Labyrinth

THIRTY

I wasn’t dressed for the place, but the doorman at the After Dark let me in anyhow. I suppose being alive in a vampire club is all the cachet you really need to get in. Staying that way may be trickier. But they know me, which is my real ace in the hole.

It was still early for the bloodsucking fraternity and there weren’t very many customers in the place yet. A lot of the early birds were demi-vampires, donors, and subordinate turns waiting for whoever pulled their strings or strung them out. The room was always cold, but now the chill was my sense of the Grey clinging to me like a wet coat. The white marble floors seemed almost reflective in their brightness, and once the room was full, the red-and-black clouds of vampiric auras would give it a stygian cast. I spotted two asetem near the back door, their uncanny glowing eyes free of the usual contact lenses and gleaming orange like hot coals. I imagined the news of my presence would be in Wygan’s ears in minutes. The broadcast station had plenty of phone lines, even if there wasn’t a more arcane method of communication between the Pharaohn and his children that I didn’t know about.

I sat down at what was usually Edward’s table, making a small stir in the thin crowd. I put my sunglasses back on and waited, schooling myself to be still, not to fidget with my bag or look for something to do. It wasn’t too hard: With my shades on, I could close my eyes against the battering light and sound and let the noise of the grid, humming and babbling with every change in the room, be my alarm system. The one positive angle I could see to the increasing apathy I felt as the grid tried to bind me to itself was that I didn’t yet feel any anxiety about this situation. And that made me less interesting to the watching asetem as well.

The crowd was denser half an hour later when Gwen arrived. She slid next to me, as light on the strings of the grid as the stroke of a feather, but I still felt her presence like a cold finger drawn up my spine. “You look ruthless,” she whispered.

“Ruthless?” I asked, opening my eyes and glancing at her.

She was as pale and ineffective-looking as ever, but her eyes gleamed and she gave a tiny, hungry smile. “Yes. Dangerous with an air of power held in check.”

“Hm,” I muttered. The strange change in my perception of the Grey seemed to have an outward expression as well, and that intrigued me a little. Or maybe it was just that the brightness and the noise made me scowl.

I could feel tremors and flutters in the Grey. It was like being a spider in her web the way every disturbance traveled to me. The impression of Cameron’s arrival rippled through the room just a moment ahead of his presence with a gust of Grey whispers. I wondered if psychics felt something like this. It was interesting, but overall, I didn’t care for it. The asetem in the opposite corner were a different matter. They thrived on strong emotional emanations, so they must have been having a delicious time with the hors d’oeuvres of anticipation radiating from most of the people in the room.

There was a palpable wave of anxiety and excitement that rang discordant wind chimes on the grid when Cameron and Sarah walked in. A sussuration of speculation raced and spread like flame, leaping high when Cam paused by the table, looking it over before he chose to sit down in what was usually Edward’s chair.

My phone vibrated in my pocket and made me twitch—I hoped the vampires would take it as a sign that I was as surprised as they about Cameron’s move. Without looking, I squeezed the silence button and sent the call to voice mail. I hoped it was Quinton, but this was not the time to be checking my phone.

Two of Edward’s usual hangers-on sidled close, plainly hoping to talk to Cam about what he was doing and looking askance at Sarah, who had taken the seat on his other side, putting him between her and Gwen. I, the foreign creature with the scary aura, sat at the free end of the group, where I could move at any time. The setting projected “Prince in his court” with the subtlety of a brick through a window.

Cameron gave the two curious vampires a bland “Yes?” that served as opening enough for them to sit down and start whispering at him. The sound grated on my ears, distorted by the noise of the grid into sharp squawks. Cam looked bored and a little annoyed by the two supplicants, but he leaned forward and listened. I wondered if they’d been put up to the scene or if it was just a natural extension of the usual jockeying for position. I let my attention float out into the room on the power lines of the grid, wide enough to thin the noise in my head, but it only helped a little as everyone was focused back toward Cameron’s entourage.

