I hoped Eli and Bruiser had already figured out where Edmund and his people were staying and where Blondie and his entire clan were staying. The Arceneau Clan Home had been rebuilt after the fire, while Blondie was in Europe, but wasn’t fully furnished yet. Therefore—Grégoire would be staying... anywhere he wanted. He was the silver-backed gorilla in the room, the one from the old joke, who sat anywhere he wanted.
The silence had gone on too long. I could smell the human sweat and the suckhead aggression starting to build in the room. “The Dark Queen is honored. If the outclan priest has advice to offer, it would be most appreciated.” I gestured to the place beside me at the table. “If the outclan priest would join us?”
Leo gave a small bow. Nobody died. Yet. Things were going swimmingly, if awkwardly, due to my uncomfortably long silences.
We took our places and I nodded to Alex, who had turned his attention from his screens to watch us. Alex’s right hand relaxed and slid from beneath the keyboard drawer.Alex with a gun? Okaaay.
He knew how to shoot, Eli had made sure of that, and also made sure the Kid spent a lot of time on the range. He was an excellent shot. Maybe better than Eli, and that was saying a lot, since Eli had been trained by Uncle Samand had been an Army Ranger. But. A gun in the Kid’s hands in the security room? I took my seat, movement jarring my ribs. Leo took the one beside me.
“Start over with the null prison attack footage, please,” I said, “specifically any shots or footage of the attackers: vamps, witches, and humans, with any IDs and info you have on them.”
“Yes, my lady,” Alex said. He queued up the video of the null prison attack again. On every screen was the scene in the street and in the shadows of the null prison yard. In most scenes a man stood behind the attackers, the man I thought was Mainet.
Leo’s mouth twitched down very slightly. Enough to let me know he had seen this man at the prison, knew him, hated him, but hadn’t tried to kill him.
In the deeps of my mind Beast whispered,Jane is killer only. Should kill vampire.
For a moment, I didn’t know if she meant Leo or Mainet.
His voice pedantic and emotionless as Eli at a debrief, Alex stared, saying, “This man is believed to be Mainet Pellissier.”
I slid my eyes to Leo. “Yes?”
Leo nodded once, a graceful movement, and his fangs clicked closed. His sclera bled back to human white. I’d never do the regal nod thing well. Leo was a master at it, despite his expression being oddly full of grief. “The Heir,” he said, his voice oddly soft.
Alex continued. “There’s no previous mention of Mainet as a human or vampire in France or Spain prior to the early twelve hundreds, though he could have been around a long time before that.”
Leo set his eyes on Alex, predator eyes. His hands tightened as if to form into fists or claws until he forced them to relax. “Continue,” Leo whispered.
“He first appeared in twelve hundred–ish, as a Mithran, during a local recurrence of the Black Plague. Mainet was given rights to start a blood family in AD 1450. He turned Amaury. He owns the Pellissier vineyard in France. He is believed to beverypowerful but also very private. We don’t have much in our files except that he was capable of having children in the human mannerfor at least three hundred years after his first appearance.”
Leo lowered his eyes to his hands, which he clasped loosely together in his lap, to all appearances, calm. But I had seen that reflexive clench. Leo had some bad mojo about Mainet. “Children of the body,” he said, “are precious and rare among my kind.”
Leo had had two children of his body that I knew of, and his daughter had been among the long-chained, stuck in the devoveo. When the Mercy Blade had attempted to dispatch her, under his authority as the vamp misericord, Leo had nearly killed him, and had driven him away. Later, much later, Leo had killed his centuries-old, insane scion himself.
Leo took a breath he didn’t need, blew it out, and seemed to study the gold ring on his thumb. I wasn’t sure, but it kinda looked like the Pellissier seal ring, the one that was pressed into hot melted wax for official clan pronouncements. While Clan Pellissier had ceased to exist when Leo died without a real heir, the clan had never been officially disbanded. It was interesting that he still wore the ring. I smelled his grief. He still grieved for his children, one he had been forced to kill, and one anu’tlun’tahad killed. He turned the ring around, his head bowed, his long hair shadowing his face.
Frivolous thoughts raced through me. I was the titular leader of Clan Yellowrock and I had no seal. Did I need one? Did the Dark Queen have a seal ring? If so, where was it? Mental note to self—check on seal rings. Get one or more seal rings made. Don’t react to the pain and grief on Leo’s face. Don’t.Don’t. He’d hate that, here in front of the people who had once been his.
Finally, Alex went on. “In the years following the formation of Clan Pellissier, Mainet turned several of his descendants, including Rudolfo and Amaury Pellissier. Amaury was Leo’s maker and the former Master of the City of NOLA.” He gave a rolling motion with his hand and added, “For the newbies and anyone who’s been living under a rock for the last hundred years.”
“Who is Rudolfo?” I asked.
“Leo’s father’s cousin,” Alex said.
“Rudolfo did not survive devoveo,” Leo said quietly. “Gee DiMercy gave him the mercy strike before we came to the colonies.”
“Leo,” I said gently. “I know that Mainet is draining his blood scions of magical mojo. But does Mainet have some additional hold over you?” He had been able to talk to me at the null prison, but now he seemed different. Almost as if he was in some kind of pain.
Leo’s fingers twitched. All ten of them. His mouth opened and then closed. His jaw unhinged slightly, the way the old powerful ones did when they wanted to drink down and kill prey. His three-inch fangs again clicked forward on their little hinges, like a viper, and his eyes began a slow change, the sclera bleeding scarlet, his pupils dilating to vamped-out black.
He was fighting it. And he was losing. Leo sucked in a gasp of air as if to speak and then swallowed several times. No words emerged. His throat seemed to close up and he never exhaled. His mouth twisted oddly, as if he wanted to speak and couldn’t.
“Tell me about a celestial being, half chained,” I whispered to him.
Leo’s shoulders went back. His lips turned down hard, making grooves on either side of his mouth. But he didn’t answer. Instead he swallowed, his throat moving as if it burned. His hands clenched, his eyes landed on me. Fully vamped out. And angry.
“Interesting,” I said, holding up a hand to stop two of the newer guards who reached for weapons. I considered Leo. I had used all the magical power of the Dark Queen to summon Leo, not so long ago. He had appeared. When I demanded he help, he had saved Eli’s life. Responding to a magical summons and a direct order meant I was...Holy crap.At that moment, I had been Leo’s master. And yet, now, I had given him a request—an order?—he couldn’t obey for some reason. And not being able to obey one’s master was a problem. It meant he was psychically bound to silence on certain subjects.
