It wasn't like going into a tunnel of light . . .
It was like going into a swank and pricey restaurant with my ex-fiancée on my arm.
I hadn't seen the wine list, yet, but the starfish was wearing a tuxedo.
"Ah, Monsieur Cséjthe, Mademoiselle Garou!" it exclaimed. "Welcome to Club Palmyra! Will you be dining with the captain this evening?"
More than a few neurologists are of the opinion that the whole "life after life" phenomenon is nothing more than oxygen-deprived brain cells firing off random memories—a free-association meltdown as consciousness gutters out like a dying candle flame.
I looked across the restaurant with the oceanic décor and ship motifs. A tiger was seated at a table on an elevated dais in a clamshell-shaped alcove. It was too far away to see if it was dining on a bowl of breakfast cereal.
Such theories might vaguely explain my watery death segueing into a watery night out on the town and a trip to a weird theme restaurant.
The tiger waved a furry paw in our direction.
Perhaps vague was too strong a term . . .
I looked at my ex. When they say that pregnant women glow, I don't think it means that they actually shed light. Lupé, however, was giving off enough illumination to pass as a giant nightlight. Her thick brown hair was piled on top of her head and the expanse of décolletage and back revealed by her scalloped evening dress had lightened up considerably from its customary coffee-and-cream complexion. I raised a hand to shield my eyes as she amped up the "glow" another hundred candlepower. "What do you think, dear?"
She patted her swollen belly as hair started to sprout across her face. "Is it safe for the baby, Patrick?" she asked, as if the maître d' were an old friend. "You know how important he is to the Old Ones."
"You mean the elves, right?" I asked.
The starfish adjusted the small towel draped over an armlike appendage. "Do not worry, Mademoiselle; Prince Dakkar has restricted his diet to seafood these past one hundred and fifty years."
I was suddenly hungry. Actually, I felt as though I'd been starving for weeks and had just now noticed it. "Seafood," I said. "Do you have clam chowder?"
The starfish bowed slightly. "Of course, sir. Though we restrict our menu to the New England recipe. Manhattan style, if you'll forgive my impertinence, is an abomination and we do not countenance it here."
"Er, okay," I said, noticing that the floor was very wet.
"This way, please," our pentagrammic maître d' announced.
I looked at Lupé who linked her arm in mine. She had accessorized with a fur stole and it was hard to tell where the stole ended and her arm began. Her face was completely furry now and beginning to elongate into a pronounced snout. The proliferation of hair was eclipsing her pearly radiance and the effect was much like the moon slipping behind a darkening cloud. I was so distracted I didn't notice that the water was actually rising until it was above our ankles.
"Isn't this taking the whole marine-ambience thing a bit to excess?" I asked.
Lupé, seemingly oblivious to the dark waters now swirling up to her knees, tapped our echinodermic attendant on the—er—shoulder. "I'm not that big on fish," she said. "What would you recommend?"
"Maybe a little less surf and a little more turf," I grumped as the water wicked up my pants legs.
Our escort leaned back and whispered conspiratorially: "I'm not supposed to espouse menu favorites but the Krabby Patties are to die for."
"You don't say?" I refrained from asking if there was a SpongeBob Happy Meal.
It was slow going, now, as the water had reached my waist and Lupé was getting ready to dog-paddle. "You know," I said, "as brain death hallucinations go, I could've drawn a lot worse from the deck of my life—especially the last couple of years. But I'm drowning in a freshwater tributary, not a saltwater ecosystem. And I'm totally not gettin' the Tony the Tiger/Guess Who's Coming to Dinner vibe . . ."
The starfish stopped and turned to me as the lights in the restaurant flickered and went out. Lupé lost form and became a beam of light, cutting through murky waters that had risen above our heads. The light put the five-limbed creature in silhouette and it changed subtly.
"Time is short, small one." His voice echoed strangely, as if from a great distance. More than that, it seemed weighted with the age of untold centuries. Millennia . . .
"Your son must be sacrificed before the sleeping god wakes or your race will come to a terrible end."
