Masked Desire

  “Thank you.” Michaela had fought Tom about using Estelle’s compulsion abilities to erase Ivy’s memories and had only agreed reluctantly when Caro pointed out that she would be doing Ivy a favor.

  Cormac had agreed. “Letting her know that she shares the world with what she considers monsters is a huge psychological hit for her. It could be devastating. Let her live her life in peace.”

  Estelle had offered to work with Ivy, promising to be gentle. “She’s good,” said Stephan in a stiff voice before excusing himself to check on the attacker they’d pulled out of Michaela’s trunk. Estelle had watched him go, her expression tight, before following the medic into the room.

  There had been enough there to put Cormac’s nerves at rest about Stephan’s potential interest in Michaela.

  “You know it was for the best,” Tom said.

  Michaela glared at him. “Stop rubbing it in.” Then she sighed. “I know. It’s…”

  “Taking her memory of a confusing and terrifying attack won’t reduce her as a person,” he said softly.

  Michaela sat down heavily in a chair and Cormac rose to stand beside her. She said nothing, but a small pulse in his sigil told him she was comforted. He put a hand on her shoulder and rubbed it softly.

  “Why the attacks on me? It’s too coincidental that it’s all happening now. There was only one other real attempt in the last six months.” She said it so casually. Cormac tried not to react.

  Tom shook his head. “Frieda Hanver. The Dawning. It’s coming to a head. She must know taking you out would cripple us.”

  “That would go for any of us,” Michaela argued.

  “Not quite. After Eric, you are the most likely target, as head of the Advisory Council.” He tapped a pen against the table. “Not to feed your ego, but you’re the best we have. Losing you would be devastating.”

  Cormac fought down a rush of pride to focus on the issue at hand. “What about Ivy’s security?” asked Cormac. “Today shouldn’t have happened.”

  Tom shook his head. “My fault. I told them to take a break when Ivy was with Michaela. I apologize.”

  Michaela nodded. “It was reasonable. I want more on her now, and until this is resolved. They’re targeting her to get at me.”

  “I’m going to set a patrol on her when she returns,” Tom said. “I’ve had her apartment checked as well and someone watching it.”

  “Thank you.” Michaela ran a hand over her face.

  “We managed to get one of ours heading the police investigation, so we’re fine there,” Tom said.

  One less worry. The masquerada were quick.

  “The one you brought back was dead by the way,” Tom said. “As in already dead when you pulled him into the car.”

  “Sorry.” Cormac shrugged. “Best I could do.”

  “We can still get information out of him, although it would have been easier to ask. Still no identification.”

  They went down to the basement and pulled on gloves and masks before going in to the makeshift autopsy room. Stephan was already suited up, and Cormac was pleased to note that he experienced no overt feelings of dislike.

  “This is weird,” Stephan announced, looking at the slim, dark body that lay on the table.

  Cormac saw the dead attacker was a young man no more than seventeen or eighteen. He looked as though he’d led a rough life, with a missing tooth and an earlobe that looked like it had been chewed off. An old wound. “He looks different.”

  “He masqued back to his natural self,” Michaela said. “That shouldn’t happen. We keep our masques when injured or killed.”

  Then she pointed at the man’s arms. “Punctures in the same location as Hiro’s wounds and the dead humans in the rebel cells.”

  “Not a coincidence,” said Tom.

  “No, and look at this one’s skin. At him.”

  The men stared at the body. Cormac did too, wondering what was so important about the skin.

  “Jesus,” said Stephan. “Stretch marks.”

  “What’s that mean?” Cormac asked.

  Michaela pulled off the shroud and examined the man’s skin closely. She gestured to thin shiny lines that crossed over his skin at the arms, legs, and chest. They were definitely stretch marks.

  “Masquerada never get stretch marks, no matter how drastic our changes,” she told him.

  “This is a new way of turning humans.” Stephan looked grim. “Not like how we were.”

