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Ah. I’ll keep her from him. Anyone else she’s killed I should know about?
Rinaldo and Nero.
Of course.
I could almost sense her rolling her eyes at me through telepathy, but I ended the conversation. We’d talk about it later. She was wondering, and rightfully so, why I’d brought Cora, but leaving her at home hadn’t been an option.
The invited vampires learned there are working prototypes of the skins, that they allow you to sit and watch the sunrise, and to eat whatever foods you wish. Taking the suit off before the food works its way through your system and exits means you have some discomfort while your vampire body tries to get rid of the solid matter. We were also told that using humans who’d done evil left a taint on the skins most vampires found unpleasant, so using the skin of serial killers and others who deserved death wasn’t a good solution.
It was made clear that more testing needs to be done before these skins might be available commercially, but there was hope they might begin renting them out within the next five years.
“The slayers want to kill anyone associated with the project,” Leonardo told the assembled vampires. “It’s important they understand we are not utilizing the knowledge in the way the Celrau vampires are. Their interest is in creating a skin that can go on an animal, and then the animal can be trained as an assassin — a being with the thumbs, weapons, and training of a human, but without the constraints on killing that most humans have. Stopping us will not stop them. Our research took a major fork in the road. The Celrau researchers care not about undigested food, or about how long the magic affects the wearer after the suit is taken off.”
“If we’re five years out from even a rental, why tell so many of us now?” a vampire from Australia asked.
“Because the rumors are all over the place, and some are doing more harm than good. It’s important our people understand where we’re headed with the research. Right now, hunters are focused on the homeless or otherwise disenfranchised humans who are not on drugs and who are kindhearted, so the authorities don’t realize how many are missing. To be certain our accumulation stays off the radar, we’ve limited how many can be taken per capita in the cities. We’re considering, once it’s time to begin sales of the process, that anyone wanting a skin would be responsible for bringing us the live human they wish us to use in addition to whatever payment scale we decide upon.”
No one asked anything else, and Leonardo walked off the stage without another word.
When no one else stepped onto the stage, Bran motioned for me to stand with him, and the two of us took our leave.
No one else is willing to be seen as the face of this, Bran told me. Leonardo never goes out in public, and no one knows which country he’s living in, much less where his home is. The slayers aren’t going to reach him, and even if they did, he’d likely kill any sent to take him out. Death and Fire working together might pull it off, but I think there’s a better chance he’d kill them both.
Death and Fire – Ryan and Blaze. You have to know my connections to both of them.
And so does the rest of vampirekind, I imagine.
So you think the message was for me, and they just brought everyone else in so it didn’t seem as if they were getting the message to the slayers through Etta and myself?
The possibility has occurred to me.
No, you either know it to be true, or you know it to be untrue.
It was floated as an idea, but the importance of confirming certain rumors while denying others to our top leadership was also a strong arguing point. I do not know every council member’s reasoning for their vote to pull in the most powerful Master Vampires from around the globe.
Abbott and Gavin are not here.
Abbott was invited and is strong enough to decline the invitation. Gavin likely won’t be invited to anything similar while there’s a chance he could bring the Harlequin’s daughter with him. No one wants Lauren O’Shea on the property.
I felt Cora pulling on my power, and then there was nothing.
I tried telepathing her, then Etta, then Venom. Nothing. I tried Furio and was again met with silence. I took off at a run, vampire-fast, in the general direction I’d last sensed them.
* * * *
Cora
Etta stopped us a few times and aimed us into an alcove, or leading us down a trail that wound us around rather than heading us straight where we were going, and I figured she was doing it to avoid running into specific vampires.
However, a few twists and turns after we’d passed the path Etta told us led to a cave system, a vampire swooped down from the skies, grabbed Madeline without landing, and flew away with her in a blur before I had a chance to react. Etta pushed off after them, and I drew power in from Marco and sent it to Etta.
Marco gave me everything I pulled, but then he simply wasn’t there.
I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I grabbed Ranger before he could take off at a run, put claws on the end of my right pointer finger, stabbed myself, and held a bloody finger up to Venom’s mouth. He took my finger into his mouth and sucked as I pulled it out, and I immediately jabbed a hole in Ranger’s arm and offered it to Venom. Ranger and I already had a blood oath, but we needed the physical connection to Venom if this was to work.
We already had lesser connections and oaths in place between the vampires and wolves, and the little bit of blood added to it, all mixing inside Venom, let me create connections that formed the power of three. Once it was set, pulling Furio in through his coterie blood-bond, so the four of us were magnifying the power, seemed easy.
A vampire floated down from above and began slow-clapping. “Well played, young wolf. We’ve cut you off from your Master, but you have your own power, and have magnified it. It won’t be enough to save you, but it helps me understand how Griffin found himself in a position that cost him his life.”