"What?" I felt as if an electric shock had just exploded throughout my body leaving me numbed, burned, and dazed. "What are you saying?"
"In the end you must sacrifice him. If not for humanity's sake, then for his own. You would not want him to live in such a world as would be ruled by the Dread Master of R'lyeh!"
I didn't have a clue as to who this so-called dead master of really something or other was but he was in for a real ass-kicking if he posed a threat to my unborn son. Likewise anybody even hinting at bad karma for Chris Cséjthe's pride and joy.
"Free will is but a human delusion, a cosmic self-deception for your infant race," he continued and his voice began to diminish, as if he were starting to move away from me and picking up speed. "I tell you this one last thing. Ignore it at your peril and the doom of your entire species!"
Great, a seafood restaurant with a waiter who doubled as a fortune cookie. "I'm all ears, Garçon." I growled.
"You cannot order the calamari," it rasped in nearly inhuman tones, "it orders you . . ."
A fishy face suddenly swam into view, its buggy luminous eyes staring at me above an expression of gape-mouthed surprise.
I reached out with my hand, trying to grab its neck but it pulled back. Neither of us was fast enough: I couldn't get my fingers behind his head and he couldn't totally evade my hand. I ripped his throat out, instead.
A cloud of blackish blood erupted from its torn flesh and it sank out of sight. Either this particular water bogie was made of papier-mâché or . . . I looked at my hand: small clumps of sushi still clung to my razor-tipped fingers!
My razor-edged, straightjacket-shredding talons had reappeared like ten spring-loaded switchblades!
Another froggy foe darted in and it was time to focus on matters directly at hand. All I had time to register was someone had shoved a scuba mouthpiece halfway down my throat and that the murky water had brightened considerably. I could see the other two more clearly, now, and prepare for their attacks.
And this time the flipper was on the other foot. As the second fish-man darted in, I threw up an arm block across his throat to keep his teeth from my face. The back of my hand and forearm had snagged a piece of silvery kelp, a ribbonlike leaf that stood out edgewise from my skin. When fish-face pushed up against the edge there was a burst of bubbles and blackish blood.
Its, not mine.
Of course this could still be part of the brain-death dream rave.
Which would account for the disposition of my third finny foe: he seemed to be occupied.
A bright light cut through the water illuminating a series of tableaus beyond. In the distance I could make out a large, batty form going all Maytag agitation cycle on a cluster of froggy folk. Apparently he merited more attention than half-monster me. Other silhouettes, however, were bottom-walking past him and in my direction, the light at their backs. If I didn't finish my third assailant quickly, they'd be upon me before I could find a way to climb back out of the river.
But my third assailant had an assailant of its own. An arm was wrapped across its scaly torso while another clutched at its goggle-eyed head. That arm snapped back and the fish-man's head twisted past the point of spinal cohesion. I could hear its neck snap even underwater. Then I got a glimpse of my foe's foe.
It looked like a woman.
A human woman.
Or, maybe, not-so-human as she bore a strong resemblance to Suki, one of Stefan Pagelovitch's vampire enforcers.
Her eyes looked dead.
Then the light went out.
Most of it, anyway.
There was still enough ambient light filtering down from above to reveal my immediate surroundings. But the creature that had saved me, and the other figures beyond, were now in murk and darkness, as if a great underwater searchlight had been switched off.
I looked up again and saw the keel of the New Moon about twenty feet above me and over a ways.
Vampires don't swim, they sink like a rock. Once in, they don't come back out. But I reached up and pushed down with cupped hands, kicking off the riverbed as if I still had a modicum of buoyancy.
And I began to rise!
I swam to the surface and then splashed my way to shore. I reached up to pull the breathing apparatus from my mouth but it was gone. By the time I had stumbled back up the gangplank and onto the boat, a large, batlike monster was wading ashore as well.
I climbed up onto the roof and scanned the waters from the secondary wheelhouse. All looked quiet. But, as Zotz joined me, shrunk down to human form and suddenly dry, I thought I could see something out in the main channel of the Ouachita River.
