also curious about an envoy of a House of vampires he has never heard of. It’s best not to keep him waiting when he’s eager or curious. Let’s go.”
He motioned to the door. Suddenly I was remembering how many other vampires-Saffron, Calaphase, even Transomnia and Nyissa-had dropped nasty hints about the Gentry, and I really didn’t want to go through that door. “You first,” I said. “Lead the way.”
“Don’t get cute,” Velasquez said. “Move it.”
“Look,” I said, kneading my brow, not precisely stalling for time but gathering my thoughts. “First, do I have any weapons? You searched me, right?”
The toothpick whirled in his mouth. “You’re unarmed.”
“I knew you felt me up,” I said, and the toothpick twitched as his mouth quirked in a smile. “ Busted. So I’m not a threat to your bosses. Second, do you have magic bullets?”
The toothpick stopped, but only for a second. “Silver hollow points,” he said slowly. “Dipped in wolfsbane.”
“Feh,” I said, folding my arms. “Not a threat. You know kung fu, or box, or anything?”
Velasquez shifted slightly, in a way which somehow, indefinably, made him more menacing. “Do you really want to get shot, Miss Frost?”
I stared at him coolly. “No, but I have been, twice recently, and here I still stand. So we’re both effectively unarmed, and I’ve got fifty pounds, six inches of reach and two different martial arts up on you. Lead the way, sweet cheeks.”
He laughed. “You think you can actually stop bullets?”
“Oh, this damn conversation again,” I said, slipping my hands into my jacket pockets and casually letting out my breath to activate my shield. “ Phooo, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can stop bullets. I could even show you how, though it takes years of training and a shitload of magic tattoos.”
“Huh,” he said, the toothpick twirling. “I may take you up on that.”
“Dial the Rogue Unicorn, ask for Dakota Frost,” I said.
“You are unreal,” Velasquez said-and then he smiled grimly. “And it would be a big fucking insult for an envoy to go in unannounced-and Sir Leopold definitely wants me to announce you as an envoy. Time to face the music, Lady Frost.”
He opened the door on a room the size of a small banquet hall, with heavy stone walls and flickering gas lights. Someone had tried to add a civilizing touch-there were long yellowed curtains and brown tapestries, and even the huge wooden beams across the ceiling added to the sepia tones-but the huge stone blocks left an unmistakable impression of fortress.
Then my vision focused on the people in the room, and I stopped short, trying to grok what I saw. In that moment of speechlessness, Velasquez introduced me. “Lords and Ladies of the Gentry,” he said, “it is my pleasure to present the Lady Frost, Envoy of the House Beyond Sleep.” When he finished, I started forward, alternately enraged and horrified.
They looked like giant art pieces: two huge wine bottles wrapped in blood red cloth, each standing beneath a giant ice pick. Then the cloth twitched, and the scale shifted in my eyes. They were man-sized cages shrouded in red curtains, standing beneath huge metal spikes.
The curtains twitched again: someone was inside each cage. My gaze lifted from the hidden prisoners to the cruel metal spikes, each taller than a man and thick as my wrist. Atop the spikes were massive stone weights, dangling precariously from single ropes rising to the rafters.
Those thin ropes each led to a winch on either side of the hall, each guarded by a black-suited man. A simple pull of a lever would end the life of whoever was imprisoned within-and then the stones could be winched back up for the next victim.
Between the execution cages, steps led up a raised dais towards three thrones. Lord Delancaster sat regally to the left of the center throne, blond tresses flowing down behind him. Cinnamon sat on the right, visibly trembling, head snapping periodically.
A black-suited man stood behind her, silver-quarreled crossbow at the ready. Behind Lord Delancaster, a similar black-suited woman stood, wooden stake in her crossbow. On the center of the dais, Tully lay bleeding, bound in silver barbed wire, between a tall white man and a short black woman-both in formal dress, both pale for their race-and both eyeing his blood.
Physically dominating the center of the room was a massive freestanding chunk of wall like the one at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, ensconced within a magic circle. But dominating my attention was a flaming coffin-and standing before it, a withered vampire lord. But the fires rippling up behind him were not yellow and natural: they were artistic, rainbow graffiti flames.
Oh, shit. The Gentry was in control of the graffiti.
The lord of the hall was all that I imagined a vampire would really be like. His skin was white as bone, infinitely wrinkled, almost corrugated, and yet so gaunt his features were little more than a skull. His ears were huge, misshapen, at once batlike and distorted as a cauliflower; his nose was a huge, hawkish beak that came down almost to his lip, a thin excuse that peeled back over a massive set of fangs, half piranha, half Rottweiler. Black rivulets of hair were slicked back over his nearly bald dome; beneath his wrinkled brow, two caterpillar eyebrows guarded the pits of his eyes, and their twin points of white flame.
When he moved, he crackled, like the rustling of aged newspaper or the cracking of an old book’s spine. I knew this condition-I had read Saffron’s paper. His human cells had been completely consumed by the vampiric fungus: he was truly undead, a lich.
The lich walked the length of the black enameled coffin, lit eerily by the wall of rainbow fire roiling up behind him, then he turned to me, bony claws clasped before him, voice a breathy hiss. “So
… Dakota Frost,” he said. “The black widow wanders into our web at last.”
“Excuse me?” I said, baffled. I had not expected that. “Black what? ”
The lich’s burning eyes bored into me, an odd amusement spreading over his face. “Surely you know the term-a lethal lover,” he said. “You are Dakota Frost, in public the paramour of the so-called queen of the vampires- and in secret, I’m told, her slayer.”
“I’m not her paramour,” I said, now offended, “much less her slayer.”
“ Someone has assaulted the Gentry,” the vampire hissed, “and who stands to gain more than the vampire queen? And who stands at the queen’s right hand? An illicit peddler of magic meant to be hidden, a meddler in the ways of werewolves-and a slayer of wizards!”
“I’m never going to live that down, am I?” I muttered.
“Why would you want to? Any vampire could only dream of having such a formidable human troubleshooter. And yet… ” the lich said, turning to glance at the vampires on the dais, “Velasquez tells me you bear other tokens… one of a House I have never heard of, and one of clan that is destroyed. Can you not make up your mind where your loyalties lie, Dakota Frost?”
“I… ” I began. “I really don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Don’t you?” He stepped aside, extending his claw towards the coffin of flame. My heart spasmed-he had mocked Saffron, his men had destroyed her Consulate: maybe he’d killed her. The flames seemed to surge as I stepped forward. Cautiously, I edged towards the coffin.
A vampire lay within the black enameled casket, his body half consumed by slow swirls of wildstyle flames. His burning head was tilted away from me, and half his face was eaten by the graffiti’d flames, but I still recognized him: it was Demophage.
“Thus ends the Oakdale Clan,” the lich said. “You were also their troubleshooter, were you not? I do not think I would hire you based on this reference.”
I took another step forward and felt the shimmer of mana. I looked down to see the edge of a clumsily marked magic circle barring my path. It was surprising it even worked: the magicians who built that ham-handed circle could never have inked the graffiti.
I looked over at the lich, then back down at Demophage. This made no sense. Then I realized the massive misshapen shape beyond the coffin was a huge section of cinderblock wall, covered with shimmering graffiti contained by a clumsy magic circle. As the tag pulsed, I could feel surges of magic leaking through the shoddy magic barrier containing it, even stronger than the sporadic leaks dribbling out from the nearer, shoddier barrier around the coffin.
