Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(66)

She trailed followers behind her as though she were a bride and they the attendants assigned the task of carrying her veil off the ground. The attendants closest to her were human, one pretty blank-faced man and a pretty blank-faced woman.

Both humans were naked and covered with bite marks on all of their pulse points and lots of other points, too. The girl had suntan lines, and some jokester had drawn along the bikini top with a black Sharpie. The boy was very dark-skinned, and in the shadows of the basement, he was harder to see.

I tried not to look at their faces, because it was unlikely I could do anything to protect them. Unlikely I could do anything to protect myself from what was coming tonight. They’d been here long enough that some of the bite marks were scars, so there might not be a lot left of them to save.

A vampire like Stefan, who took care of the humans he fed from, could keep them mostly unaffected by his bite for decades. But most vampires were too impatient for that. I was betting that Mary’s seethe was full of vampires who didn’t care about the humans they fed from. The Sharpie bikini was a dead giveaway.

The rest of Mary’s attendants were vampires of both sexes and various appearances. None of them was the woman who had caught me and stuffed me down here. When they quit coming down the stairs, there were ten of them, not including the humans.

I wondered that she thought I was so dangerous. Surely she didn’t always travel around her own home with twelve minions? Maybe she was trying to impress me. Maybe she was simply making a statement of some sort.

Or possibly she trailed minions wherever she went. Just as she trailed the stench of a black witch. What idiot vampire had decided it was a good idea to change a witch into a vampire? She must be able to hide her scent—or she never went out on her own—because any werewolf with a nose would otherwise understand immediately what she was. I supposed that a witch who could hide her seethe in the middle of Prague for over half a century could probably manage to hide what she was if she wanted to.

Libor’s pack thought her a lesser vampire, but a vampire who could pull on the power of witchcraft was a contender for the scariest monster in town by any definition.

I clung to the contact I had with Adam, drawing courage and resolution in equal measure. I would not let this be the last place I saw on this earth. I would not let the last time I saw Adam be the laughing face he’d given me as I died a dramatic death at the hands of his daughter. I would not let the last air I breathed be the fetid stench rising from the dirt of this abattoir.

I would survive this. Somehow.

“Mercedes Thompson Hauptman,” Mary the vampire said. Her accent was heavy, definitely Eastern European, but I couldn’t decide if it was actually Czech, Serbian, or even Russian. That put paid to my Hitler M?dchen guess. Hers was not the usual Czech accent, though.

I stared at her without meeting her eyes. Probably she couldn’t have caught me with her gaze, but I’d met at least one who could. Being immune to most vampires sometimes seemed as useful as being immune to none.

She said something. I stared some more, and she made an impatient sound. One of the vampires came over, a male, and knelt beside her, facing me. She put her hand on his head and said something again.

The kneeling vampire said, his voice accented with the same upper-crust accent that Ben used, “How thou art fallen, daughter of the Werewolf King.”

I continued staring at Mary. She knew who I was. Possibly she’d gotten word from Bonarata. Less likely was that she knew more about the werewolves in the States and our families than the rest of the supernatural community I’d run into here.

What did she intend with the misquote of the Bible? I couldn’t see why she’d compare me to Lucifer, at whom the original quote had been aimed. I wondered if stealing and mutilating phrases from Isaiah was a kind of assumption of power—a dare of sorts. Though I knew that biblical readings did not affect vampires, not everyone (including some vampires I’d met) knew that.

Or maybe the translating vampire was taking a few liberties with what she said. I kept myself from looking away from Mary to look at her translator by force of will. Mary was the threat.

“I have seen nature films of coyotes,” Mary continued through her translator. “I expected that you would be bigger. More impressive. He told me that you had escaped the Lord of Night, so I should make sure of your captivity.”

It must be hard, I thought, to give a proper villain speech when your victim couldn’t say anything, and you could only speak through another person. It didn’t seem to bother Mary much. Nor did she appear to be rattled by the clank, clank, clank of the vampire chained to the wall. He’d quit screaming but now jerked on his chains in a heavy-metal precise rhythm that pounded my ears.

Mary paid him no obvious attention, though the structure of her sentences started to follow the beat of that chain. As bad as the clank, clank, clank was, I still preferred it to the screams.

“I think, Mercy . . . that is what they call you, yes?” Mary smiled a little at me, as if she found me charming or something. I was betting on the or something. She waited a moment or two after the other vampire had translated for her. Presumably, she thought I might respond, but I made no move.

“A shortened version of your real name,” she said. “Mercy, the weakest of all the virtues. I find your name ironically appropriate.”

She reached out and ran her long fingernails musically over the welded metal mesh. I noted that she had a French manicure, though the nail on her little finger was broken raggedly.