Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [879]
Merlin was sitting in a chair facing us. Adonis and the dark-haired woman from the chorus were sitting on the couch against the wall. Her name was Elisabetta, and her vaguely Eastern European accent was thick enough to walk on. Merlin’s and Adonis’s accents seemed to flow with their moods, but were mostly absent.
Merlin was answering my questions in that elegant from-anywhere-and-everywhere voice: “I wanted the show to be magical for the entire audience, not just the humans.”
“So you tried to roll everyone’s mind, including the master vampires and lycanthropes, because you didn’t want them to miss the show?” I didn’t fight to keep the sarcsasm out of my voice. I’d have lost the fight, so why try?
“Yes,” he said, simply, as if, of course.
Damian’s hand squeezed a little tighter on my bare shoulder, his fingers caressing the edge of the collarbone scars.
“I find that a little hard to believe,” I said. There, that was calm. I hadn’t called him a lying bastard.
“Why else would I have done it?” he asked. His face was very calm. I knew his eyes were dark, pure brown, but other than color I couldn’t describe them much, because I wasn’t making eye contact. This vampire had damn near rolled us all with no gaze. I wasn’t chancing it. He was tall, dark, and handsome. He was not European. No, something darker, farther east, as in Middle East. There was something very Egyptian about him, or maybe Babylonian, because he was old. Old enough that he made my bones ache with his age. Not power, just age. I was a necromancer, and I could taste the power and age of most vampires. It was a natural ability that had gotten better as my power had grown. Now that ability made my bones thrum with the weight of ages that sat smiling in front of me.
“Using power that way on a Master of the City is a direct challenge to his or her authority. You know that.”
“Not if you don’t get caught at it,” Adonis said from the couch.
I glanced at him, avoiding his eyes. That made him laugh. He liked that he could roll me with his gaze. All right, that we both thought he could.
Asher spoke then. “Are you implying that Merlin rolled the minds of all the masters in all the cities that you performed in, and they did not know it?” His voice was empty, pleasant, even happy. It was a lie. He wanted Adonis to chat himself into a corner.
Merlin raised a darkly pale hand. That one gesture stopped Adonis with his mouth parted. “No,” Merlin said, “no. We have answered the question of Jean-Claude’s servant. When she speaks it is with his voice. But why are you here, Asher? Why do you sit so close and join these talks?”
“I am Jean-Claude’s témoin.”
“How have you earned this place of trust and power, Asher? It is not through strength. There are at least four vampires here, perhaps more, who are more powerful than you. And you were never known for your skill in battle. So why do you sit at his right hand, and now at hers?”
“I can tell you why he’s here tonight, sitting beside me,” I said.
Merlin gave me a quizzical look. It was so hard not to look him in the eye when he moved. I’d lost the knack of not making eye contact with vampires. “Do enlighten me, Miss Blake.”
I reached in the drawer and wrapped my hand around the gun. I felt better holding it. The moment the gun flashed to the room, the tension level rose. I felt rather than saw Adonis and Elisabetta begin to move forward on the couch.
Claudia said, “Don’t.”
Merlin said, “Do not react. That is what she wants.”
It was probably their master’s voice, not Claudia’s warning, that