  “The punctures are the result of the procedure,” Michaela said. “Hiro hated us. Why would he want to be one of us?”

  Cormac tapped a gloved finger on the steel table. “Tell me how masquerada are usually turned.”

  Michaela gestured for Stephan to answer. “It’s difficult,” he said. “We’re totally drained of blood and only given a small dose of masquerada blood to metabolize.”

  “What’s the survival rate?”

  “Poor. There are very few of us.”

  “Recovery time?”

  “Weeks if you’re lucky. Months for some.”

  Tom’s phone beeped and he pulled off his gloves to check it. “Finally. Ahmed Kalar, aged eighteen,” he announced. “Missing for three weeks.”

  “Family?” Stephan asked.

  “They’re human.”

  “As a rule, turned masquerada are extraordinarily powerful,” said Michaela. “Ahmed was too young and weak to have been fully recovered in the three weeks he’d been missing.”

  Cormac looked at the body. “You said that when you were turned, they drained you? Infected you with another masquerada’s blood?”

  Stephan grimaced. “We prefer not to think of it as infection, but yes.”

  “What if they used, say, Eric’s blood instead of an average masquerada. Would there be a difference in the one being turned?”

  “Of course.” Stephan shrugged. “The more powerful the donor, the faster and more…” His eyes widened. “Yangzei.”

  Cormac felt Michaela’s body tighten in horror. “Taking the blood of an Ancient would definitely hurry the process.”

  “Jesus.” Stephan shook his head. “We found some unusual traits in the DNA sample. It could be. Frieda has Yangzei.”

  “She’s building herself an army.” Michaela walked around the table with her eyes on the body. “Frieda doesn’t care how many die, or how powerful they are at shifting. She’s going to overwhelm us by numbers.”

  “Shock troops,” said Cormac with sudden understanding. “She’s preparing for battle.”

  Chapter 28

  The discovery put Michaela in a somber mood. There was little else to learn from the body, so they returned to find Estelle, Caro, and Eric speaking quietly in the war room. Maps covered two of the walls and laptops projected satellite data on the others.

  Michaela reported their findings and Eric shut his eyes. “Do we have any sense on how many she might have turned?”

  Tom shook his head. “No idea, but I have to assume it’s still not many in the city itself. We’d notice that many more masquerada, even weak ones.”

  “Frieda is smart. She’ll have spread out her operations to make it more difficult to track the missing and dead,” said Michaela.

  Estelle took a seat near the table and pursed her perfectly painted crimson lips. “It would be easier if we actually knew where that bitch is.”

  Stephan looked up from his laptop. “Ask and ye shall receive. This came came through a few seconds ago.” The display on the wall flashed a new map, this one with shaded zones and a big red dot in the central Atlantic.

  Caro squinted. “Please don’t tell me she’s got the mers on her side.”

  “Nope. She tried, though, and they told us. She’s on her way.”

  Michaela leaned forward and examined the shading with a sinking feeling. “She has far more sympathizer
s than I thought.”

  Estelle nodded. “I can explain that. She’s made an alliance with some vampire clans.”

  That made sense. Although the human population had grown, the Law’s strict rule made it more difficult for vampires to feed and forbade them to feed to the death. Although most had accepted that surviving this modern life meant compromise, traditionalists had always protested what they called an attack on their culture. Despite the establishment of blood banks, drinking “dead” blood had not gained a lot of traction.

  For some, not even seven hundred years had been enough time to adapt.

  Estelle pulled up a complicated flowchart that mapped out the relationships between the different vampire clans and a detailed analysis of the power dynamics within each one. It was impressive.

  “How do you know all this?” asked Michaela. This astute assessment did not fit into the idea she had of Estelle as apolitical.

  “I have good contacts,” Estelle said vaguely.

  “No secrets,” Stephan said. “Tell them.”

  She sighed. “I’m what we call the seneschal minor.”

