Black Arts

by Faith Hunter

  But I wasn’t going to let it stand as totally my doing, because no way was that the truth. At the same time, I also didn’t want to provoke him unnecessarily. It was one thing to annoy the alpha predator over the phone, and totally different to bait the vamp in his lair. I said, carefully, “You used me and my presence here to achieve some important goals.”

  He shrugged elegantly, his head, shoulders, and arms moving as if choreographed. “I am the creature that nature and the Mithran blood has made me. I make efforts to rule with fairness and compassion, but I am not afraid to use the skills and abilities and people at my disposal as I see fit to accomplish ends that will keep my people and my lands safe.”

  Behind him, the door opened. I smelled Bruiser’s scent even before he appeared. He was wearing a new cologne, subtle and citrusy, applied with the light hand of someone who lived with predators who had an excellent sense of smell and an aversion to strong perfume.

  He entered the office proper and stood in the opening, his hands behind his back, as if at parade rest, though as far as I knew, he had never been to war. He gave a smile, his lips pulling slowly as he took in my boots on the table, my slouch, and Leo’s studied patience. “Leo. Jane,” he said, acknowledging us both, in order of social and dominant importance.

  Bruiser—George Dumas—was elegance itself, some of that refinement coming from the upper-class British upbringing, and some from his years acting as Leo’s chief blood-servant, head of security, and Enforcer. Leo’s real Enforcer, as opposed to my part-time job as imitation Enforcer. Tonight he was dressed in slacks and a starched shirt, the sleeves rolled up to show his arms, lean and muscled, and worn, brown loafers, no socks. Which made me smile for reasons I didn’t bother to try to understand.

  “Sit, my primo,” Leo said. When Bruiser sat beside me, Leo went on. “We have several things to discuss. First is the illness of several blood-slaves. It is not the plague. More . . . much like the common cold that is apt to infect humans who do not drink regularly.” To me he said, “George is attempting to discover if they share anything in common. Worse is the disappearance of a Mithran in what appears to be a hoax or perhaps a kidnapping. I speak of this only to keep you informed,” he said to me. “I do not wish you to engage in the search or the investigation at this time. George will deal with this issue. I have other needs for you.

  “Tonight at dusk, I will receive a communiqué from the European Council. There have been rumors of what the call might mean, but rumors are faithless things, promising much and delivering little.” I almost smiled at that, but he went on. “There will be a meeting of the full New Orleans Mithran Council just after midnight to discuss this call.” He looked at his primo as he spoke and Bruiser nodded, understanding some unspoken command. “At that time, I will schedule a gather to announce to the clans the European plans and rulings, as well as to present the new Mithrans who have risen this season.”

  To me he continued. “I wish you to oversee the security for this gather. In-house protocols, safety measures for parking, vetting the waitstaff, and overseeing the caterer’s arrival and exit.”

  A gather was a meeting peculiar to vampires. A powerful vamp could announce a gather and command all the vamps who had sworn him allegiance to show up. Then it was like—and yet very unlike—a democratic meeting. They might party, drink a few humans, maybe have a little sex, because for vamps, dinner and sex went together, or they might get right to business and discuss. Said discussions were not always peaceful; some required persuasion and a battle of compulsive power. Then the gathered would come to some conclusion and act. At least that was what had happened at the gathers I’d seen. “Okay,” I said. “Standard security?”

  “More than that. Many things may change in the next months and announcements will not all be met with joy.” His voice went steely. “There should be no repeat of the events of our last soiree.”

  My lips tightened involuntarily, and I knew Leo saw the small movement. I had screwed up at the first vamp shindig I worked. Werewolves had gotten in by leaping from roof to roof and busting in through the stained glass windows in the ballroom. I had since figured out how they had gotten in and placed more security cameras to cover the roof system and the walls outside the grounds, and while no one could fault me for not knowing that werewolves could leap forty feet, my security measures had still been insufficient. I nodded once, feeling a bit as I had as a kid being reprimanded by a very proper and intimidating principal.

  “We have arranged for enough human warriors to keep my people peaceful and safe,” Leo said. “Derek Lee has been informed that you will be contacting him, and will need his men. There is a meeting of the full security team tonight before dusk. At the meeting, Derek will place himself and his men under your command.”

