Crossed (41 page)

“So what is this test about, my willingness to get naked in a strange room and put on uncomfortable clothing? I was a stripper for a year and a half. I think that should get me a free pass.”

I jerked on the wooden door, but it was still locked. Could
I break it open with my vampire strength? Sure. But did that mean I’d fail their test? Probably.

“Just put on the dress.” It was Luc’s voice.

“Why?” I slapped the door. “What I wear has nothing to do with my ability to control myself.”

“It shows your willingness to change with the times.”

“No.” I pressed against the door, and his heartbeat came through loud and clear, his warmth like a concealed blaze. “It shows my willingness to play dress-up.”

“Why is this so hard, Tabitha?” Luc stepped away from the door. “As you said, you took the tests. You put up with all of that.”

“You stole from me.”

“Excuse me?”

“You did.” I hadn’t thought the accusation through before I made it, but I decided to stick to my guns. “How is theft resolved among you guys?”

“We didn’t steal from you.”

In my head, I could “see” him through the door, a mass of veins with blood inside, a sack of food. That’s what this was really about, then, seeing if I could go without blood and keep my cool. “You won’t let me have my clothes. They were with me when I went to bed and now they aren’t here and you won’t let me have them back. By definition, you stole them.”

“No.” Master Ji spoke, and hearing his voice made me jump. I couldn’t hear his heartbeat. I concentrated. No, there it was, muffled and slow, but there. “Your clothes are still in your room. We moved you, not the clothes.”

“Kidnapping, then. How do you resolve that?”

“You aren’t bound by our Treaty of Secrets yet, Tabitha.”

“True, Ji, and I never will be. Not exactly.
La Bête
said we couldn’t fully join.” I clenched my fists to keep myself from batting down the door. “And he also told you to grant me every courtesy. I’m guessing this test is really about me keeping
under control while I’m hungry. I can do that, so let’s just keep this test to its basics.”

“Fine.”

Luc opened the door. “You can’t eat until midnight. You can wear whatever you want.” He was dressed in court clothes that perfectly matched the green brocade dress.

Ji wore dress silks. “But you have to have one of us nearby at all times so we can be sure you don’t cheat.”

“That means no biting yourself either, Tabitha,” Luc added. “Some vampires do that, hoping it will help the hunger pangs.”

“Fine.” I walked out the door and successfully managed not to bite either of them. We were in the “hunting lodge,” by which I mean “expansive mansion estate,” which stood in the northwest corner of the grounds. “Who’s going with me to get my clothes?”

Ji held up a hand. “I’ll go, but we have to hurry or we’ll miss dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Yes,” he answered as we walked across the grounds toward the
donjon
proper. “We’re having steak tartare.”

I must have whimpered at the thought of being near all that bloody beef without being allowed to lick the bowl, because Ji patted my hand. The contact ignited my loins and my fangs rent my gums. I jerked my hand away, my skin so hot in comparison to the rest of me, it burned.

“You don’t get to touch me unless I get to bite you.”

“Eric didn’t make a rule like that for him and Aarika,” Luc countered.

“Don’t lie to me.” My claws came out, but I didn’t cut him. Instead, I hoisted Luc up by his fancy cravat. “The only way Eric would screw that Nazi bimbo is if she came on to him while he was feeding. And even then he might not do her.”

James, Eric’s buddy from World War II, came running out of the
donjon.
He was wearing a black T-shirt with a 1-Up
Mushroom from Mario Bros. on the front and a pair of out-of-style stonewashed jeans with combat boots and a long coat. “Ji, declare her graduated.”

“At midnight.”

“No,” he argued. “Now.”

Panic. I smelled panic from James. Panicked immortals are not a good sign. Had the big furry decided they’d crossed a line?

“Why would I do that?”

“Because Aarika’s back and Eric isn’t with her.”

Luc hurtled through the air. I saw him fly through the air before I realized I’d thrown him. “I’m going.”

“In that?” Ji pointed at my nightie. I transformed into a cat, concentrating on leaving my clothes behind. Once in feline form, I crawled out of the lingerie and resumed my humanoid form. When Eric does it, he gets to keep his clothes, but when I do it, I revert to a single outfit, destroying the old one if I’m not careful.

