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The commotion in the underground palace reached them long before they rounded the last turn, and none of it involved music or merriment. Light seeped beneath a heavy fabric which covered a narrow exit. Isao drew his sword and sliced a massive gash into the obstruction, which turned out to be one of the heavy decorative tapestries lining the central hallway. One by one, they squeezed out, eyes watering in the chandelier lights. Several more gray corpses sprawled in the hall.
As he found his own feet again, Jackson looked like a man who wasn’t sure he had won his argument with death. His fierce emotional control had finally shattered. The smell of terror still clung to him and even intensified now that he was back where he had spent an entire night fighting for his life. It wasn’t a battle he would win again. One whiff and the denizens of the underground palace would tear him to pieces.
Dominique grabbed him by the arm. “Allow me a suggestion before you lose the rest of your mind?”
A dazed nod.
He pitched his voice toward compulsion. “You are safe with us. Whatever you see or hear or feel, you will be safe. Do you understand?”
With closed eyes, Jackson accepted the “suggestion” and let it work on him. He relaxed, nodded again, and scrubbed his blood-smeared face with both hands. “Thanks.”
When Dominique released him, Jackson held out a hand to Makoto. She obliged by returning his sword. It still reeked of Esteban’s blood, and Dominique thought Jackson might be safer soaked in fear after all.
54
No Equal
Movingincompletesilence,Dominique took the lead toward the bedlam echoing from the audience chamber. Together, he and his mostly blood-drinker entourage marched through the entrance arches and stopped to take in the spectacle.
Gray bodies lay scattered where they had dropped, several dozen of them, men and women in court finery with surprise frozen on their ghoulish faces. The remaining blood-drinkers—well over a hundred—milled among the corpses, their eyes filled with disbelief, questions falling from their lips. How could this be? What did it mean? Who would dare?
Some were silent as they hunched over their fallen friends and lovers, their heads hanging in shock and despair.
Dominique cast a sidelong glance at Jackson, who maintained a white-knuckled grip on the weapon that had wrought this carnage. His jaw muscles twitched, but his mind remained free of fear, if not doubt.
Adilla had his back turned to them as he walked toward the gilded throne. His two shadows trailed behind him like extensions of his deep-purple robes. One of these, Bhavanur, was beside himself. “This is anoutrage. An affront to you and your glory that cannot go unanswered,” he hissed. Markandeya stayed farther back, keeping his own council.
Rage vibrated in Adilla’s low voice. “It will not go unanswered. Be assured of that.”
“I can take a group to the surface and hunt them down. They won’t get far.”
Adilla settled onto his throne and glared at the young-looking man, who appeared about as capable of combat as a butterfly.
Bhavanur shrank back with a demure, “If you wish it, my lord.”
Dominique inhaled deeply, drinking in the blood and ash and death that perfumed the air, and let it out on a long, quiet exhale. A few of the blood-drinkers closest to the entrance, who weren’t completely focused on a fallen comrade or their lord, finally took notice of him.
Awareness rippled through the court on a wave of gasps and hisses. A few, uncertain, retreated to their lord’s side, clustering around the dais. Most, however, gathered themselves, preparing to spring at the intruders and destroy them at Adilla’s most subtle command.
The air throbbed with animosity.
While the others held their weapons at the ready, Dominique kept his blades in their scabbards. All the fighters, security guards, and spies had fallen with their sire. Those who survived carried no weapons beyond their formidable supernatural abilities. Yet, their sheer numbers gave them reckless courage. Most hovered on the brink of releasing their beasts.
Isao’s silent warning prickled in Dominique’s mind, but he brushed it off. These blood-drinkers were angry and afraid, and they needed to see that the Lord of Night had no quarrel with them—not unless they defied him directly.
Far more dangerous was their master.
Adilla pinned Dominique with obsidian eyes, which consumed his increasingly skeletal, stark white face. Immortal rage incarnate. He rose from his throne to tower over them all, his voice a hoarse rustle. “Youdareto show yourself in my presence?”
Dominique took several slow steps into the room and spoke with velvet menace. “You dare to defy me? You dare to threaten my family?”
Intense hissing filled the hall.
“Yourfamily? The mortals you cannot live without, like some depraved newborn moping after his past life?” Spittle flew from Adilla’s lips. “They arenothing.Nothingbeside my immortal glory.Nothingcompared to a single immortal life.Let alone seventy-three!” he finished with a roar that reverberated from the walls. His rage caught in the crowd like fire in kindling. Several shrieked as they darted closer.
Dominique maintained his cavalier quiet and waited for the uproar to settle a bit. Then he graced Adilla with a condescending smile. “As I told you, you will be mine.”
“You pretentious babe,” Adilla snarled. “You and this band of vermin you dragged into your lunacy have no hope against my superior strength.”
