“Leave us alone,” was Char’s response.
Geoff shook his head. Now was not the time to push her. “Fine.”
He got up and walked away. Might as well give her time to get used to the idea. Time to say goodbye.
Curiosity led him toward the scent of magic mixed with smoke. He glanced into the theater, and tasted the air. Dark magic permeated the place, centered on the empty stage. A human had died there, and a vampire had done the killing. Geoff wondered what that was about. The resident vampires must have taken care of the mess, because there was no physical sign of violent death in the auditorium.
Geoff backed out of the room, and continued following scent. It led him into the damaged tower, where he splashed through occasional puddles and dodged emergency lighting. There were still firefighters around, and rescue workers making a cautious, slow search of the premises. Geoff cautiously made sure that none of them saw him. He eventually found his way to a room where the dregs of magic hit his senses like the stench of a rotting corpse.
Again, any traces of death, or supernatural dealings, had been wiped away, but Geoff could tell that this was where horrible things had occurred. He wondered if the hotel vampires had spread their cleanup assignment to the mess running amok on Fremont Street. The mortals working that emergency could certainly use help in hiding evidence.
Instead of backing away from the ugly vibes that still lingered in the place, Geoff was drawn to explore. It was a large room. Geoff guessed that it had served as a dressing room and storage area for the late stage magician. He moved aimlessly from object to object for a while. Everything was wet. Everything smelled burned. The place reeked of evil. It occurred to him that if the dragon had been born here, the place should be more damaged. It also occurred to him that there was a reason the place was mostly untouched. Something magical was still in the room. It had protected itself from the fire. And it was calling to him.
Geoff stopped in the middle of the room, and considered options. Magic was something to use. You couldn’t let magic use you. Valentine would say that that was just spoiling it. Still, one shouldn’t look gift horses in the mouth, either.
So, Geoff let the magic call him across the room to where fire-damaged furniture leaned at odd angles around a fire-blackened coffee table. Resting on one of the damaged chairs was a blue plastic notebook. It was cool to the touch when he picked it up. There was no sign of any damage to the notebook, or the paper inside it. It was far heavier in his hand than it should be. And there was a subvocal hum emanating from it. The hum held an invitation to look inside, and discover the secrets of the universe.
Geoff didn’t take the spell book up on its invitation. “Not yet,” he said. This was not the time or the place to study a spell book. Everyone, and everything, that had been part of tonight’s disasters needed a cooling-off period. Once he was calm, ready, and well away from this epicenter of magic, Geoff thought he might peruse the object that had given itself to him.
He tucked the notebook under his arm, and walked back to the lobby. Once back at the spot where he’d left Char and Haven, he stopped for a moment to take a frustrated look at the couch. He shook his head thoughtfully, but said and did nothing.
He sat down in the deep, comfortable chair, and waited for Valentine to return.
Chapter 22
“GOOD EVENING, MADAM.”
Valentine looked at the obsequious minion waiting for her by the elevator, and sneered. Good evening, madam? What was that about?
“If madam will come with me, please.”
She stepped out of the carpeted private elevator car and into a hallway. The walls were of shining black marble, the floor was bright white. When she felt the coolness of the polished stone against the soles of her feet, she looked down and noticed that she wasn’t wearing shoes. It took Valentine a moment to remember that she’d found it easier to run across the hot ashes to Jebel barefoot than in slippery, grit-filled sandals. Chalk up a pair of shoes Ibis owed her, along with all the other aggravations of this night.
“Madam?” He was dressed, and sounded, like a butler. Except that he was dressed all in black. He even had a very upper-crust British accent.
She wasn’t in the mood for niceties. She waved a hand at the butler. “Shoo.”
He bowed, and backed up a few steps, almost disappearing against the shining black marble of the walls, except for a pale face that stood out like a thumb. “As madam wishes.”
