“Well … then I guess we’ll just have to deal with them in person,” Raina replied with a shrug after considering that for a moment. “We might be walking into a trap, but I’d rather deal with my enemies face-to-face instead of fighting my wars through everybody else. That whole proxy war thing … that’s something Duvessa would do.”
“Well, Duvessa was over two hundred years old,” Sophie reminded her.
Raina felt herself cringing. Now, she felt even dumber for simply being there. Duvessa hadn’t lived as long as she had by making stupid and careless decisions. She had others do her dirty work because her servants and her consorts were expendable assets. Placing herself in harm’s way any more than was absolutely necessary would not only have been foolishly reckless, but simply impractical.
As Grand Duchess, Raina should have known better than to take stupid, daring risks like this. Making personal visits to take care of business was something that should only be done rarely to increase the impact of its shock value and only in situations where any violent outcome was assured to be in her favor. The only reason that Duvessa had visited Arizona in the last hours of her lifetime and thus placed herself on the frontline was because she had run out of soldiers to send forth as cannon fodder for Countess Wilhelmina. Duvessa hadn’t even dared to be present when someone was being added to her bloodline, as she had even delegated that grand ceremonial task to Duke Sebastian.
Even knowing that, Raina insisted, “This is the only way I can put a stop to this. I can’t just lock myself up in my own home and hope that the authorities find and catch whoever tried to kill me. It would never happen. Sooner or later, whoever wants me dead will come for me wherever I try to hide. Everyone in the IVC would see me as a coward, they would lose faith in me as their leader, and they would probably even volunteer to help kill me … assuming they aren’t already doing just that.”
“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Sophie mused with a sigh.
“We’ll just have to play this as carefully as we can.” Raina thought for a moment. “You know, I’m not so sure I like this whole idea of letting the other party say where and when we’re going to meet. If I’m going to be playing it safe, I’d think it would make more sense to let me pick a time and place.”
“What if she can’t do that?” Thomas asked.
Raina raised an eyebrow at his image in the mirror. “What do you mean?”
“What if this woman can only meet you in that one place and that one time? What if she really does know who wants to kill you, and that person is … umm … what if that person is her boss?” he suggested.
“Good point.” She considered that, and then shrugged. “Still, we should have some kind of a backup plan. If things go wrong, I don’t want any of us to wind up dead.”
“We need guns.”
“Sure,” she said with a smirk, “but who else here besides me knows how to use one? Hell, even I’m not that good with one.”
“You were good enough the other night,” he replied with a smile of his own.
He meant it as a compliment, but Raina’s sense of humor evaporated. She didn’t like to be reminded of the fact that she’d killed anyone, much less a human being. Killing was a necessary evil in her position, she realized, and killing someone again in the future was a serious potential, if not an inevitability. Just because she was fully capable of death-dealing and that she had accepted her role as a warrior did not mean that she was obligated to be happy about it. There was no joy in taking another’s life … not really. Perhaps in the heat of the moment, the feel of it might be agreeable, but when she had time to reflect upon it, the idea of ending someone’s life seemed terribly wrong and tragic because the very concept of death, the absolute finality of it, utterly horrified her.
“I have my sword, and that should be enough for me,” Raina said. “I would feel better if the two of you were packing heat, though.”
“I can shoot,” Thomas said.
“Yeah, me too,” Sophie chimed in with an enthusiastic nod.
Raina turned to look at her briefly. “Where the hell did you learn how to shoot a gun in Britain? Isn’t it pretty much impossible to get one over there?”
“I’ve been to other countries, you know. I got to tag along with Auntie O whenever we went to Finland,” she explained. “Loki’s family lives out in the country. We all got to go out back and shoot at things, and he showed us how to shoot.”
“Pistols, shotguns, and rifles,” Thomas said with a confirming nod. “Loki’s family has many guns. Duvessa hired him because he has training.”
And that much was true, she knew. Loki had served as a chauffer for the House of Fallamhain, for the most part, but in reality he had been hired as a bodyguard of sorts. He had taken professional training courses in driving and a large number of weapons. He still was not much of a swordsman, but he could handle a knife nearly as well as Raina could swing a katana. The fact that Finland had far different gun control laws than the UK was something that Raina had never stopped to really consider, much less the fact that Thomas’s shared country of origin with Loki and their casual friendship meant that he had some experience, too.
This was not what made Raina’s spirits drop. Really, her sudden frown had nothing to do with guns or edged weapons or driving ability or any of those things. She was only saddened by the realization that she had never met Loki’s family. His parents were not resentful about the fact that their son had been employed by Duvessa, nor were they upset that he had ultimately become a vampire, himself, when Raina had accidentally forced the Change upon him. Raina was essentially married to Loki, and yet she had never met a single member of his family, with whom he still communicated quite often. Of course, for Loki to meet Raina’s own parents would have been something of a non-event. The conversation would have been sadly one-sided, and the meeting quite unremarkable, as it would have only involved visiting a mausoleum where her parents’ ashes were kept.
