High Stakes Trial

by Mindy Klasky

  I caught my breath, listening for any hint that Angelique was about to return.

  Silence—at least until my pounding heart made it impossible for me to discern approaching danger. I pulled my sleeve over my hand to avoid leaving fingerprints, and I picked up the tumbler. Setting the glass on top of the credenza, I kept my fingers covered as I typed 1234 into the keypad.

  Nothing.

  I tried 0001.

  Nothing.

  James Morton was a disorganized vampire. He couldn’t alphabetize a filing cabinet to save his life. He had no qualms about leaving waist-high stacks of pressboard files in the safety of his own office.

  But in whatever passed for his heart, he was the court’s Director of Security. And he’d never use the two most common combinations in the entire world.

  I contemplated typing 5358, the street address of his sanctum. But that would have created a security risk James would never countenance.

  1911, then. The street address of my apartment.

  The gears shifted inside the lock, and the door released, just enough for me to pull it open. A cut-crystal decanter sat inside, neatly stoppered next to a single matching tumbler. A faint circle indicated the resting place for a second tumbler.

  I exhaled a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. Until that moment, I’d somehow believed this was all a terrible mistake. I’d clutched the lie—that Richardson’s vampire had been gaslighting me, that James wasn’t involved with the break-in, the Lethe, the imperial files held ransom.

  Maybe I should follow the instruction that foot soldier had delivered. Maybe I should get the hell out of Dodge. Flee DC. Abandon the only home I’d ever known.

  But I had no way of knowing if I’d be jumping from the all-too-hot frying pan into a lethal fire. Until I understood the powers arrayed against me, I had no way of being certain how to reach safety.

  I could wait for Angelique to return. I could show her the Lethe and explain that she’d been drugged. We could work together to discover what Richardson had wanted in her office. What James had wanted.

  But I could still hear her snarled threat: “You’re going down for this.” I’d already been indicted for a series of crimes against the Empire. I’d forfeited my insignia just to walk free. I had nothing left to give as a token of my good will. Especially not when my own people, the sphinxes, had turned against me.

  I set the glass precisely in the center of its dust-ringed circle. I closed the credenza door. I spun the dial and scrambled the lock. And then I headed back to my desk, to my computer and the terrifying countdown clock on its poisonous green screen.

  I couldn’t log out, not with the ransom demand holding my screen captive. Instead, I reached behind the terminal and killed the power button one more time.

  Grabbing my purse, I headed out of the courthouse, cutting my shift short. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

  I had less than forty-eight hours to meet Angelique’s ultimatum. If I failed, I’d be asking for a metal file hidden in a cake, so I could break out of my future jail cell.

  And I couldn’t think of a single imperial who would dare to bring me one.

  9

  Of course, I went to Chris.

  Even awakened from the deepest of sleeps, he was the only person I knew who would look at my bruised throat and understand that I wanted revenge, not comfort. I told him everything, finishing with: “I need to find James.”

  It felt strange to talk about the man whose bed I’d shared before Chris’s. Still, I forced myself to say, “I need to understand what’s going on, because he would never join forces with Maurice Richardson.”

  “He’s been gone for ten months,” Chris said, his voice impossibly gentle.

  “But he’s still—”

  “He watched you execute the man he respected most in the entire world.”

  Execute. Chris didn’t hesitate as he said the word, but I knew he’d chosen it over “kill.”

  Chris went on just as carefully. “DuBois was like a father to him.”

  “I know that—”

  “A father’s death must be avenged.”

  There. That was the explanation my own brain had been avoiding, every single minute since my attacker first muttered James’s name. James Morton would only unite with his greatest enemy—Richardson—to get revenge against an even more malicious force.

  Me.

  “He wouldn’t do that.” My voice cracked.

  I’d drunk James’s blood. I knew him—somehow, some way, in the deepest parts of my brain, the ones that functioned without words.

