And then El Mago yanked upward, the blades slicing into his core, then out to the sides.
Leo fell to the floor, the blades still buried in his body.
Standing above him, El Mago extended an arm and turned over his hand. White crystals poured from a black bag.Salt?Sea salt? Crystalline flakes of a brilliant white fell over him. El Mago removed his blades, wiped them on a cloth. Darkness descended upon Leo, his vision telescoping down into nothingness. The sound of gunshots was a muffled hollow drumming as the darkness stole even that.
—
When Leo woke, El Mago was gone and his own scions had filled the office of Royal Mojo. He was fighting exhaustion, thirst, and a rage that he could scarcely control. Not since he went through the devoveo, the decade of madness experienced by all his kind when they were turned, had his need for blood been so strong that he could not force his fangs to retract. The broken thing, the girl who had been tied in the chair, had been bled almost to the point of death. She was being attended to by Katherine, life coaxed into the girl, so that she need not be turned. Another drop of blood lost, and she would die a true death. Still, he could think only of sinking his fangs into her throat and draining her dry. Even Marcoise’s dead body, bloodless and cold, on the floor across the room, smelled appealing. Marcoise, the bait to this trap, which had been sprung on him with such exquisite perfection, had been dead for hours.
“Master?”
George stood behind him, his heart strong and pounding. He had been honed into a weapon so perfect his body was little more than a sheath forthe blade he was. Hot, perfect blood, pumping through his primo.Son sang est rempli d’énergie, puissant, merveilleux sang.
Leo spun up from the floor like a snake striking, too fast for George to dodge. He sank his fangs into George’s throat.
He heard gunshots. Felt the impacts. Whirled to confront his enemies and took a stake to the belly. Leo fell to his knees at the feet of his assailant. His own love. Katherine.
He slid to the floor, where he lay in a spreading pool of his own blood, paralyzed by the ash wood that pierced him. Above him, around him, other Mithrans, his scions, rushed to heal George, whose blood was spurting across the room.
Heal George.
He had attacked his own primo, the human blood-servant who most trusted him. The human he most trusted. Shock flowed through him, filling the empty veins that had been drained out on the cement. Katie bent over him, her silvery-blond hair upswept, her long teal gown split up the side, a bastard-sword at her hip.
She toed him, cocked her head far to the side, her eyes luminous and thoughtful. Very, very quietly, she murmured, “I know you can hear me. Understand this,my master. If I wished your lands and hunting grounds, I could take them this night. If I wished to be forsworn and yet powerful enough that such treachery was no matter, I could take your head.
“You attacked your primo without provocation and mortally wounded him. Had I not been informed that things had gone wrong and seemed off-kilter this night, your George would now be turned and inmyscion lair, not yours. Had I not arrived in time here, you might have died at the hands of these humans.
“Now you are at my mercy. However, I am loyal still, and do not wish to rule. This bargain we shall strike. Someday I may require all your power and influence to save me, to protect me, keep me in my undeath and not true dead. At such time, you will remember this moment and provide such assistance as I might need. Until then you are in my debt.” She stood straight, her body positioned so that he might see up her split skirt. “Think on this as you bleed, my lord and master.”
If he had been able to draw breath, Leo might have laughed, knowingthat Katie meant both her threat and what she displayed. Had he been able to move at all, he would have run a questing hand up her leg. His love ran a bordello in the French Quarter, and half the state’s elected and law enforcement officials had visited her at one time or another. Her peek show was a reminder of her strengths—human friends in high places and a sexual libido and prowess unmatched in his centuries of experience.
She drifted from view, her grace and balance impeccable in her five-inch stilettos. Katie had been a small woman in human life, and, after so many centuries, with each generation of humans growing taller than the last, she was apt to be taken as defenseless and vulnerable. But his lover was never that. He was truly in her debt. After this night, he would be in the debt of many.
His blood ceased to flow. His hunger was growing prodigious. His eyes were drying out—perhaps the most uncomfortable of his small miseries. The cleanup was well under way, his people moving around him, working silently. No one had attempted to remove the stake embedded in his belly, not with Katherine wearing herDuel Sangbastard-sword. It had been forty-two years since Katherine Fonteneau had dueled for position in his clan, but no one who had seen it would ever doubt her wicked expertise with the blade nor her cunning strategy.
Leo Pellissier, Master of the City, owed his Katherine much this night. Though he would make her pay for the paralysis, humiliation, and discomfiture, it was the kind of punishment that would take place in his bed.
One good thing came of the enforced immobility: the time to remember, to reflect. El Mago had been on the far side of the room when he entered. There had been a sword in each hand. The sorcerer had been wearing long sleeves that hid his arms, likely places to conceal weapons, such as the short blades he had used. Hidden blades were Leo’s own strategy. Clearly El Mago remembered from the last time the tactic had been used against him, when Leo had killed him.Almostkilled him.
Leo had been predictable. The mage hadexpectedhim to step inside his reach. He had dropped the swords, incapacitating him with the blades in his own sleeves. He had carved his way deeply into Leo’s entrails.
It was time to rethink his dueling methods. But...
Silver should have rendered him incapable of healing without massive amounts of blood. Yet when he awoke, his belly was uninjured. There hadbeen a scent like silver and marzipan. The scent of bitter almonds. Cyanide was not lethal to Mithrans, but when coating a silvered blade, unable to purge from his body after entry, and allowed to fester with an unknown spell that both healed and fettered him... Leo did not know what effect that might have. His ancient enemy had intended to disable him, not kill him. Or, at least, not right away.
It was clever: the bag of white powder upended over him had healed his flesh over the wounds, so that he and others might not know what had happened. Buried within his body was poison, silver, and a spell—the spell that was perhaps the reason he had attacked his primo. Either one he might have defeated, but all together were deadly, had he not been stopped with a stake to the same damaged area.
The bag El Mago had upended over him had seemed to contain a white powder, crystalline flakes like salt. It had made a quietshushingas it left the cloth sack and fell upon him. When Leo stood after he awoke, nothing had fallen from his clothing or his person. He remembered the sound of Katie’s shoes on the floor as she walked through the room. There had been nothing between her soles and the concrete, no grinding or crushing or near soundless compression of some softer material.
He was poisoned. Likely dying. What seemed a minor inconvenience only moments past loomed large. If someone didn’t remove the stake, and soon, so that he might ask for aid, it might be too late.
Another hour passed. Pain had begun to grow in his belly, cold and harsh and remorseless, spreading through his empty veins and arteries. By the time Katie meandered back, he knew with certainty that he was dying.
She knelt beside him, aligning their faces. Her eyes, hazel gray, met his. She had applied fresh scarlet lipstick, and when she smiled it was the smile of a court courtesan, practiced and perfect and only slightly sadistic. “My master, you look miserable,” she said. “But perhaps it will cheer your unbeating heart to know that our George is once again fully alive and will neither perish nor be forced to take our curse. No? No comment?” She shook her head, making a smalltskingsound.
Katie bent and kissed him, her lips as cold as his own. She held the kiss before pulling away, and as she did, she took a breath, then froze. Her remarkable eyes widened. “Bitter almonds.”
She ripped his shirt open, revealing his abdomen and torso.“Mon dieu.”Katie yanked the wood from his belly and ripped the flesh of her left fingers with her fangs, her blood spurting. She dug her fingers into his flesh, inserting her blood at the point of the original damage. She ripped her right wrist and placed it at his mouth. “Drink, sire.Drink!” When he did not swallow, Katie shouted, “Get the priestess!” Then, to herself, “Oh no.”
