Don Bassingthwaite
A World of Darkness Novel
The sun was just beginning to rise as Solomon stepped out of the long, black sedan. To the southeast, the skyscrapers of Toronto’s downtown core were silhouettes against the rosy predawn sky. It was going to be another hot day. July was one of the worst months to be in Toronto. People complained about the winter, with its cold winds and slushy streets, but sticky, smoggy July was just as bad. Solomon slipped off the jacket he wore over his black T-shirt and tossed it back into the sedan. “Keep the motor running, David. We’ll go home again as soon as I’m finished.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Solomon walked through the iron gates of one of the University of Toronto’s many colleges. It was a pleasant building, now abandoned for the summer except for a few visiting scholars and a handful of graduate students. Several old trees grew in the college courtyard, and water splashed in broad fountains at the base of a bell tower. More water dripped from the body that two big men were hauling out of the pool. A third man, lean and hatchet-faced, watched them. Solomon walked over to him. “You’re cutting it close, Arthurs,” he said angrily. “I called you three hours ago.” Just moments after he had received a telephone call himself,
a telephone call that had consisted of a single name.
“We just found him,” Jubilee Arthurs said hastily. “We missed him the first time we were here looking. He was in a shadow under the water.” Arthurs was in his late fifties, his hair gray, his clothing loose on an aging frame. Solomon was barely pushing thirty. His skin was tanned and his muscular body stretched his T-shirt tight. His hair was black and slicked back. He had the kind of look that spoke of days spent in the gym and nights spent at clubs. He knew it. He cultivated that look. Arthurs prodded the wet body with his toe rather than meet Solomon’s dark eyes. “We would have left him in the fountain, but,” he shrugged, “like you said, we’re cutting it close.”
Arthurs’ bodyguards settled the wet body on the flagstones beside the fountain. Solomon knelt beside it, turning its head so that the face of the professor looked at him with clear, terror-haunted blue eyes. A third shining eye stared blindly at him from the professor’s forehead: the head of the nail that had been hammered through his skull. There was little blood. As with the others, the nail had been driven in after he was dead. Solomon rose again and held out his left arm. Arthurs took his hand and kissed the tattooed chain that encircled the thick wrist. It was a strange tattoo, gleaming dully as though steel rather than ink had been embedded under the skin. Solomon caught Arthurs by the neck before he could move away. “Full obedience.” He reached across his chest and pulled aside the collar of his T-shirt to reveal his left shoulder. He had another tattoo there, a rearing black beast. Sometimes people mistook it for a heraldic lion rampant. In fact, it was a mastiff.
Arthurs glanced up at him. This time it was Solomon who refused to make eye contact. He kept his eyes fixed forward, unnervingly distant. Arthurs bent his head and kissed Solomon’s wrist again. “I pay homage to Shaftiel,” he murmured obediently. He straightened a little and leaned forward to kiss the tattoo on Solomon’s bared shoulder. “1 pledge my soul and service to the Sentinel of the Ways, the Hungry Guardian Who Watches the Three Ages, the Hound of Thorns, the One Who Waits, the One Who Comes First.” He stood straight and kissed Solomon’s angry, unmoving lips. “I will obey his servant in this world. I am Bandog.”
He was calm. Too calm. Solomon didn’t want him calm. He wanted him anxious, frightened.
And a mage, especially one of the demon-serving Nephandi, had the power to make almost anything he wanted happen. Solomon reached out with his will and just a touch of magick, seizing reality and bending it. For a moment, Arthurs’ heart thundered in his chest. His face became slightly frantic. Whether the mercenary recognized magick at work or not, his body was responding to the cue of his racing heart. “You don’t have any clues, do you, Arthurs?” Solomon asked coldly. “You’re no closer to knowing why this is happening than when I first asked you to investigate. And two more of our master's followers — two more of the High Circle
— are dead!”
Arthurs actually cringed before the lash of his voice. “I’m not a private eye, Solomon,” he protested, “I’m an arms dealer. Can’t you get—” -
“You’re a mercenary.” Solomon turned away from Arthurs. The two big men, Arthurs’ henchmen and bodyguards, were watching them. They looked away hastily. Solomon swept his gaze around the dark windows of the college. “One of the best, so I’ve heard. Or you used to be. Now what’s happened? You’ve been disgraced, Arthurs. You’ve messed up one too many times. You’re getting old and clumsy. Even Pentex won’t hire you anymore, not after that episode last winter with the Garou and the Wynn-tainted bullets. It was an easy job, but it fell apart in your hands.”
He glanced back to see what effect his words had had. Arthurs was red in the face. “How did you know about that?”
“You’d be surprised what I know about the people who join the Bandog, Arthurs, especially the people I bring into the High Circle. So many of them are desperate. So many of them seek Shaftiel’s aid. I like to know why.” Solomon smiled. “You can get access to contacts and resources that I can’t. Find the killers who are preying on us, Arthurs, and Shaftiel will see that your fortunes rise again.” His smile turned sharp. “Think of it as a last-chance contract.”
Solomon turned back to the professor’s body without looking at Arthurs again. He knew that the man would very likely be pale and swallowing hard, weighing the pact he had made in choosing to join the Bandog. It was, of course, far, far too late for him to back out now. Solomon gave him a little time to sweat, then squatted down beside the professor’s body once more. “Do you have anything new to tell me? We're still looking at two murderers?”
“Umm...” Arthurs hesitated, trying to find words that wouldn't make him look like a fool. “Yes. And no
— nothing new. Not as such.” Solomon almost grinned at the old man’s desperation; he was at the end of a very frayed rope. “I’ve been in his office. All the usual signs, though: a new bottle of the victim’s drink of choice open, three chairs moved and sat in, two glasses drunk from. And the cut link.” He pulled something from his pocket and passed it to Solomon. A heavy link from a chain, one side cut through so the link could be separated from the rest of the chain. Solomon wrapped his hand around the link and squeezed tightly, feeling the cool metal against the skirt of his palm. The nail, the cut link, the final drink, the mocking calls that told him who had just died — of it all, only the cut link made sense. The killers were severing the chain of the Bandog one link at a time.
“What about the people here? Did anyone see anything?” -
“No, not as far as I can tell from their dreams.” Arthurs coughed and added, “I’m keeping them asleep now so we won’t be disturbed.”
Arthurs’ access to contacts and resources wasn’t the only reason Solomon had elevated him to the High Circle of the Bandog. The mercenary had other useful talents. Not magick, but useful nonetheless. Now Solomon just gave him a dull stare. Arthurs shifted nervously. “But you didn’t find anything else.” Not a question. A statement of fact. Arthurs looked away. “Look again. Keep everyone here asleep until noon if you have to.”
“What about the body?”
Solomon touched the professor’s corpse. “We’ll make it look like another suicide.” He gestured at the body’s head. “Pull out the nail. You remembered to bring something this time?”
Arthurs flushed, but produced a clavvhead hammer and proceeded to wrench the nail out of the professor’s forehead. It left a neat, round hole behind. “An accident would be more believable than a suicide,” he suggested humbly. “Hardly anyone commits suicide by drowning themselves.”
Solomon just glared at him. “An accident then.” He pulled a small packet of herbs from his pocket, glancing at Arthurs’ bodyguards as he did so. “How much do they know?” It was a vague question, but Solomon knew Arthurs would understand what he meant.
“Not enough for what you need.” Arthurs gestured toward a door leading into the dark interior of the college. “You two take care of the office. Lose the extra glass and fix the chairs.” The bodyguards nodded and disappeared. Arthurs turned back to Solomon. “All clear.”
Setting the packet on a dry patch of ground, Solomon began to run his hands over the professor’s wet body as though he were frisking him. Arthurs leaned in, watching closely. Solomon knew the mercenary was trying to catch the trick to what he was doing. He never would, of course. The young man concentrated on the body under his hands, his eyes narrow and distant. “Alcohol in his stomach, but hardly any in his blood. I’ll have to increase that. High levels of adrenaline and epinephrine. Like the others. Bruising on the back of his head, neck and shoulders. Bruising along his belly as well. They forced his head under the water. The bruising on his belly is from the edge of the fountain.” He would have to remove all of it — and the nail hole. He glanced at Arthurs. “If he had fallen into the pool and hit his head hard enough to knock
him out, how much damage would there...”
Solomon broke off suddenly and sucked in his breath. “What is it?” Arthurs asked.
“There are abrasions around his left wrist and hand. Like something was pulled off him.” He clenched his teeth. “Why didn’t you tell me they had taken his chain?”
“I didn’t know!” Unconsciously, Arthurs twitched his left arm back. He wore a heavy, silvery chain bracelet, not unlike Solomon’s tattoo. Solomon knew that some of the Bandog, like Arthurs and the professor, wore the seemingly innocent chains openly, flouting their secret worship of Shaftiel. The professor was the first of the victims who had done so. “Can you track the bracelet with magick?”
“No.” Solomon pushed up the left sleeve of the professor’s shirt. The skin of his wrist and the back of his hand was scratched. The scratches were slight and not very deep, the sort of abrasions that pulling off a chain bracelet might produce. Solomon picked up his packet of herbs and opened it. The herbs inside were coarsely crushed and had a peculiar smell. Some of the few people who had smelled the herbs said that the scent reminded them of old graveyards in Europe. Others said that the smell reminded them of a mortuary. There was truth in both statements. Some of the herbs had indeed come from plants commonly associated with Old World graveyards, and derivatives of others were used in embalming. Solomon also used them in the preparation of dead bodies — although hardly in the way that a mortician would. He had been planning to use them to erase the signs of struggle from the professor’s body. Now he had a better idea.