This left Valentine to her own devices in finding Ibis, but that was hardly difficult. Ibis had requested her presence; she had but to follow his mental trail down the hall, through a large meeting room, and through a door into a private office. She spotted other black-clad retainers outlined against the wall and the tall windows along the way. They all exuded an air of obsequious helpfulness that set her fangs on edge. But all this alert, respectful niceness was a hallmark of Ibis’s style.
“You’re laying it on thick,” Valentine said when she opened the door and stepped into the inner sanctum of one of the few vampires older, and shorter, than herself. He also wore more makeup, but he’d never lost his Prince of Egypt manner.
“I was never a prince,” he corrected her thought. “Merely a humble vizier, high priest, physician, and royal architect. These days I dabble in being an archivist and businessman.”
“And troublemaker.”
He inclined his head slightly. “Declare me one, if you must.”
“Your credentials remain impressive.”
“Thank you, Lady of Snakes.”
Valentine frowned at the title, but she crossed her hands over her breasts and inclined her head piously. “I am but a retired servant of that Lady.”
“And of the Other Lady? Our Lady?”
“I’ve been known to come out of retirement to do her bidding.”
“As you did tonight.”
He was sitting with his back to the high, wide windows. The view was disconcerting, but Valentine wasn’t going to let it get to her at this point. She plopped into a comfortable leather chair opposite Ibis, and stared across the wide glass-topped desk at him. The desk reflected the city lights. The room was dark, but for the glow of the neon, the moon, the stabbing beacon rising from the tip of the Luxor pyramid, and their reflections.
“What do you think of the Luxor?” she asked. “Remind you of home?”
“I quite like the place,” he answered. “They have the colors right. That’s a hotel design I would have gone with if it hadn’t already been done. Recreating the city has proved more useful.” His smile was sly, his whole attitude very, very smug. “And fun.”
Fun. Ibis called all the chaos fun? “What is up with you?” she demanded.
The little, shaven-headed vampire folded his sturdy, workman’s hands together on the desk top. “Blood-wine?” he asked politely.
She grimaced. “I don’t drink that shit.” She looked at the servant hovering attentively by the door. “Get me some coffee.”
The minion bowed and immediately hustled off to do her bidding. She smiled after the servant. “Do you ever get up and do anything for yourself?” she asked Ibis.
When she looked back at him, he shrugged. “I like keeping a few layers of functionaries between myself and any project I initiate. Be it pouring a cup of coffee—”
“Or causing a hell of a lot of damage to strigoi society,” she finished for him.
He shrugged again. “Damage? I have caused no damage. I have harmed none.” He smiled, crinkling up the corners of his artfully painted eyes. “Who have I harmed personally with this night’s activities?”
It was Valentine’s turn to shrug. “How about your investors?” She waggled a finger at him. “I own some stock in this property. If I lose money because of the fire—”
Ibis put up a hand to silence her. “You will lose nothing. I will pay for the necessary repairs out of my own pocket. In fact, the media will praise the safety precautions taken by the hotel in isolating any possible fire damage.
No one was hurt, no guest’s property was damaged. The Silk Road’s reputation will be enhanced rather than trashed.”
“You planned to damage the hotel?”
“Don’t I always plan for everything? Let’s say, damage to the property was factored in to the actions I foresaw taking place.”
Ibis was a seer of great ability, Valentine finally recalled. “You had a vision of tonight’s proceedings?”
“I did. And then I set the events to fulfill that vision in motion,” he admitted. “It seemed like a good idea. My public relations team is already spinning the story to put the blame for the fire on the late Mr. Morgan Reese. He will be found to have been most unstable and reckless. Which he was, of course.” Ibis smiled. “That was why I had him hired. He was quite a perfect pawn.”
The servant brought back her coffee, and a glass of wine for Ibis, then faded into the shadows again. Valentine sat back and savored the scent of the coffee, and the texture of the bone china cup. She was tired, drained, but there was a thrum of excitement beneath the layers of stress and strain.
