Wild Things (Chicagoland Vampires 9)

“You have breached our peace,” said the elf. “You shed First Blood.”

“We have shed no blood,” Gabriel said. “We were attacked last night without provocation. Several members of our Pack were injured. Four are dead.”

That didn’t seem to register with the elf. “One of ours is gone. We seek retribution in equal kind.”

As if those words were enough to justify murder, he lifted the sword ominously.

I braced to move, to fight back, but Ethan beat me to it. He unsheathed his katana, catching the moonlight like Excalibur might have. And he was Arthur, blond and strong and proud, willing to destroy a kingdom for his Guinevere.

“You make one move with that sword,” Ethan said, stepping forward, eyes furiously green, “and you’ll have every vampire in the world hunting you down. Beginning with me.”

The elf’s eyes narrowed with keen pleasure, as if the thought of taking on a vampire—or a world of them—was a prize, not a threat.

But Gabriel wasn’t keen on the destruction of his kingdom, his Pack, or his allies. He put a calming hand on Ethan’s arm.

“If you commit violence,” Gabriel said to the elf, “you will breach the contract between us.”

Ethan’s eyes narrowed, and while he didn’t speak to me, it was easy to guess the line of his thought. The Pack had a contract with a species that wasn’t supposed to exist—which had apparently created a village just outside Chicago—and no one had bothered to tell us about it.

“You breached the pact first,” the elf said again, his voice growing irritable and sounding not unlike an ornery child. “We claim the right of retribution.”

Gabriel watched him for a moment, considered. “Support your claim.” And when Ethan began to protest, Gabriel held up a hand. “I would hear precisely how the elves believe we wronged them.”

“It was glamour,” the elf said, damning me with a look. Glamour was the particular magic of vampires—the mythical ability to seduce and control others. But the ability to glamour varied significantly from vampire to vampire. Ironically, I couldn’t glamour worth a damn.

“We were together for our midday meal,” the elf continued. “We’d just taken our mead when the fog began to thicken.”

That was a strong defense for me and Ethan. Fog or not, midday meant sunlight.

“What kind of fog?” Gabriel asked.

“Mist,” the elf said, looking up, posing the word as a half question. It was a guess, and one about which he still had doubts. “Thick. And there was magic in it.”

The elf’s eyes went slightly out of focus, as if he was remembering precisely what he’d seen—and how it had felt. “Magic that swayed. Magic that seduced. It invited,” he said, eyes focusing on me again. “It propositioned.”

“You were propositioned by magic mist?” Gabriel mildly asked.

The elf looked back at him, glared, and ignored the question, continuing with his story. “We were overpowered by the magic, by the glamour. Like the undead, without control of ourselves or our bodies. We were drunk with magic and made senseless by it. Some lost awareness of the world. Some fought.”

He swallowed visibly and clearly was uncomfortable. “Some copulated, there in the middle of the feast, rutting like animals. We are not prudes,” he said. “But this was not about mating, about strengthening the clan. There was no lust in their eyes. No love. Only death.”

I slid Jeff a quick glance, and he acknowledged with a small nod. We’d seen those flat eyes before, in the harpies who’d attacked the first night of Lupercalia.

This time, sympathy slid through my irritation. However incorrect the elf’s conclusions about the cause of the trauma, there was no doubt his people had been violated.

“I do not remember all of it; most of us do not. But we recognized its insidiousness. It was glamour.”

“And the First Blood?” Gabriel asked.

“Niera,” the elf said. “One of the mothers of our clan. We awoke some hours later when the sun was nearly set, half naked, violated. She was gone. Her house was empty.”

Gabriel frowned. “If she is missing, how do you know First Blood was shed?”

“Elves do not leave the clan,” the elf insisted. “Mothers do not leave the clan.” He smoothed a hand down the front of his tunic, seemed to soothe himself. “Because she would not leave us, First Blood was shed. Thereby, our claim is justified.”

“Not against us,” I said. My throat was still raw, the words hoarse, but the sound carried on the wind well enough.

“You have a claim against those who attacked you. We were not those people, and you’re in the wrong.”

The elf reached out to slap me for the second time, but I’d grown tired of the show. I was a vampire and, more important, a woman who’d rather go down with steel than with cowardice.

I reached up, punched his forearm to force him to release my katana. My hands were still bound, but I stretched the manacles as far as I could and just managed to snatch the dropping katana with my other hand. I jumped to my feet, spun the sword in hand, and waited.

I heard Ethan’s warning in my head—Sentinel!—but it was too late for that. Spurred by my audacity, the elves formed a tight circle around me and Jeff and Damien, a thousand arrows pointed in our direction.

I ignored the welling fear and considered my odds, estimating I had a forty percent chance of taking out an elf or two before they took me out. I gave myself a four percent chance of surviving the fight.

“Steady now,” Damien murmured.

“Do you see?” the elf said, gesturing at us. “Do you see the violence?”

“I see a woman attempting to protect herself against false allegations,” Gabriel said. “All due respect, you’re wrong. If the attack happened midday, vampires could not be responsible. They cannot face the sun.”

“The fog—,” the elf said, but Gabriel stopped him with a hand.

“It is irrelevant. A little moisture does not protect a vampire from sun. Besides—they were in our facility during the day under lock and key.”

“You are also Other,” the elf said with a sneer.

“Other and mourning our dead,” Gabriel said. “We were attacked and put four of our own in the ground. Whatever happened here, we had nothing to do with it.”

The elf looked at Gabriel and considered the evidence. Wrong or not, he was in a bad spot. If he backed down, he looked like a coward. If he authorized his elves to let fly their arrows, he’d truly break the contract with the Pack.