“I don’t think you understand your position here, young lady,” said another of them, a man with dark skin and an Arabic-looking robe of white linen tied with an embroidered sash. “You are here at our pleasure. Our sufferance.”
“See, what does that even mean?” I said, my arms out. “Yo
u think I’m going to go along with that, just because you expect it?”
“Has no one taught you manners?” he said in a disappointed tone, as if he was lamenting the fallen state of the world, where a lowly werewolf could talk smack to a vampire.
“Yeah, you should ask the vampires back home about that. I’m real popular.”
“She is,” Ben said. “That eye rolling thing you’re doing? She gets that all the time.”
I looked at him. “Really?”
“Just trying to help.”
Man, the two of us should go on the road. Some of the retainers standing in the wings had begun to fidget. I hoped I was making them nervous.
Ned stepped forward. “If I could make those introductions now—”
The goateed vampire slapped the table, causing knives to rattle and candle flames to flicker. “Edward, you are a terrible host for allowing one of the wolves to speak so out of turn.”
Ned smiled. “She’s not mine to command, Jan. You know that.”
“It’s the principle—”
Ned countered, “If you’re offended—”
“Oh, I’m not offended,” one of the other women said. She had black hair and wore a rhinestone-studded ball gown that glittered like shattered glass. “I thought this was the evening’s entertainment.” That got a few more laughs. Several of them started talking and laughing over each other, leaving Ned cut off in the middle of his intervention.
Enough of this. I looked at Mercedes and raised my voice.
“How many of you are carrying the coins of Dux Bellorum?” I said, loud and sure to carry.
The room fell still, quiet, and every vampiric gaze, thick with power, turned on me. Mercedes actually took a step back. Well, hallelujah.
“What did you say?” The flip guy in the poet’s shirt asked this softly.
“You heard me,” I said.
Again, the long silence and studious gazes dominated. I kept still, chin up, eyes steady. I did not slouch. Neither did Ben. We weren’t the strongest ones here; it was us against all of them, the whole room. But we had startled them. We had an advantage.
“Well,” Ned said wonderingly to the assemblage. “You wanted to know if she had any real power. Now you do.”
Every one of those gazes had become appraising. Calculating. Then—they turned those gazes on each other. Because they didn’t know who among them belonged to Dux Bellorum, and who didn’t. Oh, this had gotten very interesting.
Mercedes pointed at me and smiled. “She has no power. She hides her weakness with words. I want to see her fight. Wolves are nothing without their teeth and claws.”
“Yes, a fight,” said her goateed colleague—Jan. “That will settle this. Clear out the middle here.” He pointed at several of the retainers, both vampire and lycanthrope, nodding with distaste at the discarded blood donors. The retainers began picking up the unconscious bodies and hauling them away. Some of the victims twitched muscles as if coming to wakefulness, their heads lolling and expressions wincing. No one paid them any mind as they were carried off, through the doors to another room. I hoped one with beds and food and lots of juice and water.
“I’m not going to fight,” I said.
“I’ll get in there before you,” Ben said.
“Neither of us is going to fight.”
Jan called, “Which one should she fight? One of them, the female—” He pointed at the pair of werewolves wearing the steel collars and chains.
“No,” their Master said. He had short cropped hair and wore a tuxedo with white leather gloves. He had some kind of accent, Scandinavian maybe. “She’s submissive, it wouldn’t be proper.” He actually stroked the woman’s hair, leaning over her, protective. In turn, the woman pressed into his touch, turning her face to his thigh as if to hide. She was scared. The other prisoner, the man, put his arms around her, a heartbreaking move to shelter her. He stole glances at me, but his gaze was more often on the floor—he was submissive, too, and terrified of me. Of me.