And that rang true enough that the beast inside of Adam considered it.
“Talking with Bonarata is best,” said Honey. “But if you want to kill him, I’ll help.”
“And I,” said Elizaveta, “would enjoy it, Adya.”
And with all the reasons for leaving the vampire walking that he’d been presented with, it was the voices of murderous support that allowed him to take his first deep breath since he’d gotten off the plane.
“Thank you,” he told them with real gratitude. “But Larry is right. Without the Marrok to shield us with his reputation, our people would be targets.”
As good as it would feel to kill Bonarata, he didn’t want to loose a horde of vampires on his people. Larry had also been right that Adam had gotten used to dealing from the position of strength provided by the Marrok’s support. It had been so much a part of being a werewolf Alpha that he hadn’t even thought about it. He was going to have to fix his thinking.
Everyone was still watching him intently, so he waved them off and changed the subject back to an earlier one, saying, “Elizaveta gets a bedroom. Marsilia gets a bedroom. Stefan, you and Larry can fight over the third bedroom—loser gets the couch out here. Honey and I can sleep in wolf form out here, too.”
“Adam, if you want to continue our ruse, you should put your luggage in my bedroom,” suggested Marsilia. “Larry, you should take the third bedroom. Stefan and I can share a bed.”
“I will have the gold room,” said Elizaveta coolly before he could answer the vampire. “Marsilia, the rose room is the biggest. If you share it with Stefan, then your purported threesome will have the largest room. The blue room should be adequate for the goblin king.”
“We don’t call ourselves that,” said Larry dryly. “That was just that one movie. I mean, ‘Larry the Goblin King’ just doesn’t have the right ring to it. The blue will do fine, I’m sure.”
The gold room was, Adam noticed, the only bedroom that didn’t share a wall with the interior of the house. If Bonarata sent someone through the wall after them, they would either break into the main room, the rose room, or the blue room. Perhaps Elizaveta hadn’t noticed that, but he wouldn’t bet on it. The witch was very good at looking out for herself.
—
INSTEAD OF A DINING ROOM, THEY WERE TAKEN TO A large room that had once been a library. Adam could still smell the old glue and leather that had been used to manufacture books—as well as the complex musty smell libraries accumulated over time because paper absorbed odors.
Their entrance was more dramatic than he’d have willingly participated in, but he hadn’t noticed until much too late to do anything about it. Truthfully, he wasn’t entirely certain how or when the theatrical element had been instituted, though he had a very good guess about who was responsible.
As they’d exited their suite en masse, Marsilia had taken his arm—evidently deciding that, since he hadn’t spoken, Adam would be willing to continue the farce that he and Marsilia were lovers. Only then did he realize that their entire party—including Elizaveta—had somehow managed to be color-coordinated.
Adam’s gray suit was Mercy’s favorite of the suits she had picked out for him, claiming that his choices of business wear were deliberate attempts to downplay his looks. He’d worn it this evening for Mercy, with a black shirt and his brown-and-silver tie. She wouldn’t know, of course, but he did. He would have sworn that no one except he himself had known which suits he’d packed, or which one he was going to wear until he had it on.
Even so, Marsilia’s semiformal dress was silver with brown trim. Stefan’s suit was a pale brown, and he wore it with a gray shirt and a silver-and-black tie. Larry’s suit was black and silver with a silvery waistcoat, and his shirt and tie were brown. Honey wore a dark brown dress trimmed in black that wasn’t as formal as Marsilia’s even though it covered less.
Contrary to type, Elizaveta had chosen to dress all in black. She usually dressed like a fantasy-novel version of a Russian grandmother who’d been raised by the Roma, complete with multiple skirts, scarves, and jewelry in bright colors.
Mercy had told him once that she thought that Elizaveta had once been a beautiful woman, not just attractive, but world-class beautiful. Tonight, he understood exactly what she meant.
