by Karen Chance
“So, who’s Jonathan?” I asked, fiddling with the air vents to get them as wide open as possible. The sun was so hot I could taste it, and the road shimmered in front of us like an undulating black snake. It was the kind of heat that made newspaper headlines and started people making dire predictions about global warming. I had brought the rest of the six-pack along, but like me, the bottle in my hand was already sweating heavily.
The only answer I got was a slight increase in speed. “If we are going to work together, we should know something about each other,” I quoted piously.
“The mage is not important.”
“You risked your life to try to kill him and he’s not important?”
I received only stony silence for an answer. Louis-Cesare’s eyes were on the road, but I could see them clearly in the mirror. They were perfect receptors, showing every reaction in those vivid irises. His expression was blank, the planes of his face like those of a statue, cold and unyielding. But when he thought about Jonathan, his eyes were haunted.
“I said, you risked your—”
“It is not your concern.”
“Really? Because that’s not how it looks to me. There was no reason for the Black Circle to hit that airplane. Yeah, it belongs to the Senate and yeah, there’s a war on. But they didn’t just attack it and leave. They waited for us to come back. They waited.”
“We already knew we have a traitor.”
“Yes, but now we know—” I was interrupted by a gasp of agonized sound from the mage in the back. Considering his current state, I didn’t think pummeling him into silence all the way to MAGIC was a good idea, not if anyone wanted to question him later. I found a knockout dart in my backpack and ensured that he stayed unconscious for the duration of the ride.
I turned back to find Louis-Cesare’s eyes on me. “Now we know something else, too,” I continued. “We have to conclude that Drac is working with the Black Circle, unless you think we have two leaks, one informing Uncle of our whereabouts and the other giving the same information to the mages. Personally, I find that a little hard to swallow.”
“It is not impossible,” Louis-Cesare said stubbornly. “There have been cases recently where vampires, some sworn to first-level masters, have managed to break their allegiance. A few even attempted to kill their own sire.”
My beer had left a ring of condensation on the knee of my jeans. I rubbed at it and tried to digest this new bombshell. “Why haven’t I heard about this?”
“The Senate is keeping it quiet. They are afraid that to do otherwise would encourage any vampire dissatisfied with his position to attempt to break their master’s hold.” He glanced at me. “You understand the risk?”
I nodded numbly. One of the main things keeping the vamp world all nice and tidy—most of the time—is the near impossibility of any vamp breaking the control of his sire. Each master answers for his or her children, right up to the Senate level. The only exception to the rule, or so I’d thought, was vamps who reached first-level status. I wondered how many would stay loyal if they had an alternative. Why did I think it wouldn’t be a lot?
“What is the Senate doing about this?” I demanded. If the Black Circle had figured out a way to emancipate at will, we could be looking at chaos—hundreds, maybe thousands, of disaffected vamps, all making their own decisions, with no regulation other than brute force.
“Investigating. We have reason to believe that the method the dark was using is no longer available to them. However, there is no knowing how many vampires were affected before then. The number is unlikely to be high, but it is almost certain that we have not yet found them all.”
Things just kept getting better and better. “As interesting as all this is, it still doesn’t explain Jonathan.”
“Jonathan has nothing to do with our mission.”
“It looked like he was pretty involved to me!”
A parade of emotion finally flickered across Louis-Cesare’s face—pride, stubborness, bone-deep pain—but he said nothing. I’d long ago learned the same lesson—showing your sore spot only allows it to be hit more easily. And Jonathan was obviously a very sore spot for Louis-Cesare. But I had to push. Whether I liked it or not, we were in this together. And there’s nothing I hate worse than fighting enemies I know nothing about.
“That hit wasn’t meant for me,” I said bluntly. “Drac already left me a message, remember? He took out my team and thumbed his nose in my face. Why do that if he was planning to kill me barely an hour later? For some reason, he wants me alive and scared.” At least for the moment. “So he didn’t order the hit on the plane. The mages cooked that one up on their own.”
I waited, but the only response to my nice logical argument was Louis-Cesare’s hands tightening on the wheel. “I’ve had no run-ins with the Black Circle that could explain them sending a whole hit squad after me,” I continued. “So they were after someone else. And there’s only two of us.”
A long pause. “Jonathan is a… personal issue,” I was finally informed.
“There aren’t any personal issues at a time like this.”
Louis-Cesare reached over and flipped on the radio. He settled on an eighties station where Eddie Van Halen was going to town on a guitar riff. Nice, but I suspected he just wanted something loud. I scowled at my reflection in the eggplant-colored windows, wondering when my partner had decided that I’d recently been lobotomized.
The plain fact is, anyone the Senate wants dead gets dead. That holds true even for powerful dark mages. It might be more difficult in their cases and therefore take a little longer, but there’s no one they can’t reach in the end. Yet Jonathan was still alive. Meaning that Louis-Cesare hadn’t asked them for help.
Now, maybe he just wanted to take care of the mage himself—he had said it was personal—but I doubted it. I felt the same way about Claire, but if anyone had harmed her, the Senate would hold him for my tender mercies. Taking their help didn’t mean ruling out personal involvement. So there was something about Louis-Cesare’s history with the mage that he didn’t want known.
