Stiletto Read online

  “A beautiful view,” he said appreciatively, and for a moment they both looked out over the city. “I have waited centuries to look upon it.” He turned to her. “I can see how you could lose yourself in the vista, but”—he paused, and she tensed, knowing what was coming—“you are not being polite to our hosts.” She sighed. “Now, I realize you are nervous. I understand your concerns.”

  Odette looked at him. “You do?”

  “Come, now, over the course of my centuries, I think I have come to comprehend the minds of women a little bit. This gathering is many things, serving many purposes, but it is, in the end, a party. And so you are worried about your dress and the thing with your hair.”

  “The thing with my hair? What’s wrong with my hair?” asked Odette.

  “But,” he carried on blithely, “our hosts have organized this soiree as a way for us all to meet informally before tomorrow’s work begins, and so it is important that we take this opportunity to be diplomatic.”

  Odette nodded reluctantly. “Yes, I understand,” she said. “I’ve just been mustering up my enthusiasm and reviewing appropriate conversational topics.”

  “Very sensible,” he said. “Are you ready, then?”

  “Sure,” she said. She briefly envied her little brother, who was still in their hotel suite, one floor down.

  “I am not entirely certain what to do with this, though,” he said, holding up the remains of the inadvertently deconstructed canapé. “There is no way to eat it with any sort of dignity, and this is my handshaking hand.”

  “Just dump it in that plant pot,” suggested Odette, gesturing to a nearby palm.

  “Excellent thinking.” Graaf van Suchtlen looked around and then gingerly dropped the remnants into the pot. “Now, come. It is your duty to mingle.” He offered her an arm, and she took it, allowing him to lead her to a little group of Checquy.

  Just calm down, she told herself. These people may be monsters, but they’re professionals and they’re upper-class and British, so they’ll be polite.

  “Ladies, gentlemen,” van Suchtlen said easily. “Allow me to present Odette Leliefeld.” There was a chorus of greetings, and she smiled to each person as she was introduced. She was so nervous that she failed to remember any of their names. None of them were in the Court of the Checquy, and so she assumed they were simply high-ranking managers of the covert government organization.

  They were certainly not your standard-issue humans, even if they were all dressed in expensive clothes. One of the men had a birthmark on his face that oozed around slowly, like the contents of a lava lamp. There was a woman who seemed to waver like the air over a hot highway. When one older man moved, light and color shifted briefly behind him, as if he were sporting a holographic peacock tail. Another man’s breath steamed, even though the room was, according to Odette’s skin, exactly 20 degrees centigrade.

  You do not need to be afraid of them, Odette told herself. You are here under a truce. And while these people may have abilities that defy all the laws of physics, biology, common sense, and good taste, you are a scion of the Broederschap. You have training beyond any surgeon in the world. Your body is an exquisitely crafted tool. You have repaired limbs and delivered babies and saved lives. You have climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower and touched the deepest bottom of the Mediterranean Sea and danced on the underside of the Bridge of Sighs. With an effort, she dragged herself back to the conversation.

  “You two have the same eyes!” one of the women was saying. “Graaf van Suchtlen, is she your sister?”

  “No,” said Odette, smiling despite herself at the thought.

  “Not your daughter, surely?” said the woman, looking uncertainly at the two of them.

  “No,” said Odette. “I’m his descendant.” By, what, six generations?

  “And my protégée,” said Graaf van Suchtlen. Odette looked at him and kept her face deliberately blank.

  “So, Miss Leliefeld is the first in line, then?” one of the Checquy men asked.

  “No, there is no line,” said the graaf matter-of-factly. The Checquy people exchanged confused glances.

  “Grootvader—I’m sorry—Graaf van Suchtlen has no intention of dying,” explained Odette. “Ever.” She expected to see a raised eyebrow or two, but they nodded sagely.

  “We have a Bishop like that,” said one of the women. “In fact, he’s right there. Bishop Alrich! Yoo-hoo!” Odette’s stomach flipped over. Bishop Alrich. That was definitely a name she’d managed to remember.

