Dark Queen (Jane Yellowrock #12)

“Sully? You dare!” Taviano ground out, swords bare, advancing on Gee and me.

“Enough!” The word shook the rafters and made the overhead fans sway. Sabina elbowed a vamp and two humans aside as if they weighed nothing and stepped between us, her magic hot and frozen all at once, making the space we occupied seem too small, too tight, airless. The place fell so quiet that I could hear her white, starched clothing swish. Her hands were hidden in the skirt’s copious pockets. “The outclan priestess signed the final agreements. Thus I am both final witness and judge.” Sabina pulled her gloved hands from her pockets. In one was a seven-inch-long sliver of wood, sharp as a stake on one end and worn smooth on the other. The energies in the room went sideways: hot/cold/smoky/sour, with magical glints of pale gold and motes of fearful black. The stench of the undead increased, the sickeningly sweet smell of funeral flowers and dried herbs and lemons.

The weapon Sabina held up was a big sliver of the Blood Cross, the historical, cursed, magical origination element of the vamps. This one was smaller than the cross-shaped section that had charred the priestess’s hand to the bone, but was still larger than any other piece I had seen. Where had she gotten it? I’d once peeked into her hiding place, inside the sepulcher where she might—or might not—sleep by day. I hadn’t seen this one. And I had kinda ruined the tiny one she had loaned me when it had been absorbed into the Glob. Sabina held the holy-cursed wood over her head and people backed away, leaving only the main challengers, the TV crew, and Sabina in the center of the room.

“Vespasianus,” she said. “So speaks the outclan priestess. You raised weapons against the titular challenger out of order. Pellissier, you raised weapons as well, though in what might have been defense. The primary contenders will both take places on either side of the room. You will not speak unless I give you leave.” Her hawk-sharp gaze pierced the room’s occupants, and I had a flash memory of my high school librarian, a stern-faced woman who had carried a ruler to smack tables with, if not students’ hands. “Your people will separate and sit. Vespasianus’s people there.” She pointed to her left. “Pellissier’s people there.” She pointed to her right.

No one moved. Sabina dropped her hand and pointed the splinter of the Blood Cross at Titus Flavius Vespasianus, holding it like a wand in a Harry Potter movie. “Now!”

Titus’s people moved back, human feet sliding on the floor, vamp feet silent. As they shifted position, so did Leo’s people until there was a twenty-foot space between them. Then thirty. The fighting rings were exposed where there had been only people before. Titus sat on a bench, looking regal but stymied. So did Leo, looking ticked off.

“All combatants in the first three rounds will dress in fighting armor and return,” Sabina said. “I allow you five minutes, no more. Go.”

People dashed down the stairs or popped out of sight. No one remaining on the third floor moved, the vamps doing that still-as-marble thing, common among the undead. Only the humans and weres and I breathed. I slipped down the stairs last to dress in the white armor. About halfway down the stairs I realized the corset was tied in back. Fortunately, Deon joined me and unlaced the corset top, helping me into my fighting clothes. I turned on Beast-speed and the costume change, as Deon called it, took only two minutes. In a little over four minutes we all began to return to the third floor. I hoped that wearing the girly clothing, and now the white leathers, made people think I had no fighting skills. First impressions and all that.

At exactly five minutes, Sabina turned her head in one of those bizarre, squicky motions that was more lizard than human and looked around the room. “You,” she said, pointing at Shiloh and drawing a piece of paper from a pocket in her robes. “You will read the order of trials and announce the combatants. The first will begin now.” Sabina sat down on a bench, her skirts scratchy in the quiet.

Shiloh slid between vamps and humans. Her face was too calm for this summons to be unexpected. Shiloh, part witch, part vamp, had been planning stuff with the vamp priestess. This shouldn’t have been a surprise. The position of outclan priestess had always been held by a witch or shaman turned vamp, and Shiloh fit the bill perfectly if she turned down a place in Clan Yellowrock. Dang. Something else I’d need to address if I lived through this.

Shiloh took the paper and unfolded it. “First challenge,” she said, “is from Concetta Gallo to Jane Yellowrock. Challenger and challenged, approach the central ring.” I started to walk in, but Gee beat me to it. “I accept the challenge for the Enforcer of Leo Pellissier, Master of the City of New Orleans.”

“And by what right do you accept the challenge?” Sabina asked.

A happy-sly look on his face, Gee DiMercy, the misericord of the New Orleans vamps, said, “I am the Enforcer of Clan Yellowrock.”

“Clan—” Titus shot to his feet. “This is an outrage! No human can be a Blood Master.”

Sabina stared at him. For a moment nothing happened. The emperor had been told not to speak by an outclan priestess. Kings were important. If they rallied their people they could kill a priestess true-dead. One-on-one, priestesses were more powerful. Titus went quiet, drawing his dignity around him like a cloak. He bent his head slightly in a royal nod.

Sabina said, “Do you wish to address a point of order? If so you may speak.”

“Yes. I contest the concept of a non-Mithran as Blood Master of a clan.”

Dressed in fighting armor, Edmund stepped next to Gee. To Sabina he said, “Permission to speak to this point of order.”

Without taking her eyes from Titus, Sabina nodded.

Edmund said, “I am Edmund Hartley, a master Mithran, formerly Blood Master of Clan Laurent—my clan, given by covenant to Bettina, now master of Clan Laurent.”

Wait. Covenant? “What covenant?” I demanded.

Edmund continued speaking. “I am also heir to the Master of the City of New Orleans and heir of Clan Pellissier. I speak as one of power. Only days ago, Jane Yellowrock completed a blood-binding upon me, a master Mithran, making me, according to the Vampira Carta, her primo.”

Every single vamp on the far side of the room inhaled in shock. Good thing the windows were open or there’d be no air left for the humans. For myself, I’d forgotten to breathe.

I hadn’t wanted to claim Edmund. It had been the only way to save his life.

Ed said, “Such a binding gives Yellowrock the right to be appointed as a clan master. Jane Yellowrock is now master of Clan Yellowrock. And I am now her primo.”

Coldly, Titus said, “A master Mithran, heir of massive territory, in the position of servant? No. This is absurd. I will not allow it.”

“The outclan priestess allows it,” Sabina said, her words cutting. Titus started to speak again, but Sabina went on. “To the challenged is the choice of weapons.”

Gee said, “Dual swords. No shields. Smaller blades as desired.”

“To first blood or to the death?” Sabina asked the combatants.

Someone at the back of the room answered, “Blood.”