She turned to face him with her hand still resting on a book. The glow of the fireplace lit her face.
“Like that I’m your Sanguis Ancilla.”
He sat down on the sofa facing the fireplace and Lily, enjoying the view of her. “My royal blood lives within your body. It is the highest honor I can bestow without making you vampire.”
“I know Latin. It means blood slave. I’m not your slave, and I didn’t ask for your blood.”
“You are mine, my woman, my slave, my blood.” He should have been gentler with her, but the effect of her scent was overpowering.
“I didn’t agree to that.” She placed her hand over her abdomen. Her expression was one of confusion.
He understood then. “Would you like something for your discomfort? I think there are pills women take.”
“What?”
“To ease your cramps.”
“No, I don’t–” she stopped midsentence, embarrassed. “I need to go.”
“You will stay. You agreed to my protection and I will do what I deem necessary.” He leaned back against the sofa and stared up to the ceiling. Lily started to protest. “We can argue later about this insult to your womanhood, or whatever injustice you feel has been done to your person.”
A knock at the door interrupted him. “Come in,” he snapped, irritated at the intrusion.
A Vantor entered. “Sire, Liam said you must hear this immediately.” The guard’s eyes moved towards Lily.
“Look around, Lily. I’ll be back in a moment.” He didn’t wait to get her response. When they were out in the hallway, he asked the guard, “What?”
“Your brother.” The Vantor took a deep breath. “The boys who carried the lectica. He drained them.”
He’d expected to hear that Liam had protected Cherie from Henry’s unusual demands. “The royal couriers from the queen?”
The guard nodded.
“Is Cherie safe?”
“Yes, and unaware of what he has done.”
Just like his brother to put him in a difficult position. “Dispose of the bodies. If he tries to feed on anyone else, prevent and restrain him.”
“Yes, sire.” The guard bowed and hurried back down the hall.
Krieger yanked open the double doors and slammed them shut behind him. Lily flinched. He grabbed a decanter of blood and poured himself a drink.
“Sit,” he ordered.
Lily moved behind the chair, like she thought it would protect her. “Why are you angry?” As always, she was direct and succinct with her words.
He held the glass in midair and then downed the sweet liquid in one gulp. “For reasons you cannot understand.”
“I’m not an idiot.” Her voice rose.
The look he gave her was uncensored, it displayed more than he’d intended. It frightened her, as it would anyone, and Lily looked towards the door. He moved in front of her. She backed up from him; it pleased the predator, but not the man inside him. “My brother,” he answered her question. “One night he may push me too far.”
“Henry.” She looked up at him.
Krieger felt the pull of her, the need to take her blood, her body. He moved directly in front of her. Lily looked down and quickly brushed past him and moved about the room, stopping to look at the book on the side table, leaning back to see the maps hung from above. “He’s handsome.” She smoothed her hands down the slim line of her dress.
“Yes, he is that.” Throughout his life, Henry had used his male beauty and easy charm to achieve his goals, however shallow they may be.
“What did you want to talk about?” Lily asked.
“The Elder comes.”
Lily pulled a book off the shelf, opened it, and ran her fingers over the pages. “You told me about him. I thought he never left his home.”
“He doesn’t. Or very rarely. Or no one knows when he does.”
“Walter.” She snapped the book shut, holding it against her chest.
Krieger sat, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Walter.”
“He could be with the Elder.”
“Perhaps.” He watched her pace in front of him.
“Would you send me back to Waverly? I mean if Walter is fine.” Lily kept her head down, walking a small serpentine path in the carpet.
“No. This is your home. I am your home.”
She stopped midstride.
“You will stay here while I meet with him.” Lily’s chin lifted with affront. “Until we know more, it is a necessary precaution.” He leaned over and grabbed a remote from the table. With a whir one panel of the wall moved aside to reveal a large screen. He pressed a few buttons. “It’s the sky room,” he explained what was on the screen. “You’ll be able to see and hear everything that transpires.”
“I want to be there.”
“No. He is not alone. He has a detective with him, and some Others.”
She went back to pacing. He could tell she was thinking, hard.
“There is something else I require of you.” He sat back.
“What?” she asked.
“Blood, my blood.”
Lily kept up the pacing in the same pattern, only it grew wider and further away from him. “I’m not comfortable with that.”
“No, I can’t imagine you would be, but events do not move in accordance with my plans. It need not be much, just a small amount, hidden in the taste of another drink, if that would suit you.”
“Why?”
Because I want to give and take of the blood, have it move through our veins, binding us together as the branches of the trees, he thought. “You need my blood. You’ve always needed the blood, for reasons we do not know. It’s why you are healthier now. You know I speak the truth, deep down your body can sense the benefit.”
He waited and expected her to protest, but she did not. Instead she stood still and mute, staring at an old map of the area.
“You’re afraid of the Elder,” she said suddenly.
His anger rolled and pitched as a ship rudderless at sea. “I am afraid of nothing.”
