Raven Cursed

CHAPTER FIVE Two Cups and You’re Done

They started again with the intros, which were each shorter by about half now that the two vamps had met a few times, but there was still a lot of chatter about Leo. The bloodsucker I worked for was arguably the second most powerful vamp in the U.S. I insulted him on a regular basis, which made me really stupid, or really lucky, or proved that I had something Leo wanted, a hypothesis that scared me silly when I let myself think about it.

Intros done, the men in parley were ready to toast their clans and lineage—the vamp version of a wine tasting. Two blood-servants stepped up beside the vamps, a gorgeous Asian woman named Anling, which meant Placid Jade in Mandarin, and an equally beautiful Korean man named Chin Ho, which meant Precious and Goodness. Each blood-master introduced his servant to the other; then Grégoire took Chin Ho’s hand, turned it palm up, and sniffed Shaddock’s blood-servant’s wrist. He dropped his fangs forward with a little snick of sound and bit in. As soon as he was latched on, Shaddock bit into Anling, Grégoire’s blood-servant. This part of the negotiations had been established early on, as the Carta left the location of the sampling up to the vamps in parley. Carotid, brachial, and femoral (ick), had been ruled out, as had sex with the servants while tasting. Vamps were pretty blasé about intercourse, and sex and dinner were often one and the same thing. Not something I wanted to be in the same room with. Double ick.

After a suitable amount of time—or maybe it was a volume thing, like two cups and you’re done. What did I know?—the men broke off, eased their fangs from their drinks, and started talking about the vintages.

“Anling tastes like moonlight and jasmine,” Shaddock said. Which sounded all kinds of funny with his country boy/mountain man accent. “Well aged and mellow as a good bourbon.”

“Your Chin Ho is reminiscent of hazelnut and fine wine,” Grégoire said. “A delightful offering. And young?”

“Only fifty years, but he’s agin’ well, or so I’m told.”

“Lovely boy,” the French vamp said. And he placed a kiss on the blood-servant’s wrist. The Korean vintage blushed and lowered his eyes.

It was way too much like foreplay for me, and I held in a grimace. Listening to it all made me wonder why no blood-meal ever tasted like bacon or shrimp or a really good beer. I managed not to laugh, which would have brought a fast response from Grégoire. Likely a painful one. To the vamps this stuff was deadly important. For me, it was comic relief, even though I’d made a study of the relevant parts of the Vampira Carta and its codicils for this job, and understood the penalties for vamp-misbehavior, which were not comic at all.

Since nothing important was on the docket until after dinner, I let my mind wander back over the kiss and conversation with Rick, careful not to react to the memory in any way. I wasn’t interested in becoming part of the tasting ceremony, and a physical response in any of the observers would have reached the noses of the vamps instantly in such close quarters. Noir Wine Room held space for only twenty or so, and the intimate accommodations meant we shared each other’s scent reactions.

Rick’s last words, before he disappeared, silent as a stalking cat into the long shadows haunted me. “But I’ll still want you, Jane.” He had meant it, totally and completely. But we both knew that we didn’t always get what we wanted in life.

Good mate, Beast thought sleepily at me. Big-cat. Big claws. Good killing teeth. She rolled over, her claws scraping across my mind. We could be black leopard, mate to Ricky Bo.

That statement pulled me out of my own thoughts and back to the enervating, mind-numbing boredom of the parley. The vamps were discussing the length of time Shaddock’s scions were chained while they cured, which was my smoked-meat term for the time it took newly turned vamps, who always rose insane, to remember their own minds. It took only five years for most of Shaddock’s scions to go through the curing process, a speed that had been well documented for sixty years. Most vamps, when bitten, spend ten years nutso—lost in what they call the devoveo, the insanity that comes to all freshly risen vamps—chained in their maker’s basement, before they recall who they had been and develop bloodlust control, allowing them into human society. Or into the feeding pool, as Grégoire phrased it. The speed with which Shaddock’s scions recovered had made him a master vamp at a young age. And now there was the two-year-wonder, the vamp who cured in two years. A record.

