Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1)

Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1) Page 10

I don't know where I expected the vampires to live. I suppose I'd been influenced by all those late night flicks and imagined a large Victorian mansion in a disreputable part of town. There are a few along the downtown area in Kennewick, most of them polished and painted like old opera stars. And, while there are a few run-down neighborhoods around, they tend to be populated with houses too small to house even a small seethe.

It shouldn't have surprised me to be driving along a street with Mercedes, Porsches, and BMWs in every elegant cobbled driveway. The road had been cut into the side of a hill that overlooked the town, and for thirty years, doctors, lawyers, and CEOs had been building their four-thousand-square-foot homes on the steeply sloped lots. But, as Stefan told us, the vampires had been there first.

At the end of the main street, a smaller gravel road broke off and cut between a pair of two-story brick edifices. It looked almost like it might be a driveway, but continued past the houses and into the undeveloped area behind them.

We drove through about a quarter mile of the usual eastern Washington scrub-cheat grass, sagebrush, and tackweed mostly-and then up over a small ridge that was just large enough to hide a two-story, sprawling hacienda surrounded by an eight-foot wall. As the road came down the hill our view of the house was limited to what we could see through the double, wrought-iron gates. I thought the sweeping Spanish arches that graced the sides of the building did a wonderful job of disguising the scarcity of windows.

At Stefan's direction, I parked just outside the walls, where the ground had been leveled. The vampire jumped out and was around to open my door before Samuel got out of the van.

"Should I leave this?" I asked Stefan, holding up Zee's dagger. On the way, I'd decided that since it was too big to be hidden without fae glamour-which I don't have-it might be a good thing not to take it in at all.

Stefan shrugged, his hands patting lightly on his thighs as if he heard music I didn't. It was a habitual thing with him; he was seldom absolutely still.

"Carrying an artifact this old could make them respect you more," said Samuel, who'd come around the van. "Wear it."

"I was worried about setting the wrong tone," I explained.

"I don't expect things to get violent tonight," said Stefan. "The dagger is not going to start anything." He grinned at me. "It is illegal in this state, though. You'll have to remember to take it off when you leave."

So I wrapped the leather belt around my hips a few times. There was a handmade buckle without a pin on one end, and I wove the other end of the belt through and tied it off.

"It's too loose," said Stefan, reaching for it-but Samuel got there first.

"Tighten it around your waist," he said, adjusting it for me. "Then pull it over your hips so the weight of the blade doesn't slide the whole thing down around your ankles."

When he was satisfied, he stepped away.

"I'm not the enemy," Stefan told him mildly.

"We know that," I said.

Stefan patted my shoulder, but continued, "I am not your enemy, Wolf. I've risked more than you know by taking both of you under my protection. The Mistress wanted to send others for you-and I don't think you'd have enjoyed that."

"Why take the risk?" Samuel asked. "Why take us under your protection? I know something of what that means. You don't know me-and Mercy is just your mechanic."

Stefan laughed, his hand still on my shoulder. "Mercy is my friend, Dr. Cornick. My mother taught me to take care of my friends, didn't yours?"

He was lying. I don't know how I was so certain of it, but I was.

Some werewolves can tell if a person is lying. I can only do it if it is someone I know really well, and I'm paying attention. It has to do with the change in the normal sounds a person makes-breathing and pulse, things like that. Usually I'm not paying that much attention. I've never been able to tell a thing about Stefan, not even the usual emotions that carry such distinctive smells. And Stefan's pulse and breathing tended to be erratic. I sometimes thought he only breathed because he knew how uncomfortable he made people when he didn't.

Nonetheless, I knew he had lied.

"You just lied to us," I told him. "Why are you helping us?" I pulled out from under his hand so I could turn and face him, putting Samuel at my back.

"We don't have time for this," Stefan said, and some of the usual liveliness faded from his face.

"I need to know if we can trust you," I told him. "Or at least how far we can trust you."

He made one of those grand stage magician gestures, throwing his hands up and tossing his head-but I felt a fine cloak of real magic settling around us. Like Zee, it tasted of earth, but there were darker things in Stefan's spell than anything the gremlin had done around me.

