“Oh, I remember that pudding from last night. It was delicious,” Caroline said as I pulled up a chair beside her. I fed her a generous spoonful, earning myself a kiss, before digging in myself. She was right. It reminded me of butterscotch with a hint of dark chocolate and was damn tasty.
The screen was split between high-angle views of the sitting room and bedroom of the suite which were decorated contemporary with little historical touches like chaise lounges you could lay on Roman-style, marble columns, tile mosaics and painted marble busts.
We watched one of Julia’s maids style her golden waves into a crown of hair, while another applied her makeup and jewelry. I finished up my pudding and was about to suggest we fast-forward again when Valmont entered through the door that connected the bedrooms of their suites. Julia stood, shooing away her maids.
“You are a vision of divinity,” Caroline said, translating Valmont’s French.
Julia responded in the same language. “As well I should be. Are you certain the effect is appropriate?”
She wore a timeless, curve-hugging evening dress with a high neckline. The fabric was white but had an undercurrent of gold that shimmered when she moved and was accented with a tasteful assortment of Roman necklaces and bracelets. It reminded you of her pedigree without being a period costume.
Valmont slunk over in his ribbons and ruffles and made a show of studying her. “You are perfection itself,” he said, caressing her cheek. Trailing his fingers down her neck and the front of her dress, he circled her, hands roaming. “You are august and inspiring, yet sensual. You are Venus incarnate.”
As much as I hate Valmont, I still wish I could be smooth like that. Why does it always seem like only assholes can pull it off?
“As always, you make me feel both a worshipped goddess and a slave at the auction block,” Caroline whispered over Julia’s Latin.
“Such is the nature of desire,” Valmont answered, “to make fools of the wise, servants of the powerful and divinity of the desired.”
“Do not presume to speak of desire to me, as I am the one who instructed you.”
“And what a fine instructor you were.”
We watched as Julia stepped away from him with a deep breath. “Enough of this. Loathing these tiresome feasts as I do, any further seductions shall most certainly cause me to forget my manners and take my repast here instead.”
“Have no fear on that account, my mistress. My entire design was to stimulate without satisfying,” Valmont said in Latin with an impish smile. He bowed formally. “A device to keep your interest peaked.”
“Ha! Wicked boy. Come, let us suffer the festivities…”
As they left the suite, Caroline sat back and considered what we’d seen. To me, it seemed fairly obvious but I’m sure Caroline read into the choice of words and other subtleties. I just sat back and waited rather than say something stupid or argumentative.
“How’s it going, Ash?” she asked after another minute.
Ash answered without pausing in his work. “Valmont tried to encourage foreign aid and investment again. Practically auctioning off entire governments. Gotta wonder what his Praefectors think of that policy.”
“Oh, they don’t care,” she said with contempt. “Valmont and his cronies are happy to spend as little time managing their territories as possible, so long as the money keeps coming and the parties never end. Why let a little genocide, starvation and disease spoil the fun?”
“Well, now they’re arguing over what to do about the Middle East. Again.”
That made me smile. “You mean to tell me all the problems over there aren’t just some vamp conspiracy to keep oil prices high? What’s sad is, I almost find that refreshing.”
Caroline finally smiled. “There have been periodic attempts to install Hegemons, of course but the region’s always proven too unstable. The council’s been content to influence the area through human governments and corporations. I suppose the recent increase in terrorism and Bush’s war has them talking direct control again.”
“So, you figure out anything as far as hidden codes so far?”
“Not really,” she said. “But in ten minutes, I learned more about her than in fifty years of dinners and council meetings. I’m hoping there’s a little more of substance after the feast.”
Boy was there ever—just not what we expected.
We sped through a few hours of empty room footage until we saw Julia and her maid come into the sitting room. After using the bathroom, Julia sat down at the vanity again and pulled off a few of her rings and bracelets, tossing them onto the table with a sullen air. As her maid pulled out pins and unwound some of the complex braiding of her hair, I began to worry that this was going to be a study of a Vampyr’s bedtime beauty regiment but Julia snatched the brush out of her maid’s hand with a hissed command to go away. Valmont appeared in the doorway again, having stripped down to just his pants and shirt.