"I thought you couldn't swim," he said, offering me a towel.
"I thought you knew how to fish," I answered, taking it.
Something was moving under the surface of the river. Something big where the channel was deepest. A greater shadow shaped like a giant manta ray . . .
It moved away, angling upstream. Within a few minutes I couldn't tell if it had gone away or gone deeper to bide its time. I raised a hand to shade my eyes against the glare of ten thousand diamonds as the waters fractured the sunlight and reflected it back up at me.
"Hey!"
I turned and saw that Volpea had finally stirred from her lounge chair at the front of the boat. She was standing atop the ladder, one foot on the top deck, holding a saucepan stinking of burned blood and plastic. She pulled off her sunglasses for a better look.
"I thought they called you Bloodwalker!" she said, her mouth imitating our fishy visitors of just minutes before.
"Yeah? So?" Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Zotz was doing a similar fish-face impression.
"Maybe they should call you Daytripper, now," he rumbled, still in demon voice.
That's when I finally realized that I was standing out in broad daylight, getting a double dose of solar spectra, without turning into Cséjthe flambé!
Volpea called New Orleans.
Zotz called Mama Samm.
While Mama Samm called the Gator-man I wrote up a makeshift list and sent Zotz into town. He scanned my notes as he opened the door and headed for the gangplank. "Some of this may be a little hard to come by," he said.
I smiled and felt my face grow tight. We were adding spear guns to our on-board armory. Also, redundant fish-finder gear until I could get my hands on more state-of-the-art sonar equipment. "Improvise," I suggested.
"How about some Cajun fishing tackle? I know a couple of construction sites."
I shook my head. "It's illegal to even store dynamite, much less use it, without a permit."
Zotz sighed and looked down. "Hoss, I'd venture a guess that permits are about to be the least of your worries for the near future." He looked back up at me. "Wouldn't it be simpler to just cast off and move downriver?"
I looked back. "Like all the way down to New Orleans?"
He shrugged. "You know you're going."
I glanced over at Volpea who was across the salon and engaged in a conversation of her own. "Yes. But the moment the New Moon reaches Natchez, New Orleans will go to DefCon One."
"My offer still stands."
I sighed. "I am not climbing inside a demon's head."
"Better a willing Trojan Horse than an unwilling one," he argued. "Besides, the classification 'demon' may not be technically accurate."
"It's close enough, Hoss."
Camazotz Chamalcan believed that he was formed out of the essence of ten thousand tormented souls—human sacrifices to appease a concept that had no external reality. Up until the moment the pain and fear of those victims coalesced into a corporeal manifestation of mass horror, that is. Their essence became the abomination they were originally sacrificed to appease. Perhaps a little DNA of the prehistoric Desmodus draculae, the gigantic ancestor of the modern vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, got into the mix, somehow—a civilization's need to believe in darkness given form, created it out of their own.
He and I had spent many a long night discussing Plato's shadow creation concepts and the question of whether form follows function or function follows form.
I dreaded the day we segued into Calvinistic concepts of predestination.
Like any newborn infant, his overriding impulse upon first awakening was to feed. But achieving sentience centuries after the Mayans had vanished and the sacrifices had ceased, the Death-eater found it necessary to leave his watery womb and go out into the world in search of sustenance.
Which he found in overwhelming abundance.
Death was everywhere, to abbreviate Shelley.
And not just death but suffering . . .
Pain . . . horror . . .
More than the bread of wickedness and the wine of violence, it was a moveable feast with pogroms here and genocides there and more wars than rumors of war.
Until, at last, gorged beyond surfeit, he had stumbled back to his birthplace in the green oblivion of the timeless jungles, filled with tens of millions of deaths and sick with sins of a thousand civilizations. He tried to sleep, sought solace in the depths of the dark waters, but found that he could no longer rest, no longer find peace in the dreamless sleep of centuries. Others' deaths were now manifestly his Death. Others' sufferings were now his Suffering. The hopelessness of millions had become his own.
You are, as they say, what you eat.
How and why he had come to me was something that still didn't make much sense. Except that we were both unique and one of a kind as far as monsters go.
