A skinny and worn-looking middle-aged man tentatively started down the stairs. As he did so, the female vampire said, in heavily accented English, “Are you sure this is the best place for them?”
“It will take her a while to look for any of us down here,” said the voice of the man who’d translated for me earlier. Kocourek. I couldn’t see him; he was still at the top of the stairs.
“See if you can get them to settle in under the stairs, then put them to sleep,” he continued. “Smells so bad in here, I don’t think she’ll know the difference.”
I had to agree. It was foul here, and the humans didn’t help matters. Hygiene was apparently not something that this seethe valued in their sheep.
“Should we just kill them?” the female asked, her voice shaking with stress, I thought, though her accent made it difficult to tell. She changed the angle of her face, and I realized she was crying.
“It might come to that,” said Kocourek grimly. “Anything would be better—Lars.”
One of the other two vampires stepped over and caught a middle-aged woman who had turned to run back up the stairs. He caught her, stared into her eyes a moment. The terror and tension in her body relaxed.
He said something soft and sweet to her, turned her, and kept his hand on her shoulder as he took up the rear position.
The third vampire sighed.
“Let’s get them as safe as we can, people. Dagmar?”
“Yes,” the first vampire said.
She had a lantern, and she turned it on. It glowed red rather than white. She set it under the stairs, bathing the area in the gentle glow. From my position, I couldn’t see the whole area, but it looked as though the only thing on the dirt floor was dirt—which made it a lot cleaner than most of the rest of the room.
She took those seven people, one at a time, met their eyes, and caught them in her hunter’s magic. But instead of feeding on them, she sent them into the space under the stairs, where they curled up around each other for warmth . . . and slept.
The little man with the mustache, who was the only one whose name I hadn’t heard, crawled in with them to tip one woman’s head so she didn’t snore. He did it with tenderness, and he kissed her cheek. He took the lantern out from under the stairs and left his charges in darkness.
There was a click as the overhead lightbulb was turned off. Kocourek came down the stairs like a panther, the red light of the lantern allowing me to see them well enough to judge where they were but not the expressions on their faces.
Without speaking, they all took up positions designed to allow them to keep intruders away from under the stairs, without shouting to the world, Hey, I’m protecting the people under the stairs.
I got it. What I didn’t get was why. Who were they protecting them from? Mary? But that didn’t really make sense because no one had protected that poor girl who died.
The double hit on the magic that surrounded this place happened again, and this time I wasn’t the only one in the basement who felt it.
They staggered under the weight of whatever was bludgeoning the place. During the second attack, Lars, who was neither tall nor blond, though with a name like that he should have been, went down to one knee. Mustached man groaned, and Dagmar swore. I thought she swore, anyway. There was an emphasis to the words that just translated to swearing in any language.
When the second one let up, I shifted to human, startling the ghost—which was a switch. She disappeared for the moment, though I could feel her lingering nearby.
“Kocourek,” I said quietly, because they’d been trying to be quiet. “How long have you belonged to Mary?”
The four vampires did that really chilling thing where they move at the same time, exactly at the same time, better than any award-winning dance team.
Lars said something. It sounded harsh and staccato, but it was still quiet.
“Mercy Thompson Hauptman, daughter of the Marrok, wife of the Alpha of the Tri-Cities, Washington, pack,” said Kocourek. “May I make known to you the few of my seethe who are left me—Dagmar, Vanje, and Lars.”
“Close,” I told him. “I was raised in Bran Cornick’s pack, but he’s not my father. And our pack is the Columbia Basin Pack. Werewolf packs are seldom named after a town. How long have you been Mary’s minion?”
“Guccio’s,” corrected Kocourek mildly. “Never Mary’s.”
“She’s not even her own person yet,” said Dagmar. “She still needs to feed from us to stay sane. Sort of sane—as sane as that witch gets. She’s a fledgling yet—and Guccio caters to her for her magic. He set her up here, with her own seethe made up of his children.”
“Pretty Vampire’s?” I said slowly. “The one who looks like he could make a living as a stripper? He’s your Master?”
“Maker,” said Kocourek shortly.
At the same time, Dagmar snickered. “‘Pretty Vampire’? He’d love that. He’d have loved that.”
“I thought that Master Vampires didn’t have to obey their makers anymore,” I said.
“Why are you answering her questions?” asked Lars.
“Because I think she’s the cause of whatever is blasting away at Mary’s spellcrafting,” Kocourek said shortly. To me he said, “Mostly after we quit feeding from our makers, their influence over us wanes over years. I made a mistake. I welcomed Guccio into my home as a guest, and he caught me and rebonded me—fed from me and made me feed from him. And so he took me and my children, then he told me to listen to Mary as if she were he.” The rage in his voice, for all that it was quiet, could have ignited diesel fuel. Not much ignites diesel, but it burns pretty well.