The other vampires and kin in the room stirred and muttered. Some left or moved to new tables, breaking and forming alliances as I watched; most stayed as they were, acting as if nothing going on in the room was important to them. A few sent Cameron glares of open hostility. Cam ignored it all and went on with his conversation.

The place was full and the murmurs and adjustments were dying down when Carlos entered and blew the latent emotions in the room into brilliant flame that roared through the blazing grid. He stopped a single pace inside and studied the scene. A slow boil of black fury rolled off him and he strode toward our table. He did not seem to look at anyone other than Cameron, but I knew he was aware of us all, from the asetem looking avid and excited in the corner to me, playing stone-faced in my personal madhouse while Gwen cringed beside me.

Carlos stopped at the edge of the table and glared at the two whispering vampires next to Sarah. They scuttled away without another word, leaving an insectile chittering on the threads of the Grey.

Cameron looked up, his expression one of pleasant surprise and confusion with a touch of fear that I didn’t think was entirely feigned. He stood up, smiling. “Carlos!” Then he bridled and winced as Carlos redirected his glower to him.

Carlos’s voice was not loud, but it rumbled through the Grey and set waves crashing into one another. “Presumptuous whelp. Do you think you’re Edward’s equal because you are my student?”

Cameron shook his head. Tiny flashes of white and gold exploded in the energy nimbus around him. “No. Of course not. But there’s a void without him and it needs to be filled. I seem to be the only person willing to step in temporarily rather than try to grab it all for myself.”

“Are you? And what if he never comes back? Will you step aside for someone else?”

“I would if it were you. It ought to be you as—”

Carlos hit him, the movement visible only as a black blur. Cam went backward into the wall hard enough to dent it as Sarah tumbled to the floor in the oversweep of Carlos’s strike. Gwen and I both flew to our feet—as did many of the audience—in an instant. Gwen made a slight whimpering noise that echoed in my head as she backed up.

I held my ground, not knowing how this was meant to play out once I’d said my piece but sticking to the short script I had. Cameron’s note had not told me exactly what to expect—there hadn’t been time and, had we done otherwise, the asetem would taste the falseness of our fear and anger. It was all the most desperate kind of improvisation. I hoped. “Carlos, this isn’t necessary. Maintaining peace in this community—” I started.

He whipped his head around to glare at me and his expression was almost a blow. “This is none of your affair, daylighter!” he roared. Even holding fast to the knowledge that it was only an act, I had to clench my jaw and shut my eyes against the buffeting pressure of his voice.

He turned his attention back to Cameron, who’d pushed himself forward off the wall, using his momentum to drive a flat-palmed strike into his mentor’s face. Gleams of gold and silver energy rushed ahead of the movement; Cameron was putting more than his physical strength into hitting Carlos. He’d been only twenty-one when Edward turned him, and his slender frame offered insufficient muscle against the bulkier, older vampire, even with the paranormal advantages of the undead.

Apparently taken by surprise, Carlos was flung backward about two feet and came to a hard stop against another table, knocking it sideways with a crash. “Oh, very nicely done, schoolboy,” he spat, regaining his balance and running his fingers down the crooked length of his broken nose. The cartilage crackled and popped as he moved it back into place.

Cameron’s punk-short hair hadn’t been mussed, but fury disarranged his features into an unrecognizable mask. “No one touches my people,” he hissed back.

“Ah, ‘your people,’ ” Carlos repeated in a sardonic tone. “So it comes out. You are usurping the position of your patron.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you’d do it yourself! You’re the most powerful of us all. You could hold this city in the palm of your hand in your spare time!”

Carlos moved closer, his chin down so his black stare bored out from the shadow beneath his brow. His aura flushed a vibrant red among the death black, and the sound in the grid became a banshee wail. “I am bound to Edward. He commands my fealty so long as he is on this earth.”

“How is it disloyal to preserve what is his until he can reclaim it? How is that against your oath?” Cameron shot back. He made no allusion to the real reason for the uneasy centuries of detente; neither Carlos nor Edward had ever wanted to expose that twisted betrayal.

