On the table set aside for heavy hors d’oeuvres were more corn dogs; a slow cooker full of beanie weenies with Louisiana hot sauce; pigs in a blanket; and three plates of deviled eggs, each a bit different, and one made with that green horseradish-like stuff they use in sushi. There were two kinds of slaw, one made with ginger and soy, and lots of fixin’s, including pickled okra, pickled beet, pickled pickles, and corn on the cob. Buns. And a massive, monstrous bowl of boudin, big enough to bathe in, sitting atop a platter of crackers. On the platter beside it there was a whole barbecued pig and at least ten bottles of various kinds of hot sauce, from all over the South, including two featuring the Carolina Reaper, the hottest pepper in the world, created by PuckerButt, in South Carolina. I picked up the bottles to see I DARE YOU STUPIT and REAPER RACHA SAUCE. It might have been my imagination, but my hands tingled from the peppers, even through the glass. If the table didn’t catch on fire from the sauces, it might die from the weight of the food. Pretty sure I heard it groaning as I stepped away.
The bar had been set up near the back of the room. There were five huge buckets full of ice and beer bottles, the aluminum leaking condensation onto newspapers placed on the floor. No colas. No water. No juice. No fancy wines.
On a table beside the bar was a churn of homemade ice cream, double chocolate brownies, and the fixings for s’mores to take outside to the fire pit, which was blowing on the wind and smoking up the joint. To my right, I heard the werewolf pack leader/commentator describing the food as “regular ol’ American picnic in the moonlight.” Champ had a way with words.
“Deon,” I muttered, “you are a-mazing. A Wonder-Chef. You need your own cape.”
“Only if I can get a magic wand too,” Deon said from behind me. “Oh, wait.” He put a finger to his lips. “I have a magic wand.” He gamboled away, his buttocks bouncing.
“I may have to stab out my eyes,” Eli whispered.
I gestured with my head to the emperor. He was eating a corn dog. On international paid TV. On his plate was a wasabi deviled egg. And a mound of boudin. A squirt of hot sauce was curled atop it. I had a moment to wonder if that was the PuckerButt sauce and if the fanghead king would go up in flames if he ate some. I could wish.
Vamps didn’t eat human food often. I had a feeling Titus wasn’t prepared for modern spices, and that Deon had prepared for that lack of familiarity with as much care as he had prepared his costume and attitude to irritate a homophobe. Titus scraped a mess of boudin onto a cracker and took a bite. There was a funny sound, a sort of an inhale/groan/gasp.
A dozen of the king’s humans surrounded him, hiding him from view. Leo saw it and slipped to the side, giving someone a tiny finger wave, his index finger lifting and falling. A warning. My eyes followed the MOC for a moment as he stepped behind the dessert table and picked up something. The tips of his swords appeared below the table, one on each side, mostly out of sight. The film crew stepped back.
The EV emperor’s humans were all traditionally gorgeous. The males all wore tuxedoes; the women were dressed in conservative black dresses, hems to the floor. Yeah. Titus was still hung up on sexual expression, lifestyles, and activities. Leo knew Titus’s sexual proclivities. Of course he did. And Leo, with Deon, had set all this up, maybe months ago, as part of whatever other strategies he had percolating in his multilevel, long-view, three-D-chess-game-of-politics, devious mind.
A wave scent of humanish blood washed through the room and out on the salty wind. The magic in the fighting chamber changed. Leo, weapons still out of sight, began to slowly vamp out. Katie, in her sundress, appeared at Leo’s side, her bastard sword in a two-hand grip. Edmund appeared beside me, close enough for me to hear the soft pop of displaced air. Gee stepped to my other side. I could smell Eli somewhere close but didn’t turn to look.
His humans backed away from Titus, then the vamps, forming groups, females and males. The emperor stood there, cold and unamused, his mouth burned red at the corners where he had bitten into the PuckerButt sauce and it had scalded him. He was armed with two swords, just like Leo. “You parley with your ruler without respect,” he said in stilted English. At the words, all his vamps drew their blades.
