Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  I was so lost in thought, I almost missed Naomi’s answer to my question.

  “You have connections to the werewolves. I want you to ask the Alpha to intercede for us. If Stefan is dead, then so are we. Marsilia will scatter us among the menageries of the other vampires who will imprison us until we die.”

  “All the other vampires kill their…” I almost said food and I couldn’t think of any more diplomatic way to put it so I just stopped speaking.

  She shook her head. “Not on purpose, but most of them don’t have Stefan’s control. But we are Stefan’s. That means that their mind tricks won’t work as well on us—and those of us who are bound like Joey…When a bound one is made over by someone they’re not bound to, odd things happen. I’ve heard people say that’s why Stefan was never properly subservient to Marsilia, that he was bound by a different vampire. They won’t want to keep us around long.”

  “So if Stefan is permanently dead…”

  She smiled bleakly at me. “We all are.”

  “And you believe the werewolves could do something about this?”

  She nodded. “Marsilia owes them blood price. This sorcerer is a vampire—which makes him Marsilia’s business. When the two werewolves joined the hunt they became her responsibility. Since one was hurt and the other—” she shrugged expressively. “If your Alpha asks us as his price, she’ll give us to him.”

  “What about worries over your silence?” I asked.

  “If we belong to the werewolves, our silence becomes their problem.”

  “I’ll speak to the werewolves,” I promised. “But I don’t have much influence.” Especially if Adam and Samuel were dead, too. The thought made it hard to breathe, so I shoved it away. “Tell me about the vampires and how the seethe operates.”

  Naomi gathered herself together visibly, and when she spoke she sounded like the professor she had apparently once been.

  “I’ll start from the general and then go to the specific, shall I? You understand that generalities do not account for variations—just because most vampires follow this pattern, doesn’t mean that they all do.”

  “All right,” I told her, wishing I had a notebook so I could take notes.

  “A vampire likes to keep a food supply at hand, so they live with a small group of humans, usually anywhere from three to seven. Three are enough to provide food for a month before they die, seven is enough for six months—because if the vampires feed lightly on each, their prey lasts longer.”

  “There aren’t forty people disappearing from the Tri-Cities every month,” I protested. “And I know that Marsilia has more than ten vampires.”

  Naomi smiled grimly. “They don’t hunt in their own territory. Stefan found me in Chicago teaching at Northwestern. Rachel’s from Seattle. I think the only one of us Stefan found in the Tri-Cities was Daniel, and he was hitchhiking down from Canada.”

  For some reason, her speaking of Daniel made me glance over by the sink, but sometime while we’d been talking, the young man must have left. When I thought about it, I realized that I hadn’t heard him for a while. It bothered me that I hadn’t heard him leave.

  “So the vampires have to continually replenish their menageries?”

  “Most of them.” Naomi nodded. “Stefan, as you know, does things differently. There are fourteen of us who live here, and maybe a dozen more who visit occasionally. Stefan doesn’t usually kill his prey.”

  “Tommy,” said Rachel in a small voice.

  Naomi waved her hand dismissively. “Tommy was ill anyway.” She looked at me. “When the fae came out, Stefan began to be concerned about the same things that caused the fae to reveal themselves. He told the seethe—and the ruling council of vampires—that they could no longer live as they were and expect to survive. He had already been maintaining a large menagerie because he didn’t kill his people—he has a reputation for being softhearted. I’m told Marsilia thinks his concern for us is “cute.” She gave me an ironic look.

  “He began to experiment. To look for ways the vampire could benefit the human race. He found me dying of leukemia and offered me a chance at life.”

  I did some adding in my head and frowned at her. “Rachel said you were a professor and he found you about the time the fae came out. How old were you?”

  She smiled. “Forty-one.” That would mean she was in her sixties now—she didn’t look it. She didn’t look much older than I did. “Stefan already knew that longevity was something he could offer: one of his bound children had belonged to him for over a century before another vampire killed her.”

  “How does feeding a vampire make you live longer?” I asked.

