Apparently taken by surprise, Carlos was flung backward about two feet and came to a hard stop against another table, knocking it sideways with a crash. “Oh, very nicely done, schoolboy,” he spat, regaining his balance and running his fingers down the crooked length of his broken nose. The cartilage crackled and popped as he moved it back into place.
Cameron’s punk-short hair hadn’t been mussed, but fury disarranged his features into an unrecognizable mask. “No one touches my people,” he hissed back.
“Ah, ‘your people,’ ” Carlos repeated in a sardonic tone. “So it comes out. You are usurping the position of your patron.”
“I wouldn’t have to if you’d do it yourself! You’re the most powerful of us all. You could hold this city in the palm of your hand in your spare time!”
Carlos moved closer, his chin down so his black stare bored out from the shadow beneath his brow. His aura flushed a vibrant red among the death black, and the sound in the grid became a banshee wail. “I am bound to Edward. He commands my fealty so long as he is on this earth.”
“How is it disloyal to preserve what is his until he can reclaim it? How is that against your oath?” Cameron shot back. He made no allusion to the real reason for the uneasy centuries of detente; neither Carlos nor Edward had ever wanted to expose that twisted betrayal.
Carlos raised his head in a rush and looked down his nose at the younger vampire. Cold seemed to roll off him, damping everything in a sudden pall. “The depth of your ignorance astounds me. I wash my hands of you. And I’ll leave you to the mercy of ‘your people.’ ” He turned away.
Cameron was not going to let it go. He reached out and yanked the bigger man back around. “You’re a coward and you call it loyalty. You’ll challenge me and lecture me, but you won’t stop me.” Cameron, less than a full step away, spit in the other vampire’s face.
Rage ignited around Carlos, flushing the Grey a glittering scarlet that chimed and shrieked all the louder. His voice ground out between his teeth, ice-cold and implacable. “I will stop you, treacherous brat. I’ll show you what it is to be obedient, to bow your head and bend your knee while you seethe with hate. Bound by the flesh of your flesh and the blood of your creation, you will know what torment is.” He snatched Sarah to his chest and stepped back in one impossibly quick motion.
Cameron froze. The necromancer held a small, glittering knife to the young woman’s throat, flicking it against the edge of her vein as she trembled, wide-eyed, in his grip.
Gwen cried out as blood flowed from between Carlos’s fingers, “No! Sarah!”
Carlos muttered in quick liquid syllables as the blood hit the floor and rang on the Grey like a giant bronze bell. Sarah rolled up her eyes and went limp as the vibration rippled through the room. I knew she was acting, but even I thought it looked real. Carlos let her fall, his right hand coming away from her neck smeared red. He drew on the air with her blood, whispering quickly and making a hard gesture that flicked the precious fluid toward her brother’s face.
Cameron snatched the blood from the air between them and leapt forward, pressing his bloody hand over Carlos’s face and taking up the weird language of the false spell in a rapid shout. The last word dulled the sound in the room as if someone had closed a sealed door and sucked out the air. It was impressive, even though the weight of it in the Grey was next to nothing. Only the breathless, sinking feeling was reaclass="underline" The rest was magical sham and fireworks, and I was one of only three people in the room who could tell the difference. Even the asetem would only feel the ripple. Carlos flinched as if Cameron had struck him much harder but kept to his feet.
Gwen scrambled over the table to scoop Sarah off the floor as Cameron knelt down beside her. He stroked his bloody hand over the dripping wound on her neck. Then he turned his head away. “Gwen, you do it. I—I can’t. She’s my sister.”
Gwen seemed to coil around her, hiding what she did as she bent her head down over the young woman’s neck.
The Grey sounded hollow, waiting, whining like a clockwork thing wound too tight.
Carlos had not moved except to close his eyes. The fallen set of his shoulders and the darkness around him looked like despair. The bloody handprint on his face faded as if his skin drank it in.
Cameron stood up and looked at him, his face full of pity and sorrow more than anger. “Did you think I didn’t learn anything from you? You taught me that blood binding. You taught me how to break it and how to avoid it as well. Now you’re bound to me, by your own words. And by that blood I was born with. And since she’s not dead, you’re also bound to Sarah. I know you know all this, but I’m saying it so all of our kind here know it, too. You’re mine.” Actually, most vampires wouldn’t know a binding until it bit them. But the show wasn’t for them: It was for the Pharaohn’s spies. Cam glanced side to side as if a little nervous about what he was doing. “I think it might be wise for you to kneel.”
Carlos opened his eyes, his face devoid of expression. He spoke without emotion or force, in the same sort of floating emptiness I had experienced the night before. “I will not.”
The strange golden sparks welled again in the palms of Cameron’s hands as he brought them up, open, to chest height. “Don’t make me force you, sensei.”
It was a strange word to choose, freighted with respect and tradition, and it reminded me that Cameron had been studying Japanese when he was still an ordinary college student. An age of knowledge had passed since then, and though he didn’t look much different, here was ample evidence that everything had changed. He leaned closer, resting his clean hand on Carlos’s shoulder, and whispered something into the bigger man’s ear. Then he took a step back.
He didn’t quite let his hands relax, keeping them poised just a bit in front of his body, but he didn’t do anything. He just waited, his brow shadowed with anxiety.
Nothing stirred. A roomful of creatures who don’t breathe make an unsettling silence.
Sarah let out a quiet little moan. The sound seemed to break Carlos, and he sank onto his knees, letting his head fall forward. He shuddered as he settled all the way to the floor, putting out his open hands, palm up, on his thighs. The bloodstained penknife clattered onto the marble tiles, spinning a scarlet smear. “I submit.”
The high-tension whine of the grid wound down, and the harsh carmine of the Grey drained back to a few splashes of uncomfortably bright color in the glaring silver mist of the world. Cameron relaxed and an ordinary shuffling and rustling of impatient bodies warmed the silence.
“Will you support me and defend me, aid me and advise me, with your best will?” Cameron asked. It had the feeling of something formal and old that had been translated poorly.
Carlos raised his head, looking at Cameron a little sideways with a sarcastic expression. “Yes, damn it all. Can we get this over with? I am your man, your sworn supporter, by blood bound. Is that good enough?”
Cameron blinked. “Um . . . yeah. I guess that’ll do.”
“May I stand up, now . . . my lord?” The snark was thick enough to gag on. “And if you tell me to ‘rise,’ ” he added in an undertone, “I may have to ‘advise’ you to do otherwise in future.”
Cameron rolled his eyes. “Oh, jeez, just get up.”
A ripple of amusement spread through the room and gave cover to my relieved sigh. I’d had no idea if this sketchy plan would work, but even if they didn’t buy it completely, none of the vampires could argue that Carlos hadn’t sworn to support Cameron. That alone would give anyone other than the Pharaohn pause, and Cameron’s loyalty and reasonable treatment of his teacher would give them hope for the same themselves. Benevolent dictators are much harder to depose.