Beast flicked an ear tab, returning my attention to a subject she thought more important than the parley. We could go back to hot, flat, wet place, she thought, talking about New Orleans, and take Bruiser as mate. Slyly she added, And Leo. She sent a mental picture of the three of us in a big bed, the sheets ripped, slashed, and bloody. Beast’s idea of a good time. I exhaled—not quite a sigh. Beast was less interested in a long-term relationship than I was, and far more interested in taking the biggest predators as mates. Big-cats do not mate for life, she thought at me.

Yeah. So you told me. Humans do. Sometimes.

I/we are not human, she thought disdainfully.

She had me there. We weren’t human. And then I realized I had missed something. Maybe something vital. The vamps were gathering up their blood-servants and belongings as if to leave. My heart shuddered and Grégoire looked up fast. He had heard my heart-thump of anxiety. Crap! What did I miss? As Leo’s head of security it was my job to pay attention, not woolgather.

Was not chasing sheep, Beast thought, humor in her words. She sniffed and added, Vampire, who smells of man-spices and cooked meat, has asked pale vampire, who smells of flowers and fresh streams, to see the den where he keeps his chained scions.

Relief washed through me. Scion Lair. Got it. And, Crap! The field trips were planned for next week. Grégoire had been invited to pay a surprise visit to a location I had never been given the address or GPS coordinates for, and had not reconnoitered. Though Shaddock had been agreeable about a lot of info, he’d been reticent about sharing the coordinates of his Clan Home and scion lair until the night before the visit, which would have meant Monday night. I wasn’t happy at allowing the vamps to go to someplace I hadn’t scouted and set up a perimeter. Not that I had a choice.

Chen, Shaddock’s security chief, gave me a flat stare, showing me how ticked off he was. I narrowed my eyes at him and gave my head a tiny jerk, telling him I hadn’t known. Chen looked at his boss, puzzled, but this was Lincoln Shaddock’s idea, not Grégoire’s.

Shaddock bowed slightly from the waist, a curious gesture, vaguely antique military, and said, “My Mithrans are honored that you accept our invitation to visit our chained scions.”

I tapped my mike for the command channel that went directly to Derek. This was for his ears only. “Exit strategy alpha four,” I said, choosing one of several prearranged and practiced exit strategies. It was all probably overkill, but I was staking (pun intended) my reputation on this gig, and leaving nothing to chance. “Bring the cars around front. Increase personnel on the street and the drive.”

“Destination?” Derek asked.

“Unknown,” I said, moving to the door. I cracked it and looked out, seeing Derek motion his guys into position at the entrance. “Tuesday has come early,” which told Derek why I didn’t know where we were going. From a safety measures standpoint this unexpected trip was a huge problem. “I want both vamps in one car with the blood-servants, just as planned for Tuesday.”

Two other limos would leave at the same time heading in different directions to confuse any observers. Two SUVs would ride shotgun with each limo, one in front, one in back, and rendezvous with us once they shook any tail. Security 101. It was standard because it worked.

I was riding shotgun in the last car, staring out the back window, trying to discern any pattern that might indicate we were being followed, and got the directions, address, and GPS coordinates when the drivers did. It came up on my digital video screen the moment they plugged it into the system, and instantly flashed onto a county map. The location of Shaddock’s chained scions was halfway up a mountain at the end of a nothing road. Literally nothing. The coordinates identified no access roads for miles, which meant it was both easier and harder to defend. Oh goody. It was also Shaddock’s Clan Home, which was weird, as most vamps kept their uncured (as in cold meat) children in a separate location.

The security evaluation of the clan home was scheduled for later too, making this a twofer. Tension crawled up my shoulders on little spider feet. This was a dangerous proposition. The worst case scenario for protection detail was the unexpected.

The city fell away as we headed north on I-26 past the Pisgah National Forest and took 70 toward Hot Springs. The blackness of mountains rose up before us, secondary roads off to either side, careening up and down steep terrain. Mansion homesites and subdivisions dotted distant hillsides with security lights, bright in the dark. Mobile home and RV parks, barns, sheds, and abandoned houses replaced suburban life with rural as we traveled. No one followed us.