  “It’s the exchange of blood,” said Rachel. She put a finger against her lips and licked it suggestively. “He takes and then gives a little back. Since I started feeding, I’ve been able to see in the dark—I can even bend a tire iron.” She glanced at me from under her lashes to see how I took her revelation.

  Ick, I thought hard and she frowned at me as if my reaction disappointed her. Maybe she expected me to be more horrified—or intrigued.

  “And my leukemia has been in remission since 1981,” Naomi added prosaically. “Joey said she was always a little psychic, but after she became Stefan’s she could move things without touching them.”

  “Not much,” said Rachel. “All she could do was wiggle a spoon across the table.”

  “So vampires can heal diseases?” I asked.

  Naomi shook her head. “With blood-borne diseases the vampires help a lot, things like sickle-cell anemia and a host of lesser known stuff. Stefan had some success with some of the autoimmune diseases, like MS and HIV. Except for the leukemia, though, Stefan found that he couldn’t help cancer patients—or full-blown AIDS patients like Tommy, either.”

  “So Stefan was trying to create a politically correct vampire?” I asked. The idea was mind boggling. “I can see the headlines, Maligned Vampire Only Wants to Save People. Or better yet, Vampire Estates—Come to our modern community compound. We’ll heal your ills, make you stronger, and give you eternal life.”

  “Join us for lunch,” contributed Rachel with a toothy smile.

  Naomi gave me a dry look. “He’s not that ambitious, I don’t think. And he’s run into problems.”

  “Marsilia?”

  “Mmm.” Naomi looked thoughtful. “For a long time Marsilia was more of a figurehead than a leader. Stefan said she was pouting because she was exiled. After last winter, she began noticing more. He was hoping for her support in his efforts. Hoping she could push some of the others into more humane treatment of their menageries.”

  “But…?” I started.

  “But there are a lot of problems with what Stefan is trying to do. First of all, not many vampires can afford to support as many people as he is—and any less than twelve of us and we start dying. And too, most vamps cannot control as many people as Stefan. There aren’t many vampires who can make their sheep love them.” She looked pointedly at Rachel as she said the last sentence.

  “Stefan says that the biggest problem is self-control.” Rachel said, ignoring Naomi. “Vampires are predators. They kill things.”

  Naomi nodded. “A lot of them choose not to control themselves, they say it ruins the enjoyment of their meal. But all of them lose control sometimes when they are feeding. Even Stefan.” For a moment I caught a glimpse of horror in her eyes, but she lowered her eyelids and banished it. “The longer a person belongs to a vampire, the harder it is for the vampire to keep from killing him. Stefan says that with the bound ones the urge to kill is very, very strong—and it only gets worse with time. He used to send Joey off to her family in Reno for months on end. The urge affects all vampires, not just the one the person is bound to. That’s why Stefan didn’t kill Andre outright. Daniel was bound—it could have been accidental.”

  “Andre’s menageries don’t last very long.” Rachel told me. “He’s never created a vampire except for Daniel because he kills them before their time.
”

  I don’t know what she saw in my face, only heard her start to speak quickly—something to the effect that Andre wasn’t evil. “…not like Estelle or some of the others who like to play with their food.”

  But I wasn’t listening to her, I was looking at Daniel’s tear-streaked face. I’d only met him the once, and I recognized his scent more than his features. He was standing behind Rachel, looking at me and whispering. It took me a few seconds to realize that it had been him I’d seen curled up by the sink. I hadn’t recognized his scent then, but the dead don’t always appear to all my senses.

  Then I realized what he was saying and stopped fretting about why I hadn’t realized who he was the first time I’d seen him.

  “He ate me,” he whispered in a quietly frantic voice. “He ate me.” Over and over.

  “Where?” I asked coming to my feet. “Where is he, Daniel?”

