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"What else?" I asked.
Asher breathed through my mind, and he must have done the same to Damian, because we both jumped. His voice came like a whisper in a nearby room, almost as if it was sound without words. "Hurry."
There was no more talk. We hurried.
The lantern light shone through the trees like small, yellow moons. Damian glided through that last line of trees into the clearing. I didn't glide. I stumbled over the outer edge of the clearing. There was a power circle in this land so old and walked so often that it was like a curtain waiting to be drawn around the lupanar. It would take almost no power to bring whatever was here alive.
When I quit seeing with that inner vision and looked out into the clearing, I stopped walking. I just stood and stared. Jason stood and stared with me. Between the two of us, we were getting pretty jaded, but the lupanar of the Oak Tree Clan was worth a stare or two.
It was a huge clearing with an oak tree in the center of it, but that was like saying the Empire State Building is tall. The tree was like some great spreading giant. A hundred feet tall, rising up and up. There was a body hanging from one of the lower branches. It was mostly skeleton with dried bits of tendon holding one arm out. The other arm had disintegrated, falling to the ground. There were bones everywhere under the tree. White bones, yellowed bones, bones so old they were grey from being weathered. A carpet of bones stretched out from beneath the tree, filling the clearing.
The wind picked up, hurrying through the forest. It sent the leaves on the oak rustling and whispering. The rope on the skeleton creaked as it swung in the wind. And with that one creak, my eyes went back to the tree, because there were dozens of creaking ropes. Most of them were empty now, broken or eaten to ragged ends, but those ropes creaked and moved with the wind, up and up. I followed the ropes up to the top of the tree as far as I could look in the dark by moonlight. The tree had to be over a hundred years old, and there were ragged bits of rope at its top. They'd been hanging bodies on this tree for a very long time.
The skeleton rotated suddenly in the growing wind, jaw gaping, empty sockets reflecting the lantern light for a second. The tendons at the jaw gave way, and the jaw hung, swinging on one side, like a broken hinge. I had a horrible urge to run across that boneyard and yank the jaw away, or reattach it, anything so that bit of bone would stop waggling in the wind.
"My God," Jason whispered.
All I could do was nod. I wasn't rendered speechless often, but I had no words for this.
Damian had stopped and moved back to stand by us. He seemed to be waiting, as if he were our escort. I finally tore my gaze away from the tree and its awful burden. There were benches forming three sides of a disconnected triangle. There was enough room between each bench that no one was unduly crowded, yet the clearing felt crowded, almost as if the air itself was thick with things unseen, hurrying to and fro, brushing past me in a rush of gooseflesh.
"Did you feel that?" I asked.
Jason looked at me. "Feel what?"
I guess not. That meant whatever was crowding so close in the air wasn't something that a shapeshifter would pick up on. So what was it?
There was a vampire staring at me from where he sat on the near bench. His hair was brown, cut short so his neck was pale and bare. His eyes seemed very dark, maybe brown, maybe black. He smiled, and I felt his power rush over me. He was trying to capture me with his eyes. Usually, I would have tried to stare him down, but I didn't like what I was feeling in this place. Power, and it wasn't vampires. I looked away from his eyes, studying the pale curve of his cheek. His lips were full, with an upper lip that was set in a perfect bow, very feminine. The rest of the face was all points and angles; the chin sharp, the nose too long. It was a face that would be homely except for that mouth and those long-lashed eyes, dark and drowning deep as black mirrors.
I didn't stare too long at those eyes. I was feeling unsteady, as if the ground under my feet wasn't quite solid. Richard should have told me about the lupanar. Someone should have prepared me. Later, I'd be angry that no one had; now, I was just trying to figure out what to do about it. If Verne's clan were practicing human sacrifice, then it had to be stopped.
Damian moved in front of me, blocking my view of the ethers. "What's wrong, Anita?"
I looked at him. The only thing that kept me from losing it right then in front of the other vampires was Richard. He'd have never tolerated human sacrifice. Oh, he might have come down here once, then never returned, and not called the police, but he would never have returned year after year. He simply wouldn't have approved.
Maybe this was the way Verne's clan treated its dead. If it was anything else, I'd call in the state cops, but not tonight. Not unless they dragged out a screaming victim. If they did that, then all bets were off.
I shook my head. "What could possibly be wrong?" I said. I walked into the clearing, going for our own little group. It looked as if all three groups had the same amount of people. That was pretty typical of a meet between preternatural groups. You always negotiated your entourage.
Richard stood and came to meet me. I took his hand when he offered it, but strangely, right at that moment, I didn't care if he was wearing his shirt or not. I was angry at him. Angry at him for not preparing me for this place. Maybe he thought that nothing shocked me anymore, or maybe ... oh, hell, I didn't know, but he'd screwed up again.
So I let him hold my hand, and the touch of his flesh meant nothing. I was too confused and working too hard on holding my temper to be seduced right then.
"Take the jacket off, child; let's get a look at what you've got," a voice said.
I turned, slowly, to look at the owner of that voice.
The vampire had hair that I would have called golden if I hadn't had Asher's hair to compare it to. The hair was cut short, all over. His eyes could have been blue or grey in the uncertain light. The face had frozen before he'd ever hit twenty. Still young enough that his face was thin and smooth, as if he'd died before he'd been able to grow a decent beard.
He had the face of a child on a tall, gangly frame, as if he'd been awkward in life. He wasn't awkward as he stood. He came to his feet in a movement so smooth it looked like dancing. He stood, and the black-eyed vamp stood with him, coming to his side in a motion of long practice like they were two parts of a whole.
There was one human woman among the eight of them. She looked like pure Native American with waist-length hair that was as true black as my own. Hers was straight and thick. Her skin was a dark brown, face almost square, with large, brown eyes that had lashes so thick that even from a distance they were noticeable.
If she wore any makeup, I couldn't tell. She was one of those women that is striking rather than beautiful, too strong featured for conventional prettiness, but you wouldn't forget the face once you saw it.
"Come on, girl, strip off," that young face said. "We've seen most everything everybody else has. I will be mighty disappointed if I don't get to see your goodies, too."
The woman's face remained marvelously blank, but there was a tightness to those strong shoulders, a slight turn to that long line of neck. She didn't seem to be enjoying the show.
Richard's hand tightened around mine. I thought at first he was trying to warn me not to get mad, but one glance at his face, and it was the other way around. He was getting pissed. The night would go downhill pretty damn fast if I was supposed to be the calm one.
"Are you always this offensive, or am I getting a special treat?" I asked.
He laughed, but it was just a laugh, ordinary, human. He couldn't do the voice tricks that Jean-Claude and even Asher could do. Of course, Colin had other talents. I'd seen those other talents carved in Nathaniel's chest.
Asher stood. He'd started the evening wearing satin a pale icy blue only two shades darker than his white-blue eyes. The jacket had darker blue embroidery at the sleeves and lapels. It fastened with one of those cloth loops over a large, silk-covered button. The pants matched the jacket perfectly. He'd tried the jacket on with no shirt. His chest had been very visible. The scars had seemed harsher against the soft blue cloth. He'd stared at himself in the room's only mirror for a long time. He'd finally put a white silk shirt on under the jacket.
Now that white shirt was in tatters. It looked like gigantic claws had ripped at it. His chest showed very plainly through the ruined cloth. There was no blood. I'd only seen three vampires that could cause harm from a distance. One of them had been a member of their council. But none of them had had the delicacy of control to shred cloth so close to flesh and not draw blood. We were deep into the pissing contest. So far, Colin was winning.
