Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(42)

“What do you want?” she asked. “And would you turn off the stupid light? You can’t possibly be that afraid of me.”

He laughed. The spotlight was turned off, and others were turned on.

Elyna found herself in a large room full of tarps, sawhorses, and tools. The walls had been newly painted a burnt orange. She didn’t allow herself to look down and see how much damage they’d done to Peter, just stared at the vampires.

Colbert didn’t look imposing. He was only a little taller than she was, wiry rather than bulky. His face looked as if he’d been turned as a teenager, though his dark hair was thinning on top. Only the expense of his attire hinted at his power.

Two vampires stood with him—a woman who was taller than he by four or five inches and a black man with the eyes of a poet and the body of a Chippendales dancer. Both of them were pretty enough to be models.

Arm candy, she thought. There were others here, on the other side of the wall to her right. Sheetrock was not much of a barrier to vampires, but it hid them from sight and made them easy to forget about. Not that it mattered. Doubtless either of his arm candy guards could wipe the floor with her, if Colbert didn’t choose to do it himself.

“I am Pierre Colbert,” he said.

The way he said it, it rhymed.

“You find something funny?” Colbert asked coolly.

She waved her hands around the building, leaving her right hand pointing at the wall behind which he had more of his people waiting, so he’d know that she understood they were there.

“All of this,” she said, “for me.”

“Elyna Gray,” he said. “Who killed Corona and refused to take her seethe.”

“I struck her from behind,” Elyna said. “If I’d faced her in a proper fight I’d be ash. If I’d tried to take over the seethe, I’d have been dead in two days.”

“Still,” said Pierre, “you killed your Mistress and then came into my territory.”

“I killed the monster who made me, and then I ran home,” Elyna told him. “I admit it is a subtle difference, but significant to this conversation.”

“Ah, yes,” he purred. “Now, that wasn’t smart, Elyna Gray who was Elyna O’Malley. If you’d found somewhere else to live, it might have taken me longer to find you—you’ve been very discreet in your hunting habits other than coming into my favorite club a few weeks ago. I thought perhaps you had a menagerie, but that sheep”—he indicated Peter—“was a virgin pure.”

His words accomplished what she’d tried avoiding by not looking at Peter. Rage rushed in and she felt her skin tighten and her eyes burn with fire. Someone looking at her would know that they were in the presence of Vampire.

“Mine,” she said, barely recognizing her own voice. “He was one of mine and you harmed him.”

“He tasted mmm so good,” said the woman. “Bitch.”

Behind Elyna something fell to the ground with a sharp crack. She took a quick look behind her to where a sawhorse lay on the floor, two legs on one side broken off.

“Now,” said Colbert in an interested voice, “how did you manage that?”

Elyna had thought it was someone on his side. She shrugged.

The pretty man turned in a slow circle. “Master,” he said, biting out the word as if he found it distasteful. “Master, there is a ghost in this room, can you feel it?”

“Elyna.” Colbert looked at her. “You are just full of surprises. But the ability to control ghosts is not uncommon; why do you think they hide from us? And, as it happens, I am very good at it.” He looked around the room. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Familiar big hands landed on Elyna’s shoulders.

“Jack,” she said, horrified. “Jack, you have to get out of here.”

“Too late,” said Colbert, smiling. “Jack, is it? Break her neck.”

No.

The pretty black man looked from Elyna to the ghost behind her and started to smile.

“Jack, come here.” The Master of Chicago’s voice cracked with power. His pretty pet woman took a step forward and so did Elyna.

Jack patted her shoulder and then moved around her. His hands had been so solid, she thought that the rest of him would look that way, too. Instead, he looked more like a mist of light, a shimmering presence mostly human-sized but not human-shaped.

She’d done this to Jack, brought him to be enslaved by this vampire. She had to do something about it. Everyone in the room was paying attention to Jack and to Colbert. No one was looking at her.

You aren’t interested in me, she thought, calling on all the power she had to fade out of notice in this fully lit room full of vampires.

Colbert extended his hand until it touched the cloud of light that was Jack. “Mine,” he said in a voice of power.

But vampires can move fast, and Elyna had already crossed the room and found a weapon.

“You”—Elyna hit the Master vampire across the back with a piece of the broken sawhorse and knocked him away from her husband—“leave him alone.”

Colbert turned on her—and there was nothing human left of him. “You dare—” He would have said more, but another piece of the wooden sawhorse emerged from his chest. He looked down, opened his mouth, then collapsed.