High Stakes Trial

by Mindy Klasky

  “Come on, Sarah! Look this way!”

  They bayed like a pack of wolves scenting fresh blood. When I froze, the most daring sprinted up the stairs. Phones were shoved in my face, microphones jammed so close to my lips that I had to take a step back.

  “Hey, Chris! What did you think of Mr. Russo?”

  “What’s it like to walk free, Sarah?”

  “How did it feel to stake a vampire?”

  That last question caught all of us by surprise. We were standing on the steps of the District of Columbia Superior Court. Mundanes making their early way to work were already staring at the crowd. No one had cast a protective circle around us. No one had taken any precautions to preserve the Empire’s secrecy.

  “No comment,” Chris said, taking my hand and leading me down the stairs.

  That should have been the end of it. The reporters should have dispersed, building their stories on whatever documents had been filed in the case, whatever orders Judge Finch saw fit to issue.

  But Chris’s fingers on mine ignited new passion in the mob.

  “Hey Sarah! Is it true you two got married last night?”

  “Chris! Is that why you weren’t taking calls on Monday?

  “Should we start a pool for baby names?”

  “Come on, Chris, give her a kiss. Just a quickie!”

  The questions rolled on, louder and more boisterous. The cameras were back, brilliant white flashes blinding me as I tried to find the steps beneath my feet. The shouting, the jostling, the utter, uncontrolled chaos… It felt like the worst of a pitched battle.

  My heart shifted into overdrive. My vision sharpened, as if someone had snatched away a veil. I caught my breath, and my throat was drenched with scent—blood and sweat and the individual reek of each of my enemies.

  “No!” Chris said. The syllable carried all the urgency of the Sun Lion, all the power a sphinx could summon. He kept his voice low, though, pitched only for my ears. All that intensity, all that command, targeted directly at the agriotis that threatened to demolish the reporters.

  “Get out of here,” he whispered, pitching the words for my agriotis-enhanced ears. As I struggled to master my shift, to keep my murderous demon from breaking loose, he insisted, “Go home.”

  And then he left.

  I knew what he was doing. He was drawing half the pack to himself. He waved down a cab and purposely gave the driver his address, saying the words loudly enough that a dozen of the journalists flagged their own taxis and scrambled in pursuit.

  I didn’t have time for an Uber. I barely snagged my own cab, yanking open the red-and-grey door and tumbling into the back seat with the closest reporters on my heels.

  In his urgency, Chris had been too loud. “Go home,” he’d said, breaking through the spell of my agriotis. I heard the pack baying as my cab pulled away.

  “1911!” someone called, raising a phone screen in victory.

  “Corcoran Street!” shouted another.

  “Go!” I shouted to my cabbie. “Just drive!”

  He drove.

  Of course, the swarm followed me. I lost half of them at a Starbucks over by the White House after I threw money at my driver and fled into the caffeine-starved crowd milling in front of the counter. I wasted no time fighting my way to the back of the shop, to the exit that opened onto a quiet side street.

  Another cab. Four more reporters gone.

  A scramble down the elevator at the Foggy Bottom Metro station, slapping my card onto the fare gate.

  I ran onto a train and watched the door slam in the face of a determined warder and a sylph. I traveled three stations, searching the crowd for other imperials.

  No one.

  I changed trains three times, just to be sure. Changed subway lines too, ending up on the Red. As morning commuters came and went, I slouched in a seat in the middle of the car, studying the crowd until we arrived at Woodley Park and the National Zoo.

  The doors opened. I waited. Passengers boarded. I waited. Bells rang, announcing the conclusion of the stop.

  Using my elbows and fingernails, I shoved with all my weight, pushing my way to the exit just before the door slammed closed. The train rushed by me, picking up speed as it fled to the next station.

  For one blessed moment, I stood on the empty platform.

  I was alone.

  I was safe.

  My fingers jangled with excess adrenaline as I climbed the escalator out of the station. My legs ached, teetering on the edge of cramping from the control I’d exerted to keep from completing my agriotis shift. My arms trembled from exhaustion.