My directional sense said we were getting close when we slowed, and turned onto an unlit gravel road. A quarter mile in, trees had closed in on both sides and the shadows were dense. Even with my better-than-human night vision, one of the gifts of my Beast, I couldn’t see much out the tinted windows, not enough to pierce the darkness under the trees. We stopped, and I craned for a view. “Status?”

Derek said into his mike, “Barrier. Chain across the road. Two cameras at the gate, one static, one roving. Blood-servant guard. Another in a tree stand at four o’clock.” Derek’s low-light headgear units with infrared scopes had come in handy. Vamps showed on low-light as human, but showed cooler body temp on infrared, an easy way to ID the species. “Vamps on the ground in the trees at ten o’clock,” he said, “moving fast, maintaining a perimeter.” The direction of the vamps put them deeply into the wood, scrub, and steep hills, which meant Shaddock had a well-trained security detail, composed mostly of vamps instead of human blood-servants. Like a vamp army. “That make sense to you?” I asked.

“Not so much,” he said on the command channel. Which meant his spidey sense had been activated by so many unexpected blips. I tensed. We started forward again at a steady, slow crawl, and I watched the blood-servant lock the gate behind us. My Beast did not like to be caged in. She prowled within me, ears down flat, lips pulled back in a snarl, showing killing teeth.

The house at the end of the long drive was situated on a small bald knoll of solid granite. The house was tiny, a brick and stone dollhouse with arched windows, arched entry, four chimneys, peaked roofline with lots of sharp angles. Chen exited the limo and opened the heavy front door, punched a sequence into the security panel, squelching the squeal of the alarm.

Derek and Wrassler took over, going in for a fast reconnoiter. Derek held a compact, matte-black, semiautomatic selective-firing shoulder weapon—a submachine gun—in both hands, high on his chest. Wrassler stood at the door, not trying to hide his weapon, an ACR—Adaptive Combat Rifle—an adjustable, two-position gas-piston-driven system with an enhanced configuration, supported by a strap around his massive shoulders. He was wearing the night vision headgear and was watching out over the trees that circled the place. Boys and their toys. Out here in the boonies we didn’t have to worry about collateral damage.

I got out of the SUV and stood close to it, protected by the engine block, studying the trees at the edges of the property, the cool night air whispering. The moon was up, and the shadows under the trees were intensely dark. No hint of security lights anywhere up here; vamps’ night vision is way better than any human’s—it might be better than Beast’s. My shoulders ached and I realized I was holding them tightly. I forced them down into a neutral position; a relaxed posture wasn’t possible. Derek reappeared and waved us in. I went to the limo and opened the door. Grégoire followed Lincoln Shaddock and his blood-servant inside and I felt secure only when the door closed behind us with an airtight thump.

The inside of the Clan Home was far different from the outside, barely seeming to allow for the known laws of physics. Derek said, “On the entry floor we have an expanded foyer, library on left, guest suite on right, and a wet bar. Steps down. Checking the lower level now.”

“Wait here, please,” I said to the vamps and their blood-servants. The foyer held a black baby grand piano, which I stepped around, double-checking behind Derek, verifying his assessment and making sure nothing had changed since he did a sweep. Most of the entry level was a large deck overlooking the bottom floor. All the living space was on the lower level, with the ceiling opening up three stories overhead, and the public area of the living space laid out to view. It was also carved into the rock heart of the mountain.

The rear wall of the house was windowed, revealing an extraordinary panorama of a cleft in the hills, all faintly lit with dim lights. They showed a narrow stream, a waterfall, tall trees, and tumbled rocks the size of small cars. The view opened up and down, and it was spectacular. Shaddock had made the mountains his own, bringing them inside without damaging the environment or habitats. Too freaking cool. Not that I showed it. Through the windows, a lone owl was poised in the top of a dead tree, searching for dinner. “Niiiice,” one the security guys said softly into his mike. I moved through the foyer and down the stairs, my boots silent on the stone, one of the twin Walthers pointed down at my side, held in both hands. I didn’t remember drawing it. Derek preceded me, a weapon in each hand. I followed slowly. Vamps like hidey holes and they move faster than a human can see, hence the search—always paired up.