  But if that were true, wouldn’t we have been drawn together over the past ten months? Even if we were only destined to have one final conversation, the words that finally, irrevocably pulled us apart… Wouldn’t I still be bound to James?

  “Chris…” I said, but I didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

  His eyes looked like caramel in the lamplight. “Tell me what you want.”

  Words. I needed words. Not this crazy tangle of emotions, not my constant stressing and spinning and wondering. I steadied myself with a deep breath, and my fists closed on the blanket, still rumpled from Chris’s sleep. “I want you to help me find him.”

  Chris nodded. “I will,” he said. But then his voice sharpened. “On one condition.”

  Energy crackled off those three words. Even if I’d been blind, if I couldn’t read the lines that creased beside his mouth, I would have known we’d crossed a new barrier. Chris was about to change everything—between him and me, between James and me.

  “What?” I asked, the single word loaded with trepidation.

  “When we find him, you’ll make him commit.”

  I heard the emphasis on the word. I understood it was important. But I had no clue what Chris intended. “What does that mean?” I whispered.

  “You know the Ancient Commission.”

  Of course I did. Sekhmet had charged all sphinxes with the Ancient Commission, binding us to her service millennia ago. The goddess’s youngest children, her vampires, couldn’t manage the chaos of their predatory lives in a world ruled by humans.

  So we sphinxes, Sekhmet’s oldest children, protected our younger siblings. The Ancient Commission bound us to our mother, to the goddess. We protected vampires because Sekhmet commanded us to do so.

  And we did it—they did it, the sphinxes in the Den—by confining vampires to tiny cinderblock cells, by feeding them strict rations, by binding them to specific sphinx masters.

  Not all of them. Some vampires, like James, had lived proud lives free of direct sphinx control. But weaker vampires, ones that were Turned and abandoned by their creators, ones that wandered, starving and alone, on the fringes of imperial society…

  Chris nodded at my wordless sound of frustration. “The Ancient Commission breaks vampires,” he said. “We make them dependent on sphinxes for food, for safety, for the satisfaction of every natural urge. For centuries, that’s been the only way to keep them safe.”

  I’d seen the results of that so-called safety. One of those battered and broken vampires had instigated the entire Judge DuBois debacle.

  Chris went on. “The Ancient Commission only works if we find vampires quickly, within a week—at most—of their Turning. We need something else, for vampires who’ve long-since Turned. We need a new tool. A new bond.”

  I shook my head. Vampires already resented sphinxes enough. The scarcely masked enmity between James and Chris had taught me that much.

  Chris went on, as if I’d spoken my objection aloud. “The New Commission will give vampires options. We’ll teach them about the importance of a sanctum, and why they should keep its location secret from everyone.” He reached for his nightstand and pulled open the drawer. Inside was a pad of lined paper and three capped pens, nail clippers, and a bottle of aspirin.

  At the back of the drawer was a pamphlet. “Have you seen this?” Chris asked, passing me the brochure.

  Welcome the Nigh
t. Easily legible letters were picked out against a dark night sky. The paper was slick beneath my fingers. The document consisted of a dozen pages, each answering a basic question for new vampires. “How often do I need to feed?” said one. “Do I really need to sleep in the earth of my forefathers?” asked another.

  “Where did this come from?” I asked Chris.

  “Empire General. The new medical director at the hospital started a program a few months ago. A lot of newly Turned vampires end up on their ward, recovering from the shock of transition. This is supposed to make things easier.”

  I glanced at Chris’s handwriting on the back of the brochure, cocking my head to better read his words. “How does it fit with your…New Commission?”

  “Twelve pages isn’t enough. Three paragraphs about setting up a sanctum?” He snorted dismissively. “But Empire General can get them started with that. And we’ll take on long-term support. We won’t just tell them they feed from Sources; we’ll show them how to track down an actual living donor. We won’t stop at noting they’re immune from most human diseases; we’ll get them on a schedule for self-care. Haircuts, nail trimming, regular appointments with a dentist who understands fangs.”

