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Chapter Ten

I read over the material and tucked it away before Kurt returned for my briefing. If I could trust the intel—and there were at least a half-dozen reasons why I shouldn't—my best hope lay in playing the various families against one another. The pages contained psychological profiles of both known and suspected leaders as well as lists of closeted skeletons, literal as well as figurative. It was a blackmailer's dream.

This wasn't what I signed up for, however.

I wasn't risking my neck to be monster-in-chief like Vlad Dracula or Elizabeth Báthory. Maybe it was a fool's pipe dream but, if I had to rule through terror and bloodshed, I might as well turn the reins over to the rest of the fiends. Unfortunately, idealistic missions to change the system all too often end with the system changing the idealist. What shall it profit a man that he gain the whole underworld but lose his own soul?

But then, I hardly thought of myself as an idealist any more.

Kurt, ignorant of my Chicago cheat-sheet, provided much of the same background material, drawing most of the same conclusions in terms of viable strategies: undermine the strong, elevate the weak, divide and conquer. And the iron glove for my hand of power would be the Szekely Clan who had historically served as the demesne enforcers and was presumably loyal to me.

Through Kurt.

Who was most concerned with my positions on the issues. He kept pressing me for details on what I would tell the various clans and ambassadors when tonight's meet and greet began.

He was not alone in his concerns. By signing on as the new ringmaster for this circus of the damned, I was gambling that mostly human me was still the best chance for the rest of humanity. Better, anyway, than something whose blood had cooled to below room temperature. But mostly human me wasn't as human as I'd been a few months ago. And getting less human as time went on. How much longer would I remain a preferable choice to the other monsters?

What would happen when my blood cooled sufficiently?

"You understand," Kurt was saying, "that you simply can't order an entire species to voluntarily starve itself to death."

"There are blood banks."

He shook his head slowly. "It has worked in isolated situations, serving a few here and there. You are suggesting soup kitchens to serve hundreds on a nightly basis."

I planted my elbows on the table and rested my forehead against my palms. "Supply and demand would be problematic. And the volunteer wine cellar—"

"Even more impractical," he finished for me. "And it's not just logistics and delivery issues. We are, by nature, hunters. Predators. It is our nature and cannot be permanently denied."

"Yeah, yeah; it's your inalienable right to keep and bare fangs. But the demesne system has managed to restrain that so-called nature. There are laws. There are rules. The demesne sets limits on the hunters as well as on the hunt. You're not even allowed to sire more family members without the Doman's permission."

"Which the Countess granted quite liberally as long as she was assured of clan loyalty. The rumor is that you intend to impose a policy of zero population growth."

I rubbed my chin. "Now there's an interesting idea: undead birth control. What other rumors are making the rounds?"

"Almost anything that you can imagine. The more popular ones suggest you are a 'Sin-eater.' That you will return the dead to life, that you will teach us how to walk in daylight—pseudo-religious nonsense and wishful thinking. The more troubling ones claim that you will take away their rights to hunt and reproduce, that you will free the lupin from their servitude, and that you will trigger the great Apocalypse between the People of the Day and the Clans of the Night."

"Which reminds me," I said, sidestepping several issues at once. "How come I haven't met any lycanthropes, yet? Are they all on vacation?"

Kurt's eyebrows raised a couple of millimeters. "How do you know that you haven't?"

I looked him in the eye, waited the requisite six seconds, and said: "I know." I didn't add that, when you're marrying into the family, you learn to pick up on a number of things the furophobes don't.

His shoulders twitched in a negligible shrug. "The first three nights are scheduled around meetings with the families, private audiences—nothing pertaining to the underclasses. It was deemed less volatile to send them away until basic issues get sorted out."

"You mean safer than putting them in the position of having to choose sides in the event that my coronation suddenly goes south."

Now it was Kurt's turn to give me the long stare. "I think I know you better than most but there is a great deal that I still do not know. I know that you resist violence and abhor killing. I believe that you still feel a greater loyalty to the living than the undead—though I expect that to change with time. I know that you do not seek power and that the only reason that you are here must be to protect the living as best you can.

"Be careful, Domo. Many are glad that you are not the monster the last Doman was. But even they will turn on you and destroy you if you seek to deny them their nature."

