Chapter 5 #2
“He’s called Host to his face,” I said, tugging him down the stairs. “We will dance until he’s decided to give us an audience, which is when one of the waiters will tell us that he’d like a word.”
“We wait for him to summon us?”
I shrugged and then stood on the edge of the dance floor, knowing that we should start dancing, but also knowing that as ancient as the Vampire King was, me leading might be an unforgivable faux pas to him.
“In that case, shall we dance?” Gavriel gave me a formal bow and then swept me into his arms and into the waltzing vampires as though he were one of them.
Not quite. He was too alive, with this sense of barely contained energy.
And his hand on my waist was so strong, warm, soaking into me, probably drawing his heat out of him.
He shouldn’t touch me, or he’d get ice cold.
I didn’t think about the dancing, not even in the silver heels that were slightly too tight for my toes.
I simply moved with him, following his lead effortlessly.
The music grew louder, his heart beat faster, and his eyes shone with the inner light that was so irresistible to my kind.
Everyone would want to drink his blood and touch his flushed cheek.
I moved closer, sliding my hand up his shoulder to curve around his neck, a slight protection to anyone else who might think that he was an easy kill.
“You said that you don’t dance, but you’re perfect,” he murmured, breath warm against my cheek.
“Perfect? You’re perfect. I’m just following you.”
He smiled slightly and turned his face so his nose brushed mine and a shiver went down my spine, warmth and something else that had me tightening my grasp on his neck until I realized that I was probably hurting him and relaxed, trying to think coherent thoughts.
Right. We had to dance until the Vampire King summoned us, and then we had to convince him to tell us what he knew about the new rise of Tralcon, one of his favorite demons.
The music swelled, and my thoughts blurred.
The music stopped, then began again, but we didn’t stop moving.
Gavriel started doing more complicated moves, spinning me out and pulling me to the side before doing a progression of steps that I followed effortlessly.
We’d moved into at least the third dance, perhaps the fourth, when clapping cut off the music and everyone swirled around to stare at the figure descending the broad stairs in a lilac suit and a white powdered wig.
The King was doing some historical costume for the night.
The female on his arm looked familiar. Ah, Rose, one of his favorite blood spillers.
He’d dressed her in pink for the occasion.
She looked lovely in pink. Pity it would be stained much darker before the night was over.
I almost liked Rose. She was competent. She minded her business and that of her master’s, and didn’t play games of spite.
“Welcome to my ball! For this dance, we’re going to switch partners. Specifically, I’ll be giving my beloved Rose to another very special friend to turn about the floor.”
He gestured, and Herald came forward with fencing foils, sharp tips glittering beautifully. Perfect. They’d match my dress.
Herald handed a sword to Rose, who took it with a vicious smile then slashed the air a few times. After he bowed to the king and her, he came over to us.
“This is for you,” he said, holding it out handle first.
I didn’t take it and neither did Gavriel. “It’s customary to ask for a dance.” I looked up at the vampire king, refusing to smile, viciously or not. He was supposed to summon us for a word, not publicly put on a fencing show for his supporters. I wasn’t anyone’s slave to perform at their whim.
Herald cleared his throat loudly, uncomfortably.
“The host of tonight’s festivities would like you to show your dancing skills.
Quid pro quo.” He lowered his voice to a whisper that no one else in the room would be able to catch.
“He wants to be sure that you’re stable enough to be within arm’s length. You are stable, aren’t you?”
I flashed Herald a smile and took the foil. Rose would do her best to infuriate me to bloodlust so I lost control and started ripping people apart. The only way to lose was to lose my temper.
I gave Gavriel a small smile. “No deaths. See? We’re all in accord.
” I spun around and raised my sword just in time to block Rose’s slash.
I knocked the sword back and then kicked her stomach, sending her stumbling.
She bared her teeth and fangs at me and came at me with a scream.
I parried and stepped aside, allowing her to use her momentum to carry her past me and into the crowd.
It was a crowd of vampires, so no one got trampled, and she was back in a flash.
The thing about weapons is that as wild and feral as I’d been, my training had been incredibly meticulous.