  “We’ll be their personal assistants.”

  “If that’s what they need. The thing is, we’ll be helping them. They’ll be better able to keep out of sight from mundane authorities.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until we determine they can function on their own. We’ll have a clearance program—they’ll have to show they know how to hide a sanctum, how to locate a Source, what to do if they can’t feed safely for an extended period of time. We’ll issue a license, a certification that they’re allowed to be free. They’ll be re-certified every year.”

  I pictured a phalanx of sphinxes, stopping vampires on the street under a baleful moon. Papers, please.

  “You’ll treat them like second-class citizens.”

  “We’ll treat them like an endangered species.”

  I shook my head. The vampires I’d met were proud. Powerful. They’d never submit to Chris’s plan.

  Chris sighed and reached toward the nightstand again, retrieving his cell phone from its charger. His fingers flew over the smooth glass surface, tapping out a password.

  Staring at the screen with enough intensity that I knew he was avoiding my gaze, Chris threaded his way through email until he got to a recorded video. After a moment’s hesitation, he clicked on the white triangle to make it play and turned it to face me.

  At first, I couldn’t make out what I was seeing. The images were dark; the clip had clearly been made at night. The camera moved closer, taking a moment to change its focus.

  A mound of rags sagged against a stained and dented Dumpster. A slick of oil—or something darker—oozed across broken pavement. A rat glared up at the camera, not threatened enough to give up the bone beneath his yellowed incisors.

  As I squinted, trying to reduce the image to meaningful shapes, a form appeared at the edge of the camera’s field—a man who nodded to whoever held the camera. He held a club the length of a policeman’s nightstick. But unlike any nightstick I’d ever seen, this one gleamed a sickly white.

  I didn’t realize it was silver, until the man prodded the tangle of rags.

  The rat took flight as a body exploded from the pile, all arms and legs and ragged, uncombed hair. Only then did I realize the video came with sound. My ears were filled with an agonized screech, the wail of feedback through overtaxed speakers.

  But I wasn’t hearing feedback. I was hearing the cry of a creature in fear for her life.

  The cameraman grunted as his colleague bashed the vampire’s arm with his silver nightstick. The crack of bone was loud enough to be captured on video. The recording, though, didn’t pick up the sizzle, the sound that would have matched the blisters that rose immediately on the vampire’s skin.

  She was thrashing now, desperate. She tried to lunge past her attacker, but he forced her against the filthy wall. She bared her fangs, hissing in defiance, or maybe only in pain.

  That made the cameraman laugh, a gloating sound that coated the back of my throat with bile. “You’ve got a live one,” he shouted at his buddy. “Go on,” he said. “Pin her before she gets away.”

  Egged on, the attacker slammed his club across the vampire’s throat. She bellowed at the blow, renewing her efforts to escape, but the man merely shifted his weight, using the leverage of one forearm and the silver rod. His other hand fumbled at the zipper of his pants.

  Chris did something to the phone, and the screen went black.

  Agriotis.

  My head hummed with sweet blood-thirst. I hovered on the edge of my shift, one breath away from transforming into my true imperial form. My talons lurked beneath my flesh; I could feel the jagged edge of the teeth that longed to express from my jaw.

  I wanted to kill those men. I needed to destroy them.

  “Breathe,” Chris said.

  I didn’t want to breathe. I wanted to step off the cliff of oblivion and descend into mindless, animal satisfaction.

  “Breathe,” Chris repeated, keeping his voice soft because he was only a handspan away.

  Sweet, sweet vengeance. I craved it, for myself and for the tortured vampire and for every other creature that had ever been tormented by a bully with a club.

  “Sarah,” Chris whispered.

  My name pulled me back. My name and the distant inkling that I’d sworn never to yield to agriotis again. Chris had rescued me from madness in the past. He’d restored me to my human form; he’d fed me and grounded me.

