut up, old man, I parried, blocking his rage from my mind. It looked as if I’d need to deal with him in a permanent way before any of the old sires set foot in the New World. They would hear him if they were related by blood, and I couldn’t allow him to give anything away. I pushed on with the meeting.
“They cannot think for one second we’re afraid. If they believe we are frightened, they will descend on us fang and claw.”
There were several slow nods around the room.
“The next thing we must do is to organize our regions using offspring and human companions—any network of spies and helpers to watch the coastline. I know it will be difficult to cover every harbor or airport, but we must do what we can. Forewarned is forearmed. I propose we use the Bloody Gentry site to post information and warnings. You’re all familiar with hiding real information inside Internet chatter.” I turned to Jack. “Jack has good…people skills, you might say. Later in the meeting I’ll have him talk about a few of his methods for dealing with human loyalty. Most of you have humans you use for different purposes, but we’ll need more than a few swans. The humans we choose must have some backbone and must have a reason to help us.”
“Do you think the threat is serious enough that we should shut down our business interests?” Iban asked.
“I’m not shutting down anything,” Lucius announced. “I have two major openings next month.” His staff nodded in agreement. They were loyal to a fault, but they couldn’t possibly know what kind of horrors the old sires could deliver to their doorstep. Lucius knew exceedingly well, but he took his business interests very seriously.