"Nature, red in tooth and claw? Tennyson spoke of animal nature. Are we not men and, therefore, may rise above animal nature with will and reason?"

"Are we truly men, Domo? We possess the teeth and claws of the predators. Man does not but even he may echo the poet, red in bomb and bullet. No, my dear Christopher, you may be a kinder, gentler ruler but you must content yourself with what accommodations the clans are ready for. Do not expect evolutionary leaps: you are Doman but you are not God."

* * *

The meeting ended with little resolved beyond the fact that long, involved policy decisions should wait until the clans and I had become better acquainted. For Kurt that meant I might be better persuaded of the futility of my vision. For me it meant a chance to peruse the battlefield and scout the enemy for weaknesses.

For both of us it meant avoiding major unpleasantness for just a little bit longer.

To that end, I put off asking more nosey questions, such as how the enclave acquired its immense wealth.

No question I had stepped off of the high ground and was wading into a moral morass. If there was a path between losing my life and losing my soul it was a very narrow and convoluted one. Too bad I hadn't the opportunity to have said a proper goodbye to Lupé before coming here to play the part of Napoleon Custer at the Little Waterloo.

As I adjusted my cummerbund and checked my tux in the mirror I felt something brush against my leg. I looked down and saw a tan-and-brown cat. It might have passed for a Burmese breed except for one thing—if its possessing two tails counted as "one" thing.

I reached down and picked her up. She was heavy for a cat. "Hello, Suki; long time no meow." She purred as I scratched her behind her ears. "Let me guess. You have nothing to wear?"

"Actually, she thought she could serve you better in cat form," Deirdre said from the doorway. "She'll dress if you prefer." Deirdre wore a green satin gown which, with her red hair, made her look all Christmassy and like an elegant present ready to be opened on an intimate holiday eve.

I set the two-tailed cat down on the bed. "A man always feels that he has more status if there are two beautiful women on his arm." The cat purred loudly. "But I fear I would be twice as distracted and I am already distracted enough."

"Oh my." The redhead sauntered over and took my arm. "You're very good at this diplomacy thing! You honey-tongued devil, you!"

"That's silver-tongued devil," I corrected as we started toward the door and a waiting army of bodyguards. The cat jumped off the bed and padded along behind us.

"Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Chris. I know a sweet tongue when I taste it . . ."

I had no comeback. As far as Lupé was concerned, I was a silver-tongued devil.

And all of the connotations were negative.

* * *

A phalanx of security types—some even human—escorted us to an underground ballroom several city blocks away. My best guess was that we were under Central Park now.

Over the previous century and a half some eight-hundred-and-forty-three acres between 59th and 110th Street had been repeatedly dug up and laced with a succession of conduits, tunnels, chambers, and underground passages for channeling a succession of lakes, lagoons, aquifers, flood plains, water supplies, fountains, telephone cables, electrical conduits, and maintenance access routes. As new landscaping projects were developed, old drains and tunnels were closed for new channeling systems. At present there were more forgotten and unused channels under the park and museum than there were official passageways on the current city blueprints. Stories were told and legends grew about what might creep through the subterranean paths beneath the city. Truth be told, the stories averaged out to be half right. There were few beauties but many beasts. And, while there were no such things as Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles, there was a monster under Greenwich Village that the inhabitants had nicknamed "Shredder."

Tonight the population under the Great Lawn had trebled even as half of the subterranean residents had fled in terror. Vampires and Monsters and Weres, oh my!

Except there were no Weres: they had been sent away.

Just as well. If I was to believe my beloved's dire warnings, I could well be fighting a battle on two separate fronts when they returned.

Our entrance to the cavernous ballroom went unnoticed. The lights had been dimmed and images were playing out on a large screen at the far end of the room.

Familiar images.

The monstrous creature with the steel fangs was frozen in mid stride, bashing its way into my dining room. A small readout of numbers designating the date and time was displayed in the lower left-hand corner. It was a freeze frame from my home's video security system.

"Best estimates put the creature's height somewhere between eight and nine feet," a woman's voice was saying, "its weight somewhere in the twelve to fifteen hundred pound range." Her voice emerged from speakers all around the chamber so it took me a moment to locate her up on the dais, standing behind a podium to the right of the screen. "A cybernetic organism, or cyborg, it appears to be a reengineered human. Surgical enhancements are confirmed. Genetic enhancements are presumed though we are waiting to obtain tissue samples for confirmation."

