We were standing on the third floor, the windows open to the cool night breeze, the corroded fans turning overhead. The air smelled of salt, smoke, and vamp, a weird mixture of herbs and blood and sex, poorly hidden beneath the wonderful aroma of food.
On the table set aside for heavy hors d’oeuvres were more corn dogs; a slow cooker full of beanie weenies with Louisiana hot sauce; pigs in a blanket; and three plates of deviled eggs, each a bit different, and one made with that green horseradish-like stuff they use in sushi. There were two kinds of slaw, one made with ginger and soy, and lots of fixin’s, including pickled okra, pickled beet, pickled pickles, and corn on the cob. Buns. And a massive, monstrous bowl of boudin, big enough to bathe in, sitting atop a platter of crackers. On the platter beside it there was a whole barbecued pig and at least ten bottles of various kinds of hot sauce, from all over the South, including two featuring the Carolina Reaper, the hottest pepper in the world, created by PuckerButt, in South Carolina. I picked up the bottles to see I DARE YOU STUPIT and REAPER RACHA SAUCE. It might have been my imagination, but my hands tingled from the peppers, even through the glass. If the table didn’t catch on fire from the sauces, it might die from the weight of the food. Pretty sure I heard it groaning as I stepped away.
The bar had been set up near the back of the room. There were five huge buckets full of ice and beer bottles, the aluminum leaking condensation onto newspapers placed on the floor. No colas. No water. No juice. No fancy wines.
On a table beside the bar was a churn of homemade ice cream, double chocolate brownies, and the fixings for s’mores to take outside to the fire pit, which was blowing on the wind and smoking up the joint. To my right, I heard the werewolf pack leader/commentator describing the food as “regular ol’ American picnic in the moonlight.” Champ had a way with words.
“Deon,” I muttered, “you are a-mazing. A Wonder-Chef. You need your own cape.”
“Only if I can get a magic wand too,” Deon said from behind me. “Oh, wait.” He put a finger to his lips. “I have a magic wand.” He gamboled away, his buttocks bouncing.
“I may have to stab out my eyes,” Eli whispered.
I gestured with my head to the emperor. He was eating a corn dog. On international paid TV. On his plate was a wasabi deviled egg. And a mound of boudin. A squirt of hot sauce was curled atop it. I had a moment to wonder if that was the PuckerButt sauce and if the fanghead king would go up in flames if he ate some. I could wish.
Vamps didn’t eat human food often. I had a feeling Titus wasn’t prepared for modern spices, and that Deon had prepared for that lack of familiarity with as much care as he had prepared his costume and attitude to irritate a homophobe. Titus scraped a mess of boudin onto a cracker and took a bite. There was a funny sound, a sort of an inhale/groan/gasp.
A dozen of the king’s humans surrounded him, hiding him from view. Leo saw it and slipped to the side, giving someone a tiny finger wave, his index finger lifting and falling. A warning. My eyes followed the MOC for a moment as he stepped behind the dessert table and picked up something. The tips of his swords appeared below the table, one on each side, mostly out of sight. The film crew stepped back.
The EV emperor’s humans were all traditionally gorgeous. The males all wore tuxedoes; the women were dressed in conservative black dresses, hems to the floor. Yeah. Titus was still hung up on sexual expression, lifestyles, and activities. Leo knew Titus’s sexual proclivities. Of course he did. And Leo, with Deon, had set all this up, maybe months ago, as part of whatever other strategies he had percolating in his multilevel, long-view, three-D-chess-game-of-politics, devious mind.
A wave scent of humanish blood washed through the room and out on the salty wind. The magic in the fighting chamber changed. Leo, weapons still out of sight, began to slowly vamp out. Katie, in her sundress, appeared at Leo’s side, her bastard sword in a two-hand grip. Edmund appeared beside me, close enough for me to hear the soft pop of displaced air. Gee stepped to my other side. I could smell Eli somewhere close but didn’t turn to look.
His humans backed away from Titus, then the vamps, forming groups, females and males. The emperor stood there, cold and unamused, his mouth burned red at the corners where he had bitten into the PuckerButt sauce and it had scalded him. He was armed with two swords, just like Leo. “You parley with your ruler without respect,” he said in stilted English. At the words, all his vamps drew their blades.
I tried to figure out why, and realized Titus was using treaty-making wording, not Sangre Duello terminology.
Brandon—wearing a tux, unlike the rest of us—stepped forward. Calmly he said, “There has been no parley called. Parley was made null and void when the scions of Titus Flavius Vespasianus, Emporer of the European Mithrans, came ashore, on the territory of Leo Pellissier, without legal writ from the Master of the City of New Orleans and the Greater Southeast, in violation of immigration laws of the United States of America. Said scions acted without proper honor and outside of the Vampira Carta in leading attack on the scions and humans of New Orleans.”
My eyebrows went up. That was a mouthful of legal mumbo jumbo.
Brandon finished with, “There is no treating. There is no parley. This is Sangre Duello.” Brandon stepped back.