  Food. I needed food. I’d skipped lunch the night before, heading into my forgotten hearing.

  I stumbled into another Starbucks. I couldn’t drink coffee, not now, not when I needed to sleep off my nightmare flight. But I could get a breakfast sandwich.

  I gulped down the treat, chasing it with a bottle of water. As I was swallowing the last bite, I ordered two more sandwiches and another water.

  Finally, fortified with egg and cheese and blessed, salty bacon, I headed into the warren of roads that cut through Rock Creek Park, on my way to James’s sanctum. I forced myself to wait at trailheads, making sure no one was following me. I followed two false paths before I let myself take the actual one I needed.

  At the top of the hill, I knew I should head for the alley and the privacy of the townhouse’s garage. I didn’t want the neighbors to see me. I didn’t want anyone to ask questions.

  But I was too tired to hide any longer. My feet kept catching on the sidewalk, as if the toes of my shoes were too heavy to lift. It took two tries to find my keyring in my purse, and three to fit the key into the lock.

  I turned the knob, letting my weight push the door open. I barely remembered how to extract the key, how to close the door, how to slide the chain and turn the top deadbolt, the middle one, the bottom.

  I wasn’t going to make it up the stairs in James’s sanctum. I might not even make it to the couch. I dropped my purse on the foyer floor and tried to summon the strength to move to the living room.

  And for the second time in a week, fingers closed around my throat in a deadly, strangling grip.

  17

  James.

  I knew the scent of him, the ghost of pine and snow.

  I knew the feel of his hands—even around my throat—the memory of a hundred training sessions in the Old Library.

  I knew the weight of his body as he pressed me against the door, as he levered his knee between my legs, as his hips pinned mine.

  Against my will, I whimpered as his thumbs pressed against the bruises left by Richardson’s soldier. I was too tired to fight. I was too exhausted to summon everything I’d learned in the sub-basement of the courthouse, falling over and over and over again on blue mats spread across the hardwood floor.

  There were no mats here. I might break a bone on the foyer’s marble floor. And even if I succeeded in taking James to the ground, I had no faith that I could apply my other vampire-fighting lessons. Not now. Not when I was already spent.

  “James,” I whispered, barely forcing his name past his fingers around my throat.

  He snarled, and I heard a soft pop as he expressed his fangs. Before I could consciously realize that he’d been holding himself back, that he’d caught me without even using his most dangerous weapon, he shifted his grip.

  One hand grabbed both my wrists, locking them in an iron vise as he stretched my arms over my head. With his other, he caught my chin, forcing my jaw back with the V between his thumb and index finger.

  I’d sought him for months. I’d practiced what I’d say when I found him. I’d rehearsed apologizing, begging for forgiveness, arguing my case, telling him I’d do it all over again if that’s what it took to free Judge DuBois.

  But he didn’t give me a chance.

  He slashed my jugular, slamming an icicle into my throat.

  Pain rocketed through me. I twisted my arms, fighting to break free
from his grip. At the same time, I jackknifed my body, driving my knee into his groin.

  He anticipated me easily, turning his body to deflect my feeble blow. He tightened the pressure on my wrists until my hands went numb.

  Another slash against my throat, this one not as deep because I was fighting now. I thrashed my head, determined to keep him from filling his mouth with my blood.

  I knew James was capable of softening his bite. He could roll his tongue over my veins, soothing away the sting of his fangs and raising my own delicious shivers of anticipation. He could worship my throat, leaving me limp and spent and trembling before he even started to slake his own needs.

  But he hadn’t bothered with any of that. He was attacking me like a predator pulling down a meal on the open veldt.

  “This is for Robert,” he growled, forcing my chin up to give him better access to my throat.

  Robert. Judge DuBois. James wanted revenge as surely as if I’d killed for sport.

