by Mindy Klasky
“What I—” But then the answer came to me. I’d lived the answer when I fled the Den the day before, when I’d consciously thrust down my agriotis and the urge to fight every living sphinx in the Georgetown mansion.
The Pride had banned me because I was determined to find a way to eliminate agriotis from our lives. I’d promised to search the archives, to study the Old Library, to find any scrap of information that would free sphinxes from the blinding, murderous rage that was embedded in our DNA.
I didn’t want any other sphinx to feel the regret I felt. I didn’t want a single one of Sekhmet’s children to live with the guilt that burdened me every day. I wanted to eliminate agriotis.
But agriotis made us special. Agriotis made us different. Agriotis was our super-power, the thing that set us above all other imperials.
If I succeeded in my quest, sphinxes would be weaker.
And so the Pride had cast me out, rather than give me any protection, any resources I might require. And on some level, in some way, Chris agreed with them. At least, he wouldn’t issue a Command against them.
But he wasn’t abandoning me. He was here, in the kitchen of James’s sanctum. He’d brought me breakfast. He was waiting, patiently, while I thought things through, while I measured out all the whys and the wherefores.
I sighed. “What do we do now?”
He released a breath I hadn’t known he was holding. “Now, I drive you to work. And once you’re there, you can start researching cases that will help your lawyer argue your defense.”
“I don’t have a lawyer,” I reminded him, loading the words with frustration. Now that I was cast out from the Den, I wasn’t going to have a lawyer. No sphinx in the Eastern Empire would dare to represent me.
“You do now,” he said. “That is, if you’ll accept the Sun Lion of the Eastern Empire in your corner.”
I stared at him, shocked beyond words. “You?” I finally said.
“Okay. I don’t actually have a law degree. But I watched a hell of a lot of trials, both mundane and imperial, while I worked the courthouse beat. And the court won’t dare to throw me out.”
The Sun Lion, sitting beside me at the defendant’s table. Chris’s presence wouldn’t turn my case into an open-and-shut matter. But for the first time since I’d read the indictment, I felt a glimmer of hope.
Chris reached out. His fingers brushed my cheek as he tucked an errant lock of hair behind my ear. “I couldn’t stop the Pride, Sarah. But I can do this for you. For us.”
Love.
The word still hovered between us. Now I was totally supposed to say something. I was supposed to tell him how I felt. Instead, I turned my head and leaned into the warmth of his palm. I closed my eyes, searching for the perfect words.
When I didn’t find them, I steadied myself with a deep breath. And I smiled when I met his gaze. “Let’s go,” I said. “Your client will only make her case worse if she’s late to work.”
He knew what I was doing. He understood all the things I wasn’t saying. But he stepped back and let me lead the way to the garage and his waiting car. We didn’t speak, all the way to the courthouse.
6
We may have been silent on the ride across town, but when we arrived at the courthouse, Chris pulled over to the curb, put the car into Park, and gave me a farewell kiss that sent my heart rate into the stratosphere. My lips still buzzed as I cleared Security Level Orange. Another move like that, and I’d be shouting my eternal love from the rooftops.
Or, as the case might be, from the clerk’s office. Where it was just as well that I squelched my amorous enthusiasm, because a trio of mundane lawyers waited for me to open the door.
Like any established business, I had my “regulars.” Davey Callahan, cheerful as ever while he patted his pockets looking for a pen, was ready to represent any human defendant in need of counsel. Eugene Roberts was making his weekly query about cases involving police brutality. Alicia Moran, her breath heavy with bourbon and Wint-O-Green LifeSavers, was prepared to file a sheaf of papers in a number of cases she was handling.
Their matters weren’t complicated. Nothing was life-or-death. And the human lawyers who used the night court were friendly and good-hearted. They made me glad to come into the office each evening. Not least because—I had to be honest—they tended to keep my cat-shifter boss from spending too much time on my side of the Staff Only door.
Eventually, though, the human lawyers had to go about their ordinary lives. I took advantage of the lull in the action to restore order to my desk.
Maybe the day clerk tried to be respectful of my work station. But every single night, I found at least one thing out of place. Tonight was a triple play. My stapler had been left at a haphazard angle, clearly the victim of a drive-by pounding. Someone had slipped a blue pen in among the black ones. The cord on my telephone was twisted around itself in one full loop.
As I twitched each violation back into order, I felt a little more peace settle over my mind. Disorder was like the hum of a leaf-blower in the distance. I wasn’t always aware of what I was hearing until the far-away drone fell silent.
I glanced at the clock. Five minutes to midnight. I wasn’t likely to see another mundane customer that night. I might as well start my real research. I could always key in the emergency code to bring up the human court’s logo to cover whatever imperial business I had open.
I had two choices. I could start with the most dire charge against me: Murder. Or I could start with the greatest number of counts: Revealing imperial secrets to mundane eyes.
There were extenuating circumstances for both. The so-called murder had actually been a merciful coup de grâce. And since that was the charge that could result in me forfeiting my own life, I started my search there.
First, I looked for cases where sphinxes had been charged with murder. Apparently, though, the residents of the Den were preternaturally law-abiding. That, or they were better than I was at not getting caught.
