I chuckled. What he described sounded like heaven. And by his tone, Bruiser wasn’t against the idea of company. My sweetcheeks had been quiet for several weeks, maybe even a little depressed, not that he had said so, but it was there in his tone, in his body language, in his scent. I figured he was dejected because Leo was gone and I was dying, but maybe also because he didn’t have a job, a purpose, anymore. He was a type A personality and had been gainfully employed for a century, handling social and political situations with powerful paras and managing a powerful vamp’s clan, businesses, servants, and money. He had made life-and-death decisions daily and nightly for VIVs (very important vampires) and their blood-dinners, dealing with human and vamp politics and high-stakes business. Now? He was my nursemaid. Maybe he needed this crisis. “I’m happy they’re coming,” I said.
“Good. I’ve given them the Thomas Wolfe Suite and the Charles Frazier Suite. They have a connecting door so Molly and Evan can keep eyes on the little ones. I’ve ordered in supplies and food, to be delivered at eight in the morning. And extra ammo. I’ve already put linens on the beds and in the baths.”
I swung my eyes his way. My honeybunch had mad skills for social niceties, courtesy of an English boyhood and a hundred years or so as the primo to the former MOC of New Orleans. And he was doing linen? Yeah. He needed a purpose. I had been spending the majority of my time as Beast, so I hadn’t noticed who had what jobs around the inn, but we hadn’t brought servants. So someone had to be taking care of laundry and dishes and household things. Usually that meant Eli, but he’d been upgrading security measures everywhere and making himself useful with a hammer and nails on the unfinished cottages. “Sounds good,” I said, pressing the elevator button. “Let’s see where we stand with Shimon and his merry band of blood drinkers. We may have to travel once we find him.”
“Love.”
I tilted my head back at him as the doors closed on us.
“We could call in some other monster hunters. Nomad and his cohorts.” Nomad was my first boyfriend and he taught me all about fighting vampires, then deserted me when I got in trouble. Nomad had also been bitten by werewolves, not that I’d told Bruiser that story. Maybe someday. My face must have shown my reaction to Nomad’s name.
“Rick LaFleur?” he suggested. Another former boyfriend, no less annoying, but not a bad guy. In fact, he had been pretty great during the recent unpleasantness. And I needed to have a talk with him, one-on-one, and clear the air, now that I had a better grip on what magic did to people’s will. But later. If I lived through this.
“Ayatas?” he proposed when I remained silent, pushing, making it clear that we needed backup. Ayatas FireWind was my brother, and though things were better between us, they weren’t so great that I wanted to call himfor support. He worked for PsyLED, the senior Special Agent in Charge of the eastern U.S. In the past, he had put his job first, before family, or at least before me. I wasn’t at war with him, but I was a long way from trust.
Yeah, we’d need help of some sort, but I shrugged, noncommittal yet unimpressed with Bruiser’s recommendations. Ed was in trouble. The last remaining Son of Darkness was nearby, probably planning revenge on me for feeding his brother to the dogs, so to speak. We needed to warn all the law enforcement agencies, and we had to warn my people in New Orleans to be ready. That was my political home base. That was where the attack would come because almost no one knew we were no longer in NOLA.
“Your clan Mithrans and Shaddock’s Mithrans?” he suggested, pushing just enough that I knew he was worried.
Lincoln Shaddock was the newly promoted local Master of the City of Asheville, and the protector of the most valuable vampire in the world, Amy Lynn Brown—the only vampire whose blood could shorten the time a newly turned vamp spent in the devoveo—the ten years of nutso-crazies vamps went through before they “cured,” like bacon, and found reason again. If they found their sanity at all. Many did not, or had not before Amy Lynn had come along. Any attacker would want to obtain Amy Lynn pronto, meaning she was in danger. The MOC owed me favors and loyalty since I’d made him master of his own territories and hunting grounds.
“Sure,” I said. “We’re in Shaddock’s territory, and any invading vamps might look me up eventually, so we should notify Shaddock and get his advice, but only call in an army if we need to.”
Bruiser gently squeezed my hand. The doors opened. Shoulder to shoulder, we stepped from the elevator to the main level and the central living area.
***
The winery part of Yellowrock Clan Home in the mountains, what I called Yellowrock Appalachia, was a bigbuilding off to the side of the inn, with a grape press, colossal stainless steel wine tanks and fermenters, and a Borelli bottling line, whatever that was. It was all top-of-the-line stuff that had made Bruiser’s eyes go wide when he first saw it.
The inn was designed in a large, wide-mouthed, blunt-nosed V-shape, with the entrance and main public area in the blunted point of the V and the two V wings containing five suites each, on two stories. When he first saw the place, Alex had called it a “humongous, freaking big house.” He was right. With a stone façade and four massive, wood, unshaped timbers that rose from the entry-level floor to the top of the second-story domed ceiling, actual trunks all twisted and golden and gorgeous. The trunks were the kind of logs one might expect to see in a Hobbit home, but bigger, and had been blasted with corncob grit to polish them, making them shimmer softly.