“You play silly games,” Titus said to Leo. He lifted his arms high, the steel edges of his longswords glinting in the overhead light, the silver plating on the rest of the blades flashing. He was wearing armor imbued with so much magic that it glowed in Beast-sight. “You have challenged the emperor of the Mithrans and the Naturaleza. En garde.”
Our vamps darted in. Our humans scrambled away.
Leo, still in jeans, moved around the table, blades bared, his two besties at his sides. Katie vamped out. Grégoire moved with a dancer’s grace, lending balletic beauty to the three of them. The expression on Leo’s face said he was ready to fight, the agreements as to the order of duels be damned. His swords started to spin. Grégoire’s blue eyes narrowed. The three looked deadly. But Titus’s people spread out. Blocking the stairs. Others faced our humans, ready to engage, a barroom brawl to the death. More weapons were readied on both sides. The EVs had been looking for an opportunity to attack and end it all quickly.
The filming continued, and the camera crew were speaking to one another through their short-range headsets. One tripped. Hit the floor with an echoing thump. Titus whirled on him, sword up.
What did Titus benefit by pushing this to the finish right now? And then a tingle of magic brushed across my skin. Was Titus wearing an amulet treated with a mind spell? I didn’t know and couldn’t take a chance.
I drew on Beast’s scream and shouted, “Hold!” Everything went still as the word echoed in the rafters. Leo blinked, his face startled, though he didn’t looked ticked off at me so that was good. But I had no idea what to do now that I had their attention, a skinny girl, holding a ceremonial sword that would be useless in any real battle. Flying by the seat of my pants. Again. But at least the ratcheting up of aggression had stopped. “I demand . . .” The word came to me only a beat too late. “Redress. This human”—I spoke the word as if it were an insult, and pointed my Mughal blade at Titus’s primo—“little Tavi, has challenged the Enforcer of the Master of the City of New Orleans. I have accepted his challenge and I will not be denied.” All my weapons sheathed except the curved Mughal blade, I advanced on Taviano.
My Enforcer stepped between us. “This challenge by this human child is mine to take, my mistress,” Gee said, enunciating like an actor in a pre-sound-system play. At his statement, the camera wolfman rolled out of the way, to his feet, and out of danger. Gee drew his swords. “I would not have you sully your blade with the weak, watered-down blood of this human creature.”
Beast chuffed. Sully. Is good word. But humans like meat with watered-down blood.
“Sully? You dare!” Taviano ground out, swords bare, advancing on Gee and me.
“Enough!” The word shook the rafters and made the overhead fans sway. Sabina elbowed a vamp and two humans aside as if they weighed nothing and stepped between us, her magic hot and frozen all at once, making the space we occupied seem too small, too tight, airless. The place fell so quiet that I could hear her white, starched clothing swish. Her hands were hidden in the skirt’s copious pockets. “The outclan priestess signed the final agreements. Thus I am both final witness and judge.” Sabina pulled her gloved hands from her pockets. In one was a seven-inch-long sliver of wood, sharp as a stake on one end and worn smooth on the other. The energies in the room went sideways: hot/cold/smoky/sour, with magical glints of pale gold and motes of fearful black. The stench of the undead increased, the sickeningly sweet smell of funeral flowers and dried herbs and lemons.
The weapon Sabina held up was a big sliver of the Blood Cross, the historical, cursed, magical origination element of the vamps. This one was smaller than the cross-shaped section that had charred the priestess’s hand to the bone, but was still larger than any other piece I had seen. Where had she gotten it? I’d once peeked into her hiding place, inside the sepulcher where she might—or might not—sleep by day. I hadn’t seen this one. And I had kinda ruined the tiny one she had loaned me when it had been absorbed into the Glob. Sabina held the holy-cursed wood over her head and people backed away, leaving only the main challengers, the TV crew, and Sabina in the center of the room.
“Vespasianus,” she said. “So speaks the outclan priestess. You raised weapons against the titular challenger out of order. Pellissier, you raised weapons as well, though in what might have been defense. The primary contenders will both take places on either side of the room. You will not speak unless I give you leave.” Her hawk-sharp gaze pierced the room’s occupants, and I had a flash memory of my high school librarian, a stern-faced woman who had carried a ruler to smack tables with, if not students’ hands. “Your people will separate and sit. Vespasianus’s people there.” She pointed to her left. “Pellissier’s people there.” She pointed to her right.
No one moved. Sabina dropped her hand and pointed the splinter of the Blood Cross at Titus Flavius Vespasianus, holding it like a wand in a Harry Potter movie. “Now!”
Titus’s people moved back, human feet sliding on the floor, vamp feet silent. As they shifted position, so did Leo’s people until there was a twenty-foot space between them. Then thirty. The fighting rings were exposed where there had been only people before. Titus sat on a bench, looking regal but stymied. So did Leo, looking ticked off.
“All combatants in the first three rounds will dress in fighting armor and return,” Sabina said. “I allow you five minutes, no more. Go.”
