Blood Royal

"The Vice President is attending a conference tomorrow evening," Bill said. "I'm in Chicago now. Is there any way we can get Lissa here for that?"



My eyes were widening in shock at Bill's words. "We'll have to wait until sundown," Winkler said, ignoring my frantic nodding. He was going to ask Gavin, Tony and René first. I never got to say, one way or the other, whether I wanted to go or not. Frustrated, I bumped my forehead against the granite island. Winkler, still talking with Bill, came over and pulled my head up, settling it against his side and holding it there. He stroked my jaw and neck with one hand while he held the phone in the other. I listened to his heartbeat with one ear while I tuned in to the phone conversation with the other.



Bill was promising to send a jet for us tonight if we would come. He really didn't care who else showed up, as long as I came. Someday, I don't know when that might be; I wanted to decide for myself. I had no idea if that was ever going to be possible.



When Winkler hung up after a while, I glared at him as he looked down at my face. "Baby, we have to ask the others." He was defending his actions.



"You're just like the rest of them," I muttered and misted away.



I didn't want to get back in bed with Gavin; call it preemptive anger on my part. I imagined that a call to Wlodek would be made and a conference would be held among the testosterone-producing members of our group and then they'd decide whether Lissa would be sent in to take care of things. The schmucks. I sat down angrily on the sofa in the living area, right in front of the window there. Granted the curtains were drawn, but there was still sunlight spilling around the edges. I curled up on the sofa and went to sleep there.



* * *



"What is she doing?" Winkler found Roff, and together they'd gone to the upper floor of the guesthouse to check on Lissa. They found her sleeping on the sofa, several wedges of sunlight hitting her body.



"I will take the Raona to bed," Roff was already gathering her up.



"I'll get the door for you," Winkler offered. Roff followed Winkler down the hall, and Winkler held the bedroom door open so Roff could carry the sleeping vampire in and place her on the bed beside Gavin.



"Too bad he doesn't wake when she gets up," Winkler said as he watched Roff arrange Lissa's limbs so she'd be comfortable when she woke.



"He would be angry if he did wake," Roff muttered.



* * *



"Cara, we are going to Chicago." Gavin was sitting on the side of the bed, waiting for me to wake. The conference was already over and I hadn't been consulted. Typical. Someone had also dragged me back to Gavin's bed, ruining my attempt at righteous anger. Dammit.



"Did they convene the full Council to take a vote?" I muttered sarcastically.



"Lissa, is this any way to wake? Full of anger and sarcasm?"



"Gavin, if you want sweetness and light, I suggest you find another woman," I flung covers away and sat up in bed, refusing to look at him. "I was awake when Winkler got the call from Bill. I was trying to say yes when he asked if I could go, but of course the males get to make those decisions, don't they?" I misted off the bed before Gavin could put his hands on me.



"Lissa, you are not yet two years old as a vampire," Gavin reminded my retreating back—I was heading toward the bathroom as fast as I could after materializing in the floor.



"And yet Tony gets consulted on everything and he's not even two months old. Tell me how that works, Gavin?" I slammed the bathroom door. "Fuck!" I shouted. They probably heard me in the main house as I cursed.



* * *



"Lissy's upset," Tony glanced at René. René had been going over the laws concerning the companion vote. René sighed. "The law has changed recently," he went on with the lesson. "Before, the vampire was notified using correspondence. Now, if the vampire refuses to give up his human companion, he is brought before the Council and questioned. A decision is made after that. This change is a result of a recent event when an innocent vampire and his companion, along with his companion's infant daughter, were killed by a rogue assassin who had a taste for drinking from children. That, as you now know, is an automatic death sentence if it is discovered."



"He was the one Lissa was tracking while she worked for me. Isn't that right?"



"Yes," René admitted. "But you will not divulge that information to anyone." René laid compulsion. Tony nodded.