  I reached for agriotis, for my birthright as a sphinx or whatever I was, but I was too tired, too far gone to complete the transition. Merely trying made my wounded throat sting as if I’d been submerged in a vat of salt-water.

  My strength was gone. All I had was my capacity to think, my ability to string words together—at least until James ripped my throat out.

  “I miss him too!” I gasped.

  “You barely knew him,” James snarled.

  “I knew the way he ran the court.” I answered quickly, before he could close for the kill. “I knew the way he kept order in the Empire. He was fair. He understood justice.”

  Somehow, impossibly, James was listening. It was as if he craved some benediction, some confirmation that Robert DuBois had been a worthy man, a great man, a man who should still live.

  I continued, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. “He didn’t deserve what happened. He never should have been Impressed. But by the time we found him, by the time you and I got to the Jefferson Memorial, the only thing he wanted was freedom.”

  James stiffened above me, his muscles as taut as bowstrings. He’d been there. He knew. But he didn’t want to remember.

  “He begged me, James. He pleaded for me to release him. He knew it would hurt you, hurt me, hurt the entire Empire, but it was better than submitting to anyone else. I didn’t have a choice. I had to honor the man. I had to give him one last gift.”

  I was panting, desperate. I had to convince James. I had to make him understand. “I did my best to save him,” I whispered. “I swear by Mother Sekhmet.”

  James shoved himself off me.

  Wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, he staggered back a step. He howled, a wordless sound of unadulterated grief. He was close enough that I could feel the heat of his flesh, his body grown warm from the blood he’d swallowed, my blood.

  “Sarah,” he finally said, and he reached shaking fingers toward my throat.

  I batted his arm away, ducking past him to the center of the entry hall. “Don’t touch me!”

  He pulled back, but he demanded, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I couldn’t explain it all—the hearing, the scrum at the courthouse steps, the paparazzi who’d chased me through the city. Even if I’d had the strength, he would have pounced on my last words, on the possibility that I’d delivered strangers to his sanctum.

  Instead, I heaved a deep breath, trying to ignore James’s flinch as I exhaled, long and steady and slow. “I needed some place safe to stay,” I finally said.

  “You think I’m safe?” No sane person could make that mistake, not with James’s fangs glinting wetly in the dim light of the corridor. Not with his fingers flexing, as if he were even now fighting to keep from pinning me to the door.

  “I didn’t know you’d come back,” I said. With a conscious effort, I kept my hands open at my waist, my fingers splayed. I tried not to look like a threat…or prey.

  I couldn’t keep my heart from pounding, though. And my breath still came in short, sharp pants that I tried to disguise through stiff lips.

  “You stink,” he said. Ignoring my outraged squawk, he reached into the pocket of his trousers and came up with an immaculate white handkerchief. “Clean yourself up.” He shoved the cloth toward me.

  I ignored the offering. The last thing I wanted was to move closer to him. Not when I could still feel a slow trickle of blood down my throat.

  “Take it,” James said, waving the handkerchief like a white flag. “It’s bad enough you’re dripping fresh blood. But you reek like a steakhouse on top of that…”

  He’d warned me not to eat meat, the very first day he’d trained me in the Old Library. He’d told me my diet made me smell like prey, and I’d become an inspired vegetarian overnight.

  Now, I swallowed acid at the back of my throat. I wished I hadn’t eaten those breakfast sandwiches. At least I could have ordered them without bacon.

  The breakfast sandwiches, and the roast beef I’d had the day before. Pork loin and chicken before that. With James out of sight, I’d readily embraced my carnivorous side.

  “Sorry,” I said, but I didn’t bother trying to sound sincere. I did, though, take his handkerchief.

  I folded the clean square into quarters, and then in half again before I pressed it against my throat, hard. It hurt, but not as much as the open wound had stung. I increased the pressure steadily, ignoring the rising ache in my veins.

  As I worked, James sagged against the wall. There weren’t any windows in the foyer, and the ones in the adjoining living room had been covered with steel. The only light came from the empty dining room, from the soft yellow glow of the chandelier.