People dashed down the stairs or popped out of sight. No one remaining on the third floor moved, the vamps doing that still-as-marble thing, common among the undead. Only the humans and weres and I breathed. I slipped down the stairs last to dress in the white armor. About halfway down the stairs I realized the corset was tied in back. Fortunately, Deon joined me and unlaced the corset top, helping me into my fighting clothes. I turned on Beast-speed and the costume change, as Deon called it, took only two minutes. In a little over four minutes we all began to return to the third floor. I hoped that wearing the girly clothing, and now the white leathers, made people think I had no fighting skills. First impressions and all that.
At exactly five minutes, Sabina turned her head in one of those bizarre, squicky motions that was more lizard than human and looked around the room. “You,” she said, pointing at Shiloh and drawing a piece of paper from a pocket in her robes. “You will read the order of trials and announce the combatants. The first will begin now.” Sabina sat down on a bench, her skirts scratchy in the quiet.
Shiloh slid between vamps and humans. Her face was too calm for this summons to be unexpected. Shiloh, part witch, part vamp, had been planning stuff with the vamp priestess. This shouldn’t have been a surprise. The position of outclan priestess had always been held by a witch or shaman turned vamp, and Shiloh fit the bill perfectly if she turned down a place in Clan Yellowrock. Dang. Something else I’d need to address if I lived through this.
Shiloh took the paper and unfolded it. “First challenge,” she said, “is from Concetta Gallo to Jane Yellowrock. Challenger and challenged, approach the central ring.” I started to walk in, but Gee beat me to it. “I accept the challenge for the Enforcer of Leo Pellissier, Master of the City of New Orleans.”
“And by what right do you accept the challenge?” Sabina asked.
A happy-sly look on his face, Gee DiMercy, the misericord of the New Orleans vamps, said, “I am the Enforcer of Clan Yellowrock.”
“Clan—” Titus shot to his feet. “This is an outrage! No human can be a Blood Master.”
Sabina stared at him. For a moment nothing happened. The emperor had been told not to speak by an outclan priestess. Kings were important. If they rallied their people they could kill a priestess true-dead. One-on-one, priestesses were more powerful. Titus went quiet, drawing his dignity around him like a cloak. He bent his head slightly in a royal nod.
Sabina said, “Do you wish to address a point of order? If so you may speak.”
“Yes. I contest the concept of a non-Mithran as Blood Master of a clan.”
Dressed in fighting armor, Edmund stepped next to Gee. To Sabina he said, “Permission to speak to this point of order.”
Without taking her eyes from Titus, Sabina nodded.
Edmund said, “I am Edmund Hartley, a master Mithran, formerly Blood Master of Clan Laurent—my clan, given by covenant to Bettina, now master of Clan Laurent.”
Wait. Covenant? “What covenant?” I demanded.
Edmund continued speaking. “I am also heir to the Master of the City of New Orleans and heir of Clan Pellissier. I speak as one of power. Only days ago, Jane Yellowrock completed a blood-binding upon me, a master Mithran, making me, according to the Vampira Carta, her primo.”
Every single vamp on the far side of the room inhaled in shock. Good thing the windows were open or there’d be no air left for the humans. For myself, I’d forgotten to breathe.
I hadn’t wanted to claim Edmund. It had been the only way to save his life.
Ed said, “Such a binding gives Yellowrock the right to be appointed as a clan master. Jane Yellowrock is now master of Clan Yellowrock. And I am now her primo.”
Coldly, Titus said, “A master Mithran, heir of massive territory, in the position of servant? No. This is absurd. I will not allow it.”
“The outclan priestess allows it,” Sabina said, her words cutting. Titus started to speak again, but Sabina went on. “To the challenged is the choice of weapons.”
Gee said, “Dual swords. No shields. Smaller blades as desired.”
“To first blood or to the death?” Sabina asked the combatants.
Someone at the back of the room answered, “Blood.”
“Blades and first blood. Begin.” Everyone stepped back except Gee, wearing metallic painted plasticized armor, and Concetta Gallo. The tiny woman, shaved headed, olive skinned, looked fourteen, though she was over two hundred. Her armor was silver-green and shiny, and she was a master swordswoman.
The combatants crossed swords, gave half bows, and from somewhere a single bell-tone sounded, echoing in the ceiling. They attacked. Blades clashing, glinting, flashing, they advanced and withdrew. Danced the Spanish Circle around the octagonal fighting ring. Gee cut, a controlled transfer of weight and balance, so smooth it looked as if nothing had happened. A deep cut sliced the woman’s face, bisecting her cheek from ear to nose. Instantly it bled in a drench, as all head wounds do, the flesh already swelling and drooping, to expose bloody teeth through the wound. They both stepped back, off the ring, but not as if they wanted to, and not as if they trusted the other to abide by rules of first blood. The bout had lasted all of five seconds. Maybe just four.
One of the film crew cursed softly, presumably at the speed.
