High Stakes Trial

by Mindy Klasky

  He shifted his weight, moving his left foot in front of his right. His arms hung straight at his sides, his fingers folding into fists beside his thighs.

  For one timeless moment, he was the figure in the amulet, new-forged and complete. He was balance and strength. He was ancient and new. He was glass and stone, perfect and whole.

  “Sheut?” I whispered, turning the ancient name into a question.

  That one word broke the spell. Or maybe it completed the ancient working. All I knew was that the second my lips moved, the glorious lapis light faded from the man before me.

  Darkness rose from within him, an obsidian sheen that gathered all the blue and scattered it, hardening and transforming into something older, stranger, true.

  “Sheut,” I said again, but this time I was certain. This time I knew.

  Daughter, he said.

  That one word filled me. It echoed inside my skull and twisted in my DNA. It filled gaps I’d never known I possessed, empty hollows that had ached for my entire life.

  When I’d found Sekhmet, she’d flooded my mind with desert sun. She’d shown me a lioness’s love for her cubs, a predator’s thirst for blood. She’d brought me the shift of agriotis, the bloodlust I could never control. She was mighty and mysterious, mother of sphinxes and vampires. Mother of me.

  Sheut was from the desert too. But he was the velvet night, the bottomless cave. He was secrets and shadows. He was desire and self, the urges we hid from others, sequestered from ourselves out of terror for our own gaping needs.

  He stood before me in the classic pose of my people, one foot forward, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Rigid and aloof, he waited, waited, waited, having offered the one thing I longed for most, the title: Daughter.

  I took a single step forward. I uncurled the fingers of my left hand, the empty one that didn’t hold the amulet. I set my palm against his fist and I thought one word: Father.

  Dark light flowed into me. Power and glory and strength and the will to decide who I was and who I would be and when and how and why.

  For this day, I have waited, he said. And then, before I could answer, he showed me a vision of our city, a map of Washington. Gemstones glowed upon the surface, at the Botanic Gardens, at the base of the Capitol, the National Gallery of Art and the National Archives, in a dozen other spots.

  For you, he said.

  Me? Once again, I thought my response, the communication suddenly as natural as speaking.

  Gifts in your honor, he said. Because I knew you lived in this city. Because I hoped you would see what I had done and understand a father’s love.

  Love. I basked in a sense of rightness, of belonging. For the first time ever, I felt truly protected. Complete.

  But then Sheut said, Time is short. You must choose.

  Choose?

  Go on as you were. Or unlock your full potential.

  Unlock me, I said, without hesitation.

  I felt his laugh, a velvet ripple that rolled along the edges of my mind. Not so hasty, brave daughter. The change will hurt.

  I’m not afraid of pain.

  You should be.

  He was my father. He’d donated millions to rebuild a city, in hopes I’d recognize his love from afar. He’d come to me, now, when I was utterly abandoned, completely separate from the mundane and imperial lives I’d known. I could bear whatever pain he offered.

  I’m not afraid, I said again. But I was grateful that my larynx didn’t need to vibrate in my throat. My lips didn’t need to form around the words. I didn’t have to keep my voice from shaking.

  I felt his presence gather close. The shadows around me thickened. The velvet night of the room crushed me.

  Yes? he asked, giving me one last chance to flee the shadowed mystery.

  Yes, I answered.

  Midnight wings folded around me. Darkness seized my body. Instinctively, I gripped the amulet tight.

  For one glorious, perfect moment, Sheut flowed into the faience charm, feeding the statuette, completing the form. His head was restored, drawn in blue faience, distinguished by indigo lines. Sheut stood beside Sekhmet, passive and resolute. The god matched the goddess.

  I held them in the palm of my hand. I was them in the core of my heart. My mother and my father were made whole, made perfect, in the amulet and in me.

  But I blinked, and the faience melted. It dissolved in an acid torrent, flowing through my hand and into my bloodstream. Every cell of my body opened. I was consumed with agony, with frozen fire, with burning ice.