And neither of us wanted to be monsters any more.
So, I guess he thought he might learn from me. I don't know what he'd learned so far.
I, in turn, had learned from him these past six months and it was all I could do to keep from returning to Chichen Itza and do a Greg Louganis into the Well of Sacrifices. Anything to still the voices and memories inside my own head.
"Dr. Mooncloud is throwing two cases of medical gear into the back of an SUV even as we speak," Volpea announced as Zotz grumped his way off the boat. "She said she'll be here in five hours."
"She'll be here in four," I said, picking up my own cell phone.
"It's a five-hour drive—"
"Did you tell her I was sprouting stainless-steel manicures and walking around in broad daylight?"
She looked a little nonplussed. "Well . . . yes . . ."
I nodded. "She'll be here in less than four. Where's your other half?"
She looked even more uncomfortable. Maybe it was because she was wearing nothing more than a teeny-weeny bikini and the air conditioner was on. "I'm calling him now."
"Not exactly a direct answer to the question. Maybe you can do better after he reports in." I turned my back on her and called Seattle.
Stefan Pagelovitch would sleep until sunset—which was two time zones later than here. As a master vampire, he could be roused during the day for emergencies but I wasn't about to strain our relationship any more than it already was.
So I spoke to Ancho.
The vivani was a member of the Seattle enclave that Pagelovitch ruled but wasn't a vampire, himself. He had once referred to himself as a "dusky elf"—something I hadn't taken seriously at the time because I was still freshly traumatized by my initial exposure to the other Things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. Besides, a vivani didn't look anything like those cutesy books of Tinkerbell clones they sell in quaint little bookshoppes, Renfaires, and scifi conventions.
Ancho looked like a big, hairy man with long, sharp fingernails.
He had claimed that the taxonomy of elvenkind was split along three branches: dark, light, and dusky. We didn't get much deeper than that back then as I was still doing my basic research on neck biters. It had taken a major leap of—what? Faith? Credulity? To accept that mutagenic viruses could reprogram human DNA and sufficiently mutate the biological processes to actually create the undead condition. Okay, I was able to move vampirism out of the realm of superstition and into the realm of science.
Werewolves were a little more troubling.
Issues of displaced mass got into a level of physics that was way beyond my comfort level. Still, there was enough medical and zoological data to make some actual sense of what I saw and experienced. And living with a lycanthrope tends to help you over the hump of skepticism.
Ghosts?
The phantasmagorical appearances of my dead wife had not entirely convinced me that she was more than a side effect of the necrophagic virus playing havoc with the perceptual centers of my brain. In other words, I had chalked Jenny's post mortem appearances up to occipital delusions.
But my own little out-of-the-body experience with the shade of former vampire J.D. acting as tour guide had proved pretty convincing. I could now believe in the unseen.
Within limits.
But elves weren't anywhere close to my limits; they were well across the county line and into the next state. Viruses and mutations and quantifiable paranormal phenomena are one thing, ancient magical races are quite another.
Still, that little trip out west with the Wendigo had blurred a few more lines between what was possible and what seemed not . . .
And now that I needed the faerie four-one-one? It probably wasn't the best idea to rely too heavily on a certain smut-surfing bat-demon with public library access to the internet.
And there was another reason to call Seattle, as well . . .
"Is good to hear your voice, my friend!" Ancho's voice boomed at sufficient volume to make my cell phone buzz as though set to vibrate. "How are you doing now?"
"Fine, Big Guy. How about yourself?"
"Ah! My Basa-Andrée is big with child again! I hear you are soon to be proud papa, too! Too bad you cannot come for visit, anymore . . ."
I shook my head trying to clear the disturbing image of a pregnant aguane. Ancho was married to a water elemental, possessed of an ethereal beauty when sporting about in rivers, lakes, and fountains. Out and about on dry land, however, she was about the ugliest woman I could ever imagine.
And the past couple of years had put my imagination on steroids.
"Yeah, well right now I'm Mr. Persona-non-grata up your way but maybe things will relax down the road," I offered. "I was hoping you wouldn't mind sharing a little information in the meantime."