  Leo always meant more than just what was said, and my eyes narrowed as I took all that in. Derek was placing himself and his men under my command? I’d gotten the impression that he’d rather eat dirt than take orders from me again. It would undoubtedly tick off the former Marine . . . which could be fun. I should bring popcorn. Wisely, I didn’t say that.

  Leo turned his Frenchy black eyes to me. I felt their weight and the leashed power in him as he added, “At the gather, you will be acting as my true Enforcer.”

  If I’d been in big-cat form, my pelt would have spiked up. Leo had tried to make me his true Enforcer once before. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience. But he had said, You will be acting as my true Enforcer. Acting. Not actually being. I glanced at Bruiser, who had polite interest on his face. It wasn’t the expression of a guy who had just been fired in favor of the new girl in town. But something felt wrong with all this—wrong in a “Jane is about to be hoodwinked” kinda way. And Beast didn’t like it, which was odd, because she was bound to the MOC and should be happy about anything that brought her closer to him.

  To make certain that Leo was saying what I thought he was saying, I said, “I won’t permit you to force a feeding from me again.” It came out half growl, and my upper lip curled to show my teeth as Beast leaned in hard, showing her displeasure at the memory of pure predatory dominance. “I will not be bound to you against my will.” Bound more, but I wasn’t saying that part, since Leo didn’t know. “I’ll stake you or die trying.”

  Leo looked away and back up quickly. In a human that might have been a tell, a physical tic that indicated stress or a lie or— “Primo. A moment of privacy, please.” Bruiser glanced from me to his boss and stood, gave a formal-looking nod that could have been a modified bow, and silently left the room. When the door shut behind him, Leo said, “I wounded you. I am sorry.”

  I sat up in my chair and put my feet on the floor. “Say what?” I felt Beast pawpawpaw into the forefront of my mind, and I breathed in through my mouth, taking in the MOC’s scent. He wasn’t lying. There were no stress hormones on the air. If anything, I smelled something that might have been called meekness, if such emotions had a scent at all. Inside me, Beast chuffed with confusion and flicked her ear tabs.

  “A master,” he said, studying his hands on the desk, “does not force his will upon others to feed or to bind. A master does not use violence on those under his care without need. A master, by definition of the word, should never have to resort to such methods.” His hands went flat to the table as if holding himself down, and his eyes went unfocused. As if memories carried him to places he’d rather not revisit.

  “I was close to reentering devoveo when you saved me from the hands and fangs of my enemies. I had been drained, Jane. Tortured. And you freed me. To save me, my people fed me full, beyond volumes even Naturaleza might drink. They brought me both humans and Mithrans and I drank deeply, nearly draining the cattle, in order to keep me from the brink of true-death. But it was not enough. My body healed, but my mind was . . . fragile. My . . . instability . . . was not an excuse for what I did, as Americans say, but this does offer some explanation.”

  My mouth had gone dry during his halting words and I had to
fight to breathe slowly, but calm was far from me. I knew Leo could hear my increased heartbeat, and smell the shocked pheromones seeping through my pores, because his pupils dilated. It was a vamp predator reaction.

  His control held and he went on. “Perhaps if my heir had not been recently risen from being put to earth. Perhaps if my primo had not been recently risen as Onorio. Perhaps if my Mercy Blade had not been acting upon agendas of his own, and perhaps if the priestess had not kept information from me . . .” He shrugged again, and this one was far less graceful. “Perhaps many things. I was powerful, full of the blood of my people, but I was not in control when I forced you, when I drank from you against your will and attempted to bind you. I was not myself.”

  Leo raised his eyes from his hands and sat back, moving slowly, the way one predator moves in the presence of another, to not startle or give cause for attack. “Your eyes glow golden,” he said, his voice like a caress. “There is nothing in the few histories of skinwalkers that speak of such a bright glow. Yellow eyes, yes. But not this glow.”