  Bishop Alrich wasn’t a church bishop. The Court—the leaders of the Checquy Group—had a hierarchy based on chess pieces. It was ridiculous, probably one of those archaic British traditions that made no sense to anyone else. The two Rooks were responsible for domestic operations. The Chevaliers oversaw international affairs. At the top of the tree were the Lord and Lady (they weren’t called the King and Queen, as it would have made the real British monarchy a little antsy). And just below the Lord and Lady were the Bishops, who, from what Odette could gather, oversaw everything.

  As a result, Bishop Alrich was incredibly important and powerful. But that wasn’t why she felt a sudden bolt of dread go through her. It was because of what he was. If the reports were correct, then he was actually a vampire. A blood-drinking, apparently immortal entity who preyed on human beings.

  And he’s behind me.

  Despite herself, she turned. Oh, she thought. Gosh.

  The dossiers she’d read on him had not included photographs because the Bishop did not register on any photographic equipment, either digital or chemical. There had been a few sketches and a copy of a rather idealized watercolor painting, but they hadn’t done him justice.

  He stood tall, in a suit of exquisite cut. And he was striking, so striking, with features that might have been sculpted by Donatello and eyes that could have been painted by Blake. His hair poured vermilion down to his waist. Odette felt the blood rising in her cheeks. And then she wondered if he could sense it. When their eyes met, his expression was one of dry amusement.

  “Bishop Alrich,” said the woman. “You’ve met Graaf van Suchtlen, of course.” The two men nodded to each other. “And this is Miss Odette Leliefeld.” He took her hand, and his skin was warm. Suddenly she was simultaneously very glad and very regretful of her dress’s dowdy high neck.

  “Good evening, Miss Leliefeld,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and the strength of her own voice took her aback. “I’ve heard a great deal about you, sir.”

  “Indeed?” he said.

  There was a long pause, during which Odette flailed around in her mind for something to say. This is why I don’t like going to parties.

  “It’s a lovely party,” she said finally.

  “Yes, and there have been no atrocities committed yet,” remarked the Bishop, looking around.

  “Oh, Bishop Alrich, you are bad,” said one of the Checquy women fondly.

  “It’s not out of the question, Pawn Titchmarsh,” said the vampire. “The last party I was at ended very badly. And didn’t you once attend a dinner in Bhutan where everyone except you left having been rendered completely sterile?”

  “And they all became allergic to rabbits,” said the lady with some satisfaction. “But that was for work.”

  Isn’t this evening also for work? thought Odette.

  “And have you been enjoying your time here in London, Miss Leliefeld?” asked Alrich.

  “We got here only this morning,” said Odette, “so of course I haven’t seen much. But the hospitality of the Checquy has been very . . .”—she hunted frantically for an adjective that wouldn’t cause an international incident—“welcoming.”

  In point of fact, the hospitality had been almost smothering. It had still been dark when the delegation of sleepy Grafters stepped off the jet at Heathrow. They had been met by a group of extremely alert-looking people from the Checquy headed by the imposing Bishop Raushan Attariwala
. He had greeted them cordially and escorted them through the bowels of the airport, bypassing customs and immigration. Odette had noticed that none of the hallways they’d passed through had any security cameras and that none of their escorts were carrying any obvious weapons.

  Then they’d been ushered into large black cars with tinted windows and driven through a maze of service lanes and hangars. Gates were opened and wary security guards waved them through until they emerged on a service road that segued into a back road that segued into a street that segued into an actual highway. Despite her exhaustion, Odette had been glued to the window during the trip to the city. Her squeal at the sight of her first proper London cab woke Alessio.

  And then there was the hotel, tall and grand, where they had been checked in and shown to their rooms. For all Odette knew, Graaf Ernst had attended meetings with the senior members of their delegation all day, but she and Alessio had been told to get some rest and not to leave the hotel. The cocktail party would be held at six thirty, and she was to attend the strategy meeting beforehand. Any time she or Alessio had opened the hotel room’s door, those grim Checquy operatives were standing guard in the hallway, and so she’d elected to stay in the suite and have a long nap in the bathtub.