In the history of the Eastern Empire Night Court, only one sphinx had been charged with murder. He’d been a member of the Pride in 1952. He’d gotten into deep debt supporting a naiad mistress, and his gnome banker had finally called in his markers. The sphinx had chosen murder over repayment. Along the way, he’d done his best to make it look like his mistress was the guilty party; he’d tried to free himself up to pursue a relationship with a centaur mare.
The case might make a great TV show on premium cable, but it hardly applied to my situation. Try as I might, I couldn’t find any other murder cases involving sphinxes.
At least, that was, in the electronic files. Despite my best work over the past year, there were still loads of records that hadn’t made it into the computer system. They were maintained in the Old Library, deep in the bowels of the courthouse.
I stood, pushing in my desk chair carefully, so that the arms lined up precisely beneath the computer keyboard and the five wheeled legs were perfectly centered beneath the desk. Obediently, I set the I’ll Be Back clock on the office door, twisting the big hand to twelve and the little hand to two in the morning.
The courthouse’s marble hallways felt colder than usual. My footsteps echoed louder than seemed strictly necessary as I made my way deeper into the building. One long corridor, and then another, around a bend, and past a quartet of long-empty offices. One last hallway, with the familiar door at the end calling to me.
By the time I set my thumb against the sleek, biometric lock, I was fighting an unexpected jolt of adrenaline. Descending flight after flight of stairs, I left behind the bare lightbulb on the landing, letting my eyes adjust to the dimness.
James had been the first person to show me the Old Library. He’d introduced me to the rare books, the disorganized records, and the detritus of a courthouse left to entropy for years.
He’d also shown me the Old Library’s other assets—its boxing ring and gym mats, along with a collection of weapons that would make any museum proud.
&n
bsp; I flexed my right arm, remembering how James had broken it. How he’d healed me with a second draught of his blood.
Then, James had let us into the Old Library with a heavy cast-iron key. Now, a new electronic keypad protected the Eastern Empire’s secrets.
I wiped my sweaty palms against my skirt and typed in my personal code. As I opened the door, I realized I was breathing deeply—not to calm myself, but rather to catch any hint of pine and snow that might remain on the air around me.
But James hadn’t been near the courthouse for months. As much as my heart remembered the winter scent of him, my brain knew he was nowhere in the vicinity.
I had no reason to believe he was even still in DC. Swallowing hard, I fought against my twisty longing for a man who hated my guts.
I shouldn’t even be thinking about James that way. Chris was my boyfriend now. Chris, who had stood by me after the chaos of Judge DuBois’s death and who had brought me breakfast and who’d agreed to represent me in the courtroom upstairs.
The opening library door triggered automatic lights in the ceiling. I raised my chin and stepped inside, looking toward the deep blue gymnastics mats by force of habit. I even twisted my lips into a smile, grimly determined to set aside my memories of James.
An iron collar closed around my throat.
No, I realized, as my fingers automatically rose to tug at the constriction across my larynx. Not iron. Flesh. Bony flesh, determined to cut off my breathing.
I clawed at my attacker, trying to scratch my way to freedom. I succeeded only in ratcheting his grip tighter around my throat. His grip, I was certain, because I could feel coarse hairs under my fingertips—not the pelt of a shifter, but the flesh of a hairy man.
Or, rather, vampire.
The reek of my attacker scorched the roof of my mouth, rank body odor as heavy as soaked newspaper. Below that was a sweeter fug.
Blood. Enough to soak hair or clothing.
My attacker was a vampire, and he’d fed within the past hour. The stench was sharper, deeper, because my brain had been teasing me with memories of evergreen and ice. At least James had prepared me for this precise type of assault.
Rule one: Don’t waste energy fighting a hopeless battle.
I stopped scrabbling at the hands around my neck. I wasn’t going to get a purchase. I wasn’t going to break free by brute force.
As if to reward my common sense, the vampire shifted his hands from my throat. I caught a single breath, short and sharp, and I opened my mouth to scream.
Rule two: Vampires are fast.
Faster than I could bellow a protest. Faster than I could twist my way to freedom. Faster than I could stagger toward the door and the stairs and safety.
He clamped a hand over my mouth, bruising my lips against my teeth and pressing his index finger—hard—beneath my nose. He threw his other arm across my throat, forcing my head against a chest that felt more like oak than muscle.
I jammed my elbow into his side, a single short arc made only slightly more effective by my effort to jackknife forward. Instinctively, I aimed for his lungs, deep inside the bony cage of his ribs.
Rule number three: Vampires don’t breathe.
A human opponent would have grunted. He might even have loosened his grip as he gasped for his own breath. I could have pushed my advantage and stomped on his insole, twisting down and around.
But the creature behind me only jerked my neck to the side. I felt the cold slither of a fang against my jugular. Wet lips, slimy like refrigerated liver, slipped over the vein.
Even as bile rose in my bruised throat, I forced myself to relax against the vampire. I had no choice. I had to battle every instinct; my body wanted me to stay upright, to fight my way to the door, but I had to surprise my attacker. I had to put him off balance.
My ploy worked. His forearm loosened, just enough for me to turn toward him, moving farther into his embrace.
