Heir to the Coven (17 page)

“That is absurd!” Rainor said.

“Yet it is legal. Choose.”

Kain was the oldest out of all of us at seventeen. Rebecca and Francis were fifteen, and Nathan was the same age as me at fourteen. Kain would have been my choice since he had a level head and was the biggest person in the room. But I heard Rainor say, “Natasha.”

“The lap dog?” Gideon asked. “Very well.”

I took a seat at the table with Gideon and waited for the food to be served. Glancing down at the table, I noticed the pieces of silverware I had not paid much attention to were all spoons. It was on the tip of my tongue to question it, when I remembered the rules Rainor had explained to us before we left the house. We could not bring any weapons with us, but anything we were given once we went inside was fair game. They had cleverly not given me anything sharp like a knife or a fork. Until the first course came out, Gideon and I had a staring contest with the ambassador as a silent spectator. I had passed whole meals in silence since to the Elders I was a child and children did not speak until spoken too. I was not going to be unnerved by silence now. Although I was uncertain how I was going to manage a salad with only a spoon.

The first course was caviar, a staple for the humans in Lucius’ house. Gideon seemed disappointed I did not gag at the taste. I smiled and finished my portion. We were three courses in before he began to lay out the terms for turning our city over to him. Instead of listening to what he was blathering about, my attention was on a curious thing. The servers were serving the ambassador first. They should have been serving Gideon first since he was their leader. In fact, they were being much more attentive to the ambassador on the whole. His glass was never half empty as mine was and when wine was accidentally sloshed onto his plate, the pourer bowed and scraped as if the ambassador might have him whipped to death, which an ambassador would never do at a meeting such as this.

Rainor had waited until Gideon was busy talking to enact his plan, which had required Kain to be free from the political front to fight. He gave Kain the signal to attack and Kain struck at one of the men holding Rainor so that our leader could break free. The other novices joined in the fray with Gideon’s people, but I was too focused on my situation to pay attention to what else was going on. Those at a negotiation table were not allowed to leave it until talks were over or the other side automatically won. Gideon had planned this well, but not flawlessly.

I looked at the ambassador and asked, “May I suggest a simpler solution to this situation?”

“I will hear it.”

“If I can kill the opposing leader can we end this now with our city as it is?”

The ambassador laughed. “Sweetheart if you can kill the leader of this coven you can have anything you want.”

“We have a deal?”

“Yes.”

I grinned at him and as fast as I had lunged at Vivian, I had my entrée spoon pinning one of the ambassador’s hands to the table and my dessert spoon embedded in his forehead. The room fell silent. Gideon was staring at me as if I had two heads.

“Natasha,” Rainor said, “what have you done? You killed the ambassador.”

“No. I killed their leader. Didn’t I?” I fixed my gaze on “Gideon”.

The unnamed half-caste swallowed hard. “Yes you did.”

“Then here are my terms, which your leader agreed to when he said if I killed him I could have whatever I wanted. I want my coven leader to have what he is about to request or I will see that you join the real Gideon on the floor.”

Rainor took my seat at the table to set out some excruciating terms while I went to see to my traveling companions. Francis was dead and Nathan had a broken arm from where he had been thrown against the wall. He was not a rapid healer so he was going to have to suffer with it for a week or two. Kain had a cut healing on his face and Rebecca was unharmed because she had wound up hiding under a table. They all wanted to know how I knew the ambassador was really Gideon.

“I pay attention to things. The servers were treating him better than the man who was supposed to be their leader. I merely sat back, played along and waited for the opportune time.”

“You are a devious little one,” Kain said. “Sitting there calm as you please, eating steak with a spoon, all the while setting a trap.”

Three things came out of that day for me. One was Kain’s nickname for me, Little One. The second was a saying that no one really used much anymore. Whenever there was a mission where we appeared to do nothing or to be going down the wrong path to set someone up, we called it “using a spoon,” but with transfers and deaths in the coven, the saying died away because those who had seen it first hand or heard about it when we returned home were gone expect for Rainor and Kain. The third thing I got out of that day was the fearful respect of everyone in that house and they all left me alone.