  Michaela blinked. This was unexpected. Caro, meanwhile, glared at Estelle. “Something you forgot to mention? What is it?”

  “Vampires have two parallel lines of authority,” said Estelle, her expression wary. “There’s the actual clan chief. The chief has moral authority, I guess you’d say, but has no military power. That’s the realm of the seneschal.”

  “Like samurai and with extraordinary psychic abilities,” said Eric, looking at Estelle.

  Caro went purple. “You didn’t tell me?”

  “It’s a long story and I’m only the deputy,” Estelle said, her face a deep red. “My mentor, the seneschal major, is in charge.”

  “Which means that Estelle has a very good grasp of the politics of the situation,” Stephan said in an oddly cagy tone. “She’ll eventually take over the job for this hemisphere.”

  Michaela wondered briefly about both Stephan’s tone and why a woman so influential was working as the receptionist in an arcane public relations firm. Then she put it out of mind. Now was not the time for questions, and Estelle looked pained enough. “Good,” she said, turning from Estelle to look at the shading on the map. “Because we’re going to need it.”

  Tom made a pot of black tea and a special blend for Michaela from the supplies on the far table. It was as sweet and fragrant as a sunny meadow and as she sipped, small pinpricks came through her sigil. Cormac was watching Stephan closely. Jealousy? Although the idea of being attracted to Stephan was laughable—he was so, well, if not in love, in something with Estelle—to have someone feel possessive about her was unusual. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about it until she thought of Cormac in another woman’s arms.

  That was unpleasant. Was she jealous as well? The feeling was new and unwelcome. That sort of possessiveness meant emotional connection.

  Mind you, she had a stamp on her chest that alerted her to another being’s emotional state at all times. That was attachment.

  Her phone rang and she moved to the other side of the spacious room to take it. “Hello, Madden.”

  “Where are you?” Her heart sank when she heard the tone of his voice. He was furious.

  She answered the question with one of her own. “Is something the matter?”

  “I have council members banging down my door wanting to know who is hunting them down and my security chief went missing. That is the matter.”

  “I was ill.” She hadn’t liked that Cormac had texted Madden from her phone but accepted the necessity. Now she was glad Cormac had been so evasive. No need for him to know she was poisoned, not after what he’d been like lately.

  “So your message said.” A slight pause. “Ill. A masquerada with a cold? Unlikely.”

  She ignored the blatant accusation of a lie. “My team is still onsite and working on the investigations.”

  “They have reported nothing.”

  “Because there is nothing to report.” Anjali had kept her apprised.

  “Days go by and not a single suspect?” Madden sounded almost amused. “How do I explain that to the council?”

  “Tell them we’re working on it. The councilors are hardly being hunted down. They have nothing to fear.”

  “I hope you aren’t going to tell me that this revolves around you.”

  Michaela took a deep breath. “Madden. Hiro was in my office, dressed like me. You don’t think this is even a possibility?”

  “Perhaps a very slight one, but it remains that you are not dead. Michaela, your illness must have weakened you.”

  She had a sense of foreboding.

  “I’m removing you as security chief. Anjali will act in your place.”

  “This is unnecessary,” she said coldly. “Madden, what are you doing?”

  “As your mentor, I should have known your limits,” he said almost sadly. “I failed you. Rest now. I’ll tell the council of your failure.”

  He hung up before she could reply.

  Which was probably good, because all she had to say was not very flattering.

  Cormac came over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Madden always was a piece of shit,” he said in a conversational tone. His face told a different story. He looked enraged.

  Michaela looked around. “You heard?”

  They all nodded. “His voice carries,” Stephan said.

  “That council is a nest of vipers if Madden is in charge,” Estelle observed dispassionately. “He claimed clan neutrality in the late eighteenth century, but Madden is the equivalent of a mercenary. He had no loyalty to anyone but himself.”