He took a big pinch of herbs out of the packet and ground it fine between' his thumb and forefinger, letting the fragrant powder settle into the palm of his other hand. Water squeezed out of the corpse’s clothes turned the ground herbs into a thin, runny, gray-green paste. The paste he smeared across the corpse’s hand and wrist, rubbing it gingerly into the dead skin. When he was finished, the skin had acquired a bit of the paste’s gray-green color. “Do you have a knife?” he asked Arthurs. The mercenary shook his head. Solomon frowned. He would have to detach the hand himself. He stretched his thumb and forefinger around the professor’s forearm, just above the stained skin, and concentrated, once again bending reality to his will.
The dead flesh under his grip began to decay.
The cold skin blackened, then liquefied. Solomon’s thumb and finger sank into the muscles and tendons underneath. More flesh rotted away. Thumb and forefinger met. The last flesh sloughed off the bare bones, leaving a foul gap in the professor’s forearm. Solomon pressed against the exposed radius bone, then the ulna, with the edge of his thumbnail. Each bone cracked neatly in turn. Maggots wriggled in the marrow. The professor’s left hand came away in Solomon’s grip. He stood and took a few steps toward the college gates, watching the scratches on the hand.
The leading edge of the scratches changed as he watched. The scratches were growing.
“Arthurs!” he snapped. The other man came to his feet. Solomon shoved the detached gray-green hand at him. “Take this. Use it to find the professor’s chain.”
Arthurs took the hand gingerly, but not squeamishly. “How? You said you couldn’t track the chain.”
“I can’t. But when the killers took the chain, they took some skin with it. The scratches will guide you: they’ll always point toward the skin on the chain, and they’ll get deeper when you get close to it.” He grinned, baring strong, white teeth. “If the scratches start bleeding, you’re practically standing on top of the damn thing.”
Arthurs nodded. “What if the killers dumped the bracelet somewhere?”
Solomon’s smiled disappeared. “Then it will still be closer to them than we’ve been yet, won’t it?” He looked up at the sky. Dawn was only minutes away. “Get going. Do whatever’s necessary to get these people. I want them, and the sooner, the better.”
“What about the body?” asked Arthurs hesitantly. “We can’t really pass it off as an accident with a missing hand.”
“I’ll take care of it. Now get going!” He pointed at the gates of the college.
Arthurs swallowed. “Yes, sir. But the professor’s office? My men are still...”
“Call them.”
“James!” Arthurs yelled quickly. “Jeffrey!” The two henchmen appeared almost instantly. “Are you done in there yet?”
“Just now.”
Arthurs glanced at Solomon. The younger man returned his gaze steadily. Magick could be very subtle. Arthurs turned and headed for the gates. “Come on.” The henchmen followed him. Solomon waited until they were gone before drawing a deep breath and turning back to the professor’s body. Damn Arthurs! Damn him for being the most incompetent, fuck-up
excuse for an investigator!
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone better among the Bandog that he could use as easily, Certainly there was the police detective, but he would have needed to use the department’s resources, and the last thing Solomon wanted was a rumor of murder even accidentally leaking to any other members of the Bandog. Until whoever was responsible for these murders was caught, the rest of the Bandog couldn’t know the truth about what was happening. At least Arthurs intimately understood the need for secrecy and had contacts who also preferred to remain in the shadows.
Solomon seized the professor’s body. Now that it was so conspicuously mutilated, there was no way he would be able to make the death look like an accident, much less a suicide. He would have to get rid of the corpse. Muscles straining, he lugged it over to the base of a tree, a stately old maple that stood nearby. He reached up and took a gold earring out of his ear. The shaft of the earring was needle-sharp; he jabbed it into his thumb and watched as bright red blood welled up. Solomon reached over the professor’s body and smeared the blood down the bark of the maple. He shook a few more drops onto the body. Then he stood back.
The tree shivered, the body at its base shifting. There was a groaning, like thick branches in the wind, followed by a quiet whispering, like worms in the soil of a graveyard. The earth around the maple churned suddenly as the tree’s roots — first the delicate, threadlike rootlets, then older and heavier roots — came up out of the ground, flailing hungrily. Solomon took another step back just to be safe.
But the roots found the body before they ever would have found him. They seized the corpse. Earth moved, the dirt sliding aside like water. The roots dragged the professor’s body down to feed the tree. The sod filled back in as though it had never been disturbed. In only a few moments, the professor’s last earthly remains had effectively vanished. Solomon turned away. He no longer had the respect for trees that his earliest teachers had tried to instill in him, but they still had their uses.
, If only his magick could have uncovered the killers as easily as it could reshape or dispose of the victims’ bodies. And he could hardly go for help to another of the scattered mages he knew lurked in Toronto. He would have been destroyed on sight as barabbi — a traitor to the mages of the conservative Traditions. Someone who had chosen to follow the dark paths to power.
And approaching another Nephandus mage would be the same as begging to be taken down in his moment of weakness.
Solomon walked out of the college, shutting the gates behind himself with a heavy clang. David, ever obedient, still had the car running. He opened the door for Solomon, then closed it after him and walked around to the driver’s seat. He slid in behind the steering wheel, tall, blond, and impassive as the rising sun. Solomon looked out through the heavily tinted windows and drummed his fingers on the door panel. David glanced at him. “I saw Arthurs come out holding a hand.”
“We may have a lead, David,” Solomon told him shortly.
David nodded and put the car in gear, turning tightly on the narrow street to point the car north and home. “A lead would be good,” he commented. “The Bandog are getting restless.”
Solomon jerked his head up. “How did they find out about the murders?”
“They haven’t. But they’ve all seen enough by now to be suspicious when two of their number commit suicide.” David turned a comer. “I overheard several of them talking before the last Rite. Some believe it was suicide, that Rooke and Harris just couldn’t stand it anymore. They’re beginning to look for signs of weakness in themselves. Others are wondering if there really might be something more going on than suicide.” “They’re going to be wondering even more, then. The professor has just gone missing.”
“Ah.” David was silent, then added, “In any event, their commitment and belief are wavering. They’re losing faith in Shaftiel.”
Solomon snorted. It was far too late for any of the Bandog to turn away. Like Arthurs, they had all made pacts with him — and with Shaftiel. Most of them were fairly wealthy and influential, but certainly none of them could survive the aftermath of being connected to a demon-worshipping cult; the cult was young, but its members were well-established in their fields. At the same time, though, their willing commitment to, and belief in, Shaftiel’s power made things much, much easier. They couldn’t get away, but Solomon couldn’t do much without them. He needed them. “Damn.” David stopped for a light. “Actually, 1 have a suggestion.” Solomon glanced at him with curiosity. “The Bandog need to feel a closer connection with Shaftiel, and they need to be impressed.” The light turned green. They began to move again. “Conduct a summoning ritual.”
“What?” Solomon sat bolt upright in his seat. “Are you crazy? I can’t do that!” He sat back slowly. “I’m not powerful enough. It takes a lot to summon even a minor demon successfully.”
“It wouldn’t have to be a physical summoning. Let them hear their master’s voice. Whispers through the keyhole of the door between worlds. You could do that.” David glanced at Solomon and flashed him one of the rare smiles that lit his golden face. “And think. There’s a lot of preparation involved in a summoning ritual — even a simple one. Let the Bandog help you with the preparations. Get them working together. Involve some of them, maybe the High Circle. Build up to a spectacle, something big, something that will really let the Bandog taste their power. When Shaftiel speaks to them, it will be even more impressive because they helped make it happen.”
Solomon looked at David for a moment, then turned to watch the first rays of the sun strike the cool concrete and glass of Toronto. A summoning. A spectacle. It was possible. He smiled, half to David, half to himself. He liked the idea. It shone in his mind like the edge of a knife. Something to restore the Bandog’s faith in Shaftiel, in him. Something that would bind them even more closely to the cult, and as much plain psychology as magick. A... sacrifice? Too small. It had to be big. Big enough that the Bandog would be able to see the power that the cult and Shaftiel could wield; but at the same time subtle. Solomon wasn’t the only mage or even the only Nephandus in Toronto. And mages weren’t even the only supernatural beings to haunt the city’s shadows. Whatever he did had to be subtle enough not to draw attention to the Bandog or himself. Not that all of the unseen forces of Toronto were unfriendly to Nephandi.
Just that they would view Shaftiel’s cult as a threat to their power.
David stopped at a corner to wave a pedestrian across. The pedestrian gestured for David to go ahead. No, no. After you. I insist. A game played out in cold, sterile politeness, a game that could only happen in Toronto.
Solomon’s smile flickered, growing into a hungry, calculating grin. A spectacle. Big, but subtle. One that would inextricably bind the Bandog to Shaftiel’s service. Solomon slid down into his seat, his T-shirt rasping against the leather, and started to plan.
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy.
The big man glimpsed her movement and turned away from the fallen bouncer. So much for the element of surprise, Tango thought to herself. She crouched, waiting for the man to make his move on her. He would attack her, she was sure of that. There was unthinking rage on his face, and when he caught sight of the Pan’s logo on her staff T-shirt, he bellowed like a bull in a ring. He lunged at her, maybe a little faster than she had expected. She slipped to one side, avoiding his arms and jabbing out with a blow to his kidneys. The man turned quickly, however. The blow glanced away. He snapped an elbow back, striking her on the side of the head hard enough to make her skip aside warily. He turned again. Tango dodged his fists this time, although a third bouncer, coming to her aid, wasn’t so lucky. He received a crack to the face that sent blood flying from a split lip.
