Dead Man Rising

"Let her in." The voice cut through the pulsing noise. The dance floor seethed behind me, a sharp spiked flare of Power matching a rise in the music's tempo. I hoped my hair wouldn't fall down.

Nikolai, the prime Power of Saint City, leaned back on the red velvet of an antique couch carved to within an inch of its life. An equally antique table rested in front of him, pocked with gaps I recognized as bullet holes. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in nondescript dark clothing that looked silky. No amount of simplicity could disguise the weltering onslaught of Power he commanded.

I would have been impressed if I hadn't dealt with Power all my life. As it was, I cocked a hip for balance and leverage in case anyone came at me, looked into his cat-sheened dark eyes, and held up the invitation.

He had a shelf of dark hair falling over his eyes, a wide generous mouth, and high sculpted cheekbones. He would have been handsome without the flat shine of his eyes, like a cat's eyes at night when the light hits them just right, and the utter inhuman stillness he settled into. He wore a dark button-down shirt, probably silk, and a pair of loose silken pants, a pair of very good Petrolo boots, and no jewelry.

Beside him, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, sat a Nichtvren female with a fall of long, curling blonde-streaked hair, her dark-blue eyes liquid and fixed on me. She had no catshine to her eyes, and none of Nikolai's immobility—instead, her fingernails tapped at the air, her lush lips parted slightly, the tips of her fangs showing; she wore a frayed red V-neck sweater and a pair of dark ratty jeans, beaten and scarred combat boots, and a thick silver cuff-bracelet with a tiger's eye the size of a mini credit-disc on her right wrist. She measured me from head to foot, and then smiled, half of her mouth pulling up.

I'm glad someone's having fun. I stepped forward, into the booth through a sticky sheet of Power that snapped shut behind me. Instantly, the noise they called music went down in volume, and I gave an involuntary sigh of relief.

Nikolai said nothing, examining me. It was like being eyed by a wild animal that hadn't quite made up its mind to eat you or simply crush you with a clawed paw.

I nodded at the female, knowing that his Consort was the way into his good graces. Rumor had it she was the only thing in the entire city that Nikolai valued. Rumor also had it that he went crazy if he even thought someone had messed with her.

Aw, now ain't that sweet. "I'm Da

Anyone who knew me would have expected the words to sound sarcastic. I was faintly surprised they didn't.

Nikolai still didn't move. The Nichtvren female laughed. The deep, husky sound surprised me and made my hackles rise, her eyes flared a dark luminous blue. She was exquisite, and I caught a thread of an odd scent; some type of musk that reminded me of sexwitch over the musty caramelized-dark-chocolate scent of Nichtvren. "Hi," she said. "Sit down. Nik's just in a mood. We have to see a werecain delegation after you, and he finds that unpleasant. Want something to drink?" Her accent was old Mercan, the vowels shaped oddly, like they used to be around the time of the Parapsychic Act but before the great linguistic meltdown of the Seventy Days War. So she was old too.

Not nearly as old as him.

I wouldn't trust the liquor in here, lady. I shook my head, let my cloak fall to the floor. It was a good gesture, it showed I had nothing but the ordinary weapons. I settled myself on the couch to their left, easing down gingerly, wishing I could hold my sword across my lap. Steel would be better than empty air between me and these two.

Nikolai finally moved. "What is it you require?" he asked, and the woman's pale expressive hand came down on his knee; the tiger's eye on her bracelet flashed with light. He had been immobile before, now he looked over at her, and a stone would have looked frenetic next to him.

"Be polite, sweetie. She's new at this." The woman rolled her eyes, then rested her elbows on her knees again. "What can we do for you, Miss Valentine?"

Now that was unexpected. I drew the papers out of my pocket, making sure to move very slowly. All the same, Nikolai's eyelids dropped a fraction. A chill, prickling weight of Power covered him.

I don't think I'd ever want to see him pissed off. The thought was there and gone in a flash, I pushed the sudden swell of almost-fear down. I had nothing to worry about, I was here on business, and I wasn't just human.

Am I? What's the protocol for an almost-demon dealing with a Master Nichtvren? This wasn't ever covered at the Academy. Maybe I should write to the Hegemony Educational Board.

I laid the papers on the table, swallowing the choking panicked giggle rising in my chest. "The police have asked me to look into this. Have you ever seen anything like it? I know you'll have access to texts I don't. If you can narrow this down, it would help me immensely."

She scooped the papers up. Nikolai didn't move, but he seemed to give the impression of a twitch. She settled back, moving with preternatural Nichtvren grace, and cuddled into his side.

That managed to make him move. He slid his arm over her shoulders and looked down at the top of her head. My heart slammed into my throat. For some reason, he reminded me of Eddie watching Gabe, his face softening slightly, his eyes lighting up. It was a startlingly human expression on a being who hadn't been human for a long, long time. No man had ever looked at me like that.

Would you have noticed, if they did? the deep voice asked me.

I decided to not even dignify that thought with a response. Sekhmet sa'es, I'm even ignoring my own bloody self. I'm losing my mind.

Velvet rustled as I shifted uneasily. I wished I could have worn jeans to this. At least if I'd worn jeans I could have ridden a slicboard. I licked dry lips and watched as she sca

She shuddered, her blue eyes lighting with a flare of something almost-panicked, gone in an instant.

Nikolai's eyes flicked over me.

"Nik?" She held up the papers. "Take a look at this."

He stirred himself to glance, a faint line grooving between his eyebrows, taking the laseprints from her slim pretty hand.

"It's Ceremonial." She moved slightly, her body shifting closer to his. "But I haven't seen this variation. Have you?"

"It stinks of evil, Selene." His eyes lost their catshine for a moment and turned dark. For a moment, there was a flash of how he might have looked as a human man, and I found myself staring, hoping to catch it again.

"Have you seen it?" she demanded, her hand flashing out to catch the other side of the sheaf of paper. There was a long, breathless pause.

"No, milyi." His eyes searched her face, still dark and horribly, awfully human. "I have not seen this exact variation. And yet…" He trailed off, his gaze moving slow and gelid past me and out over the dance floor. He looks just like a lion looking over a herd of zebras, I thought. Or a pimp checking out a flock of unregistered hookers.

"You're killing me here, Nikolai." She pushed a dark-blonde curl out of her face. Her lips quirked downward before she smiled. Bits of light from the blastball suspended over the dancefloor flicked over the smooth planes of her face. "Can we just once have some information without it being a huge production?"

Hear, hear, I seconded internally. I'd thought it was going to be a relief to be in a place without human stink. Instead, it creeped me out. My hackles rose, almost-goosebumps roughening my skin. They clustered through the whole building, the Nichtvren, alien as demons, even if originally human. The only way to become a Nichtvren is to be infected, bitten and transformed with a blood exchange; it usually takes two or three exchanges for the Turn to happen. Bones change, the jaw becomes distended and cartilaginous, the eyes transform, able to see in complete darkness, and the thirst races through their veins. It's a combination of retroviral infection and some etheric transfer from Master to fledgling that modern science, for all its biomechanical wonder, can't replicate. They were different from normal humans and different from me, yet I still felt something odd: a type of kinship.