He closed the door and started down the stairs but paused because someone was walking down the hallway from another wing of the villa. He couldn’t see him, but he heard his footsteps. Inside him, Adam’s wolf alerted, because the other was walking softly, like a trained fighter who doesn’t want to be noticed.
He trotted back up the stairs he’d just come down. Unlike the other man, Adam made no sound. He timed his approach so that he stepped into the hallway about five feet in front of the other man.
In front of the vampire.
Guccio’s pretty face broke into a pretty smile that didn’t show his teeth. “Adam,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Were they on a first-name basis? Adam’s wolf said no, but Adam swallowed it because all he knew was the vampire’s first name.
He managed a casual raised eyebrow when the wolf wanted to eliminate the threat to his people.
“Vampire,” Adam said, tipping his head toward Guccio in something that the vampire was welcome to read as greeting. “Should you be out in the day?”
There were vampires who could move about in dusk or twilight, but Adam reckoned they were close upon midafternoon.
Even though the inner halls of the villa were windowless and lit by artificial lights, it was the sun that mattered. When the sun rose, a vampire’s spirit or soul or whatever left their body and no longer animated it. The corpse left behind smelled and felt like a corpse. Vampires were dead every day; wolf noses don’t lie.
Guccio’s smile widened. “The Lord of Night once had a very powerful witch.” He held up a hand-stitched cloth bag tied around his neck.
It appeared, to Adam’s Southern-bred eyes and nose, like a gris-gris bag. He smelled a number of herbs, but the main scent was something organic decaying. Maybe Bonarata’s witch followed voodoo or hoodoo practices. Or maybe she (because strong witches were mostly women) was African, which was where the practice of making gris-gris originated.
Adam had never heard of a witch who could let a vampire walk in the daytime. Maybe because there weren’t any witches who would want to do so.
“It only allows me to walk when otherwise I would have to rest,” Guccio said, letting the bag settle back against the hollow of his throat. “It cannot protect me from sunlight.”
Adam wondered if Guccio knew how much longing was in his voice when he said “sunlight.” The vampires called it “sun-sickness” when their kind became obsessed with the sun. Without intervention, vampires affected by sun-sickness died within a year or two—walking out into the dawn of their own volition. Suicide of sorts. If they hadn’t already been dead.
Guccio was one of those people who liked hearing his own voice so much that he thought everyone felt the same way. He kept talking, but all Adam paid attention to was the threat he represented. Adam made answers that Guccio probably took as polite and wondered if he was going to have to kill Guccio before going to Prague.
And Adam waited at the top of the stairs until Guccio turned back the way he’d come and kept going, following the hall as it took a sharp turn. He had never said what he was doing over by Adam’s pilots’ room.
His wolf furiously disturbed, Adam knocked on Harris and Smith’s door for a second time.
“Get your things,” he said shortly when Harris finally opened the door. “There are vampires wandering around in the daytime here. I’m not leaving you here alone.”
—
HE GAVE THE PILOTS THE COUCHES. HE AND HONEY, both in wolf form, curled up on the throw rug in front of the cold fireplace. Honey slept, but Adam only managed to doze off and on, his wolf restless.
He found himself checking the bond with Mercy over and over. All he could tell was that she was there, but for a few minutes it would quiet the wolf. He hoped it was just the wolf’s reaction to the meeting with Guccio and not something about Mercy that the wolf could feel and the man could not.
No one in the bedrooms stirred, not even to his wolf ears. Smith slept like the dead. Harris . . . Harris snored. Just enough that it made Adam worry that it would cover a noise that might warn him of an attack.
People started stirring out in the hallways as the light outside bloomed into a glorious sunset. Adam shifted into his human shape, gathered his luggage, and went into the vampires’ room to use their bathroom to shower, shave, and change.
By the time he was done, both vampires were awake. They didn’t speak—maybe they couldn’t. Adam could see their hunger—just as they could see his wolf.
