Touch the Dark

  “I did not rely on her,” Tony was lying smoothly. “She was a convenience only.”

  Rafe’s hand on my arm tightened, and I bit my lip. Repeated outbursts might annoy the Consul—not a smart move—but it was hard to stay silent. I had no idea how much money I’d made the little toad through the years, but it was a lot. I knew for a fact that he’d cleared at least ten million when he bought citrus futures right before a series of natural disasters wrecked the California orange crop and caused the price to skyrocket. That didn’t happen every day, but it wasn’t an isolated incident, either.

  Tony’s moneygrubbing had never been my main problem with him, though. The thing that caused me to snap, besides finding out about my parents, was his decision to let fire ravage a city block because he wanted to buy some real estate in the area cheap. I had told him about it a week in advance, plenty of time for him to have called in a warning, but of course he hadn’t. I’d stared in horror at newspaper photos of charred children’s bodies and had one of those lightbulb moments. Some checking had confirmed what I already suspected: he’d used my talent to help him plan assassinations, mastermind political coups and successfully run drugs and illegal weapons past the authorities. And those were just the things I knew about. The day I finally put all the pieces together, I’d promised myself that, somehow, I would make him pay. He had, too, but in my opinion, not nearly enough.

  “Then she should be no great loss. You will be remunerated for your claim.”

  “Consul, with all due respect, the only thing I want is for her to be returned to me. I am her rightful master, as I am sure my own will agree.”

  “No.” The dark gaze slid to me momentarily, and I suddenly knew what a rabbit feels when it looks up and sees a hawk. “We have plans for her.”

  Tony blustered on, and I began to notice that Alphonse wasn’t making any effort to help his beleaguered employer. My estimation of his intelligence took a hike. If Tony argued himself into a belated grave—permanently this time—Alphonse would get a chance to seize control of the operation, and that worked for me. Alphonse and I weren’t exactly friends, but as far as I knew, he had no reason to want me dead besides the fact that Tony had ordered it. I grinned; keep talking, Tony. Unfortunately, one of the two huge vamps in leopard-skin loincloths that framed the Consul’s chair came forward and removed the mirror after a minute. Too bad; I’d started to enjoy myself.

  Pressure from Rafe’s hand warned me to keep a blank expression. Just as it wasn’t a good idea to show fear or weakness in a court situation—and this was pretty much the court of courts—it also wasn’t bright to show too much amusement. Somebody might take it as a challenge, and that would be very bad. I quickly readjusted my expression to the poker face I’d used growing up. It wasn’t hard: the little joy I’d been able to summon would have died anyway when I turned back to the Senate. With no more Tony around to distract them, everyone’s attention was suddenly on me, and it was unnerving, even to someone who had regularly attended family meetings. Tony had insisted, after his resident telepath was turned and lost her powers, that I be there, especially if rival families were going to send reps. I don’t know why. I can’t read minds and the odds of my Seeing something about anyone present were slim. I’d told him a hundred times, I can’t switch on the gift like turning on a TV, and when it does come, I don’t get to choose the channel. He’d ignored me, maybe because he liked the prestige of having his personal clairvoyant at his side like a trained dog. Anyway, after the number of very frightening people I’d seen, I had thought nothing could impress me. I’d been wrong.

  Besides the Consul’s, there were twelve places at the table. More than half were empty, but the ones that were filled made up for it. A dark-haired woman sat nearest to me, dressed in a long velvet gown. A little cap decorated with pearls as big as my thumb framed her face, and heavy gold embroidery traced its way up her burgundy skirts. Her skin had the opalescent sheen of naturally pale skin that hasn’t seen the sun in centuries, and was marred only by a ridge of scar tissue around her throat that a silk ribbon didn’t quite conceal. Someone had gotten close enough to this beauty to take her head but hadn’t heard that this alone won’t kill a vamp. If the heart is intact, the body will mend, although I winced at the amount of effort it must have taken to heal a wound like that.