“You can’t hide it from them forever,” I told him, just to make it clear that I was keeping up.
“I am hiding nothing.” The words were calm enough, but the Mustang was all but flying down the highway.
I was left with the certainty that whatever Louis-Cesare was keeping from me, it was very personal and very disturbing. But there was exactly nothing I could do about it. “If that’s how you want it.”
His hands flexed on the wheel, their tight clench loosening slightly. “That’s how it is.”
Chapter Seven
“Hey, Marlowe. You ever consider staking your decorator?” I glanced around the once-immaculate suite of rooms that now, like much of MAGIC, resembled a rummage sale in an inner-city neighborhood. A scorch mark in the shape of a human body marred one wall of the laboratory, next to the hall door that was half-torn off its hinges. And if there was a whole test tube or beaker in the place, I didn’t see it.
“Ah.” The handsome brunet vamp spun on his lab stool to face us. He smelled of Cuban cigars, cinnamon and some funky ointment with too many ingredients to list. The latter was emanating from the bandages wrapped around his head. His curls escaped from under them in dispirited clumps, but I didn’t have the urge to laugh. Any wound that a vamp couldn’t heal without resorting to gross-smelling concoctions was enough to have killed a man. It looked like the war had caught up with him recently. “That explains the stench,” he said, with a smile that never came close to his icy brown eyes. “I thought something had died in here. But no, that would be in about ten seconds.”
“Not unless you want Daddy on your ass,” I told him insolently. The few times I’d been to MAGIC had been with Mircea, who tends to make other vamps sweat, crawl and genuflect. I didn’t have that advantage now, but figured I could take a half-dead vamp, even Marlowe, if necessary. “I’m here on family business.”
“You’re a lousy liar.”
“I most emphatically do not need this,” Marlowe said, turning a nearby clipboard over so I couldn’t read it. It probably contained nothing more interesting than the estimated repair costs, but he gives a whole new definition to the word “paranoid.” He makes even me look laidback.
“I may have something you do need,” Louis-Cesare told him, dumping the still-unconscious mage onto the debris-covered floor. “This one was among those who attacked us.”
Marlowe looked the mage over in disgust, while I watched Louis-Cesare. His eyes were perfectly clear, like the sky on a bright June day. He wasn’t worried, which meant that the mess on the floor knew squat about him and. Jonathan. Those summer eyes met mine over Marlowe’s head with a question and I shrugged. I had no vested interest in helping the Senate, and plenty of reasons to enjoy watching them squirm. His secret was safe with me.
“Dislocator,” Marlowe sneered after getting a good look at our captive. He glanced at me. “Do you know the penalty for being caught with one of those?”
“Dark mages,” I said, shaking my head regretfully. “You can’t trust ’em.”
“You expect me to believe that one of his allies threw this at him?”
I was surprised, shocked even. “What other explanation is there?”
Marlowe nudged the guy in the ribs with his toe. “Is that what he will say when he wakes?”
“Who knows? Mages, such liars.” I wasn’t worried. The captain wasn’t likely to rat on the person who’d saved his life, and Louis-Cesare had promised Mircea not to do anything to hurt me. Turning me in to Marlowe would definitely go against that promise. It seemed we both had secrets.
Nonetheless, I kept my bag close to hand, since there were some other unsavory devices still inside. There would be a lot more as soon as I got the chance to visit a certain old acquaintance in Vegas. Drac wanted me alive for now, but why? And for how long?
“We do need your help,” Louis-Cesare was saying, which seemed to get Marlowe’s attention more than my attempts at conversation. I left them to talk things over, because I saw a familiar shadow dart by the door and into a room across the hall. If it had been any farther, I’d have let it go. I have an excellent sense of direction and don’t usually lose my way, yet MAGIC’s layout seems to change every time I’m there. It could be a spell, one of its many built-in defenses, or simply nerves on my part. I strongly suspected that a whole coterie of dark mages would be more welcome around here than I was.
I met another vamp, one of Marlowe’s boys, coming in the door and smiled at him. He bared fangs, but cringed away slightly at the same time, as if I’d really stake him in front of his already pissed-off master. I pushed past him and crossed the hall, noting that it was riddled with bits of serrated iron that were half-buried in the floor. Normally, these form what passes for decorations on the sconces and chandeliers about the place, but in times of attack they become lethal projectiles that target anyone not on the approved list. Since my name was definitely not on that document, I was glad to see that they appeared inactive.
I pushed open the door and saw whom I’d expected. “Hello, Uncle.”
Radu, in his usual swashbuckling attire, champagne-colored satin in this case, froze in place. He had the guilty look of someone caught in headlights with a body, a shovel and a big hole. I found his expression interesting, since not much disconcerts the older vamps, especially not ones who have seen and done as much as he has.
