There was a small fridge beneath the bar, and he retrieved a soda. As the door was closing she caught a glimpse of a thick plastic bag with a white label. Her stomach twisted.
He saw her staring. “Emergency supply,” he explained as he poured her drink. “It’s only good for about four days after it’s donated before the life energy leaches out, but it’s still stronger than animal blood. We have a contract with the blood and tissue center for a limited amount per month. It’s saved more than a few lives here.”
“Do they know what you’re using it for?” She tried to sound nonchalant, but the thought still intruded: God, he drank that. It was in there because he drank it. He probably liked the taste, the smell.
“Of course,” he said, returning to the couch and handing her her drink. She kept herself from shooting it out of sheer force of will, and took a sip, letting the alcohol burn her tongue and the bubbles fizz merrily along with it. “My people are known to the United States government on several levels. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon, but keeping good diplomatic relations helps us all coexist. My predecessor wasn’t so open-minded, so when I took the Signet I had to do a lot of damage control.”
She took another swallow of her drink, this one bigger. She still couldn’t shake the mental image . . . David, bending over someone’s neck . . . using those teeth to pierce a human’s flesh, and sucking from it, his lower lip stained red. His eyes had gone silver when he was angry; did they do the same when he fed?
Then there was the human. The bite would hurt, but he had said vampires used their psychic power to keep their prey calm, and that it was . . . what had he said? Intensely pleasurable. Was that why so many people thought they were romantic?
He was watching her again, and she felt herself flush. She knew he could hear some of her thoughts.
“It’s all right,” he told her, staring into his drink, then lifting his eyes to her. “I don’t blame you for feeling revulsion. Any sane person would. But we do what we must to survive. At heart, we want the same things as your kind do.”
“Really? What do you want?”
He lowered his glass, clearly surprised by the question, but thought about it a moment before he said, “I want peace in my territory. I want whoever is behind this brought to justice so no one else dies.”
He told her, then, what was going on, or at least an abridged version of it: the attacks in the city, growing more frequent and more violent; Helen’s betrayal and the holes in security it had exposed, which he was now confident were filled; and, in less detail, the street war in California and the vampire cult known as the Blackthorn.
“They began as a single family, around the time I was leaving Britain. Imagine Puritan vampires, if you can—religious zealots who favor austerity of lifestyle, feeding on those they consider sinners. They were all but extinct for over a century, then reappeared in California and assassinated the Prime there, expecting to put their leader in the Signet. Needless to say, the stone didn’t wake for him. The territory fell into chaos. I helped the deceased Prime’s Second end the war, and the Signet chose him. One of his first orders was to exterminate the Blackthorn. Any member of the syndicate we found, we killed. If any survived, they ran from California and didn’t return.”
“And you think they’re here,” she concluded.
“I don’t know. Certainly the methodology is the same. They gradually undermined Arrabicci’s authority, killing off his Elite until we were spread so thin that the Queen was left unguarded just long enough to take a crossbow bolt to the heart.” He again got that haunted look on his face, then added, “I saw it, but I couldn’t stop it. Everything happened so fast.”
“Did they shoot the Prime after that?”
David shook his head. “They didn’t have to. A Pair—that is, a Prime and his Queen—is bound by blood and soul. What kills one kills both. The Queen went down, and in less than a minute Arrabicci just . . . fell, dead, without a scratch on him. The bond between them enables them to share their power, but in doing so they also share their fates.”
“That sounds awful,” Miranda observed, sucking the liquor off an ice cube. She’d become a lightweight these past few weeks, and he’d had a liberal hand with the rum. She was feeling a bit blurred around the edges.
He smiled. “It does, doesn’t it? From what I hear, it’s wonderful.”
“Your friend, the one in California, does he have a Queen?”
“A Consort.”
“What’s the difference?”
The smile turned wry. “The difference is, if you called Jonathan a Queen, he’d break your neck.”
“They make gay Primes?”
“Only one, as far as we know. As I’ve said before, vampires are slow to evolve.”
“I’ll bet the Blackthorn loved that.”
“That’s part of why they singled out Arrabicci in the first place. Deven was his most trusted ally, and probably the single most accomplished warrior vampire kind has ever seen. The Blackthorn demanded that he execute Deven or be killed himself. I think his exact words were, ‘Go fuck yourselves, and I’ll see you in hell.’ ”
Miranda nodded, understanding. “And you’re friends, so they hate you, too.”
“For that and a dozen other reasons, not the least of which is that I helped wipe out their entire clan. If there are any left, they’ll be out for vengeance as much as for their crusade.”
She leaned sideways into the couch cushions, yawning hugely. It was a good thing she hadn’t had any painkillers so far that evening. It took so little to wear her out. She remembered a brief time back in college when she could outdrink a fraternity pledge, but like everything else in her life, it had become a shadow, an indistinct ghost from Before.
“Do you miss your wife?” she asked sleepily.
It was several seconds before he answered. “It was a long time ago.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes. Very much.”
“How did she die?”
He finished his drink, but didn’t set the glass down. “She was convicted of witchcraft and burned alive in the village square.”
Her eyes shot open. “Oh my God.”
David nodded. “My son was sent to another town, on the other side of Britain, adopted by relatives. He died of cholera at age thirty-two.”
“But . . . where were you?”
“I was in prison,” he replied. “I was sentenced to die as Elizabeth had, but someone intervened. Afterward, I thought it best to leave Thomas to his life, believing me dead, instead of forcing him to face what I had become.”
“I’m sorry.”
She nearly dropped her glass, and he reached out and rescued it from her, moving too fast for her tipsy mind to register. One second the glass was in her hand, the next it was safely on the coffee table. He might even have done it with his mind.
“Perhaps you should have a nap,” David told her, amused.
“I feel like I spend all my time asleep on your couch.”
“You need your rest. You’ve been through a lot.”
“Yeah.” She pulled her knees back up to her chin, groping for the throw blanket and pulling it around herself haphazardly. “’Specially if you’re going to work me over tomorrow like you did last time.”
“I’ll try to be gentle.”
“That’s what they all say.”
She drifted off, smiling, aware that his eyes were still on her as her own fell shut.