Enough of this. Tango brought the big man around with a few more blows to his side and back. Light blows, though, just meant to get his attention. He pulled one hand back and brought it around in a fast, heavy swing... then crumpled w'ith a gasp and a squeak as
Tango slipped in under his guard and kicked him hard in the testicles.
The watching men in the crowded nightclub drew in their breath in a collective wince.
Never go for the balls seemed to be one of the unspoken laws that connected men around the world. Maybe that was why they always seemed so surprised when a woman did it. The crowd was silent as Tango gestured for two more bouncers to carry the would-be troublemaker out of the club. The downed bouncer was getting up, with some assistance from the bouncer with the split lip. With the fight over, the crowd began to turn away, going back to the drinking and dancing that had brought them here. Jumping up on top of a table, Tango spotted the woman whose presence had started the fight. She pushed her way over to where she stood at the coat check. “Are you okay?” she asked over the club’s pounding music.
“Yeah.” The woman took her coat back from the attendant. “Messy break-up. Thank you.”
“Where are the friends you were with?”
“They’re staying. I...” She shrugged as she put on her coat, and for a moment Tango sensed something of the anxiety the woman was trying to hold back. “I think I’d better just go home.”
Tango nodded and pulled half-a-dozen free passes out of her pocket. “Just as long as you come back again. I’m sorry you didn’t have a better time.”
A smile flickered across the woman’s face. “Thanks.” The smile vanished as she saw the bouncers walking her ex-boyfriend through the crowd. “I should go before he gets here.”
“Just a second. Rick!” Tango grabbed the club’s largest bouncer, who was acting as doorman. “Make sure she gets into a cab without any trouble.”
“Got it.”
The woman smiled again. “Thank you.”
“Catch your cab.” She handed the woman over to Rick, then turned to the man the bouncers were bringing to the door. She stopped them and put a hand on the man’s chest. “I don’t ever want to see you in here again.”
He tried to focus on her and more or less succeeded. “You’re history, bitch!” he slurred. “I want you fired. I want to see the manager.”
Tango looked up at him. He w'as massively built, easily six foot five and at least two hundred and forty pounds. She was what dressmakers so politely called “petite,” and a foot shorter than him, even in her boots. The man still went pale in front of the smile she gave him. “I am the manager, asshole.” She glanced at the bouncers. “Make sure he lands hard.”
She turned away. Running Pan’s, one of San Francisco’s newest and hottest nightclubs, wasn’t easy, but it had its satisfying moments. That was why she insisted on being head bouncer as well as manager — the occasional turn on security was a great u'ay to release stress. Tango pulled her headset from around her neck, disentangling it from her long, brown hair, and settled it back over her ears. “All clear, Alan?” she asked, adjusting the microphone.
Sometimes one fight would touch off a flurry of fights, a chain reaction of violence sweeping through the club. Not tonight, though. “All clear,” crackled the tinny voice of Pan’s assistant manager in her ear. “And you’ve got a visitor.”
“Business or personal?”
“Personal. He came in just as you were asking our burly guest to dance. He said he’d wait over by the main bar.”
“Thanks.”
Tango kept herself alert, wondering who her visitor could be. She didn’t have many friends, and the ones she did have seldom came to see her at work. At least Tango hoped it was a friend. She’d made a lot of enemies over the years — she knew it was a lot easier to piss her off than to please her, and she liked it that way. It meant that the friends she did have were good ones. And that her enemies were dangerous.
If the swirling hedonism of Pan’s could be said to have a center, then the main bar was it. It had always impressed Tango far beyond the immense video wall or the soaring platforms and catwalks that took patrons up into the club’s rafters and attracted most of the media’s attention. The main bar was a bright oval of brushed steel, somehow managing to transcend the suburban space-cadet feel that bare metal so often had. Instead, the bar was like a movie star: sensual, begging for a caress, yet at the same time cold, aloof, haughty and untouchable. An ice queen. Dancers moved in a gleaming, chromed steel cage raised up over the bar, just as untouchable.
People swarmed around the bar as if that icy glamor could rub off on them. Tango shoved her way through the crowd, craning her neck in an effort to spot anyone she recognized. “Alan,” she asked into the microphone, “did the person who was looking for me say he’d wait...” Fingers dug into her ribs from behind.
Tango’s voice cut off instantly. On pure instinct she grabbed her assailant’s wrists and twisted hard. Not as hard as she might have, but hard enough to produce a yelp of pain. She flung one captured hand away and spun her assailant around, twisting his arm up behind his back so tightly his fingers were brushing his neck
— and his close-cropped, rusty-red hair. Tango blinked and cursed. “Riley?”
“Yes!” the trapped man hissed between clenched teeth. “Not very ticklish anymore, are you?”
“What’s happening out there?” Alan’s voice was sharp. “Tango? I’ve got bouncers heading toward you if you need help.”
Tango turned Riley loose. “Tell them to forget about it, Alan. I just found my friend, that’s all.” She hesitated, then added, “I’m off-duty. Buzz me if you need me.” She pulled off her headset, but left it hanging around her neck. “What are you doing here?”
Riley looked at her cautiously. “Do you greet all your friends like that, or just the ones you like?” He worked his shoulder gingerly as he bent down to pick up a ballcap from the floor. His hair was longer on top than on the sides and he wore an untucked shirt over a T-shirt and jeans. He looked about twenty, maybe ten years younger than her. In spite of his youth, though, his fox-red hair was already starting to thin. “Jesus, Tango, have you ever thought about switching to decaf?”
“You should have known better than to come up behind me.”
“Winnipeg six years ago should have taught me that.” Riley straightened his round wire-frame glasses. Looking around Pan’s, he added, “Nice. I could stand to work in a place like this. I’ve got a great apartment in a building that’s full of artists and musicians, but you know how artsy types are. Up at strange hours. Loud parties. Not that that’s all bad, but it must be nice to
be able to go home sometimes.”
“Riley.” Tango glared at the people who had turned to watch her initial conflict with him; they quickly looked away. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He grinned. “I heard you were working in Pan’s, so I thought I’d check the place out while I was in San Francisco. You know we’ve heard about it all the way up in Toronto? There’s this bar called Hopeful — they have a wall covered with club ads and the ads from Pan’s....”
“I don’t do the marketing.”
“No,” Riley added thoughtfully, “I don’t suppose you do. You’ve never exactly been Miss Congeniality, have you?” Riley’s eyes followed a knot of laughing people across the club. He inhaled deeply. “Damn.” He turned to the bar and waved a bartender over. “Whiskey sour. Make it a double. You,” he said to Tango, “are still just as nasty as you ever were. You know, I’ve never needed a picture to remind myself of you. All I have to do is go out and find a rock.”
Tango’s lips twitched.
Riley smirked.
Tango’s dour face fell apart completely. “You doorknob!” She swatted playfully at Riley’s bottom. This had become a game between the two. Each time they met — usually after a prolonged separation — Riley would try to make Tango laugh. Tango would resist as long as she could. That was usually about two minutes. The last time they had met, six years ago in Winnipeg, Riley had just looked at her and raised his eyebrows. She had broken down in seconds. Riley was one of her oldest friends. He might have looked twenty, but he was actually half again as old. And Tango was twice as old as that. “You’re looking good. Except for
the hair.”
“That started about five years ago.” Riley flushed and adjusted his ballcap self-consciously. A bracelet around his wrist caught Tango’s eye. She grabbed his arm and took a closer look at it. It was heavy and silvery, with an intricate clasp worked in the shape of a dog’s head.
“Nice. When did you start wearing jewelry?”
“Call it a midlife crisis.”
“Twenty,” Tango said firmly, “is not midlife.”
Riley stuck his tongue out at her. “Spoken like a grump. You’re acting older every time I see you. If you’d stop hanging around with hu—”
Tango made a face as the bartender returned with Riley’s drink. Riley’s voice cut off instantly and he took the drink, pulling several crumpled bills out of his pocket to pay for it. Tango caught his hand.
“On the house,” she told the bartender. “Anything he wants, all night. Don’t take his money.”
“Spoilsport,” muttered Riley as the bartender nodded and moved away. He dropped the money.
A handful of leaves fluttered down on top of the bar. Tango gave him a tired look. Riley groaned. “I’m a pooka. I can’t help it. You’ve been around humans too long, Tango. It’s not good for you. You’re getting...” he shuddered, “old.”
“It’s going to happen to you one day, Riley. It happens to all Kithain.”
“But if you’d spend more time with your own kind....”
Tango sighed. Our own kind. This was another game that Riley played with her, and it was one she enjoyed a lot less.
Once there had been faeries in the world. Noble faeries and common faeries, highborn and low. The spirits of dreams and stories. There had been fabulous parades in the moonlight, and dancing under the stars. Humans had tried to creep into faerie courts and spy on the magnificence of the Kithain. Some had been lucky and gotten away to spread tales of wonder. Others had been caught, pixie-led and pinched black and blue as punishment. A few had caught the eye of Kithain kings and queens and been spirited away to the faerieland of Arcadia as cherished guests and pretty prizes. Once there had been faeries — and then the splendor of that age had fallen. Now Arcadia was far away. There were no parades now and very little dancing, at least not the kind that the ancient faeries would have recognized. The Kithain who had been left behind in this gray, dull world had mingled with humans in order to survive. Tango and Riley were their descendants. Changelings, like the faerie children substituted for human as pranks so long ago. The last remnants of the Kithain were few.
“Give it up, Riley,” Tango said wearily. “I’m not going back. I like humans.”
