“Or to eat at all,” offered Honey. “Are we going to be dinner?”
“They always have last meal at 5 A.M. here,” answered Stefan. “‘Dinner’ is a word used for guests—think of it as a very early breakfast if you’d like. There are usually guests who aren’t vampires. Bonarata uses it as a gathering for the seethe. There will be fresh blood for all the vampires and good food for everyone else.”
Elizaveta had paced around the room muttering to herself. She entered the first bedroom, and Larry moved to follow her.
“Leave her be,” said Stefan. “She’s checking for magic. Bonarata has a few witches in his employ, had a very good witch at one time, and, according to rumor, a fae half-blood. There are a lot of things a witch could do to us without breaking guesting laws. I don’t have to tell you to clean your hairbrushes and burn the stray hairs, do I?”
“Standard stuff,” grumbled Larry amiably. “Trimmed toenails get eaten, I know.”
Honey made a sound, and the goblin flashed a grin at her. “Of course, you can flush them if you’d like. I prefer to be certain. Witches are bitches and they’ll burn your britches sure as kittens have itches if you give ’em half a chance.”
Elizaveta was in one of the bedrooms. She might not have heard Larry. But Honey was standing right next to him.
“I’m a bitch,” said Honey in a smooth voice.
The goblin laughed. “That you are, dearie. Don’t take offense where none is meant.” He wasn’t dumb, thought Adam. This was about establishing boundaries. He was telling the room that he was sure enough of his ability to protect himself that he wasn’t afraid of offending anyone in the room.
Good to know. Adam was sure he’d appreciate the information at some other time. Just as he was sure that another time he’d have been pleased and impressed with the suite they’d been given.
“Just keeping things out in the open,” said Honey, but she wasn’t really paying attention to the goblin. She was watching Adam out of the corner of her eye.
The noise of their getting-to-know-you bickering rubbed like sandpaper on Adam’s skin. Adam was sure before this was over he’d be wishing for a hotel room by himself. Or with Mercy. He checked, like a man with a toothache, and their bond was still there. He wasn’t getting much from it. He knew it was because she was no longer here and that without more of the pack, he couldn’t reach her more clearly.
His control was fraying. His wolf . . . no, to be honest, it wasn’t just his wolf who wanted to rip out Bonarata’s throat. Having his pack back home was not making his wolf any more comfortable, any safer for the people around him.
Honey knew it. She wasn’t exactly avoiding him, but she was being very careful not to meet his eyes and to give him plenty of space. If he let this continue, he’d either kill Bonarata or Bonarata would kill him—and that’s what they had come here to prevent, right?
Part of him, the biggest part of him and not just the monster, wondered why he was standing in the vampire’s stronghold and not over the vampire’s dead body or out hunting down Mercy.
He abruptly turned to Marsilia, interrupting a quiet-voiced conversation she was having with Stefan about sleeping arrangements.
“Tell me that leaving Bonarata animate another hour is the right thing to do,” he said. “And make me believe it.” If he couldn’t figure it out, maybe someone else could. If not . . .
Adam didn’t know what was in his face, but Marsilia looked at him and stilled. But it was Stefan who answered him.
“Iacopo Bonarata is a monster,” Stefan said. “He does terrible things, then lies to himself about it because he doesn’t want to believe that he is any different from the Renaissance prince he once was.”
“I agree,” Marsilia said a little sadly. “He was never a hero like you were, Stefan—no matter what either of us tried to believe.”
Stefan didn’t look at her, just continued to speak. “Iacopo Bonarata is an addict who glories in his addiction because it brings him more power. He broke the werewolf he feeds upon so that no one will ever believe that the addiction he won’t admit to is a weakness or a problem to anyone except the poor damned wolf.”
Everyone, including Elizaveta, had stopped doing whatever they’d been doing to pay attention to Stefan.
“He is a monster,” said Stefan. “But he is good at it. Good at survival—and that makes him good for the rest of the monsters who have to live, seen or unseen, with the human population, who have grown a lot more deadly since they virtually wiped out the witch population in Europe.”
“It was a civil war among the witch families that did the most damage,” said Elizaveta. “But the Inquisition was thorough about sniffing out the remainders.”
Stefan nodded carefully in Elizaveta’s direction, giving her the point. Then he continued, “Bonarata is smart, savvy, and incredibly wealthy, and he uses it to ensure his own survival. But because he sees his survival as depending upon how the supernatural predators interact with humans, he is a very strong force for stability.”
Marsilia put her hand out and touched Stefan, who fell silent.
“Killing him,” Marsilia said, “will cause the death of thousands—not just vampires, but all of the people who will fall victim to their power plays.” She hesitated briefly. “Mercy doesn’t need you, Adam—she doesn’t need us—to rescue her or avenge her. She rescued herself. By doing so, she gave us the opportunity to build bridges, to keep all the monsters”—here she curtsied with an ironic lift of her brow—“behaving themselves.”
It was a good answer. Adam didn’t know that it would be enough of a good answer to keep him from going for Bonarata’s throat at the first opportunity. Mercy’s rescuing herself didn’t mean that Bonarata deserved to be excused for taking her in the first place. He remembered the blood and glass all over the SUV, all of Mercy’s blood staining the leather seat, the necklace he kept tucked safely in his pocket.
“He nearly killed my wife,” Adam said.
Stefan said, “But he failed.”
“Not good enough,” Adam said. “Not a good enough reason.”
There was a small silence, then Larry spoke.
“You aren’t used to dealing with bad guys who are this much more powerful than you are,” he said. “No offense meant. One-on-one, if you and Bonarata got into it, the betting would be pretty even. But Bonarata isn’t just an old vampire. He’s the head of a collective of vampires—just as your Marrok is the head of a collective of werewolves. And it is the collective that is most important to the choice you are making tonight.”
Adam looked at the goblin, and Larry dropped his eyes, without otherwise changing his body language. Larry wasn’t afraid of him. He was just doing his best not to cause a fight.
“Go on,” he said, because Larry seemed to be waiting for him to respond in some way.
The goblin nodded. “Bonarata has not named an heir for a very long time.”
“The ones he picked kept getting ambitions,” murmured Marsilia. “He got tired of killing his favorites. What he has now is a collection of lieutenants, powerful in their own ways, but not a second. He has no Darryl.”
Larry said, “So what happens to the collective when Bonarata dies is this. Every Master Vampire in Europe and a fair number of them back home think that they should step into Bonarata’s place. Most of ’em because of ambition, because vampires, present company excepted, I’m sure, are ambitions. But there will be some of them who are interested because they don’t want to be bowing and scraping to a vampire who might be stupider or more horrid than Bonarata.”
“You have a point?” Adam said.
“So how do you think that they will make their first bid to step under Bonarata’s empty crown, eh?”