Duel Nature (25 page)

The three of us walked up to her and her
target. A dime sized hole with clean edges had been punched
straight through.

“Hah Christian!” she said in
triumph. “Leonard is correct.
I
don’t need stupid pieces of metal!”

“No dear you don’t,” I agreed, looking at the
damaged plate.

“How are you going to carry discs of metal
around anyway?” she asked, a bit dismissively.

I raised one eyebrow at her, reached in my
jeans pocket and pulled out a quarter. A quick squeeze of my
fingers bent the coin. A slight toss in the air and a clap as it
came down sent a silver colored streak into the earthen backstop
where a ten inch diameter crater appeared in the moist dirt.

She raised one eyebrow back at me, then
grinned slyly. “Not bad,” she allowed. “But I always have my
voice.”

Behind her I saw alarm flicker across both
Len and Gramps faces and both started to shake their heads at me in
warning. I ignored them.

“That you do T, that you do,” I said with a
smirk.

Her glare could have peeled paint. Her punch
to my already sore shoulder felt like a brick breaker.

Chapter 25

The message was waiting on both our cell
phones when we got back to the farm house. A text directed us to
check in with the Coven and when Tanya made the call the dispatch
center directed us to return to New York and the Citadel.

“What’s up?” I asked, noting both her puzzled
expression and the mental buzz on our private link.

“I’m not sure. I didn’t get to talk to Lydia
or Nika or any of the others, which is odd. They were all in
meetings,” she replied.

“Well it is a busy place, but I could call
Chet,” I suggested, expecting her to say no.

“That’s a good idea,” she answered, her
bright blue eyes alert. The bond between us told me that her
political instincts were humming.

“Dude! How’s things?” I asked when I got
through to Chet.

“Yo man! Good to hear your voice! I hear you
and the beautiful one are coming in soon,” my brainy buddy
answered.

“Yeah, we’re on our way. What’s up? Any
ideas?” I asked.

“Something big,” he said. “I’ve been told to
double up on IT security. New encryptions, changing the biometrics
on the system access, the whole nine yards! There’s a meeting
that’s suddenly been called…something called a Conclave?”

Tanya stiffened across my bedroom where she
was packing her suitcase. I watched her body language and got a bad
feeling.

“Well, we’re heading out soon so we’ll see
you in a few hours.”

“Great, travel safe,” was his response.

I turned off my phone and watched my personal
night angel speed up her packing, tension radiating with every
motion.

“T?” I asked.

She stopped and looked my way.

“A Conclave is an extremely rare event in our
world, even rarer than in the Roman Catholic church,” she said.

“Wait, isn’t that where the Cardinals pick a
new Pope?”

“Yes. Ours is used to pick a new Elder,” she
said, her tone flat.

“You pick your Elders?” I asked, confused. “I
thought they sorta appointed themselves based on age and overall
degree of bad assness?”

She shook her head. “Not exactly. It usually
works out that way, but it is still a formal process. The eldest
vampires in the world will all convene and vote to pick the next
Elder…the one to replace Fedor.”

“That was over two years ago. They’re just
getting around to it now?” I asked.

“Chris, two years is an eyeblink for the
older ones. You don’t know what they’re like,” she said, looking
pensive. “I..we thought it might not be for four or five more
years. Something or someone must have stirred things up. They never
move this fast.”

“Senka’s not like that. In fact, she always
seems to be...well not in a hurry, but at least not dawdling
either,” I said.

“Senka is very unique. She’s also extremely
excited about us,” she said, waving her hand between us.

“What do you mean?”

“Chris, you’ve only known
her for a couple of years.
Our
introduction stirred things up. That’s why she’s
mostly here in the States so much. She’s very old, and the old ones
get lethargic, tired of life. But when I was ‘born’ she got very
interested. Re-awakened as it were. Then you bumbled into the
picture and she’s like a newly Turned vampire, her interest in life
and the world completely revived.”

