“Yeah? Well, I got a feeling that your little green guy didn’t stop them,” I said. “Maybe when he ran around the backyard, wolves were coming over the walls and up to the roof without ever touching the ground.” I didn’t add that it was a rookie mistake. I didn’t even have a camera pointed up. Could werewolves jump twenty feet in a single bound? Mentally castigating myself, I repositioned myself and my weapons between Leo and the were-cats. Cat. The female was gone. My panic-o-meter shot back into the stratosphere. I took in the entire room. Placed every vamp and were. No girl were-cat. When had she disappeared?
Leo shot a look at me, vamped but in control. Relief slammed through me with my blood. At least one thing was okay, then. He turned to the were-cat. “The wolves are not here at your command?” Leo asked, his words only slightly distorted by his state.
“My kind killed the last werewolf in Europe during Charlemagne’s reign. They are the lesser were. Their females do not survive. They cannot breed true. We do not treat with dogs.”
Charlemagne’s reign was in the eight hundreds. During the time that vamps lived in Rome as Mithrans. Had that been part of what caused the vamps to disperse? Some kind of supernatural war?
“We are no’ dogs. We are wolves, predators like you.” Roul turned to the nearest camera. Crap, crap, crap! I forgot about the media. His natural charisma hitched up a notch, and his accent practically made love to the cameras. “Leo Pellissier is murderer and thief. And I have proof, I do.” Roul looked like a GQ fashion plate, strawberry blond-streaked hair fanning out in a mane, wearing pants, boots, and a white shirt rolled up at the arms, the neck open. He stepped away from his two cohorts, head back, striking a pose, rakish and theatrical. The cameras were all trained on him, loving him.
I glanced at his companions. The man with him was dressed similarly but in dark brown, and the woman was swathed in silk styled like the were-cat’s dress, but hers was pale blue; she was dressed so much like the missing female were-cat that the skirt, top, and head scarf outfit had to be required dress. Blond hair fanned out from her veiled face; only her eyes showed, heavily shadowed, and her lids sparkled with something that looked like gold dust. Her skin glowed, darkly tanned. The smell of rut filled the air, wolf in heat, and vamps and weres alike stared at her. The were-bitch walked without a limp, proof that her kind healed from nonmortal wounds as fast as I did, because I remembered hamstringing her. But I’d used a silvered blade, so she probably had an ugly scar, not that I’d noticed one when she displayed her legs on the way down.
The reporters were eating it up with a spoon. Careers would get made tonight.
“The Lupus Clan have file legal writ against Mithrans, yes,” Roul said. “We will see justice in court of human law.” The werewolf bitch placed a hand on Roul’s shoulder, but she was looking at Bruiser and Leo. Mostly at Leo, I thought, but I couldn’t be sure.
Leo’s fangs clicked back into the roof of his mouth and he closed his eyes. When he opened them a moment later, he looked like the Leo the media loved, urbane and debonair, a sophisticated Frenchman in contrast to the rougher, action-adventure character presented by Roul. But what Leo said wasn’t going to help put a good spin on anything that had happened so far tonight. “We will not treat with the wolves that we drove away, wolves who broke were-law, who have returned against our will and against our proclamation. Any charges they bring are specious and without merit and not binding unto us.
“We are not bound unto the system of law of these United States of America ...”—he hesitated, then added—“at this time. We are Mithrans, a separate nation, bound only by the Vampira Carta. We treat and parley as separate peoples.” He sounded suspiciously above the law in his comments, which wasn’t going to go over well in the court of public opinion, but when looked at from a legal perspective, it might have been dang near perfect.
Jodi Richoux was gonna hate that. So was the U.S. justice system—which was already having kittens over the thought of having to confine a vamp—in total darkness during daylight hours, bars far stronger than those needed to detain a human, not to mention the whole “must drink human blood” dietary requirements problem. And I had to wonder if this was the decision of all the international vamps, or if Leo was swimming in dangerous waters. The little disclaimer “at this time” might not be enough to save him if the vamps at large took umbrage with his high-handedness.
I looked from Leo to Bruiser, who was watching me. When he caught my eye he looked around the room as if telling me to do the same. The wolves had padded into the center of the room, surrounding their human-form buddies. The security types were all in the room with us, except for Vodka Angel’s Tit, the only security type guarding the perimeter. Not good. I had to wonder if the weres planned it this way, and if so, was it a cover for something else?
Before I could key my mike to speak to Angel, I heard him say, “Bloody female vamp just appeared in the building, second floor, moving downstairs fast. Approaching ballroom.”
Murphy’s Law was working overtime.
The smell of blood hit me just as she appeared in the reception room, lots of blood, with mixed scent signatures. Like the top-note in a really bad perfume, was cat blood. Below it, overriding the cat smell, was vamp blood—the reek old and rotted. That was the only clue who had come visiting, and it identified the unrecognizable female better than a calling card. Katie of Katie’s Ladies. Risen from the vamp grave that had healed her from a mortal wound. But cat blood, fresh and potent, said something else had gone seriously wrong tonight. Kemnebi turned to her and hissed.
Katie was caked in dried blood; it fell from her in flakes and granules, shifting down from her stiff dress with little shushing sounds, like reeds in a slow breeze. Hair, skin, clothes all were coated with the blood and it stank with a rotted meat smell. Back hunched, arms bent and out to her sides, her feet bare and slender, she turned slowly, taking in the room. Her magics snapped and sparked like carnelian flames, visible to Beast-vision. Powerful. Eerily potent.