Adam wasn’t interested in fashion as an art form, but he understood how he could use it as a weapon in the business world against men and women who used wealth to judge power. That meant he knew men’s fashions, but also that he didn’t pay any attention to women’s clothing except to note whether it looked good on Mercy or not—which put him one up on Mercy, who didn’t pay attention to fashion at all.
Not that women didn’t use clothing like a weapon in the business world, too, but because he never judged people by the richness of their clothing, he was free to ignore the fashionable weapons of the opposite sex. But that indifference left him without words to label the outfit Elizaveta wore.
It was silk—he knew fabric, and silk had a recognizable smell and a sound as it slid over itself. It was black, and it was formfitting, and Elizaveta wore it with style, whatever it was, because it didn’t fit neatly into the categories he knew: dress, pants, suit.
It began with a long, tailored shirt that hung down to her knees while it sprouted embroidery that was black but also iridescent. Beneath the shirt, her skirt was narrow and slitted up to midthigh on each side to allow for movement. She went barefoot for reasons of her own—probably related to magic. Her feet were lovely, with manicured and polished (in sparkling silver) nails.
She was old—nearly, he thought, as old as he was, and unlike werewolves, witches aged just like regular humans. But she had muscle and not an extra ounce of anything else on her frame. He’d always known she was strong because he watched the way people moved. He hadn’t known that her body was beautiful. She’d toned down the makeup from pancake to ballroom, and it suited her. She did not dress to minimize her age—she didn’t dress to minimize anything. She didn’t need to. She looked exactly like what she was: beautiful and deadly.
The only two of his people left out of the fashion show were his pilot and copilot, who trailed behind the rest of them. They were still wearing the semi-uniform business garb they’d flown in—black slacks, white dress shirt, and green tie—though for all Adam knew it was a second set of identical clothing. Still, they didn’t match everyone else, so that was something.
Their guide to dinner—a female vampire clad in a tuxedo—had been under the impression that “the help” would be dining in the kitchen with the rest of the human staff. Adam had put the kibosh on that.
Harris had put his neck out a lot farther than Adam or he had planned when the vampires insisted that they leave the plane. Adam wasn’t about to let Harris or his copilot run around loose in Bonarata’s seethe without protection. They would eat with his party in reasonable safety.
They had waited while the vampire had texted someone. As soon as the return text came, she’d agreed to the “additions to dinner”—a phrase that made Larry grin and mock-snap his teeth behind the vampire’s back.
The arrangements for dinner had distracted Adam, so he hadn’t noticed the black, silver, and brown theme until they were following their guide through the halls. Far too late to run back and change into his blue suit.
Adam wasn’t entirely certain that the color coordination wasn’t an accident. But instincts (and a hint of guilt in Honey’s face) told him that this whole performance had been planned behind his back—up to and including the way that Marsilia clung to his arm.
All this drama was in keeping with the vampires and with Marsilia, anyway. Adam was an old soldier who, like good boots, could be polished up and given a shine—but in the end he was happier being a weapon than an art piece.
This was the second time Marsilia had changed their approach without checking with him. If that was how she wanted to play this, h
e’d feel free to do the same.
In any case, the entrance was wasted because the room was empty. With a murmured encouragement for them to await Bonarata here, their guide executed a quick bow and left.
Adam surveyed his people rather grimly.
Stefan broke first—probably because he was enjoying himself. “I told you the color thing was a bad idea,” he told Marsilia.
“Not here,” Adam said, though their guide was gone. His ire was appeased, not by Stefan’s apology. With Bonarata apparently claiming the right of making a grand entrance, the whole drama had been mostly a wasted effort. Punishment enough to suit the crime, he thought.
Since they were stuck here, Adam did a little recon.
Sometime in the last ten years, the room had been gutted, fitted with modern electricity, and put back together with drywall and engineered hardwoods. There were only two windows—the light would have damaged the books when it had been a library, he supposed.
A good designer had done his best to make the room look as though it had last been decorated a couple of hundred years ago despite the modern lighting, air vents, and energy-efficient windows. The central area was mostly empty, with chairs lining the walls and a small writing desk in the corner.
