“I might have a brother who’s nearly as old as me, a skinwalker. He works for PsyLED.”
Moll’s mouth opened and closed. “Well,” she said at last. “That sounds like a good story for when we’re winding down from this crazy party. If I wasn’t preggo, I might even have to send Big Evan off with the kids and open a bottle of wine.” She squinted slightly at me. “You and this brother okay?”
“I think so. Or we’re getting that way.”
“Good. I want to meet him.” Moll went back to work.
My chin hurt where she had pinched it. “Yeah. Moll’s scary.”
I climbed to the porch. Alex was crouched there with his camera gear and Eli’s night combat gear, cataloging each blood-servant on the ferryboat and taking stills with the low-light and infrared cameras. Behind him was a camera man—camera werewolf—with a shoulder-mounted camera. It was Scout, a werewolf I hadn’t gotten to know yet, with a green grindy on his shoulder. She snarled at me, looking stressed out with so many humans—potential victims of werewolf rage—around.
Scout focused in on the sight of the beach and through his earbud, I could hear Champ talking, giving the color or the overview or whatever you called it, in his pristine British accent. The leader of the werewolves was in a closet we had set aside for the production room/security room, and it was pretty much wall-to-wall screens from every wall-mounted and shoulder-mounted camera on the island. There wasn’t enough bandwidth to allow all of us comms equipment, but the island was so small we could likely hear a good scream from end to end.
Every flaw, every flub, every wound and death, every single thing that happened for the next two nights, would be filmed and sent out live in the pay-per-view agreed upon between Leo and the werewolves and Titus. Lot of money riding on the pay-per-view, the gambling, and maybe documentaries after.
I blinked the salt and grit out of my eyes and walked through the house, feeling tiredness in every muscle of my body, an ache in my middle that called for antacids.Bandit and Rocky were in the kitchen tasting things and making suggestions to Deon. Ro and Brenda, Katie’s retinue, were bent over a schematic of security equipment, offering suggestions. The stink of vamp and werewolves and sex and blood and adrenaline were all mixed together in a gagworthy stench. The house and the spit of land were too small for us all.
Only hours until midnight. Our side could have used some sleep.
• • •
I don’t know what Titus or his retinue were expecting when they came ashore and walked toward the steps leading to the house. Applause? Bowing and scraping? Tugging on our forelocks?—which meant pulling the hair at the front of our heads. Surely he had expected fighting armor. What he saw as he approached was Eli and me standing at parade rest, not wearing leathers, but fully weaponed up with dual longswords, things that go bang, and two vials of holy water each. At my waist, I was wearing my sheathed Mughal Empire, watered-steel dagger, my gift from Bruiser. We looked like a walking advert for overlapping time periods. A take-no-prisoners duo from multiple eras, me in a nineteenth-century-style corset top and formal skirt, but wearing weapons, Eli in jeans and a muscle shirt, with even more weapons. With bare feet. Eli and I also had our battle faces on. A bizarre unwelcoming committee of two. We’d been standing in place for nearly an hour in the moonlight, as the EVs kept us waiting. Playing games already.
The extended waiting period was being filmed by Scooter in the rushes and sea oats of a sand dune. It was a terribly boring job. So far.
Titus was a small man by today’s standards, not quite five feet, seven inches tall in his dress shoes and black tux. He was clean shaven, his eyes a teddy-bear brown, deceptively nonthreatening, and his hair was worn in a modern style, not the old-fashioned one in the portraits I had seen.
His power swept before him. It hit me, a burst of icy intensity, shattering across my flesh in a shotgun blast ofenergy that charred and froze at the same time. It would have brought me to my knees had I not been expecting it. In Beast-sight, it flashed on the foundation of thehedge of thornsin the sand.
I was reminded of Leo’s power the one time I had been standing close to him when he was about to lose control or else he was funneling all the power of all the vamps in his vicinity. One or the other. Or both. It had been the opening moments of a feeding frenzy, something I had no desire to ever see.
Titus’s power was like that but more. An exhibition. A demonstration. A painful shower of smoldering barbs that iced where they touched. I took a slow breath. Eli’s eyes narrowed at his own discomfort.
Titus turned his head to scan the house. A gold chain glinted at his neck, dropping inside his collar. Gold on his fingers. At his wrists. A beach wind and the house lights caught his curls. I wanted to giggle but kept it in for fear it would sound like, well, like a titter of fear.
We stayed put as the group approached, blocking the bottom of the stairs. Staring them all down. Staring down Titus’s Enforcer, a hulking female Viking vampire named Glacie, though I suspected she had originally been a Gertruda or a Hilda. Staring down Titus’s primo, Taviano, one of the human warriors who had challenged me. Him I looked over and then ignored as they got close enough for them to see us clearly. Our blocking the way was a pointed insult. Taviano put both hands on his swords as if ready to cut his way through once they reached us. We still didn’t move.
The man who claimed to rule all the fangheads in the world was forced to come to a complete halt in front of us. Because this was Sangre Duello. Courtesy and vamp etiquette were distant rules that could be twisted and bent to intimidate or bewilder. Titus looked us over, giving the boob flesh a pointed and condemning glance. But his attitude declared that Eli and I were beneath his notice. We still didn’t move.
Just before Taviano and his boss could react to the insult that the blocked stairs represented, Eli and Iswiveled on our heels and stepped to the sides. From above us, Leo boomed, “Titus! Come on up, dude. We have beer.” I slid my eyes to Leo. He was standing there in the same jeans he’d been wearing when he landed, a brown bottle in one hand. And he was barefoot. Just like the Fifties Americana I had suggested.
Katie was by his side, wearing a billowy dress and flops and an expression that tried hard to appear excited, despite her role as inelegant, unsophisticated, and vaguely vulgar. “We have an entire... keg... of beer.”
I was sure Katie hadn’t had a beer in centuries. The whole sentence sounded strange in her usually sophisticated mouth.
Titus’s face went paler than vamp-normal. His mouth opened. His eyes went human wide, not vamped-out wide. And his power stuttered and fell. “Beer?” Titus repeated. And then he barked a torrent of French and what might have been Italian to Taviano. Shock and anger in the tone. Insult. Confusion.
“Come on up!” Leo shouted again. And the MOC and his heir turned and walked away from Titus, Katie’s flops flapping against the wood porch. The three cameras caught every word and gesture. If I survived the night I’d have to watch this someday. The MOC and Katie had succeeded in gaining the initial emotional upper hand. Point one to Leo.
And then I caught a whiff of lemons and a glimpse of the woman closest to Titus. Julietta Tempeste, Blood Master of Clan Des Citrons. Behind her was Dominique.
Beast leaped to the front of my brain.Enemy,she thought at me.
Yeah. Enemies. All of them.I stared at Julietta and when she looked up, I grinned at her, showing too many teeth, my eyes glowing gold. She faltered. And I laughed, my voice a low growl.
At the sound, the Europeans tightened around Titus, a group of men close to him, and the semicircle of women behind. The emperor stepped through the residue ofhedge of thorns 3.0, his individual power signature sparking in Beast’s vision as a dotted line of energies.
And then something happened. I wasn’t sure what. Just something different. Unexpected. Magic raked across me, familiar, gray and black with motes of red. The magics in my middle reacted, speeding up in the Vitruvian pattern of the star within me. And then it was gone and I wasn’t sure what had happened, except that Titus had done... something. And then... that thought slipped away.