Fast, Beast said, inside me, entranced. Want to fight fast with steel claws.
Brandon said, “Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios.”
Sabina said, “Next rounds, apace, now that Pellissier has drawn first blood.” She looked to Shiloh. “Call the next three bouts, which shall take place, as Americans say it, back-to-back.”
“No,” Titus said, adding what sounded like, “Es una locura.” Then in English he added, “This is mayhem. Unacceptable.”
We waited while someone explained to Titus that the phrase meant the bouts would follow one after the other, not with the fighters standing back-to-back while battling.
Titus shook his head and rattled off more foreign words, before adding, “Following this farce, it will be a privilege to teach the Americans their place and restore proper order, decorum, and protocol to these neglected shores.” As insults went that was a good one. I wondered if Titus had crib notes in his hand. Wisely I didn’t ask that question.
Leo narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t speak either. That might have had something to do with the film crew or with Bruiser’s hand on his shoulder, holding the MOC in his seat. Or playacting. Leo had planned for this night for, maybe, centuries.
Shiloh said, “Nibolio Mancini challenges Jane Yellowrock. Simon Costa challenges Jane Yellowrock. Lanbros Alafouzos challenges Eli Younger.”
My heart took a dive. Lanbros was a three-hundred-year-old vamp. He was a killer through and through. Eli was dead. I started forward, but someone held me back. The irony of Leo and me both being held back wasn’t lost on me. I snarled and jerked my arm free, but waited.
Gee said, “The honor of facing Nibolio Mancini is mine.”
Sounding like a bored roué, Edmund said, “I shall die of the tedium, but the honor of facing Simon Costa shall be mine.” The way he said honor let me know that Edmund and Simon didn’t like each other much.
“My name is properly pronounced See-MOH-neh,” the man said to Edmund, “as you are well aware. And though it is a dishonor to fight a former slave, I accept the humiliation of this bout, out of great regard for my master and emperor.”
I was watching Edmund’s undead face. Yeah. He’d been a slave. And though his expression gave nothing away, that history was still a hard pill to swallow.
A voice from the stairs said, “The honor of facing Lanbros Alafouzos is mine.” I spotted Koun ascending to the third floor. He wore no armor and was mostly naked, wearing only a loincloth, his body tattooed with blue and black dye in what was said to be Celtic symbols. “I am the chief strategist of Clan Yellowrock,” he said, as a cameraman stepped around him, getting the full three-sixty, front and back. “No one may gainsay me.”
Koun stepped up to me and dropped to one knee. So quietly no vamp on the far side of the room could have heard it, Koun said, “I yield unto you all my honor.”
Faster than my eyes could follow, Koun leaped from his crouch, going high, over the heads of those still standing, to land in front of Sabina, one knee on the floor, both hands touching the floor for balance, his blond head bent. “Mother bless me, for I have sinned.”
Sabina touched Koun’s head. “You have done well, my son. You are the only warrior to remember the old ways. Not even our once-emperor has been so proper.”
Titus snarled.
Sabina finished, “My blessing upon you, Koun of the Celts and of Clan Yellowrock.”
And then I remembered a rare codicil of the Vampira Carta that dealt with Sangre Duello. All the fighters were supposed to do homage to the clan Blood Master for whom they fought, and then to any outclan present. No others. No one in their right mind insulted an outclan priestess, yet Titus’s warriors had forgotten. So had Leo’s and mine, thanks most likely to the fact that weapons had been drawn out of order. Points against both sides.
Quickly Gee and Edmund bowed to me and to Sabina, followed by Titus’s people to their leader and then to the priestess. Sabina pointed to the octagonals inlaid in the floor and directed the three groups to take their places. “Gee DiMercy. Weapons?”
“Single sword,” Gee said, sounding bored. “Left hand only.” I figured it was the Mithran equivalent of “I’ll beat you with one hand tied behind my back.” Except that cheating was allowed, so hidden weapons might be used too.
Sabina asked, “Nibolio Mancini. First blood or death?”
Nibolio was a swarthy, hairy man with a full beard like some Renaissance peddler or fruit seller. “To fight one-handed is cowardly. First blood. This weakling does not deserve to die at my hand.”
Sabina said, “Edmund Hartley. Weapons?”
“Two swords,” Ed said. “No shield.”
Sabina asked, “Simon Costa. First blood or death?”
Simon was a Renaissance angel with eyes as blue as the sea on a postcard. “Death.”
My heart stopped beating, but Sabina went on. “Koun. Weapons?”
“Double-headed axes. Blades of steel.”
“Lanbros Alafouzos?” Sabina asked. “To death or blood?”
“I withdraw. I do not fight with the garden tools of the pagan and the barbarian.”
“Yellowrock and Koun,” Sabina said, “challenge from Alafouzos is withdrawn and his name stricken from the Sangre Duello. Death match is to be held downstairs, on the sand rings. Go now and await me.” Simon and Ed took the stairs silently.