  I couldn’t speak.

  Couldn’t breathe.

  Couldn’t think.

  And finally, in the wake of that scouring, I was born again.

  My new self was healed. Perfect. Annealed.

  I no longer mourned my physical mother, the creature who had given birth to me, who had chosen to hide my worldly father.

  I no longer mourned the sphinxes, the imperfect Den who had cast me out, rather than work to understand my execution of Judge DuBois.

  I no longer mourned Chris—

  Go, Sheut said.

  I looked at him with dazed eyes, scarcely understanding the word.

  I thought we’d have more time, he said. Even a god can be mistaken.

  I formed a dozen questions inside my head, but I didn’t have a chance to reduce any of them to words. Instead, I watched as Sheut spread his fingers wide. Shadow gathered between them, and a pool of darkness flowed across the room.

  It twisted and it swirled, encircling my left wrist. At the same time, a wreath of the same shadows enveloped the ring-finger on my right hand.

  I braced myself for another shock of pain, for the purifying ice that had seared me only minutes earlier. This time, though, the shadows cleared without a single physical sensation.

  In their wake, my flesh was marked with perfect, shimmering tattoos. Glinting dragon scales, obsidian and lapis, circled my wrist and my fingers. They were patterned like tiny scarabs, like Sekhmet’s Seal.

  Go, Sheut said, as I marveled at his work. He’s here.

  Before I could protest, he pushed me past the rooms of bone, up the shadow stairs, through the crypt. Before I could ask who he was, Sheut delivered me into the heart of battle.

  36

  The cathedral was empty.

  The world had continued to rotate on its axis while I’d communed with Sheut. Evening had slipped into night. Darkness pressed against stained glass windows, tamping down the color, siphoning away the designs. All the candles that had flickered in side chapels were extinguished.

  A handful of work lights illuminated the church, soft white lamps that splashed against stone. They weren’t enough to guide tourists, weren’t even enough to provide a path for worshippers familiar with the space. But they lent a sense of safety and security as the cathedral slept through the night.

  But the cathedral wasn’t safe. It wasn’t secure. Sheut had said, He’s here.

  I left the St. Joseph chapel and stepped over a brown velvet rope, striding to the base of the altar. I didn’t have permission to invade the holy space, to stand upon the dais. But I wanted the protection of solid marble at my back before I faced my enemy.

  I didn’t have long to wait.

  Maurice Richardson entered from the narthex. He paused for a moment, just inside the door. Maybe he was giving his eyes a chance to adjust to the dim light. Maybe he was giving his troops the opportunity to form a phalanx behind him. Maybe he just enjoyed making a dramatic entrance.

  His hair was combed back from his forehead, more grey than black. His face was jowly, and he narrowly avoided a second chin. The first time I’d met him, I’d thought he was fat and out of shape, but I’d found myself sadly mistaken.

  The bulk of his belly was muscle, strong bands that encircled his waist, swelling his chest and thickening his neck. I knew his biceps were as hard as oak, and his forearms were knotted. His wrists were thick with brawn.

  I’d fought him before—twice. He’d dr
unk from my throat. Against my will, my heart started to race as I remembered the pain of his slashing fangs, the agony as my blood was drained.

  Perhaps his vampire hearing let him detect my quickened pulse. He smiled widely, his fangs already on full display. “Sarah Anderson,” he said, and his voice carried the length of the nave in the deadly still building.

  “Richardson,” I responded.

  He began the long walk down the stone aisle. I dared not take my eyes off him. I knew how fast a vampire could pounce. But I longed to know how many vampires huddled in the throng that moved behind him. Had he brought his Impressed men? Or did he have other vampires to do his bidding?

  He fixed his gaze on my face. “I understand you visited my home while I was away.”

  I didn’t bother answering.

  “I smelled you when I returned. Funny thing about the sense of smell. Fear shows in a person’s signature, no matter how brave a face she paints.”

  He wanted me to know he smelled me now. He read my fear, had known it from the moment I remembered his puncturing my jugular.

