There was gold-veined white marble everywhere, on floors, pillars, walls, and statues, gilt work on the ceiling moldings and floorboards, and gold candles burning in white and gold candle holders, the flames flickering. On the ground floor, there was a large round table to my right—white, of course—centered with a scarlet vase three feet tall and filled with white, gold, and scarlet roses. A sitting area was across from it, the furniture upholstered in white leather and tone-on-tone cloth, set with scarlet pillows and resting on a scarlet rug. White silk draperies cascaded along the windows, tied back with scarlet tassels. A scarlet and gold family crest—a lion and something geometric—on white silk took up one wall.
There were arched openings in the marble walls, and through one was a dining room with an ebony table and chairs that could easily seat forty. The table was covered with a white linen cloth and set with white-and-gold place settings. Through another was a traditional living room, all the furniture upholstered in white leather. Another room sported a full-sized white concert grand piano. Through a fourth opening came the aroma of old books, and I wondered if they had all been re-covered in white bindings or wrapped in white paper, and a small smile lifted my lips. It was overdone and tasteless, and the blood-splattered-on-drained-flesh image of the color scheme could not have been by accident.
“You like my home?”
I lifted my head, saw Big H standing one floor above me, and said, “It’s awesome.” But my mind was thinking, Awesomely gaudy. I didn’t say it, of course. He was wearing a red silk dressing gown that matched the scarlet of the décor, with white silk jammies beneath. On his feet were white calf-skin slippers that I could see when he leaned over the balustrade, hands on the banister, his ugly necklace dangling away from his chest, the chain swinging negligently.
“You brought the antidote to the Sanguine pestis?”
My mind stalled out and then I put it together. “The cure for the vamp plague. Yes.” I patted my go-bag. “All I need are the vamp . . . ires.” I added the second syllable as an afterthought, out of politeness. I mean, I was in his home. No need to be insulting without cause. “And a table and chair.”
From the doorways on the second level, vamps poured out and down the stairs, gathering behind H, all looking eager and smelling sickly, all dressed in casual evening wear and not jammies, thank goodness. Big H walked down the stairs, leading the way into the dining room, and I counted twenty-two vamps. Their sickly sweet stench overpowered the scent of roses and leather. I glanced at Eli, but he was otherwise engaged, keeping an eye on everything else. It was good to know my back was covered.
I entered the dining room and saw that every vamp was sitting at the table, with H at the far end. The chair there was shaped like his peacock chair at the warehouse, but made of black wood, probably something that was now extinct, and he had one elbow on the chair arm and the other on the table top, his sleeve rolled up.
None of the others was sitting in that position, so I strode down the table to him and set my medical kit on the surface. When I opened it, I could feel most of the vamps straining to see, so I laid everything out on the pristine white tablecloth. “I have sterile needles and syringes, several bottles of the antibodies, gauze pads, and alcohol pads.” When the kit was empty I placed the container on the floor and said, “This is really easy. I just roll up your sleeve, draw up the antibody fluid in the syringe, and give you a shot into your arm muscle. Because your hearts beat so seldom and your blood flows so slowly, it will take a day or two to totally flow through your tissues. But because you don’t have human kidneys and digestive functions and processes, you need only one dose. Your bodies don’t filter out the drug, so it stays at a high concentration for long enough to kill the disease. The only side effect is a total lack of energy, requiring most vampires to stay in their lairs for a while with their blood-servants, where they feel safe. Oh. And everyone complained of a bitter taste in their mouths.”
“All who feel the need to rest may do so,” H said, making it a proclamation to his people. “We will not convene here again until all are well.” The vamps all nodded once, as if taking an order. “How long for this bitter taste?” Big H asked me. “It has been many years since I tasted bitter.”
“According to Leo’s people, the shortest time for the energy loss and taste was four days, for the young ones. The longest time for the oldest-lived was sixteen days.”
“Proceed,” Big H said.
I cleaned the bottle top, opened and inserted a sterile needle, drew up one dose of the drug into a three-millimeter syringe, and changed needles, leaving one needle in the bottle and putting a fresh one on the syringe. I hoped I was doing this right. I’d seen it done in my emergency medical class, but I’d never actually given a shot. To refresh my memory, I’d watched a video online to get the basics down, but I had no idea if the videographer knew what she was doing. I cleaned Big H’s upper arm and popped the needle into the muscle. Carefully, I pressed the plunger down and let the clear liquid enter Big H’s arm. Then I pressed a piece of gauze on it and said, “If it doesn’t stop bleeding, have a healthy vampire scion spit on it to close it.”
Big H’s brow crinkled in surprise, and his eyebrows would have risen had he possessed any.
“Yeah. I know. Gross, right?” I said. Then I smiled brightly down the table. “Next?”
• • •
By five fifty a.m., the vamps were all dosed up and had departed or headed to the MOC’s guest sleeping quarters, leaving me with Eli and Big H. The MOC still occupied the flared-out chair and lounged back in it, one foot up on his chair seat, one elbow resting on his knee, and a glass of red wine before him, which he turned around and around on the linen cloth. His other hand swung the ugly necklace in the air, mesmerizing as a hypnotist. He hadn’t moved from that position since I started dosing his scions. Something about his posture reminded me of a young Hugh Hefner. It had to be the silk jammies and the décor.
A silence settled on the room as I packed up my waste paper from all the sterile needles and syringes, and if Eli hadn’t been there, still watching my back, I’d have been nervous with the vamp’s intense gaze. It was almost as if he were trying out his compulsion on me or something, and it gave me the heebie-jeebies. I snapped closed the lid to the medical go-bag, slung the strap over my back, and opened my mouth to say good-bye. The MOC beat me to it.
“You do scent of Leo, but only vaguely, as if you have not drunk from him in a long time. Longer than most Enforcers.”
“It’s been a while,” I hedged. “I’m the part-timer, remember.”
“Mmmm. How many of my enemies and my people have you dispatched since your arrival?”
The topic switch took a moment to follow, but Bruiser had called Clark about Silandre, so this must be my comeuppance. “Four. A woman who followed us from your meeting and attacked us in the woods. Silandre had gone over to the dark side and was drinking humans to death. We killed three of her scions. Silandre and the others got away or healed from silver shot and scuttled off like insects. I sent pictures to your scion with a request for payment.”
“I did not authorize Silandre or her scions.”
“Yeah. About that. Leo approved her beheading, and I expect to be paid as per our revised contract,” I said, thanking my lucky stars that the Younger brothers had amended my boilerplate. “Got it?” I let a bit of Beast shine through my eyes, just in case he was thinking about paying me only for vamps listed.