  I breathed.

  And when I was able to form words, I whispered with deadly precision, “Who the hell were they?”

  “We think they’re salamanders. The video was found on the FireWeb.”

  “And the vampire?”

  “A gargoyle found her before the sun rose. He brought her to Empire General. She’s still on the Vampire Ward. Her physical wounds healed quickly enough, but…”

  Her wounds went well beyond the physical.

  Chris went on. “And there isn’t anywhere to send her. She didn’t have a sanctum before the attack. And she’s in no condition to create one now.”

  “But she’s a vampire!”

  He nodded. “From what she told the doctors, she was Turned about five years ago. She dropped out of high school before that. She was addicted to heroin and couldn’t hold down a job.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear more.

  “But she’s a vampire,” I repeated, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Chris leaned forward. “You’ve known James. And Judge DuBois. Judge Finch now, and a handful of lawyers. But most vampires don’t live like they do. Most vampires don’t have the advantage of education and money. Some don’t even have Lethe to hide from the mundane world.”

  I stared at the darkened phone, feeling my fingers grow numb in the aftermath of near-transition. Chris gave me time, letting me fumble for an answer. He could afford to. He knew I couldn’t come up with a meaningful response.

  Finally he said, “That’s why the New Commission is so important. I want to harness Sekhmet’s power in service to vampires everywhere.”

  “You want to bind them!”

  “I want to serve them. Protect them. All of them.” His gaze met mine and held it, steady and unwavering. “I want every vampire to find the sort of bond James found with you. You made him better. Stronger. More successful. Safer.”

  “Until I drove him mad!”

  “You didn’t do that. The people who Impressed DuBois did that.”

  He waited, but I only shook my head. He was asking too much. I didn’t have the right to make a decision that would bind every vampire in the Eastern Empire. I shouldn’t be allowed to choose their future.

  “Think about it, Sarah. James hired you for the court. He reached out to you. He gave you your insignia. He granted you your powers. He
did that because he knew he needed you. He might not have had the words. He might not have had the knowledge. But he wanted this. He needed this.”

  I looked around the bedroom, at the neatly folded comforter resting across the foot of the bed, at the smooth pillow where I’d lain my head too many nights to count. I stared at the windows, at the blackout shades, at the sheers and curtains.

  Everything about Chris’s house spoke of order, of logic. He managed his life as a sphinx; he was in control.

  I flashed on James’s abandoned sanctum, the musty sheets and the tangled linen closet, the dry toilet and the bare kitchen shelves. Even in its abandonment, though, the sanctum was luxurious, with its dark kitchen cabinets and its fashionably distressed wood floors.

  Chris was asking me to make a decision for the vampires who couldn’t afford fine houses, who weren’t guaranteed a safe and secure sanctum like James’s. I had to speak for the dispossessed.

  And then he added honey to his request. “If you do this, we can go to the Pride. We can show how well we work together, everything we’ve accomplished. Ptah or Sheut—none of that will matter. They’ll let you back in the Den.”

  A longing rose inside me, hot and heavy, like slow lava flowing to the sea. I wanted to belong. I’d wanted to belong since I was a child, since I’d first realized I never fit in—to school, to work, to life in general.

  I didn’t trust that desire. Not with the searing images of Chris’s torture video still playing out behind my eyelids when I blinked. Not with my throat still throbbing from Richardson’s goon, with my thoughts scraped raw at the thought of James purposely allowing that creature into the courthouse.

  Chris cared for me. I knew that. By his own admission, he loved me. But his prescription for my safety and health and well-being was inextricably linked to his own goals as Sun Lion of the Eastern Empire.

  I needed guidance from someone who wasn’t directly invested in the outcome. I needed advice from someone who understood all the old history, all the new challenges, who was aware of Eastern Empire politics and the Den and the Pride, but who stood outside all those worldly institutions.