The living room was on the lower level, and open to the upper foyer. Shaddock had decorated in shades of char-coal, taupe, forest green, black, cloud-gray, and moss, colors likely taken from the daylight view outside, with lots of natural stone, bronze, and wood that was obviously all very old. I remembered from his file that Lincoln owned an architectural salvage business, buying buildings that had fallen into ruin, tearing them down by hand, treating, and reselling the wood. Here, old barn boards had been worked into the design of his clan home, even the floors, which were an appealing mix of oak, hickory, pine, and stone tiles.

Moving human slow, two vamps walked into the room together, Shaddock’s heir and spare, Dacy Mooney and Constantine Pickersgill. The two were crafty and dangerous. Dacy had been a Southern belle when alive, and after being turned, had been a U.S. spy in World Wars One and Two, under different names and different covers. Pickersgill had been the power behind six U.S. presidents. Both had lived in the world of humans without giving themselves away, which meant they were smart, coercive, and very cool under fire. They were dressed in casual clothes, not expecting us. And they each acknowledged me with a nod when my eyes flicked over them.

Shaddock’s bedroom was to the right of the living area—his personal sleeping space, not his lair. None of us would ever see that. I took in the understated room. A king-sized bed with luxurious linens, the headboard crafted from found articles: two narrow columns, a peaked door frame from a church, a rusted iron gate, and a carving of a swan, its long neck reaching back to ruffle its feathers, wings outspread. Things that didn’t go together except here. The floor was bare, finished wood. Shaddock, whom I had pegged as a hillbilly, had the soul of an artist.

A black leather recliner and a bronze antique swan-shaped lamp were the only other furniture. There was a huge walk-in closet and marble bathroom big enough to hold a party in. Back in the living room, I took two seconds to scan it. The floor was covered with a taupe, handmade silk rug of a black swan rising from gray water in a rush of froth in the sitting area. The back wall was the finished stone of the mountain. The side walls were faced with shelving, and one antique banker’s desk. Computers and laptops were on several surfaces, making the living room a work space and Shaddock a very unusual vamp. Most of them had trouble adapting to a world filled with modern electronics. Four couches, half a dozen chairs, a fireplace big enough to roast an ox or two made up a seating area. Bronze statues of wild animals, birds, a fox. Even an eight-foot-long taxidermied mountain lion, which Beast found interesting and wanted to study. Later, I thought at her.

On the other side of the living space was a barrackslike bedroom—if barracks had silk sheets and feather pillows; six bunks, made up in moss, celery, and serpentine green. It was the blood-servants’ sleeping quarters. Two utilitarian baths and a locker room, all neat and Spartan. Tucked away in the corners were small, elegant bedrooms, walls hung with tapestries and beds in silk. Windowless. Vamp guest rooms. I pushed aside tapestries to reveal rock walls. No way was sunlight getting in here. “Clear. Let ’em in,” I said into the mike.

Back in the main area, I looked up at the huge, three-story windows just as Grégoire reached the bottom of the stairs. He looked nonplussed, which must be a difficult emotion for a master vamp his age to experience. He waved a small hand at the wall of glass. “Sunlight?” he asked, sounding pained.

Shaddock lifted a remote device from a table and pressed a series of buttons. Instantly motors started to whine, followed by a muted clanking. As I watched, folding metal blinds began to close in from the side walls, covering the windows. One of the security guys cursed softly into the miked system. I couldn’t say I blamed him. Shaddock had built what looked from the driveway like a gnome’s house, tiny, old-fashioned, and impossible to secure. Instead it was a fortress. It took a little over thirty seconds for all the metal panels to close fully, and another fifteen for the automatic latches to seal. Over them, black insulated shades dropped—a final seal.

Grégoire smiled slightly and waved limp fingers in a circle. “Air? Water? Fire?”

“Got me an air duct cut into the rock. Fan works on solar batteries. A cistern with a thousand gallons of water,” Shaddock said. He pointed up. “Sprinkler system. Got stores enough to last the blood-servants for a year.” Chen stood to the side, expressionless, but conveying irritation in his stance. His boss was giving away trade secrets.

“Escape? Security system?” Grégoire asked.