Koun stepped to me, people making way for his broad nakedness, a glint in his eyes that said he had chosen the weapons knowing that Lanbros would back out. None of the camera crew was nearby, so I murmured to him, “Chief strategist of Clan Yellowrock,” I said. “Nice title.”
Koun agreed with a tilt of his head and murmured, “Battlefield promotion, my master. Self-awarded.” He took his place behind me, next to Eli. The clean bell-tone sounded, and I caught a glimpse of a female I didn’t know, holding a polished triangle bell and a metal beater. She was strawberry blond and short with cool green eyes. And she was missing three fingers of her left hand in what looked like a permanent injury, perhaps one from before she was turned.
Behind the bell ringer and to the side were most of our nonfighting humans, lined up on benches. Eating popcorn and drinking beer. Titus looked that way and his lip curled. More Taming of the Shrew. Go, humans. Titus’s nonfighting humans were on the far side of the bell ringer, still dressed in formal wear and looking uncomfortable in the sticky winter ocean breeze.
Nibolio Mancini and Gee engaged, left-handed, swords clanking in the first clash. In the next second Gee cut off Nibolio’s beard and through his throat. Springy beard hair and blood flew everywhere. Nibolio dropped to his knees. Another vamp dashed in to drag him off the octagonal. For a vamp, it wasn’t a lethal wound, but he wouldn’t be fighting anytime soon. Gee strolled off. This one had been a two-second duel.
“Did you get the shot?” a tiny British voice asked.
“Got it. Golden,” Bear, the hairy camera wolf, answered.
“Downstairs,” Sabina said. She popped down, as did a larger number of vamps. Humans raced down the stairs. I leaped out the window, landed on the metal roof. Only to push off and land on the sand below, balanced on the fingers of one hand and my toes. I pulled on Beast’s speed, my heart in my throat. Rushed to the rock-bounded fighting circles.
The bell chimed again. I thought I might vomit.
Edmund and See-MOH-neh both attacked at once. The cage of death that was La Destreza was sketched in the air between them, glistening steel that caught the low lights, cut-cut-cut, too fast to see. Blood splattered. Edmund bleeding from a cut above the eye. Holy crap. To the death. “No,” I whispered, the word drawn out.
Something was wrong with Edmund. He was moving slow. I’d seen him fight and this wasn’t right. He looked almost clumsy. Koun leaned in and murmured to me, “Strategy, my master. Strategy. Do not fear.”
I didn’t look away from the fight. Edmund took another cut, this one to his forearm. Simon laughed, looking like blond boy playing a game, not vamp dueling to the death. Their swords whipped and whirled in a complex cage of death. Moving so quick they were blurs. Cut, cut, lunge, cut, too fast to see, even with Beast-sight.
I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets. My left fist hit something, opened, and encircled it. I had to wonder how the Glob got into my pocket. The Glob was one of my collection of magical trinkets and, its name notwithstanding, it was a powerful objet de magie. It was composed of the small sliver of the Blood Cross that I had ruined for use by anyone but me, part of the iron spike of Golgotha, and the blood diamond, all melded into one. The diamond had started out as an amulet crowded with the power of sacrificed witch children, only a few of whom I had been able to rescue. The Glob was magic that had claimed me. Magic that had been fashioned by and activated by my blood and the energy of a witch’s lightning curse. The Glob heated in my hand, a searing spurt of electric energy, quickly gone. And then I realized that the Glob might have found its way into my pocket without help. Magical objects as powerful as the Glob sometimes had a will of their own.
Ed took another cut. Stumbled. Dropped to one knee. Bent his head. Bowed his back. And sliced with a backhanded cut into the outer side of Simon’s right knee. He followed it up by blocking two strikes and then delivering a backhanded cut to Simon’s side. So hard, so smooth, so perfectly delivered that it appeared to slice through the flesh and stop only when it reached the vamp’s spine. Simon of the funky pronunciation toppled, dropping his swords. Edmund shifted his body to the side, an expression of shock on his face. As if he hadn’t expected to kill his opponent. Playing to the cameras? Or hiding what he could do from the EVs?
Simon landed. He was nearly in two pieces. Blood pulsed everywhere in a wide spray, puddled beneath his body, soaked into the sand, the air redolent with his vamp smell—wild roses and moss. Edmund struggled to his feet. He took the vamp’s head. It took three cuts, wielding the sword like an ax, ungainly, awkward. Not my primo’s usual grace and beauty with a sword, not in any way at all. But the head of the beautiful blond angel rolled to the side. The sand soaked up more blood. The night breeze swept through beneath the house, salty, clean, fresh. The fighting arena was utterly silent for a space of time that lasted for a dozen of my speeding heartbeats.
This was the first death. Sent out on camera to the entire world, those who loved blood sports would be whooping it up at home. Watching instant replays. Our people stood, staring. Titus’s undead and their blood-dinners stood. The smell of uncertainty coiled in the air, a descant of scent beneath the melody of fanghead blood. And the stillness ended. Moving like fish in a school, Titus’s people rushed in, gathering the head and body.