I still didn’t know much about the politics
of the vampire world. I knew that the North American coven was
considered a relatively new enterprise and Lydia had mentioned that
Europe and Asia were the bastions of most of the old vampires.

“So why are you bothered?”

“The last Conclave happened three hundred and
fifty years ago. It was, by every account I’ve read or heard, an
extremely bloody affair. Sometimes they go easy and other times
they’re open warfare.”

“Who was elected last time?” I asked.

“Senka,” she said. “There was a lot of
opposition. Her ideas and beliefs didn’t sit well with many of the
others.”

“I thought she and Tzao were the oldest?” I
asked.

“They pretty much are, now that Fedor is
dead. But Senka has always been something of a progressive sort.
The old vampires, even though they are mostly younger than her,
don’t like change. Many of them are not fans of her ideas.”

“What ideas?”

Tanya paused and considered. My link to her
told me she was concerned about her choice of words.

“Senka has different ideas about humans,” she
said, carefully, frozen over a folded sweater.

“You mean she sees humans more as people and
not just as food?” I asked.

She was surprised. “Yes,
Christian, that
is
what I mean,” she said, one perfect eyebrow slightly
raised.

“Lydia has told me that what I’ve seen in the
NY Coven isn’t the norm. I mentioned once that I thought vampires
would be much more violent, bloody and such. She told me that they
are, that in most parts of the world they treat humans much
differently.”

“You never mentioned that conversation?”

I shrugged. “I’ve always had a short-term
outlook on life, T. I never thought I’d live to twenty-five. So I
just thought I’d take your world as it came. I saw how the Loki
Spawn treated life, human or were, so I don’t think I will be
shocked.”

“I’m not worried about shocked, Christian.
I’m worried about explosive rage. You are very dangerous, but you
haven’t gone up against vampires in the 700 year class. And it
won’t be just one or two, but many more, maybe several dozen, each
with a retinue of forty or more younger Darkkin.”

A thought occurred to me.

“How do they treat you?”

A flicker of emotion crossed her face, too
fast to identify by sight. My bond told me it was distaste mixed
with a tiny amount of fear.

“Beings who have been alive for seven, eight
or nine centuries are not impressed with the idea of a born
vampire. Some ignore me, some are mildly interested, some
are….unpleasant,” she said.

She was deliberately downplaying the
unpleasant part, worried about my reaction. What can I say, I’m
consistent.

“What do you mean unpleasant?” I asked, my
voice changed by Grim’s surge of anger.

She watched me struggle with myself, felt the
conflict through our bond, concern written across her features.

“This will not do,
Christian. You cannot lose control around
these
Darkkin. Neither of us will
survive it!” she said.

“Neither?” I asked, although I already knew
the answer.

“Yes, my hot tempered Chosen, neither of us.
If you, how do you say, ‘freak out’, you will start a fight you
cannot win – and I will be forced to join you,” she said, watching
to make sure I understood.

If I Hulked out over the actions of one of
these older vamps and got drawn into a fight, she would never let
me fight on my own. We would both die.

She nodded as she watched my reaction.

“It’s more than that, Christian. These
Darkkin are adept at manipulating others. We will undoubtedly be
tested to see if we can be used against rivals, to destabilize
alliances or even weaken Senka’s position. They’ve had centuries to
practice, to learn the intrigues of every civilization on earth. We
are not remotely a match for them.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be there?” I suggested,
my stomach suddenly informing me that it was considering hurling. I
sucked at politics at the playground level. I wouldn’t have a
prayer at the vampire Olympic level.

“We absolutely shouldn’t,” she agreed. “But
we have to. You were there at Fedor’s death and we were both part
of the events that led to his demise. Our presence at the next
Conclave is mandated.”

“So what do we do?”

“We listen, we watch.
We
absolutely
refrain from reacting to perceived insults and innuendos. We
run everything we hear or see past Senka. We do exactly what she
tells us to do, no more, no less.”

It wouldn’t work – not for me. I hated
Survivor on television or any of those other shows that depended on
mercurial alliances and group politics. I had always lived outside
those groups, never learning to operate by their rules.