Art was the true focus of the room. Oil paintings of eclectic sizes from various eras covered the walls three layers high. They were all originals, and mostly, to Adam’s averagely educated eye, very well done. One or two were spectacular. There were no signatures, and he did not recognize any of them, which surprised him a little. He’d have thought a vampire of Bonarata’s reputation would put out famous artists to establish his status.
Then Adam realized that he knew the subject of the painting he’d paused by. Marsilia, her eyes in shadow, crouched gracefully on a rock on the edge of a stream. Her hair, longer than he’d ever seen it, did nothing to cover her naked body. Clasped loosely in one hand was a dagger.
Seeing that famous-in-certain-circles painting, Adam realized that the vampire had been establishing his status all right. All of the paintings had been done by Bonarata himself.
A door opened—not the one they’d entered the room through—and Bonarata strolled in.
Adam had never met Bonarata in the flesh, but he’d seen a few sketches, and there was one painting (perhaps also painted by Bonarata) in Marsilia’s seethe. That was enough to allow him to recognize the Lord of Night on sight even if he probably couldn’t have picked him out of a crowd.
Like the rest of the men, excepting Adam’s pilot and copilot, Bonarata wore a suit. The biggest difference between his suit and Adam’s was that Bonarata’s suit only emphasized the vampire’s brutally stamped features. It wasn’t that the suit looked wrong; it was that it looked like it was designed to showcase a warrior, a dangerous man.
Adam’s suit, which made him look very civilized, was a disguise. Adam preferred it that way.
The Master Vampire gave Adam a half bow. “I am Bonarata. I have met you through the eyes of my servant, but you have not met me.”
Adam introduced his people gravely, including Marsilia and Stefan. Both of whom Bonarata greeted mutely with that quick, polite nod, as if they were strangers. For their own protection, Adam stuck his pilot and copilot in the middle of the introductions, to make it absolutely clear that Adam felt they fell into the category of his people. He did not introduce them by name—as an added protection for them. Including them in the middle also mixed up the whole color theme, which he appreciated.
All the while, he and Bonarata sized each other up.
“Your wife is no longer in my care,” Bonarata said, apparently deciding to be straightforwardly honest.
Adam waited politely. On the outside, he was sure his face was polite anyway.
“She misunderstood my intentions, I think,” said the vampire, with a small smile on his face. “Otherwise, she would not have run from here. I did not get the chance to let her know you were coming.”
Or maybe not so honest.
“Did she?” Adam asked. “So she misunderstood that you hit her car with a semi, almost killed her, then compounded the incident by kidnapping her?”
“Adam,” Marsilia said, her grip on his arm tightening to painful levels.
When she spoke, there was an instant during which something passed across the Lord of Night’s face. Marsilia saw it, Adam felt her fingers clench, but he couldn’t see her face.
“We know that Mercy isn’t here,” he told Bonarata, and by the vampire’s careful lack of expression, Adam knew that Bonarata had thought to surprise them. He didn’t want Bonarata to have an opening to ask how they knew Mercy was gone. Not while Mercy was still out on her own. So he continued briskly, “Recovering my wife is no longer our purpose here. I think we should talk about why you decided to take her in the first place.”
“I had hoped to talk business after last meal,” said Bonarata.
“Had you,” said Adam neutrally. Not a question, just an acknowledgment of Bonarata’s plans.
It was a good thing that Larry had talked sense before they’d come down to eat, because Adam’s temper flared hotly, and he knew that his eyes were wolf-yellow.
He took a deep breath.
“It is something civilized people would do,” Bonarata said mildly.
“Which neither of you is,” Marsilia said archly.
Bonarata looked at her sharply, his eyes lingering on the way her hand stayed on Adam’s shoulder.
This time Adam recognized the flare that broke through Bonarata’s semicivilized expression as jealousy.
“Why did you take my wife?” he asked.
