unlocked.” She ducked in.
I filled Andrea in on the problem of Julie’s missing mom, the reeves, and Hood, a.k.a. Bolgor the Shepherd, while we stabled the horses. Derek stood guard by the Order’s door, but I was pretty sure he heard every word. Wolf ears worked much better than human ones, and his were exceptional. “Fomorians,” she said. “What’s the world coming to?”
“Three things: what are they doing here, why do they want Julie, and what happened to her mom?”
Andrea shook her head. “I have no clue. But then it’s not my area. I shoot. I make gadgets work. I’m good with post-Shift resonance theory. Ask me something about folklore, and I draw a blank every time.” She grinned. “But I’ll keep your girl safe.”
“I’m sorry to dump this on you.”
She glanced at Derek. “I wish everyone would stop walking on eggshells around me. It needs doing, so I’ll do it. I have to stay at the Chapter anyway: it’s standard procedure during a flare for one knight to always be present. I’ll guard your girl.”
I hesitated. If anyone could help me in this situation, it was Andrea. She was a picture-perfect knight and she knew every regulation ever written.
“What’s up?” she asked, as if reading my thoughts.
“Should I write up a petition for safe asylum?”
Andrea frowned. “Worried about the Danger to Humanity clause?”
“Yeah.”
The good thing about the petition for safe asylum was that any and all knights would protect Julie from any threat, as long as she remained in their custody. But by signing the petition, Julie placed herself into the Order’s care, which meant she fell under the imminent danger clause. If she presented an imminent danger to humanity, the knights were duty bound to dispatch her. The Order wasn’t in the habit of snuffing out little girls, but I knew that in Ted’s mind, at least, the welfare of many outweighed the lives of the few. I had no clue as to why the reeves and the Shepherd hunted Julie. For all I knew, she was some sort of Fomorian-prophesied child destined to destroy the world. Stranger things have happened. I didn’t want to find Julie with her throat slit. I’m sure they would make her end merciful and quick, but that hardly seemed like consolation.
Andrea smiled. “The good news is, you don’t have to file one. She is an orphan with no known relatives. Under provision seventeen, you can assume temporary guardianship of her due to the fact she can’t legally enter into contract. Fill out form 240-m, and she becomes your ward in the eyes of the Order. During the flare, all families of Order personnel can legally seek shelter at the nearest Chapter without being subject to the imminent danger clause. Unless she attacks, they have no authority to neutralize her.”
“I don’t know if she would sign something like that. She still thinks her mother is alive. And so do I.” I hoped, anyway. “It might hammer some unpleasant possibilities home.”
“You don’t need her to sign. That’s the beauty of it—all you need is the testimony of one knight besides yourself who agrees that you’re acting in her best interests.” She grinned from ear to ear. “And lucky you, you know one.”
“Thanks,” I said and meant it.
“No problem. This is kind of fun for me—I’m so freaking bored. If magic hits, we’ll skedaddle down to the vault, and if the reeves show while the tech is up, I’ll use their heads for target practice.”
The door burst open. Julie ran headfirst into Derek and flailed in his hands. He grabbed her and lifted her off the ground. “What? Speak!”
She strained and spat a single word. “Vampire!”
It waited for me upstairs on my desk, a hairless, emaciated nightmare, wrapped in steel-wire muscle and hidden in human skin. It was nude, ugly, and had been dead for three or four decades. Someone had smeared copious amounts of purple sunblock over its hide. For some reason the sunblock didn’t disappear but dried into paste, as if the creature had popped a giant bubble of grape gum onto himself.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The vampire unhinged its mouth and Ghastek’s voice issued forth. “A pleasure to see you, as always.”
It would have to be Ghastek. I wondered if Nataraja, the leader of the People’s establishment in the city, had specifically assigned him to interact with me or if Ghastek took that dreadful task upon himself.
Andrea stepped into the office. And suddenly she had two guns and they were pointing at the vamp’s face.
“Lovely firearms,” Ghastek said.
“SIG-Sauer P226,” Andrea said. “Move and you’ll go blind.”
“Do you really think you could beat vampiric reflexes?” Ghastek’s tone was light. He wasn’t challenging her, he was merely curious.
A small smile bent Andrea’s lips. “Do you really want to find out?”
I shook my head. “She can blow his head off before you finish a twitch. Trust me, I measure speed for a living.”
I made a mental note to never fight fair with Andrea. That was a hell of a draw. I was fast but not fast enough to beat her guns and my saber took a lot longer to come out of its sheath than a gun did coming out of a holster. “Fortunately for all of us, we don’t have to fight.” I smiled at Andrea.
Andrea nodded and guns vanished. “I’ll be down the hall.”
“Thank you.”
She stepped out. I sat in my chair. “Off my table.”
The vampire remained where it was.
“Ghastek, either you move him or I will. I don’t have to put up with rudeness in my own office.”
The undead slinked off the table. “That was not meant as an insult.”
“Good, then I won’t take it as such. Now, what is it you want?”
“How do you feel? Any broken bones? Open wounds?”
“No. Why this sudden concern for my well-being?”
“No episodes of dizziness? What about a slight prickling in the chest and along the neck? Feels a little like the rush of blood into a limb after it has fallen asleep, except the process occurs from the inside.”
I crossed my arms. “Is there a particular reason why you’re describing the initial stages of colonization by Immortuus pathogen to me?”
The vampire crept closer. “There can only be one reason.”
“I’m not turning into a vampire, Ghastek.” It was physically impossible. My blood chomped the vampirism bacterium for breakfast and then asked for seconds. No vampirism for me. No shapeshifting, either.
The vampire took another careful step to me. “May I see your irises, please.”
“I’m telling you, I’m not infected. I wasn’t bitten.”
“Indulge me.”
I leaned forward. The vampire reared from all fours and lifted its face to mine. We stared at each other, the corpse and I, with only inches of space between us. Almost touching. I looked into the vampire’s eyes, once blue, and now red from the capillaries expanded by the flow of blood brimming with vampiric pathogen. Within their depths lay hunger, a terrible, all-consuming hunger that could never be doused. If Ghastek’s control slipped just a hair, the abomination would rip into me, clawing at my flesh in search of hot blood.
At least it would try. And then I would kill it. I’d crush its disgusting mind like a gnat. It would feel good. It would make my day.
I would’ve liked to kill them all. I would’ve liked to go up the People’s food chain until I reached Roland, their legendary leader. There were things I needed to discuss with him. But our conversation would have to wait until my power grew, because right now he could wipe me off the face of the Earth with a twitch of his eyebrow.
The vampire dropped to the floor.
“Satisfied?”
“Yes.”
“You sound disappointed. Does the idea of navigating me after my undeath appeal to you?”
The vampire’s face twitched, trying to imitate Ghastek wincing somewhere in an armored room within the Casino’s depths. “Kate, that was in poor taste. Although you would make a magnificent specimen. You’re in
