He couldn’t believe he’d waited a week for that; and he should have guessed how it was going to go.
Feeling like a fool, he reassumed form behind the Iron Mask, in the shadows of the parking lot. Even out in the back, he could hear the bass beat of the music, and as he approached the rear door, with its scraped paint and well-worn handle, he knew his foul mood was a complication that was going to have to be managed carefully for the next six or eight hours.
Humans + alcohol x urge to kill = body count.
Not what he or his business interests needed.
Inside, he went directly to his office and ditched his dumb-ass Halloween costume of legitimacy, removing his fancy coat, as well as the silk shirt, so that all he had on was his black wifebeater and those fine slacks.
Xhex wasn’t in her office, so he waved a greeting at the working girls who were getting ready for their shifts in the locker room and went out into the land of the great unwashed.
The club already had a critical mass of people, all of whom were wearing dark, stringy clothes and cultivated expressions of boredom—both of which would be lost for many of them as time wore on and their livers broke down the chemical makeup of the booze they were drinking and the drugs they were taking.
“Hi, Daddy,” someone said to him.
Looking over, he found a short, curvy something-or-other staring up at him. With eyes lined with so much black she might as well have had sunglasses on, and a bustier cinched up tight as a fist, she was like an anime character come to life.
Snooze.
“I’m blahblah-blah. Do you come here often?” She took a sip from the red straw in her drink. “Blahblah-blah college student blahblah psychology. Blahblah-blah?”
In the corner of his eye, he saw the crowd part, as if they were getting out of the way of a bouncer or maybe a wrecking ball.
It was Qhuinn.
Looking as grim as Trez felt.
Trez nodded to the guy, and the fighter nodded back as he kept going toward the bar.
“Wow, do you know him?” College Student asked. “Who is he? Blahblah threesome maybe blahblah?”
As she tee-hee-hee’d like she was a Very Naughty Girl, Trez swung his eyes back and downward.
On so many levels, the plate of hors d’oeuvres being offered was totally unappetizing.
“Blahblah-blahblahblah.” Giggle. Hip shake. “Blah?”
Dimly, Trez was aware of his head nodding, and then they were moving into a dark corner. With every step he took, another part of him shut down, turned off, went into hibernation. But he couldn’t stop himself. He was the junkie hoping that his next hit would be as good as the first had been—and finally bring that relief he was fucking desperate for.
Even though he knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Not tonight. Not with her.
Not anywhere in his life.
Probably never, ever.
But sometimes you just had to do something…or go insane.
“Tell me that you love me?” the chick said to him, as she pressed herself against his body. “Pleeeeeeeeease.”
“Yeah,” he said numbly. “Sure. Whatever you want.”
Whatever.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
Xcor linked his hands and placed them on the glossy tabletop. Beside him, Throe was speaking in low tones; he himself had remained quiet since they had taken the weight off their feet in these matching oxblood armchairs.
“This certainly seems persuasive.” His soldier flipped over another page in the set of documents that had been proffered. “Very persuasive, indeed.”
Xcor looked across at their host. The glymera solicitor was built like a pamphlet, so thin that one wondered when he lay out flat whether he presented any verticality a’tall. He also spoke with an exhausting thoroughness, his verbal paragraphs of small font and crowded, complicated wording.
“Tell me, how comprehensive is this brief?” Throe asked.
Xcor’s eyes went to the bookshelves. They were crammed with leather volumes, and he quite believed that the gentlemale had read each and every one. Mayhap twice.
The solicitor launched another well thought-out, well-articulated cruise through the English language. “I would not have turned it over to you both without ensuring that all efforts were made to…”
In other words, yes, Xcor filled in in his head.
“What I do not see here”—Throe turned more pages—“is any notation of counter-opinion.”
“That is because I was unable to find any. The term ‘full-blooded’ has been used in only two contexts—that of lineage, as in a full-blooded offspring of a given sire or a dam, and that of racial identity. Over time, there has been some minor dilution of the wider gene pool, some contamination from humans—and yet individuals with distant Homo sapiens blood ties have as yet been construed by law as being full-blooded provided they go through their transitions. Now, of course, that is not the case of the direct offspring of a human and a vampire. That is a true half-breed. And those individuals, even if they survive the change, have historically been held to a different standard by the law, with lesser rights and privileges than other civilians. The concern is thus—if the king’s shellan is a half-breed, there is a chance that any male offspring of theirs may not go through the transition.”
Throe frowned as if considering the implications. “But within twenty-five years, we shall know one way or the other—and the royal couple could always attempt to have multiple young.”
Xcor interjected dryly, “You assume we will still be on the planet in two and a half decades. At this rate, we are nearing extinction as it is.”
“Precisely.” The solicitor inclined his head in Xcor’s direction. “From a practical standpoint, being a quarter human could be enough to prevent the transition from occurring—there have been documented incidences of this, and I’m sure Havers could give even more examples. Further, there is among many people of my generation a fear that an offspring with that close a nexus to the human race could in fact prefer a human mate—i.e., go out and seek one unaffiliated with our kind. In which case, we could have a human queen, and that is”—the male shook his head with distaste—“absolutely untenable.”
“So there are two issues,” Xcor said as he sat back, the chair creaking under his weight. “The legal precedent and the social implications.”
“Indeed.” The solicitor once again pulled a head bob. “And I believe that the social fears could be properly leveraged to fill in the gray areas around the relevant portion of the law concerning the king’s offspring.”
“I concur,” Throe murmured as he closed the papers. “The question is how to proceed.”
As Xcor opened his mouth to speak, a strange vibration went through him, cutting off his thought process, his body becoming a tuning fork struck by some unseen hand.
“Would you care to review the documentation?” the solicitor asked him.
As if he could, Xcor thought grimly. Indeed, one had to wonder what this learned male would think if he knew the decision maker in all this was an illiterate.
“I am persuaded.” He got up, thinking mayhap a stretch would cure whate’er ailed him. “And I believe this information should be shared with members of the Council.”
“I have sufficient contacts to call the princeps together.”
Xcor went over to a window and looked out, letting his instincts roam. Was it the Brotherhood?
“Do that,” he said with distraction as that hum in his gut increased, creating an urgency he found impossible to ignore….
His Chosen.
His Chosen had breached the compound and was close by—
“I must needs go,” he said in a rush as he headed for the door. “Throe, you wrap up here.”
There was a certain commotion behind him, conversation sprouting up from the pair of males in his wake—about which he cared naught. Breaking out through the front entrance, he regarded the farmland around him….
And located her signal.
Between one heartbeat and the next, he was gone, his body and will drawn to his female sure as a dying thief to redemption.