Death's Mistress (Dorina Basarab, #2)(65)

The head was down, cradled in his arms, almost as if he was sleeping. Blond curls spilled over a green velvet jacket that matched the drapes and the marble desk accessories. If it wasn’t for the knife protruding out of his back and the cloying scent of blood, I might never have known anything was wrong.

Then again, the vamp standing over him, clutching another blade sheened in blood, might have given me a clue.

For a moment, I just stared. I’d expected a confrontation, maybe even a duel, since master vamps weren’t that great at following other people’s rules. I hadn’t expected cold-blooded murder.

Then I snapped out of it and kicked the door shut behind me. “You killed him?”

“Non.” Louis-Cesare looked up at me, his eyes dark with shock.

“Then what the hell—”

“I came here to demand Christine. I found him like this.”

Ray snorted from inside the duffel. “ ‘He was like this when I got here’? That’s your alibi?”

“I do not need an alibi!” Louis-Cesare told him stiffly. “I did nothing!”

“And you’re holding a knife because . . . ?” I asked.

“The knife was on the floor, and the blood dripping from his wound was rapidly covering it. I picked it up to get it out of the way, and as I did so, he died.”

I stared at him in disbelief. If that was his story, he was completely screwed. And then running footsteps were coming down the hall, and I realized it didn’t matter. He could have the best damn story in the history of the world, but no vampire was going to take time to listen when his master had just been killed.

We needed to get out of here and worry about damage control later. There was a single window in the room, or there had been. The force of Elyas’s passing had blown it out, letting in a breeze that stirred the heavy drapes. I used my elbow to knock out the remaining glass, then stared downward. A five-story plunge onto concrete, which was not doable for me. But Louis-Cesare ought to be able to manage it.

“Feel like giving me a—” I began, turning. Only to see him disappear through a door to the left.

“Where the hell is he going?” Ray demanded.

I just shook my head and ran after him. Beyond the door was some kind of sitting room, with a big window and a lot of soft, comfortable-looking armchairs. There was no one there, but a door on the other side of the room was open. I went through and found Louis-Cesare about to put his foot through a locked door.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, as the sound of fists pounding on the study door came from behind us.

“Searching for Christine.” He kicked in the door and disappeared inside.

“Now? They’re going to kill you if they find you here!”

“And they will kill her in three days if I do not.”

“You don’t know that she’s here! Elyas could have her anywhere.”

He didn’t even slow down. He disappeared into what looked like a bathroom, while I stared back and forth between it and the office. Damn it! I turned around and ran back.

The door was shuddering under the blows from outside, but it must have been warded, because it hadn’t already caved in. I didn’t know how long it might last, but I needed a look at the body. God only knew what kind of condition it would be in by the time any of the Senate’s people got here, and a dhampir witness was better than none at all.

The big leather chair was on wheels, so it was easy enough to move it out from the desk a couple inches, to give me a view of the body from underneath. The only light in the room was a thin ribbon under the door, the residue of a few low-burning sconces in the hall, and a little grayish city light from outside. At first I didn’t see anything other than the unnatural tilt of his head and the wet, clotted gape of his slit throat. Then I took a pencil and pulled at the open collar of his dress shirt and there it was: a glint of gold.

“I don’t get it,” Ray said. “He had the rune—I know it. So why’s he dead?”

I tugged at the chain and the heaviness already told me Ray was right, even before the necklace appeared. Ray had been correct about the size, but not the gaudiness. It was large, maybe four inches across, but beautifully made. The striations of gold radiating out from the center caught the light in a starburst that lit up the floor with a pattern of rainbows.

“Jókell’s?” I asked, holding it up.

“Yeah. That’s it,” Ray told me, over a cracking sound.

A glance at the door showed me that someone had tried to put a foot through it. They hadn’t quite made it, but part of the wood had bowed inward, with splintering around the indentation. Only the ward was keeping the fibers in place at this point, and it was failing. We were out of time.

I pulled the carrier off Elyas’s head and shoved it in the duffel. I spared a second to check the knife sticking out of his back, to make sure I knew what had happened. Then I ran for it, hearing the door explode into pieces behind me.

A couple vamps had been smart enough to go around the long way. I guess the waiting room door must have been warded, too, because they met me in the bathroom. One was a medium-grade master—level five, at a guess—who tried to put a fist through my head. I dodged, and he hit the mirror instead, spraying glass everywhere and giving me a second to shove an incendiary stick down his pants.

It went off with a hissing flare and he fell back into the bathtub, screeching and fumbling for the faucet. The baby vamp with him just stood there for a second, before quickly putting his hands up. I rolled my eyes, pushed him out of the way and ran out the door.