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“I should tel you, I’m going through with a pledging ceremony with my girlfriend come spring. I can be your official consort, but I can never be your wife.” Camil e’s words about betrayal were ringing in my ears, and though I’d already talked to Nerissa about Roman, I wanted to make my stance perfectly clear.
He inclined his head. “And as I said, I have no problem with that. I wil place your intended under my protection, as wel . I assume she is not vampire?”
“No, she’s a werepuma.” I paused, staring out the tinted windows. “We caught the serial kil er.
He’s dead.” I gave him a quick wrap-up of what happened. “Do you think we should look for his sire?”
“Why would we do that?”
“I don’t know . . . she’s siring innocent victims. Look what her actions cost—five lives. Six, if you count Charles.”
“No need. If she continues to be a problem, we’l take action, but for now, let it be.” He gazed at me with his frost-ridden eyes. “Once the Regency is secure, she won’t be welcome in the city.”
After a moment, I looked ahead through the dividing glass at the driver. “Who is your driver? He a vampire, too?”
“Yes. His name is Hans, and he’s been with me for three hundred years, as a horseman, a buggy driver, and now, my chauffeur. He was turned in the year 1210, on a raiding party.”
Old. These were old vampires. “How old is Terrance? I don’t know much about him. Delilah tried to ferret out information but couldn’t find more than a scrap or two on him.”
Roman shifted. “Terrance is not so old—younger than Hans, even. He was born into his second life in the year 1815. He was a petty thief, a con man, and a murderer in his former life. He lived in the Southwest—was born and bred there. Died young, around twenty-five. He had aspirations, shal we say, to become a famous card player. He didn’t play wel enough to keep from getting run out of every town he drifted into. The last one, he was forcibly evicted by the sheriff late one night and fel into the hands of a vampire.”
“How did he become so . . . so . . .”
“So worldly? So educated?”
“I was going to say so popular, but that works, too.” The Terrance I’d met seemed older than a scant two hundred years, minus a few. He came across as smooth, suave, and sophisticated, not like some two-bit con man traveling from city to city, trying to make a buck.
“A man may become educated through school, he may learn manners through a tutor, but he wil never develop class unless it is in his nature and heart. And Terrance has no class. He’s greedy, grasping, and though he’s not an actual threat to the throne, he’s an impediment.”
Roman shifted, crossing one leg over the other. “My mother is harsh, but she has a regal air that Roman shifted, crossing one leg over the other. “My mother is harsh, but she has a regal air that lends itself wel to her position. She is never crass or boorish. Terrance is a poor specimen to represent our kind, and that is why he must die. For, unlike your young friend, he wil never step down if asked.”
“What’s the plan?”
“The plan is, we meet my associates at the club, walk in, and take out Terrance.”
“I’ve been in the Fangtabula before. There’s a lot of security there.”
“You were not there with me, or my guards.”
“True.” Actual y, he’d piqued my curiosity. Just how big was his army, and who was in it? Before I could ask anything, we pul ed to a stop.
The Fangtabula was down in the Industrial District—in south Seattle. This was an area of town you didn’t want to go strol ing through at midnight. Although there was talk of expanding the district to include more residential areas, it hadn’t happened so far, but if people kept moving to the city, no doubt the high-rise condo buildings would find their way down into the grungy concrete jungle that was a maze of train tracks and old warehouses. In fact, the Fangtabula was in what had once been a meatpacking plant.
As we pul ed into the parking lot, the club stood out as it always had, with bright red doors against wal s patterned with black-and-white stripes. Three stories tal , the Fangtabula did a lot of business, even though it was on Chase’s to-close-down list. A number of underage girls and boys were rumored to hang out there, and though Chase had managed to cal a couple raids on the place, Terrance was always two steps ahead and nobody carded ever came up as a minor.
“It looks like we’re here. Come, my dear. We’ve got work to do.” Roman stepped out of the limo and held out his hand. I took it and al owed him to help me out of the car. “Stay by my side, whatever you do. This is going to be bloody.”
As I stood up and looked around the parking lot, I saw four other cars pul up—al black sedans
—and out of each car stepped four vampires. Mostly men, but a few women in the mix, and they were al dressed in the same black jeans and turtlenecks as Roman, with a signature crest woven in white on their shirts. They wore black sunglasses—Ray-Bans, by my guess—and fel into two lines, standing at attention, arms crossed.
Roman turned and I saw the same crest splashed across his back, and it was easier to make out what the picture was. A pair of crossed white swords in the center of a circle. The circle rested atop the back of a mighty lion, with a chalice clasped in its paws.
“Your family crest?”
He nodded. “My crest, but the chalice indicates my lineage—that I’m a child of Blood Wyne.
And al of these”—he stopped to nod at the vampires gathering around us—“al of these are my children; I’ve sired every one of them.”