Brandon stepped from the group of Onorios who were acting as judges along with Sabina. Brandon seemed to be the spokesperson. He said, “Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios.”
Sabina said, “Next duel in fifteen minutes.”
I tried to catch Bruiser’s eye, but he didn’t turn my way, bending his head to the B-twins as the three talked. Some vamps left the fighting area, to walk under the stars on the beaches. Ed came to me, limping. “You scared me,” I said.
“My heart is both saddened and full of joy,” he said. “Saddened that I frightened my mistress. Full of joy that my mistress cares.”
“Uh-huh. Keep it up, Eddie Boy.”
I started to turn and caught Titus’s eyes on me. In them, I could read multiple emotions: avarice, curiosity, hatred, a cold fury that let me know how much he had liked the blond angel Simon. And how much he blamed me for the vamp’s death. And the fact that he had seen me leap what amounted to four stories in two bounds. Good. I put my thoughts into my eyes. Chew on that, Your Magisterial Ass. Stuff you saw on the stolen video? It’s all true. And I’m coming for you.
I gave him a toothy grin and put all that into my body language as I strolled into the darkness. The shadow of a camera wolf was beside mine, and I knew my leaps were now part of the permanent record of the Sangre Duello. So was the death of Simon. And the vision of Titus watching me. The camera wolf fell away, finding something better to shoot than me in the dark.
Once I was beyond the house and prying ears, I had myself a silent bout of anger, pounding the sand. My hand—the one that had healed around the magical thingy when it was created—was furiously squeezing the Glob as I hammered it on the earth. For long seconds, I couldn’t force myself to stop or to let go. It hurt my hand. I got sand in my eyes. But I felt better after my temper tantrum.
On both floors, the next rounds began.
Leo’s side was winning.
Ro Moore chose wrestling as her weapon and defeated her opponent according to standard wrestling rules. Gee took on two vamps at one time and killed them both on the sand. There was enough blood and gore to make the wolves dance in glee. The pay-per-view numbers had started smaller than anticipated, but they had now outpaced expectations and were growing rapidly.
Brenda Rezk took on a Vespasianus security guy, and the finish was two simultaneous cuts. The cut to her arm was a surface wound, while the other guy was carted away needing major vamp blood to heal. She lost on time, but won on wounds delivered.
After that things went sour.
Maryanne, Edmund’s lover and blood-servant, died at the hand of a woman named Cupid, her head rolling across the sandy rings. Edmund went still as death, except for the human tears that spilled down his face as she fell. His tears tore into me like claws into raw meat.
The bout bell rang upstairs. I hugged him and left him to his grief.
“Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios,” Brandon said behind me. And for the first time since I met the Onorio twins, I wanted to slap them, slap all three of them.
In the next match, which was supposed to end with first blood, Titus’s swordswoman cheated at en garde and Gee took a hidden steel blade into his belly and out his back, followed by a Z-shaped move that carved his innards into Zorro-inspired spaghetti. Anzus were lethally allergic to steel and couldn’t heal themselves on Earth. Gee didn’t die, but only because his organs were not human-sited, but Anzu-sited. And because Leo fed him from his own wrist. My Enforcer was out for the night. Likely for the rest of the Sangre Duello. The cheater won. Cheating was smiled upon in the Sangre Duello.
Edmund took the ring, facing off with two blades to first blood, against a vamp who called himself Jeedalayn, which was supposed to be Somali for the verb “to whip.” Jeedalayn had little to no dossier beyond his presumed age. My primo stood there in blue armor facing a six-hundred-year-old vamp. Something in Jeedalayn’s stance caused my heart to flutter. It may have stopped. I had a very, very bad feeling. The bell sounded, the tone a clear pure note of death.
Jeedalayn slithered. Swords so fast they sang on the air.
In half a second, Ed took two cuts. Blood flew. His opponent stepped back, honoring first blood. But my primo’s left hand was nearly severed at the wrist, bloody, splintered, and cut bone exposed, his hand hanging by tendons. His right thumb was equally nearly amputated.
Bile boiled into my throat at the sight. Someone again held me back as Leo’s clan members rushed to provide assistance and clean up the blood spatter. Two blood-servants bundled my primo into sheets and carried him down the stairs. I followed, the scent/taste of his blood and pain heavy on the air. My feet felt strange on the stairs, as if they didn’t quite touch down. As if I might slide off and into another dimension. And I still held the Glob. It was so cold, it was like clutching an ice cube.
Behind me I heard Brandon say, “Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios.”
I managed to not whirl back and coldcock him.
In Edmund’s shared cubicle in the center rooms, the vamps and humans placed my primo on a bed. My primo. Someone I should have protected. A woman said, “I have him. Del, get the bottle.”
“Right here, Mama. I’m ready.”
A half-familiar smell hit the air: blood and chemicals. I blinked, to focus on Dacy Mooney, kneeling on the mattress beside Edmund, his right hand in her left. The heir of Clan Shaddock said, “Ed, honey, we’re gonna coat your thumb with the blood remedy. This will hurt.”