Now that things were essentially over with Loki, she would likely never get to meet the groom’s parents, and never know whether or not they approved of his bride. Did they think so poorly of her that they still had never wished to meet her? It was probably just as well. Raina thought poorly enough of herself, anyway, for what she had done to their son. It all would have simply been too awkward.
“I think we could probably get some from a store in town,” she finally said, “but it would probably be a big hassle to find a place willing to sell guns to vampires.”
Sophie gave her a strange look. “But … this is America. I thought everyone here could have a gun…?”
“Not exactly, no,” she said. “It’s not illegal for a vampire to own a gun in Arizona, but gun store owners have the right to refuse a sale to anyone. They don’t want someone down the road to sue them, or they don’t want it on their conscience if the guns they sell to vampires wind up being used in murders or something. In fact, as I remember it, Loki had to be the one to buy guns for everyone when Duvessa came here because he was one of the only humans that came along. And even then, he had to buy them from a private party and not a gun store.”
“Well then, we could just disguise ourselves as humans, couldn’t we?” Sophie suggested.
“Forget it. One way or another, they’ll know you’re a vampire,” Raina explained with a sigh. “It’s not impossible for us to get a gun legally, but they’ve sure made it pretty damned hard. Meanwhile, just about any redneck hillbilly with a fistful of cash and a clean record can just walk into a store, buy whatever he wants, and then go out and hunt vampires like we’re a bunch of animals.”
“That hardly seems fair,” Sophie said.
“That’s because it’s not meant to be. We’re the dregs of society, the scum of the earth.” She looked at Sophie with a sad smile. “We’re monsters, remember? We don’t get special privileges. In fact, we should probably consider ourselves grateful that we even have what we’re allowed by law, as it is. Not too long ago, professional vampi
re hunters were still allowed to track and kill vampires.”
“They still do,” Thomas said, “but now they work for the FBI.”
“The Bureau of Vampire Affairs, yeah,” Raina agreed. “I’ve already had a conversation or two with some of their agents when they came to ask me some things about Duvessa. I guess I’ve been lucky so far. They haven’t decided to try to take anything she did and pin it on me, instead.” She thought about that. “Then again, it’s only been a few months. Maybe I just haven’t had enough time to piss anyone off yet.” She let out a heavy sigh. “Shit. I’d better just shut up before I make myself completely paranoid.”
The rest of the drive was conducted in relative silence. The issue of attaining firearms went essentially unresolved from that point onward, which only added to Raina’s underlying worries and dread of another impending disaster. They had edged weapons, and that was it. If anyone drew a gun on them again, they were done. Raina’s only hope for safety rested within the possibility that her enemies were just as clueless as the media regarding her whereabouts. This would perhaps afford them enough time to locate this Mistress Monsoon woman, begin her Change to thus make her a formally protected Fallamhain, and then head back to the relative safety of the Fallamhain Estate in London. Of course, that was assuming that this person was genuine, and that the wrong people would not be the first to get their hands upon her. And, of course, that also presumed that they could even manage to find this person, about whom everyone seemed to know absolutely nothing.
Their first destination was the hotel where they planned to stay the following day. Raina had somehow expected Serenity to select the same hotel in which Raina had publicly undergone her Communion of Blood, allowed herself to be seduced by Duvessa, and then later killed Countess Wilhelmina in front of a large audience. Thankfully, she opted for a totally different venue, selecting a historic and very old but very upscale hotel in the heart of downtown Phoenix. They were immediately met at the front by a group of finely-dressed valets and busboys that took their luggage and parked their cars as they headed inside.
As they walked through the main lobby to the front desk, she saw the receptionist’s face melt from a bright, cheery, welcoming smile to uncertainty and then ultimately something bordering upon terror. Raina had managed to conceal her pointed ears with her hair well enough that she could have easily passed for human at a glance. Serenity, however, was as vain as ever about her High Court genetics, as she swooped back the hood of her white wool cloak to reveal her identity readily. Her blonde mane was tied back fancily in a way that displayed her ears proudly. The group of seven assorted-race vampires approached with Raina and Serenity leading side-by-side. Serenity stepped up to the desk, smiled kindly, and spoke with the sweetest, most innocent-sounding tone of voice that she could, hoping to put the startled receptionist at ease.
“Good afternoon, dear,” she said. “We would like to check into our suites for the evening.”
“Um … yes, of course,” the receptionist replied awkwardly, visibly forcing herself to smile and try to appear indifferent. “Under what, ah … what name was your reservation?”
“Jennifer Chambers,” Serenity replied surprisingly, apparently using her given human name. “I had reserved three full suites.”
The receptionist was a mature but attractive and well-dressed Hispanic woman with streaks of blonde highlights in her dark brown hair. She hesitated as she began to enter the information into the computer under the edge of the countertop. More than once, her eyes flicked to Raina. Whether the look itself was responsible or if Raina was actually picking up on a human’s emotions quite clearly seemed uncertain, but either way, her apparent focus upon Raina with such uneasiness was beginning to make her feel just as anxious. The woman fidgeted as she appeared to wait for it to display its information, and then an even more distraught look passed over her face as she saw something on the screen before glancing up at the group of vampires. She glanced over her right shoulder, then her left, more than once, before finally looking to Serenity.