There was something about the woman—even at a distance—that seemed strangely familiar. I moved forward to get a better look, pushing at my forward guard to break a path through the crowd.

"In addition to steel and Kevlar implants and skeletal augmentation, the creature may have had its strength and reflexes artificially enhanced. As you can see from selected portions of the security video, it is as fast as it is strong."

On the screen a series of herky-jerky edits showed it selectively taking out my security personnel as well as my home's structural architecture.

"Even though the creature killed one vampire and three humans and injured another vampire with ridiculous ease . . . your Doman managed to defeat it single-handedly . . ."

I was pissed off to find security video from my home being shown to a bunch of strangers, some of whom were heavily invested in getting rid of me. And I was grieved to see a replay of the deaths it had caused, particularly that of The Kid.

And I was majorly annoyed that Deirdre and Suki's parts in the battle were largely left out.

But I had to admit I was impressed with the spin.

The editing of the video and the narration worked to underscore the monster's invulnerability and then my parts were intercut to make me appear heroic and invincible. Either Kurt had just discouraged the next assassination attempt or he had convinced my enemies to multiply their efforts by ten.

"And so," the speaker was concluding, "there is an unknown entity in the game, which has moved against the interests of New York. We are fortunate to have a Doman who has experience in dealing with what even we would call the unusual and extraordinary!"

The audience response to that seemed evenly split between the mutterers and the murmurers.

"The Doman has authorized a one-million-dollar reward for information leading to the identity and location of this mysterious Dr. Pipt."

Deirdre leaned toward my ear and whispered: "Does that include me? I've done some more research."

"Research?" I whispered back. Given the background noise, whispering was easier to hear than muttering or murmuring.

"I've read more of The Patchwork Girl of Oz."

"And?"

"Am I eligible for the reward?"

I shrugged. "I didn't even know there was a reward until just now. But I don't see why not."

She nodded. "Well, I found out that this Dr. Pipt gave away a whole batch of his Powder of Life to Mombi the Witch in exchange for a Powder of Perpetual Youth. Only the Powder of Youth was a fraud. It didn't work."

"Of course."

"So Pipt had to make more powder—Powder of Life, that is, since he had given it all away to the old witch."

"And what did she do with her portion?"

"Made Jack Pumpkinhead, for one."

"And how does any of this relate to the real Dr. Pipt?"

She looked at me. "I don't know. Yet. I'm still researching."

"By reading an old Oz book?"

"It beats what you've been doing this afternoon."

I was spared having to come up with a reply by a blaring introduction from the sound system. "And now I'd like to introduce the new Doman of the New York demesne, Christopher Cséjthe!"

Showtime: the queen is dead, long live the king.

The security team hustled me up on stage and I was escorted to the microphone. The podium gave me the illusion of a shield. Likewise the two large bodyguards flanking me to either side. A large, Plexiglas screen served as both a teleprompter and a bulletproof barrier for my upper torso. The only way I could've been better protected was to have addressed the crowd from another room. I looked down at the audience. Anyone harboring thoughts of taking me out right here, right now, could see the futility of making such an attempt. They would either be exposed or need to use something that could harm the other occupants of the room, thus negating the political advantage of such an act.

I pulled the microphone out of its cradle on the stand and stepped around the podium. "Go sit down, boys," I said to my bodyguards, "I won't be needing you in this room."

The guards were in a quandary: Kurt had given them specific orders to be all over me like white on rice. Yet, their Doman was giving them a direct counterorder. And to disobey me in front of the clans was as dangerous to me as it was to them. I helped resolve matters by giving them a little mental nudge. They stumbled out of my way.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," I said as I walked to the center of the dais. "I think I'll dispense with the teleprompters. If a leader can't speak from his own heart, he shouldn't presume to speak for anyone else, either. And I don't think I want anything to come between me and you. If we can't work in harmony, bulletproof glass and armored barriers aren't going to solve the problem."

Kurt was hovering stage-left looking positively apoplectic. He shouldn't have been surprised. It was no secret by now that I was no good at following other people's scripts.