* * *



Gavin already had a bag packed for both of us when I stalked out of the bathroom. He wasn't speaking to me, either, which was fine. I wasn't speaking to anybody, including Roff. He looked hurt, but I wasn't about to thank him for putting me back in bed with Gavin. Sometimes, you had to make your point and you didn't need somebody going behind your back and undoing what you did in order to get that point across.



I climbed into the van, said nothing on the way to the airport and loaded onto the military jet that Bill sent for us. If the taxpayers knew they were paying to haul vampires and werewolves to Chicago at a moment's notice, I'm sure somebody was going to get upset over it. I hoped they'd be compensated, however, if I could take Rahim Alif down. Not that they'd ever know it was a vampire that took him down.



Bill was there when we landed, and had two vans ready to take us to a hotel downtown. The VP's speech was scheduled at the conference the following night. Roff reminded me that it was Thursday, September second, and was fingering his throat discreetly. Damn. I forgot all about that. "We'll get to that," I promised quietly.



The hotel overlooked Michigan Avenue and was huge. "The conference is held here and the speech tomorrow evening will be given in the largest ballroom. It's doubling as a fundraiser," Bill grumbled as we walked inside the hotel's foyer, which was richly decorated, with plenty of polished marble on the floors. Well, politicians will be politicians; even I knew that, and no opportunity to gather funding would ever be ignored.



"I'll go through the place tonight and see if I can find anything," I offered after we'd ridden an elevator to our floor. Gavin glared at me and Tony cleared his throat before stuffing his toes into it. "We'll go with you," he announced. Joy. I was going as mist. Now I was going to have passengers going with me as mist.



"Well, hell, let's take Bill, too," I drawled sarcastically. Some days, you should just keep your mouth shut. I hadn't learned that lesson, I guess. We shoved our bags into our sixth-floor room, made sure there wasn't any light that could get through and fry vampires and then every stinking one of them, including Roff, lined up so they could go with me as mist. It's a damn good thing they don't weigh anything when I haul them around like that. That's how Bill, Winkler, René, Tony, Gavin and Roff all ended up as passengers when we found the hole in the air duct.



The air duct was located over the hotel ballroom, with a large square cut out of it so somebody could crawl through and get to a nearby vent. It wouldn't be difficult to remove the vent cover and open fire on the ballroom below.



I also imagined that the hole had been cut with a vampire's claws. More compulsion had been used to accomplish that, I was sure. Security was too tight around the hotel for it to be anything else. I smelled the vampire that had been there, sure enough. It was somebody new—I hadn't scented this one before. The only other smell was that of a rat or something. I guess those things can get in anywhere.



Put us down, I want to examine this! Tony demanded. I sent blanket mindspeech back so anybody who could hear me would.



No! They'll come back and scent us! We'll be here tomorrow night, waiting as mist and see what they're about to do! Doofus! I misted right through floors and everything to get us out of there. The couple making love didn't even notice as I blazed right through their bed.



"They'd really scent us?" Bill asked just as soon as he'd become solid again inside our hotel room.



"Duh," I said. "I'd sure as hell smell it if somebody else was there. We don't need to muddy the scene; we just need to be back there tomorrow, waiting on them."



"In the meantime, I still want to check out the rest of the hotel," Tony had his arms crossed over his chest. He was angry, Gavin was angry, René was angry on his vampire child's behalf and Roff was acting a bit sullen. Bill's only goal was to check the entire hotel for threats against the Vice President; Winkler had a smirk on his face—he was enjoying himself. The schmuck.



"Fine. Let's go through the whole damn thing, floor by floor," I snapped and gathered them all up as mist again. We did. We went through the entire hotel, floor-by-floor, room-by-room (the couple on the fourth floor was still at it) but didn't get the slightest scent of vampire. I didn't get a whiff of Rahim, either. He was staying away until he could pull off whatever he was planning, I'm sure.



"That was a bust," I snipped when we all dropped inside our hotel room again.



"I want to be there in the vent, waiting on them," Tony demanded.



