Frost Moon (10 page)

“And what precisely is the purpose of this?” I asked. “Why isn’t the collar enough protection? Can’t you just use your vampire telepathy to put out the word—”

“Vampire… telepathy?” Lord Delancaster said, puzzled.

“You can’t fool me,” I said. “She summoned you without ever leaving her chair.”

“I called him from the bedroom,” Doug said. “He has a cell phone.”

“To answer your question, my Lady Frost,” Lord Delancaster said, “While many of us in the vampire community desire to be a part of the normal human world, others do not. When you asked for our protection, you called on much older rituals. In the olden days, if you had asked for our protection, I would have drunk your blood, tasted your flesh and bathed in your aura, and then, if you were attacked, even if the body were well hidden, I and the other close members of my court could sense your blood in his veins and scent out whether he’d despoiled you.”

“So drink my blood and you’re a walking vampire crime lab,” I said. “Neat. Let’s call CBS and see if they’re interested in doing
CSI: Vampire Atlanta
.”

“I like that,” Lord Delancaster said. “That’s more appropriate than you know. With the finger stick, I no longer need to drink your blood, and with modern rape kits, we were already considering phasing out the tasting part of the ritual. But there was another purpose to the tasting; the fluids your body produces are charged with your life force and transmit the essence of your aura. A drop of blood from a wound won’t do it. If I cannot bite you or taste you, I will still need to feel your aura.”

“What’s that going to involve?” I asked, trying to keep contact with his tiger eyes and glancing away, nervous. Savannah came out from behind the wetbar with a small medical kit. She sat herself down on a barstool and patted for me to join her. As I did so, Lord Delancaster came to stand behind me, placing his hands gently on my shoulders. I looked sideways at them, swallowing: his fingernails were long and sharp, like claws.

Savannah pulled out a small orange piece of plastic and grabbed my hand. Actually she didn’t grab it, she just took it gently. But her grip was like steel, completely unyielding, and I bucked uselessly. “Hey, wait—”

“I don’t want to lick a slide,” Delancaster said.

“Doug, fetch us a spoon,” Savannah said, matter-of-fact, holding the orange thing over my finger and preparing to jab. I tried to twist away, but her grip tightened. “Hold still.”

“You’re hurting me,” I said. “And not the right, it’s my tattooing hand.”

“My Lady Savannah,” Lord Delancaster breathed, voice so close to my ear that I felt my heart flutter. “Be nice.”

Savannah glared at me, then her eyes flicked aside to Lord Delancaster. Finally she let go my hand. “I’m sorry. But if you want our protection we do need to do this.”

Lord Delancaster’s breath was warm and alive in my ear, and I could feel his power prickling over my skin. “O-okay,” I said, holding out my left hand.

Savannah took it, pricked my forefinger quickly, and squeezed slightly. A dark, red drop of blood welled up, and her lips parted with a small sigh like a little orgasm. Mesmerized, she took the spoon from Doug like a sleepwalker, squeezing my finger gently to release the flow of blood. She looked up at me, squirming on the seat, eyes filled with as much lust for my blood as she had ever had for my naked body—and then Lord Delancaster’s lips brushed my throat.

“I will not break the skin,” he said, breath spreading across my neck, deep voice thrilling through me down to my very toes. “I promise.”

“O-okay,” I repeated dreamily, leaning back against his hard body, slipping my thumb into the buckle of my belt, letting my fingers play over the buttons of my pants as Savannah drained more blood into the spoon. Now I wished I had taken her up on her offer to strip; this was so intimate, so erotic that all my clothing, my armor seemed… inappropriate.

His lips parted, and I felt the side of his fangs pressed against my jugular, just above the collar. My blood pounded in my ears, thrummed though my neck, and I felt a warm, distant drumbeat echoing across the magical ink woven through my tattoos—Lord Delancaster’s heart. The drumbeat grew louder and louder, and I squirmed on the seat, sinking back against him, curling my toes. A new drumbeat joined the jungle rhythm, one I instinctively recognized as Savannah’s; and I opened my eyes to see Savannah’s slender extended arm, and Lord Delancaster draw his lips aside from my neck to drink the blood from her proffered spoon.

The silvery spoon drew back from his lips, and Delancaster closed his eyes in bliss. Apparently chocolate ice cream had nothing on blood. Then Delancaster leaned away. “I have her pulse,” he said. “Yes, I have it.”