  “Yes,” said Odette. “They’ve taken very good care of us.”

  “Good to hear,” said Alrich. “I hope you’re looking forward to working with us.”

  “Oh, I hope so too,” said Odette. It took her a couple of moments to realize that what she’d just said made no sense. Mercifully, he didn’t comment, just smiled a little smile, bowed his head, and excused himself.

  That didn’t go too badly, she thought. She relaxed a little and watched as the vampire moved smoothly through the crowd. She couldn’t help but appreciate the fact that his hair stopped strategically right at his waist.

  “It’s enough to make you wish he were an incubus, isn’t it?” said an amused voice next to her. Odette turned and saw a short woman in her thirties. She was a rather unremarkable-looking person, but she was wearing an astounding cocktail dress of ebony cloth and leather. Judging from the unorthodox cut and fit, it had to have been made specifically for her. Indeed, it seemed to have been sculpted around her. Tight curves swept up her body to sharp points that spread just beyond her shoulders and elbows. She looked as if she were wrapped in elegant black flames. The sleeves were connected to the dress at the middle of the rib cage, which made for an arresting silhouette, although it was not terribly practical—the woman had trouble lifting her glass to her lips.

  It was, in short, the dress to which Odette’s own gown was the ugly stepsister who had taken vows of chastity and poverty.

  Beyond the dress, though, there was something about the woman that set her apart despite her plainness. She had an air of command, but she also gave the odd impression that she did not quite belong, even among the Checquy. Then Odette recognized her and felt genuine fear—even more than she had with the vampire.

  Rook Myfanwy Thomas. My God.

  Rook Thomas was the reason they were all there that evening. One night, months earlier, Graaf van Suchtlen had presented himself in her office in the Rookery, having strolled easily past every security measure in the place. He introduced himself to the Rook, his habitual courtly manner unhampered by the fact that he was completely naked, and then made the astonishing proposal that their organizations should put aside their centuries of enmity and join together.

  Rather than responding as any other Checquy soldier would and doing her utmost to destroy the intruder, Thomas had offered him a cup of coffee and a bathrobe and listened to his proposal. Given the legendary hatred between the two organizations, it was an extraordinary reaction, but then, it was somewhat in keeping with Rook Thomas’s apparently unpredictable nature. Odette had pored over the Grafters’ dossiers on the woman and found herself utterly confused.

  The records described an almost pathologically shy woman who, despite her timidity, had somehow risen to a high rank. But Thomas had overcome her shyness, as well as her inculcated loathing of the Grafters, to become the driving force of this merger. She had argued strenuously for peace and faced down the protestations of the highest in the land. If not for her, the Checquy and the Grafters would, at that very moment, have been at war.

  From what Odette had read, Rook Thomas had traditionally been unwilling to use her powers, but then again, she had also recently single-handedly subdued not one but two biological weapons of mass destruction.

  Thomas’s unpredictability, however, was not the reason that Odette was afraid of her. Or at least, it was not the main reason. Alone among the Checquy, Rook Thomas possessed the supernatural ability to completely control other people’s bodies. With a touch, she could turn a person’s flesh and organs against him, bending them to her will. Odette was far too aware of her own organs to feel anything but revulsion at the idea. And the greater implications were even more frightening.

  All our resources, she thought, everything that sets us apart from normal people. Centuries of knowledge, weaponry, augmentations—they would all be rendered completely useless with one caress by this woman. For all she knew, the Thomas woman could make the Grafters’ implants tear themselves right out of their bodies.

  “I won’t ask you to shake hands,” said the Rook drily. Evidently, Odette had not concealed her horror very effectively. The other woman’s smile had gone from amused to wry, and she was not displaying any of her legendary shyness.

  “Myfanwy!” boomed Graaf van Suchtlen from behind Odette.

  “Ernst,” said Thomas with a little archness to her voice. To Odette’s astonishment, the Grafter lord leaned down to kiss the Rook’s hand. “Good evening, I’ve just been making the acquaintance of your great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter.”