"Well, you are only prohibited from coming here in person," he said thoughtfully. "As long as you are not asking wrong kinds of questions."
"Fair enough," I allowed. "Ancho, you once told me something about faeries—about how there are three different kinds . . ."
"Are many different kinds," he corrected, "but, yah, three different realms."
"Right. You said: light, dark, and dusky . . ."
"Yah, different kinds in each realm."
"With different powers and purposes?"
"Among different kinds, yah. And everybody different like humans are different, too. Realms not having anything to do with powers or—how you say—purpose. Good or evil?" I could almost see him waggle his hand. "Not to do with realms. There are bad light elves and good dark elves. All mix up, just like humans."
"Which is the kind that steals children, Ancho?"
There was a pregnant pause. "Steal children? Human children?" His voice betrayed a note of alarm. "Is not done so much anymore! The world has changed!"
"What do you mean 'changed'?"
"More humans, now. Live together closely. Ten generations ago, sun go down and all was darkness. Much woods and fields and many hidden places. When cloudy or new moon, our world strong beyond feeble glow of lantern or candle. Now is little night and much steel and concrete. You have lamps that flash like sun over great distances and no shadow, no dark or hidden place is safe . . ." His voice had gone soft and sad but suddenly snapped back with a tone of barely controlled disgust. "So, is not done so much anymore."
"But why?" I asked. "Then or now, why do the faerie kidnap children?"
"Most do not. Did not even when humans were cattle and huddled in the great dark. But for those who did? Are different reasons like different kinds. One—individual or tribe—loses a child of its own and cannot conceive. They adopt from the race of Men because they are too ancient to renew themselves with pure lineage."
"Hmmm," I said. "Sort of like the House of Windsor . . ."
"Sometimes a human child is seen to be abused or neglected. The Folk take that lost one out of mercy or kindness."
So, sort of a Fey Folk Family Services . . .
"And once, every generation or so, there is a Telling."
"A Telling?"
"When a babe is foretold. Is anointed . . . gifted. Child is taken to help fulfill special destiny or . . ." He paused. "Are you asking about a specific child?"
My hand was gripping the cell phone so tightly I was in danger of crushing it. "Or what, Ancho? Prevent its destiny from being fulfilled?
"Christopher, are we talking about your child?"
"My son hasn't been born, yet."
"But something has happened. What can I do?"
"If I describe an elf and her human servitor, do you think you could identify them?"
"I do not know. But for you I will try."
So I described Fand and Setanta as best I could. Answered the dusky elf's questions about their clothing and jewelry.
It wasn't enough.
"But their names," Ancho said, "seem familiar. I will ask around."
"Thanks, buddy," I said, forcing the tension back out of my voice. "I really appreciate it."
"Is there anything else I can do?"
I hesitated. Time for that other thing. "Yeah, would you ask Suki to give me a call when she rises?"
There was a long pause. "Is not a funny joke, my friend."
"Joke?"
"The Doman was angry enough about your threat to the other demesnes. He forgave you for Deirdre; her making was largely your doing. But he feels Suki and the others were betrayals."
"Um, Ancho, this isn't a joke. I really want to talk—"
"Tell her," he continued, "that if she ever leaves your protection, he will make an example of her to the rest of the Northwest demesne."
"Ancho—"
"Goodbye, my friend. Be careful and guard your son."
The connection clicked off and I was left holding a silent lump of plastic to my ear.
"Your eyes . . ."
It eventually occurred to me that I was the only other person aboard the New Moon at the moment. I turned from the upper deck railing and looked at Volpea. "What?"
She had thrown on a white shirt but hadn't bothered to button it. The material billowed out behind her as the wind angled up off the river. With her bronzed skin and articulated musculature, she looked like some caped crusader from the comic books. It is I, Bikini-woman!
She stepped a little closer, reducing the quantity, if not the quality, of distraction. "Um," she said, "you know the old saying about how the eyes are mirrors of the soul?"
