Pia Does Hollywood (Elder Races, #8.6)(30)

The second was, the more people who died from this, the worse the political fallout would be. Last month, the human world had put the Elder Races on notice—they were watching, and they were disturbed by what they saw.

In fifty short years, the spring massacre in the Nightkind demesne, along with all the other issues that had arisen over the last eighteen months, would become nothing more than minor footnotes in history. But right now, the massacre was too soon, too raw in people’s memories.

This problem in the Light Fae demesne might not be Tatiana’s fault, but the humans wouldn’t see it that way. Non-magical humans might not be susceptible to catching the contagion, but they could be caught and killed by hordes of those who had turned. This was everybody’s problem, and it appeared to have been caused by the Elder Races. It wouldn’t matter to the human government that the Elder Races demesne responsible lay in Great Britain. When reacting with racial bias, people tended to get very simplistic in their thinking.

So aside from the personal considerations, the calculator in Dragos’s head clicked on, and he looked at this whole fiasco as a numbers thing. The more people who died or were victimized, the larger the fallout would be, and right now, he couldn’t finish that equation, because they hadn’t succeeded in containing the hazard yet.

He needed to step up the preliminary work with the Dark Fae engineers he had hired from Niniane, just in case. The Other land under his control from upstate New York was a massive, protected place, but it was also almost completely pristine and undeveloped. The political and social tensions from the summit in Washington D.C. had shown that co-existence might not remain a safe option for the Wyr, and he was determined that they would have a safe place to retreat to, if it ever became necessary.

Retrieving his phone from one pocket, he sent a few texts. As he hit send on the last one, out of the corner of his eye, he watched Tatiana walk toward him.

It was a maneuver he did not appreciate, as the Light Fae guards with their guns perpetually trained on him grew tense.

Crossing his arms, he leaned back against the Hummer’s bumper and tried to appear relaxed. As Tatiana drew near, he said, “I’m still not thrilled with how trigger-happy your guards look, Tatiana. If you need to have a conversation, are you sure you wouldn’t rather call me on my cell?”

Tatiana did not look over her shoulder at her guards. “They won’t shoot unless you present a clear danger to me.”

Then they were stupid for not shooting him right away, because the dragon always presented some kind of danger.

But so often it didn’t do to educate people out of their stupid.

He crossed one booted foot over the other, basking in the hot sunlight, while he waited for the Light Fae Queen to get around to whatever it was she wanted to talk to him about.

“How are you holding up?” she asked.

That wasn’t what she wanted to talk about. He said in a brief, flat reply, “I’m fine. How are you, Tatiana?”

He could tell by the flicker in her eyes and the tightening of her mouth that she hadn’t liked the sarcasm in that. But she chose to answer him honestly. “I’m pretty much as you might expect. My people are being decimated, so I’m enraged and worried.” She hesitated. “Would you consent to letting my doctors draw some of your blood? We need to find out everything we can about the contagion in order to stop it.”

He didn’t like that, and his knee-jerk reaction was to refuse the request. You could learn a lot by studying someone’s blood, and it was never a good idea to give anybody information about himself.

As she watched his face, she urged quietly, “Please, Dragos. You’re the only person we have so far who might provide clues about how to build a resistance against the contagion. Everyone else has succumbed in less than half an hour.”

Goddammit. He rubbed his forehead, struggling with conflicting impulses. Finally, he said, “The only way I’ll let you have samples of my blood is if we get a doctor that I trust into your labs to monitor what you do with it. And I want the samples destroyed afterward.”

“Damn it, Dragos, this isn’t the time—” she began.

Impatiently, he interrupted her, “I mean it, Tatiana. Like the guns you have trained on me right now—my decision isn’t personal. But you know as well as I do that Powerful spells can be built on someone’s blood. I’m not letting go of something that could be that valuable and dangerous to me without putting some guarantees and protections in place beforehand.”

Biting her lip, she nodded after a moment. “Okay, you have a point. It’s a deal. But what I was going to say is, the problem is how long it might take for you to get one of your doctors here. We need your blood samples now, not tomorrow. We actually needed them yesterday.”

He had already squandered the trip he had bargained for from Soren, so he told her. “That isn’t my problem. That’s yours. You’re resourceful. I know you can make it happen, if you put your mind to it.”

Her expression darkened. They both knew that in order to make it happen, she herself would have to strike a bargain with a Djinn. But damned if he would incur a Djinn debt just so that he could safely give her some of his blood.

As her silence grew prolonged, he remarked, “You know, I would much rather prefer to have my own doctors study my blood and give any synthesized results or antidote to the Light Fae, anyway. If you would prefer.”