She kept her back to him and dragged the brush through her hair a few times as the maid fled across the suite and into her small room at the other end. “He scarcely took notice when I gave away his own descendant’s robes of office!” she said in English. She switched to Latin, adding, “He smiled! Though I made inference that I had taken Blackwood to my bed and preferred him, he smiled.”
Valmont leaned against the doorframe. “What of it?”
Halfway through a stubborn tangle, Julia pulled the brush out and tossed it among the bracelets. “He knows, Jean-Paul. He knows his oblivion rushes to him and yet he shrugs and makes sport of us.”
“He baits you and you rise to it, as always. Or perhaps he truly does not care. It is of no consequence.”
“He is determined to give me nothing to the bitter end,” she said, scrubbing the makeup from her face with a cloth. “The very same nothing as was ever between us.”
“What is this?” Valmont asked, changing to Latin. “Pity? Regret? Spit those poisons out, dear one. Sound training now as when you gave it to me.”
Julia just stared down at the clutter on her vanity table. “I’ve lost him…”
“Pina…” There was an edge of worry in Valmont’s voice now. “Stop. This instant.”
Caroline and I sat forward in our seats.
“Nothing more than mosaics now … mosaics and busts,” Julia whispered. “Weeks now I’ve strained to recollect a single living image, one moment of breathing life … but there is nothing. How can a mother forget that face?”
“Oh, I see,” Caroline said. “She’s talking about Nero now.”
On the video, we heard Valmont say, “You still have a son.”
Julia looked up at him. “How can I forget … and have no feeling regarding it?”
“Gone dead inside, have you?”
“Oh, leave me alone,” she said, turning back to her table.
“Gobbled all the ashes you could and found they still have no flavor?” He hadn’t moved. “I warned you not to count on reaction from Iago but nevertheless you did.”
“Be gone, I say.” She was hunting around for her hairbrush now but in a slow and distracted way.
“You want to see fear in him. Want him to struggle and crawl back to you and cry for rescue like the unfaithful lover in a melodrama. You think you are empty, so perhaps he will fill you again, eh?” Valmont leaned into her, resting his hand on the tabletop and she cringed away from him. She’d stared down Draco only hours before this!
“How dare you?” she asked but couldn’t meet his eyes. “I’m weary, distracted. Get out and let me rest.”
“You’ve rested enough I think, if this is the shape of your thoughts.” He stood up and whistled sharply. “And I am remiss for letting you sink so far this time.”
We saw Valmont’s two servants enter from his bedroom. They were white, heavily pierced and tattooed South African Dhampirs who looked twenty-something. The guy had long, dark hair while the girl’s platinum blonde top was streaked with bright red and shaved at the sides and back.
/> Julia stood, glancing back and forth at Valmont and his servants. “I told you I require nothing but solitude and rest. Now, as I am your Creator, you will obey when I say to take your slaves and leave me. The hour grows late.”
“Yes, it surely does,” Valmont said, stepping up to her and grabbing her arms. “But if my Creator had not left this despondent, trembling creature in her place, this would be unnecessary…”
That’s when he ripped the front of her dress apart.
It took a second or two for what we’d just seen to register, so we continued sitting and staring in shock as Valmont’s sex slaves ran over and grabbed Julia’s arms. She shouted and struggled as the three of them pulled her over to the huge bed.
Caroline wasn’t translating anymore, for which I was grateful. I didn’t want to watch this anymore. It felt private and I’m not the type who gets off on voyeurism.
On screen, Valmont and his slaves dragged her onto the bed, face down. The maid’s door opened for a moment as she peeked out and then closed again. So much for help from the servants.
When Valmont climbed behind Julia and shoved her torn dress up her back, I turned away and stood. “All right, that’s enough.”