"Windows," I said. "The eyes are the windows of the soul. Not mirrors. Thomas Phaer, 1510 to 1560."
She stared at me.
"Falsely attributed to Aristotle and Shakespeare."
"Now you're scaring me."
I shrugged. "Just saying . . ."
"Well," she brushed some hair from her face and took another step, "yours are more like mirrors than windows. At this rate your reflective moods will soon be more literal than metaphorical."
"Great," I muttered. "Maybe I can get a temp job, working for Galactus."
She was back to staring at me.
"Galactus?" I repeated. "You know . . . the Silver Surf—?" I sighed. "Oh, never mind." I turned back to the railing and gazed out at the tree-lined bluffs across the green undulations of water.
Looking up at the bleached turquoise sky, I realized, again, just how much I had missed the sun. Not that I didn't look out of a shaded window from time to time. It wasn't even that long ago that I had still been able to slather on enough SPF 1000 sun block for very short excursions outside. Longer on those days that were heavily overcast. But to stand fearlessly out in the open, enjoying the view up close and the warmth of sun on my back? The need might diminish over time but it would never completely fade away.
And it wasn't just me.
Rumor had it that, of all the vampires caught out in the open and immolated by the rising sun, fewer were caught by accident than previously supposed.
Even transformed, we are not emotionally designed for immortality.
I, myself, wasn't suicidal. Yet. Just clinically depressed, according to Drs. Mooncloud and Burton.
And Mama Samm.
And Camazotz Chamalcan.
And even The Kid, though he hadn't been around to haunt my new digs for a while. Apparently ghosts don't have an affinity for water unless they drowned there to begin with. Since J.D. had been a vampire—with the attendant hydro phobias before he kicked it for the second time—his visitations were rare and usually involved an event of some significance.
Apparently my abduction and return weren't significant enough.
"Tell me about Lupé Garou," Volpea said.
Oh yeah: still had company. Not suicidal but depressed enough to be dangerously distracted. And no longer as averse to risk as I once had been. Not a good sign. I had to keep my head in the game—if not for me then for my son. And, although two werewolf enforcers from New Orleans were more likely to be allies than enemies, I couldn't simply trust in others' better natures. To paraphrase the Tao of the Tomb: shit happens.
In my case it happens a lot.
Over and over.
Like preternatural laxative.
"You probably know more than I do, by now," I growled. "I'm up here. She's down there. You can visit. I can't. I should be asking you that question."
She came to stand beside me at the railing. "Is it true that you were lovers? That the child she carries is yours?"
"Is this any of your business?" I turned back to the view across the river but that wasn't what I was seeing anymore.
"It is the business of the Pack," she said gently. "For, if it is true, it tears at the Covenant. Fang and Fur may be sundered."
"Ask me if I care."
"You have a reputation as Warlock, as Oath-breaker. You are anathema to our traditions."
I snorted. "Whose traditions? The vampires who rule the weres? Or the weres who have been subjugated by the undead for a thousand years, now? Half of it's a lie, you know."
"And what half is that?" There was no shock or consternation in her voice. Either I was preaching to the choir or she wasn't about to take anything I said seriously.
"About it being death or some sort of folderol for a vampire to drink a werewolf's blood," I told her. "How do you think a Doman acquires their powers, after all?"
Her breathing quickened. She wasn't as fully briefed as she'd thought. "And what," she asked carefully, "happens when a lycanthrope drinks the blood of a fanged master?"
I shrugged. "Ask Lupé. Although I'm not sure that I would count as I'm not—" Dammit: saying more than I should . . . "You realize, of course, that even though we are no longer together, I have published a fatwa, promising to destroy anyone who harms her or the child. And then utterly destroy their bloodline as well."
I saw Volpea nod out of the corner of my eye. "Of course. It is why she is still alive despite the breaking of The Covenant." I felt her gaze slide across me. "At least as long as you live, that is."
"Doing fine so far."
She shrugged. "People die."