They had better get things tied up here tonight, or Bonarata might not be the one they had to worry about. He hadn’t thought about the vampires’ need to feed. He didn’t know much about it. It was a touchy subject for Stefan, though maybe not for all vampires. Should he have suggested that they bring one of their willing donors—what did Mercy call them?—one of their sheep with them?
But he didn’t think he could have stood back and watched, not knowing that the human’s willingness might not be anything more than a strange and strong addiction.
They were adults. More than adults, they were powers in their own right, he decided as he nodded to them and kept going out the door to the main room of the suite. He would do his best to keep them safe, but they could find their own food.
In the common room, Harris and Larry were up, dressed in keeping with their differing roles in this play. Elizaveta was wearing a slate-gray suit with a diamond brooch. She looked like someone’s sweet and expensive grandmother. Soft. He wondered whom she was planning on blindsiding.
There were two people showering. By process of elimination, that would have to be Honey and Smith.
A polite knock sounded at the door.
Adam started to get it, but Harris waved him back.
“I believe that’s my job, sir,” he said deferentially, then flashed Adam a cheery grin.
He opened the door to a male and female vampire, each pushing a trolley.
“Good morning,” said the woman with a friendly smile and downcast eyes. “With my Master’s compliments, we have sustenance for your bloodborn. For the rest of your party, there is tea, coffee, and drinking chocolate. First meal will be served in an hour in the main dining room. It is generally less formal than last meal—no ties required. My Master requests that a half hour before the meal, you attend him again in the receiving room. If you would like a guide, one will be provided you.”
“The receiving room is the old library?” Adam asked.
She gave him a surprised look before dropping her eyes. “Yes, sir.”
“It still smells of books,” Harris explained, touching his nose. “The wolves pay more attention to the scents of things than most people do. We won’t need a guide.”
The servants withdrew. Adam claimed the cart that held a tea service with a large, elaborately fashioned black-and-gold teapot that did not, according to his nose, hold anything like tea.
“I’ll take it in to them,” he said. He trusted that Marsilia and Stefan had enough control not to attack anyone even with their hunger riding them, but he wouldn’t send anyone else in. Just in case.
He knocked once—they would have heard the exchange with Bonarata’s servants—and went in. Marsilia was dressed and putting a diamond drop earring on. Stefan was buttoning his white silk shirt.
“Thank you,” Marsilia said.
There was no trace of the Hunger in either of their faces, but Adam knew what he’d seen. He pushed the cart all the way into the room and turned to leave them to it.
Marsilia said, “Wait.”
He stopped and looked at her.
“Please,” she said. Then she nodded to Stefan, who closed the door.
As soon as the door shut, she approached him. “Did you meet with a vampire in this house between the time we retired and awakened?”
“Guccio,” he said. “Mercy contacted Ben via e-mai
l using a stolen e-reader. She’s alive in Prague and likely to stay that way until we get there. I went to talk to Harris to let him know we’d be wheels up tonight as soon as you figure out what a proper leave-taking of Bonarata consists of. Sooner rather than later if you can manage.”
Marsilia absorbed all of that. While she did, Stefan said, “Guccio? In the day?”
“He had some sort of magical bag. Witchcraft. I want to ask Elizaveta about it.”
Stefan considered that. Then he said, “Did he do anything odd?”
“No bite marks,” Adam said. “I checked.” And he had. He knew about vampire mind tricks—and his wolf was even more agitated than it had been when he found out about Mercy.
Stefan nodded slowly. “Okay. Okay. You should be okay, then. You just—” He glanced over at Marsilia, who sighed.
“Vampires have scent markers,” she told him. “It’s not quite a secret, but not something we tell everyone about. We leave them involuntarily when we feed off a human, but we can also do it deliberately—a touch, a brush of skin on skin. A way of marking someone as ours. As soon as you walked into the bedroom, Stefan and I could tell you’d been marked by someone. I didn’t know Guccio well enough to remember how his scent marker smells.”