“So do I.”
“Only because you can play tricks on them so easily. There’s no way I’m going back to Kithain society, so don’t bother trying to talk me into it. Conversation over.” She gestured to the bartender. He brought her a club soda. Riley just rolled his eyes. Tango knew that if something didn’t have alcohol, caffeine, or at least sugar in it, he wouldn’t drink it. “So if you came to Pan’s to see me, what brought you to San Francisco?”
“An airplane.” Tango gave him a nasty glance, and he amended hastily, “I’m here on business. A trip for the duke of Toronto.”
‘‘Worming our way into the duke’s black heart, are we?” .
Riley looked pained. “I’ve lived in Toronto for ten years. I’m not exactly worming my way anywhere.”
“Is he as cold as they say?”
“Colder. If he were any more cold and stiff, he’d be a corpse. You wouldn’t think an Unseelie Kithain would be so rigid and tradition-bound.” Tango nodded. So much of the Kithain’s heritage had changed over years of just trying to survive, but some things stayed the same. The Kithain loved pageantry. They loved the show of court — and, of course, there would always be those who were willing to rule the Kithain courts as dukes, duchesses, kings and queens. And even among the nobles of the dark, unruly Unseelie courts, there were those who held on to the chains of tradition. Especially when tradition supported their positions. “I’ve been appointed his Jester for the year.”
“What happened to the last one?”
“He retired. It’s harder to make Duke Michael laugh than it is to make you laugh. But there is a good side to the job.” Riley smiled. “The Jester organizes the Highsummer Night party.”
Tango spluttered into her club soda. “Nobody organizes Highsummer parties!” Even at the darkest times, the Kithain had clung to their festivals as the tattered banners of their faded glory. Highsummer Night, July 17th, was the biggest Kithain festival of the year, a night of enchantment, feasting and pranks. A wild free-for-all revel. Tango had been to Carnival in Rio once. It was a slumber party compared to Highsummer Night.
“They do in Toronto. Everything is organized. It’s a
strange city. You’ll see.”
He grinned at her expectantly. It took Tango a moment to figure out the meaning behind that grin. “No.”
“Please? Only for a visit? You’ll have a blast. I’m here to get party favors from the Kithain court at Berkeley. They trade with a bunch of Cult of Ecstasy mages there. Do you know what the Cult of Ecstasy is?”
“I know more about mages than you do.” Tango slammed her club soda down on the bar hard enough to make bubbles come fizzing out of the liquid. “But even if I wanted to visit a Kithain court again, I wouldn’t do it during Highsummer. I hate Highsummer Night!”
“I can’t believe that. It would do you good, Tango. I’ve seen grumps older than you frolicking like childlings....”
“No. Enough, Riley. I’m not going.”
The finality in her voice made Riley turn to look at her. He was silent for a moment, then asked, “You’re serious?”
“Why would you think I’d change my mind for a party? You know me.” Tango spread her hands. “I haven’t even set foot in a Kithain freehold in fifteen years!”
“And where has it gotten you? Older.” Riley sipped slowly from his drink, then looked deep into the pale green liquid for a moment. “I was hoping you’d come for me.” He sighed. “It’s not every day that a pooka gets put in charge of something this big. Even so, do you think that anyone is really going to thank me for this? They’ll all be too busy recovering from hangovers. I want someone there who’s clearheaded enough to be able to say ‘Good job, Riley.’” He looked at her again. “Please, Tango?”
“Don’t make puppy eyes at me,” she replied gruffly. “It’s not going to work. I don’t like Highsummer Night. You get drunk, you play a few pranks, then you find a human or another Kithain and screw like rabbits. And the next day everybody lies and says what a great time they had.”
“There’s more to Highsummer than that and you know it. Except for the pranks, you could be describing Pan’s. You seem to like it well enough.”
“I work here. I don’t get drunk myself, and the last thing I did like a rabbit was have salad for dinner.” Tango reached over the top of the bar and poured the rest of her club soda into a sink. “I’m sorry, Riley. Even if I wanted to, I can’t. I have responsibilities here to think about. I have to work.”
Riley’s face went hard. “You are turning into a grump,” he commented sourly. This time, Tango knew, he wasn’t joking. She felt a little flush creep into her face. “You wouldn’t have used work as an excuse six years ago.”
“Riley...”
“Don’t bother.” He drained his drink and set the empty glass down on the bar. He pulled a pen and a piece of paper out of his packet. Writing something on the paper, he thrust it at her. “I’m flying Air Canada. This is my flight number and the hotel where I’m staying. I’m flying out of San Francisco International tomorrow night at 9:30.” He looked into her eyes. “At least think about it, okay?” He took her hand and wrapped her fingers around the paper. “Give me a call. I’d really like to have you there.”
Tango pulled her hand back. Riley looked disappointed, then sighed and walked away from her, disappearing into the crowd. For a moment, Tango considered calling him back. For a moment, she considered tearing up the paper and forgetting all about Toronto and his invitation. Instead, she slid Riley’s paper into her pocket. She put her headset back in place and turned it on. “I’m on duty again, Alan. Anything to report?”
* * *
She looked at Riley’s paper again a few hours later as she sat in her office. On the other side of the wall behind her, Pan’s was closing up for the night. The staff was chasing the last few clubgoers out through the doors, cleaning up the dance floor and wiping down the bars. Another successful night at San Francisco’s hottest club. Tango considered Riley’s paper and wondered if Pan’s couldn’t manage without her for a week.
Highsummer Night was just a little more than a week away. And surely a weekend night flight to Toronto would still have seats available, even the day before. Taking time off work, in spite of what she had told Riley, wouldn’t be a problem. Alan was good. She could leave the club in his hands. She drummed her fingers on the desk. Getting to Toronto wouldn’t be a problem.
Going would.
Tango leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. She hadn’t lied when she’d told Riley that she didn’t like Highsummer Night. It was pointless, stupid, and childish. Like most Kithain celebrations, and like most Kithain themselves.
With the rare exception of Riley and a few other friends scattered around the world, Tango really did not enjoy the company of Kithain. They were too absorbed in the games that they played, too caught up in the pursuit of dreams and elusive wonder. Kithain were trapped between two worlds: the real world, where they lived, died, and ate greasy hamburgers, and a dream world, where they could still live as their immortal faerie ancestors had, amid pomp, adventures and raucous feasts. Kithain who lived with their minds floating in that dream world might stay young longer, but in Tango’s opinion they also tended to be the next best thing to useless in the real world.
Maybe she was turning into a grump, one of the bitter, stubborn and dull older Kithain. If she was, then the change had been building for the last fifteen years. There was a small mirror in her drawer. Tango felt almost guilty as she took it out and looked into it. No wrinkles yet. No sagging. No gray hairs. She looked like any thirty-year-old woman. She didn’t look like a grump. She didn’t feel like a grump — at least not most of the time. A Kithain really was only as young or old as she looked and felt. And Tango felt about thirty most of the time, still energetic, but with experiences that were starting to become a heavy load. Some days that load felt heavier than others.
Like today. Tango had played the Kithain games of wild youth once, hopping from freehold to freehold, from the real world to dreams and back again. She had been fifteen, in both appearance and reality, when she had gone through the Chrysalis, the period of awakening to her faerie legacy and the existence of Kithain. She’d looked only twenty when games had become sour for her, thirty years later. Tired and disillusioned, she had walked away from a freehold in...
she wasn’t even sure where it had been now. Somewhere in Colorado, a freehold so lost in the Dreaming that it barely had a location in the real world. She had walked away, knowing that there must be more to the world than Kithain games. Two days later, she had been in Bangkok.
Traveling had done her good. She probably knew more about the other creatures and beings that shared the shadows of the world than most Kithain did. And she knew that she found most of them, and most humans, more interesting than most Kithain. She had met the owner of Pan’s, a human playboy and mage named Aaron Barry, in Australia five years ago. They had become good friends, strong friends, almost instantly. But humans, mages or otherwise, weren’t Kithain.
Tango worked a kenning, a tiny, simple enchantment that brought the fae seeming of people and things into focus for her. In the mirror, her reflection shifted. Her hair became wild and pale, her eyes dark and beady, her teeth crooked and her features rough, an exaggerated red sausage of a nose against apple cheeks. Her hands, holding the mirror, became tough and callused. Her arms and legs grew gnarled, and she became even shorter than she normally was. She grimaced at herself, almost sure that the mirror would break. This was her true face, the face of her kith or faerie race. Riley was a tricky pooka. Tango was a dour nocker.
But not even nockers were grim and grouchy all of the time. They were the descendants of earth faeries, the miners and smiths of the Kithain. In the modern age, their magic had also come to include machines, so much so that most nockers were more skilled with machines than they were with other Kithain, Still, they had their social moments. Kithain blood called to Kithain blood. And in spite of the way she felt about Kithain, Tango was more social than most nockers — maybe because her magic was weak and any knack for machinery almost nonexistent. She liked being around people. Her own crooked nocker face was, aside from Riley’s, the only Kithain face she had seen in a long time. Seeing a few more for just a short while wouldn’t hurt her, would it? It would be nice to spend more time with Riley.
Thirty years of Kithain life had left her with a lot of dark memories. Riley’s offer was waking some of the brighter ones.
