Midnight's Emissary Read online

  I flagged down the bartender.

  “What can I get you?” he shouted over the music.

  I leaned over the bar. “I need to speak with Liam.”

  “Who?” he tilted his head as if he hadn’t heard me the first time.

  “Liam,” I shouted back.

  He shook his head.

  “Liam. I need to speak with Liam.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry I don’t know any Liam.”

  He moved on without taking my order, leaving me standing there wondering what to do next.

  I was going to be pissed if I’d interrupted my night only to be kept cooling my heels by the bar because Liam couldn’t be bothered to let anybody know I was coming.

  I dug out my phone. I could try calling him again from outside. It’d be impossible to conduct a conversation in the din of this place.

  A hand landed on my shoulder. I spun and was confronted by Kat, looking none too pleased to see me.

  Kat had the face of a model, with pouty lips, high cheek bones and a graceful jawline. Her brown hair was perfectly styled, and her glare was hot enough to burn a hole in the fake wood bar behind me.

  The two douches next to me fell silent as they took in the ten in front of me.

  “Kat, what a surprise.”

  Just not the good kind.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  How much to tell her? I didn’t know if Liam had told anyone what role I had to play or if he wanted this to be kept totally below the radar.

  “This is clan territory.” Her grip on my arm tightened. She leaned forward to hiss, “Clanless rejects are not welcome on our hunting grounds.”

  Guess that solved that question then. She was still sore about how I’d ditched her last year. I wonder how much trouble she’d gotten in for my little stunt.

  I looked down at her grip on my arm and put one hand over hers, digging my nail into the spot right above her thumb’s nail. She grimaced and let go of me. I fought the urge to shake my arm. The woman had a grip like a python. I was pretty sure I’d have had bruises tomorrow if I’d been human. As it was, my advance vampire healing abilities would fix it way before then.

  “I was asked here,” I finally said.

  She folded her arms over her chest.

  “Oh? By who?”

  I didn’t see any way around this. If I didn’t answer, she had every intention of kicking me out. Liam would just have to deal with the consequences.

  “Liam wanted me to meet him here.”

  She arched an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth tilting down.

  Thought that might stick. She couldn’t kick me out since an enforcer was the one who requested my presence. I still didn’t know exactly what an enforcer did or why they seemed to have such pull. All I knew was that his name opened doors that would have otherwise remained closed to a baby vamp.

  “Why would he want to see you?”

  I smirked. “That’s really none of your business. Now, are you going to take me to him, or am I going to have to find him myself?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Follow me.”

  I waited until her back was turned before giving a sigh of relief. I didn’t know what I’d have done if she had told me to pack sand and do it myself.

  She led me to a door on the far side of the club. Once it closed, the sound disappeared as if the hundreds of people on the other side weren’t making as much noise as they possibly could. I couldn’t even feel the bass.

  “Are you coming?”

  I came unstuck from where I’d stopped to marvel at the soundproofing.

  She gave me a once over as I walked towards her. “Try to keep up. I don’t have all night to babysit.”

  Yeah, yeah. I got it. Don’t fall behind.

  She led me down a twisting corridor. What was it about the supe community that made them turn their businesses and homes into places that defied the physics of the universe? The last club I’d been in, the one where I’d met Kat, had also used magic to increase the size of the place, adding more rooms, higher ceilings and the like. Theoretically it could be a whole world unto itself.

  For all I knew an entire clan lived here.

  How Liam expected me to find my way to him was beyond me. Without a guide, I would be lost.

  Kat opened a door and gestured me inside. “After you.”

  I hesitated before proceeding her into the room. It was like stepping into a whole new club. One that had nothing in common with the public one. Instead of the tropical oasis of the normal side, this place was much more subdued.

  Wood paneling covered the walls. Wooden beams made grid patterns on the ceiling and black lights completed the look. The small bar had a wooden top and the floor was covered in places by a cream colored rug. There was also a cream colored couch against the wall. Despite being a wood box, the place managed to defy the hunting cabin look gone wrong and pulled off an old world charm that said money, class, and taste.

  There were several people decorating the chairs and couches, each more beautiful or handsome than the last. It was like standing at a convention for all the pretty people. I did not fit. I was pretty enough. Before becoming a vampire I had my share of guys trying their pickup lines on me, but I had nothing on the people in this room. When God was handing out looks, he’d wasted his best stuff on the people here. I mean, really, was the good looking trait a check box when these guys decided who to turn into a vampire?

  Talk about boring.

  A woman in a black dress beckoned Kat over. She was delicate, with perfectly arched eyebrows and a petite nose on a finely boned face. Her blond hair was swept up into a chignon. Her face was the sort great painters of the past would have had a brawl over to determine who got the honor of painting her.

  Her earrings, amber drops on long chains, brushed her shoulder as she tilted her head.

  “Kat, darling, it’s so good to see you again. What is this you bring us?” Her low voice matched the rest of her, managing to sound both beautiful and superior at the same time.

  I hated her instantly, not liking the way she looked me over like she was imagining what I would taste like. That may not have been far from the truth as I strongly suspected this woman was a vampire.