"Fine," he said. "Just don't blame me when she's in a rotten mood because we kept her waiting. You called me tonight with a question."

"What did you just do?" asked Samuel quietly.

Stefan let fall an exasperated sigh. "I made certain that the three of us are the only ones participating in this conversation, because there are things that hear very well in the night."

He turned his attention back to me. "When I called our accountant she put me right through to our Mistress-which is not standard procedure. Our Mistress was obviously more interested in your Dr. Cornick than she was with your question. She came to me and had me call you back-she didn't intend me to escort you. She didn't want you to have even that much protection, but once I offered, she could not contradict me. I am here, Mercy, because I want to know what is going on that stirs my Mistress from the lethargy that has been her usual state since she was exiled here. I need to know if it is a good thing, or something very bad for me and my kind."

I nodded. "All right."

"But I would have done it for friendship's sake," he added.

Unexpectedly, Samuel laughed a little bitterly. "Of course. We all do things for our Mercy for friendship's sake," he said.

Stefan didn't take us through the front gates, which were large enough to drive a semi through, but led the way around the side to a small, open door in the wall.

In contrast to the undeveloped scrub outside the gates, the interior grounds were elaborate. Even in November, the grass, under the moon's waxing light, was dark and luxurious. A few roses peeked out from protected areas near the house, and the last of the mums still had a few blooms. It was a formal French-style garden, with organized beds and meticulous grooming. Had the house been a Victorian- or Tudor-style home, it would have looked lovely. Next to a Spanish-style adobe house it just looked odd.

Grapevines, bare in their winter guise, lined the wall. In the moonlight they looked like a row of dead men, hanging arms spread wide and crucified on the frames that supported them.

I shivered and moved closer to Samuel's warmth. He gave me an odd look, doubtless scenting my unease, but set his hand on my shoulder and pulled me closer.

We followed a cobbled path past a swimming pool, covered for the winter, around the corner of the house to a broad swath of lawn. Across the lawn there was a two-story guesthouse almost a third the size of the main house. It was to this smaller building that Stefan led us.

He knocked twice at the door, then opened and waved us into an entry hall decorated aggressively in the colors and textures of the American Southwest, complete with clay pots and kachina dolls. But even the decor was overwhelmed by the smell of mostly unfamiliar flowers and herbs rather than the scents of the desert.

I sneezed, and Samuel wrinkled his nose. Perhaps all the potpourri was designed to confuse our noses-but it was only strong, not caustic. I didn't enjoy it, but it didn't stop me from smelling old leather and rotting fabrics. I took a quick, unobtrusive look around, but I couldn't see anything to account for the smell of rot; everything looked new.

"We'll wait for her in the sitting room," Stefan said, leading the way through the soaring ceilings of a living room and into a hall.

The room he took us to was half again the size of the biggest room in my trailer. From what I'd seen of the house, though, it was cozy. We'd left behind the Southwest theme for the most part, though the colors were still warm earth tones.

The seats were comfortable, if you like soft fluffy furniture. Stefan settled into a chair with every sign of relaxation as the furniture swallowed him. I scooted toward the front edge of the love seat, which was marginally firmer, but the cushions would still slow me down a little if I had to move quickly.

Samuel sat in a chair that matched Stefan's, but rose to his feet as soon as he started to sink. He stalked behind my love seat and looked out of the large window that dominated the room. It was the first window I'd seen in the house.

Moonlight streamed in, sending loving beams over his face. He closed his eyes and basked in it, and I could tell it was calling to him, even though the moon was not full. She didn't speak to me, but Samuel had once described her song to me in the words of a poet. The expression of bliss on his face while he listened to her music made him beautiful.

I wasn't the only one who thought so.

"Oh, aren't you lovely?" said a voice; a throaty, lightly European voice that preceded a woman dressed in a high-cut, semiformal dress of gold silk that looked rather odd combined with jogging shoes and calf-high athletic socks.

