I quickly explained about the security and the bolt-hole/escape-hatch. The Mithran Suite was decorated all in gold—like the vamp—with gilded, armored steel shutters on the windows and an escape hatch in the floor at the foot of the bed, leading to a narrow passage down through the walls of the hotel and underground. The suite was secure up to RPGs—rocket propelled grenades. If an opponent was that determined, no one was safe.

“This is acceptable. I am not unpleased.”

“You have no idea how happy that makes me.” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

He laughed. “You may join me here. Your presence in my bed would please me.”

And theeeere it was. The invitation I had been expecting. Fortunately, after all the vamp manners studies, I had my line all prepped and ready to go. “Grégoire, you are pretty beyond anything I’ve ever seen.” He nodded as if I spoke only the truth. I resisted an eye-roll. “But I have a job to do, and climbing into your bed would surely turn my head and blind me to all proper responsibility.” A strange look crossed his face, as if that one had never occurred to him. “So, I’ll reluctantly decline and see to your daytime security placement.”

I left, and Grégoire didn’t try to stop me. I’d like to think he was flummoxed. Floored. Startled. But maybe he was tired. What did I know?

I worked like a fiend all day with my team and with Grégoire and Clan Arceneau’s primo blood-servant twins, Brandon and Brian Robere, finalizing safety measures and arrangements, and reading them into my plans and protocols. Grégoire’s finest were lean, narrow-waisted, broad-shouldered, and former military. Though they looked young, the B-twins were some of the oldest blood-servants I’d ever met. I liked them and they had kept up with the changes in technology and security protocols better than most old servants.

We also met with Shaddock’s head of security, an Asian guy named Chen, who had intense eyes and looked about ten. He already knew the hotel layout and had little to offer or request in terms of security changes. He was in and out like a precise laser attack, and he set my predator instincts buzzing. I wondered if we would both survive the parley, or try to kill each other.

The big hoedown started just after midnight, with Lincoln Shaddock, the vamp asking for MOC status, arriving in Shaddock’s limo and a group of three armored SUVs that we had brought in to provide secure transportation during the parley. We hadn’t announced the date and time of the first meeting, and the antivamp protestors who had assembled out front were caught off guard, as was the media, so there was no big hoopla. Just a stately procession of vehicles pulling up out front and people emerging faster-than-human.

The vamps were introduced in the lobby, which had been cleared of guests and swept for explosives and video and listening devices. Shaddock strode across the hardwood and silk oriental rugs like the beaked-nosed frontiersman he had been as a human: tall, rawboned, and rough around the edges despite his tuxedo. Grégoire stood with his back to the massive central fireplace, resplendent in gold brocade. I stood to the side, taking in Shaddock’s heir and spare, and his primo and secondo blood-servants. I had studied their files extensively and, with a flick of a finger, I repositioned two of Derek’s men into better position to cover the vamps—not just to keep them alive, but to make sure the newcomers didn’t pull weapons and stake Grégoire. Hey. It could happen.

“Lincoln Shaddock,” said the vamp. His laconic tone was marked by a strong Tennessee/Kentucky accent, and his scent was unusual for a vamp, smelling like hickory bark, wood shavings, and barbeque. The vamp owned a BBQ joint in the middle of Asheville and he worked there most nights, which explained the scent, though the idea of a job was odd for a vamp. But then, Shaddock wasn’t as old as most master vamps. Maybe he had to work like the rest of us poor slobs. “I am blood-master of the Shaddock Blood Clan. Turned by Charles Dufresnee after the Battle of Monocacy, outside of Frederick, Maryland. Currently sworn to Clan Dufresnee, and with his permission, petitionin’ the blood-master of the southeastern United States to acquire territory to include the city of Asheville, North Carolina, and to be granted hunting land and cattle and the rights to rule as Master of the City under his rule.”

Hunting land meant territory where vamps would hunt humans to drink from. Cattle meant the humans they’d be hunting. Ticked me off, not that I had a say in the wording or the reality of the meaning. The phrasing had been established centuries ago as part of the Vampira Carta, the legal document vamps lived by. The Carta also established the laws that gave me the right to hunt rogue-vamps. That part of the law probably gave vamps the willies. I could only hope.

Lincoln Shaddock gestured to the tiny young woman standing behind him. “This here is Amy Lynn Brown, my youngest scion.” The miracle-vamp, the reason that Leo had allowed the petition and the parley. The dark-haired, brown-eyed girl looked terrified, and no one did anything to alleviate her nerves. Grégoire stepped to the side and studied her like a piece of meat.

