“Rip his throat out, Wolfie!” Genti screamed, tearing a chunk out of his enormous turkey leg, as if to demonstrate. He’d set his hat down in front of his red glass plate, revealing a bald head that shone with excited perspiration as he pounded the air with his free fist, shouting exultantly as the wolf sank its fangs into the bear’s shoulder.
Across the ring, Niall and Admes were talking so intensely it almost looked like a fight. Only the way Niall would occasionally touch Admes on the back of the hand to emphasize a point or Admes’s tendency to rub Niall’s shoulder hinted at civil conversation. Their human companion roared with approval as the bear shook the wolf off and followed with a belt to the head that sent a couple of teeth flying. The guard jumped up to gather a winning bet from Marcon, who shook his silver ponytail with admiration, then sat back down near the head of their table, which also had room for several more at its base. What was the deal with that? Or was it anything at all? Maybe I was just trying to avoid thinking about the senseless bloodshed going on almost within arm’s reach.
I tore my gaze from the fight cage and looked at Vayl, trying to make my face a mirror of his since I could feel calculating eyes on me, including Disa’s. “So this is the Sonrhain?” I asked between lips that tingled from pressing them together hard enough to clog my gag reflex.
“Indeed,” Vayl said, his voice devoid of expression. “And Disa has honored us with a place at her side.”
I pulled out my Lucille Robinson persona. She never wants to slam people against the wall and ask them how they like being the weak link in the food chain. “Seats with a view. How nice.” I flashed Disa Lucille’s brilliant smile, which has performed small miracles for me in the past.
She’d been smiling as well, one of those semi-vicious grins you get from people who are setting you up. Now she banged her teeth together so hard her fangs sank into her bottom lip. She licked off the resulting droplets of blood, swallowed whatever words she meant to say, and motioned to the chairs Vayl had pointed out earlier.
“Where’s the third?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
I nodded to Dave. “My guy here needs a place to sit.”
She looked at him as if he’d just appeared, maybe stepping out of one of her personal guard’s stomach folds. “I assumed he would stand,” she said, throwing a glance over her shoulder at the men who flanked the doorway like a couple of Buddha statues. “Well, I suppose we could—”
“Don’t bother,” said Dave shortly. “I see an open spot down there.” He nodded to the right end of the horseshoe and, before I could object, headed off alone. I nearly went after him. But I couldn’t think of a good excuse to drag him back. He’d have a great view of the whole room from there, so he could provide a proper defense should we need one. Plus, I’d look like such a coward chasing him down. As if I was afraid to sit with the big bad vamps all by my lonesome.
We settled by Disa, Vayl next to her with me to his right. Sibley sat to her left. Disa leaned forward so she could converse with me. “You are so fortunate to catch us during our celebration. So rarely does a new Deyrar rise that we have few excuses to fight the Weres.”
I nodded and faked a smile. “Ha. Well, Vayl and I are just lucky ducks today then, aren’t we?” I didn’t clench my teeth as a new round of roars filled the room, coming both from the ring and the audience surrounding it. But it was close. I ran my hand down the side of my pants, tracing the outline of the knife I kept sheathed inside my right pocket. A memento of an ancestor’s World War I days, it practically buzzed, tempting me to pull it. Take off Disa’s head and turn the we-got-a-new-leader bash into a wake.
To distract myself from my fantasies, I said, “Vayl has given you our hostess gift, I see.”
“Yes, Vayl’s kindness is even as I remembered it,” she said as she turned her eyes to his. In her cleavage hung a silver chain from which dangled a pendant in the shape of a Hydra—the Trust’s symbol. We’d meant to give it to Hamon, but Vayl had decided Disa wouldn’t mind its masculine overtones. And he’d been right. What she didn’t know was that my buddy Bergman had embedded a minuscule camera in the Hydra’s oversized chest, one that would send images to the three palm-sized computers he’d provided for Vayl, Dave, and me as part of the bundle. Additionally, he’d implanted tiny doodads he called remote sensors in each of the Hydra’s nine heads. While he wouldn’t thoroughly explain their function, he would say that if the villa had a decent security system (and he figured, as paranoid as Hamon had been when Vayl had known him, it had to) it would be the latest in high-tech, wireless, camera-rich packages. Which meant the sensors could easily detect and latch on to the Trust’s camera feeds, allowing us to download the images for our own use. It had more aggressive applications as well, which we might, or might not, put into use as the situation warranted.
As I watched Disa run her fingertips across the Hydra’s serpentine body, I reminded myself to erase anything related to this particular scene that might appear on my Monise, which was Bergman’s moniker for our minicomputers. If Vayl wanted a copy for posterity, let him record it.
He rested his arm across the back of my chair, not touching me, but making a statement all the same. “My avhar and I look forward to continued cooperation with you and your Trust, Disa.”
I couldn’t help it. The smug just leaped up in me like a fat wad of chewing gum demanding to be bubbled. Now I knew why Cole was addicted to the stuff. Since I couldn’t quite keep the smile from my face, I turned to my neighbor. “Lucille Robinson,” I said, introducing myself again. Normally I wouldn’t, but this group seemed overwhelmingly self-centered and unlikely to remember anyone else’s name for long.
“Charmed,” she said, sounding anything but. She didn’t bother reintroducing herself.
“You’re Meryl, right?” Indifferent nod. “Nice to meet you.” Not really. “Are you going to be part of the negotiating team?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Only the Vitem will do that. And, of course, Koren will go.” She jerked her head toward the makeover show candidate stomping her rotting canvas flats on the seat of her chair. Good God, she hadn’t even taken the time to change out of her blood-stained shirt!
“Why her?”
“She was Hamon’s avhar. That gives her the right to participate in events he arranged before his death.”
Hmm, so Eryx was permanently out of the picture. That made Koren something like a widow. What I would be if Vayl ever . . . Nope, don’t go there, Jaz. Vayl will never . . . You’ll probably go before he does. Yeah, that’s the most likely scenario. I glanced at him, taking in his stern profile, that long Roman nose, those luscious lips.
The last time they’d touched mine had been during our previous mission. A world-spinning kiss that still danced through my dreams, teasing me with its sugary deliciousness. A big part of me felt like a hound at the end of its chain, straining, slavering. Woof, woof, ya big hunka man flesh! But we’d left our relationship in limbo. Floating on a raft that couldn’t ground itself until he found a way to put the memories of his centuries-dead sons to some sort of rest.
He’d waited a long time for me to sort through my horrors. And it could be I still wasn’t done. You don’t love a man like Matt Stae and then watch him die without taking some major hits. Although I’d said my goodbyes, I still woke up some mornings pressing my hands against my chest because my heart ached so badly just to see him again. Five minutes. Sometimes that was my greatest wish. Just to talk to him, know he was okay and that he missed me too. See, the trail for Vayl and me had never been easy. He’d been patient with me. I figured I owed him that and more.