Her reddish blond curls were pulled up with elegant whimsy and lots of bobby pins, revealing dangling diamond earrings that matched the elaborate necklace at her throat. There were faint lines around her eyes and mouth.

She smelled a little like Stefan, so I had to assume she was a vampire, but the lines on her face surprised me. Stefan looked scarcely twenty, and I'd somehow assumed that the undead were like the werewolves, whose cells repaired themselves and removed damage of age, disease, and experience.

The woman padded into the room and made a beeline for Samuel, who turned to regard her gravely. When she leaned against him and stood on tiptoe to lightly lick his neck, he slid a hand up around to the base of her skull and looked at Stefan.

I shifted a little farther toward the edge of my seat and twisted so I could watch them over the back of the love seat. I wasn't too worried about Samuel-he was poised to break her neck. Maybe a human couldn't have managed it, but he wasn't human.

"Lilly, my Lilly fair." Stefan sighed, his voice puncturing the tension in the room. "Don't lick the guests, darling. Bad manners."

She paused, her nose resting against Samuel. I gripped the hilt of Zee's dagger and hoped I didn't have to use it. Samuel could protect himself, I hoped, but he didn't like hurting women-and Stefan's Lilly looked very feminine.

"She said we had guests for entertainment." Lilly sounded like a petulant child who knows the promised trip to the toy store is about to be delayed.

"I'm sure she meant we had guests for you to entertain, my sweet." Stefan hadn't moved from his chair, but his shoulders were tight, and his weight was forward.

"But he smells so good," she murmured. I thought she darted her head forward, but I must have been mistaken because Samuel didn't move. "He's so warm."

"He's a werewolf, darling Lilly. You'd find him a difficult meal." Stefan got up and walked slowly around my couch. Taking one of Lilly's hands in his, he kissed it. "Come entertain us, my lady."

He pulled her gently off Samuel and escorted her formally to an upright piano tucked into one corner of the room. He pulled out the bench and helped her settle.

"What should I play?" she asked. "I don't want to play Mozart. He was so rude."

Stefan touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers. "By all means, play whatever you wish, and we will listen."

She sighed, an exaggerated sound with an accompanying shoulder droop, then, like a marionette she straightened from head to toe and placed her hands just so on the keys.

I don't like piano music. There was only one music teacher in Aspen Creek when I grew up, and she played piano. For four years I banged out tunes for a half hour a day and hated the piano more each year. It hated me back.

It took only a few measures for me to realize I'd been wrong about the piano-at least when Lilly played it. It didn't seem possible that all that sound came from the little upright piano and the fragile woman sitting before us.

"Liszt," whispered Samuel, stepping away from the window and sitting on the back of my seat. Then he closed his eyes and listened, just as he'd listened to the moon.

Stefan stepped away from the piano once Lilly was focused on her music. He drifted back to stand beside me, then he held out a hand.

I glanced at Samuel, but he was still lost in the music. I took Stefan's hand and let him pull me to my feet. He took me to the far side of the room before releasing me.

"It isn't being a vampire that made her this way," he said, not whispering, exactly, but in low tones that didn't carry over the music. "Her maker found her playing piano at an expensive brothel. He decided he wanted her in his seethe, so he took her before he understood that she was touched. In the normal course she would have been mercifully killed: it is dangerous to have a vampire who cannot control herself. I know the werewolves do the same. But no one could bear to lose her music. So she is kept in the seethe and guarded like the treasure she is."

He paused. "But usually she is not allowed to wander about at will. There are always attendants who are assigned to keep her-and our guests-safe. Perhaps our Mistress amuses herself."

I watched Lilly's delicate hands flash across the keys and produce music of power and intellect that she didn't possess herself. I thought about what had happened when Lilly had come into the room.

"If Samuel had reacted badly?" I asked.

"She'd have no chance against him." Stefan rocked back on his heels unhappily. "She has no experience at taking unwilling prey, and Samuel is old. Lilly is precious to us. If he had hurt her, the whole seethe would have demanded retribution."

"Shh," said Samuel.