I hadn’t known Leo was the blood-master of the entire southeastern U.S. until the first time I heard the introductions read during my parley training. He held the hunting license of every fanghead below the Mason-Dixon Line, from the eastern border of Texas at the Sabine River, east to the Atlantic and south to the Gulf, with the exception of Florida and Atlanta. The Atlanta MOC was an independent of sorts, and Florida was run by a vamp I hadn’t studied yet.

Grégoire turned his attention back to Shaddock and bowed slightly, saying, “Grégoire, blood-master of Clan Arceneau, of the court of Charles the Wise, Fifth of his line, in the Valois Dynasty, turned by Charles—the well beloved, the mad—the son of the king. Here by decree of Leonard Eugène Zacharie Pellissier, turned by, and heir of, Amaury Pellissier, his human uncle and Mithran father, now true-dead, to negotiate the petition of Lincoln Shaddock for rights to claim Asheville and surrounding territory as Master of the City . . .”

Yada yada. I zoned out on the confab, seeing a flicker of shadow at the front entrance. The protestors were trying to get in, bodies pressed against the glass, voices raised, chanting, “Vamps go home. Vamps go home.” Real original, and no threat unless they had guns or were willing to break in, which I had to consider. I touched my mouthpiece to com channel and said to Derek, “Moving to the front. Get the principals to the Black Bear Grill, out of sight.”

“Copy,” my second in command replied. He switched channels and relayed my orders.

We had two communication channels, a command channel between Derek and me, and a general channel that went to all the security staff. Moving to the front, I listened as the B-twins and Shaddock’s Chen led the way to the hotel’s restaurant, which we’d taken over for the first night of the parley. I felt immensely better as the doors to the restaurant closed with a firm snap. This initial meeting allowed the primary negotiators to chitchat and take one another’s measure while their minions gave a final tweak to the rules the vamps would operate under, and shuffled and finalized the talk schedule.

I had never been a bodyguard, and I wasn’t looking forward to the whims of vamps changing my security measures on the fly, but that was part of the job too—flying by the seat of my pants, moving my men here and there and hither and yon and trying to keep everyone out of trouble. Playing in the vamp sandbox was an exercise in creative use and placement of assets.

While they did what vamps and their blood meals do, I wandered around the hotel, making sure none of my men were mispositioned or left a blind spot where trouble might hide. I also triple-checked the communication gear and walked the entire external perimeter of the hotel, the nearby parking garage, and every hallway, stairwell, wine bar, nook and cranny of the joint. Again. It was obsessive but it also was keeping me awake.

Near dawn, the first something unexpected happened. I was checking out the men’s rooms off the lobby when I was alerted over my com headgear. “Legs, something’s up. The blood-servants are going ape-shit,” Derek said.

Wrassler, my number two guy, and one of Leo’s blood-servant security goons talked over the chatter. All I made out was, “—in here now . . . Leo . . .”

I hotfooted it out of the john, Beast-fast. “What?” I asked as I entered the Black Bear Grill. They were all watching a TV monitor, local cable news showing a scene of flashing emergency lights: police, ambulance, even an antiquated fire truck with Cocke County Rescue Squad painted on the side. In the background I could make out a bridge and the reflection of red and blue flashing lights on still water. On-screen was a wild-haired, heavily bearded man, maybe mid-twenties, with multiple piercings and lots of body art. “Dude, it was bad. I mean blood and guts and stuff. The deputy was saying it had to be fangheads, what with the injuries. Like one a’ them rogues that goes psycho and eats people and shi—uh, stuff. Like, sorry, dude. I cuss a lot.”

“Oh crap,” I murmured. My cell phone rang. It was Leo. “Yellowrock.”

“You will take any necessary personnel and deal with this. If it is a rogue, dispatch it. If it is something else, you will make this situation go away.”

“Sure, Leo. But—” The line clicked off. I was just an underling, the paid help. Unlike the vamps, I didn’t deserve good manners.

CHAPTER TWO

Vamp-Fang and Werewolf-Bite Scars

Eyes gritty from lack of sleep, I knelt on the bank, jeans absorbing the wet from the river-slick rock. Just upstream from me, two commercial rafts slid under the bridge where a couple had been attacked before dawn, the screaming voices of laughing children tearing the air. Someone slapped a paddle onto the water, the sound echoing. My Beast flinched deep inside, but I didn’t react. I was too busy studying the scratches on the rock in the early morning light.

There were three parallel lines, the one in the center longer than the ones to either side. I put my fingers into the grooves, feeling the rough edges of the slashes. Using the excuse of a better view, I bent lower, getting my nose to the rock. I sniffed. The water smelled of iron and fish, sunscreen, treated sewage, chemicals, and age. The grooves smelled different. Still fishy, but with a particular, sour, dead-fish stench I recognized.