Caroline also had her eyes averted but as I leaned over to shut it off, she said, “Leave it alone.”
“Caroline, what the fuck? I don’t want to listen to a woman get raped, okay?”
“You think I do?” I could see the pain in her expression as she tried to meet my eyes. She swallowed, fighting to keep her voice level. “Valmont keeps calling her sister and referring to himself as a god. She’s begun calling him Gaius and the Dhampirs by the names of her sisters. It’s like some sadistic attempt at psychodrama.”
Not only was the poor woman being gang-raped, she also thought it was her brother and sisters doing it to her?
This was all so very wrong I could hardly believe it, yet I found it impossible to just walk out of the room. As disgusting as this was, now that I knew a little, I needed to know it all. I watched Ash at the console trying hard to ignore all of this and knew why he’d been so reluctant to let us see it in the first place.
“What does he…?” Caroline said to herself, drawing my attention. “He’s challenging her. Of course. ‘Who are you to stop me?’ He’s trying to bring about some kind of catharsis.”
Almost on cue, Julia screamed. Unlike the begging and whimpering, this was a sound of fury and power. I turned in time to watch her throw aside the two Dhampirs holding her arms. I didn’t need a translation when she shouted something along the lines of “I am Agrippina of the Julii!”
She whipped around and grabbed Valmont by the throat and threw him onto the bed. As she leapt onto him and shredded his chest and legs with her nails, she shouted a diatribe which included names like Germanicus, Augustus, Caesar and Venus in harsh, panting breaths. Valmont just lie there, scratched and bloody, eyes closed.
Julia’s eyes burned and her lips stretched back to reveal razor-sharp, fully-extended canines. She struck like a snake, head whipping down between Valmont’s legs with one obvious intention.
It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy but I still flinched away.
When I turned back, Julia rose to her knees: the blood on her lips, teeth and chin said it all. The frenzy had disappeared but the shredded dress hanging from her shoulders like a burial shroud, ragged hair, blood dribbling down her pale body and the oddly untouched Roman necklace across her throat combined to make her a genuine Gorgon.
The sex slaves genuflected from their places on the floor and Valmont rolled over and pulled his knees beneath him to do the same. Face implacable, Julia reached up and tore the ruined dress off, throwing it aside as she rose. I saw nothing in her nudity but cold power, like a statue come to life.
As if to cement the image, Valmont drew himself forward, kissed one of her feet and whispered in Latin.
“What’d he just say?” I asked.
“He called her his living goddess,” Caroline answered. Her voice was oddly flat, not excited or scared or embarrassed or anything. “This is it. This is what we can offer Iago. Whatever Sebastian thought he was accomplishing with this, it’s going to bring him down.”
I looked at the time stamp in the corner and realized that this scene had occurred at exactly the same time Caroline and I had been having our little make-out session one wing over. I felt my nausea return along with smoldering anger.
“Can we please shut this off now?”
Caroline looked at me with a mixture of defiance and embarrassment. “Yes, of course. Look, Avery, I’m sorry that was so unpleasant but we’re fighting for our lives here. We can’t afford to be picky about how we gather the information that could save us.”
I sat down heavily in the chair. This had all been easier when they were just heartless monsters and we were the good guys. “Oh, well, excuse me for hoping we were a little better than that.”
“Dammit, don’t you dare start throwing morality in my face! You have no idea what I’ve sacrificed for the sake of my ethics and what I’ve done to keep things from being worse than they are. We’re better because our goals are humane, while Sebastian and Julia are malevolent but that doesn’t mean that we have the luxury of choosing our methods on abstract and, yes, human definitions of fairness.”
She was as angry as I’d ever seen her, gripping the back of her chair with white knuckles as she leaned toward me. “I told you when we started that this wasn’t going to be easy and you promised to follow my lead. I’m asking you to remember that from now on, because I can’t do what I need to if I have to coddle you every step of the way.”