She played Liszt for a long time. Not the early lyrical pieces, but the ones he composed after hearing the radical violinist Paganini. But, right in the middle of one of his distinctively mad runs of notes, she switched into a blues piece I didn't recognize, something soft and relaxed that lazed in the room like a big cat. She played a little Beatles, some Chopin, and something vaguely oriental in style before falling into the familiar strains of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

"I thought you weren't going to play Mozart," said Stefan when she'd finished the song and begun picking out a melody with her right hand.

"I like his music," she explained to the keyboard. "But he was a pig." She crashed her hands on the keys twice. "But he is dead, and I am not. Not dead."

I wasn't going to argue with her. Not when one of those delicate fingers broke the key beneath it. No one else said anything either.

She got up from the piano abruptly and strode through the room. She hesitated in front of Samuel, but when Stefan cleared his throat, she trotted up to him and kissed him on the chin. "I'm going to eat now," she said. "I'm hungry."

"Fine." Stefan hugged her, then directed her out of the room with a gentle push.

She hadn't once so much as looked at me.

"So you think we're being set up?" asked Samuel, with lazy geniality that seemed somehow out of place.

Stefan shrugged. "You, I, or Lilly. Take your pick."

"It seems like a lot of trouble to go to," I ventured. "If Samuel died, Bran would tear this place apart. There wouldn't be a vampire left in the state." I looked at Stefan. "Your lady may be powerful, but numbers matter. The Tri-Cities isn't that big. If there were hundreds of you here, I'd have noticed it. Bran can call upon every Alpha in North America."

"It is nice to know how we are esteemed by the wolves. I'll make certain our Mistress knows to leave the wolf alone because she should fear them," said a woman from just behind me.

I jumped forward and turned, and Stefan was suddenly between me and the new vampire. This one was neither ethereal nor seductive. If she hadn't been a vampire, I'd have put her age somewhere around sixty, every year etched in the lines of grim disapproval that traversed her face.

"Estelle," said Stefan. I couldn't tell if it was a greeting, introduction, or admonition.

"She has changed her mind. She doesn't want to come up to visit with the wolf. They can come to her instead." Estelle didn't seem to react to Stefan at all.

"They are under my protection." Stefan's voice darkened in a way I'd never heard it before.

"She said you may come, too, if you wish." She looked at Samuel. "I'll need to take any crosses or holy objects you are wearing, please. We do not allow people to go armed in the presence of our Mistress."

She held out a gold-embossed leather bag, and Samuel unhooked his necklace. When he pulled it out of his shirt, the necklace didn't blaze or glow. It was just a bit of ordinary metal, but I saw her involuntary shudder when it brushed close to her skin.

She looked at me and I pulled out my necklace and showed her my sheep. "No crosses," I said in a bland voice. "I didn't expect to be out speaking to your Mistress tonight."

She didn't even glance at Zee's dagger, dismissing it as a weapon. After pulling the drawstring tight, she let the bag dangle from it. "Come with me."

"I'll bring them down in a minute," Stefan said. "Go tell her we are coming."

The other vampire raised her eyebrows but left without a word, carrying the bag with Samuel's cross in it.

"There's something more happening than I thought," Stefan said rapidly. "Against most of those here, I can protect you, but not the Mistress herself. If you'd like, I'll get you out of here and see if I can find the information without you."

"No," said Samuel. "We're here now. Let us finish this."

Samuel's words slurred a little, and I saw Stefan give him a sharp glance.

"Once more I offer you escort away from here." This time Stefan looked at me. "I would have no harm come to you and yours here."

"Can you find out where the other wolves are, if she doesn't want you to?" I asked him.

He hesitated, which was answer enough.

"We'll go talk to her, then," I said.

Stefan nodded, but not like he was happy about it. "Then I find myself echoing your gremlin. Keep your eyes away from hers. She'll probably have others with her, whether she allows you to see them or not. Don't look at anyone's eyes. There are four or five here who could entangle even your wolf."

