Sketched
Rose Carver, Book Two
David Alan Jones
Contents
Prologue
1. Socialite
2. At Odds
3. The Discarded
4. Conditions and Coalitions
5. Ties that Blind
6. Avatar Diverged
7. Reunited
8. Better the Devil
9. Rhapsody
10. Outside Looking In
11. Alias Ally
12. Sought and Forgotten
13. Intimidation
14. Open Arms and Cold Shoulders
15. Fangs Out
16. Manipulation
17. Sight Unseen
18. Beyond Her Grasp
19. Bellwether
20. Argument for the Defense
21. Appeasement
22. Engagement
23. Catalyst
24. Final Disclosure
About the Author
Falstaff Books
Friends of Falstaff
Prologue
The girl led them on a merry chase. Alice hadn’t run like this in months. Neither had the lads. Alice found it exhilarating.
They crashed through a series of narrow alleyways and crowded sidewalks west of Times Square, garish shop lights illuminating their path while simultaneously sending their shadows scuttling ahead of them on the mottled cement. They jostled New Yorkers, the offended Americans sending expletives chasing after them on the crisp October air. The humans liked to talk. That was their way. They thought themselves alone on the Earth—masters of the land and sea.
Alice pitied them their hubris. It kept their eyes shut to the truth.
The girl dashed into a car park, taking the chase away from the city center, probably hoping to jump the high fence ahead of them and slow their pursuit. That was good. Alice liked overconfidence.
Barney, the fastest of Alice’s lads, streaked across the macadam, his footfalls like gunfire, and managed to leap just before the girl. He took her at the waist and slammed her into the chain links. They rattled like old bones.
The girl didn’t cry out as Alice expected. Instead, she twisted in Barney’s arms and smashed an elbow into his temple. He melted off her, his eyes rolled back in his head, his considerable muscles rendered useless.
In other circumstances, that might have been good enough. The girl clearly had more votaries than average, coupled with a keen sense of drawing. She was fast and strong and determined to get away, but the lads had captured many a slippery fox in their time, and they knew they’d be paying Saint Peter’s price if they let this one escape.
Fig tackled her before Barney hit the ground. Shifty seized her legs to keep her from kicking free and Fig got an arm about her throat. If he had been an ordinary man, the girl would have ripped that arm from its socket, and possibly from Fig’s body altogether, but try as she might, she couldn’t budge the incubus's steel grip. The pressure on her neck turned her already flushed cheeks ruddier. She locked eyes with Alice.
Alice favored the girl with a nod: a master hunter acknowledging her prey’s near escape—the cunning moves she had employed during their chase.
The girl’s eyes rolled back.
“Ease off.” Alice flicked two fingers, and Fig relaxed his grip, though he kept control of the girl.
Barney sat up, rubbing at the welt rising on his head. “Goddamn. The little minx hits like a mule.”
“She should,” Alice said. “She’s got the fear draw in her blood. Haven’t you, girl?”
The girl sneered, but said nothing.
Though the hour was late, nearly 3 a.m., humans still walked the streets. Alice gestured, and the lads hauled the girl away from the bright carpark to a short alley behind a TGI Friday’s and some coffee shop Alice had never heard of. America abounded in those. The air smelled of rancid food and old lattes. Fig leaned against a refuse bin, his meaty arms encircling the girl.
“Your name is Melody.” Alice fished her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and snapped a picture of the girl. “Your sister is Anna Rose Carver.”
Melody’s nose flared at the sound of her sister’s name. Good. If Alice’s intelligence was right, the girl hated her sister with a murderous passion.
“What do you want?” Melody no longer struggled to free herself from Fig’s grip, but Alice knew she remained dangerous. Now was the critical moment.
Alice leaned forward, close enough to smell the reek of hard living on the girl. Despite her many votaries, and the power they entailed, Melody had been living rough for months, sometimes on the street but almost as often in fleabag motels or whatever hostels would take her. She knew the American slinkers were after her. Vampires, too. Raising herself, even for a day, might be enough to let them catch her. Therefore, she had been living low—well beneath her considerable means.
She deserved better.
Alice met the younger woman’s eyes. “I want to neutralize your sister, destroy every vampire on this continent, and overturn American Society. Are you in?”
1
Socialite
Rose Carver leaned forward to see past the crowd of people dressed in evening finery. “Is that her? The redhead?”
“Yep.” Matt gently drew her back by the elbow. “Best not stare, hon.”
Leading up to this night, ostensibly a fundraiser for Gloria Torres’s Senate campaign, Matt had continuously warned Rose to keep herself in check. Some of the richest and most powerful of the American elite occupied this room. That sort of thing meant nothing to Rose, who had grown up a slinker, her family on the brink of poverty her entire childhood. And even if it had, she possessed other reasons to dislike the people gathered here. Some of them, perhaps most of them, had tortured members of her immediate family in the last six months.