I stood up, ready to snap off a good exit line like, “Well, I guess I’ll just have to work on being more cold-blooded,” and walking out but Ash interrupted before I could.
“Looks like Wilkes is on his way back. Maybe a good time for you to take off, Avery.”
It was enough to break some of the tension. I decided not to use my exit line, since I felt I’d still be owed the apology if I left things as they were.
Caroline didn’t look at me as I left.
* * * * *
Since the Gathering, I’ve had time to look over the security camera footage, so I can tell you what was happening in that council meeting while I was off in the kitchen. Thank Caroline and Ash for the quotes, however, since their translation from the Latin was the only thing that allowed me to understand it.
The council chamber is a large, rectangular room dominated by the gigantic table at its center. The Hegemons’ chairs can all rightly be called thrones, high-backed and ornately-carved with red silk upholstery. What little light exists in the room is focused on the table and—with the two-story tray ceiling (which Caroline says once featured gorgeous murals of the Continental Congress and Columbus’ landing) painted black and the black marble floor—gives the impression that the table exists in some kind of abyss. The only remnants of the chamber’s Federal style are the fluted marble columns around the table and the giant stained-glass window opposite the doors depicting an American bald eagle with wings spread and the word “Liberty” on a scroll clutched in its talons.
I won’t bore you with all the arguments over international finance, trade agreements and ancient precedents that make up the first three hours of the meeting. The part that matters comes right near the end after a vicious argument over the ownership of Mongolia, which Iago ended up taking away from Draco and awarding to Jade Tiger.
Iago, looking like a man at the dentist’s awaiting a root canal, asks if anyone has any further business to bring before the council.
Sebastian rises, saying, “I do.”
An expectant silence falls over the room and Sebastian savors the moment, letting his gaze touch each one of the Hegemons in turn. “Fellow Hegemons, I ask you to consider how much control you truly wield over your Domains. A foolish notion on the surface but indulge me for a moment. I have thought awhile upon the daily workings of my Domain and have com
e to the unhappy revelation that I have far less knowledge of the offices of those beneath me than I ought. The laws and practices by which my governments enact and enforce their laws, the myriad companies and banks in which I am invested, the political cabals who control others of their ilk, all of these are unknown to me in their particulars. Certainly though, this is a problem of little consequence. For do I not have my capable and honest Governors whom I may rely upon to carry out my wishes without thought for personal gain?”
He pauses for the knowing chuckles his joke produces, as smooth and confident as a well-loved president playing to a crowd of the party faithful.
“Yes,” he continues, “I see nearly all of you have had like experiences to mine. Policies delayed or never implemented and always the endless excuses about legalities, procedural difficulties, cultural obstacles and the lot. Fondly do I look back on the days when I knew every Reeve and Dhampir in my Domain and could, with but perhaps an evening’s preparation, assume their office as though it were my own. Days when I could dispatch a letter of instruction with my own hand to avert a crisis. Now, alas, I must confer with assistants and Governors and Executive Governors. Now I must tread lightly around human laws and mark the ever watchful eyes of human cameras. Now I must act the figurehead and choose from the meek options my Governors allow!”
If the Hegemony council was just a little less stuffy, there would have been a round of applause. Even Draco, sworn enemy that he is, sits forward and listens to Sebastian’s words with unabashed admiration.
Only Iago appears unimpressed. Seizing the natural pause in Sebastian’s speech, he slips in to cut him down. “I’m afraid circumspection of action is one of the necessities of civilization.”
“Theirs or ours?” Sebastian responds without a hitch, stealing the thunder from Iago’s would-be zinger. “Perhaps I am mistaken but it was my understanding that we controlled the humans and not the reverse.” He pauses here for effect, looking grave. No one attempts to interrupt this time. “Perhaps I am mistaken, at that. For I have saved mention of the most dire threat to our power for last. Even were we to ignore or accept our present limitations, there are the ‘computers’ to account for. ‘Computers,’ those once novel tools for keeping records and performing calculations, will very shortly be the end of us.”
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