A stirring in one corner of the office drew her attention away from the mirror. The shadows in that corner were momentarily alight with a glow that only her kenning allowed her to see. Tango smiled. That was another reason to accept Riley’s invitation. The glow was Glamour, the energy of magic and wonder — and lifeblood to the Kithain. Tango rose and walked over to the struggling shimmer. She dipped her hand into it, letting it tingle like saltwater across her skin. Stories said that Glamour had been everywhere once. Now it was rare, and clung to the real world in only a few places, like Riley’s apartment building, filled with the creative energies of artists and musicians, or Pan’s, enchanted by Aaron with his human magick but attracting a thin kind of Glamour as a side effect. The Glamour around Kithain freeholds and courts was usually thick, however. Part of Tango craved that density of Glamour, cried out to be submersed in it. Just as part of her craved the company of other Kithain for
just a little while.
And she did have a few very fond memories of Highsummer Night.
Tango walked back to her desk and considered Riley’s paper again. Maybe the pooka was right. Maybe it was time for her to go back to Kithain life, at least for a little while. It probably would do her good. She might even find that the years had taken away the disgust she felt for Kithain society and that she could stomach the company of other Kithain again.
If she didn’t, at least Toronto had plenty of humans to hang around with.
She reached for the phone and dialed Riley’s hotel. It was a good hotel; even at this early, early hour, there was a night clerk on duty. The giddy anticipation of Highsummer was already creeping up on her, and she briefly considered having the clerk ring Riley’s room. She would enjoy waking him up. Instead, though, she just left a brief, anonymous message. Let’s tango in Toronto. “He’ll know what it means,” she told the clerk.
* * *
Getting a ticket for the 9:30 flight to Toronto the next night was as easy as Tango had anticipated it would be. Riley had written down his seat number, and with a little smooth talking Tango even managed to get the seat beside his. There was no return call from Riley, but that was nothing unusual. Riley had never returned a call on time since she had known him. So Tango packed her bags, promised to call Alan with Riley’s number in Toronto as soon as she had it, and drove herself to the airport. She would rent a car in Toronto. There were very few lines at the airport. Not even the departure lounge was particularly crowded.
Which made it abundantly clear that there was no sign of Riley.
That wasn’t especially unusual either. Riley was about as punctual as he was prompt in returning phone calls. To judge by the desire that he had expressed last night in Pan’s to have her come to Toronto, though, she would have expected to see him waiting for her anxiously. But maybe not. Tango bought a cheap, trashy novel at a terminal convenience store and settled down to wait.
When preboarding was announced and Riley still had not appeared, she began to worry. Going to the desk, she caught the attention of one of the attendants. “I’m supposed to be traveling with someone. Can you tell me if he’s checked in?” •
“Certainly. His name?”
“Riley Stanton.”
The attendant entered the name in his computer terminal, then shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“He hasn’t checked in yet?”
“There isn’t anyone by that name on this flight.” Tango bit her tongue. Riley could be traveling under a false name. The long-lived Kithain did that fairly frequently. She hesitated to ask any further questions in case he was. It could make things awkward for both of them, especially if Riley was carrying the kind of “party favors” that the mages of the Cult of Ecstasy usually made. “Thank you,” she said politely. One of the other attendants called boarding for her row. Tango took out her boarding pass and got in line.
“Gate H,” said the attendant mechanically.
Tango followed the other passengers almost numbly. There was late, and then there was Riley. And then there was really late. She could imagine him rushing through the airport as though he were a character in some travel comedy, the kind where tickets get left behind and overpacked luggage dumps clothing in the middle of the terminal. She hoped he made the flight. She had been looking forward to having a good talk with him during the trip. Once they got to Toronto, she was sure that she would lose him to his duties as organizer of the Highsummer party.
She found her seat, on the aisle, and stashed her carry-on in the overhead compartment. Just as she was settling into her seat, a tall woman with platinum-blond hair and an expensive jacket stopped in the aisle. “All right, Cheryl,” she said to a small girl with her, “you have the window seat. If you need something, Mommy will be right behind you.”
Tango glanced up. “I think there must be some mistake. I’m waiting for a friend.” She touched the seat beside her. “This is his seat.”
The woman glanced at the row numbers overhead, then at her daughter’s boarding pass. “6A? No. It’s ours.” She flashed Tango a dazzling, perfect smile that spoke of long hours of adult orthodontics. “Excuse us.”
“Yay!” squealed Cheryl, clambering around Tango. “Wait!” Tango stood up. “Let’s check with an attendant. There’s been...”
“There’s no mistake.” The woman’s mouth compressed into a hard line of displeasure. “I requested a seat reassignment when we checked in. This is the seat they gave my daughter.”
Tango took a deep breath and resisted the urge to give the woman reason to spend even more money on corrective dentistry. “If you don’t mind,” she said smoothly, “I’d just like to check that myself.” She flagged down an attendant and explained the situation.
The attendant disappeared toward the front of the plane, then reappeared a minute later. “I’m sorry,” she reported with a smile, “but the seat assignment is correct.”
The platinum-blond woman gave Tango a smug smile and settled into her own seat. Tango choked back a snarl. What kind of parent brought a kid on a night flight anyway? “What happened to the person who had the seat before? Has he been bumped?”
“No. The seat was never sold. If you will take your seat, we’re ready to start taxiing to the runway.”
Tango blinked and sat down in surprise. And an unpleasant thought occurred to her. A thought that made her hands itch to be around Riley’s scrawny throat and squeezing.
Pookas took immense delight in playing pranks — one reason they loved Highsummer Night so much. Riley hadn’t played a serious prank on her in years. She had thought their friendship was past that.
“Hi!” Cheryl said brightly. “This is my first time flying at night.” She shoved her skinny little arm under Tango’s nose. There was a gaudy gold charm bracelet around her wrist. Cheryl indicated a charm shaped like a star. “Mommy bought me a new charm. See?”
One of the plastic covers on the armrests cracked under Tango’s grip. Cheryl glanced at the broken plastic, then up at Tango’s face. Tango didn’t look back at her. She was concentrating on breathing slowly and steadily, smoothing out her black anger at Riley.
Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots’
Matt walked down the steps of the fraternity house as if he belonged there, as if he were just another frat boy going out for the night. Miranda looked up at him. “Finished so soon?” she asked sarcastically.
“I hate summer,” Matt complained. “Practically everyone’s gone away. There can’t be more than a handful of frat boys left in the city.” He jerked a thumb at the dark bulk of the frat house behind him. “This is the third time this week I’ve had to come here.”
Miranda shrugged. “Kidnap him. Keep him on ice.” “Yeah, sure. And what happens when he’s gone? Do I just get another one?” Matt wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his varsity jacket, leaving a dark streak glistening on the blue leather. Miranda wasn’t sure if he’d ever really played rugby, but Matt liked to cultivate a style he called “collegiate gone savage.” The jacket was worn and stained, the jeans he wore with it tom. Matt seldom took the jacket off, even on the hottest of summer nights. “These boys have parents, Miri, who miss their babies when they’re gone. And they have friends. Too many frat boys go missing or die suddenly, and it gets very hard for me.” He grimaced. “You’re ■■
lucky. You can feed wherever you want to.”
“Cry me a river,” she replied. Matt glared at her angrily. Miranda returned his glare, meeting his gaze coolly and directly. For a moment, their wills clashed: Matt seeking dominance, Miranda denying him with the arrogance of experienced, rightful power. Finally, with a snarl and a flash of bared teeth, Matt looked away.
“Where are Tolly and Blue?” he asked in a hiss.
“Following someone.” Miranda led him to her car, a black sports model parked down the block, without saying anything else.
“Who?”
Miranda remained silent and inscrutable as she started the car and pulled away from the curb. She was more than aware of Matt in the seat beside her, fuming and waiting for her reply. She left him hanging for a few minutes longer. The car slid through the hot Toronto night, whispering from one pool of light below a streetlamp to the next. Like a shadow. Miranda was a shadow, too, tall and lean. Matt might affect a look that recalled the university student he had once been, but Miranda chose to embrace what she was now. She wore black. Black jeans, black, high-collared shirt. Her long, black hair was pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck with a knot of black velvet. A gothic cross cast in dull pewter hung around her neck, her only ornamentation. Her eyes were intense, dark, drowning pools in a strong face that still retained its cafe-au-lait skin tone even after years of death.
She was a vampire. Why pretend otherwise?
She had known Matt back in university — they had both been taken the same night, reborn into the world of the Kindred in the same cemetery. Sometimes she wondered if he remembered her from then, when he was important and popular and she was nothing. Maybe that was why he always seemed so jealous of her now. Maybe it was because he would never be able to match her acceptance of the cruelty that their new existence demanded.
Miranda parked the car on Beverley Street, just south of Dundas. Matt glanced at her. “We’re going down to Queen? Just the two of us?”
“Does that frighten you?”
Matt snorted and swung his door open. A small group of people was just walking past, heading south, laughing and discussing some art movie they had seen. Matt’s door opened right in front of them, forcing the young man who was in the lead to come to a sudden halt or run into the vampire. The laughter stopped instantly. For a moment the young man stared at Matt, his expression neither angry nor frightened, but simply blank. Then he said, politely and automatically, “Excuse me,” and stepped around the open door.
One of the young man’s friends laughed again, a brittle laugh. The group sluggishly resumed its movement and continued on, down toward Queen Street. Matt sneered after them. “Too terrified to recognize danger.”
“They aren’t the only ones.” Miranda got out of the car as well. “We’ll go down to Queen Street as a pack.” Blue was waiting for them on a bench in the park across the street. The rest of the park was empty except for the few streetpeople who slept there, too desperate or too deranged to go elsewhere. “Tolly?” asked Miranda.