  But I wasn’t the same creature I’d been that night two years ago. When Richardson had drunk from me, I’d thought I was human. I hadn’t learned about Sekhmet, about the sphinx blood I carried in my veins. I certainly hadn’t dreamed I was a dragon.

  Enough of this farce. I clenched my jaw and tightened my gut and willed my body to shift into my birthright from Sheut.

  Nothing happened.

  Blue ice didn’t rise beneath the darkness in my soul. I didn’t feel a hint of wings or tail. My arms and legs didn’t sprout armor, didn’t change from their ordinary configuration. I didn’t even feel a whisper of a cobra’s hood, swaying around my head.

  Richardson came closer. “I punished James, you know. I told him he should have waited until I was home, to show you a proper welcome. We could have given you a room upstairs, to spend the night. Or longer. So much longer.”

  I shuddered. I couldn’t squelch the reaction; the mere thought of those women, serving Richardson because they had nowhere else to turn…

  At the same time, I cast a thought toward the St. Joseph chapel, toward the crypt and the hidden ossuary below. Father!

  All my life, I’d longed to know my father. Now I’d met him. Now he’d transformed me, or so it had seemed when I’d frozen with fire.

  But when I called upon him, when I needed him most, I heard nothing. For one terrifying second, I wondered if I’d imagined him, if I’d hallucinated the entire encounter.

  But no. I could see the tattoos banding my finger and wrist, glinting faintly in the work lights.

  Richardson was halfway down the nave. The crowd behind him was larger than I’d imagined. Maybe he had thirty vampires, forty even.

  “James could only tolerate so much…discipline,” Richardson said. “He begged me to forgive him. He offered something in exchange.”

  I ordered myself not to think of how James had been tortured. Richardson had too many tools in that bag. I bit my tongue, knowing I was supposed to ask what James had forfeited. Richardson wanted me to beg.

  Sheut! I called. But still no one answered. I was as alone as I’d ever been, not human, not sphinx, not anything I could possibly understand.

  Richardson had reached the velvet rope. I hadn’t granted his desire. I hadn’t pleaded for his story, but he gave it to me all the same. “The New Commission, Sarah. James told me all about it. He explained what your Sun Lion pimp came up with. Papers for all vampires? Certification before we’re allowed to roam the night?”

  Richardson might be a master at revelation, drawing out his attack. His soldiers, though, were far less practiced at holding rank. They hissed at the mention of Chris’s plan. I heard fangs pop, and the entire dark clutch surged closer to their master.

  He held up one meaty hand, and the vampire horde settled down. “You were just waiting for Sekhmet’s Seal, right? You’d bring it to the Den, like the desperate whore you are, and then they’d launch their goddamn plan.”

  I’d told James I needed the Seal before the New Commission could move forward. He’d passed on that information, obviously casting me in the worst possible light.

  Even as I fought despair, I focused on my reflexes, on the almost uncontrollable urge to look up at the Civilization window. I didn’t want Richardson following my gaze. I didn’t want his vampire eyes raking over the scarab-shaped Seal.

  He went on: “You thought you were so clever, hiding away. No home. No email. But I have eyes where you never imagined. I’ve been reading Angelique Wilson’s email for weeks.”

  I caught my breath. That was how he’d found me. I’d logged in as Angelique, then run a hundred searches about the National Cathedral, about the Civilization Window and the Seal.

  Richardson’s smile was wide. “A little Lethe was all it took,” he said. “My man added a key tracker the night you caught him at the courthouse. That gave me Wilson’s password. The rest was waiting, to see what the cat would drag in.”

  I wanted to curse. I wanted to scream. I’d brought this attack on myself, because I’d been so confident I could beat Angelique, so certain the incompetent shifter would never detect me masquerading as her online.

  Richardson planted his fists on his hips. “Make this easy on yourself, Sarah. I know the Seal is here. Give it to me, and I’ll spare you the attentions of my…pets.”