  Michaela said nothing. Madden was—had been—her mentor, and she had benefitted greatly from his wisdom. She couldn’t fault the logic of his decision to remove her, though she still wanted to tear a strip off him for acting so unreasonably. Part of her felt guilty at having failed him. Most of her, to be honest.

  That asshole.

  * * * *

  Dinner that night was subdued. Michaela had insisted on sitting with Ivy, who was now awake , and Cormac promised to check in after dinner. He wanted to get to know the girl better, and if she fell asleep, well, it would give him time to figure out how to convince the queen to leave his forest alone despite his mating. The meal itself was delicious—the entire arcane world was jealous of Eric’s legendary chef, Cynthia—but it might as well have been minced cardboard for all of the enjoyment Cormac got out of it.

  He was too focused on the ways he was going to make Madden pay for what he’d said to Michaela.

  “Mei mei’s strong,” said Baptiste, leaning over to speak to Cormac. He sat to Cormac’s right and peeled a small but intensely fragrant orange. The old masquerada had come earlier, first to inform Eric that he had been part of the Pharos Council, which had caused Eric to sigh and ask rhetorically which of his trusted advisors weren’t, and then to tell Michaela that Madden had prorogued Pharos until Hiro’s killer was found. She had simply nodded and gone up to be with Ivy, but Cormac’s sigil had sent a pang through him. Baptiste raised his bushy eyebrows. He must have heard the same thing Cormac had—the almost audible snap of Michaela cutting what was left of her relationship with Madden.

  “How did you know what I was thinking about?” Cormac took an orange for himself. It smelled like bright sunshine.

  “What do you know of the masquerada?”

  Cormac suddenly realized he and Estelle were the only two outsiders here. “Not much,” he admitted. “Probably no more than what the average arcana knows.”

  Baptiste touched his fingers to the sides of his head as if he was a human fortune-teller. “Let me guess. Michaela has already torn a strip off you for assuming she’s weak.”

  “Not quite.” Time to change the subject. “You were consecrated to a tree.”

>   “In the bayou, a big, beautiful bald cypress.” He gave Cormac a broad, knowing smile. “Good try. To be with a masquerada means you need to be able to embrace change. We can’t go without shifting. We have to.”

  “It’s difficult to deal with.” Since it was going to be impossible to move the masquerada from this topic, Cormac decided to be honest. “Not knowing who she is.”

  Estelle leaned over before Baptiste could answer. “She’s always Michaela. Always.”

  Michaela or Miaoling? What was the true masque? The dinner table was no time to discuss it, so he finished his orange and wiped his fingers. “Tell me about being a seneschal.”

  Baptiste’s eyebrows hit the middle of his wrinkled forehead but he stayed silent. His masque today was an elderly grandfather with long, greying locks that reached to his waist and dark eyes weepy with age.

  “The training is intense,” Estelle said vaguely.

  “The psychic training?” He’d always wondered about the range of the vampires’ compulsion power. If there was an extreme to the impact a vampire could have on the minds of others, the seneschals would be the ones to possess it.

  “Part of it,” she said. “You know vampires have compulsion skills and we build on those. You’ve both felt Madden’s, I’m sure.”

  Baptiste tapped the gnarled walking stick by his side with one bent finger. “He’s strong.”

  “Very. Don’t underestimate him.”

  “How well do you know Madden?” Cormac asked. He made sure to let his gaze rove casually around the table, as if the three of them were talking about nothing more interesting than the weather. Stephan stared at them, his fist clenched around his knife. Cormac gave him a serene smile.

  “We had a few of the same teachers, although he’s much older than me. He wasn’t able to—” She glanced over and grimaced. “Never mind.”

  Cormac wanted to know more about Madden. “He’s not seneschal level.”

  She laughed. “Did that ever piss him off. Tell me why you want to know about Madden.”

  This was easy enough to answer truthfully. “I don’t trust him, and the way he speaks to Michaela makes me want to slam his head through a wall.”