whose name I couldn’t even remember, had supplied the ink. What was left of them had been dumped in a corner, along with the body of an old man who had been cleaning earlier. Three deaths in what couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes, and they still had time to leave me a message. It looked like Drac had acquired some capable help pretty fast.
“ ‘Devil’s cow.’ It’s his pet name for me.” It was actually one of the nicer ones, as I recalled.
“Whose? Are you saying Lord Dracula did this?”
“Not personally.” I’d have known if one of the cloaked bastards was Uncle. His presence was unmistakable, especially to me. I’d have been able to taste him on the air, musty and electric-ozone sharp—the smell of madness. I pushed away sickening memories and concentrated on translating the brief scrawl. It was leaking down the walls and was fairly indistinct against the black paint, especially where it crossed the poetry, but I got the idea. “Kristie and José are dead,” I said evenly. The note didn’t say how, for which I was grateful.
“Dracula knew they were coming to meet us.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t reply. I fished around in my bag and brought out a bottle of tequila I’d ripped off from the Senate’s plane. It’s always good to have something flammable in my line of work, not to mention that I like tequila. “You might want to wait outside,” I said. Vamps tend to burn so nicely.
“How did they know?” It sounded more like he was talking to himself than to me, so I didn’t answer. Besides, there were far too many possibilities to count. I splashed alcohol around, except for a mouthful I decided I needed worse than the Hog. I stopped because of a grip of steel on my upper arm. I dropped the bottle and it rolled across the floor, spilling the remaining contents, until stopped by the cleaning man’s body.
“What is your problem?”
“We will not continue this way,” Louis-Cesare told me grimly. “I may be forced to work with you, but you will show me the proper respect. And when I ask you a question, you will answer it.”
I glared. The guy had mood swings bigger than his goddamned ego. “Buddy, you are about ten seconds away from getting your ass kicked all the way back to Daddy.”
“Do not call him that!”
I tried to rip free from his grip, but this time, nothing happened. My pack was across the room, near the back door where I’d dropped it after seeing the carnage, but I didn’t really need it. I had no fewer than three stakes on me at the moment, and I needed only a slim opportunity to slip one between his ribs. Unfortunately, that would leave me with no backup at all and a seriously pissed-off Mircea. I didn’t know if reasoning with this lunatic was likely to work, but if not, I could always stake him later.
“Whether you, me or Mircea likes it, he is my father. Believe me, I’m not proud of it.”
Louis-Cesare laughed bitterly. “No, why should you be proud? Do you have any idea how very fortunate you are? To have a connection with the Basarab line, to have Lord Mircea himself defend you and claim you as his own? If you weren’t under his protection, you would have been killed years ago! And what do you do in return? Mock him, belittle him, speak as if he were your equal! You, who have doubtless killed dozens of our kind—”
“Thousands,” I corrected, and saw his eyes flash silver. The next second, I was pinned by some invisible hand to the bloody wall, while a psycho vamp stalked toward me. Did the family never make any sane vampires? They really shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce at all.
“Some would give all they possess to have what you throw away,” he hissed. I tried to move, but got nowhere. That was the problem with the really old vamps. You never knew what kind of extra powers they’d picked up through the years.
“And they’d be welcome to it,” I told him frankly. “I don’t know what your stake in this is, but I’m here to save a friend. I don’t owe Mircea, or you, a damn thing. As for your question, I would guess that Kristie told Drac’s guys where she’d agreed to meet us, after some persuasion.” For her sake, I hoped she’d talked quickly.
“How did he know to