Chapter Seventeen #2
He decreased the lighting inside except in the sitting area, turned the heat down five degrees, and switched on the weather and a sports channel.
With a flick of a finger, he turned the windows from opaque to clear to reveal the view of the city at night, a city without power.
No snow was currently falling, but the wall screen showed another band of snow heading their way.
Football, European style, might please Walter. Did Walter even like soccer?
EJ pulled on another layer of clothes for warmth, a thick sweater and an extra pair of sweatpants.
There came a polite knock at the door. EJ glanced around and made sure the room didn’t hint at seduction. He didn’t want to make Walter uncomfortable. He tapped his unicom and said, “The door’s unlatched.”
Walter entered with a frown and said, “That is unwise. Your door should be latched and warded at all times.”
“Yes, sir. Wine? And I think you like this brand of cheese?”
Walter shot him a glance and frowned. Picked up the wine bottle, sat in the chair indicated, and said, “Very nice vintage. And yes to both. It’s good to see that Saxelby’s is back in production. The goat Tomme was always a favorite. Thank you.” He placed the bottle back in EJ’s hand.
EJ judged the breathing time was nearly acceptable for such a young wine, added an aerator to the spout just in case, and splashed some into the glasses.
He had conducted many interviews in the war, in the States and abroad.
In Europe, cheese and wine or tea were always acceptable icebreakers, but this was different.
This interview was personal in ways he had never experienced.
He needed to be nosy. Personally nosy, into private issues.
EJ stared at his wine, sniffing it, swirling it.
Walter smiled as if he knew what was in EJ’s head, dark-skinned fingers swirling his wine, watching the legs trail. Mildly he said, “I’d say I don’t bite, boy, but we both know that isn’t true.”
EJ chuckled silently, little huffs of breath. “What gave me away?”
“Scent. Not meeting my eyes even in a glance. And you have a tell.”
EJ’s head reared back. “I do not.”
“Of course you do. You are still standing.”
EJ blew out an irritated huff, and sat. “I have questions.”
Still in that mild tone Walter said, “It’s about time.”
EJ placed his glass on the table with a snap before he realized that Walter knew just how to push his buttons. And the bodyguard had never used that knowledge before now. Or had he, and EJ hadn’t noticed?
Walter spoke before he could. “Let me tell you what you want to know and provide the answers to what would be a protracted and uncomfortable conversation. And don’t frown so hard, boy. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that your face would stick that way?”
EJ, momentarily feeling like a child, tried to smooth out his features. Yeah. Button-pushing time.
Walter sipped the wine, nodded approvingly, and scooped up a bit of the goat Tomme onto a buckwheat crispbread.
He ate, crunching, and closed his eyes, nodding as he chewed.
“Delightful texture. Semifirm, thick and succulent. It has that melty mouth feel, like a cheese from the Pyrenees, perhaps a Pyrenees Brebis or P’tit Basque.
Distinctly goaty, slightly musky. I especially like the delicious herbal, piney, floral notes in the scent.
” He sipped. “Lovely, with the bright, light wine and the harsh, crispy crackers.”
Frustrated, EJ ate. Sipped. Walter was right.
It was excellent. And both his social skills and his use of the Revised Reid Interrogation Techniques were badly out of practice.
He had given himself away by everything he did.
Suddenly, EJ grinned and said in a fair British accent, “I do believe the term you’re looking for is ‘sublime.’ ”
“Indeed. However, your accent is dreadful. Learned Lancastrian, perhaps?”
EJ lifted his head, nose in the air, and said, “The King’s English.”
“Not hardly, boy.”
EJ dropped the accent and grinned. “The cheese is pretty good.”
“Never doubt yourself. It is indeed sublime.” Walter licked his fingers and said, “You should record this conversation for your sister. She is far too blood-drunk to absorb it at this time.”
EJ was too surprised to react. Walter said, “Ojos, record: audio and video. For Angelina’s eyes only.”
“Record on,” the system said.
He looked at EJ. “You want to know why I agreed to work for the queen, why I agreed to align myself with her and your grandfather when I have refused to be a scion to anyone for near a century. Also, why I chose you and Angelina as guardian assignment. And you want to know why you were allowed to live here, away from clan and coven and the queen—the real reason, if there is one. And what the queen’s banner atop your apartment building means.