Tralcon didn’t want to lose his favorite slave, and he invested in my skills.
Mr. Good hadn’t cared about my training.
He expected me to take care of it myself, other than sending his goons to give me some exercise in jail, so I’d gotten sloppy in the last decade, but it came back quickly enough.
I followed her attack through several styles and time periods while Gavriel stood on the side, arms crossed, looking irritated and sultry. He was so handsome. Was that female edging closer to him? I almost didn’t block Rose’s swipe at my neck, I was so distracted.
“He’s pretty,” Rose murmured.
“I know,” I said.
She flashed a smile while I shrugged. Was I supposed to deny something so obvious?
“You shouldn’t have come here.”
“I shouldn’t do a lot of things.”
She spun around and then boxed the side of my face with her fist while her sword arm came at me down low.
It was on the side of my sword arm, so I let her hit my face, although it sent a shower of sparks across my vision.
Rose hissed, “If Tralcon is rising, then it’s best if you run and hide. You know the King would be happy to hand you over to him.”
I bared my teeth at her. Finally, something useful. “Your concern is touching, but I would love to be turned over to him, the easier to kill him. He doesn’t own me anymore. No one owns me.”
“Not even the pretty angel? They don’t like to have unreciprocated feelings.”
I struggled not to look over at Gavriel and succeeded well enough to block her flurry of blows that drove me back until I went under her and shoved my sword deep into her stomach, hit the right nerve in her wrist that she dropped her sword and held her, my hand at her throat, in sudden stillness and silence.
She gurgled as blood welled from her mouth, but she didn’t move or complain.
The king came forward, clapping steadily as he approached.
“Well done, Ruby Blood. You have won an audience with me. Won’t you and your companion join me as I take a turn about the room?”
I slid my blade out of Rose and went back to Gavriel so I could reach him before the Host. Herald took my foil with a bow and disappeared into the crowd.
I said, “No need for a walk. You know what I want.” I pitched my voice low so everyone didn’t hear me.
The king waved a hand negligently. “How could I know what you want? I haven’t seen you in over a decade.” He slid his arm in mine and the contact was so revolting, I almost lunged at his throat to rip it out.
Gavriel put his arm in mine, tugging me close, like he could tell I needed to get away from the Vampire King’s corruption, but not until we’d gotten some information about the demon.
We walked through the ballroom, not talking, but being seen.
My anxiety rose at every vampire we passed who looked at Gavriel with flared nostrils.
The Vampire King was leading us through his people so everyone could catch our scent.
Were we going to play chase-down-the-intruders after his show of civility was over?
“Have you seen my gallery?” the king asked, giving me a smile that showed off his bleached incisors.
“Yes.” He had paintings done of all the great vampires and other monsters he’d known through the centuries.
“But your new friend hasn’t.” The king tugged me towards a doorway that led out of the ballroom and to the gallery. What was his game? Would he give me a head start before sending his court after us?
“I have two portraits of Tralcon. They might be interesting to you, angel. He was a rare demon. He had so much control and planned for every exigency. We all knew that Blood would kill him. You can’t train someone to kill that thoroughly and not expect the blade to turn in your hand eventually. Odd that you didn’t kill Good.”
“He didn’t train me nearly as well.”
He flashed me another irritating smile and then we stopped in front of a large picture of a group of us standing in front of a copse of trees, bodies littering the ground, me wearing nothing but blood, crouched at my master’s feet like a dog.
My stomach flipped, and I had the strongest urge to turn and rip out the king’s throat.
Again. How dare he show Gavriel how I’d been before I remembered how to wear shoes?
The king gestured at Tralcon. The artist had been truly gifted, capturing my former master’s grace and beauty very well.
He’d also captured my fangs, my claws, and the look in my eye that told you that I was counting how many ways I could kill you.
It was true. I spent a great deal of time counting death possibilities, but I’d managed to change that to counting the silences between heartbeats instead.
“The demon, Tralcon, rose in power over the course of centuries, but never as swiftly until after he had our dear Lady Blood.” He shot me a red-eyed glance, then looked over at Gavriel, who was studying the portrait with a great deal of boredom.