I tried to figure out why, and realized Titus was using treaty-making wording, not Sangre Duello terminology.
Brandon—wearing a tux, unlike the rest of us—stepped forward. Calmly he said, “There has been no parley called. Parley was made null and void when the scions of Titus Flavius Vespasianus, Emporer of the European Mithrans, came ashore, on the territory of Leo Pellissier, without legal writ from the Master of the City of New Orleans and the Greater Southeast, in violation of immigration laws of the United States of America. Said scions acted without proper honor and outside of the Vampira Carta in leading attack on the scions and humans of New Orleans.”
My eyebrows went up. That was a mouthful of legal mumbo jumbo.
Brandon finished with, “There is no treating. There is no parley. This is Sangre Duello.” Brandon stepped back.
“You play silly games,” Titus said to Leo. He lifted his arms high, the steel edges of his longswords glinting in the overhead light, the silver plating on the rest of the blades flashing. He was wearing armor imbued with so much magic that it glowed in Beast-sight. “You have challenged the emperor of the Mithrans and the Naturaleza. En garde.”
Our vamps darted in. Our humans scrambled away.
Leo, still in jeans, moved around the table, blades bared, his two besties at his sides. Katie vamped out. Grégoire moved with a dancer’s grace, lending balletic beauty to the three of them. The expression on Leo’s face said he was ready to fight, the agreements as to the order of duels be damned. His swords started to spin. Grégoire’s blue eyes narrowed. The three looked deadly. But Titus’s people spread out. Blocking the stairs. Others faced our humans, ready to engage, a barroom brawl to the death. More weapons were readied on both sides. The EVs had been looking for an opportunity to attack and end it all quickly.
The filming continued, and the camera crew were speaking to one another through their short-range headsets. One tripped. Hit the floor with an echoing thump. Titus whirled on him, sword up.
What did Titus benefit by pushing this to the finish right now? And then a tingle of magic brushed across my skin. Was Titus wearing an amulet treated with a mind spell? I didn’t know and couldn’t take a chance.
I drew on Beast’s scream and shouted, “Hold!” Everything went still as the word echoed in the rafters. Leo blinked, his face startled, though he didn’t looked ticked off at me so that was good. But I had no idea what to do now that I had their attention, a skinny girl, holding a ceremonial sword that would be useless in any real battle. Flying by the seat of my pants. Again. But at least the ratcheting up of aggression had stopped. “I demand . . .” The word came to me only a beat too late. “Redress. This human”—I spoke the word as if it were an insult, and pointed my Mughal blade at Titus’s primo—“little Tavi, has challenged the Enforcer of the Master of the City of New Orleans. I have accepted his challenge and I will not be denied.” All my weapons sheathed except the curved Mughal blade, I advanced on Taviano.
My Enforcer stepped between us. “This challenge by this human child is mine to take, my mistress,” Gee said, enunciating like an actor in a pre-sound-system play. At his statement, the camera wolfman rolled out of the way, to his feet, and out of danger. Gee drew his swords. “I would not have you sully your blade with the weak, watered-down blood of this human creature.”
Beast chuffed. Sully. Is good word. But humans like meat with watered-down blood.
“Sully? You dare!” Taviano ground out, swords bare, advancing on Gee and me.
“Enough!” The word shook the rafters and made the overhead fans sway. Sabina elbowed a vamp and two humans aside as if they weighed nothing and stepped between us, her magic hot and frozen all at once, making the space we occupied seem too small, too tight, airless. The place fell so quiet that I could hear her white, starched clothing swish. Her hands were hidden in the skirt’s copious pockets. “The outclan priestess signed the final agreements. Thus I am both final witness and judge.” Sabina pulled her gloved hands from her pockets. In one was a seven-inch-long sliver of wood, sharp as a stake on one end and worn smooth on the other. The energies in the room went sideways: hot/cold/smoky/sour, with magical glints of pale gold and motes of fearful black. The stench of the undead increased, the sickeningly sweet smell of funeral flowers and dried herbs and lemons.