Besides the five family bedrooms and five guest suites, there were twelve one- and two-bedroom cottages, with entrances on both the inn and the gorge/creek sides. Three of the cottages were finished and set up as vamp lairs; nine of the more outlying units were unfinished, barely dried in. The previous owners had big aspirations.
The inn’s central main rooms had been designed with weddings, tours, and other public events in mind and had originally consisted of a public tasting room, wine shop, gift shop, bakery, two half-finished kitchens, and summer café. In the last months, all that had been converted, giving us a chef’s kitchen with commercial fridges and freezer, and a baker’s kitchen with three commercial ovens, a real brick pizza oven, and commercial mixers. We had three dining spaces, multiple sitting areas, and a game room with space for a future pool table, all currently unfurnished.
The TV lounge and office space was located against the outer wall and walled off from the rest of the living areas. In it, Eli had installed an egress access in the floor, leading to a ladder and a wide tunnel that the previous owners had hoped one day would be a personal wine cellar and a doomsday bunker with its own outside entrance.
We entered the central part of the inn. The two-story, vaulted, tongue and groove, natural wood ceilings and marble floors meant the air was always just a little chilly in winter and the audio ambience was bright, sharp, and echoing. Even with the four polished golden timbers and the warm cream color of the two-story wallboard walls, even with the fans pushing warmer air down into the living space, even with the heated floors in some rooms, it wasn’t homey. Not yet. Not even with fires burning in the three fireplaces. It still looked like a public space for weddings. Bruiser had ordered furniture and rugs to turn it into a home, but they hadn’t arrived, nor had most of the furnishings beyond the bedroom furniture for the suites. The main area was open and empty, so we lived in the kitchens and the TV lounge/office, where we ended up now.
I placed the empty insulated shake cup in Bruiser’s hand and sat gingerly on the comfy recliner. Bruiser had purchased the chair just for me, and it had a push-button mechanism that laid me back and raised my feet. Bruiser covered me with a soft, fuzzy blanket and turned the chair’s warmer up. I sighed in relief. I was always cold these days. A game was on the big screen, as usual, muted, the score and team names on the bottom banner. I ignored it and gave my attention to Alex. Bruiser disappeared with my empty tumbler and returned to position a cup of ginger-honey green tea on the small table at my elbow.
“What do we have?” Bruiser asked. He took an oversized pillow off the sofa, dropped it beside my chair, and sat on it, resting one arm across my raised foot stand.
Eli told the house system—which Alex had named Merlin—to turn on the lights, and the hidden fixtures in the ceiling and along the walls came on. They threw dark gold highlights across Bruiser’s dark hair and caught lighter tones in his beard. In jeans and flannel shirts, he looked nothing like the primo to the Master of the City of New Orleans he had been when we first met. Eli, wearing jeans and layered T-shirts, took his position at the stone-faced fireplace, facing the room and all theentrances. It was the location that allowed him to see the foyer, out a front window and a back window, and into the kitchens and mudroom. He was armed, a double thigh rig and a shoulder holster, nine-mils in each. He was always armed, but the in-your-face abundance was a new addition. He was worried and I wasn’t sure why.
Alex spun in his office chair, facing us, and glanced at his brother. Eli nodded. They had been talking. Or hiding something. From the sick and dying me, too weak to deal with troubles. I glowered at them. Hurting, feeling the winter chill, I pulled the fuzzy blanket over my shoulders and watched the guys settle in. Inside me, Beast thought,Littermates. Mate. Strong den, safe against predators. Beast is... what Jane calls happy.
Yeah,I thought, surprised, especially in light of what I’d planned when I discovered I had cancer and had run away to die.Me too. Even with still being the Dark Queen, it hasn’t been bad. Not bad at all.
Other than the Dark Queen, I’d abdicated my titles in favor of Ed, my primo, who was now Master of the City of New Orleans and most of the southeast U.S., with loyal but independent masters of various cities owing him allegiance. He was also the titular emperor of Europe if he could take it and hold on to power. Or he had been before he was kidnapped. “Out with it,” I said, as my body settled into some semblance of comfort.
Alex said, “You abdicated the emperorship of the EuroVamps. We know that. But apparently no one in Europe knows that. If Ed ever got the papers, he never said anything.”
I had sent my abdication letter to Edmund and Sabina, the outclan priestess of the Mithrans. I hadn’t heard back from either of them. But... Sabina was old enough to take a decade to reply to correspondence. Ed was sneaky. Ed played the long game. What had Ed done? Maybe more important, what had henotdone? “That little sneak,” I said, trying to sound calm and not mad enough to chew nails. Lying by tone. Before they could reply I added, “And what is Grégoire doing? Is he safe or is he in as much danger as Ed?”
“Grégoire is fighting duels and battles in France, challenging the Mithrans who are killing humans, and trying to hold his own lands,” Bruiser said. “He is scheduled to fight Titus’s former heir this week.” He turned his head and gave me a cheeky grin. “At each duel, he declares that he is fighting as the proxy of the emperor—Edmund—and for the Dark Queen, holding her up as some sort of King Arthur, and her reign as some sort of Camelot.”
“Oh...crap,” I said, incredulity and laughter lacing my words.