“They say it feels as if one is being immolated.”
“I wouldn’t know. You can tell me.”
Dacy upended a small glass vial over Ed’s severed thumb and a thick, syrupy drop formed on the end of its rubber spout.
I recognized the scent of the blood remedy. Leo’s Texas biomedical lab indeed had reverse engineered the revenant potion left by the vamp funeral director when the Caruso blood-family skipped town, to back the EVs. But instead of creating it to make revenants, Leo had made his version for healing. The MOC was a dangerous creature, but sometimes he was also a pretty cool dude.
I still wondered at the oddity of the Carusos leaving their bottle, and at the letter Leo had received claiming they had betrayed him only to save Laurie Caruso’s daughter. It could be insurance, a bid for protection should Titus lose. Carusos playing the long game, maybe.
Dacy dribbled the drop on Ed’s severed thumb and pressed the thumb back in place. Ed screamed. He continued screaming as Dacy and six other vamps held him down so Del could apply the blood mixture to the ends of his amputated hand. Del’s blond head bent over my primo, her fighting leathers the color of her eyes. Ed screamed, his ululation so high-pitched that I went deaf and had to step from the room. Yeah. That was the reason. Not my own cowardice at seeing a man I cared for injured and in agony for trying to protect me.
Shiloh walked down the stairs toward me, followed by a line of men and women. “Leo wants you to follow this one,” she said, her long straight red hair swinging. Except for hers, I had never seen straight red hair. Red hair was always curly. Stupid thoughts. Stupid duel. I hated this. These mind games and blood and death.
“Why do I need to follow you?” I asked, my lips feeling numb. Edmund was being tortured. I could hear his screams through the soundproofed door. I placed a hand on the door, as if I could ease his pain through the steel.
“Your two best fighters are down and out,” Shiloh said. “Koun is slated to fight seconds after this bout, so he can’t fight this one.”
“She’s trying to tell you that I accepted my own duel,” Eli said. He descended the last four steps and stopped beside me.
The acid in my stomach boiled. “Why?” I whispered.
Shiloh said, “Challenger is Lucrezia Borgia. Eli Younger chose weapons.”
“I picked matching German Sig Sauer P320s,” Eli said.
“Naturellement, I contested such barbarism,” the female vamp behind him said. “However, the priestess has denied my disputation.”
I recognized the woman. Hers was one of the histories I’d studied in preparation for the EVs’ visit, a VIV, very important vamp. She shouldn’t have been on the roster until later tonight at the worst. Tomorrow at best. And Gee or Ed should have been fighting her. Not Eli. I followed Shiloh down the stairs, not sure why we were going down and not up. My brain was wrapped in cotton. Ed was screaming. I could still hear him.
Shiloh said, “Lucrezia Borgia chose death.”
My boots halted on the stairs. I came to a stop, my mind flashing with useless information. Lucrezia was the illegitimate child of a pope and his mistress, in the early 1500s, and had become an assassin for Titus. She was a master at hundreds of weapons. Her dossier said that she practiced all night every night, with blades and firearms. I was so cold at the thought that my head started buzzing and nausea boiled in my gut. The P320 was a brand-new modular weapon, a serialized gun. It could be modified to shoot nine-millimeter loads, altered quickly to fire .357 Sig, .40 S&W, or even .45 ACP—automatic Colt pistol.
No matter how good vamps were, there were always weapons old vamps hadn’t fired, because they figured the ones they were most familiar with were the best. This was sometimes true, sometimes not. There was a chance, a small chance, Lucrezia had never fired this modular and wouldn’t have the muscle memory to make her a perfect shot. I started my feet moving again, down. Down to the death rings.
Eli was standing on the front porch, moonlight brightening the world around him, making his black leathers seem darker, as if he himself were a pathway into the underworld. I set my eyes on him, but he didn’t look back, though he surely had to feel the weight of my gaze. He led the way down the steps.
We were halfway down to the beach when Shiloh said to me, “The duel is at forty paces, twenty each, approximately one hundred feet, depending on stride. Since it’s with firearms, it’s all very methodical and according to protocol covered in codicils other than the Sangre Duello.”
I walked away from Shiloh, across the sand, following Eli. He was breathing slowly. The pulse in his neck was equally slow. Zen. Warrior face on. But he smelled—strangely—of excitement and joy. On the beach, the gulf’s waves curled on the sand. Lightning split and danced in the distant sky, a storm so far away it looked as if the clouds and water were one. With Beast-sight I studied the building cloud. Not magic lightning. Just one of the ubiquitous storms on gulf water. Thunder rolled in with the waves, long and low. The tide was high, making the beach a narrow strip. The wind was cold, and I shivered as it needled its way through my clothes.
Eli bent to his second. That second couldn’t be me, so Tex had accepted that position, and they spoke in voices I might have heard had I tried. Brute trotted across the sand to me and stuck his nose into my crotch.
