Misguided Angel (9 page)

"Send him in, Doris," Mimi ordered, preparing herself for what was sure to be a fight. The wretched human Conduit was her only link to her traitorous brother, and she was determined to beat any information as to Jack's whereabouts out of him.

Oliver walked into her office. She barely knew the boy, and in the past had only paid attention to him because of his proximity to her rival for Jack's affections, but even she could discern that he looked different since she last saw him--something in his eyes--a hooded stil ness that wasn't there before.

But then again, who hadn't changed since the bonding disaster? She herself had looked in the mirror the other day and had been horrified to see a haggard, grief-stricken spinster looking back at her. Tragedy was wreaking havoc on her sun-kissed cover-girl looks. It had to stop.

"You rang?" Oliver asked. His face was a mask of deeply felt suffering, so it surprised her that he could stil made jokes.

Mimi tossed her hair over her shoulder. "That is not the way a human addresses his superiors."

"Forgive me, madam." Oliver smirked. He made himself comfortable in the guest chair. "How may I be of service?"

She got right to the point. "You know where they are." The minute her brother had left town, Mimi had sent an army of Venators and mercenaries after him, but so far none had been successful in bringing him to justice. Once Jack had left the Coven, he had disavowed its protection as wel , so that his spirit was not traceable through the glom.

"
They
?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"My brother and his . . ." Mimi could not bring herself to say it. "You know where they went; the Venators told me you were there at the airport when they disappeared."

Oliver clasped his hands together and looked firm. "I can neither agree nor disagree with that statement."

"Don't be coy. You know where they are and you have to tel me. You work for me now. You dare defy the Code? You know the punishment for Conduit insubordination is twenty years in solitary," she snarled, leaning over her desk and baring just a hint of her fangs.

"Oh, we're bringing the Code into this, are we?"

"If I have to," Mimi threatened. As a Repository scribe, Oliver was low man on the totem pole. He was col ateral--nothing more than an underpaid clerk. Whereas she was Mimi Force. She was Regent now! She was the only thing keeping the Coven together at this point.

Oliver smiled a crafty smile. "Then in my defense, I must plead the Fifth Commandment."

"The Fifth?" Bel s of recognition began to ring in the back of her head, but Mimi ignored them. She was al -powerful; he was the one playing games.

Crush the human cockroach! No one dared defy Azrael when she wanted something.

"Forgive me if I sound patronizing, but according to the Fifth Commandment of the Code of the Vampires, there is such a thing as Vampire-Conduit

"Forgive me if I sound patronizing, but according to the Fifth Commandment of the Code of the Vampires, there is such a thing as Vampire-Conduit Confidentiality. It is within my rights not to divulge any information about my former Blue Blood mistress. Look it up. You'l find it in the Repository Files. You can't touch me."

Mimi picked up a Tiffany lamp from her desk and hurled it at Oliver, who managed to dodge it at the last moment.

"Temper, my dear. Temper."

"Out of my office, worm!"

Oliver made a show of slowly straightening up and gathering his things. It was obvious he was enjoying her frustration. Yet before he left, he turned around to address her one last time, and his voice was gentle. "You know, Mimi, like you, I am also bereft. I'm aware it doesn't mean very much coming from me, but I am sorry this happened to you. I loved Schuyler very much, and I know how much you loved Jack."

Jack!
No one had
dared
say that name to her face. And it wasn't love she felt for her twin, but a confusing whirl of shock and sorrow. Love? Whatever love she had left had turned into a bright, glittering hate, a hate she nursed deep in her soul until it shone like an emerald.

"Love," Mimi hissed. "You familiars know nothing about love. Delusional human, you never felt love; you only felt what the Kiss
required
you to feel. It's not real. It never was."

Oliver looked so wounded that for a moment Mimi wanted to take it back, especial y since his were the first words of sympathy she had heard since losing everyone who had ever meant anything to her. Stil , it had felt good taking her hate and directing it outward. Too bad Oliver had tried to help. Fool: he'd only stood in the line of fire.

