Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly Read online

  Warren had started down the hallway, but I didn’t follow him. There was something about that chair…

  The wood was dark, but the grain looked like oak to me. It was covered with carvings, from the lion-paw legs to the gargoyle crouched on the top of the tall back. Each of the legs had a ring of brass about a third of the way up. The arms were made entirely of brass wrought with delicate-appearing vines and small flowers and thorns. On the end of each arm, one of the thorns stuck up in a sharp point.

  When I was almost close enough to touch the chair, I realized that I’d been sensing the presence of its magic even from the hallway—I just hadn’t known what it was. To me, magic usually feels like a tingle, as if I am immersing my skin in sparkling water. This was a dull, bass thrum, as if someone were beating a very large drum while I plugged my ears so I could feel it, but not hear.

  “Mercy?” asked Warren from the doorway. “I don’t think that we’re supposed to be exploring.”

  “Do you smell this?” asked Ben from the level of my knee. I looked down and saw that he was crouched on all fours with his head extended and slightly cocked. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. “There’s old blood on that chair,” he said.

  I was going to ask him about it, but the first vampire entered. He was one I hadn’t seen before. In life he’d been a medium-sized man, Irish, by the red hair. His movements were stiff and graceful at the same time, reminding me of the way a daddy longlegs moves. The vampire brushed past Warren and walked across the room without looking at any of us. He sat down on a small bench I hadn’t noticed near the far wall.

  The vampire’s arrival seemed to answer any doubts Warren had, as he followed the vampire in and took proper bodyguard position to my right. Ben rose to his feet and stood just behind and to my left, so I was flanked by the werewolves.

  Over the next few minutes the rest of the seats in the room filled up with vampires. None of them looked at us as they came in. I’d have thought it was an insult, except they didn’t look at each other either.

  I counted under my breath, fifteen vampires. They made an impressive showing, if only in the expense of their clothing. Silks, satins, brocades in all shades of the rainbow. One or two wore modern business suits, but most of them were in period costume, anything from medieval to the present.

  Somehow I expected more dark colors, but I didn’t see any black or gray. The werewolves and I were underdressed. Not that I cared.

  I recognized the woman who had confiscated Samuel’s cross the last time I’d been here when she came into the room. She sat in one of the coral chairs as if it had been a stool, her back upright like a Victorian lady in a tight corset, though she wore an aqua-colored silk dress with rows of beaded fringe from the nineteen twenties that seemed oddly frivolous for her stiff bearing. I looked for Lilly, the pianist, but she didn’t appear.

  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 qui
ckly. 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 Pasco. 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.

  “Stefan,” Marsilia said. “You put the seethe in danger. How do you answer this?”

  Stefan took a step forward, then hesitated, looking at the vampire he held in his arms.

  “I can hold him,” Warren offered.

  Stefan shook his head. “Daniel has not fed in too long, he would be a danger to you. Andre?”

  Andre frowned, but got up to take the starving vampire into his arms so that Stefan could go stand before the others. I expected Stefan to stand where Bernard had, but he sat in the wooden chair, instead. He slid until he was pressed against the back then grasped each of the brass-studded gracefully curved arms, closing his hands around the ends as if he hadn’t seen the brass thorns sticking up.

  Or maybe he had. The thrum of magic I’d been feeling stepped up in tempo and strength, making my rib cage buzz with power. I tried to swallow my gasp, but Marsilia turned to look at me as if I’d done something interesting.

  Her regard didn’t last more than an instant before she turned her attention to Stefan. “You choose to offer Truth willingly?”

  “I do.”

  The chair reacted to his statement somehow. But before I could decide what the flare of energy had meant, the young looking vampire, the one who was still swaying to my heartbeat, said, “Truth.”

  Most werewolves could tell when someone lied, but it was based on the smell of perspiration and heartbeat—neither of which the vampires had. I knew that there were magical ways of telling if someone lied, too. It was appropriate that the vampire’s truth spells would demand blood.

  “Speak.” I couldn’t tell from Marsilia’s voice whether she hoped he’d be able to excuse himself from the bloodbath at the hotel or not.

  Stefan started with his suspicions that there was something odd in Daniel’s tale of bloodlust. He explained that when the vampire Daniel had been supposed to contact had returned, he’d seen it as an opportunity to learn more.

  “It occurred to me,” he said in an unhurried storytelling kind of voice, “that if I was correct in my suspicions I was about to confront a vampire capable of enthralling one of our own kind—though Daniel is very young. I thought at the time that the vampire might have been a witch before he was brought over.”

  “So dangerous you brought her with you rather than another vampire?” Bernard’s tone was heavy with contempt.

  Stefan shrugged. “As I said, I thought Littleton was a witch. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before. I did not really think I would be facing anything I could not handle. Mercedes was my insurance, but I did not think she would be necessary.”