"I apologize for not coming to New York sooner but I have had other business to attend to." I paused. "Part of the delay has been due to unscheduled visitors interrupting my work. While the mysterious Dr. Pipt sent this most recent emissary, there have been other intrusions as well. Some by representatives of people within this very room."

The mutter-mutter/murmur-murmur volume rose to a new level. I let it build and then pulled the microphone in close for more volume.

"I must admit I was amused by the first seven attempts on my life—" Actually that was a lie but the first rule of intimidation is to never let them see you sweat. My smile turned into a frown. "—but my patience has its limits and I find that I am no longer inclined to be so tolerant. Any further assassination attempts will be dealt with harshly. With penalties assessed for the clan and family as well as the perpetrator." The mutters and murmurs had faded away. "I just want to make sure that we're clear on this point before continuing."

A tall, aristocratic-looking vampire was standing at the edge of the stage, his handsome features framed by a silky mane of chestnut hair that fell past his shoulders. He stood head and shoulders above the crowd and was able to lean an elegantly cuffed arm across the edge of the elevated platform without stretching. "I have a question," he said politely.

I stepped closer and said, "Yes?" And lowered the microphone to make his query audible to the room.

"If I kill you," he said, reaching out and grabbing my ankle, "how will you enforce that?" He yanked and I fell backwards. The back of my head smacked the stage and I was as momentarily stunned as my security team. He dragged me into his embrace and his mouth was on my throat before anyone else could take a single step.

He didn't just bite me; he tore my throat open with his razored teeth: it was his best hope of killing me before anyone else could reach him.

It hurt like hell and probably would have hurt a lot more if I hadn't been coasting on the edge of shock. As it was, the pain seemed to revive me and I began to struggle. Not that struggling was going to do me a lot of good. As I've pointed out before, I'm no match for a full-fledged vampire in either the strength or the speed department. The word had gotten around and this guy knew it. I felt a gush of blood and his mouth was on my wounds, greedily slurping all the high octane Doman blood he could suck down.

Maybe he was too greedy: he started to choke on the third swallow. As his mouth came away, I licked my palm and slapped my hand over the bloody gash on my neck. My assailant released me and it was all I could do to keep from falling to the floor like a sack of spilled groceries. The stage was against my back and helped to prop me up. The crowd pressed in on either side, cutting off my escape routes and providing additional support. And my attacker was in front of me. I wasn't about to fall down because I had no intention of getting any closer to him than I was now, total exsanguination or not. I locked my knees, kept a tight grip on my neck with my left hand, and waved at the thickening haze with my right.

Then the screaming started.

It started all around me but it was the loudest just in front of me.

I waved my hand all the more, trying to fan the smoke aside to see what was going on. My attacker stumbled against me and it was suddenly obvious why there was both smoke and screaming.

His face was gray and black, his mouth a bubbling ruin. White-and-gray fumes issued from his lips, vented from festering sores on his throat, and leaked from a growing red-and-gray stain on his shirt above his cummerbund. His eyes were bulging in their sockets, reflecting a kaleidoscope of confusion, fear, and pain beyond imagining. His hands gripped the folds of my jacket. "It . . . burns . . ." he wheezed, more noxious vapors issuing from his scorched mouth.

Powerful pairs of hands grasped my shoulders and hauled me back up onto the stage. My attacker held on with a death grip and came along for the ride. We were pried apart and he fell back on the stage where he writhed and moaned.

Kurt pushed through the semicircle of security people and threw an arm around me. "Let's get you out of here."

I shook my head. I had lost a lot of blood but I could feel my accelerated healing factors kicking in. I might still pass out but I probably wouldn't bleed to death now. "Not yet." I nodded at the dying vampire. "Who is he?"

"Yuler Polidori."

"The Polidori Clan?"

He nodded.

Oh great. I carefully bent down and retrieved the microphone cord, pulling the mike toward me. It wasn't easy using just one hand. A bodyguard assisted. "Yuler," I said, kneeling over the writhing vampire, "Yuler Polidori. Who is your master?"

"No . . . man . . ." he gasped, "no . . . man . . . is my . . . master . . ."