  I had a feeling all of the people in this room were vampires. That was a cheery thought.

  “Just a clanless looking for the enforcer,” Kat replied.

  I glanced at her, not surprised when she gave me a cool look. In retrospect, it probably hadn’t been a good idea to follow Kat. I thought the threat of Liam would keep her from trying anything, but I’d been wrong. From the looks of it– big time.

  The woman stood gracefully, circling me in a slow gliding movement. Her eyes had about as much feeling in them as a shark’s.

  “This is the clanless we’ve been hearing so much about?” she asked, no surprise in her voice.

  My back twitched. I did not like news of me making the rounds.

  “She’s so young,” a man in the corner said.

  A woman seated at the bar closed her eyes. “I can barely feel any power signature on her.”

  Another power I was missing. I could feel power coming off someone but only if they were using a lot of it. Right now, the only power I felt in the room radiated from the woman treating me like prey. It had a cold bite to it, leaving me feeling an oily residue on my psyche where it brushed mine.

  The woman took a seat and picked up her drink. The red liquid in the martini glass left a slight stain on the glass as she took a sip.

  I took a breath, the smell wafting to me. Blood, but mixed with something. It had a slight burn to it that said alcohol. I was betting vodka.

  A blood martini. How appropriate.

  “I’m not seeing Liam in here,” I finally said. “Did you get lost?”

  The woman at the bar chuckled softly.

  Kat gave her a look that should have bludgeoned her, but bounced off without phasing its intended victim.

  “Darling, don’t
be so cross with our Kat. She was only trying to help you out.”

  Yeah, I believed that like I believed frogs were actually princes in disguise.

  I decided not to take issue with her use of the word darling. This situation felt dangerous. It’d be best to be exercise a little bit of caution.

  “I highly doubt that,” I said. There, that was diplomatic, wasn’t it?

  Her laugh sounded like tinkling bells.

  “You’re probably right about that. Our Kat doesn’t really like you. She was punished rather harshly after she misplaced you last fall. The enforcer was very irate. She’s only recently been allowed out of her clan’s isolation room.”

  Kat’s face was politely interested, as if we weren’t discussing her while she was standing right here.

  I hadn’t realized she faced any major repercussions from my escape. I thought Liam would give her an ass chewing to end all ass chewings and that was it. Seemed like that wasn’t the case. I strangled any urge to feel sympathy for her. That way lay monsters. She’d twist that sympathy and strangle me with it if she got the chance.

  “Right. Good to hear. I’ll be on my guard with her from now on,” I said. I didn’t know if this woman was warning me or trying to start something between the two of us. Maybe both. “I still need to find Liam.”

  “Don’t rush off, little bird,” the man in the corner said. “It would be to your benefit to make a good impression on Elinor. She’s one of the applicants for the selection.”

  An applicant?

  I looked at the woman before me, Elinor, with new eyes. Her power coiled around her. It was like standing next to a snow storm. One where only a thin membrane separated me from the subzero freeze.

  Was she the one Liam suspected of hexing Thomas? Or was she just an applicant looking for an angle?

  “How impressive,” I said. Only those who knew me well would be able to tell I meant the exact opposite. “Still, I have places to be and roads to travel. I need to find Liam before I go.”

  “What interest does our enforcer have with you?” Elinor asked. Her eyes glinted dangerously. I had a feeling she’d been wanting to ask this question for a while.

  I gave her my best businesslike smile. “I’m afraid that’s between me and him.”

  The humor drained from her face, leaving a glimpse of the power hungry monster I suspected was behind the mask.

  “You’re refusing to answer your elder, girl?” Her tone made it clear there was only one right answer to the question that was not a question.

  “Can’t answer.” I again gave her my professional smile. The one I practiced in the mirror to be sure none of my true ‘fuck you’ feeling shone through. “I’m afraid it’s part of my job.”

  “And what job would that be?”

  As if she didn’t know. I’m sure if the rumors had tagged me as the clanless vampire they also tacked on that I was employed by Hermes Courier Service.

  “I’m a courier for Hermes.”

  There was no humor in her laugh. None of her emotions reached her eyes. “Yes, I seem to remember hearing something about that.”

  The rest of them laughed on cue. I looked around, noticing that several had drawn closer. Before they had been spread out in the room with Elinor existing in her own oasis of space. Now I was the focal point of the room. It left me feeling like meat. Unliving, breathing meat. It was not comfortable.

  I kept my breath even and the fear locked in a box in the back of my mind. Showing terror to a predator was about the worst thing you could do and despite their beauty, their nice clothes and seeming humanness, these people were predators. The type that sat at the top of the food chain and only feared those like them.

  I was not like them. Not even by a long shot. I was willing to bet Kat wasn’t like them either given the way she gave a few of them an uneasy look, as if it had suddenly dawned on her that she was in the line of fire.

  “It’s strange that you haven’t been brought to heel yet,” Elinor drawled. “Don’t you think, John?”

  “Very,” a voice said next to my ear.

  I twitched but kept myself from jumping. Must not show fear. Must not show fear even though my skin crawled and every instinct in my body said to make a break for the door.