Carlos raised his head in a rush and looked down his nose at the younger vampire. Cold seemed to roll off him, damping everything in a sudden pall. “The depth of your ignorance astounds me. I wash my hands of you. And I’ll leave you to the mercy of ‘your people.’ ” He turned away.

Cameron was not going to let it go. He reached out and yanked the bigger man back around. “You’re a coward and you call it loyalty. You’ll challenge me and lecture me, but you won’t stop me.” Cameron, less than a full step away, spit in the other vampire’s face.

Rage ignited around Carlos, flushing the Grey a glittering scarlet that chimed and shrieked all the louder. His voice ground out between his teeth, ice-cold and implacable. “I will stop you, treacherous brat. I’ll show you what it is to be obedient, to bow your head and bend your knee while you seethe with hate. Bound by the flesh of your flesh and the blood of your creation, you will know what torment is.” He snatched Sarah to his chest and stepped back in one impossibly quick motion.

Cameron froze. The necromancer held a small, glittering knife to the young woman’s throat, flicking it against the edge of her vein as she trembled, wide-eyed, in his grip.

Gwen cried out as blood flowed from between Carlos’s fingers, “No! Sarah!”

Carlos muttered in quick liquid syllables as the blood hit the floor and rang on the Grey like a giant bronze bell. Sarah rolled up her eyes and went limp as the vibration rippled through the room. I knew she was acting, but even I thought it looked real. Carlos let her fall, his right hand coming away from her neck smeared red. He drew on the air with her blood, whispering quickly and making a hard gesture that flicked the precious fluid toward her brother’s face.

Cameron snatched the blood from the air between them and leapt forward, pressing his bloody hand over Carlos’s face and taking up the weird language of the false spell in a rapid shout. The last word dulled the sound in the room as if someone had closed a sealed door and sucked out the air. It was impressive, even though the weight of it in the Grey was next to nothing. Only the breathless, sinking feeling was real: The rest was magical sham and fireworks, and I was one of only three people in the room who could tell the difference. Even the asetem would only feel the ripple. Carlos flinched as if Cameron had struck him much harder but kept to his feet.

Gwen scrambled over the table to scoop Sarah off the floor as Cameron knelt down beside her. He stroked his bloody hand over the dripping wound on her neck. Then he turned his head away. “Gwen, you do it. I—I can’t. She’s my sister.”

Gwen seemed to coil around her, hiding what she did as she bent her head down over the young woman’s neck.

The Grey sounded hollow, waiting, whining like a clockwork thing wound too tight.

Carlos had not moved except to close his eyes. The fallen set of his shoulders and the darkness around him looked like despair. The bloody handprint on his face faded as if his skin drank it in.

Cameron stood up and looked at him, his face full of pity and sorrow more than anger. “Did you think I didn’t learn anything from you? You taught me that blood binding. You taught me how to break it and how to avoid it as well. Now you’re bound to me, by your own words. And by that blood I was born with. And since she’s not dead, you’re also bound to Sarah. I know you know all this, but I’m saying it so all of our kind here know it, too. You’re mine.” Actually, most vampires wouldn’t know a binding until it bit them. But the show wasn’t for them: It was for the Pharaohn’s spies. Cam glanced side to side as if a little nervous about what he was doing. “I think it might be wise for you to kneel.”

Carlos opened his eyes, his face devoid of expression. He spoke without emotion or force, in the same sort of floating emptiness I had experienced the night before. “I will not.”

The strange golden sparks welled again in the palms of Cameron’s hands as he brought them up, open, to chest height. “Don’t make me force you, sensei.”

It was a strange word to choose, freighted with respect and tradition, and it reminded me that Cameron had been studying Japanese when he was still an ordinary college student. An age of knowledge had passed since then, and though he didn’t look much different, here was ample evidence that everything had changed. He leaned closer, resting his clean hand on Carlos’s shoulder, and whispered something into the bigger man’s ear. Then he took a step back.