“Keeping an eye on our boy.” Blue rose to meet them. He was big, and the shirt he wore, flannel with the sleeves torn off, only emphasized it. If Matt hadn’t actually played rugby, Blue probably had, dragged into it because of his size and build. He still looked like the cop he had wanted to be: square-jawed, short-haired and grim. He seldom smiled. The fangs of other vampires might extend only when they were angry or hungry, but Blue’s were always visible. Miranda liked him, maybe because he was more like her than any other member of the pack. Not entirely like her, of course. Blue might have been a predator, but it was instinct that drove him. A vampire had to think, as well. “He went into Calais — no telling if he’s still there. He might have moved on. Tolly will stay with him.”
Miranda nodded. “So then we have to find Tolly. Matt?”
In the shadows, she could only make out. the ghost of a smirk on his face. Miranda longed to wipe the smirk off his face. But she didn’t. They needed him, and he knew it. “Well?” she asked again.
“I can do it,” he said confidently. Almost cockily. Miranda refused to give him the response that he was looking for. She simply turned and walked into the darkness of the park, leading them south.
The park was old, once the grounds of an estate, later willed to the city. The trees were dark and twisted, the bushes thorny. An old iron fence still encircled it, and gates, though welded open, still guarded its entrances. The only concessions to the present were garbage baskets and, by the south gate, a wide asphalt pad with ugly concrete planters filled with tired geraniums. Someone had scrawled political graffiti on the asphalt. In chalk, of course, not spray paint. This was Toronto, after all. Even the vandals had manners.
South of the park was Queen Street. Queen Street West, the heart of Toronto’s club scene, Toronto’s alternative scene, Toronto’s hip, cool, epitome-of-style scene. The place to be seen. A dangerous place for the pack.
There were people here, many people, walking along the sidewalk, sitting on the patios of bars and cafes, clogging the narrow street with their cars. Miranda, Matt and Blue joined the crowds. Few people seemed to be going anywhere; most just wandered, alone or in groups. Miranda, in her black clothing, fit right in with them. Matt and Blue stood out only a little, no more than the occasional cluster of punks or handful of hammered university students. The crowd still parted around the vampires, though. Miranda almost wished they wouldn’t. It was probably an unconscious reaction to the implicit threat of the vampires’ presence, but it made them easier to spot. At least, though, it also made it a little easier to see.
Calais was a trendy clothing store, open late into the night, as so many of the stores on the street were. In the store’s window, pale mannequins in dark clothes were covered with long veils of semi-transparent gauze. The gauze made it difficult to distinguish the fashions displayed underneath, the dark clothes and reflections in the glass blurring the distinction between the crowd outside and the silent mannequins in the window. The shrouded dead surrounded by restless spirits. That was probably the intention. Miranda stopped. “Tolly?” she
asked out loud, ignoring the people brushing past her.
There was no response. Blue went into the store and came out again a moment later. “He’s gone.” He looked at Matt.
Matt straightened his jacket. “Tell me who we’re following, first.”
Miranda was looking across the street. Another woman had stopped over there, staring at them, her face hostile. Then she was gone. Miranda frowned. She had been hoping that this would happen later rather than sooner. “They’ve seen us.”
“We’re following a Camarilla vampire,” Blue told Matt. “We saw him feeding in a car while we were waiting for you.”
“On St. George?” A cruel smile spread across Matt’s face. There were two sects in vampire society; two competing ideologies that fought each other. The Camarilla, weak, bound by tradition and fear of human attention, was one. The Sabbat, strong, wild, free and unafraid, was the other. The Camarilla might rule the majority of the vampires in the world, but they hid behind a Masquerade, concealing themselves from mortal eyes by pretending that there were no such things as vampires. Denying their own existence. The Sabbat knew better. Mortals were nothing. Playthings, more than willing to deny the existence of vampires of their own accord. The vampires of the Sabbat had nothing to fear from them. The Sabbat ruled Toronto. A few lingering refugees from the Camarilla were... tolerated. Within strict limits. “That’s out of bounds. Why didn’t you stop him there?”
“We wanted to punish him here. In his own territory. But we’ll be in trouble too if we don’t find him before
the welcoming committee gets to us.” Miranda turned back to her friends. “Find Tolly, Matt.”
“Where was the last place you saw the kook?”
Blue growled and pointed to a half-shadowed doorway. Matt stepped into it and put his hands flat against one wall. Matt could sense things that humans and many other vampires couldn’t, the only one in the pack with that particular ability. It was one of the few reasons that Miranda tolerated him. One of Tolly’s abilities was to hide, so completely and sometimes so impossibly that only Matt could find him. The gifts that came with the Embrace were varied and strange, but always powerful.
Matt’s hands were like huge white spiders creeping over the wall as he slowly felt for the psychic impressions that Tolly’s presence would have left behind. Finally, he nodded and pointed. “This way,” he said, leading them back the way they had come and around a corner. He paused, head slowly turning from side to side, searching for Tolly.
“Where is he?” demanded Miranda.
“I...” Matt’s head snapped around. “I see him. Come on.” Hurrying down the block, he stopped in front of a tall, iron lamppost, one of the kind erected by the city government in an effort to beautify parts of the city. Matt rapped on it, his knuckles ringing against the metal. “Tolly.”
An arm, then a leg, sprouted out of the lamppost. More accurately, they came around the side of the lamppost as Tolly stepped out from behind it — or beside it. Miranda suspected that whichever side of the lamppost she had been facing, Tolly would have seemed to come from behind it. He had taken on a shape very much like that of the lamppost itself: tall, and almost cylindrically thin. His face, translucent pale skin framed by long, fine, blond hair, almost glowed with reflected light. The Embrace might bring strange and powerful abilities, but it could also bring madness, sometimes hand in hand; Tolly’s body had a tendency to shift and reshape itself, reflecting the vampire’s moods or surroundings. All totally unconsciously. Occasionally he would wander off and reappear with a new tattoo or a body piercing, as if his body’s own unnatural abilities weren’t enough to satisfy it. The artificial modifications lasted no longer than his ow'n reshapings, healed, erased or plucked away by Tolly’s wandering hands. Sometimes Tolly scarcely seemed aware that he still had a body and that he wasn’t some disembodied spirit. It was eerie to watch him as his face and limbs distorted while he chatted or walked or sat, blissfully ignorant. His lack of control fascinated Miranda — almost as much as it disturbed her.
But Tolly could also be frighteningly competent in the midst of his madness. One impossibly thin arm, like the crossbar on the lamppost, came up and gestured toward a cafe. “He’s in there.”
“Good.” Miranda walked toward the cafe. The others followed her, Tolly still as tall and thin as the lamppost, though he shrank down with every step he took. No one passing on the street seemed to notice. If they did, they were too polite to say anything. By the time the vampires entered the cafe, he was still tall and scrawny, but at least he looked human again.
The server behind the glass case of cakes and pies at the front of the cafe ignored them. No one stopped them as they made their way to a table in the back comer of the restaurant. A man — another vampire — sat there, a cup of coffee untouched in front of him. He smiled at a pretty girl and whispered words that were as sweet as the cake she ate. Miranda dropped down beside him and caught the girl’s eye. Her will was like candy floss. “Go home,” Miranda commanded.
“Shit!” The Camarilla vampire started, his chair squealing on the floor as he pushed away from the table and tried to escape. Blue’s big hands came down on his shoulders and held him in his seat. The girl stood without a word, picked up her purse, and left. Tolly sat down in her place and began playing with her cake.
“Keep quiet, Camarilla,” whispered Miranda with a smile on her face. “There are a lot of nice, normal people here. You wouldn’t want them to know what lurks in the shadows of their little paradise, would you?” The vampire’s eyes were wide with panic as he looked from Miranda with her smile to Tolly, mashing the cake into a brown goo with a fork, to Matt, casually standing with his back to the rest of the cafe and blocking the table from view. “You’re Sabbat,” he croaked. “You’re not supposed to be here. The Settlement...”
“You’re Camarilla, and the Settlement applies to you, too. It’s time for a little geography lesson, I think. What’s your name, Camarilla?”
“Listen.” The vampire licked his lips nervously. “I know what this is about.... Earlier tonight, right?” He glanced around again, searching for sympathy. “I didn’t know she was going to drive out of the Box. And I was hungry. It’s not my fault.” He reached out to Miranda.
Tolly grabbed the vampire’s hand and slapped it down, palm up, on the tabletop. Then he drove his fork through the undead flesh and into the wood of the table. Blue wrapped one hand around their captive’s mouth, muffling his shriek of pain.
Miranda held up her hand. Her fingernails lengthened, growing into long talons. Shadows stretched and shifted around her, around the table, shrouding them in gloom, hiding what was about to happen from the humans in the cafe. The ability to grow claws was something she had learned from Blue, but the ability to manipulate shadows was her skill alone, a reflection of the darkness inside her. “What’s your name?” she repeated.
Blue loosened his grip on the vampire’s mouth, just enough so that he could speak. “Re—Reg.”
“Reg,” Miranda said calmly, as though she were speaking to a child, “when the Sabbat conquered Toronto, a few of your elders helped us in return for being allowed to remain in the city. Our leaders, in their infinite and only slightly questionable wisdom, agreed, and gave the surviving Camarilla a small territory, subject to a few conditions. Can you tell me what the most important of those conditions is, Reg?”
Reg nodded, red tears in his eyes. Even vampires could know terror. “Never to leave it,” he whimpered.
“Very good.” Miranda touched one talon to his pinned palm and swiftly drew it through his flesh, leaving a deep gash behind. “What is the eastern boundary of the Camarilla’s territory?”
Reg’s eyes went wide with pain, but he managed to gasp out, “University Avenue.”