I batted him away. “Stop that.”
He chuffed with laughter and sat close beside me. A moment later he leaned his entire body against me, from calf to hip, in what was clearly an attempt to comfort me. I could feel his panting breaths and his body heat through the leather uniform and I realized how cold I was. Probably shocky. Because I couldn’t help my people. And Eli was facing a warrior who had been fighting and shooting for centuries.
I scratched Brute’s head between his ears. “Dang werewolf.”
He chuffed in agreement.
Lucrezia was a pretty woman with golden hair and blue-green eyes. She looked way younger than her stated age when turned, and I figured she had been changed a decade or so prior to her reported death and her human self had been replaced with another woman. It was likely that replacement human was the woman recorded by history as having gained a huge amount of weight while supposedly grieving a dead husband, and died young.
Brute’s head on my leg, I stood to the side and watched the combatants, standing back-to-back. Snatches of instructions came to me on the wind. Eli and Lucrezia shook hands. Tex shook Lucrezia’s second’s hand, a human who had been fed on and had been sipping vamp blood for over two hundred years. She was currently known as Whimsical Lou. Stupid name, but that was what the second called herself. Whimsical Lou, No Last Name. The seconds walked out to the positions where their firsts would likely stand, and waited. Eli and Lucrezia stood back-to-back.
The moonlight was a long streak across the choppy water, ahead of the storm. I heard a distant bell-tone and Eli and Lucrezia strode away from one another, Shiloh counting off the paces. On his last pace, Eli stepped quickly to the side. They turned and fired, but Eli was a foot to the side of where he should have been. Lucrezia’s shot missed. Eli’s hit her chest, just left of midcenter. She screamed in that sound of a vamp dying, though it was all drama queen.
They had used standard ammo so the shot would fly true over the distance. She’d live.
I laughed in relief, the sound billowing on the wind and out to sea. The smell of Lucrezia’s blood sharp on the air.
Eli had survived and won his bout. Except that this was supposed to be to the death. He strode toward the downed vamp.
And then time broke in slow motion.
Time in battle is subjective, thick and viscous like taffy. An avalanche of images.
Brute snarled.
Beast leaped into the forefront of my brain, screaming challenge.
In agonizing, protracted fragments of time, Lucrezia’s second, Whimsical Lou, took two long steps into the dueling space, drew a long-barreled handgun. Aimed. Fired.
The round hit Eli. Midcenter. I could see it as it pierced his leather jacket.
Beast screamed. I/we leaped, raced down the sand. Grew claws with my right hand. Drew a blade with my left. The blade took the Whimsical second through the right eye. The claws tore out her throat. All while in midair. She fell. Rolled into the low waves, dark in the moonlight. A shot rang in the night, taking Lou in the chest. Tex, holding his six-shooter, fired again. Lucrezia fell. Tex stood over her. Firing until the chamber was empty. Time snapped back.
I rose from the landing crouch and sprinted to Eli, my combat boots crunching, throwing sand. Eli wasn’t moving, lying on the shore, facedown, head to the side. One arm twisted, outstretched in the slight surf, clear salty bubbles pooling in his palm. My body was so cold it felt like a shard of iceberg. Tears filled my lids and clung there as if holding on to the rims of frozen cliff faces.
I heard Shiloh ask calmly, “Have the deceased signed papers to be turned?”
Bruiser’s voice, sounding cool and distant, said, “Lucrezia is true-dead, as is Whimsical Lou. The judges await status of Eli Younger.”
I knelt, rolled Eli over, placed a hand on his chest, and . . . felt a heartbeat. Didn’t smell blood. I leaned in and sniffed, a long cat-scree of sound, pulling in air over my tongue. No blood. I pressed down on his chest, feeling the kind of armor Uncle Sam’s men wore to war, not just armor against blades, but against bullets. My tears spilled onto his face. I put my mouth at his ear and hissed, “If you’re not dead, I may kill you for scaring me to death.”
“Sorry, Babe.” The words were a breath against my cheek, his lips scarcely moving. “Just remembering how to breathe.”
I thought I might pass out from the relief that rammed through me. I shouted to the wind, “He’s alive. Eli will not be turned.”
“Never wanted to drink blood,” he gasped.
“Are you hit?” I whispered back, asking if the round penetrated the armor.
“Not,” he whispered, the sound creaking with tight breath. I dropped my head to his, forehead to forehead. “But I’m going to kill Lucrezia Borgia.”
“My mistress. Lucrezia Borgia is true-dead,” Tex said. “I took her conniving, snake-belly-low life and her head.”
“Good. I think she broke my rib,” Eli said. “Sucker hurts.”
I rolled Eli up into my arms. He grunted with pain, tightening up to protect the hurt rib. “Babe,” he wheezed. “Next time? We’ve got a backboard.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” I tucked his head against my shoulder and carried him up the stairs and into the house as if he was the most valuable thing in the universe.
“Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios.”