In other words, not some fangless wimp who was a pretender to the throne of the New York demesne.

"Then who is your Sire?"

He shook his head. "I acted . . . alone . . . saw . . . my chance . . . took it . . . no plan . . . kill me . . ."

I looked at Kurt. "Can he be saved?"

Kurt stared down with a face of stone. "What would be the point? This one would not talk."

An alpha vampire with close-cropped gray hair shouldered his way through the crowd and leapt onto the stage. The security team moved toward him but Kurt waved them back. "Friederich," he said.

"Domo Cséjthe," Friederich Polidori said, inclining his head to me.

I gave him a slight nod in return. I was afraid that if I moved my head any more than that, I would reopen my jugular.

"I am mortified, my lord. Yuler has always been wild and headstrong but I never suspected him capable of treasonous behavior. Had I had any inkling, I would have killed him myself."

Funny. It was a nice little apology but curiously flat in the sincerity department. An accomplished liar might have put too much emotion into the speech, punctuating his sentences with exclamation marks. Polidori recited the words without any inflection, as if reading cue cards in an emotionless monotone. Then I got a look at his eyes and felt the prickle in my parietal lobes: ole Freddy was trying to glamour me. He was putting all of his efforts into sugarcoating the message telepathically.

I turned to my seneschal, who looked a little unfocused himself. "Isn't that a little odd, Kurt?"

"Hmm? What?"

"That a Sire doesn't know what his Spawn is thinking?"

"That is true," he answered, his gaze hardening.

I turned back to Polidori. "A clan leader knows he has a hotheaded Spawn who has positioned himself right next to the stage where the new Doman is going to speak? A Doman who has been the target of repeated assassination attempts by powerful foes within the enclave, itself? Who then attempts to use mental domination on the Doman and his First while trying to offer an embarrassment of an excuse?"

"It appears to have all of the markings of a conspiracy," Kurt growled. There was apparently no love lost between the Polidori and Szekely clans.

"On the other hand," I continued, "it may be nothing more than a series of errors in judgment. Of course, for the head of a clan, so many mistakes and misjudgments could spell ruin for the families that follow him—even if he was loyal and true."

Polidori scowled. He was angry that a member of his family had been caught in the act of trying to assassinate me. Perhaps he was angry that the attempt failed. He was certainly unhappy to be dressed down in such a manner. But what probably pissed him off the most was the fact that the microphone was still on and our little exchange had been overheard by everyone in the room.

Perhaps he was tempted to attack me, himself.

And perhaps the grisly result of the last attempt that smoked and bubbled at his feet was giving him pause.

"My lord—let me be the instrument of your vengeance."

"What? Oh, I see. You wish to prove your loyalty by killing one of your own who is suffering and likely to die anyway." I shook my head. "That is no gift to me."

"Doubtless it would safeguard any secrets you might wish to keep," Kurt observed.

Stay out of this, I sent to my majordomo.

He glanced at me, a flicker of surprise appearing and disappearing across his stony face.

"Here is my gift to you and your clan, Polidori: I give Yuler back to you alive. I give him to you with the charge to keep him alive." If "alive" was the proper term for an undead. "Heal him as best you can. That will be your apology and gift to me. Your clan's atonement is to heal Yuler."

Friederich Polidori was aghast. Well, technically, he was a "ghast" anyway. But this was so outside the pale of his expectations that he didn't know how to respond.

"I shall expect a progress report when we meet again tomorrow night."

"Tomorrow? But our appointment is for to—"

"Tonight. I know. I'm rescheduling you for tomorrow."

"But we are first! This is an insult!"

There was no way I could outdominate a master vampire. The best I could do was take a tone with him. "No, Fred; this is an insult," I said, pointing at the gurgling, hissing Yuler. "And he's going to occupy your attention for the remainder of the evening. Now, do you need help getting him back to your domicile?"

He seemed to come to a decision. "No."

I almost said: "No . . . what?" but maybe I needed to cut Polidori some slack. And maybe I also needed to not push my luck past the breaking point.

He turned and his clan moved as one toward the stage. As Yuler was lifted down and carried toward an exit he turned back to me, clicked his heels and executed a short bow. "Until tomorrow, Domo."

