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Bernardo and Olaf were at Edward’s back, and I knew in that instant that if he’d given the word, they’d have both drawn guns and fired. It was a comforting thought. Suicidal, but comforting. Because I could feel her people now, which meant she had to have been blocking me, hiding them. I felt the vampires underneath the building, around it, through it. There were hundreds of them, and most of them were old. Hundreds of years old. And Obsidian Butterfly? I glanced at her but was careful not to meet her eyes this time. It had been years since I’d had to avoid a vampire’s eyes. I’d forgotten how hard it is to look someone in the face without making eye contact, like some elaborate game. Them trying to catch my glance and bespell me, me trying to keep away.

She had a fall of straight black bangs, but the rest of her hair was pulled back from her face to reveal delicate ears set with jade ear spools. She was a delicate thing, petite even standing next to me and Professor Dallas, but I wasn’t fooled by the packaging. What lay inside was a vampire not that old. I doubted she was a thousand years yet. I’d met older, much older, but I’d never met any vampire under a thousand that echoed in my head with the power that this one had. Power breathed off her skin like a nearly visible cloud, and I’d learned enough of vampires to know that the echo of power wasn’t on purpose. Some of the masters with special abilities, like causing fear or lust, just gave off that power constantly like steam rising from a pot. It was involuntary, partially at least. But I’d never met one that leaked power, pure power.

Edward was talking to me, probably had been talking to me for a while. I just hadn’t heard. “Anita, Anita, are you all right?” I felt the press of a gun not pointed at my back, but drawn, using my body to shield it from the room. Things could get ugly really fast.

“I’m all right,” but my voice didn’t sound all right. It sounded hollow and distant, like I was in shock. Maybe I was, a little. She hadn’t exactly rolled my mind, but she knew things about me in that first contact that most vampires never figured out. I realized suddenly that she knew what kind of power I was. That was her gift, to be able to read power.

Her voice when it came was heavily accented and much deeper than that fragile throat should have held, as if the voice was an echo of that immense power. “Whose servant are you?”

She knew I was a vampire’s human servant, but not whose servant I was. I liked that, made me feel better. She read only power, not details, unless of course, she was only pretending not to know. But somehow I didn’t think she’d pretend ignorance. No, this was one that liked showing off her knowledge. She breathed arrogance as she breathed power. But why not be arrogant? She was, after all, a goddess, self-proclaimed anyway. You’d have to be either absolutely arrogant or crazy to claim godhood.

“Jean-Claude, Master of the City of St. Louis.”

She cocked her head to one side as if listening to something. “Then you are the Executioner. You did not give your true name at the door.”

“Not all vampires will talk to me if they know who I am.”

“What is it you wish to speak with me about?”

“The mutilation murders.”

Again, she turned her head to one side as if listening. “Ah, yes.” She blinked and looked up at me. “The price for an audience is what lies on your hands.”

I must have looked as puzzled as I felt, because she elaborated. “The blood, César’s blood. I wish to take it from you.”

“How?” I asked; just call me suspicious.

She simply turned and started walking away. Her voice came like the sound to a badly dubbed film, sound long after it should have been heard. “Follow me, and do not clean your hands.”

I glanced at Edward. “Do you trust her?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Me either,” I said.

“Are we going or staying?” Olaf asked.

“I vote for going,” Bernardo said. I hadn’t really looked at him since the sacrifice began. He was looking a little pale. Olaf wasn’t. Olaf