I looked down sharply, clearing my head. Savannah, looking as sad as a cat whose food bowl had been swiped away, held a white cotton ball over my finger, and was unsuccessfully trying to unwrap a Band-Aid with her other hand. “Doug, a hand here.”

“Whoa,” I said. My forehead was feverish, and I felt sweaty.

“I have tasted your aura, drunk your blood, felt the beat of your heart,” Lord Delancaster said, stepping back to the center of the room. “If any vampire I meet has drunk your blood, or taken your life, I will know it. In honesty, I will very likely know if they were to spoil you. I will make this known that you have the protection of the House of Saffron, but the ban of the Lord of Georgia as well.”

“Swell,” I said, a bit woozy. I shook my head, and the room swam. “Swell.”

“Before I return to my Halloween party,” Lord Delancaster said, stepping back to retrieve his cane, “is there anything else you want to protect?”

“Isn’t my blood, my life and my sex enough?” I asked. I took a deep breath, tried to get a grip on myself. He hadn’t even broken the skin, and I’d damn near had an orgasm—no
wonder
mortals got so easily seduced by vampires. “Seems, ah, seems pretty comprehensive—”

“What if they decided to take their anger out on one of your friends?” he said, and I swallowed, pulling at the collar. “Or did something as childish as trashing your car? I’m sorry, but immature vampires can be petty… and creative. We do need to be specific.”

“A young witch recommended this to me,” I said. The sudden surge of adrenaline was doing a better job of clearing my head than my own efforts had. “Skye ‘Jinx’ Anderson. And I drive a POS Vespa, but I don’t want that trashed either.”

“I don’t know all modern car makes,” he said. “Is POS the model number or—”

“Piece of Shit,” I said, “and it’s a scooter, license plate MAGTAT.”

“I saw it,” he said, closing his eyes briefly, as if recalling and re-memorizing every detail. “Is there anything else you’d like to protect?”

Abruptly I flashed on Richard Sumners—he’d insured his hands for a million dollars. What the hell? It couldn’t hurt. “Just my hands. I’m a tattoo artist.”

“Your life, blood, and sex; your friend, scooter, and hands,” he said, reciting the odd list in complete seriousness. “I think that is as extensive, and as specific, as we can make the ban; but it will have to do.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He took my hand, raised it, and kissed it chastely. “Remember, this protection only lasts in the inner city. Outside the Perimeter, the vampires can no longer protect you. So please, do not forget: if you travel outside the circle of I-285, you should stick to the safe places that humans instinctively gather in—or else you will run into creatures far more dangerous than either vampires or werewolves.”

My lip pursed up. “Thank you, Lord Delancaster.”

I still couldn’t wrap my head around the
vampires
being Atlanta’s force of supernatural law and order.

13. THE WEREHOUSE

The werehouse stood at the edge of the Chattahoochee, a bombed-out vestige of ironworks damaged beyond hope of repair on the river’s slimy banks. The entrance was an unlikely path struggling down an embankment of a bridge crossing, a trail so trampled that the earth opened up in a jagged wound of red clay. Trash was piled everywhere, cigarette butts, beer bottles, ants swarming over mustard packets spilling out of a discarded Chick-fil-A bag. I gagged. I couldn’t stand the smell. I couldn’t imagine how the weres did either.

No doubt it was a steal on the rent.

The moon was swelling close to whole—what did that make it? New?
Gibbous?
—and I heard a soft thump as the vamp guard I’d been told to expect jumped down behind me.

“Ah-ah-ah,” a soft, velvety voice said, almost near enough to taste. You could almost hear him wagging his finger. “You don’t want to go down that path at this hour, mortal.”

I turned, and the vampire cringed at the blaze of my cross.

“Jeez!” he said, half choking on the word.

“Sorry,” I said, slipping the cross back under my shirt. I squared off with the vampire, hands jammed into the buttery leather of my trench vest, letting my tattoos gleam in the silver of the streetlight. “You must be Insomnia?” I said, hoping I got his name right.

I was wrong.

The little vampire punk quit cringing and glared, drawing himself to his full height, pale, made-up face falling as he realized I still towered a half a head over him, even counting his ridiculous teased hair that made him look like an albino member of the Flock of Seagulls. His face fell even further as he realized I was not the least bit intimidated.