"Buh-bye, Fred." Well, some pushing is instinctual . . .

As he strode away, head held high, a haughty expression frozen on his aristocratic countenance, Kurt leaned in and whispered, "We can reschedule all of tonight's appointments."

"Don't be silly," I murmured. "Just push back my appointments an hour or so. I need to clean up and replace a couple of gallons of blood, that's all."

I walked back to the podium with Kurt and a half-dozen security personnel hovering around me like the Marines bent on raising the flag on Iwo Jima. "Sit down, gentlemen," I said pleasantly.

They looked at each other as if I had just asked them to do headstands.

"Sit down," I said pointedly. I had to make the fact that I was still on my feet work for me or I would be resting permanently before the night was over.

They returned to their seats and the standing posts just offstage.

"Now then," I said, turning back to the audience, "where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?"

"You were saying," answered a woman's voice from the floor, "that 'any further assassination attempts will be dealt with harshly. With penalties assessed for the clan and family as well as the perpetrator'."

There was a ripple of nervous laughter that turned to murmurs (no mutters) as I turned away from the podium and went down the steps from the dais back to the floor again. A conga line of bodyguards scurried after me as the crowd hurriedly parted and I made my way to the dark-skinned woman who had just spoken. She appeared to be a mix of Eurasian and Negroid stock and her accent suggested that she might be a recent immigrant to these shores. She stood her ground as I arrived, refusing to take a step back as I walked right up and into her face. Neither of us spoke and the room fell silent. I removed my hand from my throat. Blood oozed in a sluggish trickle from tears that were already on their way to forming pink weals. Reaching out, I cupped her chin with my right hand and put my left behind her head.

"What—" she finally said, and I suddenly wrenched her head from her shoulders before she could speak a second word.

Tucking it under my left arm, I licked my right hand again and pressed my spittle-soaked palm to my neck. As her headless body collapsed to the ground, I turned and began making my way back to the stage. "Get that off the floor," I said to the last security man and ascended the stairs again.

I placed the head on the podium so that it was looking up at me. Then I looked out over the stunned assemblage and smiled. "She was correct." I patted the head, whose entrails dribbled down the front and side of the podium like gory party streamers. "And I should be grateful to Yuler Polidori for assisting me in making my point." Confusion suffused some of the faces of those nearest me in the crowd. "What? You think that killing him would have been harsher?"

"No, my lord; killing him would have been a kindness!" It was another woman who spoke now. A tall, raven-haired beauty, equal in aristocratic bearing to Friederich Polidori: Carmella Le Fanu. "Nor, I suspect, are you finished with the Polidori Clan in this matter."

Everyone held their breath to see what I would do next.

I inclined my head and pulled my hand away from my neck. A hundred pairs of eyes focused their greedy attention on the bloody hamburger effect between my jaw and my ruined collar. "They'll be getting my bill for the tuxedo tomorrow."

More laughter now and less nervousness.

"However, as Madame Le Fanu points out, the matter is not yet closed," I continued. "Perhaps you are used to Domans who rule through violence and intimidation. Perhaps you have had leadership that equates brutality with strength. Make no mistake; the guilty will be brought to justice. But a rush to judgment often punishes the innocent. And a Doman's responsibilities are, first, to protect and serve the welfare of his people . . ."

"The vampires . . ." I heard someone mutter.

"All of his people," I said. "Wampyr, were, demi. Natural, unnatural, supernatural, preternatural."

I felt hundreds of eyes glance toward the head by my right hand.

"Oh, very well," I said, "bring me the body."

A couple of the security team trotted up, bearing the headless corpse. They hadn't been too far away.

I lifted the head and gazed into its eyes. "Woman," I said, making sure we were both close enough to the microphone to pick up the sound of my voice, "I adjure you from the realm of the living to speak from the land of the dead! Tell me your name!"

Her eyes fluttered open and I had to fight a momentary flashback to Theresa Kellerman's decapitation as her mouth worked like the Tin Man's as he prepared to speak his first words after standing rusted for a hundred years.

"Jhojie Selangor," she finally croaked. I made sure the microphone picked up every syllable.

She shouldn't have been able to speak at all. Never mind being technically dead, the problem, once again, was the disconnection between larynx and lungs. Among the dangling entrails, however, several bladderlike appendages pulsed, pushing enough air through her voice box for a short answer or two.