  The vampires behind him whined like beasts. They were excited, shifting from foot to foot. I wondered how long Richardson had starved them, how long he’d kept them from the women in his house, from a legitimate Source, even from a drugged and desperate blood herd.

  “No?” Richardson said. “Not willing to talk? Well maybe you just need a little encouragement.”

  He raised his right hand far above his head. The seething horde behind him froze. He snapped his fingers, once, and the vampire ranks parted.

  James glided to Richardson’s side.

  He looked rougher then I’d ever seen him. He’d abandoned his customary white dress shirt for a black turtleneck that only emphasized the pallor of his face. His cheeks were covered in stubble, as if he’d forgotten to shave. His eyes were bleary, and I wondered if Richardson had somehow kept him awake for days.

  “Drain her,” Richardson commanded. “Drain the feeder bitch dry.”

  “With pleasure,” James said, his voice nearly as cold as the fire that had purged me in the ossuary.

  I’d let myself believe he was a double agent. I’d accepted his explanation, that he’d embedded himself with Richardson’s men, that he’d worked for the kingpin so that he could bring Richardson down, once and for all.

  Lies. All of that was lies. James was really and truly an enemy.

  His fingers flexed, and I remembered them ripping apart Chris’s brochure. I remembered the spiked rage in James’s voice, the raw fury when he thought I’d joined with the sphinxes against him. I hadn’t been able to reason with him then. I hadn’t been able to make him understand the truth.

  What hope did I have now, when he was standing before the vampire who’d broken him so many years before? He’d been tortured. He’d been betrayed. He was powerless before Richardson.

  As the gang of blood-crazed followers hissed and hooted, James sprang lightly onto the dais. Despite the black turtleneck, he still wore dress pants, as if he’d stopped by the cathedral on his way home from work.

  But James didn’t work any longer. He’d left the courthouse, left his job, left his source of honor and security, all to follow the most dangerous criminal the Eastern Empire had ever known.

  He started to circle behind me, moving with slow, gliding steps. I matched him instantly, drawing on the countless hours we’d trained together in the Old Library.

  “Rule one,” James said. We both knew what he didn’t bother to say: Don’t waste energy fighting a hopeless battle.

  Well, this battle was lost before I’d begun. Even if I succeeded in escaping James, I wasn’t getting o
ut of the cathedral alive. Richardson would simply send another one of his dogs. One, or two, or three. More. No creature on earth could fight off a dozen vampires at once.

  I was dead. My body just didn’t know it yet.

  As if he could smell my resignation, Richardson took a full step forward. The motion distracted me. I almost missed James lunging toward my right side. At the last possible second, I spun to my left, ducking low.

  Vampires are fast, that was the second rule.

  But James never committed to attacking my right flank. Instead, he’d feinted. Before I could parse my mistake, he’d spun to my left, to where he knew my body would be.

  I barely had time to throw my head forward, to protect the vulnerable curve of my throat. My cheek stung as he sliced it down to the bone.

  Blood immediately soaked my blouse. The pack of vampires bayed their excitement. Richardson clenched his fists, barely limiting his excitement to taking another step closer to the altar.

  I clamped a hand to my cheekbone, futilely trying to stop the flow of blood. James looked down at me with the aloof eyes of a statue. “Rule two,” he said.

  I wanted to punch the words out of his throat. I wanted to keep him from baiting me, from playing with me like a cat with a mouse. Instead, I said, “Rule three.” Vampires don’t breathe.

  Richardson growled a command: “Kill the bitch.”

  As James spared a single glance for his master, I chose not to waste my last breath on reciting the fourth rule: Humans are better off on the ground.

  I knew it. James knew it. I started to drop and roll and pray for a single chance to use James’s vampire force against him before he finished me.

  I was too slow. James was at my side before I could move. One hand clamped over my right biceps. The other grappled at my left hip.

  “New rule,” he said. And before I could understand his meaning, he was lifting me into the air. Leveraging my arm and leg, rotating from his waist, he tossed me onto the altar, where I landed hard enough to knock the wind out of me.