“What?” I demanded.
“You have servants to make such calls, yet you make them yourself. You did not demand respect from your underlings. They called you names about your legs.”
“So?”
“You are a strange ruler. People with power most often spend their days trying to take more power. They have nothing without the mantle of royalty.”
“I kinda suck at royalty. And I have my own mantle.” With an index finger, I drew a circle in the air around my furry face.
“I see this. I could teach you how to be decorous and genteel and royal, but I will not. The lack of propriety suits you. And it makes me laugh.”
“Yuck it up. Poop will hit the prop soon enough, and no one will be laughing. At least that’s been my experience.”
“What is this poop prop?”
I laughed and walked off.I kinda suck at royalty.No kidding.
***
It was nearly dawn when Lincoln Shaddock arrived with three vehicles. His people escorted blood-slaves into two cars and let them snuggle down with vamps. They would share blood, and that would calm the humans’ anxieties, at least for a while. As the sun began to gray the sky, Shaddock took up a position near the front of his own vamp-mobile. They all had super dark tinted windows and heavy armor, toys he needed for the MOC position. He drew two swords and pulled on his power as master of the city. I felt the energies shiver through the ground, a cold wave of danger. “Thema! Kojo!” he shouted. “Attend me!” The power rolled out. Asummons.
The two vamps raced in, popping into place directly in front of him. They both looked shocked to besummonedandcompelled, and instantly they drew dueling swords. The two were facing Shaddock, swords up, in a stance that meant impending combat.
Shaddock vamped out. Fully. Black pupils in scarlet sclera, fangs too long for his actual vamp-age. He was seriously ticked off, his power a frozen sizzle on my exposed skin, like nothing I had felt from him before. Thema and Kojo vamped out too. Fast, that immediate instinct-vamping that meant their human selves were lost beneath bloodlust and violence. Both of them were wearing silver earrings, a show of power that they hadn’t paraded since they first came to Asheville.
“Crap,” I said. I wasn’t a vamp but I couldmove. I pulled on Beast’s speed and my own skinwalker gifts, and skiddedto a stop between the three, my weapons sheathed, arms out to the sides, feet and head moving to keep them all in sight. They spread out around me. No matter how I maneuvered, I had two vamps mostly behind me. Adrenaline shot through me. They began to circle me.Crap. What was going on here?“Easy. Easy there, boys and girls.”
The smell of vamp was astringent and floral and heated. They stared at one another. No one looked at me. Which was strange enough to prick my predator warning system. Something was about to happen between the three vamps.
“Get in the cars. Care for the cattle,” Shaddock said to the two vamps.Cattle. I hated that term for humans.
“We will not,” Thema said.
Softly, speaking slowly, I said, “I don’t know what this is, but no blood challenges. Not here, not now. And Linc, especially no duels with your guests.” Or whatever they were. They hadn’t sworn to Shaddock, and I didn’t know why. And I hadn’t cared. Until now.
The master of the city slowly took his predator gaze off his guests and put it on me.
Koun popped in from the dark. Barreled into the two vamps behind me, sending them flying. He stood at my back, swords drawn. Thema and Kojo dashed back to us, their swords out at Koun. “Do not make me kill you all,” Koun said calmly, as if the possibility of him dying wasn’t on the challenge table. Idiot man would get himself killed fighting against multiple powerful vamps.
My powers were different from a master of the city; I couldn’tsummonpeople like Linc could. But I had the power of my office—not that I knew how to use it yet. But I knew how to use the power of the skinwalker. Power was power. Right? Maybe? Sorta?
I took a slow breath and thought aboutle breloque, its magic, its purpose, its meaning, and I wrapped myself in the mantle of the Dark Queen. My head went up, my nostrils flared. The paranormal power that came from the Dark Queen’s position threaded through me, strengthening my bones, rooting me to the earth. I reached out with that magic. “Put down your weapons,” I said, my voice cold and demanding.“Now.”
They lowered their swords. I was so surprised that I didn’t know what to do next. And it hit me. They had obeyedme. Holy crap.
Shaddock ignored Koun, speaking to me in his old-fashioned country accent. “I took in the broken humans just like My Queen demanded, just like all the others left in my broken city when her enemies came here searching for her, destroying everything I had built, and killing so many of my scions. Every human will be attended to and cared for and healed as best my people are able. These two? They drink from my cattle and give back nothing.”
“We fight your battles,” Kojo spat. “Our swords have been yours.”
“I got plenty of warriors. What I need are Infermieri.”
I had never heard the word before, but it sounded like a title.
Shaddock turned his eyes to me, trying to roll me with his mesmerism. Like the vamped out state, it was a challenge. I wanted to stick my tongue out at him, but unlike Leo, Shaddock wouldn’t find me amusing. “You can’t roll me, Linc,” I said, my power brushing across him. “Don’t even try.”
He blinked slowly, as if he hadn’t known he was trying something wrong and now had to get himself back under control. His pupils constricted slowly, and his sclera pinkened to a watery blood shade. But his fangs stayed down on their little hinges.
“What’s an Infermieri?” I asked.