  I struggled with my heart rate, trying to keep it steady as Leo said aloud something that been my secret, mine alone, and then mine and Molly’s, for so very long. But my flesh went hot as I thought about what he might mean by the histories of skinwalkers and I had to wonder what he had discovered. What his priestess might have told him.

  Leo went on. “You are different from others of your kind, I think.”

  Beast’s hackles rose and I shoved down on her, feeling her slink away, her surprise as intense as my own that Leo would talk to me about all this, about any of this. But like any cat, she was also amused and delighted at the power play and at Leo’s . . . tentativeness, was the only word I could find. She sat in the back of my mind and extruded her claws, pressing them into my mind. It hurt. She intended it to.

  When I didn’t respond, Leo lifted the fingers of one hand, as if throwing something to the side. “But that is of no matter. What is imperative is that I make this right. I forced a feeding. I hurt you.”

  I nodded, the movements jerky. My hands gripped the upholstered arms of the chair as if to keep me in place. “When I took your blood, against your will, when I attempted to bind you against your will, I broke . . . not law, but . . . custom, perhaps. That which is custom for masters. For the forced taking of your blood, I owe you a boon,” he said, “at the very least. A great boon. You could have half of my kingdom.” He smiled, but I just stared, not acknowledging his use of scripture in the analogy. “Until such a time as you claim it, you own part of me. I am yours to command.”

  “Ummm.” Yeah, that’s telling him. But really. What was I supposed to say? And You own part of me? Say what? I said instead, “But you gave blood to help Misha’s daughter Charly stay alive.”

  “That was charity for one injured by Naturaleza.”

  “Okay. You owe me a big honking boon. Gotcha.”

  He didn’t smile. “And”—he took a breath, deeper than the ones that simply allowed him to talk; it was a human breath in its depth—“at some time in the future, when you are able”—he looked back at his hands and said in a perfectly human tone—“I would have your forgiveness.”

  If one of my vamp enemies had been in the room, he could have meandered over and drained me dry, before I could react, I was so stunned. “Uhhh.”

  “George and my servant whom you call Wrassler have additional information for you regarding the gather. You are dismissed.”

  Like usual. But this time I didn’t even care. I stood, walked to the office door, and out into the hallway. Bruiser was waiting for me. Leo’s primo looked me over, lifted a single elegant eyebrow, and closed his mouth on whatever he was going to say. Instead Bruiser said, “You look . . . peaked.”

  “Yeah.” I blew out my breath and stuck my hands deep in my pockets, my shoulders up near my ears. “I think that means I look crappy.”

  Bruiser smiled, the motion slow as he took me in again, his eyes roaming almost possessively. He gestured along the hallway, indicating it was time for us to move. When we were some ten feet from Leo’s door, he said, “You do not look crappy. You look lovely.”

  I shook my head but I couldn’t help the grin his words brought to my lips. I wasn’t a lovely woman by anyone’s estimation. Interesting, maybe. When I was all doodied up maybe a bit better than interesting. But never lovely, which implied more natural grace than I’d ever had and bone structure that was less strong. But I wasn’t good with compliments and so I just shrugged and followed him. Which was easy. Bruiser had, by far, the best butt I’d ever seen on anyone, and it flexed as he walked toward the front of the building.

  “The boss said you have info for me?” I asked, changing the subject from me and taking my attention off his backside, to something I could converse about. Like business.

  “Yes.” Bruiser’s lips pulled down into a scowl and he turned to me, tilting his head down so our eyes were on a level. “We have a Mithran missing, in a strange manner, and I have a bad feeling she is true-dead.”

  “True-dead how? When you behead a vamp you have a lot of proof, most of it bloody and gory and hard to get out in the wash.”

  He slanted his eyes at me again, dark humor lurking around his mouth. “Strange. Like something out of TV or film. One of Leo’s newly freed scions disappeared from her sleeping lair overnight. The only thing left was her jewelry, her clothes, and her personal items.”

  “No body. No head,” I clarified.

  “No. And nothing to wash out.” He smiled.

  “She maybe left with someone?”

  “No. Her new blood-servants went to bed with her. When the boys woke, all that was left was a pile of dust. Ash and some kind of granules, actually.”