She turned, her beautiful bejeweled eyes sparkling, but held her tongue.
He feared for Lily, feared the Elder would know she was much more than a keeper’s daughter. Feared what he would do if someone tried to take her from him.
Whatever internal conflict she felt was not written on her face. She nodded and waited.
Krieger yearned to open his vein and feel her lips upon his flesh. Later, he told himself, later. Instead he took a wine goblet off the long table that ran along the length of one wall, its wood from the same trees as the doors. He heard the sharp intake of her breath as he cut a thin line along his wrist vein. He filled the glass a quarter full and licked the wound closed. There was nothing but bottles of alcohol to mix with.
“No.” She must have anticipated what he would ask. “No, if I’m to drink your blood then let it be honest.”
Krieger carried the drink to her. She held his gaze, her head high, and reached out to take the glass. Whatever Lily had been was not what she would be.
His blood was thick and left a film as she tipped the glass towards her lips. Lily didn’t sip, nor did she gulp, but drank it demurely as a lady would. With each swallow, he felt his blood like a phantom appendage move through her body. Even in death his blood would live on inside her. When she was done his blood decorated her lips and he reached out to swipe away the stain on her lips.
His hand was caught in the space between them when his mobile vibrated against the table. “Not enough time,” he said to himself, snatching up the phone. “They are here.”
While he was turned to get the phone, Lily had moved into his space. She rested one hand against his back, the other reached for his arm.
“I must go.” He turned, not looking back, not wanting to be enraptured by her, and left the room.
Chapter Eleven
“They’re back there?” Hunter used his thumb to point behind them.
“Yep,” Meirta repl
ied with a smile. “The undead got you worried?”
“I just thought they had to be underground during the day.”
“You talk funny for a Brit.”
He’d noticed that she had an odd way of changing the course of a conversation midway. It was like her mind worked on multiple levels at once.
“My mother was American. I lived here the first half of my life, before I went to England.”
“Oh.” Her lips formed a perfect circle. “The sun’s rays weaken them, and they prefer to sleep during the day, but the older a vampire, the less the elements affect them. The Elder’s vampires are beyond ancient.”
“The Elder’s vampires?”
She smiled at him, and her teeth looked very sharp. He almost asked her what she ate. Somehow that seemed more intimate than the sex they’d had on the plane.
“The Elder has a retinue of subjects.” She placed her hand on his chest. “You, them, us, we are all part of his inner circle.”
“How much further?”
She looked out the Suburban’s tinted windows as the Virginia countryside rolled by. “We’re passing through Middleburg now, should be only another twenty minutes or so.”
He stared at the box on the passenger seat. Leaning towards the aisle, he noticed the seatbelt light was lit on the dashboard. How much did the head weigh? It must be the combined weight of both the box and the head which had triggered the sensor. He pondered the expression a customs agent would have made if they had been required to go through the tiresome task.
“Anything to declare?”
“Yes, this.” He pictured opening the box.
“What’s so funny?” Meirta asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
She had turned her head to look out, her red hair highlighted by what little light filtered through the tinted windows.
“Scientists think there are eleven dimensions. Most of us can only see three, with time being the fourth. It’s strange to think that a cockroach might be more advanced than we are.”
She was always coming out with interesting statements like this not connected to their conversation. Hunter was surprised by her, and enjoyed her company, not just because they’d had sex, though that was an added bonus.
“Why don’t you make yourselves known?”
She turned, searing him with the gaze of her brilliantly green eyes. “We have,” she said.
He could tell she was playing with him. “I mean to the world. Why live in the shadows? Why are you looking at me like that?”
He knew she was a Minder, supposedly able to pick up thoughts. He still wasn’t used to the way she looked at him sometimes, like a cat watching a mouse.
“Why are you nervous?”
“Are you reading my mind?”
Her smile was lovely, like a model whose picture was being taken for a magazine cover. “Please, you’re like an open book,” she replied.
“I’ll have you know I’m an excellent detective, who can keep my personal feelings hidden.”
She corrected him, “You can keep your personal feelings from the human world. I am an Other.”
He could only look at Meirta. There hadn’t been enough time for him to sort through his newfound knowledge. She reached across and placed her hand on his thigh.
“You are human. Vampires were once human. Werewolves are more or less human with a variant gene which mutates them. I am completely Other.”
He wanted to look away from her breasts, he tried to, but all he wanted was to sink into her bosom. Where the hell did he pull that word from, bosom? He found the best way to resolve this situation was to close his eyes.
He slowly opened them when the compulsion was past, and he could look at her again without wanting to. . . No, he wouldn’t think about that. Instead he looked out the front windshield. They were in a valley, just now starting the climb upwards to the peak of the mountain. He knew that the king’s home was at the top, so it wasn’t much further.
“You didn’t answer my question. Why do Others choose to stay hidden from the rest of the world?”
“Seriously, you haven’t figured it out?”
