Dark Queen

In the backseat Alex said several of the words that were prohibited in our home. I didn’t make a fuss about it.

Eli turned into the front drive at vamp HQ and rolled down his window. Spoke into the mic and the security camera, and the heavy iron gate rolled ponderously open. He parked. I said nothing. Didn’t move. Not even when the others got out and went up the steps. Eli came around and opened my door, took my hand, and led me out of the SUV and up the stairs. Softly, just for my ears, he murmured, “Tonight? Is going to rock.”

* * *

• • •

Eli and I entered the Mithran Council Chambers—the actual room where the council met, as opposed to one of the proper names of the entire building. The room had seats in a semicircle, stacked like a small theater facing the dais. At the front of the room on the dais were carved black chairs behind a narrow, curved, half-round ebony table; a black rug was on the floor there. The wall behind the table of judgment had recently been painted black and was centered with a tall grandfather clock in ebony wood. The room had new black marble tile flooring, with a drain in the center of the slightly sloped floor. There was something foreboding about a drain in the room of judgment.

Little brass plaques lined the table’s front edge, engraved with clan names, only four of them now where once there had been eight. Leo of Clan Pellissier, Grégoire of Clan Arceneau, Innara of Clan Bouvier, and Bettina of Clan Laurent, with the name tag of Sabina Delgado y Aguilera, the outclan priestess, in the middle, presiding. Time had been rough on the vamps. Or I had. Almost half of the chairs would be empty for tonight’s ceremonies.

I went to the table and tapped on the mics hidden behind the plaques. They were all live. This meeting of the council would go live throughout the building.

Sitting in the audience chairs were a number of early arrivals, and some were a surprise, primarily Ming Zoya, formerly Blood Master of the now-defunct Clan Mearkanis. At her side was her sister, Ming Zhane of Clan Glass, out of Knoxville, with Zhane’s primo, an Asian man named Cai. Koun sat at the back, his arms out to the sides as if claiming the chairs on either side of him. Koun had declared he was a Celt and maybe he was old enough for that, I didn’t know. We didn’t really get along, but in a fight, I’d pick him at my back. He was fast and powerful. Alejandro, another vamp I didn’t know well, entered and sat with Koun, their heads coming together as they chatted.

I nodded cordially to the vamps just as Amy Lynn Brown entered and took a seat against the wall in back. Amy was a young vamp, seemingly too young to be important, but vamps had gone to war over her because her blood could bring a Mithran scion over from the devoveo—the madness vamps entered when first turned—in less than the average ten years. Feeding from her blood had even brought a few of the long-chained back to sanity. Amy was valuable for her fortuitous but inadvertent and involuntary blood kiss, however, not for anything that she was. She was untalented, too young to protect herself, and had a big red target painted on her forehead. Every master vamp in the world wanted her for themselves. Not one of them wanted her for who she was except her master, Lincoln Shaddock, back in Asheville. Isolation was turning her inward and making her solitary. That was the kind of lonely vamp who would one day, far too soon, walk into the sun.

Just after Amy, Shiloh entered. Shiloh Everhart Stone was my BFF’s witch-turned-vampire niece, her long straight hair pulled back in a thick tail. Big surprise to see her. At her side was Rachael Kilduff, her red-headed, tattooed, primo blood-servant. Rachael had been working out. She looked buff and toned and dangerous. Shiloh came over to us and Eli stiffened, an almost imperceptible reaction, one I couldn’t interpret. “Jane,” she said. “Why am I here?”

I frowned. “You don’t know?”

“No. I got this and I figured you sent it.” Shiloh held out an envelope that bore Leo’s clan watermark. The envelope was made of extra-heavy rag paper, paper made with linen or cotton, and the flap had been sealed with red wax, which was still attached to the envelope tip. Leo’s seal had stamped it closed. I looked around. Several people were holding identical envelopes.