  Next to her sat the only person at the table I recognized. I could hardly fail to do so since Tony boasted about his connection to the famous Dracula line at every opportunity, and had portraits of all three brothers on the wall of his throne room. He had been made not by Vlad III Tepes, the Dracula of legend, but by the great man’s elder brother, Mircea. We’d entertained him in Philly when I was eleven. Like many children, I loved a good story, which was lucky since there was little Mircea liked better than to go on about the bad old days. He’d told me how, when his younger brothers Vlad and Radu were in Adrianople as hostages—the Ottoman sultan didn’t trust their father to honor a treaty otherwise—Mircea encountered a vengeful gypsy. She hated his father for seducing and then throwing aside her sister, who’d been Dracula’s mother, so she cursed Mircea with vampirism. I think the idea was to end the family line, since a vampire can’t father children and everybody had assumed that the hostages weren’t coming back. But, as Mircea pointed out, she actually did him a favor. Shortly thereafter, Hungarian assassins working with some local nobles captured, tortured and buried him alive, something that might have been a real downer if he hadn’t already been dead. Under the circumstances, it was more an inconvenience than anything else.

  I’d been too young when I met him to realize that the handsome young man who told me Romanian folk tales was actually older than Tony by about a century. He sent me an encouraging smile now out of a face that had looked thirty for five hundred years. I smiled back in spite of myself; I’d had my first crush on those brown velvet eyes, and I’d forgotten how attractive he was. Those same features had won his longer-lived brother Radu the title of “the Handsome” back in the sixteenth century. Mircea paused to brush a speck of lint off his snazzy black suit. Other than Rafe, who preferred more casual chic, Mircea was the only vamp I knew who cared much about modern fashion. Maybe that was why I’d never seen him wearing the court regalia of old Wallachia, or possibly the clothes then had just sucked. In any case, he looked completely up-to-date now, except for the long, black ponytail. I was glad to see him, but even assuming he remembered me fondly, I doubted one vote would do me much good.

  Speaking of a need to update a wardrobe, the vamp next to Mircea—the same one who had been loitering around the waiting room—looked like a GQ ad, if the magazine had been printed in the seventeenth century. Considering that I’d spent a lot of time in a Goth club, I didn’t object to the embroidered frock coat, frothy shirt and knee britches he was wearing. I’d seen weirder getups, and at least this one was flattering—silk hose shows off legs better than most modern styles, and his were worth playing up. The sticking point was that the whole deal was in buttercup yellow satin. I’m sorry, but a vamp in yellow is just wrong, especially when you throw in bright blue eyes and glossy auburn curls cascading halfway down his back. He was very handsome, with one of those open, honest faces you automatically trust. It really irritated me that it belonged to a vamp. I gave him a tentative smile anyway on the theory that it couldn’t hurt, and thought maybe I’d get a brownie point for being the only other one in yellow in the room. Of course, my happy-face T wasn’t looking its best at the moment, which maybe explains why he didn’t smile back. He was watching me almost hungrily, the weight of his gaze so intense that I spared a thought to hope he’d already eaten. I needed to get this blood off me before I started looking to someone like a walking hors d’oeuvre.

  The remaining vamps, two on the far side of the Consul, were so alike that I assumed they had to be related. I found out later that it was a coincidence. The man was almost as old as the Consul, having started life as one of Nero’s bodyguards even though his mother had been a slave
captured somewhere much farther north than Italy. He’d been one of the emperor’s favorites for having even more sadistic tastes than his master: want to guess who really burned Rome? The woman, who looked so much like Portia that I did a double take, had been born in the antebellum South. She was said to have killed more Union soldiers in the twenty miles or so around her family home than the Confederate military did, and to have mourned the end of the war and the easy hunting that had gone with it. So, different eras, countries and backgrounds, but they looked like twins with their milky complexions and wavy dark hair. They even had similar eye color, a light brownish gold, like the light through autumn leaves, and were dressed in complementary outfits of white and silver. Admittedly, his was a toga while she looked like she was on her way to a Savannah ball, but they looked good together.

