Oracle's Moon (Elder Races #4)(13)

Khalil had to admit, that surprised him a little. After the human had evidenced such panic, he hadn’t thought she had it in her. She still smelled of fear, but her energy crackled with anger too. She clearly didn’t like how the Vampyres had frightened her. Since it was also clear she had the ability to sense his presence, he decided to hold off on materializing to see how she dealt with what waited on her doorstep.

Grace felt Khalil looming behind her as she looked through the fine mesh of the screen door at the two Vampyres on her porch. Earlier that morning in the clearing, there had been so much concentrated Power from so many entities, she’d had trouble sensing which Power belonged to whom. She’d felt surrounded by a formless heat, as if she had been engulfed by a solar flare.

Now she had no difficulty sensing the intense Power that the Vampyre males carried. She faced two disasters dead ahead with a calamity at her back, and that was more than enough to dry out her mouth and keep her heart racing.

“What do you want?” she said to the Nightkind King.

Wow, listen to me, she thought. I sound kinda rude, don’t I? Get me a Djinn like a gun in my holster, and I lose all my manners.

Julian Regillus’s dark gaze met hers. She felt the draw from his eyes through the screen door. “I want to talk with the Oracle, of course.”

The Nightkind King’s voice was deep and rough, like a shot of raw whiskey. He had opened the front of his cloak to the warm summer night, and he wore a plain black shirt and black trousers underneath. He was broad across the chest and shoulders, flat through the abdomen and heavily muscled. This close, she could see that when he had been mortal, he had not aged particularly well. He looked like he was in his late forties when he had been turned, so he had probably been in his midthirties. His rough features were weather-beaten, lined at the eyes and at the corners of a stern mouth. Though he kept his hair military short, somehow he gave the impression of a shaggy wolf that watched her every move.

In contrast to his King, the killer that stood beside him appeared almost slender, del Torro’s long, lean body disguising what must be a terrible whipcord strength. Xavier del Torro looked like he had been turned in his early to midtwenties. He could still embody the illusion of youthfulness, with eyes that were somewhere between gray and green, a clear complected skin and refined features that somehow missed being either handsome or delicate.

Del Torro’s turning had been a famous event in history. A younger son of Spanish nobility, he had been a priest until the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition tortured and destroyed a community of peaceful Vampyres near his home in Valencia. The Vampyre community had included del Torro’s older sister and her husband. After the massacre, del Torro walked away from the Catholic Church and approached Julian, who turned him into a Vampyre and set him to cut a swath through the officers of the Inquisition. The ten years that followed were some of the bloodiest in Spanish history.

While in theory Grace didn’t have a problem with someone who had decided to go after the Inquisition, um, yikes.

Grace turned her attention back to Julian. “What do you want to talk about?”

Del Torro turned his attention from studying the front of her house and gave her a pleasant smile. He asked, “Is this how you offer sanctuary to strangers?”

“You’re rich and Powerful,” she said. “You don’t need sanctuary. You need a luxury hotel suite downtown. And you lost any right to sanctuary this morning when your friend pulled a sword on my land.”

Behind her, Khalil’s presence flared in surprise, and she realized he hadn’t known what had happened. His attention must have been focused on the house. He coiled tightly around her.

Julian shifted, a sharp, abrupt movement, and del Torro lost his easy smile. “We did not know that she came armed or what she intended to do,” Julian said.

“That seems somewhat careless of you,” Grace said. “Is it supposed to make me feel better about letting you into my house? Because it doesn’t.”

“We had no argument when the Wyr killed her,” Julian said. “We agreed that was justice.”

Was that sincerity or expediency? Something was in the Vampyre’s voice, but whatever the emotion was, it was more complex and nuanced than she knew how to name. He was thousands of years old, and she was twenty-three. She wasn’t even going to try to understand him, because she knew she couldn’t.

“Still not feeling reassured,” Grace told him. “I’m not up to a second consultation in one day. Why don’t you just ask me whatever it is you want to ask me, so I can answer, and you can go away?”

Julian said, “I want to know what you and Carling talked about.”

Del Torro’s gaze lowered. He moved suddenly and muttered under his breath. “Madre de Dios.”

She looked down.

Black smoke wafted around her, covering her from the waist downward. She drifted fingers through the top of it. It curled and eddied just like real smoke. Khalil was making his presence known to the Vampyres in no uncertain terms. She stirred the smoke with a forefinger. It looked really neat, actually, like she was standing in the mouth of a volcano. Or maybe in the mouth of hell.

“Meet my companion,” she said. “He’s not very friendly.”

Khalil Somebody Important. Which probably meant he was the Bane of More Than One Person’s Existence. He might possibly be the Bane of Quite a Few Peoples’ Existences. For the first time since meeting him, Grace felt almost cheerful.