I pulled out the note, and it made that soft rich sound of very expensive paper scrubbing against more fancy paper. In exquisite calligraphy, the note said, Your presence is requested in Mithran Council Chambers upon rising. It was signed, Leo, Master of the City.

Shiloh said, “I mean, it can’t be from Leo, so it has to be from you.”

I stuffed the note into the envelope and handed it back to her. “Leo handwrote that.” When Shiloh went still as a dead cat, I chuckled.

She whispered, “What could the master want with me?”

“Go. Sit. You’ll know soon enough. And I expect you to do whatever makes you happiest.”

Shiloh took a seat one down from Amy Lynn. The two vamps didn’t acknowledge one another, which was sad. There were always so many lonely people in here. I walked over to them. “Amy. This is my BFF’s niece, Shiloh. She’s a witch turned vamp and master vamps want her because, since she survived being turned and survived the devoveo, she’ll be powerful someday. If she lives long enough.”

Shiloh flinched slightly at my blunt words.

“Jane,” Eli breathed, faintly horrified.

Not very diplomatic of me. I guess I could have been more tactful, but . . . sometimes plain words were best? “Shiloh, this is Amy. She’s the vamp whose blood brought you back to sanity. Every master vamp in the world wants her for that. You two would make—” I stopped as an idea hit me and a devious expression melted over my face. Both girls went wary and worried. “You two would make a very powerful coalition.” They looked from me to each other and back again. That was why they were here, I was almost sure of it. Leo was working the short view this time, protecting his assets. The girls considered each other. I let Eli pull me to a seat in the middle of my clan members.

Other vamps and blood-servants wandered in, and in the midst of them were Katie—once Leo’s heir—and Grégoire, arm in arm. Behind Katie trailed Alesha Fonteneau, her sister, once known only to me as Madam Spy. The two women had spent a lot of time in the scion cages after Katie rebelled against Leo to protect her sister, but their freedom and the glittery jewelry they wore suggested that they had been forgiven if not restored. Real diamonds and sapphires and emeralds sparkled on their necks and fingers and ears. I hadn’t been aware that Grégoire was in town, but the Sangre Duello had meant a recall of outlying forces. Leo wanted his best around him. Dacy Mooney, the heir of Clan Shaddock, took a seat and moments later Leo’s primo blood-servant and Dacy’s daughter, Adelaide Mooney—Del—took a seat. Del was taller than me, a blond beauty with long lean legs, her fingernails painted green to match her dress. The whole gang was here.

The place filled up fast as the grandfather clock gonged seven p.m., the herbal stench of vamps and sex and blood mingling on the air. The doors behind the long table opened, and the VIP vamps filed in and took their seats. The three Onorios filed in after and took places against the walls, where they stood at military parade rest, hands clasped in front of them. Bruiser found me in the audience and his eyes stared hard in warning, though his somber expression didn’t change. Something was up. I gave him a scant nod that I understood there was a problem and opened my senses, smelling, tasting, watching, listening. I thought I caught a trace of lemon. My eyes shot around the room, trying to place the scent, but it faded and was gone. Someone had eaten lemons. Or washed their hands in lemons to get seafood stink off them. Or there was a danger here I didn’t yet see. Nothing else seemed out of place. Everyone here belonged here. The vamps at the dais sat except for Sabina and Leo.

The men up front were dressed in tuxedoes, the women in black floor-length gowns, except for the outclan priestess, who wore stark white, even to the gloves that hid her fire-blackened hand. The last time I saw Sabina, she had been blood-drained and weak; now she fairly glowed with power, her skin glistening palely in the soft lights. Sabina was old, with a beaked nose that suggested Mediterranean ethnicity. She looked powerful, imposing, and serene.

My eyes traced back over the crowd. Everyone seemed as expected. No one was visibly armed beyond teeth, fangs, and talons, weapons they carried with them all the time. I took a seat again with the Youngers and my people, on the second row.