Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,76

fine,” Marco said, and his tone informed me that my door was still in jeopardy.

“We had a thing—”

“So I heard.”

Of course he had, I thought, while trying and failing to get my fumbling fingers to open my damned makeup bag. Vamps communicated mentally. He’d probably seen it in 3-D, surround sound, 4K, or whatever the hell. Damn it, I didn’t care, I just wanted—

There!

A little triangular bottle fell out in my hand, strangely and wonderfully heavy for its size. But I couldn’t use it yet. Marco would smell it through the door.

“I’m fine,” I told him again, trying to sound a little more convincing.

“Prove it.”

“What?” I blinked at the door in confusion.

“I said, if you’re all right, prove it.”

“How? By letting you in?”

Because I didn’t think that would be such a good idea. I’d washed my hands and face at the consul’s, but there was dried blood and God knew what else all over me—including on my bare legs, I noticed with some horror. Splotches of something had dried white and crusty, like I’d had a sudden onset of leprosy. I let my head fall back against the cabinet.

I wasn’t all right.

“No, by joining us,” Marco said. “We’re having dinner on the terrace.”

I swallowed and tried not to stare at the stuff on my legs. I didn’t want dinner. I might never want dinner again.

But I did want Marco to go away.

“Okay. But I have to clean up first.”

I almost saw the big head nod. “Don’t take too long. There’s somebody here to see you.”

Great. That was all I needed. Somebody else who wanted something.

But Marco finally left, and I had the cork out of the bottle as soon as I heard the outer door shut.

I shuddered through half of what was left and did some more head-resting. A thousand questions were whirling around in my mind, but I was too tired to think straight. And smarter heads than mine hadn’t done much better.

What the hell had we just fought? Why had it possessed the redheaded soldier when it could have just laid waste in its real form? What was the small dark thing I’d encountered and hidden out with for a while, and why had the monster been searching for it in somebody else’s head?

Nobody knew. The best guesses were some kind of demon—because of the possession—although the demons on hand had never seen anything like it and had seemed as weirded out as the rest of us. And that it had taken control of the redheaded soldier to get past the shield protecting the camp, which . . . all I could say was, that must be one hell of a shield. And nobody had any idea about the little dark thing at all.

Marlowe had suggested that the idea behind the possession might have been to cause a revolt among the troops by causing them to blame each other for the deaths. The invasion was being rushed to take advantage of the slow time period coming up in Faerie; the last thing anybody needed right now was dissent in the ranks. But that seemed a little far-fetched, too.

These weren’t normal soldiers; these were vamps. They might get pissed off, even lash out at each other occasionally. But they weren’t high-level masters who could make their own decisions. If their masters wanted them somewhere, they’d stay there, and they’d toe the line, no matter how much some of them might grumble about it.

And most of their masters did want them there. They might not like that a levy had been placed on their households, but let’s face it, they weren’t sending their best guys. If they didn’t get them back, they could always make more, and maybe they’d get luckier next time. And if they did get them back, they’d likely be far more powerful than when they left, due to some of the demons’ power leaking over.

That had been the big selling point to get people to join the elite force. Because no matter what the blond musician thought, he wouldn’t have been forced. The demons couldn’t work effectively in an unwilling host, so he’d have likely been sent back or—more probably—given some kind of support position if he declined. Maybe he’d have even ended up entertaining the troops!

But not now.

I thought again about his little rash, his chewed-up pens, and his general prissiness. I’d liked him, in the few minutes I’d had to get to know him, and now he was dead. I wondered how many more