Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson #2)(19)
Author: Patricia Briggs

My eyes swung past an old man with wisps of gray hair decorating his head. Unlike werewolves, vampires kept the appearance they had when they died. Even though he appeared ancient, I could be looking at the youngest vampire in the room.

I glanced at his face and realized that unlike the others in the room, he was watching me. He licked his lips and I took a step toward him before I managed to drop my gaze to the floor.

Werewolves might lock eyes for dominance purposes, but they couldn’t take over your mind if you held their gaze.

Being a walker was supposed to keep that from happening, but I’d certainly felt the pull of his gaze.

A dark haired, young-seeming man with narrow shoulders had entered the room while I’d been playing peekaboo with the old man. Like Stefan, he was more human-seeming than most. It was his clothing more than his face that I remembered. If Andre wasn’t wearing the same pirate shirt that he’d been in the night I’d met him, he was wearing its twin. Once he’d taken a seat in one of the plush chairs near the center of the room, he, unlike the other vampires, looked at me directly and smiled in a friendly fashion. I didn’t know him well enough to know if he was friend or foe.

Before I could decide how to return his greeting, Marsilia, Mistress of the Mid-Columbia Seethe, came into the room. She wore a brilliant red, Spanish-style riding skirt with a frilly white blouse and a black shawl that suited her blond hair and dark eyes better than I’d have thought it would.

She walked with fluid grace, unlike the last time I’d seen her. Of all the vampires in the room, Marsilia was the only one who was beautiful. She took her time arranging her skirts before she sat down in the chair in the center of the semicircle. Her red skirts clashed badly with the chair’s coral fabric. I don’t know why that made me feel better.

She stared at us-no, at the werewolves, with an avid, almost hungry gaze. I remembered her with Samuel and wondered if she had a preference for werewolves. It had been because of a werewolf, Stefan had told me, that she’d been exiled from Italy. Vampires didn’t have any rules against feeding from a werewolf, but the wolf she’d taken had been the property of a more powerful and higher-ranking vampire.

Ben and Warren, both, had the sense to keep their eyes averted from hers. It would have been instinctive to meet her gaze and try to stare her down, instinctive and disastrous.

Finally Marsilia’s voice, deep and lightly accented, broke the silence. "Go and retrieve Stefan. Tell him his pet made it here and we are tired of waiting."

I couldn’t tell who she was talking to, she was still staring at Warren-on whom she had gradually focused in preference to Ben-but Andre stood up and said, "He’ll want to bring Daniel."

"Daniel is being punished. He cannot be brought out." The vampire who spoke sat directly on Marsilia’s left. He wore a buff-colored, nineteenth-century businessman’s suit, complete with pocket watch and blue-striped silk waistcoat. His moustache was striped like his waistcoat, though in brown and silver. He’d combed his hair back over a small balding spot on the top of his head.

Marsilia’s mouth tightened. "Your aspirations to the contrary, I still rule here, Bernard. Andre, bring Daniel as well." She glanced around the room. "Estelle, go with him. Daniel might be difficult."

The middle-aged woman in her beaded flapper gown stood up abruptly as if someone had pulled on a string above her. As she moved, her beads made a soft chattering sound that reminded me of a rattlesnake. I couldn’t remember them making any noise at all when she’d first come into the room.

Andre gave me a small, reassuring smile that no one else could see as he walked by. Estelle ignored us again as she passed. It was deliberate rudeness, I decided, though I preferred it to Marsilia’s hungry gaze. I had to resist the urge to take a step forward and block her view of Warren.

If my errand hadn’t been for Stefan, I’d have gone out and dragged in a few chairs for us, or maybe just sat on the floor; but I didn’t want to antagonize anyone before Stefan was safe. So I just stood where I was and waited for him to arrive.

The minutes crawled by. I’m not very good at waiting, and had to fight not to fidget. I’d have thought that Ben would be worse than I, but neither he nor Warren seemed to have any problem staying still while we waited, not even under Marsilia’s steady regard.

The wolves weren’t as motionless as the vampires, though. None of the vampires bothered with the small touches that Stefan affected to make humans more at ease, like blinking or breathing.

One by one, as if Andre’s leaving was some sort of signal, the vampires turned their gaze on me, their expressions blank. The only exceptions were Marsilia, and the vampire on her right, who appeared to be a boy of about fifteen-so I looked at them.

Marsilia watched Warren, occasionally flexing her long, highly decorated fingernails. The boy just stared off into space, swaying just a little. I wondered if he, like the musical Lilly, was damaged mentally. Then I realized he was swaying in time to the beat of my heart and took a quick step closer to Warren. The boy rocked a little faster.

By the time I heard movement in the hall behind us, he was swaying pretty quickly. Nothing like being prey in a room full of vampires to keep the heart racing merrily along.

I heard Stefan and his entourage coming well before they got to the room.

Estelle brushed past us first, and resumed her seat. Andre took up a position on a couch near the odd, wooden chair. I didn’t have to turn my head to know that Stefan had stopped a few feet behind me-I could smell him. I turned anyway.

He still wore the clothes he’d been in when I last saw him, but he appeared unharmed. He was carrying a young man in his arms who could be no one but his young friend, Daniel, Littleton ‘s first victim.

Jeans and a "Got Milk?" T-shirt seemed incongruous on someone who looked as though he’d just been liberated from a Nazi death camp. His head had been shaved, and dark stubble turned the pale skin of his scalp blue. It made me wonder if vampires could grow hair.

Daniel’s cheeks were so sunken I could almost see his teeth through them. His eyes looked blind, with irises that were startlingly white, and no pupils at all. It was difficult to judge the age at which he’d died accurately, but he couldn’t have been older than twenty.

The man in the striped waistcoat, Bernard, stood up-and finally Marsilia quit staring at Warren, and turned her attention to the matters at hand.

Bernard cleared his throat then, in an appropriately businesslike tone, said, "We are here because early this morning Stefan called us to clean up his mess at a motel in Paseo. Five humans are dead, and there was considerable property damage. We were forced to call in Elizaveta Arkadyevna "-I hadn’t known Elizaveta worked for the seethe as well as Adam’s pack, but I suppose it made sense. The old Russian witch was the most powerful practitioner in the Pacific Northwest  –  "because we could see no scenario in which the police would not be called in. The local authorities have accepted the story we manufactured and, according to our contacts, there will be no further inquiry into the case. Other than the monetary cost of employing the witch, no permanent harm has been done to the seethe." He bit off the last part a little too sharply, as if he wanted to disagree with his statement.