“The call to adventure,” Ibis said. “It has always been part of you.”
“I’m retired,” she reminded him. “I write scripts. I’ve started a novel. I don’t try to change the world.”
“You did try not so long ago,” he said. “Remember the original script for If Truth Be Told?”
She didn’t ask how he knew about her having tried to out the Enforcer of Los Angeles. She’d convinced herself that trying to tell a little bit of truth about the current state of the vampire world had been an aberration, not a small act of rebellion. “I had writer’s block. It was only a plot for a low-budget horror movie. Nobody would have believed it.” She drained the very hot coffee in a long gulp, then put the cup down carefully on the glass desk top. “Writing about Selim’s life wasn’t the same as your building a hotel based on the lost city.”
“Yes, it was.”
“I didn’t get to make the movie, though, did I?”
“The Enforcer of Las Vegas was more lax in his duties than the Hunter of Los Angeles. You should have written about Duke instead. You still could. A movie about a corrupt cop coming to a bad end might be interesting.”
“Been done recently. With Denzel. You haven’t seen Training Day, have you?”
“Did it have corrupt vampire cops? Did it have a young Nighthawk couple struggling against outmoded taboos as the love interests?”
She shook her head.
“There’s a convention center full of producers in Las Vegas this week, Valentia,” Ibis went on. “I knew you’d be in town for it. Why don’t you pitch this corrupt vampire cop picture to them?”
Ibis had always been seductive. She hadn’t fallen for it for a few thousand years. “What is your agenda this time?” she demanded. “What is your problem?”
“My agenda is the same as always. Truth for all. Knowledge is power. Equality for the masses.”
“Oh, Goddess,” she muttered. “Here we go again.”
“You used to agree with me.”
“I agreed that the city was a decadent cesspit, but did I help you destroy it?”
“The Mongols destroyed it from without,” he said. “And rebellion by the abused companions from within.”
“And we both know who the brains behind both attacks was.”
He put a finger to his lips. “My dear—”
“Did it do any good?” she demanded. “We both know that it did not. The survivors went even more conservative. They abandoned the old ways completely. Did they return to being protectors of the mortals and treating companions as cherished lovers? No, they did not. Out of fear they enslaved companions with even stricter rules that bound them as property. They organized the Nighthawks—my children—as servants to their new Council, to their petty, perverse, inflexible Laws of the Blood.”
“And while they messed up our society, you did what?” he questioned.
Valentine let out her breath in a deep whoosh. She knew better than to get up on a high horse with Ibis. “Hey, I tamed Istvan,” she replied, pointing out at least one proactive action in the last few hundred years. “He would have killed every vampire on the planet if I hadn’t had a talk with him.”
“He ended up working for the Council.”
“Which did need someone who could take out any Enforcers that went bad. Even the Strigoi Council has a few good ideas. They have kept the underneath together.”
“They’ve kept a stranglehold on our society. There’s nothing but repression. There’s been no growth, no change, no adapting to modern times. They teach our kind to enslave, but not to love. I will agree that most of the Enforcers have fought for justice. They have punished evil. They remain your children, though most of them don’t even know you exist, dear Lady Valentia. The Council hasn’t corrupted them. It’s time you came out to lead the Nighthawks again.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t.”
“Once the strigoi population knows about the Scrolls of Silk, and Martina’s scientific data, the Nighthawks will have to justify their existence. They’ll need you to organize them.”
Valentine was on her feet. She leaned forward, her hands flat on the desk. Glaring at Ibis. “You let that information out? Martina was working for you?”
“She did not knowingly cooperate with my plans,” he answered. “Martina didn’t know much about anything. But her self-centered stupidity made her useful.”
Valentine scraped her claws loudly across the polished glass. She got some satisfaction at Ibis’s wincing at the sound. “You know, I think maybe I ripped off the wrong head this evening.”
“Don’t be peevish, Valentia.”