Here I was, alone again.

Chapter 17

I had been waiting on the corner of Main and Hyacinth for ten minutes when Marcus appeared at my side, leaning against the signpost. Apparently he was my hunting partner for the night. I think he was disappointed I did not jump.

“What’s with the leather?” Marcus asked. “You wore it to meet with Anton that first night too.”

I had not noticed him that night, but then I was focused on butting heads with Anton at the time. “What’s with the leaning? Last time I saw you at Anton’s house you were leaning in the hall after you used me to set up that brat.”

“Still haven’t forgiven me for that huh?” He grinned.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

“Forgive and forget.”

“At your age you should know that theory could get you killed quickly. I’m a baby compared to you and even I know that.”

“You’ve been around long enough to have a reputation. Our paths haven’t crossed but I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I know, I know. I irritate people to amuse myself.”

“I was not talking about Anton. I heard about you long before I stepped foot in this town.”

“Is that so?”

“All very intriguing.”

I think he wanted me to ask who specifically had been talking about me, but I wasn’t in the mood to play cat and mouse. I went back to his first question. “About the leather, old habits die hard.”

I was about to say I disappointed him again when he zinged me with, “You really only take the bait with Anton. A pity.”

“This was a test?”

“I wanted to see if I could make you get worked up too, I was hoping you would take it out on-”

“Good evening,” Tristan said.

I looked at Marcus with a scowl. “And they say I like to stir up trouble. I need to watch out for you. What is
he
doing here?”

Tristan looked down his sharp nose at me. “When the Master said he had agreed to this plan I informed him that I wanted to observe the situation closely. We could open ourselves up to a lot of trouble with this.”

“Don’t tell me. Your caste thinks it is my plan to pick you off one by one and say it was part of the night’s difficulties?”

“That’s a good guess,” Marcus said.

“It’s the same wall I spent the morning banging my head against.” I turned to Tristan, “Let me be clear. If I wanted to kill off members of your caste, I wouldn’t use some Machiavellian plan that would take forever to complete. I would let myself into your house, maybe alone or maybe with some friends, and let the fun begin.”

“All about the slaughter,” Marcus said with a laugh. “My kind of woman.”

“Our Master has declared her his,” Tristan said. “Watch yourself.”

“I am not Anton’s property! If I want to do Marcus in the middle of that street I will.” When I saw Marcus cover his mouth with his hand I knew I had fallen into his trap. He couldn’t rile me up to set me on Tristan, so he set Tristan up to rile me by bringing up the jerkier side of Anton. “Tell me Marcus, does Anton know what a conniver you are?”

“He doesn’t know the half of it.”

“Great. Let’s get moving.”

Tristan said, “I think we should head south.”

“Because you think the vampires are migrating south for the winter?”

“Because there are plenty of humans in those businesses that are ripe for the picking.”

“Then we are going north,” I said.

“Because you are being difficult?”

“No. Because these vampires aren’t going to hunt where Anton’s people can catch them. They are going to hunt the quiet streets where there is less a chance of the competition, or me, finding them.”

Tristan gave a quiet growl.

Marcus said, “Neither Natasha nor I need a baby sitter. This is our hunt.”

I expected Tristan as the second to put Marcus to the ground no matter how much older Marcus was, but Tristan fell in step behind us. Interesting, but not my most pressing issue right now. “Shall we head north then?”

“I’ll show you north,” Marcus said. Giving a shove off the ground, he hovered a foot in the air. “Can you keep up?”

“Try me.”

He grinned and levitated away at a blinding speed.

“Show off,” I muttered and bounded up onto an overhang, then onto the roof of a neighboring building and jumped from roof to roof following Marcus’ lead. Tristan trailed a roof behind me.

We kept the game up for a long while before coming to a halt. That had been fun and I was disappointed to have to stop. I hadn’t had a hunting partner since I came back and while going it alone was fun, I liked the competition and a 1000 year old vampire was enough to put me through my paces. I was about to ask why he stopped when Marcus, with a jerk of his head, indicated he spotted something suspicious. He zoomed downward while I sprang to the ground to land on my feet next to a brunette female vampire feeding off a human male.

