I looked more closely, then recoiled as I saw little white threads creeping over her skin. It was the vampiric fungus: the magical infection that powered vampires and animated zombies. You never normally saw it outside of a microscope. I knew what was happening-I had read Saffron’s paper. Without normal human food, the delicate balance between living human flesh and undead vampire matter inside Saffron had been disrupted, the vampiric fungus was blooming, and she was sliding from daywalker into normal vampire.
Saffron opened her eyes at me, filled with hunger, and I looked away, feeling none of the love I had once felt and all the hate. This was precisely what I had feared would happen if she became a vampire. I glanced at Darkrose’s pitiful form-but who was I kidding?
“I’m so sorry, Darkrose,” I said-and turned back to Saffron.
I stepped to the cage, pulling back my sleeve, and extended my arm to Saffron. At first she didn’t move, but then her brittle hands took it tenderly, and gave me a brief squeeze, as if she knew what this cost me. Slowly, tenderly, she kissed the skin above my hand.
Then her teeth sank in, her eyes closed in bliss, and Saffron took life from my wrist.
Return of the Vampire Queen
There was a sharp pain, a near-orgasmic pleasure, and a terrifying sensation of blood flowing out through my skin, drawn by the suction of her mouth through an orifice that should never have been there, through which blood should never have gone. But beyond all that I felt mana: my own life force, built up in my skin and my body while I had been threatening the lich, just pouring out through this new conduit like a live electric wire.
Seconds later, Saffron ripped her mouth from my wrist, snarling, droplets of blood spraying out over the cage. I collapsed backwards, holding my wrist, as Saffron stood in one explosive motion, arms thrown wide, shattering the bars of the cage so they clattered out across the hall, ringing with the impact wherever they struck like deranged churchbells.
The huge stone weight snapped off its chain and fell upon her. Her arm swung up in a savage motion, breaking off the metal spike with a twang. Then she caught the stone, screamed with rage, and hurled it the length of the hall, where it impacted with a clap like thunder.
Saffron turned towards Darkrose’s cage, and the guards tensed, raising their crossbows. One was too tense, and he loosed his bolt. Saffron caught it midair and crushed it in one hand.
“If starving me has taken my daylight, you all die, ” Saffron snarled, broken splinters dropping out of her hand one by one to the stone floor below. She no longer sounded human; she sounded worse than the lich. “If you kill my mate, I will torture you all to death.”
“Such power, such fire,” the lich said. “Most impressive, surely, but you have been listening. The calculus in this room has not changed-unless you relent. Recall my offer. We are willing to acknowledge your power… if you acknowledge ours.”
Saffron glared at him, looked down, nodded.
“You planned this,” Iadimus said. I couldn’t pin down where his voice was coming from; if anyone was going to walk out of this alive, it was him. “You knew the Lady Scara would oppose so you had her taken out-and you knew who the Lady Frost would choose.”
“Would it change your vote?” the lich snarled. “We have lost two elders to this plague. We have already discussed replacements. She was our first candidate. Shall we proceed?”
Iadimus was silent for a moment.
“No, it would not change my vote,” he said. “And, yes, I think we should.”
“Congratulations, my dear,” the lich said, cackling. “You may sit at the big table.”
“You pompous windbag,” Saffron snarled. “You really think I will let this go?”
“Now now,” the lich said coolly. “Don’t be petulant, my dear. Delancaster has spoiled you. But the Gentry will not quake before you like leaves. Tantrums are unbecoming in well-groomed children.” His voice hissed like sandpaper. “Don’t make me take away your pet.”
Saffron tensed. So did the guards around Darkrose. Then Saffron seemed to crumple, and looked up at the lich, who gestured to the throne where Cinnamon sat. When the guard’s hand touched her shoulder Cinnamon hopped up like her ass was on fire. He led her to the edge of the stage, and she stood where he put her, holding her tail so it wouldn’t switch back and forth. A little gasp escaped her lips, a rough cough and head snap, and the lich hissed at her sharply.
“Be silent, you foulmouthed brat,” he snarled. “Even if you are Frost’s daughter-”
“Leopold,” Vladimir warned. “The child has a condition.”
“Enough,” the lich said, voice crackling. “She was warned. No more insolence.”
Cinnamon nodded; then she looked at me, eyes pleading, neck twisting in its steel collar. Talk about stress-Cinnamon was one outburst away from setting the lich off again. How was I going to help her, sprawled on the floor amidst a pile of twisted metal rails and cracked stone?
“ Thank you, Dakota,” Saffron said, and I looked up to see her looking sadly down at me. “I never wanted to force that on you.” Then she lowered her head, walked down to the stage, ascended the dais, and sat down under the crossbow of the guard.
“Uh… okay,” I said, sitting up but still totally bewildered. “What just happened?”
“‘The Gentry’ means a clique of the most powerful vampires in a region,” Vladimir said, bending down, examining my wrist. “This Gentry just offered ‘acknowledgement’ of Saffron’s power. By acknowledging their power in return, Saffron gains standing among them.”
“Wonderful,” I said, wincing as he pulled out a tiny silver flask with a cross and poured a clear, fizzing substance on the wound- holy hydrogen peroxide? “A vampire country club.”
“ Don’t think of your vestigial Western aristocracy,” Vladimir said, pulling out a compact first aid kit. “Gentry is an old word, and the organization it represents is older still-”
“Enough history,” the lich interrupted. “I have kept my part of the bargain. A life for a life, Dakota Frost. Now… I count four more. What do you have to offer me in return?”
“What do I have to offer?” I asked helplessly, as Vladimir bound the wound on my wrist. “I don’t even know what you want.”
“Scara was right,” the lich said. “We did not bring you here just as the Envoy of a House we do not respect. And, as it turns out, neither did we capture Darkrose just to get to Saffron. You are a slippery woman, Dakota Frost. We captured Saffron to get to you.”
“To me? ” I said. “What do you want with me?”
“ Some of us,” Iadimus said, appearing on the dais, carefully staying out of direct eyeshot of Vladimir, “are not fooled by your protests and denials. You have to know why you are here: to stop your assaults on vampires.”
It took me a moment to get it.
“Do what? ” I said. “You think I’m behind the attacks?”
“The police certainly do,” Iadimus said. “According to the Lady Scara’s sources, the district attorney suspected you from the start.”
“The district attorney is not the police,” I said, “and if she suspected me, it’s only because I was a magician at the scene of a magical crime-”
“With a history of killing by magic,” Iadimus replied.
“The police called me to that crime scene,” I said, inwardly cursing. McGough had been right from the start. I should never have been there. “They knew my history-”
Iadimus’s eyes tightened. “Perhaps they wanted to see what you would do.”
“Hang on, you’re saying the police, my uncle, invited me to the scene of an assault hoping I’d turn it into a murder, and didn’t arrest me on the spot when it did?” I said. “I don’t think you know how human police work-or my uncle, for that matter.”
“Perhaps your relative didn’t want to see you for what you were,” Iadimus said, pointing at Demophage’s coffin. “After he let you walk, you annihilated the Oakdale Clan.”