“Some say that demons are even more beautiful than angels.”
Gavriel looked at him then. “And some say that angels are more destructive than demons. People say a lot of things.”
The king’s smile became cunning. “And your partnership with Lady Blood. Do you find it satisfactory?”
Gavriel glanced at me, then at the picture of me, and shrugged. “She did gain entry to one of the most exclusive events in the world. Have you seen Tralcon in the last decade?”
“So forward and direct. Isn’t that like an angel? No, my new friend, I haven’t seen Tralcon. No one has seen him, but I do happen to know one who is linked to the new rising threat that has everyone so intrigued. I can give you a location, but you’ll have to do something for me.”
“I already played your sword game,” I said, turning to scowl at him.
He smiled down at me. “That was for an audience. For answers, you’ll need to do more than that.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. If he wanted me to kill someone, one death, for one name, I supposed I could do that, except that I’d promised Gavriel that I wouldn’t kill.
Fine. He could kill, and I could help make sure he did it properly.
Not that an angel of death wouldn’t know how to properly kill someone.
“There are six ways that I could kill you,” I said without any inflection.
I’d spent a lot of time thinking about how to kill people, and the Vampire King wasn’t an exception.
“Six? That’s interesting.”
“I could tell you how I would do it, and you could know how to protect yourself better.”
His red eyes glimmered. “You’re negotiating?
Not bad for a youngling. But I can’t let you leave here without a single scratch, not when Lady Anastasia had some dear friends who are clamoring for your head.
You’ll have to use your persuasive qualities another time.
Although…” He studied me for a moment and then smiled. “If you chose to work for me—”
“I wouldn’t.”
He shrugged slightly. “I suppose that’s to be expected. You’re so deliciously reserved these days. Before, you looked like death coming, but now, you’re practically civilized.”
“I’m not. I’ve never been interested in killing. That was Tralcon’s obsession, not mine.”
“What is your obsession? I do have a rather fine library, and if I recall correctly, you spent some long hours perusing its depths. Tralcon once told me that you worked in a bookstore. He saved the poor spinster from a life of quiet misery.”
“I preferred your crypt to the library. Pity you’ve gone to technology.” We reached the end of the gallery, and a balcony that looked over the ballroom. We’d looped around and there was the Host’s court, waiting for us. “Are you going to set your court on us, good hunting?”
He shook his head and then patted my cheek. I would have killed him for that, but rage swept over me at every vampire down below staring up at us, at my angel, smelling his blood, wanting to touch him. I would kill them for that.
I slipped away from Gavriel and the Vampire King, leaping over the balcony overlooking the ballroom and into the melee.
A haze of red was over everything; the other vampires practically frozen compared to my speed.
Stab, slash, drop two, and now for the final stroke…
the team leader’s voice came to me, the oath I’d made not to kill strong enough to crack through the rage.
I jerked my hand back before I performed the death stroke, then turned to another victim instead.
I fought, ripping apart the court, but I never killed, no matter how thick the red haze grew.
This new dance was delicious enough. I danced with the court until a click snapped around my wrist and then another, and a pulse of electricity swept through me from the cuffs, making me jerk and flail.
Gavriel picked me up and flew like a breath of despair back up to the Vampire King where he stood at the top of the stairs, watching the show.
“Give us the address and the name, or I kill you now,” Gavriel growled. He had the most delicious growl, and his arms were so strong around me, bringing me back to my own mind, my own will.
I blinked, reeling with horror at how mindless I’d been. I’d been the Vampire King’s slave, just like I was Tralcon’s. No, worse because I hadn’t even realized it. The rage was his, only pierced by the team leader, probably because of the brooch and hairpin Gavriel had given me.
The Vampire King stood still, the point of Gavriel’s beautiful sword at his throat. “The where is Song’s Lament, and the who is Cupid.”
“Cupid? What kind of—” My question was cut off as Gavriel sprang into the air, flying directly towards the ceiling.
I squeaked and flinched as we exploded through the plaster in a spray of dust and rubble out into the clear dark night.
He held me close as we flew far away from the vampires and the rest of the world below.