Adam sniffed himself, but he couldn’t detect anything different. It made him uneasy that the vampires could smell something he couldn’t, but that might be why his wolf was so upset.
“I showered,” he said, “and it’s still here?”
Stefan grinned. “Don’t worry, Mercy won’t smell it, either. Some kind of vampire magic designed to keep some poor fool from taking a bite of a Master Vampire’s prey. Vampires can smell it from the newest hatchling to the oldest doddering geriatric.” His smile was real, but his eyes were solemn. “It’s considered rude, unless it’s one of your own . . . people, someone who has to go out and about among our kind, and you want to protect them from other vampires.”
“What an interesting thing to do to a guest of Bonarata,” said Marsilia. “I wonder what it means?”
Adam felt his mouth quirk up. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Marsilia narrowed her eyes at him.
“Come on out to the main room,” he said. “I have a few things to talk over with everyone.”
But when they made it to the main room, Honey was still getting dressed in Elizaveta’s room. Smith was in the suite, and from the wide-eyed look he gave Adam, he’d heard about the vampire scent-marking him. Adam was pretty sure there was a glint of something in Smith’s eyes, too, but the other wolf dropped his head like a good submissive, so Adam couldn’t be sure.
Given that there were no bite marks, Adam could see why they found it funny that he, a werewolf, had been marked as prey by the stupid vampire.
The two goblins were pointedly looking at the window, their backs to the room. Presumably so that Adam couldn’t see their wide grins.
Elizaveta looked from Adam to Smith to the goblins and said, in a voice with virtually no Russian accent at all so that Adam knew she was really angry, “Please tell me the joke so that I know what you and the vampires were conversing about. It seems that I am the only who did not hear what went on.”
Adam bowed to her and said in Russian, “My apologies. It is a joke on me, I am afraid. Please let us wait until Honey is here, and I will tell everyone some information I’ve gotten while you’ve slept. And I think you may provide us with important information about what I have to say.”
She arched an eyebrow at him, but he knew that by addressing her in Russian—which everyone here did not understand—he had given her a sop to her pride, because, in that case, she was not the one left out of the information flow. And letting her know she held vital information was a boost to her ego. She knew he was manipulating her, but she decided to allow it.
“Very well,” she said in English, her accent back in place. “I can wait for Honey.”
Honey came out, her short hair a little damp and her face freshly made up. She smelled, just a little, of rose petals. A human might not catch it, but the vampires would. She wore a rose-colored tank top without a bra and jeans that looked as though she wouldn’t be able to draw a deep breath. Around her neck was a gold chain with a small wolf charm. He knew that Peter, her dead mate, had gotten her the necklace, because Adam had gone with him to pick it out for her birthday.
She looked like bait.
He smiled at her, and she gave him a toothy smile back. He was glad he’d brought her, fierce and strong. She was a good wolf to have at your back.
He told them about Mercy. Told them that Guccio had been walking around the villa with a spell bag that allowed him to roam during the day. And he told them that he’d been marked so that all the vampires would think that he was Guccio’s food.
Honey stepped closer and sniffed him. “I don’t smell anything?” She gave the vampires a suspicious look.
“I don’t, either,” said Larry. “But I know that vampires have a way of marking their prey. It’s seen as crude, because usually, unless it’s a Master Vampire, it’s an accident. Proof that a vampire lost control when he”—he glanced at Marsilia and said—“or she found some food that appealed to her. Sort of like spitting into a drink that isn’t yours.”
Adam smiled grimly at the goblin. “Thank you. I’ll store that image.” He turned to Elizaveta. “The bag Guccio wore around his neck—it looked and smelled like a gris-gris bag. He said it gave him the ability to stay awake during the day, but it wouldn’t protect him from the sun.”
He closed his eyes and described it in as minute detail as he could manage, including a list of herbs and the other things he had picked up. “Whatever was rotting in the bag smelled vaguely rodent-like to me, but it had been dead and covered in herbs for too long. Mostly it just smelled rotten. He claimed that a witch Bonarata had once had made it and that it allowed him to walk during the day.”