  “Yes,” said Marsilia sharply. “Let us tell the room why it is that Mercedes Thompson would be someone you would go to for help.” Her eyes were narrowed and her fingers played with the fringe of the black Spanish shawl she wore. I didn’t know what she was so angry about, she knew what I was.

  “Mercedes is a walker,” Stefan said.

  The energy level in the room picked up remarkably, though none of them moved. I would have thought that all of the vampires had been told about me, but apparently not. Maybe she’d been angry because Stefan had forced her to reveal my existence to the rest of them. I wished I knew exactly why they were so worried about me—maybe then I wouldn’t feel like a chicken in a den of foxes.

  The boy next to Marsilia quit rocking. When he looked at me, I felt it, like a flash of ice running over my exposed skin. “How interesting,” he said.

  Stefan spoke hurriedly, as if he were trying to distract the boy from me. “She agreed to come with me as a coyote, so the vampire would not know that she was anything other than part of my costume. I thought the ruse would protect her, and her partial immunity would help me. I was both right and wrong.”

  His recount from that point was very detailed. When he told them that he’d smelled the demon’s scent that told him Littleton was a sorcerer as soon as he’d parked my car at the hotel, Bernard broke in.

  “There are no such things as sorcerers,” he said.

  The boy beside Marsilia shook his head and, in a light tenor voice that would never drop to adult tones said, “There are. I have met them—as have most of us who are more than a few centuries old. It would be a very bad thing, Mistress, if one of us were a sorcerer.”

  There was a heavy pause, a reaction to the boy’s comment, but I couldn’t tell what it meant.

  “Continue, please,” said Marsilia finally.

  Stefan obeyed. He’d known that everyone in the hotel was dead when we entered the building. That’s how he’d found Littleton so easily: it was the only room where someone was still alive. Stefan had known the woman was in the bathroom before I had. Vampire’s senses, it seemed, were better than mine.

  I expected Stefan to stop his account of his actions where Littleton had stopped him and changed his memory, but he didn’t. He continued on as if the false memory were his true one until the boy next to Marsilia said, “Wait.”

  Stefan stopped.

  The boy tilted his head and closed his eyes, humming softly. Finally he said, without opening his eyes, “This is what you remember, but you don’t believe it.”

  “Yes,” Stefan agreed.

  “What is this?” asked Bernard. I was getting the distinct impression that Bernard wasn’t Stefan’s friend. “What is the purpose of volunteering for the chair if you are just going to lie?”

  “He’s not lying.” The boy leaned forward. “Go on. Tell it as you remember it.”

  “As I remember it,” agreed Stefan and continued. What he remembered of the maid’s murder was worse than he’d told us this morning, worse even than what I’d seen, because in his version, he was the killer, bathing in her death as much as her blood. He seemed to be at some pains to remember every moment. I could have done with the short version he’d given me before. Some of the images he called up were going to come back in my nightmares.

  When he’d fini
shed, Marsilia stared at him, tapping her fingers on the chair arm, though the rest of her body was very still. “These are your memories of what happened, though Wulfe believes you no longer trust that they are true. Are we then to suppose that you believe this…this sorcerer tampered with your memories as well as Daniel’s? You, who have never answered to your own maker, you believe a new-made vampire—excuse me—sorcerer was able to hold you in thrall?”

  Bernard added. “And why didn’t he give you memories of the other people who died in the hotel? If he wanted to place the fault with you, surely he would have given those deaths to you as well?”

  Stefan tilted his head and said thoughtfully, “I don’t know why he didn’t give me memories of killing the others. Perhaps I would have had to be present for their deaths. I do have some evidence of his ability to tamper with another vampire’s memories. I’d like to have Daniel speak.”

  Marsilia’s eyes narrowed to slits, but she nodded her head.

  Stefan took his hands off the chair carefully. The brass thorns were gleaming black with his blood.

  Andre stepped forward and set Daniel’s too-thin body on the chair in Stefan’s place. Daniel pulled himself into a fetal position, tucking his hands protectively away from the arms of the chair, turning his shoulder when Stefan would have touched him.

  “Andre?” Stefan asked.

  Andre gave him a dirty look, but turned to Daniel. “Daniel, you will sit up and take your place in the Questioning Seat.”

  The young vampire began crying. With the speed of a crippled old man he straightened in the seat. He tried twice to lift his hands before Andre took them and impaled them on the thorns himself. Daniel began to shake.

  “He’s too weak for this,” Andre told Stefan.

  “You are his maker,” Marsilia’s voice was cold. “Fix it.”

  Andre’s mouth tightened, but put his wrist in front of Daniel’s mouth. “Feed,” he said.

  Daniel turned his head away.

  “Daniel, feed.”