coppery smell that reached through the cracks around the door.
“I smell blood,” I said, hesitating. It was lots of blood, for me to scent it through the door like this.
Ned nodded. “Before we enter, you need to understand that there hasn’t been a meeting like this, a gathering of the Masters of Europe, in over a century. We’ve never had one that included so many from abroad. What you’re about to see … it’s a rare thing, and I must remind you that you are guests here.”
“Great. Warning taken,” I said, and Ned looked at me sidelong.
The Master of London opened the doors and led us down the central aisle of the theater.
The rows of seats, red plush and marked with brass number plates, were empty, and the house was dark. All the action was happening on the brightly lit stage, and I might have thought we were here to watch a play. There was a dinner party in progress, a dozen or so people sitting at long tables covered with brocade cloth, set in a horseshoe that faced the audience. The diners were looking out, and at each other. Gold candelabras held burgundy candles, dripping wax. The only silverware or place settings on the ornate tables were knives—slim, wickedly sharp steak knives, most of which were bloody.
A dozen bodies lay piled in the middle of the stage. Male and female, many of them were naked, arms and legs splayed, long hair tangled, heads thrown back, mouths hanging open. All had wounds clotting at their necks and wrists. The scene displayed baroque decadence taken to the ninth level of hell.
My stomach flipped and my throat closed on bile. Ned watched calmly, studying my reactions as he had since I’d met him, so I turned to Emma, my friend, reaching for her in despair and disbelief. “Emma?”
She stood back, just out of reach, and her expression seemed indifferent. The stink of blood stuck in the back of my throat, and it didn’t taste like food, like the feast and frenzy with which Wolf would normally react. It tasted like danger—we were in terrible danger. All those bodies, at the center of a vampire orgy. I looked at Ben, my eyes wide.
“Wait a minute,” Ben said close to my ear, keeping a tight grip on my arm. “They’re not dead.”
Letting my nose work, I searched past the bloody reek for other signs. Settling, tamping down the panic and rage, I could sense beyond the initial shock: all the blood in the air was still warm—still alive. The bodies were flush and breathing, just unconscious. This was an orgy, but not at the ninth level. Maybe the seventh.
This was like something out of an overwrought opera or a story of Caligula. I needed a long, disbelieving minute to take it all in, and even then my mind shied away from the scene, and Wolf rattled the bars of her cage, fighting to break loose and flee. And still, there was more to see.
I breathed the room’s air until I could start to differentiate scents, between the antique furnishings, chill vampires, warm bodies, and spilled blood. The wild fur-and-skin scent was subtle under the onslaught of the rest of it. Those at the tables were all vampires. Two dozen or so more figures—vampires, lycanthropes, and mortal humans—stood in the positions of bodyguards and retainers behind the tables where the gathered Masters and Mistresses of Europe and beyond sat. They wore all manner of clothing—costumes—from loincloths and lingerie to ornate historical gowns and frock coats. Some were obviously bodyguards, fit men and women in suits who gazed watchfully, suspiciously. I smelled wolf, tiger, and another beast I couldn’t identify. A couple of them were ornaments, sleek women in skintight gowns and gold jewelry. There was a dark-haired, cinnamon-skinned woman whom I thought must have been a fox. Literally. But then … something else entirely.
One of the vampires seated at the end of a table held a pair of chains that led to collars, thick bands of steel secured around the necks of a man and a woman kneeling at his side. They were both naked, physically fit, muscular, well-tanned. They crouched like pets, and they were werewolves, chained and submissive.
“I’m not okay with this,” I said, feeling ill, panicked, furious. This wasn’t my world, and I didn’t want to be here.
“Ned says it’s so much better than it used to be,” Emma said softly. “Imagine what this must have been like in a culture where bearbaiting was like prime-time TV.”
“I’d rather not, thanks. You can’t defend this, Emma.”
“I’m not … it’s just—it’s the way things are.”
This was her world now, I reminded myself.
“I thought this was a meeting, not a horror show,” I snapped at Ned.
One of the vampires on stage, at the middle table, the place of power, stood and leaned forward. She had brick-red hair, curled and flowing down her back and over her shoulders. Her skin was fine china, her smile practiced, her gaze fierce. She wore a gown of midnight blue silk that molded to her figure, and my hackles rose at the sight of her: Mercedes Cook.
“I think we’ve damaged the girl’s modern sensibilities,” she said to her colleagues in her honeyed, purring voice. She actually winked at me, and I buried a growl.
Some of them chuckled in appreciation; others stayed quiet. All those gazes looked down on me, trapping me. I might have been the one on stage.
A few seats down, another of the vampires played with his knife, running the handle between his hands, spinning it. Wearing a suit with a brocade waistcoat and jacket with tails, he was polished and gorgeous, sharp features framed by slick black hair and a trimmed goatee, like a nineteenth-century villain, but he made the look work. He probably invented it. “Modern sensibilities? We are ancient creatures. What do
“It’s not like we kill anyone—civilized vampires don’t,” said a third, a man with long brown hair, Mediterranean features, a floofy poet’s shirt, loose tan pants, and knee-high boots. “Why kill mortals for their blood when they so obligingly make more?”
“Humans—a renewable resource.”
“We recycle! We’re green!”
Much laughter. Ha.
One of them didn’t laugh. He sat at the far end of the table from Mercedes and her cohort. He wore a simple suit jacket with a band collar shirt. On the stout side, he seemed careworn, his gaze tired, as if he’d seen it all.
“A werewolf with morals,” he said. “I never thought to see such a thing.” His voice was kind, his accent flat American. Him—I wanted to talk to him. I wondered if that was a trick he’d developed.
“Maybe it’s because I come from a country that fought a war to put an end to this sort of thing.” I pointed at the werewolves in chains and fumed. “God, what is this, the Dark Ages?”
Some of them laughed. Some of them looked at me as if I had asked a very silly question. The
“Mistress Norville, please settle. You’re under my protection here,” Ned Alleyn said.
“I didn’t ask for your protection,” I said.
How the hell were Ben and I going to hold our own against this? This whole setup—them on the stage, looking down on us, with no way for us to move to a dominant position—was contrived.
“We can always leave,” Ben said calmly. He stood straight and tall, chin up, not cringing a millimeter. It made me stretch a little taller, and I imagined my tail and ears standing up, superior.
We could leave. But as Ned said, this was supposed to be neutral ground, an opportunity to meet with each other without fear. When was I going to get another chance to size up the gathered vampire might of Europe?
“No,” I said, taking a breath, forcing myself to at least pretend that they hadn’t gotten my hackles up. “I haven’t asked any of them how old they are.”
He chuckled. “They never answer that.”
“Ned did. Can’t stop trying now.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Thanks. So, how about it? Any of you up to telling me how old you are? How about if I promise not to tell anyone else?” I raised my voice and scanned the table, looking at every one of them—not meeting their gazes, but making it clear I had noted them, and remembered. Seated at the table were three women and eleven men, plus retainers, servants, and pets. Plus the victims of the dinner. I pointed at the guy in the poet shirt. “You—I bet you’re going to try to tell me you knew Lord Byron, right?”
He laughed, a point in his favor. Guy with a sense of humor couldn’t be all bad. The rest of them regarded me with expressions ranging from amusement to disbelief. Even Ned stood aside, hand to his chin, intrigued. I had a sudden feeling they were feeding me rope, waiting for me to hang myself with it.
“Nobody? Aw, come on, I thought you were all supposed to be badass. What’re you afraid of?” Ben, bless