He didn’t quite let his hands relax, keeping them poised just a bit in front of his body, but he didn’t do anything. He just waited, his brow shadowed with anxiety.

Nothing stirred. A roomful of creatures who don’t breathe make an unsettling silence.

Sarah let out a quiet little moan. The sound seemed to break Carlos, and he sank onto his knees, letting his head fall forward. He shuddered as he settled all the way to the floor, putting out his open hands, palm up, on his thighs. The bloodstained penknife clattered onto the marble tiles, spinning a scarlet smear. “I submit.”

The high-tension whine of the grid wound down, and the harsh carmine of the Grey drained back to a few splashes of uncomfortably bright color in the glaring silver mist of the world. Cameron relaxed and an ordinary shuffling and rustling of impatient bodies warmed the silence.

“Will you support me and defend me, aid me and advise me, with your best will?” Cameron asked. It had the feeling of something formal and old that had been translated poorly.

Carlos raised his head, looking at Cameron a little sideways with a sarcastic expression. “Yes, damn it all. Can we get this over with? I am your man, your sworn supporter, by blood bound. Is that good enough?”

Cameron blinked. “Um . . . yeah. I guess that’ll do.”

“May I stand up, now . . . my lord?” The snark was thick enough to gag on. “And if you tell me to ‘rise,’ ” he added in an undertone, “I may have to ‘advise’ you to do otherwise in future.”

Cameron rolled his eyes. “Oh, jeez, just get up.”

A ripple of amusement spread through the room and gave cover to my relieved sigh. I’d had no idea if this sketchy plan would work, but even if they didn’t buy it completely, none of the vampires could argue that Carlos hadn’t sworn to support Cameron. That alone would give anyone other than the Pharaohn pause, and Cameron’s loyalty and reasonable treatment of his teacher would give them hope for the same themselves. Benevolent dictators are much harder to depose.

I remembered the rest of the evening’s responsibilities and hoped Carlos and I would be able to leave soon. I needed to talk to him before anyone else made any moves and let him know we were far from done tonight. And I hoped that away from the bloody rage of vampires, I might be able to think without so much noise in my head for just a few minutes.

Once Carlos was back on his feet, the patrons of the After Dark seemed to know the show was over and drifted back to their tables and conversations, speculating, no doubt, on what Cameron would do first as Prince of the City. Only the asetem acted disinterested. Gwen and Sarah had retired back to one end of the table, bent toward each other like parentheses. I frowned as I glanced at Cameron, but he was busy with a sudden press of admirers and sycophants.

I looked for Carlos—no one would think it odd that I did, since I was there as a neutral party and I could talk to whomever I pleased—and spotted him near the door. Just one more scene to play. . . . I twisted my way through the moving kaleidoscope of bright colors and cold bodies to catch up to him before he went outside. Once out of the club, there was nothing to stop the asetem from closing in.

I met him at the entrance. He gave me a chilly glance with one lifted eyebrow. We hadn’t discussed this bit of business, but he was even more the experienced performer than I was and I was sure he’d pick up my cue and play along. I made only a small twitch of my head toward the door before I spoke, but I knew he caught it.

“I wouldn’t have expected that of you,” I said, not modulating my voice down. I wanted to be heard, after all.

“Obeisance?”

“Betrayal.”

He narrowed his eyes but made no other reply.

“Everyone knows you hate Edward and you took Cameron only because you couldn’t refuse—”

“A situation you engineered.”

“For Cameron’s sake. Not Edward’s. But he’s been a loyal student. He’s been your friend—if that’s possible. And you were going to kill his sister and bind him to you so you could . . . what, watch him twist in the wind while you abandoned him? That’s not any better than what Edward—”

He clamped his hand onto my bicep and jerked me close. “Enough, Greywalker!”

“No,” I protested, “it’s not enough.”