I nodded. "Yes. Yes, they do. In fact a whole lotta people have died over the past year because they haven't learned to leave us the hell alone. You want covens and packs and enclaves that are socially dysfunctional and obsessed about miscegenation? Fine! Keep your clubhouses and secret handshakes and have your silly little rules and rituals. But don't be pulling any pointy sheets over my head and telling me that I have to sign up for your nonsense! I've got my own clubhouse, thank you very much, and I and my people will do our own family planning!"
"Then why," she asked after a long silence, "is your lover and the mother of your child taking refuge in New Orleans instead of staying up here in your . . . um . . . clubhouse?"
"Why don't you ask her?" was all I could come up with after a slightly shorter pause. "Why do you care?"
"Because I'm curious. Because you are not what I expected. Because I do not know if you are the greatest threat that the New Orleans' demesne has ever faced . . . or its last, best chance for salvation," she said, turning toward me. "And I cannot make that decision without knowing you better." She pushed herself against me. "I think I want to know you better . . ."
I reached down, grasped her upper arm, and moved her back. At least I tried to move her back. She was strong and solid and not ready to move. And I couldn't budge her. Well, my leverage was all wrong . . .
I didn't want to step back because predators always recognize a retreat as a sign of weakness. I had learned that early on. I just hadn't learned how to deal in situations precisely like this.
"One of the reasons Lupé is not here is that she walked in on a conversation very much like this one and got the wrong idea," I said. I did not speak softly, I spoke quietly. There is a marked difference.
"Well," Volpea said, reaching up to finger my shirt, "she's down there . . . we're up here . . . so she can't walk in and get the wrong idea this time . . ."
"How about Fenris? Suppose he gets the wrong idea—"
Her index finger came to rest on my lips. "I told Fenny to stay away for a couple of hours. I told him I had a better chance of getting information out of you if we were alone."
"What kind of information?" I mumbled around her finger.
"Some of us want to know where your sympathies lie . . ." The finger left my lips and trailed down my chin.
"Sympathies?"
"The conflict between Lupin and Wampyri. If you had to choose sides . . ." The finger ghosted my throat and made a lazy tour of my chest.
"I thought it was a matter of public record that I've always taken my own side," I answered.
"You, yourself, have said repeatedly that you are not a vampire." The finger trickled lower.
"Not yet, anyway."
"You resist the Embrace . . ." Lower. "You are still potent . . ." Uncomfortably low. "And we have questions regarding your plans for . . . expansion . . ."
I grabbed her hand and brought it back up. Lucky for me she didn't resist.
Even luckier, I didn't squeak when I said: "Expansion?"
"Your demesne. At least what you claim as your own gathering of allies and were-lieged."
I finally took that step back and released her wrist. "And why should I tell Marie Laveau all of my plans? We already have a mutually agreeable arrangement."
I had released her wrist but Volpea had performed a smooth reverse and now had mine. "Because, as much as she and the other fanged masters would like to know how you fit into their plans, it is the Lupin who ask. And, depending upon your answers, they may be the key to your supremacy over all other demesnes."
I stared at her.
"Do you understand?"
Well, yes and . . . "Not really. No."
A moment before she was looking at me like I was a seven-course meal in a five-star restaurant. Now she wore the expression of someone whose tuna casserole was a little overdone and was thinking about ordering pizza delivery instead.
"Look," I said, "it's not that I don't see where you're trying to go with this. It's just that it doesn't make any sense. If the Lupin want to rise up and throw off the shackles of vampire oppression, you've got my blessing. I won't get in the way. But if you're talking about the weres all signing up to be members of my demesne? Well, what is that? Trading a bunch of undead masters for another? Uh-uh. I can barely manage my own affairs much less anyone else's. And the whole point of seceding from the demesne system would be to free yourselves from anyone's domination. So, best of luck to you. Hope it all works out. And drop me a postcard from time to time."
"It's not that simple," she said.
It was for me. It had to be. I had complications enough without getting involved in additional hostilities. On the other hand, no sense in pissing off another werewolf. Much less a whole new clan or pack or furry activist coalition. Tread carefully, Cséjthe . . .
"Tell me about bloodwalking."