He was unsettled by the surprise motion, startled just enough that I could grab hold of the front of his shirt. Then, I let myself fall, allowing gravity to supplement my own spare weight.
Rule number four: Humans do better on the ground against vampire opponents.
He was stronger than I was. Faster, too. In an instant, he had me on my back, straddling my hips as he renewed his grip on my throat.
Despite his advantages, though, my attacker was poorly trained. As his right fingers closed around my throat, I clamped my left hand onto his wrist. Before he could pull his hand away, I reached across my body, clutching at his upper arm, just behind his elbow. I’d locked his right arm across two vulnerable joints, giving me a tiny advantage.
Shifting my knees and twisting like a fish on a line, I got my left foot against his hip. I knew how he’d respond; any opponent with greater weight and strength would simply flip me on to my belly and shove my face into the floor.
I didn’t give him a chance. Instead, I summoned all my strength, raising my hips and sliding my knee behind his right shoulder. Fighting not to breathe too deeply of the stench that wafted from his cold, cold body, I tightened my right knee against his torso, squeezing as tightly as I could.
Now I controlled three of his joints—wrist, elbow, and shoulder. With whiplash speed, I dropped my hips, using his momentum to pull his forearm across my abs. Before he could regain his balance, I threw my left leg over his shoulder, crossing my ankles behind his back and securing him in a vise between my thighs.
I reinforced my advantage by circling my left arm around his neck, gripping his left shoulder and pulling him close. The motion crushed his arms between our bodies; he had no choice but to release his grip on my throat. Immediately, I squared up my hips, once again setting him off-balance.
With a final jackknife twist, I secured his body with my legs—my right wrapped around his waist, my left anchoring his vulnerable neck. His arm was hyper-extended beneath my right hand.
Vampires might be undead, but they weren’t immune to the pain of broken bones. I pulled up sharply on his elbow, simultaneously using my legs to tamp down any consideration he had of escaping.
He grunted in pain, and I demanded, “Who sent you?”
He started to shake his head, but I shifted my weight, stretching his elbow to the breaking point.
“Who?” I shouted.
When he stayed silent, I dug in hard, not caring when the monster beneath me bellowed. I closed my fingers on his wrist in one last warning, pressing even harder against his over-extended elbow.
“For…the last…time,” I panted. “Who?”
“Richardson!” he gasped just before I shattered his ulna.
Maurice Richardson.
A tiny corner of my rational brain actually expected as much. The courthouse had been poised for an attack by the vampire kingpin for months.
First things first. I had to learn how the enemy had gotten into the courthouse, so we could plug that hole and keep any other invader from breaching our defenses. I renewed my pressure on his arm. “How the hell did you get in here?”
I expected him to say he’d worked with other imperials. A harpy had spirited him through solid walls. A basilisk had frozen the security guards with his poisonous gaze. He’d bribed a gnome to build a new tunnel, delivering his weight in gold.
I never thought he’d force me to twist his arm even further. And I never imagined he would gasp, just before his elbow shattered: “Morton gave me the code!”
7
No.
James couldn’t have anything to do with the animal beneath me.
James would never sacrifice the safety of the courthouse, not after his years of honorable service as Director of Security.
James, the most moral vampire I’d ever met, would never work with Maurice Richardson, the most venal imperial east of the Mississippi.
Maurice Richardson had Turned James, over a hundred years ago. Richardson had Impressed him, stealing his free will.
A chill convulsed my spine. Had Richardson Impre
ssed James again? Was that why James had kept his distance from the courthouse all these months? Why he’d kept his distance from me?
But James was far from the weak, newly-Turned vampire he’d been when Richardson had first taken possession of his will. James had become one of the strongest vampires in the Empire, in the world. And he knew Richardson’s touch. He’d never be fooled into working with his enemy.
Which left one option: James was allied with Richardson voluntarily.
My belly twisting in revulsion—at the disgusting arm I gripped, at the thought of James betraying the court, at the thought of James choosing to join forces with Richardson—I released the enemy vampire, adding a quick kick to his kidney as I spun away.
I used my momentum to carry me over to the far wall. I’d handled the weapons there often enough to set my hand directly on the one I wanted: A silver dagger.
The blade was as long as my forearm. No self-respecting vampire would get near the double threat—a blade sharp enough to sever an artery fashioned out of a metal guaranteed to deliver third-degree burns.
By the time my enemy recovered his balance, I’d regained my position between him and the door. Balancing the knife lightly in my hand, I glanced around the library.
No files were out of place. None of the weapons had been disturbed. A faint whir, though, came from the ancient computer terminal on the far wall. Its monitor flickered, white letters rippling on a dusty black screen. I must have interrupted my attacker before he could locate the electronic resources he needed.
What the hell did James want in the Old Library?
That assumed, of course, that James had actually sent this sorry excuse for a vampire. I couldn’t imagine him talking to the creature, much less entrusting a mission to the sorry piece of crap.
Richardson, on the other hand… He’d do anything to disrupt any aspect of the Eastern Empire Night Court. And he wouldn’t hesitate to lie about James, if he thought that would advance his cause.