His appearance couldn’t be more of a lie. Xavier del Torro was one of the most notorious of all the Vampyres, a feared hunter famous in all of the Elder Races—and famous among humans as well—and Julian’s right-hand man. Neither del Torro nor the King glanced at the stage.
Haley worked hard for her allotted two minutes. Her routine was polished, professional and raunchy, and it left the onlookers in no doubt. Clearly she was ready and willing to do anything to become a Vampyre’s attendant. When the buzzer sounded, she swept up her discarded robe and exited stage left with a bright smile and a cheerful, Miss Universe pageant-style wave.
The next candidate walked onto the stage with quick, jerky movements. This one was a man in his forties dressed in a department store suit. He looked tense and so uncomfortable, Tess’s muscles clenched with empathy. She could relate.
When the emcee handed the candidate the microphone, he cleared his throat, pulled out a photo and held it in the air. It wavered visibly in his unsteady hand. In the photo, a girl grinned at the camera, her head tilted to one side.
“My name is Roberto Sanchez, and I am here on behalf of my beautiful daughter Cara. Cara is fourteen years old, and she is in the hospital. She has childhood leukemia. She was in remission for three years, but now the cancer has returned. Please, I am begging you—someone have mercy on her. If you would only agree to be her patron, you could help to heal her. She’s a good girl. She can work hard for you, if only she felt better. . . .”
Tess winced. Sanchez was breaking several of the rules that had been handed out on cards to those candidates who had been lucky enough to get a ticket and now stood in line, waiting for their turn on the stage. All medically based petitions must go through the visa application process at the Bureau of Nightkind Immigration.
The annual Vampyre’s Ball on New Year’s Eve was an occasion to make a different kind of petition altogether, a kind of massive job screening process where Vampyres of standing might choose to take on human attendants to add to their households.
Supposedly the relationship between a Vampyre patron and his human attendants was a mutually beneficial arrangement. The attendants assured the Vampyre a steady blood supply in addition to working to support the household as a whole. In return the Vampyre offered his protection and assured that the attendant would have a safe, secure place in which to live, and a long, healthy life. There was even an outside chance that a candidate might become a Vampyre himself one day.
Both opportunities were rare. According to the website FAQs that Tess had read, the Nightkind demesne in the United States received over ten million visa applications a year from humans hoping to be turned, while the number of newly created Vampyres each year was the tiniest fraction of that and strictly controlled by the Nightkind demesne working in coordination with the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
Probably Sanchez had already applied for a visa for his daughter and had been turned down. Clearly desperation had pushed him onto the stage.
Just as it would push Tess, when it was her turn.
The next few moments were excruciating, and not just because of the rawness of Sanchez’s pleading, although that was bad enough.
The worst was that the Vampyres did nothing.
Nothing.
Nobody moved to interrupt Sanchez. The emcee did not order security to remove him. Nobody turned to look at the pleading man or raised a bidding paddle. They all acted as if he did not exist.
A sickened anger tied her stomach in knots. This was horrendous, degrading, and it didn’t matter that cold logic said there could be no good way to handle candidates like Sanchez, or that his petition had been doomed from the start. The number of visa applicants was overwhelming to begin with. If the Vampyres gave into one Sanchez who broke the rules, they would never be able to stop the flood of others.
She didn’t know what was worse—their show of indifference or the humans who chose to abase themselves onstage.
And I’m one of them, she thought. She wiped her face with a shaking hand. How in God’s name could I have ever thought this might be a good idea?
Scratch that, I never thought it was a good idea. It was my only idea.
The reason was simple. When you pissed off the devil, you ran out of options real fast.
The buzzer sounded. With agonizing politeness, the emcee escorted Sanchez off the stage, and the next candidate came on.
The person behind Tess elbowed her with a hiss, and she eased the stage door closed to step into the wings. Her blood pounded in her ears, and her shaking breath caught in her throat. This was far worse than any kind of normal stage fright, magnified as it was by anger, revulsion and fear.
As if from a long distance away, she heard the buzzer sound. And again.