  The Consul gave me time to size everyone up before she spoke, but when she did, I had no desire to look anywhere else. Wherever her kohl-rimmed gaze landed, it felt like tiny pinpricks along my skin. The sensation was not quite painful, but I had the impression that the pins could become swords very easily. “You see how many of our seats are empty, how many voices silenced.” I blinked in surprise. I’d assumed there was a problem, but not that—four ancient vampires aren’t exactly easy to kill. But she confirmed it. “We are greatly weakened. The loss of some of the greatest among us is felt keenly by all in this room, but if it continues, it will echo around the world.”

  She stopped, and at first I thought it was for a dramatic pause, but then she zoned out on me. Some of the really old ones do that sometimes, drawing into themselves for a minute or an hour or a day, and forgetting that anyone else exists. I’d gotten used to little time-outs with Tony, so I didn’t let it bother me. I noticed that Tomas had been joined at the door by yet another guy I didn’t know. What looked like a life-sized statue stood near him, a rather crude one with no paint to cover its clay exterior and poorly defined features. Tomas and the new guy seemed to be arguing about something, but their voices were too low to hear. I had a brief moment of nostalgia for Tony’s audience hall, where most of those present were murderous scumbags, but at least I knew their names. I was jumpy enough standing in blood-soaked clothing in front of a group of vamps powerful enough to kill me with little more than a thought, without also having to work in the dark. Rafe was a comfort at my back, but I’d have preferred someone whose specialty was more in the guns-and-knives line.

  “We are missing six of our number,” the Consul abruptly continued. “Four are irrecoverable, and two others hover on the edge of the abyss. If any power known to us can restore them, it will be done. But it may well be that we strive in vain, for our enemy has lately obtained a new weapon, which can undo us at our very conception.” I resisted the urge to glance back at Rafe, whom I hoped was following this better than I was. Maybe he could fill me in later if the Consul never got around to making sense.

  “Tomas, attend us.” She had barely finished speaking before Tomas appeared beside me. “Can she be of use?” He was resolutely not looking at me. I wanted to yell at him, to ask what kind of coward couldn’t even hold my gaze while he betrayed me, but Rafe’s fingers tightened almost painfully and I regained control.

  “I believe so. She occasionally speaks when there seems to be no one there, and tonight…I cannot explain what happened to one of the assassins. There were five. I killed three, and her ward dealt with another; but as for the last…”

  “Tomas, don’t.” I definitely did not want him to finish that sentence. It would not be good if the Senate decided I was a threat, and if they found out about the exploding vamp, they might feel a tad on edge. How can even an ancient master fight against something she can’t see or feel? Of course, Portia’s intervention had been a fluke—I don’t go around with an army of ghosts and I sure as hell can’t command any that I meet up with to fight for me—but there was no way the Senate could know that. I somehow doubted they’d take my word. Most ghosts are too weak to do what Portia’s friends had managed; she must have called every active spirit in the cemetery and, even working together, they had barely had enough power. It wasn’t something I could duplicate, but if the Senate didn’t believe that, it could get me killed.

  Tomas’ jaw tightened, but he didn’t look at me. Big surprise. “I am not sure how the last assassin died. Cassandra must have killed it, but I did not see how.” That was true, but he had definitely seen frozen vamp parts all over the aisle, and there weren’t a lot of ways they could have gotten there. I was surprised he’d hedged his reply for me, but it didn’t matter. One glance at the Consul was enough to show that she wasn’t fooled.

  Before she could call him on it, the short blond who’d been eavesdropping from the doorway suddenly darted around the guards and ran towards us. I wasn’t worried; it was easy to see by the way he moved and the suntan on his cheeks that this was no vampire. Two of the guards followed, so quickly that they were just smears of color against the red sandstone walls, then overtook him. They reached us first and put themselves between Rafe and me and the newcomer, although they didn’t try to restrain him. In fact, they seemed more interested in keeping an eye on me.

