“No vampire that I know of would even think of marrying a living woman. Vampires are fairly strict about interacting with their own kind. It’s both cultural as well as practical. You can have human concubines, but wives? Vampire only. And they have both written rules and a host of unwritten ones that go with every aspect of belonging to the Vampire Nation. Woe to those who decide to disregard them.”
“Charlie would never make it up the ladder, would he?” I asked. Even though he was far more sophisticated now than when we had first met him, Charlie didn’t have the heart to live within the confines of the Vampire Nation and we all knew it. Most of all, Charlie knew it.
“No, he wouldn’t. We’ve talked about that a few times,” Herne said. “He recognizes that he may have to harden himself a little to interact with the VN, but he realizes that he’s just not cut out for the life style. It would be far worse if he wasn’t part of the Wild Hunt. He belongs with us. Without us, he’d be a rogue, on his own, and that’s never good when you’re a vampire. Too easy to slip into madness as the centuries go by.”
I thought about Charlie, and how he’d been so geeky and lost when we first met him. In the space of a year, he had turned his life around and he seemed truly happy.
We arrived near the entrance of the Catacombs that was closest to Wager Chance’s office. Raven had told us about it. As we stepped out of the car, Herne set the alarm on the vehicle. It would take a picture of anybody trying to break into the car, as well as sound an alarm.
We entered the Viaduct Market—years ago it had been called the “Pike Place Market”—and headed through the throng of evening shoppers. The market was open until midnight most nights, but we were headed toward one shop in particular. An art studio that catered to nobody. There were always a few students in there, but Raven had told us they were shills, fronts so that the studio seemed on the up-and-up.
Herne led us up to the woman behind the counter, who glanced up from her magazine with a bored expression, smiling a fake smile.
“Yes? May I help you?”
Herne leaned on the counter. “Hi, Vivian. I’m Raven’s friend, and I run the Wild Hunt Agency. Did she call?”
Vivian dropped the smile and stood. Even from across the counter I could feel the magic tingling around her. She nodded and pulled back the curtains that were covering the doorframe behind her.
“Take the elevator and press S2, for ‘Sub-Level 2.’ If you’re not back before midnight, you’ll have to use another exit.” She held up her hand before we swung around the counter. “Raven asked me to give you these. I trust her. Don’t make me regret that trust.” She handed over three keycards with the name “Art Shack” stenciled on them. “Next time, just show these to me and you can go through without a problem. But I need your names so I can log them in.”
“Ember Kearney,” I said, and she took my picture with a digital camera, then typed in my name next to the photo and the number of my corresponding badge on her computer. Herne and Yutani followed suit before we headed through the curtains.
We found ourselves in a small alcove with a door to the left, and an elevator straight ahead. Herne punched the button and the elevator doors opened. He tapped the S2 button and the car began to move.
A moment later we came through the doors and found ourselves facing a sign on the wall that read s2-sector 6. A sign to the left read s2-sector 5, with an arrow pointing left. A sign to the right read s2-sector 7, with an arrow pointing right. We turned to the left.
Without the signs, we would have gotten lost within minutes. The Catacombs stretched out, a vast labyrinth below Seattle, and they interwove and interconnected in dizzying loops.
Sub-Level 2 was oriented toward tourism. We passed a branch of the Vampire Nation Worldwide Financial Institution, or VN Worldwide for short. There were restaurants geared toward tourists, given vampires didn’t need to eat food, though they could if they wanted to, and souvenir shops, along with clothing boutiques and shops of that sort. We passed through the wide corridors, skirting groups of humans, Fae, and vampires alike. This