Miranda made a second gash at a right angle to the first. “The southern boundary?”
“King Street.”
Slash. “The western?”
Reg choked before replying, “Bathurst Street.” A vampire could heal most wounds quickly and cleanly. The wounds of Miranda’s claws would heal slowly, though, and they would leave deep scars. Reg might even lose the use of his hand.
Miranda made a fourth cut, completing the square that gave the Camarilla’s restricted territory in Toronto its nickname — the Box. “And the northern boundary?”
“Queen Street.”
Surely the human patrons of the cafe weren’t oblivious to the torture that was taking place in the shadows behind their backs. Reg’s voice bubbled with agony, even though he held back the true expression of his pain. But no one intervened. No one came over to see what was happening. Sometimes, Miranda thought, it almost seemed that the people of Toronto knew what dark forces lived among them and ruled their city, but were simply too polite to stop them. Politeness and manners became a protective shield against fear.
There’s nothing to see. Just ignore them and they’ll go away.
Miranda looked into Reg’s pain-filled eyes. “So if that’s the Camarilla’s territory, where would you say you were tonight?”
“In Sabbat...” Reg’s words caught in his throat, and he almost gagged trying to get them out. “In Sabbat territory.”
“Show me,” Miranda said. She flicked the fork embedded in his palm. Reg’s hand spasmed in answer to the vibrating metal. He clenched his teeth. Reaching across with his other hand, he traced a shaking trail that ended just above the base of his second finger. Miranda nodded. Blue reached down and pulled Reg’s free hand away. Miranda grasped the finger almost delicately between her talons.
There was no way to muffle Reg’s scream this time. The Sabbat pack left him clutching at his ruined hand, trying to drag the fork out of his bloody flesh, and walked out of the cafe. Miranda lifted her veil of shadows, exposing him to anyone who dared to look. But the human patrons ignored it all, deliberately oblivious. Perhaps one of the staff would phone the police, but Miranda suspected that none of what had happened here would even make the news.
There were more Camarilla vampires waiting for them on the street outside. Not many. Only three, maybe four. Trapped in the Box, the Camarilla vampires of Toronto were overcrowded, degenerate refugees hiding from the justice of their own sect. Miranda faced them down. “One of your own violated the Settlement,” she announced coolly. “We came here to punish him, as is our right under the Settlement.”
“Get out.” It was the hostile woman Miranda had seen on Queen Street. “Get out and leave us alone.” Matt laughed. “We’ll go when we’re damn well ready.”
“We’ll go now.” Miranda glared at Matt, and the other vampire subsided into sullen silence. She looked back at the Camarilla vampires. “Because we’re done here. Punishment has been carried out.” She turned and began walking back toward Queen Street. A gaunt vampire caught her arm.
“We won’t forget this, Miranda.”
She knew him. “You can remember for as long as you want, DeWinter.” She brushed his arm away — he was weak. “There’s nothing you can do.”
* * *
“We’ll leave now. Heli, Miri, why didn’t you just bare your neck for them?”
Matt hadn’t stopped complaining since they had walked away from the Camarilla vampires. Now they were coming back up through the park and Miranda was doing her best to keep herself from silencing him by removing his tongue. Let him get his rant out of his system, she thought to herself. Then I’ll crush him like the idiot that he is. Freedom was important to the Sabbat, but so was a certain amount of intelligence. “Those Cammie assholes need to be taught a lesson,” Matt raved. “We’re Sabbat. We can go wherever we damn well feel like! Why’d we let those bastards stay in the first place?” “They begged for their lives,” Blue replied. The big vampire scuffed his feet as he walked. “The Archbishop decided to let the Cammies keep them — for a price. Like killing a bear and turning it into a rug. They’re living trophies.”
“Maybe they’re starting to forget that they belong on the floor, then. We should get some of the other packs together and show the Cammies what being a vampire is really all about.”
That was enough. “We should leave them alone.” Miranda turned to look at Matt. Her voice was as warm as velvet, but it had all the strength of iron. “The Sabbat made a deal with them. The Box is theirs. As long as they respect the Settlement, we respect it, too.” She paused, giving him a disdainful glance. “Why do you think they didn’t attack us when we came out of the cafe? They could have surprised us and had the upper hand. They could have taken us, but they didn’t.”
Matt didn’t seem particularly impressed. “They didn’t fight us because they were afraid to let the humans see them. It’s that stupid Masquerade of theirs that kept them back.” He snorted. “If they had any brains at all, they’d forget trying to hide. Then I’d be worried.”
Tolly giggled. “Like a cartoon character, Matt?” Miranda and the others just looked at him. He smiled. “You know. Frightened of a bearskin rug. Groowwwrr!” The mad vampire’s body ballooned up and he grabbed at Matt with suddenly stubby arms. Saliva dripped from exaggerated teeth.
Matt stumbled, startled. “Get out of my face, kook!” He slapped at Tolly. The blow landed with the smack of skin on modeling clay. Tolly blinked and collapsed back into his normal form, rubbing at his face. His jaw sagged ridiculously to one side. Matt snarled and drew his arm back again. Miranda grabbed it and pulled, twisting Matt around. She seized him by the front of his shirt and lifted him into the air.
“That is enough.” Her w’ords were a hiss, backed up by an angry glare and exposed fangs. Miranda shook Matt hard enough to snap his neck back and forth. “If I hear any more talk about violating the Settlement, I will take you before the Archbishop, and we’ll see what he has to say.” Matt paled. The Archbishop was the leader of the Sabbat in Toronto — and quite fond of his captive menagerie of vampires. In the past he had very casually killed vampires more powerful than Matt for even criticizing the Settlement. “And if you’re that unhappy with the way I handled the situation tonight,” Miranda continued with a smile, “maybe you’d like to take the matter up in a duel.” She threw him to the ground. “Right now. How about it?”
Matt stared up at her, anger burning in his face. He glanced at Blue. The big vampire refused to meet his gaze. Miranda waited. “Well?” she asked.
Matt looked down. “No,” he muttered. “You did the right thing.”
She could have demanded that he repeat the words, humiliating him further. She didn’t, however. Instead, Miranda simply nodded and turned her back on him, contemptuously daring him to try attacking her from behind. She knew that he wouldn’t. He and the rest of the pack would follow her. Blue might be bigger, Matt more devious, Tolly more... inhuman, but none of them could match her for simple, callous evil. She was a serpent and they knew it. They would follow her.
She was untouchable in her evil. She was Sabbat. Miranda walked confidently down the paths of the park, through the old gates, back onto Beverley Street — and froze.
There was a man sitting on the hood of her car, his feet resting idly on the bumper. He was dressed in black, just as she was: tailored black pants, polished black shoes, and a shirt of whisper-thin black silk that clung to his muscular body. The combination of that body and a face that should have been on an angel would have been enough to inspire mingled feelings of lust and envy in anyone who looked at him. He might almost have been a clubgoer who had wandered up from Queen West. Almost.
The pack was suddenly clustered around her, staring at the man. Tolly smiled, his still-twisted jaw rendering the expression horrifically grotesque. Blue’s own expression was dark. Matt’s lips were drawn back in a happy snarl. All they saw was a mortal where one didn’t belong. A lone mortal who had definitely picked the wrong car on which to rest. “Oh, yeah,” murmured Matt, “I needed this.” He glanced at Miranda. “May we teach him a lesson, Mother Miranda, or does the Sabbat have a treaty with the humans as well?”
Miranda considered the man for a moment longer, then smiled as well and nodded. Matt’s snarl turned into a broad grin. “Tolly, get behind him. Blue, you’re with me.” Miranda noticed that he didn’t attempt to include her in his plans, a deliberate snub. That was all right. “Hey, buddy,” the arrogant vampire called out, “is that your car?”
“Yeah,” the man lied casually. His gaze was vacant, the look of a man who had had too much to drink, the look of a man with his guard down. Matt strode into the street cockily. Blue hung back a little bit, perhaps a touch suspicious. Tolly... Tolly was already gone, faded into the shadows in the instant Miranda’s attention had been off him. She caught the tiniest of flickers in her peripheral vision. It might have been Tolly crossing the street. The man patted the car’s hood. “Beauty, isn’t she?”
“Sure is.” Matt and Blue came closer. “I have a friend who used to have one just like it.” Writers and literary critics were always talking about the “legendary” vampire as a symbol for sex and sensuality. They were right. When he chose to, Matt could be irresistibly charming, radiating an exotic, predatory allure.
That allure worked almost visibly on the man. He gave Matt a brainless grin. “Really? They’re great cars. Tough, too.” He bounced up and down on the hood a few times, setting the car rocking on its shocks.
A red flush of anger spread across Blue’s face, and red light flashed in his eyes. Miranda caught the shifting of shadows as claws grew on his hands. “You...” the big vampire began in a growl, lurching forward. Matt threw an arm across his chest, holding him back.
“Never mind him. Seeing cars bouncing brings back bad memories from high school.” Matt’s voice dripped sweetness like a honeycomb. He stepped closer. “What’s your name, buddy?” He grinned, his smile a sudden flash of white teeth.
The smile brought the man’s attention to Matt’s face. Simple animal instinct. They made eye contact. The man’s gaze dulled instantly as Matt’s will overpowered his mind.
“Lie back,” Matt ordered him softly. The man slid down obediently so that his back pressed against the cool metal of the car’s hood and he stared up into the hazy night sky. “Tolly,” Miranda heard Matt call. Nothing happened. Matt called for Tolly again, then cursed the mad vampire. He walked closer to the car.
