The Rose & Wimple bartender turns to me with a sad smile. “Hello, Alaric. I’ve been impressed with the cocktails at this party. Next time, though, I think you should go lighter on the truth potion. It leaves an aniseed aftertaste that isn’t to my liking.”
“Truth potion?” Bernard cries.
Spitting sounds echo around the room as vampires deposit their half-drunk cocktails back into their glasses.
“A necessary evil to unmask the killer in our midst,” Callista says. “Dusk Court, will you judge?”
“I will judge.” Lilac’s voice rings clear. “Lilac Elisaria of the Blood Ptolemy,for the Dusk Court.”
Blood Ptolemy? That means?—
“This man is my sire,” Lilac adds, her mouth twisting into a grim smirk. “I will see him brought to justice.”
A gasp circles the room. It’s rare for a vampire to turn against her sire. But the Mora allows for those of the same blood to judge. I catch the eye of Eleanor Mock of the Blood Alexandre, Komal’s suspect. She nods once to Lilac. A nod of accord between them.
So Lilac’s siring was nonconsensual. Another vile crime for which Baylor should suffer.
Lilac steps onto the dais alongside Callista and Perdita. Gideon appears behind them, placing two goblets onto a small table, and lays a long blade across them. Callista’s blade. I’d recognise it anywhere.
Callista carries the tools of the Mora with her whenever she travels, in case she be given the opportunity to wield them.
I turn to the shocked faces of the crowd. I have seen my mother administer the Mora so many times that the rite is burned onto my soul, but many in this room have led privileged lives, sheltered from the brutality of Upyr justice.
My gaze finds Winnie again, but her golden eyes are focused on Callista and that shimmering blade.
I long to go to her, to hold her close and assure her that Baylor’s evil is behind us. But she’s no longer mine to hold. I thought I had torn down every wall between us, but instead, I buried our love in rubble.
Very well. If I am the monster …
I kick Baylor’s slumped figure, seizing his neck and thrusting it upward. He stares up at the judges, his lip curled back in an impertinent sneer.
“This man has broken our first sacred law,” I cry. “He took blood from a human woman, who was in my employ, without her consent and with the intention of drinking her dry. He has dared do this tonight, in our presence, beneath the roof of a fellow Upyr, because his thirst prevents him from thinking clearly. Because he has already husked two other humans.”
Baylor tosses back his head and laughs. Theharsh sound echoes through the ballroom. He doesn’t say a word in his defence, just cackles until his cheeks redden and his whole body convulses.
“You’re fools and liars, every one of you.” He licks the dried blood from his lips. “I’m guilty of many of your so-called crimes, but I’m not the only one among you brave enough to embrace my true nature. You sit up here in your lofty houses, with your courtly rituals and your high ideals, and you think yourselves civilised. Butcivilisationis a human concept. We are predators, and they are ourprey. You all wish you had the stomach for what I did?—”
“Enough.” My mother presses her foot into his face. The heel of her glittering shoe drives straight through his eye. Blood splatters across the marble, and Baylor does not laugh any longer. His cackles become shrieks of pain.
Callista calls over his cries, “Midnight Court, you may now pass judgement.”
Perdita steps up to the goblets. She raises her left hand, stretching out her long, delicate fingers towards Baylor. She brings her wrist to her mouth and bites down.
She holds her wrist over the left cup, allowing droplets of her blood to splatter over the blade of the sword before collecting inside the chalice.
“Guilty,” Perdita announces, her clear, musical voice ringing out over Baylor’s cries.
Lilac goes next. There is nothing delicate about her as she slashes a long cut across her arm with one fang and squeezes a gush of blood over the sword and into the left cup.
“Guilty, you vilebastard.”
My mother takes her turn, taking her time to smear her blood along the blade before dribbling it into the left chalice. “Guilty,” she announces. “Dusk Court, would you like to do the honours?”
Interesting.The Lady of Agony is softening. This is one of her favourite parts of the Mora.
“Hell yes.” Lilac picks up the sword. “I’m going to enjoy this. I think I’ll make you eat your owntesticles, you fucker.”
The wound in Baylor’s eye has already started to heal over, but now his screams are those of terror. His bravado cannot hold in the face of what’s about to happen to him. He crawls over the floor, trailing blood from his eye. I jerk him back and pin him down while Gideon forces his mouth open. He laughs and shrieks as we force him to drink the blood of the Mora.