  But it was no use. Daniel was no Mrs. Hanna, who had died quietly and gone on with her usual routine. Some ghosts have urgent business to conduct—stopping over for a few minutes to leave a final message of love, or anger, with someone important. Some of them, especially the ones who died in traumatic ways, are caught in the moment of their death. Those are the most common kind—like Henry VIII’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, who runs screaming in the halls of the Tower of London.

  “Daniel?” I asked, though his lack of reaction had robbed me of some of my urgency.

  Rachel had quit speaking, hopped off her stool, and looked at Daniel. Naomi was just staring at me.

  He faded after a moment more, and even after I couldn’t see him anymore his voice lingered.

  “Did you see him?” whispered Rachel.

  “That’s a cruel trick to play,” Naomi snapped at me.

  I looked at her. “You live with vampires and don’t believe in ghosts?” I asked.

  “Daniel’s dead,” Rachel whispered.

  I nodded. I wondered how a vampire could be a ghost—weren’t they already dead? I was starting to get punchy from lack of sleep.

  Naomi turned to the girl, “Rachel—”

  “I saw him, too,” she said hollowly. “Just for a moment, but it was him. If Daniel’s dead…Stefan wouldn’t let anything happen to him, not if he were alive.” She looked around a little wildly and then left the room. I heard her quick footsteps up the stairs.

  “What did he tell you?” I couldn’t tell by her words if Naomi believed me or not, but it didn’t really matter.

  “Nothing.” I decided not to share what he had said. It wouldn’t help anyone here, and it didn’t sound as if Rachel had heard him. I got up and opened cupboards at random until I found a glass. I filled it with water and drank, pretending my throat was dry because I was thirsty, not because I was scared. Had the sorcerer really eaten Daniel?

  Unwelcome, the memory of Littleton killing the woman at the hotel hit me as a full-throttle flashback: sight, smell, and sound. Just for a moment, but for that moment I was back in the hotel room. I must not have acted strangely, because when I turned back to Naomi she wasn’t looking at me like she’d have stared at someone who’d screamed. I set the glass carefully down on the counter.

  “If vampires live in their menageries,” I said, proud of my steady tone, “who lives in the seethe?”

  “Only the strongest vampires can live on their own and survive purely on human blood. All the others live in the seethe. They are the Mistress’s menagerie,” Naomi told me after a moment.

  I worked it out. “She feeds on the vampires?”

  Naomi nodded. “And gives them a little, very little, blood in return. Without that blood, the weaker vampires would die—and only the Mistress is allowed to feed other vampires and feed from them. She keeps humans there, to nourish them all, but without her, the lesser vampires would die.”

  “Allowed to feed?” I asked. “If there is a rule against it, that must mean that she gains something from feeding off vampires.”

  “Yes. I’m not sure what—strength and power, I think. And the ability to limit the actions even of those vampires she didn’t directly beget. She made Stefan, and, I think Andre. But Estelle and most of the others aren’t hers. When she quit paying attention to the seethe, Stefan and Andre ran things for her. But some of the older vampires became unruly.”

  “Estelle and Bernard,” I suggested remembering the man in the dapper suit.

  Naomi nodded. “The four of them, Stefan, Andre, Estelle, and Bernard are the only vampires strong enough to live outside the seethe. Stefan says that once they can live without feeding from the Mistress, vampires start to get territorial, so they’re sent out to gain their own menageries.” She paused. “Five, actually. The Wizard lives on his own.”

  “The Wizard?” I asked.

  She nodded her head. “Wulfe. You’ve seen him because Stefan said he was present at the trial. He looks younger than Daniel and has white blond hair.”

  The boy who’d worked the magic on the chair.

  “While Marsilia wasn’t paying attention, Estelle and Bernard managed to make a few new vampires and kept them to themselves.”

  “They’re feeding off the new vamps,” I said, following her story. “That makes them more powerful than they otherwise would be.”

  “Right. This part I’m not certain of.”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s some reason that Marsilia can’t take the new vampires from them. I think it’s because once the new vampires have exchanged blood with their maker a few times, they’ll sicken and maybe die without the blood of that particular vampire. Vampires reproduce very slowly so they are very careful with new ones—even if it means that Bernard and Estelle gain power that Marsilia cannot afford for them to have.”