"What?" Tread carefully and pay more attention! "Why? So you'll know what to look for if I try anything?" I grumped.
The seductive look was back in place. "Because maybe I'd like to know what I'm getting myself into should I decide to invite you in."
"Invite me in?" I echoed stupidly.
Now I'll be among the first to admit that there are times that I can be, well, obtuse. A little slow on the uptake, at the very least. Occasionally. Not often, mind you, but . . . sometimes. More rare than common—
The point is, I find it helpful to feign confusion at times in order to get people to volunteer more information. Such as when their motivations are obviously suspect.
Like now.
"I need you to consider our cause," she elaborated. "You might be more inclined to do so if I were able to smuggle you in to see your . . . people . . . under Marie Laveau's nose."
I stared down at her. It wasn't that great a distance as she was tall. "You're talking about giving me a ride inside your head," I murmured.
"Maybe. It would depend on a number of things."
"Like what?" I asked, already knowing the negotiations would likely involve some sort of compromise on my part.
"I would need to know what kind of a man I would be sharing my body with. And would my mind be violated? Or is it possible for my thoughts to remain private if I so wish it?"
I didn't like it. You don't give intel to the enemy. Or, at the very least, to strangers. Especially when you have so little, yourself. But if Volpea was even halfway serious, it would be my best and possibly only chance for slipping through the Voodoo Queen's cordons and seeing Lupé.
Explaining my mode of transportation to Lupé could be a big problem but this was not the time to look a gift wolf in the mouth.
So I explained what I did know from my surprisingly limited experience in invading other people's bodies. I told her that I had never tried being the "passenger" aboard a willing host. That all of my experiences in bloodwalking had involved taking control of the body of an unprepared host and relying on shock and surprise to help keep their consciousness suppressed while I sat in the "driver's seat," as it were. And that the only time I had actually delved past anyone's surface thoughts while visiting was to fish a security pass code out of a panicked guard's memory—which he surrendered as soon as I asked the question. That's all.
I promised to be a gentleman, if that helped any.
Her response, after a long pause, was that her only formal acquaintance with any "gentlemen" was at "gentlemen's clubs."
It was at that point that something else that had been bothering me—along with all of the other things that had been bothering me—suddenly jumped the queue and rushed to the front of the line. I looked down at the discolored patch of skin on Volpea's wrist where I had grasped it a moment before. I could still see remnants of my handprint.
I looked at her hand now firmly enclosed about my own wrist. "Doesn't that hurt?" I asked.
Her lips quirked into a smile. "Define 'hurt.'"
Fenris and Volpea had been briefed, of course, about the silver deposits in my body. A couple of silver bullets from January's assassination attempt had dissolved in my bloodstream before they could be removed. As a result, my touch was more than a little uncomfortable to silver-sensitive creatures like lycanthropes. Lupé had found my embrace unbearable and my lips on her forehead had produced blisters. Just another of the several causes for our present separation.
"There is a very thin line, at times, between pleasure and pain, Domo Cséjthe," Volpea said breathily, moving my hand to her side and holding it to the curve of her waist. "There are those who season their food with dabs of catsup while others prefer quantities of Tabasco." She moved my hand so that my fingers trailed across her belly, leaving reddish streaks across her bronzed skin. "And there are ways, for those who choose them," she said as my fingers brushed her belly ring, "to build our tolerance—even our enjoyment—of intense stimulation."
I took a closer look at reddened interception of flesh and jewelry. "So you're saying this isn't the standard stainless steel setting?"
She shook her head with a sly smile. "Silver alloy. As is this . . ." She pulled her top open, exposing her right breast. A more elaborate ring spiraled about and transfixed her engorged nipple with a ruby clasp.
She stepped back and tugged on my hand. The red streaks across her finely muscled abdomen were already beginning to fade. "Let's go back to your cabin and I'll show you the others . . ."
Others?
As in more than one others?
I started to do a mental inventory as she pulled me toward the steps leading down to the deck below.
Compromises, I told myself; you knew this would likely involve compromises. Everything has a price.
The question was, was the price too high?