"Tony," I held my head—I swear I felt a headache coming on—"you need to be downstairs in the ballroom. You can send mindspeech to me if you need to. I think Gavin or René should be with me; they can help slice up whoever is going to be inside the duct. This way, I can come quickly if there's a problem on the first floor."



"That would be my choice," Bill agreed. "I can hear Lissa's mindspeech when she sends it to me; I just can't send anything back."



Bill, I sent, wake me up after the vampires go to sleep. I need to be up during the day, I think. Bill nodded slightly to let me know he'd heard. Winkler and Roff might have a fit, but they were going to have to live with this. I knew what Rahim smelled like—I'd matched the scent from a house in Georgia with that from a hotel room in Paris. His ass was grass if I ever caught up with him, and I sure as hell wanted to know if he were planning to come in during the day. The only person I wanted to get my claws into worse than Rahim Alif was his best buddy vampire, Xenides.



* * *



"I don't understand how you're doing this," Bill was walking with me down the hall toward the elevator. I'd left Gavin sleeping the sleep of the dead in our hotel room. René and Tony were just as unconscious in the room next door. I'd told Roff to stay with all of them and make sure they were safe. He'd given me a wide-eyed stare and nodded. Yeah, he might be in trouble if Gavin woke up and found out I hadn't slept any.



"Can we get coffee, tea, or undiluted caffeine?" I rubbed my eyes as we loaded onto the elevator. Winkler was supposed to meet up with Bill downstairs. He was about to get a surprise. "Winkler, don't even say it," I held up a hand before he could get the words out as Bill and I stepped off the elevator. "Our friend isn't—well—you know. He could be here at any time and we wouldn't know it. Therefore, I'm staying awake, just in case. Now, give me coffee and shut the hell up." Winkler shut the hell up and went to order a tall cappuccino for me at a coffee shop inside the hotel.



The caffeine had some sort of effect, I think. I was wide-awake after a while. Winkler and I hung around the front door of the hotel while Bill went to meet with some of his agents at the back. I knew he had agents scattered through the lobby, but I didn't try to pick them out. I knew the one I waited for. Winkler was reading the Wall Street Journal while we waited; I'm glad he was making sense out of all that. My eyes crossed just thinking about it. Merrill read it, too—online, of course.



If I'd been depending on my eyesight to pick him out, I'd never have spotted him. He couldn't mask his scent, though, even with expensive cologne. Rahim Alif strolled into the hotel lobby dressed like a college student. He wore a T-shirt and cargo shorts—it was hot in Chicago the first part of September. Flip-flops, a baseball cap and a backpack slung over his shoulder rounded out his outfit. I elbowed Winkler as Rahim walked past us, on his way to the front desk. None of Bill's agents had a clue.



I listened carefully as the hotel desk clerk looked up his reservation. Rahim had booked a room under the name Raymond Andreadis. Rahim was passing for Greek. He was given a room on the eighth floor and was already walking toward the elevator when I sent mindspeech to both Winkler and Bill.



Bill, if you'll give me a couple minutes, I'll have him at the back door for you, I sent and ran to catch the elevator with Rahim. He nodded politely to me as I punched the button for the ninth floor. He stepped off on the eighth floor as planned and the minute the door closed again to take me to the ninth floor, I was mist and trailing behind Rahim. I floated over his head while he slipped a key card in the slot, walked into his room and shut the door.



He wasn't tall; maybe five-eight or nine and I nabbed him, turning him to mist before he could set his backpack down. I didn't know what was in it and didn't want to wait around to find out. The Vice President was supposed to be in the building soon; he had the presidential suite booked on the top floor. I'm sure he smiled every time somebody gave him the presidential suite, too.



I'm coming with the package! I was doing my best to send to Bill and Winkler, I just didn't know if my mindspeech was going to penetrate a werewolf brain or not. I did my best, anyway. I zipped Rahim through walls and down through floors, flying as straight as I could toward the loading dock at the back of the hotel. Bill was already there, talking on his cell phone when I misted to that huge block of concrete at the rear of the hotel. Winkler skidded to a stop nearby, a bare second or two later.