What hold Nyoka has on me. And how all this pieces together. ”
That was a great deal more than EJ would have asked for, but he sipped his wine. Pondering. “Yes. If you’re willing.”
“I told you much of this earlier. We will start with Nyoka.” His words slowed, as if he pulled them from the deep recesses of his mind and assembled them like a child’s blocks.
“Nyoka is the Swahili word for ‘snake,’ a name she chose when she was freed. Like me, she was born of a slave woman who had been raped by her master, but unlike me she was born with power, the daughter of a formidable medicine woman, what would have been recognized as a witch by today’s standards.
We were turned, survived the devoveo decade of madness, and were taken to England.
When all UK slaves were freed in 1833, Willim imprisoned me in his dungeon, on the outskirts of London. ”
Walter was staring at his wine, bright in the bell-shaped glass. He turned the glass, his long fingers sliding across the smooth surface, his nails slick and thick, but human, not the talons that would slide atop them if he had to fight.
“Nyoka broke in and freed me, leaving Willim dead, or so we thought. Even to this day I do not know how he survived. Willim disappeared.
“But I was free.” Walter’s eyes lit with joy, a joy EJ had never seen before. “Free for the first time in my life.
“Nyoka and I spent near a century cavorting and hunting across Europe before we parted. After Nyoka left me, she aligned herself with others.”
“Why?” EJ asked.
Walter didn’t answer that question. “Considering what she suffered as a result of betraying me, it is startling that we find her in this country, aligned again with the ones who betrayed her.”
Walter appeared relaxed, peaceful. At his most dangerous, because a fanghead this calm was lulling to humans. To witches too.
“Nyoka would not consort with them without an ulterior strategy, intending to protect me, intending to turn on them.” He paused, sipping, thinking.
“She would never have willingly accepted to host a demon, become a slave again, no matter the power offered. Possibly she was ensnared by them to do their will.”
He waved a hand in the air, a languid gesture as if shooing a pesky fly, and added, “Nevertheless. Backing up to those details. Her lovers betrayed her, abandoned her, and left her alone in the Italian Alps. Or perhaps it was Switzerland. I never discovered the hamlet. I was simply keeping tabs on her as I could, and even in the vampire world, gossip is a double-tongued mistress.”
“Who did Nyoka leave you for? Which ones of our current enemies?”
“This goat Tomme is truly splendid.” Walter smiled slightly, something mischievous and unexpected in the expression. “Even better after drinking from Villetti.”
“You’re blood-drunk too, aren’t you?”
“Just enough, boy. Just enough to tell this tale.” Without pausing, he went back to his subject.
“Once I learned Willim was alive, not the true-dead I had thought, I looked for him for a very, very long time, to challenge and kill him. But he hid on the oceans of the world and even when electronic trackers were invented and could locate ships at sea, he eluded me. The reason I agreed to work for the queen is because I knew that eventually, Willim would position himself with someone of power and come after me. He had never relinquished his claim upon me. In his deranged and sexually frustrated mind, I will forever be his.”
“Who did Nyoka leave you for?” EJ repeated, dragging them back to the questions he needed answers for.
“You are persistent.”
“Who did Nyoka leave you for?” EJ repeated.
“Nyoka joined the Blood Master of Clan Marrazzo in Italy, Terenzio Villetti-Marrazzo. Julietta Ravensport was a young but powerful Mithran at that time, part of the Marrazzo clan when Nyoka joined. Terenzio and Julietta were her lovers. They are the two who betrayed her.”
“Son of a witch.”
“Yes, you are.”
History was always vital to understanding vampire alliances. “Bullet-point the timeline and the relationships,” EJ ordered. When Walter didn’t respond, EJ added, “Sorry. I am grateful for information, which you were under no obligation to offer. Please, continue.”
“It is…complicated. With my kind, it always is.” Walter swirled the wine.
Sipped. “And there are gaps in my knowledge, and some supposition. Guesswork, you would call it.” Again he made that little swirling motion with his free hand, a European gesture, elegant and graceful.
But he set down his glass and faced EJ. As he spoke, EJ heard faint magic, the minor notes of unhappy truth.
“There are multiple players that bring us here: Terenzio and Ravensport, who betrayed Nyoka; possibly Nyoka herself; Willim and Konstantin, the scion of Prince Oleg. Later, Karson.
“Hitler came to power in 1933. That is the beginning of the upheaval.