“Got them too.” Shaddock didn’t volunteer the location of other protective measures. I frankly was surprised we got to see all that we did. Vamps were private creatures, and the fact that he let us see all this only meant he had a lot more security stuff hidden. Stuff he wouldn’t tell us about, and certainly wouldn’t show us.

“Your scions?” Grégoire asked.

Shaddock led the vamps into his bedroom where he pressed some more buttons; a shelving unit hummed, sliding behind another, revealing a narrow door, steel, banded with more steel. One-handed, he turned four levers, unlatching four manual locks, and opened the door. The smell of stone, cool cave air, vamps, and old blood filled the room. He stepped through. Before I could stop him, before the twins checked the room, Grégoire followed. I flew through the doorway after them and was brought up short, standing with two weapons drawn, feeling stupid. Especially when Chen raced in after me, his own weapon aimed at my head. I gave him a weak smile and holstered the Walthers. He frowned and reluctantly holstered his own.

The only scion-lair I had ever seen had been run by crazy psycho-vamps in New Orleans for their long-chained scions—uncured vamps who had never found sanity and who should have been destroyed centuries earlier. I had no preconceptions except modern fiction and scuttlebutt, which said that nutso young vamps were kept chained to the walls until they cured. Not so. These vamps were in steel-barred cells, maybe eight-by-eight feet. Bare mattresses on stone floors. The uncured-scions-to-be were naked. Vamped out. Rogue. My hackles rose. Cages. I fought down Beast’s growl. She hated cages, and rogues almost as much.

The caged vamps reacted to the sight of company in different ways. One attacked the bars of his cell, throwing himself against the iron, screaming incoherently. One laughed, a chilling, insane sound. One wept, curled on her mattress. Others, frenzied, reached toward the humans, eyes crazed, fangs deployed. Only one looked at me with reason in his eyes. He was wearing a shirt and pants. Shoes. His cell was larger than the others, containing a bed, desk, chair, table, and recliner. A flat screen TV was mounted across the bars and the desk was loaded down with books, a laptop, and various other electronic devices. I made a swift mental sketch: brown and brown, average height, slender, flat nose, as if broken, which was odd. I assumed he was a chained scion who had found himself and was ready to be released into the world. Until he met my eyes, held my gaze. And smiled. His small fangs flipped down and he ran his tongue over the sharp, inch-long tips, the gesture almost taunting. All righty then.

I could feel their hunger, ravenous, demented. It would have been kinder to just stake the pitiful things, but that wasn’t my job. The security arrangements were, which meant I needed to prepare a report on the safety measures of Shaddock’s Clan Home and his scion-lair. Crap. I hated reports. Not hiding my frown, not caring if I threw off anger pheromones, I took in the arrangement of the overhead lighting, each bulb protected by metal grates, the switch by the door, and moved through the room. Security cameras were in the four corners, the dynamic, mobile kind, operated by remote from a secure location. The bars were bolted into the rock floor, rock ceiling, and rock walls with no sign of rust or corrosion. I checked for adequate fire protection, drainage, and a safe manner to feed the caged. There was a large round drain in the sloping floor and sprinklers overhead. A hose to clean the vamps and their cages was curled on a hook. A stainless-steel sink big enough to swim in stood in one corner, and from it a stainless trough ran around the walls.

Shaddock said, “Blood-slaves—or the occasional pig if times get hard—can be bled at the sink, and the blood’ll drain around the room, feeding the vamps who slurp out of the trough.” He sounded proud and I smothered my anger. It was barbaric, not that the scions cared. They were too wacky to care. No one cared that they were kept like prisoners, either. They had signed all the legal documents giving the vamp master permission to control, keep, and care for them for as long as he chose, and then acceding permission to be put down like rabid dogs if they didn’t come out of the devoveo.

Actually, Shaddock had done a good job creating his lair. The Vampira Carta didn’t specify that rogue scions had to have mattresses or space. And all Leo cared was that they wouldn’t starve or get free. I had no choice but to be satisfied. I left the room, the two vamps still talking about the various nutritive techniques and systems of restraint for the chained ones. I was just angry. Deeply, silently angry. Chen watched me leave with flat, cold eyes.