He turned and led the way through the house to an alcove sheltering a wrought-iron spiral staircase. As we started down, I thought we were going to the basement, but the stairway went deeper. Small lights on the cement wall surrounding the stairs turned on as Stefan passed them. They allowed us to see the stairs-and that we were traveling down a cement tube, but they weren't bright enough to do much more. Fresh air wafted out of small vents that kept the air moving, but it also kept me from smelling anything from deeper down.

"How far down are we going?" I asked, trying to fight off the claustrophobic desire to run back the way we'd come.

"About twenty feet from the surface." Stefan's voice echoed a little-or else something below us made a noise.

Maybe I was just jumpy.

Eventually the stairway ended in a pad of cement. But even with my night vision, the darkness was so absolute I could see only a few yards in any direction. The smell of bleach danced around several scents I'd never encountered before.

Stefan moved and a series of fluorescent lights flickered to life. We stood in an empty room with cement floors, walls, and ceilings. The overall effect was sterile and empty.

Stefan didn't pause, just continued through the room and into a narrow tunnel that sloped gently upward as we walked. Steel doors without knobs or handles lined the tunnel at even intervals. I could hear things moving behind the doors and scooted up until I could touch Samuel's shoulder for reassurance. As I passed the last door, something slammed against it, ringing with a hollow boom that echoed away from us. Behind another door someone-or something-began a high-pitched hopeless cascade of laughter that ended in a series of screams.

By the end of it, I was all but crawling up on top of Samuel, but he was still relaxed, and his breathing and pulse hadn't even begun to speed up. Damn him. I didn't take a deep breath until we'd left the doors behind.

The tunnel took a narrow turn, and the floor became a steep upward set of twelve stairs that ended in a room with curved plastered walls, wooden floors, and soft lighting. Directly opposite the stairway was a sumptuous mocha leather couch whose curves echoed the walls.

A woman reclined on two overstuffed tapestry-covered pillows braced against one of the couch's arms. She wore silk. I could smell the residue of the silkworms, just as I could smell the faint scent I was learning to identify with vampire.

The dress itself was simple and expensive, revealing her figure in swirling colors ranging from purple to red. Her narrow feet were bare except for red and purple toenail polish. She had them braced so her knees came up and provided backing to support the paperback she was reading.

She finished the page, dog-eared one corner, and set it carelessly on the floor. She swung her legs off the couch and shifted so that her face was toward us before she raised her gaze to look at us. It was so gracefully done that I barely had time to drop my own eyes.

"Introduce us, Stefano," she said, her voice a deep contralto made the richer by a touch of an Italian accent.

Stefan bowed, a formal gesture that should have looked odd with his torn jeans, but somehow came out gracefully old-fashioned instead.

" Signora Marsilia," he said, "May I introduce you to Mercedes Thompson, auto mechanic extraordinaire and her friend Dr. Samuel Cornick, who is the Marrok's son. Mercy, Dr. Cornick, this is Signora Marsilia, Mistress of the Mid-Columbia Seethe."

"Welcome," she said.

It had been bothering me how human the two women upstairs had seemed with their wrinkles and imperfections. Stefan, himself, had a touch of otherness that I could see. I had known him for inhuman the first time I'd seen him, but, except for the distinctive scent of vampire, the other two women would have passed for human.

This one would not have.

I stared at her, trying to nail down what was making the hair on the back of my neck rise. She looked like a woman in her early twenties, evidently having died and become vampire before life had marked her. Her hair was blond, which was not a color I associated with Italy. Her eyes were dark, though, as dark as my own.

Hastily, I jerked my gaze from her face, my breath coming more rapidly as I realized how easy it was to forget. She hadn't been looking at me though. Like the other vampires, her attention was on Samuel, and understandably so. He was the son of the Marrok, Bran's son, a person of influence rather than a VW mechanic. Then, too, most women would look at him rather than me.

"I have said something to amuse you, Mercedes?" Marsilia asked. Her voice was pleasant, but there was power behind it, something akin to the power the Alphas could call upon.