“My name is Valentine. I don’t do revolutions.”
He was totally unfazed by any declaration she might make. “Then perhaps your Geoffrey will take the proper actions. Perhaps Char will. Perhaps Haven will. Each has their own goals. They are freedom fighters. Each came to the Silk Road looking for something. Haven wants to help the companions,” he informed Valentine. “Char wants to be a superhero, to protect the world of day as well as the world of night. Geoffrey is a modern man. He cannot and will not be trapped in the past. I built the Silk Road for them. All they had to do was come to me and ask for whatever they needed. Of course, they suspected a trap.”
“They’re smart kids.”
“And I built the Silk Road mostly for you.”
“Bullshit.”
“I used Martina. I used Reese. I used poor Ben Siegel and his companion, which I do regret. I did what I had to do to start the revolution—”
“Without getting caught,” she interrupted his practiced little speech.
He sat back, and folded his hands again. “Of course. I never get caught.”
She held up an index finger. “Excuse me, but I would say that you are well and truly busted.”
“Not by you,” he said, utterly confident. “If you kill me, it will be a victory for the Council. You’d never let them win a big one. You know the world needs me. Someday, some way, I will change vampire society back to the way the Goddess meant for us to be. We are meant to work our way back to the light by doing good. Young Char has the right ideas. So do Haven and his online crew.”
“His what?”
Ibis was on a roll, and wasn’t going to be deflected from his preaching by any questions from her. “So does Geoff.” He leveled his dark, intense, persuasive gaze at her. “So do you. I can shape the pattern. It is up to others to bring the pattern to life.”
“You’re as agoraphobic as I am,” she realized.
“Worse.” He blinked, having deviated from his script. “I can look outside, but can’t bear to go out. Everywhere I go, I go in spirit form.” He took a moment to look at the lights reflected in the desktop, then raised his gaze to her once more. “Where was I?”
“Revolution. Blah, blah, blah.”
“What do you think it means?” he asked softly. “The Law that says ‘Beware of the Light�
�?”
She gestured toward the bright, bright, beautiful city of light behind them. “I’ve seen what that does to the neon junkies.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think that’s the light the Law means. I think the light they want us to beware of is the light of knowledge.”
“Bullshit,” she replied.
“When did you get to be so reclusive?” he questioned. “So—uninvolved?”
Valentine thought about it, and frowned. “You know, I don’t quite remember. When the psychics started dying, maybe. That—hurt.”
“It was the fourteenth century,” he said, nodding gravely. “You had to be there.”
“It’s not the fourteenth century anymore,” she added, because she knew he would.
“I could use your help again tonight.”
His expression and tone had changed. He wasn’t talking about anything to do with his revolution now. Valentine relaxed, remembered that she was tired, and sat back in the comfortable leather chair. “What?”
“You did the right thing when you let Ben kill Reese.”
“Are you implying that I don’t generally do the right thing?”
“You’re a lazy flake,” he said. “That’s the truth, not an implication.”
“Now you’re insulting me? Me, who holds your life in my hands.”
“You do, of course. But you won’t take it.”
“Why not?”
“You know how fattening I’d be. You’ve always watched your figure. And now that you work in Hollywood . . .”
“You insult me,” she said, forcibly keeping to a more formal tone. “You, who have never been anything but a troublemaker. And who is not even a Nighthawk.”
“Not even?” His heavily arched eyebrows went up. There was amusement in his dark eyes. She never had been able to scare him. No one could. “Do I detect a hint of racial prejudice in your tone, my pretty Valentia?”
“Snobbery,” she countered.
She wished he’d stop calling her by that name. It wasn’t even her real name, but a version of it that she’d adopted sometime in the Roman era because her then companion had found her ancient name too hard to pronounce. Having had his tongue cut out before he was forced to be a gladiator hadn’t helped his speech. Ibis, at least, knew her real name. As she knew his.
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