“Because he’s traumatized,” Jules said, watching Twitchy for a moment to see if he’d stay put. He did. Jules went over to the cabinet with the bronco, which swung outward to show a hidden bar. “There’s a reason they usually separate babies for a while, even from other family members. You know, bunk them with a mentor to see that they don’t walk out into the sun or something, and give them a chance to adjust.”
I nodded. Tony had had a special room he called the nursery, set up behind one of his businesses. Any new vamps he made stayed there for at least the first six months, and sometimes longer depending on how well they were taking it. Because it could be pretty shocking: hearing the family talking in your head all day, the whole bloodlust thing, the new senses . . . Most of the time, babies were considered to be doing pretty well if they didn’t lose their minds and run amok.
You know, too often.
Although I’d never seen one quite this bad.
“Traumatized by what, exactly?”
Jules handed me a glass and then sat on the edge of the cabinet with his own. He didn’t offer the vamp any. It would have been a waste of good whiskey; at that age, everything just tasted gray.
“Like I was saying, he came into contact with someone with power, right?”
I nodded. “Mircea.”
“Hoo boy. Yeah, that would do it.”
“Do what?”
“That,” Jules said dryly, pointing his glass at the vamp. “Let me guess. New guy here was bugging the shit out of Mircea, who told him to be quiet, right?”
“More or less. How did you—”
“Had it happen to me once, as a newbie. Always liked to talk too much. And there was this guy—Roberto. You met him?”
“No.”
“You haven’t missed anything. He loves to torment the new arrivals, or he did. Mircea lent him out to another master a few years ago, and we’re all hoping it’s permanent. Anyway, someone told him my last name was Fortescue, and he thought that was funny as hell. Told me to ‘keep a stiff upper lip, old chap,’ laughing the whole time. I didn’t know why. Till I realized: I couldn’t move the damn thing at all.”
“Move what?”
“My lip. Spent two days sounding like I had a serious speech impediment until someone figured it out and countermanded the order.”
“But it wasn’t an order. It was a figure of speech—”
“Not with power behind it,” Jules said sourly. “He meant for that to happen. Like I said: dick. Mircea, on the other hand, sometimes just forgets how powerful he is. He spends too much time around upper-level types, where he doesn’t have to watch it. He’d probably apologize if he realized, but he’s kind of stressed right now, so I hate to bother—”
“Kind of stressed?” I felt my own blood pressure start to rise. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Jules blinked at me. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously!”
“Well, let’s see. You almost died this morning. Then you disappear all day and nobody knows where you went. The consul’s own home was attacked, and half of it’s in ruins, which is making it hell for me trying to find space for all the newbies, by the way. The rooms that are intact have mostly been claimed by senators and their retinues. I’ve managed to pawn some of them off on Louis-Cesare—new senate member, has a house near here—but it’s still in progress and—”
“Jules.”
“Oh, right. Well, on top of all that, Dante’s is trashed, and currently closed for business, the consul’s in a mood, and Mircea’s just been named Enforcer—”
“Enforcer?” I frowned.
“The senate positon. You know?”
I shook my head. I knew that the senate had been devastated by a series of attacks early in the war—like before anybody knew we were in one. And what with everything happening fast and furious ever since, they’d only just gotten around to filling the vacant seats. I’d even heard that some shuffling of roles was taking place, since the newcomers didn’t always slot cleanly into the old positions.
But Enforcer?
“Why Mircea?” I asked. “The Enforcer acts like a beat cop, dragging back misbehaving masters. Sure, he could do that, but what a waste—”
“It’s not a waste.”
“How? He’s a senior diplomat—the senior diplomat. How is that not—”
“The Enforcer also has another role in wartime,” Jules told me gently. “You probably haven’t heard about it, since it’s been centuries since anybody used it.”
“What other role?” I asked, confused.
“General.”
Chapter Thirty-three
We were on the move again, at my insistence. The mute vamp seemed pleased, however, despite carrying me, since I probably weighed the same as a feather to him. And since he’d finally figured out that we really weren’t going to ask him questions he couldn’t answer, or send him back to work, where he’d probably have someone else do the same thing.
That would be bad, since it would directly contradict his former instructions to accommodate guests in any reasonable way. And clashing orders apparently did bad things to baby vamps’ minds. So we needed to get the mute command rescinded ASAP.
But that wasn’t the only reason we were headed to the basement.
“That’s all I know,” Jules said, keeping pace with the vamp’s long strides. “Mircea’s been named Enforcer, not just of our senate, but of the combined forces of all six senates.”
“What?”
“I know.” He nodded. “I never thought I’d live to see the day that the senates do anything but claw at each other. But now that they have, it makes sense that they’d need a ruling body to govern the actions they do as a group. He won’t have anything to do with the Enforcer’s role in, say, India. That’ll be up to the South Asian Senate, since it just involves their turf. But if the combined forces are doing something, then it’s his baby.”
“Then they’re arguing about who’s going to be . . . on the senates’ senate?”
He nodded, and dodged a guy in a flowing djellaba, surrounded by half a dozen flunkies. “That’s the rumor. Our consul’s the leader. That’s already been decided, but the rest of the roles . . . Well, from what I hear, the conversation’s getting pretty heated. But Mircea was an obvious choice, with his war experience—”
“His war experience is five hundred years out-of-date!” I snapped because I didn’t like this. I didn’t like this at all. Human generals, okay, they sat in nice, air-conditioned command centers, well out of the fighting. But vampires . . .
Why did I think that wouldn’t apply to vampires?
Maybe because it wasn’t that way when they fought—at any level. Even those who would be consul had to fight for the job, defeating whoever already had it. Or, if he was dead, competing with all the others who wanted to try for it. The whole culture was built around personal power. Leading from the rear just wasn’t a thing.
Which meant that vamp general might just be the most dangerous job on the planet.
“He’s led vamp forces, too,” Jules said. “Didn’t you know?”
“No.”
“It happened a couple of times. Not everybody was thrilled when the current consul came to power, back in the fourteen hundreds, and there were rebellions off and on for a couple centuries. The big ones were dealt with pretty quick, but the smaller ones were harder to stomp out, or even to find. Groups kept getting together, and holing up in the mountains—including some in the master’s old stomping grounds.”