Hunter’s ego bristled at the condescension in her voice. “Oh I’m just a poor, stupid human.”
The driver laughed, slapping his hands on the steering wheel.
“Why would we? The whole world is ours now. It would serve no purpose and might hurt a great many of us. And we don’t live in the shadows. We live in the open, as you, as anyone.”
“What about certificates of birth and legal documents? How do you exist in this world without documentation?”
She sat very still and stared at him. “Ah, I see why you ask now. Almost all of us have that. We are born and die as you. I am from Ireland.”
“What about the vampires?”
“They are different, but there are very few of them.” Meirta shook her head. “It isn’t very hard to acquire another identity.”
They were now at the top of the mountain. The driver turned left onto a small windy road. “That was the keepers’ original purpose, to serve as the human go-between for the vampires, their human face. Now it is not necessary, but for many centuries it was the safest way.”
“How many are there?” Hunter asked.
“Vampires?”
He nodded. She looked past him as she calculated the number. Her pupils were extraordinarily large and, he’d noticed, when she concentrated on something, sometimes changed shape.
“I can’t say for sure. They are pathologically secretive and protective about their race. Somewhere around one thousand would be my guess.”
“That’s it? Why so few?”
The driver slowed down. Hunter took the opportunity to roll down the window to get some fresh air. A military-type fence with rolled concertina wire was on the left, obviously meant to keep people out or something in.
“It’s a government installation. They have all sorts of underground facilities here.” She must have read his thoughts, or maybe he really was that obvious to her. She went back to his question, slipping easily from one topic to the next. “They are smart enough to know that the delicate balance between the two worlds would be compromised if there were too many.”
The suburban turned off the main road and stopped at a guard station. It was built of stone with ornate carvings and looked like nothing more than a quaint English cottage. The guard stepped out and waved the first vehicle through, and then talked to their driver, eventually waving them on. The forest enveloped them, the tree canopy almost suffocating out the light. The lane continued to circle around and up the mountain, until they were delivered to the very top.
Hunter wasn’t prepared for something so vast, so huge, in America. He’d seen the castles of England and Ireland, and knew what an imposing structure was. But what lay before them was massive. The ground had been leveled, and placed on top was a citadel of monumental proportions. The main structure loomed from and above the mountain, high and impregnable, flanked by twin octagon shaped structures hugging either side. The vehicles swung around to the end of one wing where the driveway sloped down, and as he looked through the windshield he saw the yawning opening of the underground garage. Two more guards stood at attention on either side of the opening as they passed by.
The Elder debarked from the lead car. Hunter turned around and watched as two men, vampires, stepped out of the last vehicle.
“They won’t bite you unless you provoke them.” Meirta laughed.
He knew she was teasing him, he half liked it and half felt embarrassed for being so edgy. They didn’t look too different from everyone else. At least they had once been human. The two resembled each other; both had sandy hair, cut very short, and their builds were slim. They were average in height. He stepped out of the vehicle and continued to watch them. It was unnerving that he truly couldn’t tell that they were not human. The scariest monsters were always people who looked like your friendly next door neighbor.
“You got
that right,” Meirta said.
He gave her a hard stare. “Stop that.”
“You’re just so easy.” She smiled, and he knew she meant more than his mind. He couldn’t help how his body reacted to her, but it annoyed him all the same.
“If you would, Detective Hunter.” Huthwiat was hovering by the passenger door, indicating that he should carry the remains of Walter Ayres.
The box was heavy. It must be lead lined, Hunter thought as he lifted it off the seat. It was embellished with symbols he did not know. He looked closer, his mind registering that one of them was also on the wall of the church. Meirta had heard his thought – he could see it by the way her pupils narrowed. Why hadn’t Huthwiat mentioned it?
A man wearing a long robe, almost like a cardinal’s robe except black with red embroidery, and hair cut short to the scalp, walked towards them. He had a confidence about him which marked him as important. His eyes reminded Hunter of a hawk. He looked at the box and then at Hunter.
“This is Merlin,” Huthwiat said. “The king’s advisor.”
Hunter couldn’t shake hands, and he wasn’t even sure that was appropriate, so he nodded slightly. Merlin did the same, and the procession resumed towards an elevator. Hunter’s mind buzzed with questions regarding Merlin.
The doors opened to reveal an industrial-sized elevator, big enough to place a small automobile inside with room to spare. Merlin pressed the button marked two and the doors slid shut.
He half expected to hear elevator music. Maybe a dirge or whatever the undead found entertaining. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Meirta smile. She really had to stop reading his thoughts. Just to get her back, he envisioned her under the table, skirt pulled up around her toned thighs, hair disheveled around her face. He felt her hand cup his ass. Later, he thought, and she nodded.
The Elder did a half-turn to look at them. The gesture reminded him of a school master keeping the boys in line with a look. Before he could think any other naughty thoughts, the doors opened into a cathedral sized room of marble floors, with areas covered in lush carpets, and statues placed in front of each pillar.
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