"And do you swear fealty to me as your Doman and promise to serve me faithfully?" I pressed.

"I . . . swear . . ." she gasped.

I turned and, as the bodyguards held the headless body erect, I eased the entrails and, finally, the head, back into the gaping wound created by her cranium's sudden departure. Waving my bloody hands in what I hoped looked like sufficiently mystic gestures, I muttered incoherently and hoped that snake oil was in season.

Stepping back, I cried: "Release her!"

Everyone stepped back: the security staff, the audience. Jhojie Selangor blinked, reached up to give her neck a minor adjustment, and stepped forward. Somewhere in the back of my mind, Colin Clive was shrieking: She's alive, alive! 

The audience wasn't much less restrained as I returned to the podium.

"I will be looking into a great many matters," I said, continuing as if my little exercise in head games hadn't even happened. "Perhaps this will make some of you uncomfortable. Just remember that we are banded together for our common welfare. Our strength and security lies in our combined numbers, our combined efforts, our common purpose. But nothing is ever achieved without sacrifice and the one truism of mutual effort is compromise. To get something you have to give something. If we are all to benefit, we must all be willing to temper our individual and family desires with satisfying others' needs as part of the bargain. It is my job as your Doman to see to it that the enclave benefits . . . so that you all may benefit.

"That is one of the main purposes of my meeting with your representatives and ambassadors from other demesnes over the next three nights. To better acquaint myself with your needs and concerns so that I might serve you all.

"I look forward to meeting with all of you during the nights ahead. I shall go now and change into something more comfortable and begin my visitations for this night. I urge you all to stay, enjoy the refreshments and the music, party and, perhaps, use this opportunity to renew old acquaintances and make new ones. Good evening, my friends."

Scattered applause broke out as I backed away from the podium, turned thunderous as Kurt and Jhojie came to my side, and continued as I was escorted off the platform by the small army of Bodyguards-R-Us.

Out in the corridor I sank gratefully into a cushioned seat on the electric tram.

"Are you all right?"

I closed my eyes. "I am so thirsty."

"I'll call ahead and have fresh blood waiting. Any preferences?"

"Yeah. Have it sent up in a bucket. Tonight I'm not sure I would know when to stop with a living host."

We started off with a lurch while Kurt radioed ahead. "You departed from the script tonight," he said when he finished the call.

"I hadn't counted on Yuler."

"I'm talking before young Polidori. When you told the bodyguards to sit down and you stepped away from the podium."

"I'm not one of them, Kurt. I have to do it my way. This brings me to a couple of things. Just before Yuler's Sire stepped in, I asked if Polidori could be saved. You didn't answer my direct question. You presupposed my purpose in trying to save him. Don't second-guess me. Give me the answers I ask for, not the answers you think I need."

"I think you need more than you ask for," he argued. "As your advisor, it is my place to give you advice. Again I must make the point: because they are stronger, faster, older—"

"Wiser?"

"—more powerful, it is all the more reason that you must demonstrate your power."

"I thought I just did that."

"Your destruction of the young Polidori was most impressive. But you should be demonstrating power instead of mercy."

"Abraham Lincoln said: 'I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.'"

"Yes? Well, Shakespeare wrote that 'nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.' Show them your power first. You can then afford mercy later."

"Mercy is power, Kurt. In showing the Polidoris mercy, I was showing everyone else my strength. I don't think ole Freddy felt I was being kind. And I doubt anyone getting a good look at Yuler thought he was getting any kind of charity, whatsoever."

My seneschal nodded grudgingly.

"I'm not going to play the role of brutal dictator here. If I can't do it my way I'll walk away."

I could feel him shaking his head inside the pounding of my own. "You cannot walk away."

"I won't be another Elizabeth Báthory. I won't become Vlad Drakul the Fifth."

"No," he said sadly. "You are somewhat cleverer than either in your own way. And, in a sense, they are both your parents. You are already turning into a monster. Someday you will be more terrible than the two of them joined together."

Now there was a happy thought. I had come to New York to face down my enemies. With apologies to Pogo, my most dangerous foe waited for me in the future.

Myself.

 

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