  “I will speak, Consul, and you had best instruct your servants not to lay hands on me unless you wish to escalate this to war!” The blond’s booming voice was well-educated British, but his outfit didn’t match it. His hair was the only normal thing about him—close cropped and without noticeable style. But his T-shirt was crossed with enough ammunition to take out a platoon, and he had a tool belt slung low on his hips that, along with a strap across his back, looked like it carried one of every type of handheld weapon on the market. I recognized a machete, two knives, a sawed-off shotgun, a crossbow, two handguns—one strapped to his thigh—and a couple of honest-to-God grenades. There were other things I couldn’t identify, including a row of cork-topped bottles along the front of the belt. The getup, sort of mad scientist meets Rambo, would have made me smile, except that I believe in showing respect for someone carrying that much hardware.

  “You are here on sufferance, Pritkin. Do not forget that.” The Consul sounded bored, but several of her snakes hissed in the guy’s direction.

  The man sneered, and his bright green eyes were scornful. I wondered if he had a death wish, and pressed back against Rafe. His arms slid around my waist and I felt a little better. “She is not vampire—you have no right to speak for her!”

  “That can easily be remedied.” I jumped as a low, sibilant voice spoke in my ear. I twisted in Rafe’s grip to see a tall, cadaverous vamp with greasy black hair and glittering beetle eyes bending towards me. I’d met him only once before, and we hadn’t gotten along. I somehow didn’t think this time would be any different.

  Jack, still sometimes called by his famous nickname, had had an abrupt end to his early career in the streets of London when he met Senate member Augusta, one of those missing at the moment, while she was on a European vacation. She showed him what a truly ripping good time was before bringing him over. He had been promoted to the Senate only recently, but had served as their unofficial torturer almost since she made him. He’d come to Philly to do some free-lance work once and hadn’t liked that Tony refused to throw me in as a bonus for a job well done. I’d been relieved not to see him in the Senate chamber when I arrived, and there was no entrance on that side of the room. But figuring out where he’d come from was not as big a priority as wondering why his lips were curled back and his long, dingy fangs fully extended.

  Rafe jerked me away and Tomas shifted to be able to watch both new arrivals. Before things got more interesting, the Consul intervened. “Sit down, Jack. She belongs to Lord Mircea, as you know.” Mircea smiled at me, apparently unfazed. Either he trusted Jack a lot more than I did, or the fact that he was Tony’s master, and by vampire law mine as well, didn’t mean much to him. I was betting on the latter, knowing my luck.

  Jack backed away, but he didn’t like it. He gave a whine like a child deprived of a t
reat as he assumed his seat. “She looks like a slut.”

  “Better than like an undertaker.” It was true—his heavy Victorian clothes would have looked perfectly at home in a funeral parlor—but that wasn’t why I said it. I’d learned early that fear was power, and I was deathly afraid of Jack. Even in life he’d been a monster; now he was the sort that even vamps gave a wide berth. But I wasn’t going to give him the advantage of knowing how he affected me. Not to mention that terror was an aphrodisiac to him—Tony had said that he actually preferred his victims’ fright to their pain—and I wouldn’t give him the pleasure. He bared his fangs at me again in response. It could have been a smile, but I doubted it.

  “The mages do not have a monopoly on honor, Pritkin,” the Consul continued, ignoring Jack and me like we were two naughty children acting up in front of a guest. “We will keep our agreement with them if they keep theirs with us.”

  I started, and gave the man—no, the mage—another look. I’d met mages before, but only renegades who occasionally did jobs for Tony. They had never impressed me much. Most of them had serious addictions to one illegal substance or another—a by-product of living constantly under a death threat—and their habit had Tony’s blessing since it kept them eager for work. But I’d never before seen one in good standing, especially not a Circle member, if that’s what he was. Tony feared both the Silver Circle and the Black, so I’d always been curious about them. The rumors that circulated about the Silver Circle, whose members supposedly practiced only white magic, were scary, but the Black wasn’t talked about at all. When even vamps find a group too daunting to gossip about, it’s probably best to avoid it. I wondered which type he was, but there was no sign or insignia that I could see anywhere on that weird getup.