  I didn’t need a window to know it was broad daylight outside. The sun had risen as I fled the paparazzi horde. James should have been asleep two, three, maybe even four hours ago.

  His eyes were dilated, as wide as a lemur’s. My blood wasn’t enough to fight the compulsion of his vampire body to sleep, not when he had to be spending an enormous amount of energy just fighting his instinct to drain me dry.

  Nevertheless, he struggled to stay upright. “Just as well you’re here,” he said. The words were a little slurred, as if he’d had one too many glasses of wine.

  I lifted my makeshift bandage gingerly. My neck still stung, but a quick swipe of my fingers confirmed I’d staunched the flow of blood. “Why?” I asked, wary.

  Instead of answering, he tried to stagger toward the door. His fingers closed around my wrist.

  All his brutal strength had flown. He was no longer an apex predator defending his lair against an unknown enemy. Now, he was a drained warrior who could barely keep his balance.

  Instead of pulling away, I let him lean against me. It was that, or watch him pitch to the floor.

  “C’mon,” he said, reaching blindly toward the doorknob.

  “Come where?”

  “Richardson,” he slurred. “Have to see. Have t’ unnerstan…”

  There was no way in hell I was letting him take me to Maurice Richardson, even if he could navigate the city streets by day. “What the hell, James?”

  I shifted his weight, and he slumped against the wall. As he sagged to the floor, legs akimbo, I knelt to retrieve my purse. It only took a moment to pull out the burner phone. It seemed like a century since Bubba had given it to me, not one long night and part of a nightmare day.

  “What the hell is this?” I demanded, shoving the phone toward him.

  He shook his head slowly, like a punch-drunk fighter trying to get back into the ring. “Richardson,” he repeated, nearly losing the last syllable as his eyes closed.

  “What about Richardson?” I insisted. “You gave him access to the court! Angelique was dosed with your Lethe!”

  James murmured something, but I couldn’t make out the words. Frustrated, I kicked at the sole of his shoe, brandishing the phone in front of his slack face. “You don’t get to do this! You can’t help Richardson one day and fight him t
he next! It doesn’t make sense, James! I don’t understand what’s going on!”

  I could have yelled for hours. I could have smashed the phone to pieces on the marble floor. I could have twined my fingers in James’s tangled hair, pulling with all my might, but none of that would change a thing.

  He was out cold. Like any vampire in the middle of the day, he was completely incapable of action. Maurice Richardson could be plotting a nuclear war against the Empire, and there was nothing James could say or do till sunset that evening.

  Even in the midst of my frustration, I understood all that. I was a sphinx. Or I had been one. Whatever.

  In all the ways that mattered, I was James’s sphinx. He had chosen me for the clerk’s job. He’d given me my insignia. I was bound more closely to him than if we’d been joined through the Ancient Commission, or Chris’s untested, untried New Commission.

  But my own strength was drained—not by sunlight or by Earth’s turning on its axis. I was exhausted because I’d depleted my reserves, physical and mental, trying to manage whatever the hell James was doing.

  I was too spent to drag him to the comfort of his own bed. It was all I could do to snag a blanket and spare pillow from the linen closet upstairs and stumble back to the foyer. My own eyelids drooped as I untied his laces, as I slipped off his shoes.

  After only a moment’s hesitation, I loosened his belt as well. There wasn’t anything seductive about the action. I might have been undressing a mannequin, for all the thrill I felt.

  I knew James’s body. He’d meant something to me; we’d meant something to each other. But that was before that horrible June night. It was before Judge DuBois’s death and James’s disappearance, and Richardson’s mistrial.

  It was before everything went wrong.

  I settled my palm against his shirt, imagining I could feel a heart beating inside his chest. His flesh had cooled now, the rush of my blood completely dispersed.

  He was safe here, in the hallway of his sanctum, and he was as comfortable as I could make him. I climbed upstairs to his bed and fell asleep, alone.

  18