He growled and pulled me into the cold of the foyer, letting the black doors slam shut behind us. Sounds came down from the street in ice-blue trickles and leaked thinly from under the door like water. The area was built like a well, all white marble with a curving, iron-railed staircase going up the circular shaft to a gate on the street. It wasn’t an ideal place to talk, but it would do for a moment.

Carlos let go of me at once and kept his voice low. “An unpleasant evening’s work.”

“Yes, but now the little kingdom is secure and you’re Cameron’s sworn right-hand man.”

“So much mumbo jumbo. None of those would know the difference. There is no binding. Only my word.”

“Which is as good as, I recall.”

“Yes.”

“You won’t betray him, not after what Edward did to you.”

He nodded, his mouth pulling down in distaste.

“What about the magic? What about Sarah?”

“Special effects.” He spread his fingers and I could see white cuts and lines in his flesh between the index and middle fingers of his right hand, knitting up as I watched. “One learns a lot of tricks in such a long lifetime. She’s in no danger. I took care to feed well on waking.”

“I hope it’ll last: We’re not done.”

The interrogative eyebrow rose again.

“The labyrinth portals expire tonight and after that, there’s no back door.”

“We don’t need it. Only the right knife and you. The Lâmina I have with me. And you . . .” He peered at me in the darkness that was bright as Broadway to me. He pulled his head back and frowned. “Already?”

“If I were any more in touch with the grid, I’d disappear into it.”

“Exactly.”

“Do you think he knows?”

Carlos snorted. “No doubt he’s known for hours. We shall have to let them take us.”

I disliked the sound of that, but it was the same conclusion I’d come to myself since I didn’t know where Wygan would do his dirty work.

“Are you ready?”

I shook my head. “I . . . need to make a phone call first.”

He laughed at that, but he let me walk a few feet away and do it. I noticed the earlier missed call was from the phone in Edward’s bunker. It must have been Quinton and that pleased me at the same time it made me sad. I’d only have time to tell him the bare bones of the situation before I’d have to go, and my chances of coming back weren’t good. I called anyway.

Quinton answered at once. “Harper?”

“Yeah.”

I could hear his sigh through the phone, and it slid over me, soft and warm. “I was with the police and the FBI all day—”

A finger of concern touched me. “The feds didn’t suss you—?” I started.

“No, no,” he reassured me. “But things didn’t move as fast as we’d hoped. I was worried. . . .”

“It’s almost over. We’ve settled some things and now . . . it’s just up to the bad guy to come get us.”

The door opened from the club and the two asetem stepped out. They stared at us with baleful, glowing eyes.

“Ah, the escort is here,” I said.

“Is it Goodall?”

“No,” I answered. “Why?”

The asetem were walking toward us, trying to herd us up the stairs without actually touching us and causing a scene. Carlos glowered at them but let himself be moved, though he kept them away from me so I could finish my phone call. It was what we wanted after all, but we couldn’t make it look too easy.

“Goodall is bad news. Ex-military, ex–black ops. The Feds wouldn’t even say which group, but they got quiet and worried when we showed them the recording.”

“But we knew he was that sort of trouble. He won’t hurt us. He’s on Wygan’s leash.”

The asetem hissed at me, and one of them darted in my direction, forcing me toward the stairs a few steps. I could see the shape of someone at the top. . . .

“Stay away from Goodall! He doesn’t want to capture you; he wants to kill you! And I mean in a not-getting-back-up-this-time way. The bullet hole in the Danzigers’ doorway was at head height. Head height, do you understand? He had all the time in the world to take the shot; it’s not a mistake. If he’d just wanted to knock you down and drag you to Wygan, he’d have chosen to shoot you anywhere else, but he was aiming to blow your head off. That’s what took out your father. That would kill you, too. He is not playing by Wygan’s rules: He means to take you out permanently!”

The light was odd, but it illuminated the waiting figure better as we rounded the first few steps.

“Ah,” I said and closed the phone, slipping it back into my pocket.

That was Goodall at the top of the stairs.