There was a quiet crunch that Miranda could hear from across the street. Matt just barely had time to glance down at his feet, at the scattered minefield of garlic cloves into which he had walked, before he froze, paralyzed. A look of confusion was locked onto his face. The man on the hood of the car snapped himself upright, flicking something, another clove of garlic, at Blue. Startled, the big vampire still tried to dodge, diving aside with unnatural speed. The man’s aim was better, though, and his arm faster. Blue was paralyzed before he hit the ground. His body didn’t even change position as he fell.
Miranda walked up to the car and studied the garlic scattered on the ground, just as writers were right about vampires’ sex appeal, folklore had gotten some of the facts about vampires, like the dangers of stakes through the heart and exposure to sunlight, correct. On other matters, though, they had been very wrong. Crosses didn’t do a thing, and garlic was no more than a pungent herb. Under normal circumstances. “Interesting choice. Even if Matt had noticed this, he would have thought you were no more than some kind of misinformed would-be hunter."
“That was the idea.” Solomon climbed off the car. “You don?t have to worry about it, by the way. The only danger now is that it will make your shoes smell bad.” She smiled at the mage. “I’m surprised Matt didn’t see it, though.”
“All of his attention was on me. He didn’t have a chance to notice it.” Miranda raised an eyebrow. She knew enough about magick to doubt any lucky coincidences that happened to Solomon. He just shrugged. “Believe what you want.”
Miranda smiled again, then considered Matt, as stiff and still as a mannequin. She put her hand on his shoulder and shoved gently. Matt rocked. Miranda grinned, glancing at Solomon. “May I?”
Solomon grinned back and held up his left hand. Obediently, Miranda kissed the chain tattoo, then turned his hand over and ran her tongue over the pale skin on the inside of his wrist. Solomon shivered slightly. Miranda looked up at him, her smile lascivious. Solomon pushed one hand through her thick hair.
“May I?” she asked again.
“Go ahead. He’s essentially unconscious right now.”
She gave Matt a strong push between his shoulders. The paralyzed vampire toppled forward onto the car hood. His face banged into the hood. A broken nose wouldn’t be much for him to heal, but it would be embarrassing. Miranda turned back to Solomon. “That felt good. Is there something I can do for you, O Master?”
“Don’t call me that.” He caught her hand and kissed her wrist in turn. “Save it for the Bandog rituals.”
Miranda twisted her hand around to grab him underneath the chin, lifting him up until he was standing on his tiptoes. She looked into his eyes and smiled. “Full obedience.” Solomon gave a little moan. She let him slide back down to the ground. He took her hand again and kissed it a second time.
“I pay homage to Miranda.” He stepped into her arms, head and knees bending so that he could kiss her breast. His head lingered there for a moment and she could feel his breath through her shirt. “I pledge my body in service to the Sentinel of my Ways, the Hungry Mistress Who Commands the Three Aches, my Lady of Thorns, the One Who Wills, the One Who Goes Before Me.” Solomon straightened again, but kept his eyes humbly downcast rather than meet her gaze. “I am your servant in this world.” He paused, waiting. Miranda parted her lips, exposing her fangs. With a shiver of anticipation, Solomon kissed her, then sent his tongue darting into her mouth to caress her fangs with hesitant eagerness.
The blasphemous mock-obedience had shocked her the first time he had pronounced it, but she had grown used to it quickly. If Shaftiel’s chief servant could mock his master in this way and get away with it, why shouldn’t she accept it? Miranda let Solomon lick her deadly fangs for a moment longer, then pushed him away roughly. The mage sighed with a little pleasure at her rejection.
It was all just a game. They both knew and they both accepted it. Miranda had lost interest in sex as mortals practiced it when she had become a vampire, the pleasures of the flesh lost to the pleasures of blood. Solomon’s touch was enjoyable, but her arousal could be deadly. That, Miranda knew, was what Solomon found so exciting. She was a creature who was far more powerful than he at such close quarters. He risked himself each time he approached her in this way, trusting her in his complete submission, knowing that any attempt to satisfy her would fail because of her very nature. Each time he failed, he became all the more penitent. The only way he could ever succeed would be to die.
It was a game that Miranda enjoyed as well. It forced her to balance her hunger against her self-control. She dominated not only Solomon, but also her own vampire instincts. She harnessed the beast within. There was no need to disguise her true nature when she had sex with Solomon, only to restrain it. Because the sex play was long and slow, the final blood-taking that came with Solomon’s climax was much more intense than the typically frenzied feedings of the pack. There was no love in their sex, only desperate submission and hungry dominance. And if giving her body to Solomon gave her some measure of power over the leader of the
Bandog in return, well, that was a deal that she was willing to make. It was a cold relationship, but worth it.
Hadn’t she joined the Bandog for the power that the demon Shaftiel promised?
“Why did you come here, Solomon?” she hissed. “The next Bandog ritual is in five days. Couldn’t this have waited?” Her annoyance was only partially mock-aggression. The Sabbat was wild, but it had its rules. There were things that terrified even vampires, and demons were among those things. If the Sabbat inquisitors ever found out that she had become a demon-following infernalist, she would be destroyed out of hand. She had been very careful to keep the pack from finding out about the Bandog. Solomon’s public appearance jeopardized all of that.
“No.” Solomon caught her hand and kissed it one last time, then stood. All trace of his eager submission was gone. “This is business, Miranda. I want to hire you
— or rather, the pack — to do a job for me. For the Bandog.”
“For which?”
“Does it matter?” Solomon smiled.
Miranda raised one eyebrow and tilted her head to the side. “Possibly. You can’t fool me, Solomon. I’m not one of the wealthy, middle-aged baby boomers you blackmailed into joining the Bandog.”
“I didn’t have to blackmail all of the Bandog,” Solomon replied candidly. “You’re not the only one who wants Shaftiel’s favor. Even humans have problems that they want solutions for.” He nodded at Matt, facedown on the hood of her car, the frat boy’s stolen blood oozing from under his head. “He’s getting to be quite a pain,
isn’t he? I was watching you tonight.”
Miranda suppressed a shiver of paranoia. One of the benefits of acting as Solomon’s mistress was that she had learned some of what the mage was capable of doing with his magick. Once he knew a person, he could find and spy on them anywhere in the city. She put forward a strong front. “You promised me the power to deal with him.”
“Be patient, Miranda. You won’t have to wait too much longer.” He reached out to stroke her thick, kinky hair. “The pack will be paid with money, but Shaftiel is calling on your pledge of servitude.”
The words sent a thrill of anticipation through her. “What does he want?”
“Sacrifices. Sacrifices disguised as murder.” Solomon put a finger against her lips before she could ask for more details. “There’s nothing else I can tell you now, except that it’s all for the greater glory of Shaftiel and the Bandog. The murders must be committed in a certain way. You’re the perfect Bandog to commit them, but you’ll need the pack to help you.” He smiled again. “Don’t worry. They don’t have to know why you’re doing this.”
The vampire brushed his hand aside easily. “They probably won’t even wonder why.” Senseless violence came easily to the Sabbat, part of the disdain that they showed for humanity. Miranda narrowed her eyes and considered Solomon. “Does this have anything to do with the three Bandog who died recently?”
“You’re as suspicious as the rest of the Bandog.” Miranda bared her teeth. “Like I said, Solomon, I’m no innocent.”
“No,” Solomon agreed, “you’re not.” He nodded. “It does, but not in a way that I can explain to you now. I’ll tell you everything at the same time I tell the other Bandog — at the ritual on Thursday night. For now...” He lifted his wrist to her lips. She kissed it obediently. “Who dies and how?” she asked.
“I have specific targets, but not specific people. When I tell you, where I tell you. Tonight I want you to kill a man from a bar in the gay district. Tomorrow-night, the same, and from the same bar. After that, I’ll be in touch. Any man, any bar, it doesn’t matter. Your choice.”
“Or Matt’s.”
Solomon shrugged. “Or Matt’s, but with your supervision. The body has to be found tomorrow. There must be no witnesses to tie you to the victim. And there can be no sign that vampires were involved.”
“So we can’t drink from him?” Miranda scowled. “I’ll have trouble explaining that away to the pack.”
“You won’t have to. Like I said, I’m hiring them.” He held out his hand. David stepped out of the shadows carrying a briefcase. His sudden appearance startled Miranda into growling. She didn’t like the cold, blond man. He disturbed her. Solomon took no notice of her discomfort. He never had. Miranda had no illusions that she meant more to him than David did. “No drinking
— no spilled blood at all if you can help it. I don’t want anyone to suspect vampires.”
“Who would?”
“Other vampires.”
Miranda nodded slowly. He didn’t want the Sabbat to interfere. “All right. But why use us at all, then? You could do this yourself.” She gestured. “A little
magick...”
“Magick doesn’t work that way so easily. Vampires are much better at killing than I am, and I know I can trust you.” He took her hand again and touched her fingertips to his lips. “Besides which, I thought you might enjoy it.”
Her fingers tensed. Solomon pressed her sharp fingernails against his upper lip, reveling in the brief spark of pain. Miranda’s fingers relaxed again and she pressed back for a second longer before withdrawing her hand. “Wake the others. I want to go through this again in front of them. I don’t want them wondering why they were knocked out and I wasn’t.”
“That should be obvious. They were the ones who were stupid enough to attack a mage. Not all of us humans are as helpless as we look.” Solomon smiled, a vicious expression that blossomed like a slash across his handsome face. He released the magick holding the rest of the pack. The vampires stirred. Matt yelped at the pain from his broken nose.
Miranda’s smile matched Solomon’s.