I tapped her on her shoulder. “Excuse me miss? Can I see some I.D.?”

Marcus snickered.

Tristan scowled. “Must you make a joke of everything?”

“Lighten up or you’ll go gray Tristan.” The vampire was so intent on her feed that not only didn’t she stop when we arrived, but she kept at it even after I addressed her. Placing my hand on her shoulder, I pried her off her victim and kept a tight grip on her. “Hi, we need to talk.”

“She’s not ours,” Marcus said. “The human will be dead in a moment. I can smell it.”

Gee, I thought I had a good nose because I could smell a dead person after only a few minutes, but I could not smell death coming. It was the slowing of his heartbeat that told me death was at hand. No matter how fast I moved there was not enough time to get him to a hospital for a transfusion. His options were to be turned into a vampire or allowed to die. I could not oblige him on the vampire transition front and the ones who could did not seem inclined to. The man was probably better off. I would not want to be a vampire.

“That was my dinner,” the female vampire snarled.

“That was most likely your last supper if you don’t tell us what we want to know,” I said.

She tried to break free, but came face to face with Tristan and froze. I took the opportunity to throw the offending vampire against the wall. The three of us formed a semicircle around her, fencing her in with our bodies. She tried to break through our barricade, but we held strong. Marcus shoved her back hard enough the brick behind her cracked.

“You must be pretty hungry or pretty stupid to feed where we could find you so easily,” I said. “Which one is it?”

The female vampire bared her teeth. “I don’t speak to the likes of you half-caste. You should be on your knees when you address me.”

I glanced over at Marcus. “She did just speak to the likes of me, didn’t she?”

“That she did.”

“I guess that makes it the first one then,” I quipped.

Marcus came closer to the female and ran a nail down her cheek. “Perhaps you’ll talk to me young one? What caste are you?”

“The hungry kind.”

“Clever. What are they hungry for?”

She glanced over at me with red eyes and hissed. “The blood of our enemies.”

“You put us all at risk with your stupidity!” Tristan roared. He pulled a stake out and slammed it into the female vampire’s chest.

Dumbfounded I watched the vampire turn to ash. “What the hell was that about?”

“I eliminated a threat to the city.”

“You destroyed the one solid lead we had. We could have made her talk, but piles of ash aren’t known for their verbosity.”

Tristan said, “She was feeding in the open. That was enough to earn her a death sentence by your rules as well as ours. If she was an enemy to the city in addition to that, she is dead now which means she is no longer a threat. I fail to see the problem.”

I took a step towards him menacingly. “Then maybe you should have your eyes checked. I’d be happy to remove them and give them a thorough once over for you.”

Marcus glided between us. “Let’s play nice children. No need to start excising parts.”

“Who said anything about using knife?” I asked. “I was going to yank them out of their sockets.”

“Perhaps I need to define the word nice for you Natasha.”

“If you want to define words for people, Marcus, I suggest you define the word incompetent for Anton because that,” I pointed at Tristan, “as his second proves he doesn’t know what it means.”

I leapt onto a low roof and then onto a higher one, leaving the now bickering vampires to work out whose best interest that kill was really in. Up until Tristan reminded me how self-centered and bullheaded vampires were, I had actually been having a good time. It was nice to not have to hold back on how fast I moved or how high I jumped. Then they had to go and ruin it. I should have known better.

*****

My return home was announced with a slam of the door. Was it that they were vampires or that they were men that made them so damn frustrating? This had been a waste of hours I could have spent doing better things like scrubbing mildew off the shower wall.

“Natasha!” Fitch shouted my name as he forwent the stairs and jumped over the banister to reach me faster.

“They sent you to verify that I made it back? I don’t know if I should be insulted that they doubted my ability to survive a night with two vampires or insulted they hated my plan so much they sent you here to get proof that I didn’t come back unscathed so they don’t have to do it.”