She read me like a book.

“We have many, many
advantageous,
zayka
. The Citadel is our territory, every inch of its electronics
are controlled by Chester. Nika is the strongest telepath in the
vampire world. Senka
and
Tzao are on our side. We also are…popular I guess
you could call it, with the younger vampires.”

“And offsetting all of that is my temper,” I
said. She stood still over her toiletry bag, her shiny black hair a
curtain over her face.

My temper has always been a factor. But I
challenge you to live my life and not have a few anger issues. Add
a syringe of demon blood and a separate personality that thrives on
combat and suddenly the term ‘anger management’ becomes a life path
and not just the title of a funny movie.

“Grandmother will have some ideas on that
Christian, but you have to promise me you will restrain your dark
side,” she said, her link worried.

I sighed and nodded. “Hell, maybe I can just
avoid most of the meetings?” I pondered.

“Maybe,” she responded.

***

Five hours later found us in Manhattan,
maneuvering our car down to the lowest level of an underground
parking garage. Slotting the car into an empty slot near the back
of the level, we hopped out and grabbed our bags.

The elevator had numbers for all the levels
above us, but when Tanya pressed her right thumb over an innocuous
black square on the top of the control panel the numbers started to
go down instead of up.

The doors opened into a concrete hallway with
a door that could have worked nights as a bank vault. This time my
vampire used a retina scanner and the two-foot thick door popped
open with a soft hiss.

A six pack of Arkady’s security vampires
awaited us, quickly loading our luggage onto a stretch golf cart
that immediately careened down long empty hallways. We were on the
outskirts of Citadel and after a moment or two I realized we were
using one of the least utilized access points. Coming home by the
back door as it were.

Well before reaching the center of the
complex we turned off, heading in a direction I had never been
before, not that I’ve ever seen the entirety of the complex.
Citadel was built to house and protect the entire New York Coven
during times of danger and included space enough for several
thousand people. As the Coven only numbers 300-500 vampires at the
best of times, there is plenty of room. So it wasn’t shocking that
I had never seen this stretch of tunnels before, but what was a
surprise was the number unfamiliar vampires we were passing. My
ability to gauge the age of a vampire was telling me that the
Darkkin we were seeing were mostly in the 400-600 year range. In
all my time in Citadel or even in the Big Apple, I had only seen a
handful of vampires in that age group.

Our cart came to a halt in front of a group
of vampires. Arkady and Lydia were in the front, but I noted
several much older vampires, including a giant that I had seen once
before. There were also quite a few younger vamps that I knew to be
locals.

Tanya hopped out of the cart and walked up to
Arkady and Lydia. I got out the opposite side of the cart and had
to walk around it. I was still approaching when Tanya gave a small,
formal bow and said: “Rover Team 29 present.” No friendly greeting
to people who were family.

“Rover Demidova, welcome back,” Arkady said.
The omission of the title that Arkady had practically coined,
‘Young Queen’ was glaringly obvious. The feeling of relief I got
from Tanya was palpable. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how
much pressure Tanya felt from that two word phrase.

Arkady glanced at me. “Rover Gordon,” was his
greeting.

“Security Chief Barsukov,” I replied with a
bow as close to Tanya’s as possible. Our link practically wrapped
me in her approval of my actions as well as a message; we were
being watched and judged.

The giant vampire behind Arkady moved
forward. I think his name was Ondrej. He was Senka’s bodyguard and
possibly the largest individual I’d ever seen. Over seven feet tall
and had to go well past 300 pounds.

“You will come with me, Rover,” he said to
Tanya, his voice like two boulders rubbing together.

I started to follow, but he froze me with a
stare. “Not you Gordon. You go with Hosokawa-san,” he said,
motioning with his chin at another older vampire. Five foot, five
and built like a gymnast, I had also met Hosokawa before. He was
Elder Tzao’s bodyguard. Pitch black eyes locked onto me and he
waved me after him. Behind us our luggage was swiftly disappearing
from the cart, headed to our quarters I hoped.