  “I find it curious that you’ve been allowed to run free, even though our laws state that a newly turned vampire must be claimed by a clan for the first hundred years of their life.”

  It was clear she expected an answer. I had no intention of providing one. Partly because it was an answer I didn’t want her to have but mostly because she was starting to piss me off.

  “No answer. That’s good. It’ll make this so much more fun if you insist on being difficult.”

  The power that had been slithering through the room struck, wrapping around me. It was like being dropped into a lake of ice water.

  Have you ever experienced a change in temperature that was so drastic it was like your entire system shut down? It was like my brain got its finger stuck in a toaster. There was no thinking, just shock and pure, unrelenting cold. My heart fluttered, even my vital organs protested. My lungs locked, unable to breath, to suck down air.

  Black ate at the edges of my vision.

  Then suddenly that unbearable cold was gone. Well, most of it. I had a feeling my lips would still be blue. My body had been too shocked before to fight for warmth, but now it was trying to make up for lost time as I experienced a full body tremble so fierce that my muscles cramped.

  Son of a bitch. What the hell was that?

  The shark in front of me smiled.

  “Now, shall we try this again? Why did Liam allow you to run loose despite being a yearling?”

  My teeth clattered as I bit out, “Fuck you, lady.”

  Not the most eloquent of responses but it was all I could get out around the chattering.

  Elinor’s mouth tightened with displeasure though a spark of pleasure ignited in her eyes. She was enjoying this.

  That wave of cold hit me again. I gasped and then couldn’t get enough air in to breathe. With the iciness of death came a deep sense of despair and fear. Worse than I’d ever experienced.

  It was the kind of despair that made me question what right I had to be standing before these perfect people who were so much higher up in God’s good graces than me. The thought was so out of character that it jarred me out of the depression spiral.

  I never thought like that. Sure, I had self-doubt, but I never brought the big guy into it. My mistakes were my own. Never once have I felt that he was responsible for my problems.

  She was messing with my mind. It was different than a telepath’s influence. That was more like a one way radio set on blast. The radio being my mind. This was more like she was creating the feelings she wanted me to have and then amplifying them in the worst possible ways.

  The only time I’d felt anything like it was during my encounter with the draugr.

  “Would you like to answer now?” she asked in a silky voice.

  I closed my eyes, envisioning my forest around me. It was faint but the feeling of despair lightened just a bit. I added sunlight and imagined wild roses and bushes full of thorns. The fear lightened just a little more. Enough that I felt less like curling into a fetal position on the floor and more like killing the thing responsible for this feeling.

  “I’ll take no for a thousand,” I said.

  Her forehead furrowed as if she didn’t get the reference, but then she shrugged. I braced, knowing this would be bad.

  “I’m sure the enforcer would not like knowing someone was messing with his little bird,” a voice said from the door.

  Elinor gave the man behind me a superior smile. “Aiden, are you sure you want to interfere. It’s not like you to make such a huge misstep when it comes to politics.”

  I couldn’t turn to see what he did, not wanting to take my eyes off the monster in front of me. Whatever he did caused Elinor to frown in displeasure.

  A pair of nice men
’s shoes appeared in my peripheral vision and a hand grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. I hadn’t even realized I’d fallen to my knees during Elinor’s little torture session.

  “You’re not the select yet,” Aiden said.

  “Being a Patriarch won’t always protect you,” Elinor warned.

  “That’s exactly what it means,” Aiden said, giving her a cool smirk. “You forget, the select is not all powerful. You can only affect those less powerful than you.” He paused, running his eyes up and down her. “And darling, we both know that you don’t have enough power to force me to bow.”

  “We’ll see.” Her red tinged lips turned up in a self-satisfied smile that said she knew something he didn’t. “There are always others around who can take your place.”

  Aiden didn’t respond verbally. His hand tightened around my arm until it was a painful vise. I bit back my sound of protest and kept any hint of pain off my face. No way was I letting this bitch know that her barb had hit its mark.

  “This has been fun and all, but I still need to see Liam,” I said into the dangerous silence.

  Both pairs of eyes landed on me. It was like being at the center of a hurricane or between a pair of boxers whose knockout punch was a simple flick of the finger.

  “You know where he is?” I asked Aiden.

  The skin around his eyes crinkled slightly. He gave a small nod. “He sent me to find you when it took you too long to show up.”

  “How thoughtful,” I said. It would have been more thoughtful if he’d been waiting outside the club so I didn’t have to go through any of this. “Lead on, buddy.”

  Those crinkles got deeper as if something I said had amused him.

  He gestured me to proceed him out of the room. My legs were shaky, but they held my weight as I took the first steps to the door. I wanted out of here bad enough that I was willing to crawl, but was grateful when I made it to the exit upright.

  “Aileen,” Elinor purred.

  I hesitated, shooting her a glance over my shoulder. Aiden paused beside me.

  “Every vampire in Columbus is required to be in attendance at the All Clan later this week. I expect to see you there.”

  She gave me a sickly sweet smile. It was amazing how that smile hid the ruthless monster inside. One that liked throwing her weight around and torturing those less powerful than herself.