  “So,” Naomi continued, “there’s dissension in the ranks. Stefan believed that Marsilia is losing her grip on the seethe. No one is in outright rebellion, but the Mistress is not in absolute control either.”

  “What does the addition of the sorcerer do to her position?” I asked, and she smiled at me like a student who’d come to the right conclusion.

  “A vampire is in town causing trouble,” she said. “It’s a matter for Marsilia to handle—but this one has proven stronger than Stefan. Vampires…the older they get the more afraid they are of death. Stefan told me that he thought the reason she sent only him out after the sorcerer wasn’t to punish him—but because she could send no one else because they wouldn’t go. Of the five most powerful vampires, only Stefan and Andre are truly hers.”

  So she really had been desperate when she came to me.

  “Why doesn’t Marsilia go after him herself. She’s the Mistress and the most powerful of them all.”

  Naomi pursed her lips. “Would your Alpha go after such a dangerous creature when he had warriors to fight in his stead?”

  “He already has,” I told her. “An Alpha who counts on others to fight his battles doesn’t stay Alpha long.”

  “He’s not dead.” I turned at the sound of a masculine voice behind me.

  The man who filled the doorway looked to be somewhere in his fifties, with an underlying strength buried beneath his somewhat thickened midsection. I glanced at his hands and was unsurprised to see them roughened from a lifetime of hard work. Like me, this was a man who’d made his living with his hands.

  “Who’s not dead, Ford?” Naomi asked, but he ignored her entirely.

  His bright eyes on mine, he took another step into the room. I couldn’t look away from his gaze. “He’s not dead,” he said intensely. “If he were dead, the threshold would be gone. I was here when Andre couldn’t get through. Only Stefan made this a home. I’d know if he were dead.”

  “Stop it, Ford,” Naomi said sharply and the scent of her fear distracted me from Ford’s brilliant, liquid-crystal gaze.

  I blinked and jerked my gaze away. It was still daylight, so Ford couldn’t be a vampire—but I was guessing he was the next thing to it.

  He grabbed my arm and hauled me of
f the stool with less effort that it should have taken. I was used to big men—Samuel was over six feet tall, but this man made me feel small. He didn’t know how to fight though, because I didn’t have any trouble breaking his grip.

  I took two steps back and Naomi put herself between us.

  “Daniel is gone,” I told him. “I saw his ghost myself. Warren, one of the werewolves who was with Stefan, was badly injured and left for the pack to find. I don’t know how our other wolf is or Stefan either. I intend to find out.”

  Naomi stepped closer and patted him on the chest. “Shhh. It’s all right.” Her soothing tones were very close to what Adam used on his new wolves when they became overset. “You might want to go now, Mercedes,” she said in the same soothing tones. “Ford is one of the bound.”

  And that meant more than his being able to become a vampire when he died, I saw. The brightness of his eyes wasn’t some genetic fluke, but the precursor to the glowing gems I’d seen vampires display in anger or lust.

  He grabbed Naomi impatiently, I think to thrust her aside so he could get to me. But she tilted her head and presented the side of her neck to him, and he hesitated, clearly caught by the sight of her pulse.

  If she’d been merely afraid, I’d have stayed there and tried to help her—but her eagerness for him was uncomfortably strong. I turned and left as he bent for her neck.

  I was a half mile from Stefan’s house before I took my first full breath. I’d learned a lot there, more than I’d expected—and nothing that would help me find Littleton. I’d no idea where the other vampire menageries were, and even if I did, I doubted that the sorcerer would be living with his master—assuming Littleton’s maker was one of Marsilia’s vampires.

  There were any number of vampires who might have made the sorcerer to cause trouble for Marsilia. Or a vampire from another seethe might have noticed the trouble she was in, and sent the sorcerer to soften the seethe up in preparation for a hostile takeover.