about that.”
“Then let them step up and deal with the problem,” I said, glaring at him. I’d never even heard of the Wizarding Guild before this. “Dozens of people died. My friends died. Thousands of people were put at risk by this, including any of the members of the Guild who live inside the Perimeter. If they don’t like how I’m handling it, let them come to me.”
The lich laughed, a delicious, vicious sound.
“And how will you handle it?” Iadimus said. “Kill all the taggers?”
“Sounds like a great idea,” I said. “We should also stake all the vamps, and put a silver bullet in all the weres. And why don’t we burn all the witches while we’re at it?”
Iadimus sighed. “A puerile analogy,” he said, “but you’ve made your point.”
“Not yet,” I said. “The police have been trying to stamp out graffiti for years, and short of putting cameras on every street corner like in London, they’ve not been able to do it, even though they weren’t fighting people who can turn into animals and disappear.”
“The police failed only because nothing was at stake when it was mere spray painting,” Scara said dismissively. “We will succeed if we have the will to do what needs to be done.”
“Aren’t you listening? Half the taggers are weres. Their werekin friends will turn on you, just because you’re vamps. You’ll start a war-and I won’t have that.”
“ You won’t have-” Scara began, then froze when Vladimir stepped up to my side, turned around and growled at her, oh so softly. Saffron abruptly left Darkrose’s side and stepped to the other side of me, folding her arms.
“Lords and Ladies of the Gentry, let me be clear,” I said. “A lot of good people died recently-vamps, weres, your human servants, my good friends. But not all of them died at the hands of the tagger-many died as a direct result of your actions, Lady Scara.”
She tensed. “I will not be held to account for defending my people.”
“Nor do I intend to,” I said. “That’s over now. This was a terrible, dangerous situation in which many people acted out of fear-including you, Lady Scara. You murdered many good men and women at the Consulate, but I am prepared to forgive and forget-this one time.”
“What are you doing, Dakota?” Saffron muttered.
“This is not the Wild West,” I said. “This is not the Stone Age. This is the twenty-first fucking century, and tribal warfare stops, now. From now on, if you have a grievance, you bring it to the Consulate-open warfare between factions in the Edgeworld of Atlanta is forbidden.”
Scara snorted. “And if I do not play along?”
“If anyone breaks the truce,” I said, “then I will take them down.”
“And I’ll help,” Saffron said.
“As will I,” Vladimir said.
“As will I, ” the lich said, smiling.
Scara and Iadimus both turned on him, stunned. Then Iadimus snarled.
“Oh, you’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?” he said. “Damn you.”
“If you have a grievance, take it up with the Consulate,” the lich cackled. “If the Lady Frost agrees, of course. Unless… she wants to be judge and jury, in addition to executioner?”
“What? No, of course we should have a, a grievance procedure,” I said, thinking fast. The vampires already had courts, didn’t they? “We, ah, could begin with the Consulates-”
“No!” Scara said, her voice tinged with despair.
“Finally,” Lord Delancaster said, relaxing into his throne, looking, for the first time, as if he truly belonged there. “Play acting no longer.”
I stared at him blankly, then looked at Saffron. “What… what did I just do?”
“The Consulates,” the lich said turning back to his throne, “are my project, Dakota Frost. An independent power structure to which even members of the Gentry may be held accountable. But there has not been enough… independent power to enforce this idea… until now.”
“But… aren’t you the big man on campus?” I said, confused and alarmed. “Didn’t you always have the power to make him your lieutenant?”
“No!” Scara said. “No! You can’t! I forbid it-”
“You cannot forbid anything any longer,” Iadimus said. “Your allies on the Gentry are dead, Delancaster’s protege has replaced them-and your behavior has become embarrassingly erratic.” He turned to Delancaster with an ironic smile. “I will support this plan, my Lord.”
“You-you can’t do this,” Scara snarled. “To put him in charge- you can’t trust him! ”
“He remains a puppet, but it has been a century and a half, my dear,” the lich said, sitting on the throne next to Delancaster. “And his protege is one of us now. The Lady Saffron leads the Consulates, I will support her, and together… we will support the Lady Frost. ”
Never waste a good crisis, indeed. “Uh… thank you for your support, Sir Leopold.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said, staring at me. “How will you deal with the taggers?”
“Well, we have Tully, trained by the tagger,” I said, thinking as quickly as I could, “and my contacts in Atlanta’s human graffiti community are already working to defuse the tagger’s tags. My team will teach other taggers these methods, and spread the word: eliminate the bad tags when you find them, and make no new tags designed to prey on the life of another.”
“And if they do-”
“Then you catch them, you give them to me, and I give them to Philip,” I said. “And let the men-in-black deal with getting enough evidence to make it stick.”
“That’s nonsense,” Scara said. “We are vampires. The taggers are werekin. Neither of us can go to the police. We can only enforce your rules through violence, which you forbid.”
“If only you had someone with recognized authority,” I said. The lich’s piranha grin was growing. “Someone to give me an appointment, and the power to make it stick.”
“But… but I can’t do that,” Saffron said. “I can’t make appointments.”
“No you can’t,” I said. “Not at the city level.”
Saffron glanced at me. Then she followed my gaze to the throne.. . to Lord Delancaster, Vampire Master of Georgia, in his mind, on TV-and in the eyes of the State.
“If only,” I said, “Lord Delancaster really had the power you’ve pretended to give him.”
“No! You can’t!” Scara said to the lich-like a scared little child. “You, you promised -”
“Lady Frost,” Iadimus said quietly, and now I flinched back from the sudden icy cold and the unexpected hate in his pale eyes. “You have no idea what you have just done.”
“But I-” I began, then stopped. He had sounded like he supported my quickly hatching plan, but now he was angry -and Scara was terrified. I really didn’t have any idea.
“Things are not as simple as they seem,” Iadimus said, glaring at me. But his eyes didn’t blaze at me for long; he quickly turned to the lich, and the wave of frost intensified. “You know that, Sir Leopold. Do you really think you can maneuver us like little children?”
“I think I have,” the lich said.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Think about what I’m asking. This is in your best interests. I’m offering you a chance to get my help on tap. I’m trying to get us to work together.”
“But-but-” Scara began, eyes fixed on Delancaster like a fearful cat on a challenger, afraid to look away lest the newcomer pounce. But she broke the glance, shook off her fear, and glared at me, eyes glowing cold red. “But what if we do not want to work with you?”
I stared at her, eyes tightening into slits. I felt her aura expand, felt her anger burning against my face, flooding past my skin. Then my vision began to double, as the head of the Dragon-which had never fully retracted- began to rise over my head again. I snarled as the feedback loop begin again-the pain was excruciating-and Scara backed up.
“Then I kill you where you stand,” I said through clenched teeth, and Scara nodded.
“Enough, enough,” the lich said, raising his hand for silence. “You have made your point, Dakota Frost-and even so, you will never know how close to death you came. Your designs have played into mine. .. quite nicely, I must admit. Still, I rarely tolerate such insolence in my presence. A thousand years ago I would have had your tongue cut from your mouth at the first insult. Five hundred years ago, we would have all fallen on you at the first
