“I have tasted your blood, felt your aura.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll know if anyone spoils me,” I said.
“More importantly, an experienced vampire will know we are linked,” she said. “When I present you, I may touch you to emphasize that. That may be a bit gauche since you just lost your boyfriend, but it will help sell it. Please don’t be offended.”
“It’s all right,” I said distantly, as the limo started to slow down.
“We’re almost here. Damnit. If they try to sway your mind, squint, like down to slits,” Nyissa said. “It sounds cheesy, but your retinas are part of your brain. Vampires hypnotize people through their eyes by extending their aura, establishing a brain-to-brain link… ”
“I love it when you talk science to me,” I said, and the limo stopped. We were in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Atlanta: Grant Park, not a stone’s throw from the Park proper, a tree-lined valley that held Zoo Atlanta and the Cyclorama. Here, one side of the street was lined with houses over a century old; the other was dominated by a looming fortlike building built after Sherman took Atlanta. “Grant Park was a guess on my part. You’re sure this is it?”
“Based on what you saw, and what I know of the Gentry, this is where you were taken,” Nyissa said, peering out the window. “Besides, did not your lover in the DEI confirm it?”
“Philip is my friend, not my lover. Hell, I’m not even certain he’s my friend,” I said, “and just because the other end of my call to Vladimir ended up in this area it doesn’t mean anything. It wouldn’t surprise me to find an empty room with a signal repeater.”
“No,” Nyissa said. She was trembling. “I have not taken you to an abandoned warehouse. This is the Gentry’s stronghold. We shouldn’t even be here; the Gentry does not like to be approached. In the olden days vampires were staked for merely showing up uninvited.”
“And this is their stronghold, guarded by Scara,” I said. I stared off into the distance, thinking. Then something on the other side of the street drew my attention. At first I couldn’t put my finger on it
… and then it hit me: one of the old mansions was a bit too shuttered, and had several black vans parked in front of it. Something was tickling my brain, a bit of Civil War trivia I’d learned from Michael Bell. “But maybe there’s another way. Vladimir gained entry, somehow, through a point relatively undefended-and I think I know just where that is.”
Nyissa followed my glance. “What are you suggesting?”
“Some of the generals who moved into Atlanta after the Civil War built houses with underground passages, crossing the street,” I said, struggling to remember what Michael had told me, years ago. “Vladimir came in from a side entrance. I’m betting he used that as his entrance to the stronghold. When we left, he was still standing there-it was his exit. If we enter that way, we can avoid fighting our way through armed guards just to deliver my report.”
“You really think there’s a back entrance over here?” she asked dubiously.
“Worst case scenario,” I said, “it’s not, and we apologize for waking someone up early.”
“Or late,” Nyissa said, drawing up the hood of her cloak. “It’s almost dawn.”
“I take it you’re not on the Saffron diet,” I said. “Oh, hell. Let’s do this.”
We got out of the limo and approached the house. The black vans looked all too familiar, but I’d had enough jumbled encounters with black vans and boots flying in my face that I didn’t trust my memory. But when we stepped up to the porch, the front lock was busted.
“Now, that’s blatant,” I said. “I expected Vladimir would have more subtlety.”
“Maybe he was in a hurry,” Nyissa said. “Or maybe this home is being burgled.”
“Then the two of us get to play superhero,” I said. “Either way, I think you’re up.”
Nyissa glanced at me from beneath her hood. Then she rang the bell.
A spinsterly old black woman came to the door-but not half-asleep in her bathrobe, or irritated. Instead she was alert, in haute couture, and wary. She looked almost perfectly made up, but her hair was a touch disheveled, and she had a bruise on her forehead. “Yes?”
“I apologize for waking you,” Nyissa said carefully. “I am the Lady Nyissa of the House Beyond Sleep, and this is my client, Dakota Frost.”
“I know who she is,” she said, glaring at me. “And you know you did not wake me.”
“Ah,” Nyissa said. “Then you know we would like passage to see Sir Leopold.”
“Go to hell,” the woman said. “After what your wolf did to my poor boys.”
“My apologies, ma’am,” I said, spreading my hands, “but it’s almost dawn, and it’s like an armed camp down there. I’d like to deliver my report while he’s still awake, and I don’t have time to negotiate my way in through the front. We would like to use the tunnel, please.”
“You bitch,” she said, staring between the two of us. Then she opened the door. “You know I can’t stop you. I can’t even call to warn him, with what your wolf did to my phone.”
We entered into a picture book from the Atlanta History Tour. Victorian furniture was decorated with art deco lights. Yellowed pictures climbed horsehair plaster walls. An ancient violin leaned against a Victrola phonograph. And a corridor jetted forward into the house, right through its center, towards a parlor in the back where I could see stairs up-and down.
But we didn’t get that far. A dark-suited security guard was standing by one of the corridor doors, openly holding a crossbow. He saw us-he had clearly been watching the door the whole time the woman had been speaking-and he touched his finger to his ear and murmured.
“Oh, hell,” I said, glaring at the older black woman, who was smiling viciously. “Figures that the unguarded back door was a trap.”
The low voices speaking in the room behind him stopped-and then the door burst open, and the Lady Scara stomped out towards us, two guards on her heels. “Well, well,” Scara said, baring her fangs in an equally vicious smile. “Look who we’ve caught sneaking in, trying to mount a rescue. Dakota Frost-”
“My client is not here to mount a rescue,” Nyissa said clearly.
Scara scowled and stomped up to Nyissa. “And who the hell are you?”
“I am the Lady Nyissa, Second of the House Beyond Sleep,” Nyissa said imperiously, twirling her poker. I have to admit, when she was on, she was good. There wasn’t the slightest crack in her act. “My client, Dakota Frost, is here on behalf of Lord Transomnia to-”
Scara moved with a blur, seizing Nyissa behind the neck and forcing her to her knees. Nyissa jerked and twisted and swung the poker, but Scara effortlessly batted it away, gouging a chunk out of the horsehair plaster walls.
Both the guards behind her moved forward instinctively, but Scara snarled at them-then reached out, seized one of their crossbows, and jammed it against Nyissa’s chin. She angled the crossbow downward, shoving Nyissa’s mouth open, breaking one of her fangs.
“You talk too much,” Scara said-and fired the crossbow into Nyissa’s mouth.
The Center Cannot Hold
Blood splattered everywhere. Nyissa fell to the carpet, jaw forced wide open by the end of the silver crossbow bolt protruding from her mouth. She flailed, and I had a horrific image of the bolt jutting out of the bottom of her mouth and into her voicebox.
“Oh my God,” cried the woman, running back into the house. “She shot an ambassador!”
Scara looked at me, then threw the crossbow down and smiled. “Looks like you are going to need a new protector,” she hissed. “What toll shall I make you pay?”
She stepped towards me, eyes glowing, sending a prickling sensation rippling through my skin. I flinched in fear, drawing up my energies, but I could tell that I’d lost too much ink. My shield would be useless. Her hand reached out And then Lord Iadimus was standing between us, straightening his suit. It was like a magic trick. One moment she was advancing on me, the next he was standing there, Scara flinching back. The prickling sensation disappeared, replaced by icy cold emptiness.