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“Yes, my Lord.”
There was another pause, and as Wrath pictured the elderly butler bending at the waist, he flared his nostrils and breathed in deep—and then he just… felt the energy rolling off the doggen.
Fritz hadn’t lied. Thank fuck. Not that the butler would have done so intentionally, but V had been adamant something had been on that property, and therefore things had to be objectively assessed.
“You may be excused,” Wrath murmured.
“Thank you, my Lord. May I bring anyone a libation? Or perhaps an hors d’oeuvre? I will be holding Last Meal until I am informed your meeting is over.”
“Thank you, Fritz. That is just perfect.”
* * *
Standing with Ad just inside the fancy study, Eddie watched the old guy in the tuxedo bend so far down, it was like he was inspecting the carpet for missing threads. Then the butler went to leave, his shuffling stride taking him to the door, his head angled to the floor as if he felt like he’d ruined everything, and not even a direct order from his master could make him stop rehashing it all.
The whole situation kind of made you feel sorry for him—hell, even the King over there, sitting on his throne like something out of a Mad Max movie, had clearly been choosing his words carefully around the guy.
And not because his royal grand pooh-bah’dness was worried about some kind of argument. More like he hated to see the butler cry, and if he pushed too hard, he was worried about a Kleenex event the likes of which even Bambi and Old Yeller put together couldn’t level up.
As the poor old guy reached the door, Eddie tilted to the side to open it for him—
An enormous blond mountain stepped in and blocked the exit, Eddie’s hand getting slapped back by a carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
The Brother’s headshake and bugged eyes were as clear a set of nonverbal cues as Eddie had ever seen, and as he flashed his palms in an I-don’t-get-it, the butler opened the door for himself and slipped out of the room.
The blond vampire then motioned around the assembled with an ornate silver spoon. “Jesus, you guys. You should have asked for a drink or two. Or at least let him bring a Brie or something.”
“And you could have asked for hot fudge,” the one who always smoked muttered from a love seat.
“Fair enough,” Rhage said as he leaned back against the door. Poking his ice cream with his spoon, he frowned. “Well, crap. Actually, now I want fudge.”
The big boy on the throne popped up those black wraparounds and rubbed his eyes like he had the business end of a clawhammer in his frontal lobe. “Enough with the food. So where are we?”
“We searched the grounds and the house,” the calm vampire directly to the right of the King said—Tohrment was his name. “There was nothing we could see.”
Vishous, the smoker, added, “And I checked the security feeds. Nothing in the drive or on the lawn. Fritz did what he said he did. He was in the kitchen, he looked out the window, like someone had called his name. He exited the back door, glanced across—and we arrived.”
“You’re sure nothing was caught on video?”
“I looked at everything twice.”
“But we all felt it,” someone said.
When there was a grumble of agreement, somebody else chimed in, “There was a presence, like a person, standing there.”
“Yet all we got was thin air,” a third concluded.
“What about you two.”
For an instant, Eddie didn’t realize that the angels in the room were being addressed. But when no one else spoke, he swung his gaze back to the throne—come on, that had to be a throne, otherwise George R. R. Martin was missing one of his living room chairs.
“What did you males sense?”
Eddie glanced at Ad. When the guy nodded a g’head, Eddie put his hands in his pockets, all nonthreatening, and took a step or two toward the center of the room. He wasn’t going to get much farther—the furniture was delicate, but there was a lot of it, and the bodies were huge, with more than a dozen squeezed in together.
It was like wading through a defensive line trying to have a tea party. But at least no one was trying to tackle him.
Taking his hands out of his pockets, he looked around at the vampires. They were from different bloodlines, he thought they called them. Colorings were various, but body types were pro-wrestler without any of the fat, and all the intelligence was clear.
And then there was the King. Wrath seemed bigger than the lot of them, and not just because of his size advantage.
Eddie thought of Lassiter. No wonder the rogue had come home to roost with these hard-ass guys.
And he wanted to get involved, too. He really did. It was just…