At first, I’d been stuck with the clothes I’d originally been wearing when I transformed, but with practice, I’d been able to change the outfit, to create a default. I’m still stuck with just the one outfit, but at least it isn’t stripper gear . . . or not the same stripper gear anyway.

When I became humanoid again, I wore a pair of Valentino jeans, a black leather corset, matching lace-up boots, and a full-length black duster. A studded leather belt, choker, and silver bracelets completed the ensemble nicely even if the heat from their creation burned my skin. I wrapped myself in the jacket for two seconds, wallowing in the warmth and fighting my hunger.

Creating clothes takes even more of a toll than transforming, and I’d already been famished.

“You can’t leave.”

I snarled, fangs bared, claws out, eyes ablaze. “But if I don’t feed . . . ?”

“You’ll never pull it off,” Ji said. “Not around all those humans.”

I forced the fangs and claws back in, willed the eye glow to fade. “I’m going to look for my husband. My husband you were supposed to be looking after.” Luc picked himself up off the ground and dusted off his clothes. “I just want to know if I can do so without having wasted the last two days.”

“That’s fair, Ji,” James insisted. “More than fair.”

“You can go.” Ji chewed the inside of his cheek. “But his thrall will need to stay here.”

“How is she supposed to find him without his thrall?” James rounded on Ji. “We screwed the pooch on this one, Ji.”

“You don’t know that,” Ji said firmly. “There shouldn’t have been any vampires out there who could pose a threat to him.”

“Not even Lisette?” I stepped between them. “She’s an Emperor too.”

James looked away, and so did Ji.

“Lisette isn’t in Europe,” Luc said. “She left for Void City by ship over a week ago.”

“Why the hell didn’t you say something before now?” I stalked toward Luc, and the other two immortals armored up, but he raised his hands to halt them.

“Because we didn’t want her to return to our territory,” Luc answered. “Most of the older Emperors have their little areas and they stick to them, but Lisette moved around, tried to keep active in society. Now that she has set foot in the Americas, she’ll have to formally petition the Council for reentry into Europe. We plan to deny her. You heard
la Bête
the other night. He doesn’t want her here. Neither do we. It simply wasn’t worth the effort to force her out.”

“This is why Eric hates supernatural politics.” The eye glow was back and I didn’t fight it. “Could one of the other Emperors—?”

“They aren’t active,” Luc interrupted. “They are still. Calm. Sated.”

Another figure came walking across the bridge. It was Aarika. I moved toward her at top speed, all but teleporting to her side. “What happened?”

“A female Vlad,” Aarika began. “We’d finished scouting places he thought you might like to see . . .”

He was scouting for places I might want to see? How sweet!

“. . . several other vampires showed up to fight him. It had happened two or three times a night, so I vasn’t vorried, but then the other Vlad arrived and he seemed to know her. Eric began acting strangely. Strangely for him, I mean. Drugged or enspelled perhaps. I sensed a thrall and then there was a large amount of energy pouring along the link between Eric, the other Vlad, and the thrall. The magic was overpowering. It even had an odor.”

“What kind of odor?”
Please don’t let it be . . .

“Cinnamon. Eric collapsed and when he got back up, he climbed into a limo with the female Vlad and they drove away. I could not give chase; I was . . . injured. When I recovered they had gone, so I returned here.”

“I need my cell phone and I need to be somewhere it will work.” I rocketed through the complex, tore my cell phone out of my purse, and came back at top speed. “Well?”

Aarika blinked and then two of us stood in the middle of a tourist attraction version of the castle I’d just been in.

“Try it now.”

I dialed Eric first, unsurprised when it went straight to voice mail. Then I tried Talbot.

“Talbot, is that you? Damn phone. Hello?”

“Who is this?” His voice was tired, and hearing it gave me a warm tingle I wouldn’t have had if I’d been well-fed.

“Talbot! It’s me, Tabitha.”

“What are you doing up?” he answered, sounding surprised. “It’s what, five-thirty over there?”

“Would you shut the hell up and listen to me!” I shouted.
“My cell is broken and it keeps hanging up. Is Rachel there?”

“I haven’t seen her since you guys left for Paris. Is Eric there? I need—”

“I don’t give a fuck what you need, Talbot. Shut up and listen to me. Lisette is headed for you guys. She may already be there.”

“Where’s Eric?”

