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Kendra looked to Marco, and Cora told him, “I know she can’t visit us for at least a year. Separation of powers and all of that.”
“It’s tradition,” Kendra agreed. “We’ll get through it, but I’m going to miss you, too.”
“It is the tradition,” Marco said, “but Homewood is a bit like the Russian Embassy in New York. You are your own territory, and vampire contracts can’t always say what happens there. If she couldn’t teleport in, it wouldn’t be possible, but she can reach you without touching my lands, so...” He shrugged.
Kendra laughed. “I think Kirsten has been a bad influence on all of us, finding little holes in our rules none of us would’ve dreamed of using before.” She gave Cora a wistful smile. “I will miss Girls’ Night Out with ya’ll, but I’m happy I’ll be able to visit Homewood.”
Chapter 6
Ryan
I’ve been inside the Chattanooga coterie house more times than I can count, but tonight it felt like a completely different building. The energy wasn’t the same.
The furniture in the common rooms was still in place, and yet it felt distinctly changed. It’s always this way during the transition period between the old and new Master of the City, and it always bothers me.
On this day, I was welcomed in through the front door and then walked upstairs to the office by a young eagle girl who had to be at least eighteen, but she could’ve easily passed for twelve. I’d look into her later, but I figured Marco was trying to get me to ask her age so I could be shown my original assumption was wrong, and she’s indeed old enough. I wasn’t falling for it on this day.
I knew everyone in the room — Marco, Etta, Moira, Josef, and Venom. I assumed this was his top four. Abbott had usually brought his top five people in for these meetings.
But this was all new. Before Abbott, the assigned Slayer had snuck in to observe, or had used electronic surveillance. We’d had to follow the flock out and talk to them during the day when their vampires weren’t around, to make sure they weren’t being mistreated. We’d trailed the vampires when they hunted at night, to be certain they weren’t killing humans. The Concilio makes sure supernaturals don’t show themselves to humans in a way they can’t make them forget, but doesn’t care how they treat their food.
I’d started out with an assigned territory, but within fifteen years, I’d been promoted to the elite class who moved from place to place, taking down the monsters the regular slayers can’t manage to kill. I was still given those assignments, but I’d given myself a territory, and my handlers hadn’t argued with me. My reasoning, in the beginning, had been to watch over the beings I thought might someday wrest power away from the Concilio, but once I’d become more familiar with this group, I no longer thought a mixed-species council was in the cards. At least not from this particular collection of supernaturals. The combined power in the city could almost certainly manage it, if they tired of having to follow the Concilio’s rules, but I wasn’t going to suggest they do so, and I didn’t believe any of them had so much as considered the possibility. If the Concilio had deemed Kirsten a danger who had to be killed, they absolutely would’ve done so, and for a while, I thought the Concilio was going to make that decision. Bran had stepped in during the biggest part of the crisis, however, and had managed to get her labeled, for legal purposes, a human. Later, once she was absolutely no longer human, she fell under the rules of Olympus, which removed her from the Concilio’s authority.
The Slayers originally protected humans from the monsters, but over time, our goals have expanded so we also protect the lesser shapeshifters — those who are traditionally prey, like the deer. Not all of us feel this way, but the sect I belong to does, which is why I felt comfortable joining them.
Abbott had also made changes in the way Slayers operate, because he’d invited me inside the coterie house to spend time with his flock. He’d also been honest with me when one of his vampires had gone outside his rules and enslaved a human. Abbott had freed the human, and had implanted memories of being in a car wreck and spending two days figuring out how to get out of the woods he was in, to explain his lost time. And then, the Master Vampire had allowed me to observe how the vampire was punished. When Kendra finished torturing him, I was told I could kill him if I felt it necessary.
I hadn’t killed him. Kendra’s torture had been worse than death, and I had no doubts this vampire would toe the line to keep from being at Kendra’s mercy again, because she clearly had none whatsoever.
Slayers don’t fear vampires. We have a healthy respect for them, but we don’t fear them. We’re smart enough to get help when a vampire is exponentially stronger than us, but we still don’t fear them.
Kendra, however, terrified me. Of everyone who’d be moving to Alaska, I was happiest to see her leave. Gavin is a sociopath who should probably be put down, but he’d never given me reason to do it, and I’d watched him carefully because I was so certain he needed to die. And yet, I wasn’t afraid of Gavin, or Abbott, or Josef.
Kendra is the second vampire to scare me, and the only one still alive, because I killed the other one.
But she wasn’t here today, thank goodness, and once we were past the niceties, Marco started the meeting by addressing me.
“Kendra tells me that Abbott invited you to visit with his flock.”
“He did. I made no agreements not to still come and go as I wished, outside of the invitations, and I won’t make any such agreements with you. However, I appreciated the fact he clearly had nothing to hide.”
“Some of the old flock will stay,” Josef said. “Most moved to Alaska, or will. Many of the college students transferred up there, but three are in their senior year at the local university, and several are in a post-graduate program and do not wish to leave.”
I looked to Venom. “It’s my hope you’ll let Andreas continue his schooling in New York.”
Venom shook his head, and his eyes reflected sadness. “If he only had a year, I think he’d stay and finish, but he says he can’t bear to be apart from me for two years.”
“He may not have a choice,” said Marco. “We still don’t know if the Amakhosi will allow him to stay longer than a few months.”
And I intended to have a talk with Nathan about that, because I believed the boy needed away from Venom. I’m supposed to only be an advocate for the humans and non-predatory shifters, but in recent years I’ve started stepping in for the less dominant monsters. I’ve thus far hidden this from my fellow Slayers, but my own moral code forces me to speak up for Andreas and other apex predators who find themselves in the position of the underdog.
“You’ve been working with Moira as your liaison, and I see no reason to change that,” Marco told me.
I shook my head. “I know Moira deals more with your humans than Etta, but I’d like for Etta to be my point of contact for a while.” I looked to Moira. “It’s been nice working with you, but with all the changes taking place, I’d like to have contact with one of the new people.”
“People?” Moira didn’t like being referred to as a person.
“Staff. Vampires. Crew. I apologize.”
