Before I lash out at Odette, I look through her, willing myself numb.
Shin Jaehyuk, Nicodemus’ foremost assassin, lingers in a fall of darkness at Odette’s back. The second vampire Nicodemus ever turned, Jae ruled the night in the heyday of Korea’s Joseon dynasty. A master of weapons and sleight of hand, this vampire—with his penchant for blades of all shapes and sizes—frightened me the most as a child. The way he loomed ever present, his pallid skin marred by countless scars, from a story told to me in pieces.
“Welcome to forever, my brother,” another voice intones with its characteristic Carolina drawl. Boone Ravenel leans his left shoulder against the damask wallpaper as he sends me an insouciant grin, his features tan, his expression the portrait of charm. But beneath his angelic mien skulks a fiend with a shark’s sense of smell and a hawk’s eye for tracking. Fifty years ago, Odette dubbed him the Hellhound, for a variety of reasons. As with many such things, the name stuck.
To Nicodemus’ immediate right stands Madeleine de Morny, her eyes and skin the color of dark teak and her expression culled from quartz. The first of my uncle’s undead children to be turned, Madeleine is also the vampire Nicodemus consults before any other. Over the last hundred years, she’s become his equal in many things, though I would never dare to say so in my uncle’s presence. Alas, I know very little about Madeleine’s past along the Côte d’Ivoire, beyond the fact that she begged Nicodemus to turn her younger sister, Hortense, in exchange for her eternal loyalty. And that her greatest passion in life—aside from her family—is to lose herself in the pages of a good book.
Hortense de Morny lounges on a chaise of tufted velvet, toying with the ends of her long, thick hair, groomed like the mane of a lion. Amusement ripples across her face, a wicked sparkle in her russet eyes. She wears a gown of translucent tulle dyed the exact color of her dark skin. Of all Nicodemus’ undead children, Hortense relishes immortality the most. A lover of the arts, her favorite pastimes include an evening in Nicodemus’ box seats at the French Opera House—scandalizing the lily-white members of New Orleans society with her presence—followed by a sampling of the city’s finest musicians. She favors the violinists the most. Their song is like spun sucre, she likes to simper.
One immortal among them remains outside the circle. Though it is not readily apparent—for his hazel eyes possess a similar inhuman luster, his brown skin the same subtle sheen—Arjun Desai is not a vampire. He came to New Orleans last year at Jae’s behest. Trained as a barrister under the auspices of the British Crown, Arjun was denied access to the profession’s hallowed halls as a result of his heritage. Born nineteen years ago in Maharashtra, a state in the East Indies, Arjun is an ethereal, the son of a mortal man and a fey huntress of the Sylvan Vale. Another being straddling the line between worlds. His arrival to the Crescent City solved two problems: that my uncle’s interest in New Orleans’ hotelier industry necessitated a lawyer with a particular set of skills and that the Fallen was forbidden from bringing any more vampires into the city, following their treaty with the Brotherhood a decade ago. In less than a year, Arjun has established himself as a proper member of La Cour des Lions.
There they all stand, from all parts of the world and all walks of life. Each of them a lion in their own right. Two of my blood brothers, three of my blood sisters, and one half fey.
Gangly Nigel Fitzroy, the vampire responsible for my death, remains glaringly absent from this twisted tableau.
Rage riots through me. I swallow as it burns through my veins, my teeth gritted in my skull. Everything around me sharpens. Becomes clearer, like a point of light in a haze of darkness.
It is not an unwelcome feeling. I want to lose myself to it. To abandon all sense of logic, caring about nothing but destruction. There is purity in such a sentiment. Reason in its simplicity.
I roll back my shoulders and take in an unnecessary breath. When I gaze about the space once more, my sight fixes on my uncle, his golden eyes shining through the shadows like those of a panther.
Nicodemus studies me, his face hewn from marble. A single devilish whorl of black hair grazes his forehead. “Sébastien,” he says. “Do you know who I am?” He analyzes me as he would one of the many winged specimens in his collection. Like a butterfly with iridescent stripes, a long metal pin stabbed through its abdomen.
Again the rage spikes in my chest. “Were you truly concerned I would not remember you, Monsieur le Comte?” I expect my voice to sound gruff from disuse, but the dark magic rounds its tones, making a rich melody of it.
No trace of relief flashes through Nicodemus’ features, despite the proof that my mind survived the change. “It was a distinct possibility. You were dangerously close to death when I began turning you.” He pauses. “And it is always a gamble to mix mortal blood with that of an immortal ancestor, as you well know.”
I do. I blink back the memory of my mother, who was consumed by madness. Poisoned by grief. Obsessed with the desire to be unmade and return to her mortal form. I say nothing in response. Those remembrances serve no purpose now, except to goad my anger.