I decided to tell her the truth and see what she made of it. "You are the third woman tonight who has virtually ignored me, Signora Marsilia. However, I find it perfectly understandable, since I have trouble taking my attention off Dr. Cornick, too."

"Do you often have such an effect on women, Dr. Cornick?" she asked him archly. See, her attention was still really on him.

Samuel, unflappable Samuel, stuttered. "I - I haven't..." He stopped and sucked in air, then, sounding a little more like himself, he said, "I expect that you have more luck with the opposite sex than I do."

She laughed, and I realized finally what it was that bothered me. There was something off about her expressions and her gestures, as if she were only aping humans. As if, without us here to perform for, she would not appear human at all.

Zee told me that modern advances in CGI allowed filmmakers to create computer-animated people who seemed very nearly human. But they found that after a certain point, the closer the characters looked to real, the more they repelled their audience.

I knew now exactly what he meant.

She had everything almost right. Her heart beat, she breathed regularly. Her skin was flushed slightly, like a person who has just finished walking in the cold. But her smiles were just slightly wrong: coming too late or too early. Her imitation of a human was very close, but not quite close enough to be real-and that small difference was giving me the creeps.

Generally, I don't have the control problems that the werewolves do-coyotes are adaptable, amiable beasts. But at that moment, if I had been in coyote form, I'd have been running away as fast as I could.

"My Stefano tells me that you want to know about the visitors who paid me so nicely to leave them alone." She had gone back to ignoring me again-something I wasn't really unhappy with.

"Yes." Samuel kept his voice soft, almost dreamy. "We will eventually find them ourselves, but your information would help."

"After I give you this information," her voice rumbled in her throat like a cat's, "we shall talk a little about the Marrok and what he will give me for cooperation."

Samuel shook his head. "I am sorry, Signora, I do not have authority to discuss this matter. I will be happy to forward any messages you might have to my father."

She pouted at him, and I felt the impact of her intent upon him, could smell the beginnings of his arousal. The scary things making noise behind steel doors hadn't caused his pulse to increase, but the Mistress of the seethe could. She leaned forward, and he closed the distance between them until her face was only inches from his groin.

"Samuel," said Stefan quietly. "There is blood on your neck. Did Lilly cut you?"

"Let me see it," suggested the Signora. She breathed in deeply, then made a hungry noise that sounded like the rattle of old dry bones. "I will take care of it for you."

That sounded like a really bad idea somehow. I wasn't the only one who thought so.

"They are under my protection, Mistress," Stefan said, his voice stiffly formal. "I brought them here so you could speak to the Marrok's son. Their safety is my honor-and it was almost lost earlier when Lilly came to us unescorted. I should hate to think your wishes were opposed to my honor."

She shut her eyes and dropped her head, resting her forehead on Samuel's belly. I heard her take in another deep breath, and Samuel's arousal grew as if she called it from him as she inhaled.

"It has been so long," she whispered. "His power calls to me like brandy on a winter night. It is difficult to think. Who was in charge of Lilly when she wandered into my guests?"

"I will find out," Stefan said. "It would be my pleasure to bring the miscreants before you and see you once more attend your people, Mistress."

She nodded, and Samuel groaned. The sound made her open her eyes, and they were no longer dark. In the dimly lit room, her eyes gleamed red-and-gold fire.

"My control is not as good as it once was," she murmured. Somehow I'd expected her voice to harshen with the heat of the flames in her eyes, but instead her voice softened and deepened seductively, until my own body was reacting-and I don't care for other women that way as a rule.

"This would be a good time for your sheep, Mercy." Stefan's attention was so focused upon the other vampire it took me a moment to realize he was speaking to me.

I'd been edging closer to Samuel. Five years of study in the martial arts had given me a purple belt, the muscles to heft car parts around almost as well as a man, and the understanding that my paltry skills weren't worth a damn thing against a vampire.

I'd debated the wisdom of knocking Samuel away from her, but something my senses had been trying to tell me for a while had finally kicked in: there were others here, other vampires I couldn't see or hear-only scent.