  “Ah, yes, we are very proud of young Odette,” said the graaf, resting his hand heavily on Odette’s shoulder. “I expect great things of her.” Odette resisted the impulse to cringe.

  “I’m sorry that I couldn’t be at the airport to welcome you this morning,” said the Rook. “Bishop Attariwala felt that it would be more appropriate for a higher-ranking and more important member of the Court to greet you.”

  “Is that how he put it?” asked Graaf van Suchtlen, raising an eyebrow.

  “Pretty much,” said Thomas blithely. “Apparently there’s a long-standing awkwardness between the two of us.” What an odd way to phrase it, thought Odette. An older woman appeared at Thomas’s shoulder and spoke to her in low tones. The Rook made a face. “Please excuse me, Ernst, Miss Leliefeld. It seems that something absolutely horrible has happened, and it needs my attention.” She moved away, accepting a mobile phone from the older woman and putting it to her ear.

  “An intriguing woman,” mused Graaf van Suchtlen. Before Odette could think of a response, the Rook returned and spoke quickly to her assistant.

  “Any problems, Myfanwy?” the graaf inquired.

  “Not with the party,” said the Rook. “But word has just come to us through the London police that there’s been an incident. Multiple civilian fatalities. The local constabulary have secured the site, but they’ve found some very unusual elements. Someone called their boss, who called their boss, who called my office. I’ve just authorized a team to go there and examine it.”

  “Do you have to go?” asked the graaf.

  “It’s not obligatory,” said Thomas, “not at this level. But I think I will make an appearance. It turns out that the incident is just around the corner.” She hesitated. “Would the two of you like to come along?” Odette looked at her ancestor in surprise. “Your perspectives might be useful.”

  “It would give Odette a good opportunity to see the Checquy in action,” said van Suchtlen thoughtfully. “But would our leaving raise any eyebrows?”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” said the Rook. “You’ve greeted everyone, and I’ll inform my head of security if you inform yours.” The two leaders separated to find their respective und
erlings, leaving Odette standing alone. Despite herself, she found the prospect rather exciting. Rook Thomas’s invitation had an air of adventure about it. Not only would she be escaping the dire party, but they would be going out and actually doing something important.

  Unless, of course, this is some sort of ambush, a paranoid part of her brain suggested. They lead the head of the Grafters and the girl they think is his protégée away from the gathering, kill them, slaughter the rest of the party, and then have a celebratory drink. She firmly instructed that part of her brain to shut up, lifted a glass of orange juice from the tray of a passing waiter, and took a defiant swig. Seriously, you have got to calm down, she told herself.

  “Miss Leliefeld?” It was the older woman who had brought the phone to Thomas. “I’m Ingrid Woodhouse, Rook Thomas’s executive assistant.”

  “Hiya!” said Odette, still caught up in her determination to relax.

  “Yes, hello,” said the lady, mildly taken aback by her enthusiasm. “Um, the Rook advised me that you’d be coming to the site.”

  “Yes, apparently that’s what I’m doing,” said Odette.

  “Marvelous. Come with me, please.”

  As they approached the lift, the doors opened to reveal Rook Thomas and Graaf van Suchtlen. Also inside was Odette’s cousin Marie Lemaier, who was the head of security for the Grafter delegation, and a tall black man who Odette assumed was the Checquy chief of security. The two leaders were looking distinctly uncomfortable as their underlings engaged in some highly courteous but highly vigorous bickering.

  “Pawn Clovis, what guarantees can you provide regarding the safety of Graaf van Suchtlen and Odette at this site?” Marie asked as Odette and Ingrid got on the lift. Her hair was auburn, shot through with streaks of black—a sure sign that she was getting irritated.

  “None at all,” replied Pawn Clovis calmly. “Of course, there will be a full team of Checquy investigators, all of whom have combat training and many of whom possess special abilities. There will be a small internal security team present, and local police are providing external security. Plus, Rook Thomas and, I gather, Graaf van Suchtlen both possess significant abilities of their own. But there are still no guarantees. Something killed those sixteen people, Miss Lemaier, something mysterious. A manifestation site is not a safe place. But then, this is not a safe business that you are entering into.”