I glanced around, but nothing seemed unusual. We were in one of the small, unremarkable rooms that litter the rabbit warren of MAGIC’s lower levels. Like the one across the hall, this one looked more like it belonged in a hospital or laboratory than a supernatural stronghold. But there were no alien bodies in formaldehyde or anything else to account for Radu’s expression. He smiled nervously, the famous turquoise eyes that had once garnered him the nickname of “the Handsome” wide and scared.
“Stop looking like you expect me to draw a weapon and come after you,” I said irritably. I don’t know why he does that—I’ve never actually tried to kill him—but maybe he figures there’s always a first time. I sat on the edge of a nearby counter and lit a joint, trying to look casual and put him at ease. Considering the tenseness that practically radiated off him, I wasn’t doing so hot.
“You’re a brunette again,” he said, and then looked flustered when he realized that making personal comments wasn’t the best way to start a conversation.
“Temporarily.”
He tried widening the smile, but it trembled on his lips and he soon gave it up. “It has, er, been a long time, Dorina.”
“Dory, and yeah, I suppose so.” I thought for a minute. “Let’s see, World War II was still on. I remember because you were bitching about the Krauts sinking some ship with a bunch of your stuff on it—”
“The blockade, you know, around Britain.” He gestured helplessly. “Such a bother. Some of the rarer herbs simply aren’t available anywhere else.”
“Right.” I glanced around the room at the rows of shelves holding valuable ingredients. “Bet there’s no problem getting unusual stuff now, with you working at MAGIC.”
There was no earthly reason for Radu to jump slightly at that comment. The Senate had used him for the last century as one of its brain-trust weirdos, hanging around the lower levels, concocting God knew what. There was nothing new about it, so his reaction interested me. But since I knew I had about as much chance of getting information out of him as of being voted most popular by vamps worldwide, I switched subjects.
“I’m working with Louis-Cesare now—did anyone tell you?”
He nodded vigorously. “Mircea said something about it. How are you two getting on?”
“Famously. Until Jonathan showed up.”
I watched Radu carefully, but there was no sign that he recognized the name. And if he had, there would have been. It never ceased to amaze me that he and Mircea were full brothers. “Who?”
“Nothing.” I gave him my sweetest smile, and for some reason, he blanched. “I’m glad I caught you, Uncle. I need a favor.”
“There are three great houses of the Light Fey,” I was told by the nondescript little vamp Radu had dug up. He smelled like old, musty books and dust, and was gray all over—hair, eyes, clothes and teeth. But the bookworm knew his stuff; for once, Uncle had come in handy. “The Blarestri, or Blue Elves, are the current ruling house, but their grip is less than firm because their king has no heir. Or, rather, he does have a son—Prince Alarr—but he cannot rule.”
“Why not?” I perched on the overflowing desk, an enormous rolltop like something out of Dickens, that filled most of the tiny office. The vamp was one of Marlowe’s beetles, a group attached to the spy network who acted less as operatives than as librarians. He was one of those responsible for keeping track of info on the Fey, and Radu had called in a favor so he’d allow me to pick his brain for half an hour. So far, it hadn’t yielded much.
“Alarr is half-human, and the ruler must always have a majority of Fey blood,” the beetle explained. “But there are those who doubt that he intends to follow the old ways if they deprive him of a throne. People fear civil war should the king die, for there is another claimant. The king’s sister married a Svarestri noble, and bore him a full-blooded Fey son with royal Blarestri blood. They call him Ǽsubrand—it means the Sword of the Ǽsir.”
“I understood about one word in seven of that,” I told him frankly. “Back up. Who are the Svarestri?” The cram course on Fey politics was already giving me a
headache. And I couldn’t even complain because I’d asked for it.
“The Black Elves, as they are known, are the second great house of Faerie. And because the Alorestri, the Green Elves, have never shown much interest in politics, it is the Svarestri who pose the greatest threat to Blarestri rule. In fact”—he paused to light a pipe—“according to legend, they did rule once, long ago, when the Æsir walked the earth.”
“The who?”
“How can you have lived so long and be so ignorant?” he asked tetchily.
“The Ǽsir were the lords of battle,” Radu put in.
The beetle glanced at him approvingly. “Quite. Said to love war more than the very air they breathed—Odin, Thor and the like. They displaced the Vanir, the older fertility gods, and banished their followers, the Blarestri, from Eluen Londe—”
“What?”
“Eluen Londe.” I looked at him blankly. “Faerie!” he clarified impatiently. “They gave its rule into the hands of those who pledged themselves to their service—the Svarestri—who ruled it until the Ǽsir departed.”
“Departed for where?”
“But that’s the great mystery, isn’t it?” Radu asked excitedly. “No one knows. One day, poof. They simply weren’t there anymore.”
I raised an eyebrow but didn’t question it. I really didn’t care where some probably mythical beings had gone on vacation. “Okay, how about more modern history? What’s the situation now?”
The beetle looked vaguely perturbed. He hemmed and hawed for a while, but the upshot was that the vamps didn’t know squat. There were rumors of turmoil in the Fey capital, and no one had seen the king for weeks, but whether that signified a coup, no one could say. I’d sat through that whole history lesson and learned absolutely nothing useful.