me time to take in the tableau, because no way was this unstaged. The humans were sitting on the floor at the feet of the vamps, some bleeding and in chains, others giving the impression of pets with pretty collars around their necks. There were dozens of humans and twelve vamps. Twelve powerful vamps, the entire group except for three wearing pure white. Something moved in the background, a fast blur of darkness with a flash of crimson, behind the vamps and humans. It was gone before I could tell what it was.
Set to the side of the enormous fireplace was a gold throne. A gold-plated throne, rather. It had been constructed of what looked like femur bones and human skulls coated with heavy layers of gold. Shimon was literally sitting on the bones of his enemies.
Just inside the main room, I stopped. The people with me stopped and spread out, Lincoln at my left shoulder, the witches just behind him. The humans with us spread out into the fringes, acquiring firing positions sufficient to avoid hitting us. Our few to Shimon’s bunches.
Ed was lying at the base of the throne, at the feet of his torturer. Ed had been skinned, from his buttocks, up across his scalp, to his forehead. From his hips, up his stomach and chest, to his chin.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t wail. I didn’t attack. I showed my fangs. I extruded my scarlet claws and gripped the Mughal hilt near my waist. I forced a snarl of a smile instead of giving in to the scream that was riding at its heels. Shimon had tortured my heir. My friend. He hadn’t done that by accident, but I didn’t know what the Flayer’s goal was, so I waited, though all I wanted was to attack Shimon and save my primo.
Edmund’s head raised. “The tribal woman comes to call,” he said, sounding unlike himself. Understanding came fast. My primo was still speaking the thoughts of his captor. The vamp was in his head. Shimon was posed, lounging back on the gold, his long black hair flowing over his chest, a chest that was covered in a chitinous armor, shining and hard. I had seen this before, in Natchez, Mississippi. It was an exoskeleton like that grown by the vamps there, who had undergone mutation and become partially insectile in reaction to too much . . . too much time magic. Oh crap. I had focused in so intently on the arcenciel time magic and my own timewalking that I had forgotten about witch time circle magic. This magic took multiple witches and a nonstop working circle and large quantities of the iron spike of Golgotha. The witches forced into the time circle had no choice, no way to get free, no way to stop the working. The working killed them, one after another.
Shimon was watching me and must have seen my understanding because he suddenly relaxed, smiling. “Yes. You see what is possible for the Sons of Darkness.” His lips didn’t move with the words, but there was no doubt who was speaking to me through Edmund’s tortured lips. “The magic of time,” he said, in case I misunderstood.
Somewhere he had put witches into a time circle and forced them to work it, and they were dying. They were tools, nothing more. Like his possession and control and torture of Edmund. I’d kill the Flayer of Mithrans for Ed alone.
Hayyel would be tickled pink.
Before I could speak, Lincoln stepped around me. “It is my belief that both of the Sons of Darkness could read. Yet, here you are, in my city, without presenting yourself to me, in di-rect contradiction of the original Vampira Carta, and the Vampira Carta of the Americas. You owe me fealty, you foul creature.”
“Kill the Dark Queen, give unto me her magical items, and I will depart your shores.”
“Ain’t happenin’,” he said, sounding more mountain man than Blood Master. “I reckon you and me’ll have to battle, then. Once my queen’s done thrashing your butt, expect to meet me on the field of battle at dusk. Of course, that’s assumin’ there’s enough of you left to fight.”
While Shaddock spoke, I had let my snarl fade away into disdainful neutrality. “You will release my primo to me,” I said, sounding bored.
“You will release my brother to me,” Shimon said, sounding bored-er.
I laughed, managing to sound entirely unperturbed. From my peripheral vision, I watched as Eli and Thema maneuvered around the room for the best