“The fucking immortals lost him. And they made me do a lousy three-day initiation.”

“Immortals?” He paused. “Oh. I forgot about that. They don’t police Mousers, so—”

“Eric was kidnapped by someone with cinnamon-scented magic and a female Vlad.”

“Damn. So you think Rachel—”

“Well, don’t you think Rachel?”

“Probably. And Eric would want me to stay here and help Greta with Lisette. Fuck!” I don’t think I’d ever heard Talbot say “fuck” before.

“Do you know what the Vlad looked like?”

I handed Aarika the phone. “Describe the other Vlad.”

“She was petite. Attractive. She’d been turned in her early twenties. The way she moved was distinct, as if she had trouble moving slower than her maximum vampiric rate. Eric seemed to recognize her.”

“Put Tabitha back on,” Talbot said, as if I couldn’t hear him quite well even when Aarika held the phone to her ear.

“You know who it is?”

“It could be Irene,” Talbot said. “She’s one of Eric’s children. He tried to kill her after El Segundo. She was involved with the demons there. To her it was a game.”

“What was? El Segundo?”

“No.” Talbot’s tone sent a chill down my spine. “The end of the world.”

“You can’t let him be around her, Tabitha,” Talbot
continued. “He’s different around Irene. He’ll kill for the fun of it, just because it turns her on.”

“He’d do that for me.”

“He lets her bite him.”

“That bitch!” Plastic shattered near my ear, splinters gashing through my palm and my fingers. “Ow . . . what the hell?”

I stared at my hand without comprehension during the long seconds it took for me to realize I’d crushed the phone. Plastic hit the ground, and I was moving. “I need to get back to the plane or— Damn it! Where did Eric leave
El Alma Perdida
?”

“El Alma Perdida?”
Aarika asked.

“His magic gun!” I snarled in her face.

“How will a gun help?”

“Ah. Shit. Never mind. It won’t unless he has part of it with him and I have part of it with me.”

“Explain.”

“The last time I had to find
El Alma Perdida,
Eric had been framed for murdering some werewolves. He found one of the bullets, and a mage named Magbidion told us the bullets and the gun were linked to each other. Talbot and I used the bullet to find the gun.”

“Talbot is one of your sire’s thralls?”

“No!” The thought of Talbot as anyone’s thrall repulsed me. “He’s just a friend of . . . the family.” The memory, not of his touch but the scent of his blood, rushed over me. “He’s a Mouser.”

“Mousers.” Aarika spat on the ground. “They have no respect for societal rules.”

“Well, no offense, but your rules suck.”

“Our rules are the only reasons your kind still exists.” Her shoulders snapped back, a rigid line, and though she’d let her hair down a little over the last few nights where Eric and I were concerned, I was reminded of the brusque businesslike militant who’d wanted us deported at first sight. “And our rules and
la Bête
’s insistence upon our providing you our assistance are the only reason I tell you this:
La Bête
had some other werewolves return bullets from Eric’s gun to him while you were daystruck. If he still has them and if they are linked, as you say, then—”

Her words cut off. “Then I can find them. Now where’d he leave the stupid gun?”

Did he leave it on the plane or take it with him in the bags? I hadn’t been paying attention. Beatrice would know.

“Aarika, can you take me back to Beatrice? I need to ask her where Eric left
El Alma Perdida.
”

No response. The air was warm, but not warm enough. Creatures moved in the night. Some were bloodless little insects, but many contained precious samples of exactly what I craved.

I tapped my foot. “Aarika? Hellooo?”

She blinked.

“Ji has formally objected to being confronted before a supplicant,” Aarika said.

“A supplicant? What? Me?” I asked.
Isn’t that what they called me when I agreed to the tests?

Aarika nodded. “Luc, James, and I are to appear before the Council immediately.” Another pause. “As a sign of our trust, you are released on your own recognizance to search for your sire. If you manage not to feed until midnight, your petition will be granted.” And then she vanished.

“But what about Beatrice?” I shouted after her. She didn’t answer, but I’m pretty sure someone heard me, because someone shouted something in French and I ran for the
donjon
. It was different than in the remembered world of the Vale of Scrythax, but the moat was still there, and for a vampire, it was very leapable. “Eric,” I said to myself as I landed on the other side, “you’d better have left your gun on the plane.”