Elizaveta grunted. “Such a thing could be managed that way.”
“Oh?” said Marsilia, a little too neutrally.
“I can do it for you for a fee,” she acknowledged. “But such things are limited. A certain amount of time per day—and only for so many days.”
“Could you do one for sunlight?” asked Stefan, but he didn’t sound hungry, just thoughtful. “It would really suck eggs if Bonarata has access to something that allows him to run around in the sunlight.”
He’d gotten that “suck eggs” expression from Mercy.
Elizaveta gave Stefan a shrewd look. “I can make you a gris-gris that will allow you to walk in the sun,” she said gently. “Would you wear it?”
Stefan gave her an arrested look. “Never,” he said slowly. “No tarnish to your honor, donna, but I would have to trust you a lot further than I trust anyone to venture out into the sunlight with a gris-gris.”
Not at all insulted, Elizaveta gave him a slow smile. “That is good, Soldier. You are wise. I think that any vampire who has lived as long as Bonarata has lived would feel the same.” She looked thoughtful. “Truthfully, I don’t know that it could be done in any case. I would have to understand more about why sunlight—and not, say, full-spectrum light from lightbulbs—is fatal to your kind. The other—allowing you to walk during the daytime—would be a variant on part of zombie animation.”
“So the gris-gris is a consumable,” Adam said.
Elizaveta smiled at him. “A very expensive consumable, I think. It would take time to make, and its maker would have to be of a certain level of power. A lot of power and a lot of skill—you said the vampire claimed that Bonarata no longer has access to this witch?”
“That’s what it sounded like,” Adam said. “If this is a nonrenewable consumable and valuable magic item, then Guccio was not casually strolling by Harris’s room.”
“No,” agreed Marsilia. “It is a good thing that you were there, and a good thing you broug
ht them back with you. Or maybe we wouldn’t have had pilots to take us home.”
“On Bonarata’s orders?” asked Adam.
She shrugged. “Maybe. Guccio might just be trying to curry favor. Iacopo—Jacob—Jacob has always had a fondness for innovation.”
“He probably marked you for spite,” said Stefan. “It was a dumb thing to do, though. And dumb people don’t tend to last long enough around Bonarata to climb the power hierarchy.”
“A gris-gris such as the one he carried can affect people adversely,” Elizaveta observed. “That is true black magic, and it tends to stain the user as well as the one who casts it.” She glanced at her watch. “If we are to meet with Bonarata at the time specified, we should leave.”
11
Adam
I could wish that Adam were more concerned with his own life than with saving everyone else’s. Since it is a wish Adam has expressed (often) about me, I suppose I have no grounds to complain. I do anyway, of course.
BONARATA WAS DRESSED IN SLACKS AND A TURQUOISE silk shirt that had been made for him. He was seated, doing paperwork, at a desk Adam had barely noticed the first time he’d been here. “A moment, please,” he said, without glancing up.
Adam’s dad had liked to do that when Adam had transgressed in some way. Invite him into his study, then sit down and do some other work for a while so that Adam could think very hard about whatever it had been that he (or one of his brothers) had done to get called into the study. And let him know that neither he nor his transgressions were as important as whatever else his father was working on.
It had worked quite well on Adam when he was eleven.
Adam strolled over to the desk and stood, looking down upon the vampire, Honey at his shoulder.
Marsilia gave him a horrified look. Stefan flashed him a quick smile before turning his attention to a painting hanging some distance away. It was not the painting of Marsilia. From his position, Adam couldn’t see the subject other than there was a lot of blue, maybe a seascape. Elizaveta found an oil painting done in the classical style, the rape of Leda, Adam thought, because there was a muscled and naked woman grappling with a human-sized swan. The two goblins and Smith were on the far side of the room speaking softly—very softly if Adam couldn’t hear it. If he couldn’t, then neither could Bonarata.
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