Stefan's advice gave me something better to do. I pulled out my necklace. The chain was long enough that I could tug it over my head, and I let it dangle from my hand just as Marsilia moved.

I grew up with werewolves who ran faster than greyhounds, and I am a little faster yet-but I never saw Marsilia move. One moment she was pressed against the front of Samuel's jeans, and the next her legs were wrapped around his waist and her mouth was on his neck. Everything that followed seemed to happen slowly, although I suppose it was only a few seconds.

The illusion hiding the other vampires dissipated in the frenzy of Marsilia's feeding, and I saw them, six vampires lined up against the wall of the room. They were making no attempt to appear human, and I gathered a hurried impression of gray skin, hollow cheeks, and eyes glittering like backlit gemstones. None of them moved, though Stefan had wrapped himself around Marsilia and was trying to pull her off. Nor did they interfere when I closed the distance between Samuel and me, the silly necklace wrapped around my wrist. I suppose they didn't consider either of us a threat.

Samuel's eyes were closed, his head thrown back to give Marsilia better access. So scared I could barely breathe, I pressed the silver lamb against Marsilia's forehead and said a hurried, but fervent prayer, that the lamb would work the same way a cross did.

The little figure pressed into her forehead, but Marsilia, as absorbed in the feeding as Samuel, paid me no mind. Then several things happened almost at the same time-only afterward did I put them in their probable order.

The sheep under my hand blazed up with the eerie blue flame of a well-adjusted Bunsen burner. Marsilia was suddenly crouched on the back of the couch, as far from my necklace-and Samuel-as she could get. She shrieked, a high-pitched noise just barely within the range of my hearing, and made a gesture with her hands.

Everyone dropped to the floor, Samuel, Stefan, and Marsilia's guards, leaving me standing, my little sheep aglow like an absurdly small blue neon sign, facing the Mistress of the nest. I thought at first that the others had fallen voluntarily, reacting to some secret sign I hadn't seen. But Marsilia jerked her chin, a quick, inhuman motion, and screamed again. The bodies on the floor twisted a little, as if something hurt, but they could not move to alleviate it-and I finally realized that it was magic as well as fear that was stealing my breath. Marsilia was doing something to hurt them all.

"Stop it," I said, with all the authority I could muster. My voice came out thin and shaky. Not impressive.

I cleared my throat and tried again. Surely if I could face down Bran after the time I ran his Porsche into a tree without either a driver's license or permission to drive it, I could steady my voice so it didn't squeak. "Enough. No one has harmed you."

"No harm?" she hissed, tossing her head so her mane of hair fell away from her forehead to reveal a nasty-looking burn vaguely in the shape of my necklace.

"You were feeding upon Samuel without his permission," I said firmly, as if I knew that her action had given me the right to defend him-I wasn't certain it was true, but bluffing worked with the wolves. And vampires seemed to be big on manners.

She raised her chin but didn't reply. She took a deep breath, and I realized she hadn't been breathing since I'd driven her off Samuel. Her eyelids fluttered as she took in the smell of the room-I could smell it, too: fear, pain, blood, and something sweet and compelling brushed with the scents of those present.

"It has been a long time since I had such presented for me," she said. "He was bleeding and half-caught already." Her tone wasn't apologetic, but I'd settle for mere explanations if it only got us all out of here alive.

Stefan managed to get out a single word. "Trap."

She drew a quick circle in the air and dropped her hand out and away. In response, all the men on the floor went limp. Samuel, I noticed with relief, was still breathing.

"Explain, Stefan," she said, and I took a deep, relieved breath at having her attention somewhere else.

"A trap for you, Mistress," Stefan said, his voice hoarse like a man who has been screaming. "Bleed the wolf and present him to you as if he were gift-wrapped. They were good. I didn't notice that he was under thrall until I saw the blood."

"You may be right," she said. She gave me an irritated look. "Put that thing away, please. You don't need it now."

"It's all right, Mercy," said Stefan, his voice still whisper-thin. He hadn't raised himself off the floor, but lay with his eyes closed, as if he'd come to the end of his strength.