The venue they had rented, rather haughtily named The Rake’s Regret—the owners blanched whenever Rose referred to it as an auditorium—rang with voices, not one of them human. Black-tied and evening-dressed partygoers mingled in stratified groups based mainly on their political clout and who might be trending on the latest social media outlets. Some of these people had answered Rose’s invitation out of a legitimate desire to help the campaign. Most had come to goggle at the upstart slinkers who had thrown succubus society into turmoil these last few months.
“She doesn’t look like much.” Rose took a sip of sparkling grape juice. Others about the room imbibed the real stuff; she could smell the alcohol fumes pouring from their champagne glasses. Good for them. Rose would keep her edge, thank you.
“Maybe not, but don’t let her grandma charm fool you. Barbara Griffith ran Society from the turn of the last century right up to my father’s coup ten years ago. She’s tough, and a lot of the old guard like her.” Matt tipped his head to encompass the spacious room. “Some of the succubi in here have known her—known her leadership—for a century.”
“Why didn’t your dad take her out when he took power? Seems like his way of dealing with people.”
“Dad might be a scoundrel, a grifter, and a conniving son of a bitch, but he’s no fool. Harming Barbara would have ended the Indrawn Breath in an instant. Besides, she gave him no reason to attack her. She stepped down when she saw things swinging his way.”
“But now that we unseated him, here comes Barbara.”
Matt’s right cheek twitched with that patented half-grin of his. “She isn’t all that old, just a hundred and fifty or so. She probably figures we’ll lose favor within a few weeks, maybe even days considering the state of the world.”
“And once that happens, she’ll step right back in as the undisputed leader of American Society.” Rose swirled what remained of her juice around in her glass, her lips pressed into a hard line.
>
“Definitely. Slinkers don’t go in for politics. Yeah, we won a victory, shut down the fear factory, but we’re not the sort of people you call on for long-term governance. Not in the minds of people like Barbara Griffith, at least.”
Rose, who knew next to nothing about government, whether the regular human variety or her own shadowy succubus kind, understood Matt’s point. Slinkers, a nomad class of succubus who lived ever on the move, couldn’t be trusted to manage Society’s affairs.
Rose would know; she had been a slinker all her life.
“That’s going to change.” Rose daintily finished the last of her drink and placed the empty glass on a passing waiter’s tray. Not so long ago, she would have been one of those carrying away the dirty dishes.
Matt met her eyes. “Yes, it is.”
When Rose turned back, she found Barbara Griffith heading her way, a young incubus on her arm. Succubi, who aged far slower than humans, whether by some caprice of evolution or divine providence, tended to be gorgeous. Both sexes exuded sensuality as part of their raw charm, a glimmering influence possessed by every member of their kind. Barbara was no exception. Even at well over one hundred years old, her flat stomach, curvaceous figure, and flawless posture afforded her the appearance of a human woman enjoying her sexy forties.
“You’re Rose Carver.” It wasn’t a question. Barbara lifted a coiffed eyebrow at Rose. “You’re the woman who overthrew Kraft’s house of horrors.” She proffered her free hand.
“And you’re Senator Barbara Griffith of Arkansas.” Rose shook as graciously as she knew how. “You’re the woman who successfully ran Society for nearly a hundred years.”
“Ran is too strong a word, dear. Guided might be better.” Though slight, Rose thought she detected something of Dixie in Barbara’s accent. The older succubus looked askance at the man holding her arm. They shared a smile. “Or perhaps, haphazardly played maidservant, cleaning up every mess I could. It’s not an easy job, leading American Society.”
“I imagine not,” Rose said.
Silence fell between them despite the burbling crowd. Barbara watched Rose with keen interest, her gray eyes like a pair of drills spinning their way into the younger woman’s head.
“I thought I should take your measure now, while you’re atop the world.”
Uncertain how to answer, Rose nodded.
Barbara took Rose’s silence as some sort of victory. The Senator’s eyes crinkled with mirth, and she spun about to scan the crowd. “Is that your girl? The one running for Senate?”
“I would never call Gloria Torres a girl,” Rose said, trying in vain to keep her temper. The way Barbara spoke reminded her of how self-righteous bigots talked about minorities, with a clear sense of superiority. “She’s my friend, and yes, she’s running for the Senate seat out of Georgia.”
“A slinker in office,” Barbara mused as if speaking to herself. “It’s a frightening thing if you ask me.”
“You’re afraid of slinkers, Senator Griffith?” asked Matt, and Rose’s heart filled with pride.
Barbara regarded him with an expression that bordered on disdain until it settled for mild pique. “Matthew Kraft.”
“Snow.”
“Right. You took a bastard’s name. How literary of you.” Barbara glanced again at her unnamed companion. “I don’t blame him, really. His father’s a powerful incubus, a true leader, though I, of course, abhor and repudiate his methods. Still, Jason at least made something of himself. This one? A born flunky. All he’s ever done is his father’s bidding and then his mother’s after that. Kraft might be a bastard, but at least he has some chutzpah.”
Rose squeezed Matt’s hand. She expected him to stiffen in anger, maybe even spit a few choice words Barbara’s way. To her everlasting surprise, he smiled.