“How do you feel?” Nicodemus takes a step forward. Everything about him—from his slicked hair to his shining shoes—epitomizes the look of a gentleman. The kind of gentleman I aspired to be from boyhood. But there is an odd hesitancy in his question.
My uncle is not one to waver.
It puzzles me. Unwilling to show him any sign of my own confusion, I say the first thing that comes to mind. “I feel powerful.”
I expect my brothers and sisters to laugh at the triteness of my reply.
“Are you not . . . angry?” Odette’s voice is gentle. “I know this is not what you—”
“No,” I lie without even considering it. “I am not angry.”
More silence.
Madeleine blurs toward me, then stops short as if catching herself, her palms held in a placating manner. “Do you have any questions? Anything you need? Il y a des moments où—”
“I believe I understand the general gist of things, Madeleine.” I suppress another wave of wrath, bitter amusement quick to take its place. “Drink blood and live forever.” I grin at my immortal family, then straighten my stained cuffs.
“Stop it,” Jae says, the two syllables cracking through the darkness like warning shots.
Madeleine glares at Jae, attempting to silence him with nothing but a glance.
He is unmoved. Unapologetic. “Be angry,” he grits out. “Be sad. Be anything but this.”
I quirk a brow at him.
“Afraid,” Jae clarifies. “You are so afraid, I could cut your fear with a knife. Slice it to ribbons.” With his chin, he gestures toward Odette. “She can wear them in her hair.”
I swallow, struggling to hold fast to my smile. Weighing whether or not to attack Jae.
He is quick to respond to my unspoken challenge. Like a ghoul, Jae glides forward, his greatcoat swirling around him. He draws two blades from hidden sheaths in his jacket. Twirls them once, daring me to answer his silent threat.
I stand straight, my hands curling into fists, the fire purifying me from the inside.
He’ll win. Of that there is no doubt. But I won’t tuck tail and run. I’ll come at him until he’s forced to cut me down. Maybe if he cuts me deep enough, I will find what remains of my humanity. Or maybe I will simply succumb to another one of my uncle’s lessons: destroy or be destroyed.
Afraid? Jae thinks I’m afraid? Let him see what fear truly is.
Just before I make good on these promises, my uncle claps his hands like a judge with a gavel, demanding order. It almost makes me laugh, for Le Comte de Saint Germain is anything but the proper gentleman he wishes the mortal world to see.
Nicodemus is renowned in all circles of the Otherworld, as much for his wealth and influence as for his brutality. He was there at the beginning, when vampires and werewolves resided in castles carved from ice, deep in a forest of perpetual night. When blood drinkers and shapeshifters lived among their fey brethren, like the gods atop Mount Olympus, toying with humans for nothing but sport. He cavorted with the nymphs, the goblins, the ogres, the phoukas, and the sprites far apart from the mortal world, in a place of endless winter known as the Sylvan Wyld. Nicodemus still remembers a time when they did not hide their elven nature, but instead basked in it. Until—in their quest for power—the vampires allied with the werewolves and made a great error in judgment: they attempted to trade their most precious commodity with humans.
Their immortality.
Nicodemus is one of the few remaining vampires to witness the events of the Banishment, the time in which vampires and werewolves were exiled from the Wyld’s Winter Court for these transgressions. Forced to cede their holdings to the Summer Court of the Sylvan Vale.
“Jae,” Nicodemus says, his tone weary, “that’s enough.”
Jae restores his blades with two quick flicks of his wrists. It rankles me how quickly he obeys, his affect cool, as if he were about to remark on the weather. My uncle looks to me, expecting me to behave in kind.
“Bastien,” he says. “You will do as your maker commands, in this and in all things.” Though his tone brooks no reproach, I sense another test. Another round in the proverbial ring.
I was small as a child. More comfortable around books and music than I was around people. In an attempt to teach me to stand tall in a crowded room, my uncle paid for me to train with New Orleans’ best pugilist. Despite my protests, I learned to box. To feint. To dodge. To take hits and dole them out in equal measure.
I have not entered a ring in years, but my uncle has traded figurative jabs with me since I was a boy. If I obey without hesitation, I am a sheep, like Jae. A creature meant only to serve. If I resist, I am a child throwing a tantrum. A wriggling worm who knows nothing of respect.
The terms of this battle change like the seasons, without warning.
It is an impossible fight. One I usually lose.
Perhaps it is because only moments ago Jae accused me of being afraid. Perhaps it is because I don’t give a damn about the consequences. Perhaps I only wish to trade more jabs, until my opponent cries mea culpa, his blood staining my fists.