Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

‘They gave up the power to you so you’d protect them from the bogey vampires.’

‘They feared the Mother of us all, and what the Lover of Death forced his descendant to do in Atlanta.’

‘He didn’t possess the Master of Atlanta, but he drove him crazy and made him and his vampires slaughter people. It’s similar enough to what this master is doing,’ I said.

‘Perhaps this master was hiding not from the human law, but from the Council.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘This new master is powerful, but he is not more powerful than the Mother of All Darkness, and if he is a rotting vampire, then he descends from Amor de Morte, which means until they were both destroyed he must have feared them possessing or destroying him.’

‘You mean he waited for us to kill everyone he feared and now he’s outing himself to us?’

‘I am not sure it is that simple, because he sounds quite mad. There is no real logic in madness, ma petite , though the mad always believe they are quite logical.’

‘Crazy is never logical outside the head of the crazy person,’ I said.

‘My point,’ he said.

‘So now that we’ve destroyed all his competition, this new master is challenging us, or is he too crazy to care about us like that?’

‘I think the latter.’

‘Shit,’ I said, ‘does he have a body for us to find and destroy?’

‘The Traveller still does, and he is the oldest of us left with the ability to jump from body to body, but if someone destroyed his original form he would die in truth.’

‘But Mommie Darkest didn’t die when her body was burned up.’

‘ Non , but the body that had been trapped in Paris wasn’t her original body, or so I am told.’

I thought about it and shook my head. ‘You’re right, it wasn’t. She’d traded bodies before, which was one of the reasons she thought she could take mine or make me get pregnant so she could take the child over.’ I shuddered, as if I could still feel how evil she’d felt inside me. She had been the darkness made real. The night itself giving breath and life so it could slip in your window and do everything you feared would happen in the dark.

He went back to fussing with my hair. I wasn’t the only one who had been afraid of the DARK, if you spelled it with all capital letters.

‘Killing the spirit-walking vamps is so damned hard,’ I said.

‘ Oui , you must first trap them in a body long enough to destroy them.’

‘It only worked last time because she wanted to possess my body. It made her stay put long enough for my necromancy and your power to help me kill her.’

‘Then you must find what this new master vampire wants badly enough to stay, as you say, put, so you and Edward can slay him.’

‘Can you help us find him? I mean, you’re king with metaphysical ties to most of the vampires. Can you use those ties to hunt for him?’

‘In all honesty, ma petite , I do not know. The powers attributed to the old Council head, the Mother herself, were more her magic than any power given to her as the leader of the Vampire Council. I am not the first vampire or the creator of our society. I am a leader, but not that kind of leader.’

‘The female vamp was created by him. Maybe if we use her as a link we could trace it back to him like a psychic cell phone. You have her phone turned on, and then you trace where she’s getting her messages from.’

‘It is a good thought and one worth trying, ma petite .’

‘But you don’t think it will work,’ I said.

‘I do not know, and that is the truth.’

I took in a deep breath, let it out slow, and changed topics while I tried to think of how to find the new big bad vampire. ‘So there’s nothing anyone can do for Micah’s dad?’

‘Nothing that vampires can do for him, I am afraid, but we did save one of your law enforcement officers, Travers.’

I started to turn and look at him, but he kept my face turned so he could keep doing my hair. ‘You sucked the … corruption out of Travers?’ I asked.

‘No, Truth did.’

‘You brought Wicked and Truth with you?’ I said.

‘They are my main guards.’

‘It was more of a risk for Truth to do it. He’s not as powerful as you are,’ I said.

‘I am the king. That makes me powerful enough to have cured the officer, but it also means that I would have been tempted to drain power from local vampires if it went badly. I would not have allowed myself to rot to death for a stranger if I had the energy available to me to live. If I drain the life from wee vampires the first time I visit another master’s territory without asking his permission first, my reputation will be set like the old European council’s. I will be a monster and I do not want that.’

‘Is it that dangerous to feed on this corruption, even for you?’ I asked.

‘You witnessed Damian rotting from helping Asher drain corruption from Nathaniel. If you had not been there as his master to offer him clean and powerful blood, Damian would have died beyond all hope of healing, or recovery.’

‘But Asher had no problem doing it, and he wasn’t as powerful then as he is now, and certainly not as powerful as you are.’

‘Honestly, ma petite , I would not risk all that I am and all that I have for a stranger.’

I tried to turn again, and this time he moved so I could. ‘You wouldn’t risk it for Micah’s dad?’

‘I might have, but he is beyond such cures. No vampire can cleanse his blood now. It is too widespread in his body.’ He moved to the other side and started to patiently fuss with my hair.

I wanted to tell him to stop, but then I had another thought. ‘Edward mentioned that the media were calling it a zombie apocalypse, and I made international news footage.’

‘Oui,’ he said, winding a curl around his finger and not really looking at me.

‘Are we going to have to go through reporters to make the hotel? Is that why you’re fussing with my hair?’ I asked.

‘The police are keeping them well back on behalf of Micah’s family.’ He placed the curl among all the rest and began to work on that one problem area in the back of my hair that almost every person with long curly hair seemed to have.

‘I thought we might have to talk to the press.’

‘There is some talk of a conference tomorrow, but not tonight.’

‘Then why are you fussing this much with my hair?’

He hesitated and then continued to do each individual curl on the back of my head so it would curl and lie just so. ‘It gives me something to do with my hands while I think.’

‘So you are nervous?’

‘Oui,’ he said, softly.

I frowned, couldn’t help it. ‘Are you having second thoughts about the proposal?’

He looked at me then, face showing astonishment. ‘ Mon Dieu , no, no!’ He hugged me, then moved back with his hands on my shoulders so we could see each other’s faces. ‘ Ma petite , you have made me a very happy man by saying yes. Never doubt that I am ecstatic with our engagement and look forward to making a more formal presentation of it.’

I frowned harder. ‘Formal? Why formal?’

‘Because I am the vampire king of America, and kings do not become engaged quietly.’

‘What does that even mean?’

‘It means that once you, Micah, and whoever else we deem involved have worked out the organization of who is marrying whom, then we will announce what we all wish to announce, whatever that is.’

‘Okay, that sounds very reasonable, so why are you nervous?’

‘It seems silly,’ he said. He drew back from me, running his hands down the lace on either side of the pearl buttons of his shirt. The lace was actually inlaid on either side of the button line trailing up to the collar, which was unbuttoned and lying loose over the black velvet jacket, which hit him just past the waist. The last time I’d seen the shirt, the collar had been high and buttoned all the way up his neck so that the soft, embroidered white-on-white lace framed the edge of his chin. He only wore the collar loose when he was at the end of his day and in private.