I hid the necklace again, and the room looked even dimmer in the remaining, more mundane, lighting.

"Tell me about this trap, Stefano," she said briskly as she climbed from the back of the couch and into her seat. If her eyes dwelled a moment too long upon Samuel, who was still limp, at least their inhuman flames had died to flickers.

The vampires were all showing signs of life, but only Stefan was moving. He groaned as he sat up and rubbed his forehead as if it hurt. His movements were jerky, inhuman.

"Lilly was sent to us without her attendant. I thought she was sent to create an incident. If Samuel had killed her, it would be war between our seethe and the Marrok. But perhaps it was more than that. I thought we got him away before she marked him, but looking back, I believe he was in thrall from that moment on. They sent him down here bleeding like a rare steak and presented him to you. If you had killed Samuel-and I think it likely, half-starved as you've been keeping yourself-" I could hear the disapproval in his voice. "If you had killed Samuel..." He let his words trail off.

She licked her lips as if there was still a trace of blood left. I saw a flash of regret on her face as she stared at Samuel, as if she wished no one had stopped her.

"If I had killed him, there would have been war." She looked away from Samuel and met my eyes-but nothing happened. She frowned at me, but seemed less surprised than I was. But maybe the little sheep who must have protected me from her magic was still at work. She tapped her long, manicured nails together, looking as if she were considering something.

"We would be badly outnumbered," Stefan said, when she said no more. He gathered himself visibly before getting to his feet. "If war broke out, we would be forced to leave this country."

She stilled, as if his words were of great significance. "To leave this cursed desert and return home "-she closed her eyes-"now that is a prize that many here might risk my wrath to gain."

The other vampires were stirring by then. I moved between them and Samuel, trusting Stefan to keep his mistress off us. As they rose, they seemed to be more focused on Samuel than on Marsilia. Like most everyone else tonight, they ignored me as they slowly began closing in.

"Wake up, Sam." I nudged him with the heel of my foot.

Stefan said something in liquid tones with the unmistakable cadence of Italian. Like they were in a peculiar game of "Swing the Statue," the other vampires simply stopped moving, though it left some of them in awkward poses.

"What's wrong with Samuel?"

I asked the question of Stefan, but it was Marsilia who answered. "He is bespelled by my bite," she said. "Some do die of the Kiss, but it will probably do no permanent harm to a werewolf. If I were less, then he would not have succumbed." She sounded pleased.

"Then how did Lilly manage?" asked Stefan. "It wasn't a full Kiss, but he was in thrall."

She crouched by my feet and touched Samuel's neck. I didn't like the way she just kept appearing places, especially when she did it near Samuel who couldn't defend himself.

"That is a good question," she murmured. "He is a dominant, this son of Bran?"

"Yes," I answered. I knew that humans had trouble telling a dominant from a submissive wolf. I hadn't thought the same would be true of a vampire.

"Then Lilly could not enthrall him. But... perhaps she could have been loaned the power." She brought her fingers to her lips and licked Samuel's blood off them. Her eyes were glowing again.

I reached into my shirt and started to draw out the sheep, but a pale hand wrapped around my wrist and jerked me against a body, all cold bone and sinew.

By the time I realized I'd been grabbed, I'd already thrown him. If I'd had time to think, I'd never have tried to throw a vampire the way I would a human, but it was a reflexive thing born of hundreds of hours in the dojo.

He landed right on top of Samuel because Marsilia had gotten out of the way. The creature twisted, and I thought he was coming at me again, but he was after Samuel instead. He struck at Samuel's bleeding neck.

Marsilia jerked her vampire off, leaving torn skin where his fangs had already locked onto flesh. Without visible effort or emotion, she tossed him into the nearest wall. Plaster flew, but he bounced to his feet with a snarl that died as soon as he saw who had thrown him the second time.

"Out, my dears." I noticed that the burn mark on her forehead was healing. "Out before we lose all honor, overcome by such sweetness as is laid out here before us like a tempting feast."

I'd gotten my sheep out finally, but before it started glowing we were alone, Stefan, Samuel, and I.