FIFTEEN

Seen Your Video

The punching bag swayed back and forth like a pendulum, and Mimi gave it another satisfying kick--right in the center. She'd come straight to the gym after leaving her office for the day. She didn't need anyone's pity, least of al that stupid Repository scribe's. Times real y had to be tough if a human was feeling sorry for a vampire. Especial y one of her lineage and status. What was the world coming to? She had survived the crisis in Rome and weathered the journey to Plymouth, only to be the object of a Red Blood's sympathy? Absolutely ridiculous. She punched the bag again, sending it whirling to the other side of the room. Her muscles ached from spending the last four hours kickboxing the crap out of it.

She pictured Jack's bloody face bowed in humiliation and begging for mercy. How satisfying it would be to unleash her fury at last. Every minute of every day she was consumed by revenge; she lived and breathed it; her anger fueled her wil to live. Where was he? What was he doing? Was he even thinking of her at al ?

Why couldn't she just leave it alone, she wondered as the bag spun and knocked her off balance for a moment. She didn't even
want
Jack anymore--

she had understood as much at the altar. He didn't want her, but she didn't want him either. So why was she so obsessed with his death? Because
someone
had to pay for Kingsley's. Kingsley was gone; he was dead, or trapped--it didn't matter. It was easier to feel a murderous rage against her brother than an overwhelming grief at her lover's demise. It kil ed Mimi to think that Jack had survived while Kingsley had not. That Jack was happy, somewhere out there with his half-blood concubine, and she was alone.
Someone
had to pay for the scope of what she had lost--someone had to pay. If Mimi couldn't be happy then she certainly didn't see why anyone else should be.

It was beyond tiring being angry al the time, and Mimi craved the physical exhaustion her punishing workouts brought her. Most days after leaving the gym she would go home numb and too beat to do much else other than laze on the sofa with her laptop, replying to IMs and updating her status on social networking sites. On this particular night, the town house was empty when she returned, which was not a surprise. Trinity was out at some society function, as usual. The house was too big for just the two of them. The maids kept to themselves, and the silence was so depressing that on most nights Mimi had both the stereo and the television blasting while she surfed the Web.

She threw her smel y gym clothes into the hamper and took a quick shower. Stil wearing her bathrobe, she fired up her computer and clicked on her in-box, scrol ing through the list of unread messages. Blinking at the top was an e-mail from an unknown address. Even though the Committee's tech team begged her to stop doing so, Mimi routinely disregarded warnings about the danger of Internet viruses hiding in unknown e-mails, and as a result her computer crashed several times a month. She couldn't help it; she was too curious to not open them.

She clicked it open. The e-mail was empty save for a link. Mimi hit it, and braced for the onslaught of computer havoc, her system breaking down, or some kind of dirty video appearing on her screen. The link did take her to a video, but not one of the pornographic variety.

The screen showed a hazy video, a bunch of jerky handheld camera angles, until final y Mimi noticed that the two dark shapes in the middle of the screen were actual y teenagers necking on a couch.

So it was one of
those
videos after al , she thought, ready to close the window. But something stopped her. As the camera zoomed closer, she realized the teenagers weren't just hooking up. The girl's face was obscured by her long hair, but Mimi could see that her lips were pressed against the boy's neck, and blood was running down her chin, as his body twitched and convulsed in an ecstatic spasm.

It was al too familiar--the boy's fervid motions, the way the girl was holding him--gentle enough to keep his frenzy in check and yet firm so that she could keep him right where she wanted him. How many times had Mimi done the same exact thing in the same exact position? It was practical y out of the Committee handbook. You didn't want a familiar's head to rol back lest he or she lose oxygen, or choke on his or her own tongue.

Mimi watched, frozen in her seat, as the girl pul ed away, and for a moment, the camera zeroed in on her ivory fangs, and they caught the light, revealing their needle-sharp beauty--so much finer and sharper than any computer-enhanced prop. Meanwhile, the boy slumped back into the couch, drugged, defeated, and for the next forty-eight hours, useless. The girl, her face stil in shadow, kissed him sweetly on the lips and stood up from the couch.