How could I be? A vampire in makeup, designed to make him look more like a vampire?
Total poseur.
He looked like he shopped at Hot Topic—not that I don’t—and had even gotten mud on the hems of his bondage pants, the ones with the cheap plastic handcuffs and glittering chains that are supposed to look all Goth and edgy. And
this
was supposed to be a
guard?

“I,” he said pretentiously, fake accent and all, “am the Vampire Transomnia.”

“Dakota Frost,” I replied, and the rest of him deflated. “I was sent by Jinx to see the Marquis, and I travel under the protection of the Lady Saffron, Queen of Little Five Points.” I tugged at the metal collar once or twice to make sure he saw it.

The little vampire glowered at me—ok, perhaps not little, most likely average height for a guy—and I hopped down from the slight ridge to land in the clearing next to him, hoping that reducing the height difference would set him at ease. It didn’t help. The proximity apparently made me even more threatening. His lips parted in a slow sigh, tips of his canines pointed past human, eyes glinting in his pale pudgy face like black olives shoved into the surface of a puff pastry.

“Saffron
protects you?” he said, hot breath curling on the air, a dull red glow building in his eyes. I suddenly realized I was within arms’ reach of a vampire—a scrawny, poseur, threatened, insulting vampire who wanted a pissing match. “You could have done better than to ally yourself with that… maid.”

His lip curled further, and the bit of dried blood at the root of his fangs erased any illusions as to whether he’d been the one to eat the fast food from the sack tossed on the ground. Christ, he’d fed, not minutes ago, and not from the drive-thru window. He’d been sloppy about it. I hoped to God it had been a rat, but…

I swallowed and slowly took my hands out of my pockets— empty. Showing him I wasn’t carrying a stake or something.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I said. “I live in her district.”

“No, you
had
a choice,” he said, his lip twisting up into a mocking sneer. “Not to come here. Now that you have… you have to pay the toll.”

I raised my hands. “I’ll use a different entrance—”

“Too late,” he said, grin widening, both fangs now exposed. “You’re already under the bridge, and
I’m
the troll.”

Shit, so much for Saffron’s
protection.
“Hey, I just want to speak to the Marquis,” I said, raising my hands higher. “And I’m glad to go through you to do it.”

I said it so placatingly that he actually blinked as he processed it. In that split second I flipped my hands, and when his lids opened he got an eyeful of the crosses, stars and sickles upon each knuckle. They blazed with power, resonating with the vampire’s own projected aura of hostility, and when he flinched, my right fist popped out and landed the holy symbols on his face in a twisting one-inch punch.

All the mana stored in my tattoos and all the hate feeding back through the holy symbols released with a flash and a solid, satisfying BANG, and the vampire flew back into the mud and slid halfway down the riverbank.

“I protect Saffron as much as she protects me,” I said, strolling over to where the vampire lay, planting my fist in my other hand to let the charms charge up against the yin-yang in my palm. “Now would you, pretty please with sugar on it, take me to see the Marquis?”

The vampire was blinking, twitching, and I started to worry I’d hit him too hard. Then his eyes focused on me, and I felt the holy symbols on my knuckles start to tingle in a hot wave of hate. I settled back, feeling adrenaline flood me. He wasn’t supposed to get back up—what the hell was I going to do if he rushed me with vampire speed? “You’re dead,” he snarled, fangs fully exposed. “You are so
dead,
bitch!”

He reached toward a bush to pull himself back up—but before he could, the bush put out a strong male hand to steady the vampire. “Enough, Trans,” said a deep voice, and the bush unfolded, branches morphing into the proud antlers of a deer’s head that flowed into the shoulders of a ruddy Native American warrior—a werestag, in half-human form.

“Homina,” I breathed.

“Lord Buckhead,” Transomnia stammered. “I—I didn’t see you—”

“You were not meant to,” the werestag said. “I was watching your watching.”

Lord Buckhead carried a staff topped with the skull and antlers of a deer, adorned with eagle’s feathers, but beyond that wore only a loincloth, buckskins, and an ornately woven chestpiece of beads bumping against his broad chest. His bare feet were almost as ruddy as the clay, but left only the slightest impressions as he effortlessly helped the smaller man up the bank and set him down beside me. I paid the vampire no mind. The werestag was almost seven feet tall— without the antlers—and despite the oddly solemn expression of his deer’s head, there was a lively, reactive intelligence behind his eyes that I never saw in any beast.