“You always know when an elite’s back is up because they start saying the quiet things out loud.”
Barbara’s young man bristled as though he might say something hot, but she stopped him with a gesture. He quelled like a trained dog, leaving Rose to wonder if the old Society leader had him charmed out of his wits, but his eyes appeared clear, his expression animated.
Probably just a gold digger.
“I heard you were arrested when the fear factory came down.” Barbara twiddled her fingers, and a nearby waiter hurried to serve her a glass of champagne.
“I was.”
“But you weren’t, Rose?”
Rose shook her head. Three hours of campaign fundraising, and she had had her fill of Society. More than ever, she congratulated herself on demurring to run for political office. Thank God, Gloria had stepped up.
“Why is it then,” asked Barbara, looking between them, “that everyone’s talking about Rose Carver, the hero of the fear factory? The woman who single-handedly put down Kraft’s Indrawn Breath in a matter of months.”
“There was nothing single-handed about it.” Rose loathed discussing the fear factory. It brought back too many painful memories. No, that was a lie. That wasn’t why she hated remembering the place. She had to be honest. It brought back her craving for fear.
“I think you’re overmodest,” Barbara said. “It’s your name I hear again and again any time someone brings up the topic. And they bring it up often.”
“Because they’re happy it’s gone, or are they jonesing for the votaries they lost?” Though the smile hadn’t left Matt’s face, his eyes grew cold as he spoke.
“No one’s pleased about what your father did there, Matthew. Don’t be boorish. Frightening people out of their minds is abhorrent. This world is better without that disgusting place.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that.”
Barbara inclined her head to him. “So, exactly how did you escape after the fall and your subsequent arrest? I heard there were those in the state department who wanted to pin the entire enterprise on you.”
“I didn’t escape. I was set free.”
“Because of your father’s influence?”
Matt’s jaw grew tight, but he maintained a civil tone. “I honestly don’t know, but if I had to guess, I’d say he had something to do with my release, yes.”
Barbara gingerly placed a hand on his shoulder in a faux sign of comfort. “To think, after all that’s passed between you—so many betrayals and lies and ill uses—that the man still loves you enough to flout the law on your behalf.”
“I’ll be sure to nominate him for father of the year.”
“How long were you in custody?”
“Three days.” Matt barely opened his mouth when he spoke.
“Imagine that. By that time, the attorney general was already hounding your father for his involvement in kidnapping and torturing innocent Americans. Embattled and soon to run for his life, he thought to save his only son. That’s a father’s love.”
“I doubt it. He probably wanted me out of the way so I wouldn’t testify against him.” A slow grin tugged up the corners of Matt’s mouth. “I did anyway.”
Barbara scrunched up her nose as if she smelled something foul, her attention suddenly diverted.
Rose followed her gaze to find Olivia Crown, a vampire in Rose’s care, sauntering toward them in a sleek red evening gown. Silver tassels danced across the mid-line, hips, and shoulders as she moved, playing up her lithe form.
There had been a time, not so long ago, when Rose would have been anything but pleased to see a vampire coming her way. Her experience with their kind had been tainted during last year’s invasion of Mexico. Subsequent experiences with Olivia’s mother, her many sisters, and one brother had laid those fears to rest. After three months of spending most nights in Olivia’s company, Rose had come to view her as a dear friend. Though circumstance had thrust them together, commonality and mutual respect brought them close.
It didn’t hurt that most of the rich, snooty, upper-class succubi in the room hated vampires even more than they hated slinkers.
Olivia, no doubt aware of those feelings and yet blithel
y unimpressed, opened her arms to give Rose a hug. The show of affection surprised Rose. They had arrived together before all the schmoozing began, yet Olivia embraced her as if they had been parted for days. At first, Rose took her friend’s gesture as a way of tweaking the crowd’s collective noses, but there was genuine feeling in Olivia’s tight embrace.
As it turned out, that feeling was fear.
“We have a problem.” Olivia whispered the words sotto voce into Rose’s ear.
Rose gave her the barest of nods before gesturing. “Olivia, this is Senator Barbara Griffith.”
“A pleasure to meet you.” Olivia’s deep southern accent had softened during her time living amongst succubi, but her charm, even in the face of enemies, had not. She and Rose had discussed this woman many times during late-night planning sessions for the Torres campaign. She knew the threat Barbara posed for both of them. During the senator’s previous tenure as head of American Society, vampires had been relegated to second-class citizens in the States and Canada: a minority to be tolerated, put in its place, and forgotten.
“Indeed.” Barbara pointedly did not offer her hand to Olivia as she had Rose. “Do excuse me, I believe Ms. McAleese of the Irish delegation is being ignored over there in the corner. I think I’ll go see she doesn’t get too bored with your little soiree.”
The haughty succubus pivoted like a clockwork soldier and marched across the room to greet a short, blond woman surrounded by oversized guards. She did not look back.
“How’d that go?” Olivia asked, watching the senator and her escort.
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