The vampire’s eyes met his, and Adam felt the draw of the vampire’s gaze even as he cursed himself for allowing it to happen. He knew better. He prepared to fight his way out of it, drawing on his bond to Honey—and to Mercy.
And the vampire’s gaze slid right off Adam without effect.
“Why”—Adam let his voice soften with the rage that simmered around the image of his SUV after the semi had hit it—“did you take my mate?”
Silence rang loudly in the room as no one moved or spoke.
“Iacopo,” murmured Marsilia, letting her hands slide off Adam’s arm.
“Jacob,” the vampire said coolly.
“Jacob,” she corrected without apology. “You did not set out to kill Adam’s mate. That would be stupid and wasteful, and the man I knew for centuries is too smart for either.”
“Or to respond to flattery,” he said.
She threw up both hands high, then let them drop to her sides as she spoke. “It is not flattery if it is true. You did not intend her death—so why did you take her?”
“You are in the wrong,” murmured Stefan. “Everyone in this room understands this—including you, Jacob. To pretend otherwise is unproductive.”
“And heaven keep us from being unproductive,” growled Bonarata. But he turned to Adam. “I went to Wulfe for information, as you know. This was my mistake, and I apologize for it. I have known Wulfe a long time, I know that he enjoys causing trouble, but I thought I had taught him better than to cause me trouble. I will see to it that it does not happen again.”
Marsilia reached out and grasped Adam’s arm, digging her nails in deeply. But he didn’t need her request.
He shook his head at Bonarata. “Wulfe lives in my territory. He is under my protection; moreover, he did not lie to you. My mate is the single most powerful person in our territory.” He waved his hand to include the rest of his people in the room. “Witness the quality of the people willing to put their necks out for her—and I turned down a lot of help.” He decided not to give Bonarata an excuse to react to Adam’s defense of Wulfe—a defense that Bonarata had been expecting, if Adam was reading the vampire aright. So he kept talking. “Why did you kidnap someone you expected to be the most powerful person in the Tri-Cities?
”
Bonarata veiled his eyes. “Your territorial grab is a very interesting thing, Mr. Hauptman. A place where we could deal with the humans and each other in safety is very valuable. But to say that is what you have—and to actually be able to keep people safe—is another thing entirely.”
“I agree,” said Adam.
Bonarata turned and walked to a dry bar and poured himself a drink of something that smelled like port to Adam. “Would you like some? It doesn’t affect me, of course, any more than it would affect you. But I like the taste.”
Adam let his eyes become half-lidded, and Marsilia petted his arm soothingly. Adam watched Bonarata notice her hand. Watched the vampire throw the alcohol back. It wasn’t true that it didn’t affect either of them. Alcohol would give a werewolf a momentary jolt, then the effects dissipated.
Sherwood Post, one of the last werewolves Bran had sent to join Adam’s pack, said he’d discovered that even a werewolf could get drunk by drinking Everclear, the 190-proof version, fast enough. He’d stayed that way by drinking steadily for two days before Bran took away his alcohol and told him to grow up.
“No,” Adam said. “I never acquired the taste before I Changed, and I see no reason to start now. You were going to tell me why you took my wife.”
Bonarata set his empty glass down. “Yes. Where did I leave off?”
“You had decided to see if we could protect our own,” said Marsilia softly. “You asked Wulfe who the most powerful among us was, and he told you—for reasons that make sense only to Wulfe, for all that he explained them to us—he told you that person was Adam’s mate, Mercedes. So you broadsided her car with a semitruck and hurt her mortally—and then kidnapped her.”
“She is alive,” Adam said, and despite his best effort, his voice emerged as more of a growl than a human voice. “Despite your best efforts.”
“Ah, yes,” Bonarata said, “the famous mating bond of song and story.” He smiled tightly at Adam. “She was dying,” he said, “because Wulfe misled me. If you wish for him not to have consequences for that, I suppose I am not the one to suffer the most from his games. My people called me to report the issue, and I almost left her there. Her death would have told me what I wanted to know, after all. That you cannot protect your own.”