"Right away," the waiter said. He watched a little nervously while Balthasar got to his feet. Balthasar smoothed down the wrinkles in his linen pants, but there's only so much you can do with linen. It really isn't meant to be knelt in.
"You have won the first round, Jean-Claude. Be careful that it does not become a Pyrrhic victory." Yvette said. She and Balthasar left without ever taking a table. Guess they weren't hungry.
"What's going on?" I asked.
Jean-Claude sat back down. "Yvette is a council toady. Balthasar is the human servant of one of the most powerful council members."
"Why are they here?"
"I believe it is because of Mr. Oliver."
Mr. Oliver had been the oldest vampire I'd ever met. The oldest one I'd ever heard hinted at. He'd been a million years old, no joke, a million years, give or take. For all those with a head for prehistory, yes, that does mean he wasn't Homo sapiens. Homo erectus,and able to walk around during the day, though I never saw him cross direct sunlight. He'd been the only vamp to ever fool me for even a few moments into thinking he was human, which is nicely ironic, since he wasn't human at all. He'd had a plan to take out Jean-Claude, take over the vamps in the area, and force them to slaughter humans. Oliver had thought a slaughter like that would force the authorities to make vamps illegal again. He thought vampires would spread too quickly with legal rights and take over the human race. I'd sort of agreed with him.
His plan might have worked if I hadn't killed him. How I managed to kill him is a long story, but I'd ended up in a coma. A week unconscious, gone, so close to death that the doctors didn't know how I survived. Of course, they hadn't been too clear on why I was in a coma to begin with, and no one felt like explaining vampire marks and Homo erectusvampires.
I stared at Jean-Claude. "The crazy son of bitch that tried to take you out last Halloween?"
"Oui."
"What about him?"
"He was a council member."
I almost laughed. "No way. He was old, older than sin, but he wasn't that powerful."
"I told you he agreed to limit his powers, ma petite. I did not know who and what he was at first, but he was the council member known as the Earthmover."
"Excuse me?"
"He could cause the earth to shake by his power alone."
"No way," I said.
"Yes way, ma petite. He agreed not to cause the earth to swallow the city because it would be blamed on an earthquake. He wanted the bloodletting to be blamed on vampires. You remember his plan was to drive vampires back to being illegal. An earthquake would not do that. A bloodbath would. No one, not even you, believes that a mere vampire can cause an earthquake."
"Damn straight, I don't." I stared at his careful face. "You're serious."
"Deadly serious, ma petite."
It was too much to take in all at once. When in doubt ignore and be terribly unimpressed. "So we took out a council member, so what?"
He shook his head. "There is no fear in you, ma petite. Do you understand what danger we are all in?"
"No, and what do you mean the 'danger we are all in'? Who else is in danger besides us?"
"All our people," he said.
"Define 'all,' " I said.
"All my vampires, anyone that the council considers ours."
"Larry?" I asked.
He sighed. "Perhaps."
"Should I call him? Warn him? How much danger?"
"I am not sure. No one has ever slain a council member and not taken their place."