“Oh, there is no catch. No penalty. Only rewards. Stop rolling your eyes, I know that money means nothing to you. This could put you back in the Scepter’s good graces. The vampire court might not be so hot under the ruffled collar whenever your name comes up.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets, grimacing. “Still notorious, then? It’s not like I’ve done shit to deserve any of their ire.”
“Oh?” Vilmas said, his voice pitching like he’d caught me in a particularly exquisite trap. “But your continued insistence on working so closely with werekind, this Gilberto Ramirez of yours. Handsome and strapping, to be sure, but still, not someone to consort with. Tut, tut.”
“That’s one guy. I’m friends with one werewolf. Could be more if I met any I liked. They’re not so bad as you and the old fogeys at court seem to think.”
“You know how it is, Sterling. Tradition. Old blood. Bad blood.”
“It’s not tradition. It’s prejudice.”
He steepled his fingers together, smiling like he’d just led me from one trap to another. God, I fucking hated this guy.
“Perhaps the pre
judice is well-placed, considering the murderous nature of these cannibalistic barbarians, hmm? All these faces being eaten. You were saying something about a ‘werewolf problem’ back in your cabin? Not that I need further explanation. It’s quite clear that the lycanthropes are behind it. A local pack, perhaps.”
Not half an hour ago I’d been trying to reason with Gil about the possibility of werewolves perpetrating the Silveropolis attacks, and now here I was, getting all pissed off on his behalf. I rubbed my thumb and forefinger against my temples.
“Look, Vilmas. I’ll let you know if I hear anything, whether it’s about the mask or the werewolves. Just leave me alone. We’re just settling in, for fuck’s sake, I don’t need you and the court breathing down my neck already.”
He tilted his head, smiled, then extracted a slender bit of card from his breast pocket. “If you insist. Here.” His hand lingered a little too long as he slipped it into my jeans pocket. “Call me if you hear anything.”
“I will.”
“Good boy. And hey, since you’re new in town, you can always drop by my hotel if you want to feed. Nice little place off the plaza. I brought two of my best thralls. You must be awfully hungry.” He ran a finger along my jaw. “You’re so cold. Well, in every sense of the word.”
I clenched my teeth, refusing to give him the pleasure, my pride overriding my hunger. “Very generous of you, but I’ll manage.”
“Suit yourself, Sterling. It really is so nice to catch up.” Vilmas waggled his fingers, beaming as he waved goodbye. “Keep in touch.”
Without another word, Vilmas burst into a cloud of glimmering droplets, a million beads of blood that glistened in the moonlight. The red mist rode the wind, streaming away past the forest and down the road.
“Fucking showoff,” I grumbled, hoping he could hear me as he drifted off back to his hotel and his two tastiest, most delicious thralls. I hugged my arms close against my torso, sullenly aware of how cold my body was running from lack of feeding. As a last resort, maybe, if I was crawling on my hands and knees. But before that, there was Olivia Everett and her juicy fruit shop. Worth a try.
Honestly though, screw Vilmas with his pompous accent and histrionic fashion sense. Sure, I liked leather jackets myself, but those were practical. Wearing red velvet up in the mountains? The man was a vampire, not a cupcake. And what sort of name was Vilmas, anyway? It drove me nuts that I could never place his accent, something I was normally so good at. It helps to know where another vampire is from, in case you ever need to snuff them out. We’ve got plenty in common, but across cultures and countries, the differences can range in the extreme. So can the vulnerabilities.
There’s a kind of vampire native to the Philippines that Asher once told me about. A manananggal, it’s called. They pass as normal humans by day, and in fact can walk in sunlight. The trade-off is the very inhuman flip side of the situation that comes by night. To feed, a manananggal sprouts bat wings from its back. Then the torso, and only the torso, flies off, leaving the stump of the pelvis and legs behind. To kill one of these, you’ll need to locate its lower body. Salt the exposed flesh of the stump generously. Season it good. When the torso comes back from feeding, the process of reconnecting into one organism becomes so excruciating that the agony drives the manananggal mad with pain, eventually killing it.
Not that I had a big enough reason to want Vilmas dead – not just yet. But that was why many vampires chose their own names, or at the very least hid their family names. It was part of the etiquette. I mean, do you really think that Sterling is my real name? It may well be. Or I could be lying. You’re not meant to know.
Our pasts are behind us, and yet those could be the very things that other vampires, or worse, that hunters could use against us. A secret vulnerability, perhaps, or potentially more painfully, a descendant that could be held hostage, even killed. A vampire who uses their true, full name is one of a few things: very stupid, very brave, or very, very powerful.
That rule holds true for the Scepters. There was a Scepter to rule every vampire court, and a court in every state. Power trickled down to smaller courts in certain cities, but everyone knew that it was the Scepters who held the true authority in vampire America. But I was happier to be away from all that. The courts and the Scepters could keep their politicking to themselves. I didn’t have time for power plays and tugs of war. The Filigreed Masque, though – that was something worth considering.
Now, only a stake through the heart would get me to admit it, but I was happier being among friends. I rubbed at my breast pocket, considering another cigarette, then decided against it, slinking back up the path towards the cabin. I loved smoking too much, which worked out fine because I was already dead. Still, it was something Asher was trying to get me to give up. It couldn’t possibly be good, he said, even for an undead smoker. It was nice that he cared, a reminder that really, I genuinely was happier being among friends. Maybe if I buttered one of them up enough, they’d let me take a tiny nibble.
I reached for the door, hearing the muffled laughter from inside, when my ears picked up on something else. Even without my heightened senses I would have heard it: the unmistakable sound of a man screaming. The door flew open. I jerked away just in time to avoid having my face flattened. Gil rushed out onto the porch, shrugging on a denim jacket.
“Did you hear that?” he said, his eyes smoldering, glinting as they searched among the trees.
“Loud and clear. We should check it out.”
With a wordless nod, Gil took off, veering sharply away from the cabin and heading straight through the woods. Asher came running up to us, locking the door behind him as he pulled on a sweater of his own.
“Wait up,” he said, his breath a wisp of shuddering fog.
The man screamed again, louder, this time. I could sense the fear in his voice, the pain.