Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [368]
That was the main reason one of the last remaining wild bands of Lesser Smokey Mountain Trolls lived in the area. Richard was finishing up his master’s degree in biology. He’d been studying the trolls every summer for four years between teaching full time. Takes longer to get your master’s degree part time.
I took a deep breath of the clean, clean air. I could see why Richard would want to spend his summers here. It was exactly the kind of place he’d enjoy. He was into outdoorsy stuff in a big way. Rock climbing, hiking, fishing, camping, canoeing, bird-watching—pretty much anything you could do outside was his idea of fun. Oh, caving, too. Though I guess, technically, you’re not outside if you’re inside a cave.
When I said that Richard was a Boy Scout, I didn’t mean just his moral fiber.
A man walked towards us. He was almost perfectly round in the middle, wearing a pair of coveralls with oil on the knees. White hair stuck out from underneath a billed cap. His glasses were black-rimmed and square. He wiped his hands on a rag as he walked. The look on his face was polite, curious. His eyes flicked from me to the rest of the guys as they filed out of the plane. Then his eyes flicked to the coffins that were being unloaded from the storage compartment. Asher was in one. Damian was in the other.
Asher was the more powerful of the two, but he was several hundred years younger. Damian had been a Viking when he was alive, and I don’t mean the football team. He’d been a card-carrying, sword-wielding, marauding raider. One night he’d raided the wrong castle, and she took him. If she had a name, I’ve never heard it. She was a master vampire and ruler of her lands, the equivalent to Master of the City when there is no city in a hundred miles. She took Damian on a summer night over a thousand years ago, and she kept him. A thousand years, and he felt no more powerful in my head than a vampire half his age. I’d underestimated his age by hundreds of years, because part of me just couldn’t accept that you could exist that long and not be more powerful, scarier. Damian was scary but not a millennium worth of scary. He’d never be more than he was: a third or fourth banana for all eternity. Jean-Claude bargained for Damian’s freedom when he came to be Master of the City. He ransomed Damian. I never knew what it cost Jean-Claude, but I knew that it hadn’t been cheap. She had not wanted to give up her favorite whipping boy.
The man said, “I’d shake your hand, but I’ve been working on the planes. Mr. Niley’s man is waiting in the building.”
I frowned. “Mr. Niley?”
He frowned then. “Aren’t you Mr. Niley’s people? Milo said you’d be coming in today.” He looked back, and a tall man stepped out of the building. His skin was the color of coffee, two creams. His hair was cut in a wedge, leaving his elegant, sculpted face bare and unadorned. He was wearing a suit that cost more than most cars. He stared at me, and even from a distance I felt the dead weight of his eyes. All he needed was a sign over his head that said Muscle.
“No, we’re not Mr. Niley’s people.” That he’d made the mistake made me wonder who Mr. Niley was.
A voice called, “These are the people I’ve been expecting, Ed.” It was Jamil, one of Richard’s enforcers. The enforcers were Sköll and Hati after the wolves that chase the sun and moon in Norse mythology. When they catch them, it will be the end of the world. Tells you something about werewolf society that their enforcers were named after creatures that would bring about the end of everything. Jamil was Sköll for Richard’s pack, which meant he was head enforcer. He was tall and slender in the way a dancer is slender, all muscles