  My mouth opened and closed. I had nothing to say to that for way too many steps down the hallways. I figured the term boys meant her young blood-servants. Ewww. I managed “That is weird, even for fangheads. The boys hurt her? Burned her to ash?” Though I had no idea how that might be possible.

  “No. Leo sent a master he trusts to drink from them. At dawn, they went to sleep in a pile like a bunch of puppies and when the boys woke, she was gone.”

  From a side corridor Wrassler emerged. “You tell her?”

  “I did. She seems as bemused as we are.”

  Wrassler popped the knuckles of his left hand, and then the right, and what would have been snaps in an ordinary-sized human were more like thunks from his meaty hands. “I’ve been handling it.” He looked at Bruiser and something passed between them that I couldn’t decipher in the heartbeat of time it lasted. “I got a minor promotion to security chief.”

  I thought about that for a moment. The primo was security chief as part of his duties as primo, but he seemed almost indifferent at the change in the status quo. I wondered if the change was due to Bruiser’s own change in status to Onorio and if he’d share later, or if I’d never be told what was up. Never was more likely. Even if Bruiser was some kinda superblood-servant, that didn’t mean he would be free from loyalty to Leo. I did wonder if Superblood-Servant warranted his own comic book and I had to smother a laugh at the thought of him in a black bodysuit and bat wings. “Huh,” I said, fighting the laughter. That’s me. So good at soliloquies.

  “Reach is researching any similar occurrences in the histories,” Bruiser said. “It’s nothing to worry yourself over just now, but be aware. Wwwrrassler”—he stumbled over the nickname and I let a smile form—“will send you reports if we hear anything useful.”

  I’d rather not spend my time bent over a bunch of electronic gear researching, so I wasn’t going to ask for the gig unless it got more physical—boots-on-the-ground kinda stuff. I shook my head. “Yeah. Okay. What do you know about the gather?”

  “Boss is nervous about it,” Wrassler said. “Which is why he’s got Bruiser overseeing the caterers personally, handpicking the blood-meals, getting his pet designer to make sure everyone’s clothes coordinate.” He ran his hand over his scal
p. “Leo hasn’t been this worried about a meeting since the leopards came to visit.”

  “Who’s the visitor?”

  “Don’t know. But scuttlebutt says the gather will be to discuss a future visit by the European Council.”

  I stopped dead at the top of the foyer steps, and so did the men. Wrassler wore worry on his big, flat-featured face. Bruiser was watching me work it through. “Leo said he’d be getting a communiqué from the EC,” I said. “Not a phone call or a chat, but something that might be considered an order or a plan of action. The vamps from the council are coming? Sometime soon? Not their human lackeys?”

  “That’s what I hear,” Wrassler said. “If the gossips are right, it’ll be the first time the top European Mithrans left the continent since the eighteen hundreds, and the visit could be, maybe, in as little as six months.”

  Six months seemed like a long time away, but to a long-lived vamp that was an eyeblink of time. I guessed the vamps had a lot to plan. The European Council probably traveled with their entire households, steamer trunks full of clothes, dozens of servants, a lawyer or two, interpreters, cooks for the humans, maybe provisions of food that their blood-servants couldn’t get here. . . traveling like visiting heads of state. If visiting vamps was the kind of rumors Leo had been talking about, then no wonder he was worried. I would have to readdress every bit of security, both physical and protocols, for that kind of gig, which was why Leo wanted me as acting Enforcer. I was more up-to-date on current security hardware than Bruiser, his real Enforcer. I started down the stairs again, Wrassler beside me, Bruiser following. And this time I could feel his eyes on my backside and legs. Bruiser was a leg man. I felt warmth rise in me, settling deep inside.

  “In addition to the announcement,” Bruiser said, “we’ll have visitors for the gather, and an introduction of the new Mithrans.”

  Wrassler looked disgruntled at that and rubbed his scalp again, a gesture that meant he was disturbed. “Yeah. I got details.” He pointed to the waiting room cum holding cell just off the foyer. I went with him. Bruiser closed the door after me, leaving himself on the outside without a word. I figured he would catch up with me later. Wrassler opened the small fridge and handed me a Coke. I popped the top and took a swig.