I hadn’t missed the little bit of Italian that Pretty Vampire had thrown out. A lot of vampires had accents, especially the old ones. Vampires, like werewolves, had their origins in Europe. Among the vampires, being American was a confession of youth and weakness—so none of them was too eager to lose their accent.
I was starting to get a really bad feeling about these two vampires. Okay, being kidnapped had already given me a really bad feeling, but this was worse. If these guys were actually from Italy—recently from Italy—well, I knew of one Italian vampire that was really, really bad news. I wondered if Marsilia knew that there were strange vampires from her homeland trespassing in her territory. I was very much afraid that the answer was no.
It had become the job of the pack to investigate supernatural visitors, but I knew darn well that Marsilia kept herself apprised of everyone’s comings and goings, too. If she hadn’t notified the pack before the Italian vampires trashed Adam’s SUV (and me), she probably hadn’t known about them.
“You are the mate,” said Pretty Vampire again, pulling me away from my racing thoughts. “You aren’t a werewolf, as we had assumed. Werewolves bounce back from a little thing like a car wreck a lot faster than you did. Happily, our people on the street acted quickly when they realized you were dying, or we wouldn’t be having this pleasant conversation.”
“Happily,” I agreed blandly.
“So why does Wulfe think you are so powerful?” he asked, an edge in his voice.
I widened my eyes at him and did my best to look helpless. “I have no idea. I’m a VW mechanic,” I told him. And I showed him my hands as proof. I tried to wear gloves, when I thought about it, but dirty oil was ingrained into every crack and crevice, and my knuckles were scarred pretty good. “I’m the first one to admit that fixing old cars is a superpower, but it’s only important if you have a bus or bug you want to get fixed.”
He hit me. One moment he stood just inside the door of the walk-in freezer, six feet away from me. Then he moved so fast I hadn’t seen his hand move, just felt the effects on my jaw. It laid me out on my side.
I’m pretty sure I blacked out for a moment because I dropped right into an argument that seemed to have been going on for a while. I couldn’t tell what they were arguing about because they did it in Italian.
I half opened my eyes to watch their body language and was pleased to find I was right. No matter how dominant Pretty Vampire was, it was Thug Vampire who was running the show. Radiating nothing in the presence of power is a sign of even more power. Thug Vampire pushed Pretty Vampire all the way out of the room without touching him. Pretty Vampire bowed and kowtowed apologetically as he backed up.
Thug Vampire returned alone and knelt beside me. His hand was warmer than the metal floor as he slid it under my shoulder and up against my face. He lifted me off the floor, my face carefully cradled against the front of his shirt.
I could have done without his picking me up. Vampires are evil. They are scary, and I don’t like being carried around by them when I’m half-conscious. I sucked in air and tried really hard to stay conscious when dizziness threatened to make me totally helpless. Again.
He walked toward the door, then paused.
“Almost,” he murmured, “I would take you out where you could be made comfortable. But you and I should negotiate before your so-famously-volatile mate figures out where you are, eh?”
He called out something in Italian, and there was the sound of scurrying, then two unfamiliar vampires carried a Victorian-style sofa, complete with purple velvet upholstery, into the room. They looked like normal people—but I could smell what they were.
He must have had them waiting. He’d had no more intention of taking me out of the cell than he had of running naked into the dawn to be turned to ash. He’d pretended he was going to take me outside, that outside would reduce his ability to negotiate with me. Why? Vampires think sideways. Old vampires think upside down with a widdershins spin.
“That is better,” he said, setting me down on the sofa in a sitting position. He held out his hand, and one of the furniture-carrying vampires gave him an emergency cold pack, the chemical kind. He shook it, then put it into my hand and indicated that I should hold it against my cheek.
“Guccio forgot that you are not a trespasser or miscreant we are interrogating,” he told me. “He doesn’t have much experience with politics, so perhaps I expected too much from him. Who are you, Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman, and why did Wulfe tell me that you were the power we should contact to begin negotiations in the TriCities?”
“Contact,” I said, holding the bag to my face, still trying desperately not to pass out. My ears were ringing, and my vision was spotty, so I was proud of the steadiness of my voice. “Contact. Hmm. Full-body contact makes for an interesting negotiating technique. Diplomatic, even, like the discussions that the CIA’s well-known negotiation and waterboarding team conducts.” My voice was steady, but I was babbling. I shut up as soon as I noticed.
“My apologies,” he said sincerely, without meaning the words in the least. “As Guccio told you, misled by Wulfe’s information, we did not expect you to be so fragile.”
It was still my head that hurt the most, but my jaw was now a close second. The whole slap thing and argument had been for show, I decided. If Pretty Vampire—Guccio—had been as out of control as they were pretending, I’d have had a broken neck or, at the very least, jaw. So what . . .
Horrified, I realized that they were playing good vampire/bad vampire. Bad Vampire had been sent away, and I was supposed to feel like Good Vampire was my friend. Just how dumb did they think I was?
Good Vampire, formerly known as Thug Vampire, made a soft, sympathetic sound and sat down next to me, his body turned toward mine in an intimate, sheltering way. “It looks like it hurts, poor piccola. That’s all you needed, one more bruise.”
I straightened, scooted away from him, and dealt with the resulting dizziness. I needed to be sharp, and I was anything but.
Vampires weren’t fae, who always had to tell the truth. I could tell when a human was telling a lie—but, in general, the older the creature, the better liar they were. If he wanted to negotiate with my pack, any kind of negotiate, kidnapping me had been the wrong move. If he was who I thought he was, doing it wrong was highly unlikely. So maybe negotiation wasn’t what he was after.
Wulfe had told them I was powerful. Wulfe knew them better than I. So why would Wulfe have picked me out?
And all the while I tried to figure out the vampires, some part of me was frantically beating at the silence in my head where the pack should have been. Where Adam was supposed to be.
“Piccola,” said Good Vampire, his voice soft and chiding. Apparently he thought that I should have leaned against him and let him take care of me instead.
Why had Wulfe told him I was the most powerful person in the TriCities? Vampires lied all the time—but Wulfe was more like the fae. It amused him to always tell the truth and make people believe it was a lie until it was too late.
Most powerful person in the TriCities . . . hmm. Well, maybe so, if your perspective was skewed enough—and “skewed” was a good word for Wulfe. I decided it was also the kind of power that would keep me alive for a while longer and so should be shared with Good Vampire. Staying alive was the first task of any hostage.
“I am Adam Hauptman’s mate,” I told the vampire. I didn’t meet his eyes. My coyote shapeshifting was accompanied by an unpredictable resistance to some kinds of magic. Vampire magic especially had a hard time with me—but it wasn’t anything as reliable or useful as immunity.
Good Vampire made an encouraging noise, but said, “We know that.”