Chapter Eleven #2
Walter was armored, wearing the queen’s black and gold with the royal crest over his heart.
It was the same style armor worn by the queen’s personal security team.
EJ had never seen Walter in the queen’s armor.
Their bodyguard might be tacitly under the oversight of Grampa, as master of the hunting grounds that included Chattanooga, but he was the queen’s man first. Until now, Walter had been a free vamp.
It hadn’t occurred to EJ that, by using the queen’s banner to keep them safe, Walter might have given up all his own independence as well as theirs.
Was he pissed? Or was that why he had laughed and made a joke?
Walter pulled a Dyneema cowl over his head, pressing his hair close to his skull, and slid a gorget snug beneath his chin, protecting his throat with the minuscule steel rings washed in a thin layer of silver against fang attack.
To his weapons harness, he added a battle-ax and mace, a small pistol in a spine holster, two longswords, three shortswords, one a silvered vamp-killer, and numerous throwing knives.
With practiced motions, he slid the shortswords in and out.
The longswords in and out. Threaded into loops across his chest were null sticks and silver-tipped stakes.
He pulled Dyneema bracers up his arms and secured them.
He holstered twin nine-millimeter handguns at his back, above his buttocks, the grips placed for easy draws.
Sitting for any length of time would require a straddle position or serious discomfort.
He bristled with weapons. Holy hells, he looked like… Walter looked dangerous.
Walter placed the queen’s standard into one flap pocket and pinched the gold brooch displaying the queen’s official crest into the specially made tab in his gorget.
Her crest was a golden laurel-leaf crown, a puma fang, a feather, and a chunk of stone shaped like her fist, what she called The Glob, and what was, in reality, her most fearsome weapon.
And Angie had a piece of it.
In what might have been considered a jocular tone in almost anyone else, Walter said, “I have quite a few centuries on the upstart Karson Marrazzo. And whilst wearing the colors of the queen’s personal guard, Marrazzo would be a fool to attack. But I can hope he is a fool.”
“And if your former master and owner happens to be with Marrazzo?” EJ asked
Walter touched his brand. His fangs snapped down, serrated on the back side, thick as tiger fangs. “I can hope.”
EJ stayed silent. This was a Walter he didn’t know.
“Willim Danil Yorath IV is an unspeakably cruel coward. He hid from me for over a century, living on one seagoing yacht or another. I located him once. And then the war happened. He vanished like the smoke of a snuffed candle. I signed with the queen to be your bodyguard for ten years. The only time in the last two centuries when I have been close enough to challenge and kill him, was the queen’s soirée. ”
“And you didn’t go,” EJ said.
“The invitation to attend did not come with a letter permitting me to challenge him. And such a challenge—without royal approval—would have been unwise.”
“What?” EJ said, the word carrying overtones of, Are you nuts? “Did it ever occur to you that the invitation from Aunt Jane was the queen giving you permission to challenge him? That maybe she was planning for that?”
Walter pivoted on one toe, like a dancer, lethal and swift. “Did I—” He frowned. “With contracts there are always loopholes. Was the invitation such a loophole? An opportunity now missed? If I had been at the emperor’s reception, would Londyn and Cennet still be alive?”
“Hell if I know, but if Willim is at Marrazzo’s clan home tonight, do me a favor, Walter. Challenge and kill him. Because if you don’t, I will.”
“You will do no such thing.”
“I will. So, to fulfill your vow and contract with the queen to keep me safe, you have no choice but to challenge him and kill him first so I don’t spill my blood on Asshat’s marble floors.”
Walter’s fangs snapped back into the roof of his mouth. “You are a little devil, aren’t you. You leave me no choice.”
“Right,” EJ said. “You can’t let me be injured. The queen would be pissed.”
Walter laughed, the tones vicious and joyful all at once. “Child, if this comes to pass, I will, how do you say it? Owe you big.”
“Yeah. You can pay me back by never calling me a child again.”
“Impossible. But I will give you a boon. Be wise how you use it.”
EJ knocked and they entered Angie’s apartment when the light flashed on the security unit. He stepped in and stopped, taken aback.
“You aren’t in the queen’s colors,” he stated.
Like Walter, Angie was dressed in armor, but Walter wore the colors of the queen’s personal guard.
As princess, Angie should have been armored in the queen’s colors as well.
Angie wasn’t. That was unexpected, and therefore important.
The kind of important that got people killed.
Angie’s smile was not her sweet, sisterly smile.
This was that odd “something else” he’d been seeing.
Her magic sang at him, a concert of power.
Her head lifted a hint, and it was as though she stared down her nose at him.
EJ resisted stepping out of her apartment into the relative safety of the hallway.
He had fought demons in the war, and so there was little that made him retreat.
But his sister’s magic clanged at him like battle cymbals. Beware.