On the bottom of the screen was a date and a time stamp. That was just last weekend, Mimi thought, as the image cut to a larger room, where many more teenagers were gathered. Wait, wait, wait! There was something familiar about that room, with those damask curtains and that Renoir on the wal . If you got too close to the painting, you tripped the silent alarm and the house majordomo would shoo you away. She'd been to that apartment many times. It was Jamie Kip's parents' penthouse and this was his eighteenth birthday after-party. Mimi had been there Friday night. She'd left early, bored by the scene. The newest Committee members were little eager beavers, hopped up on their first taste of blood, and she was stil too angry to have much fun.

When the camera focused on the girl again, her back was turned, and she disappeared in a blink of an eye, only to reappear across the room, laughing next to the keg. This was no trick, no visual effect, no clever editing. It was clear that the girl had been in one place and then without any natural explanation for it, in another. Dear God, don't tel me. . . . The camera caught more vampire tricks. Stupid junior members showing off--someone lifting the grand piano with one hand, another party guest turning into fog. The usual juvenile exuberance, vampires drunk on their newfound powers that came with the Transformation.

A cold knot began to form in Mimi's stomach. Who the hel was videotaping them? Blue Blood parties were strictly closed--vampires and familiars or soon-to-be-familiars only. That was the policy. This was against every rule in the Code. This was
exposure
. It was online. Had anyone else seen this?

Mimi felt the hair on the back of her neck tingle.

The scene faded and words appeared.
Vampires are real. Open your eyes. They are all around us. Do not believe the lies they tell.

The Mistress lives!

The who? The what? Mimi was stil trying to absorb what she'd read when the screen shifted again. Another room, but now the girl was shown tied up, bound and blindfolded, with a gag in her mouth, stil unrecognizable. That was Venator rope, Mimi could tel from the silver stitching. What was going on?

What the hel was happening? Who was that girl?

The screen faded to black, replaced by more text.

On the eve of the shadow crescent . . .

Watch the vampire burn.

A match was struck, and a fire burned, fil ing the screen. Smoky dark flames that danced around an ebony center. The Black Fire of Hel .

Mimi shut off the computer, banging down the screen on her laptop. She found she was trembling. It was a joke, wasn't it? Someone from the party had decided to make a funny video. That was al it was. It had to be. Jamie Kip and Bryce Cutting probably put it together to spook her. They stil couldn't accept she was their Regent. It was just a joke to them.

Stil , Mimi didn't sleep wel that night. She wished she could just forget about it, delete it, and like any normal teenager, go back to counting the number of her friends online. But she couldn't. She was their leader. She was responsible for the safety of every vampire in the Coven. She wasn't going to lose one on her watch. No way. Not this time. Not after Charles's blind denial of the existence of the Silver Bloods . . . and Forsyth's betrayal of the Conclave. Whatever this was--a new Silver Blood threat, or something else?--she had to be prepared to deal with it. She had to take action. This video had been sent to her for a reason.

SIXTEEN

The Conspiracy

The sixty-inch monitor on the wal showed the vampire's face ful of terror, frozen on the screen. Mimi looked around the conference table on Monday morning to make sure everyone had a chance to absorb it. She had skipped class for this, but even Trinity could not argue that this was less important than passing AP Mandarin.

Around the table sat members of the Conspiracy, the subcommittee that handled human-vampire relations and disseminated false information about the vampires into the human world. Conspiracy members included several best-sel ing novelists, one of whom had popularized the amusing idea that instead of burning to death, vampires smel ed like roses in the sun, as wel as film producers who kept the slash-and-behead theory alive and wel in numerous blockbuster horror movies. More than a few were annoyed to have been pul ed from their lucrative jobs for an emergency meeting. The Conspiracy had not met as a body in many years.

Seymour Corrigan, Conclave Elder and head of the Conspiracy, opened the discussion. "Any ideas where this might have come from?"

"Looks like one of your jobbers, Harry," joked Lane Barclay-Fish, the author of
Blood and Roses
and said mastermind of the floral-smel ing vampires conceit. He turned to Harold Hopkins, the executive producer of a popular vampire soap opera currently running on a prestigious cable network.