Dmitri’s lips curved. “The ability to charm your enemies and make friends wherever you go has always been your gift, January.”
Naasir snorted at the literal translation of Janvier’s name. It was an unusual one, given to him by a girl of sixteen who was in love with her baby—a baby born during the first minute of a long-ago January night. The time and date were facts his mother had known only because right before she pushed her son out into the world, she’d heard the sky explode with fireworks as the wealthy mortals and immortals who lived in the nearby settlement celebrated the new year.
That sweet, romantic girl had loved him to the day she died as a tiny, wrinkled woman who’d lived a glorious life.
“My Janvier. My New Year’s gift.” Warm, soft hands on his cheeks, a brilliant smile that hadn’t faded an iota in all the decades of her life. “I am so proud of you.”
Warmed by the precious memory, he smirked at Dmitri. “At least people don’t run screaming when they see me coming.” The other vampire was simply too old to fully conceal the lethal depth of his power.
“Do you think I could jump to the ground from here?” Naasir asked conversationally.
“No,” Dmitri replied. “I’d have to scrape you up with a shovel.”
Naasir frowned, stared down at the distant city street. “Pity.”
Sometimes, even Janvier didn’t know if Naasir was kidding or asking a serious question. “If you don’t need me to handle anything else immediately, I’m going to visit the injured.” He’d gotten into the habit of dropping in, updating the fallen men and women on news of the outside world—the kinds of things that would make them laugh or groan.
“I’ll hit the vampire clubs tonight,” he added, “get a feel for things.” If the computer searches on the tattoo and fingerprints came up empty, the clubs would also be a good starting point when it came to tracking the identity of his and Ash’s victim.
As soon as her name formed in his mind, it was as if the past minutes hadn’t existed. He was back on the snowy street outside the morgue, watching the woman he’d waited two lifetimes to find walk away from him.
• • •
Mulling over the strain he’d seen on Janvier’s face before the Cajun left, Dmitri turned to the vampire who remained. Naasir was unique, the only one of his kind in known history. He was also dangerous to himself at times, with as little sense of self-preservation as a four-year-old. “If you crack your skull by falling over,” he pointed out, “you won’t get to have dinner with Elena and Raphael tonight.”
Naasir jerked up his head, eyes shining. “Dinner?”
“Yes, you’ve been invited to the Enclave. Elena would like to welcome you back to the city.”
Naasir crept away from the edge a fraction. “I want to go to dinner,” he said decisively. “Will there be proper meat?”
“Montgomery will ensure you get fed.” He was severely tempted to turn up at the dinner himself, just to see Elena’s reaction to Naasir’s unusual eating habits. “Tell me about Amanat.” The lost city risen to the surface after an eon was home to the Ancient Caliane, Raphael’s mother and a staggering power.
“Twice a week,” Naasir said, “Caliane lowers the shield that protects the city so her people can go outside. They do so in small herds, scared and clinging to one another.” There was no judgment in the words. “It may take months for them to overcome the fear seeded by the loss of one of their own.”
Dmitri wasn’t surprised. Caliane was strong, but the people who’d come with her into her long sleep were gentle, cultured beings with no real capacity to protect themselves. “Lijuan’s territory?”
“I was able to infiltrate it without being detected after Jason gave me the advance data.”
Dmitri had already received Jason’s report, but the spymaster had focused on the politics, as well as on any news of Lijuan’s whereabouts, while Naasir had been directed to pay attention to the populace.
“Her people are in the grip of a stunned kind of shock,” the vampire said, “but there is no despair, not at the level there should be. They are waiting, and erecting shrines—where they kneel and pray for Lijuan’s swift recovery.”
“Damn.” Dmitri had been hoping Raphael had managed to kill her off despite Raphael’s own belief otherwise.
Killing an archangel, Raphael had said, has always been a difficult task. Killing an Ancient might be an impossible one—and while Lijuan isn’t an Ancient, she’s close enough to it that I believe it’ll take an extraordinary event to eliminate her.
“I’ve thought of multiple methods to kill her,” Naasir said. “Unfortunately, she keeps regenerating, even in my imagination.”
That was the crux of it. If nothing could eradicate the threat of Lijuan, hell would erupt on earth. “Share your ideas with the sire.” Naasir didn’t think like the rest of them, had come up with surprising maneuvers before.
“Do I need to take a gift for Elena? Is that the thing to do?”
Dmitri fought the urge to tell him yes. Naasir’s idea of a gift tended to be interesting at best. “Do what feels natural. Neither the sire nor the consort expect us to be anything other than who and what we are.” That fact was at the core of why he served Raphael; there was no need for pretense.
“I’ll take a gift,” Naasir said after a minute. “It’s what Jessamy taught me to do when invited to a special dinner at someone’s home.”
Dmitri wondered if Honor would mind if he changed their plans and invited them both to dinner at the Enclave.
• • •
“It lives!”
Ashwini pointed her finger at Demarco. “I haven’t shot anyone this week.”
The streaky blond-brown of his hair more on the brown side right now, given the winter sunlight, the irrepressible hunter jumped over a table in the Academy dining hall to grab her shoulders and squeeze. It was his form of giving her a hug—most of the hunters who were her close friends knew she had trouble with too much physical contact.
Leaning forward, she hugged him. He was part of her family and she understood the value of such loyalty and affection in a way no one who hadn’t lost a family could. It had all gone wrong so long ago, and now there was no way to fix the family into which she’d been born. But she could do this; she could hold on to the family she’d created.