“Ah, could you, um … would you mind waiting one moment, please?” the receptionist asked, moving away before Serenity could even respond in agreement.
The woman was acting completely spooked. Raina could understand that the appearance of any one vampire, even more so a group of celebrity vampires, could be a bit unsettling for many people due to so many myths, misconceptions, stereotypes, and presumptions about the race, as a whole. But this woman was acting particularly odd for some reason, most curiously seeming to fixate her fearful attention upon Raina most of all, even though she was arguably the most human-looking of the entire group.
The receptionist went over to a nearby desk with another receptionist, next to whom a balding man in a fine dark blue suit was standing. She almost timidly got his attention, interrupting the man’s conversation with the other receptionist, and gestured with a nod in Raina’s direction as she murmured something to him.
“Who?” the man asked with disbelief. The woman murmured it again, and the man turned around to face the group with an expression that similarly flashed close to fear for just an instant before he managed to restrain his reaction. After a moment, he leaned toward her, patting her shoulder, and could be heard saying, “Go take a break. Let me handle this.”
The man was a tall African-American with a thin, long face, close-cropped hair that was balding at the top and thinning toward the front, clean-shaven, and sporting a rather bland dark blue tie that matched his suit jacket. He forced a more successful superficial smile as he approached the desk.
“Hi, good evening,” he said with one of those professional tones of voice that was just a bit louder than necessary. “How are you all doing tonight?”
“Quite well, sir, thank you,” Serenity replied brightly.
“I’m Kyle Tucker. I’m the general manager of the hotel,” he introduced himself quite proudly. “What can I do for you all?”
“We would like to check in to our suites for the evening before going out to dinner. I made reservations for three full suites.”
“Excellent! And under what name was this reservation?” he asked. Not only did he speak just a bit too loudly, but he spoke slowly and drew out his words at the end of each sentence in an almost condescending sort of tone that Raina despised. She did her best not to let her automatic dislike for him show as he kept glancing at her, just as the receptionist had.
Raina sensed a bit of tension from Serenity as she responded in a gentle, polite tone of voice. “Jennifer Chambers.”
“Jennifer … Chambers,” the man repeated as he typed the name into the computer at the desk. He waited a moment, and then his smile faltered. He pretended to cringe and sucked in a hiss of hair between his teeth for a moment before looking up and shaking his head slightly. “I’m sorry, madam, but I don’t seem to have that name in the system.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I don’t seem to have any reservations for a Jennifer Chambers anywhere here. Let me check the main list to be sure. Perhaps it was spelled incorrectly,” he replied, tapping in a few keystrokes and then reaching over to click a few times with a nearby mouse device. A second or two later, he shook his head and looked up again with an apologetic look that was surely insincere. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t have a reservation under that name anywhere on my roster.”
“There must be some mistake. I called well in advance to make reservations.”
“I’m sorry, madam, but I have no records showing a reservation under that name,” the man said in a slightly deeper voice.
Serenity’s smile just barely slipped, but Raina could sense her growing agitation. Still sounding very diplomatic and seeming undeterred, she asked the manager, “Do you have any suites available that we might take, instead?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” the manager replied immediately without even consulting his all-important computer. “We tend not to have any vacancies at all through this time of year, and so reservations are
an absolute necessity.”
“Well, I did make reservations with your staff in advance two nights ago, sir…”
“And I’m sorry, but as I’ve said, I have no record of those reservations anywhere on file, madam,” the man interrupted rudely but in a professional tone. “Most reservations we take around this time of year are made weeks or even months in advance, actually.”
“Really? Because the receptionist that I spoke with two nights ago said that you actually had quite a few rooms available,” Serenity replied.
“I’m sorry, madam, but she must have been mistaken because what I’m seeing here is that we are fully booked,” the manager replied, glancing at his screen and tapping a few random keys – probably not for any reason other than to appear to be making an actual effort.
Raina let out a heavy sigh and rolled her eyes as Serenity remained polite and diplomatic as she continued to try to reason with an obviously unreasonable man. She knew what was going on. She had seen it before, and had experienced similar discrimination in the past when she had been to a few places with Brenna. There was a certain portion of the human population that held a bigoted opinion against vampires in general, sometimes even against the people that associated with vampires. The discrimination was every bit the same as others of certain human races, religions, ethnicities, or other specific groups had faced much farther in the past, the kind of discrimination that was now prohibited by law. Apparently, though, people saw the issue of humans versus vampires in a totally different light that made hypocrites out of even those who had been discriminated against, themselves, in the past.
“Sir, do you realize exactly who we are?” Serenity demanded, finally beginning to lose her cool.
“Actually, yes, I do know who you are,” the man replied, narrowing his eyes at Raina as he said it, “but that does not change the fact that we do not have your reservations on file and this hotel does not have any vacancies this evening.”
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 39