Kiss of Angels Page 12

  The room beyond was a boardroom, over-sized and lush: the party could have been held there without losing any of its ambiance. There were two men in it, two Old men, or however they named themselves when they met in human form. One was Kaimana Kaaiai, whose genial smile broadened as he saw the relief that swept Cole.

  The other was, from his coloring and clothing, a djinn. His hair had steel in it, grey slabs against black, and he wore a short gnarled beard, which the djinn Cole had seen previously did not. He exuded power the same way Eliseo Daisani had: naturally, charismatically, overwhelmingly. He rose when Cole and Cameron entered the room, and came forward to stop not more than an arm's length away. His eyes were such a pale brown as to seem gold, much lighter than the other djinn—or the selkies, for that matter—and long lashes shuttered those gold eyes as he bowed slightly in greeting. Cole, watching the djinn's lashes tangle together, wondered just how unwise it would be to describe them with the obvious word—feminine—aloud, and didn't risk finding out.

  The djinn straightened, studying both Cam and Cole a moment before he spoke. "I wish to make apology to you, and to thank you for your quick thoughts this evening. I regret the deaths of so many of my own, but they were rebellious fools who very nearly succeeded in setting us on an unstoppable path of warfare and bloodshed. They would have succeeded, had it not been for you, and I am therefore in your debt."

  Cole looked over his shoulder for Margrit, half expecting her to be holding a "PRANKED!" sign, but she shook her head very slightly: this was real, and the djinn was serious. Cameron, more gracious if no less surprised, squeaked, "You're welcome. Um, excuse me for being rude, but who are you?"

  The djinn exhaled, not as if insulted but as if shedding a lifetime's worth of weariness before answering. "I am Amar Beqi Rusel di Hefze al-Kaleek, and I have argued with my people for a very long time that the way to go forward in this world is with the hand of humanity in our own. I would like to offer that hand to you now, in hopes that we may put this incident and all others like it in our past."

  He did exactly as he said, offering both his hands to Cameron and Cole. Cam instantly moved to take it, then stopped the motion and looked at Cole, who twisted a faint smile at her. Even in the immediate aftermath of the fight below, even with all the unanswered questions, it was in her to assume the best of people and hope for a better future. He couldn't do that. He wasn't that good and he had too many questions, but there was something he could do, something that he hadn't had the option to do since the Old Races had first come into his life.

  Cole said, "I love you," to Cameron, took a deep breath, nodded at Amar al-Kaleek, and finally, for the first time since Alban had revealed himself as a gargoyle, chose.

  BETRAYALS

  The woman disturbs him. There is nothing overtly wrong about her, not to human eyes. She has a gift for stillness; well, some people do. But he sees more, a stillness from within that is uncomfortable to him, because mortals do not hold that still. Not while they live, at least, and she is fully alive. But he knows the stillnesses of the Old Races, and the woman does not have that, either. Not exactly. Not entirely.

  And then there is her hair. This is Japan: everyone has black hair, silky straight and smooth. Those who do not have altered it chemically, dyed it bright colors or forced waves and curls into it. Hers is black, but it has none of the undertone, none of the gloss that naturally black hair has. There are no hints of blue or red in it: it is flat, matte, dyed. Very few of even the elderly in Japan bother to dye their hair black again, as age is venerated, but this woman is also not old.

  Nor is she Asian, of course, but that somehow seems unworthy of comment: her features, with a slight downturn to her eyes, a straight but not narrow nose, full lips and skin that would probably brown under sun it never seems to have encountered, could be Asian, if one didn't look a second time, or if one simply chose not to think about it. In many monocultures, not thinking about it is both easy and forgivable; that which appears to be approximately like the whole, is. He is not Asian, either, but his disguise runs deeper and is far more difficult to see through. More difficult to obtain and retain, too, for that matter, but that's unimportant.

  She knows by now that he's watching her, and curiously, she is not distressed by it. Many women—many people—are; it is the hunter in him, ancient and more primal than humanity cares to remember. He is the thing they fled in their infancies, the thing they built fires in the night to ward away, the thing about which they still tell tales, all the while pretending not to believe. Most of them look away, move away, finally break and all but run, when he has been studying them as long as he has watched this woman. Even, perhaps especially, those who consider themselves strong, leaders, men of action and challenge, tend to find excuses to be elsewhere.

  This is part of why he is so very good at dominating board rooms, and how he has rebuilt an empire taken from him by others of his…kind, though even in his thoughts he uses that word with caution. His own kind are buried beneath human holy places, and there they must remain. The others, the selkies and djinn, the dragons and gargoyles, they are of the Old Races and therefore of his kind, but they are no more vampires than this strange still girl who sits a dozen feet away, and does not flinch as he examines her.

  What is equally extraordinary is that now that she knows he's there, she makes no move to encourage a meeting. Most people are not content to be studied without demanding some other kind of acknowledgment, but although she has glanced his way—her eyes are as dark a brown as he has ever seen—she returns to her reading without neither a come-hither smile, a cold shoulder or any sign of discomfort.

  It is precisely because of intriguing behavior like this that he has gotten into trouble in the past. If he were Janx—but no, and it has been many years since he has allowed himself to think that way, which means he is more unsettled than the woman is. In the end, he rises from his own seat, a small dip in an otherwise unadorned concrete slab, and approaches the woman where she sits in an identical hollow.

  She looks up, as expressionless as he has ever seen anyone. It is not curiosity on her well-formed features, nor is it displeasure. There is no fear, no distrust, no anticipation. She is only waiting, waiting to see what happens next.

  Her utter neutrality causes him to make a choice. He says, "Eliseo. Eliseo Daisani," and with those words reclaims a name, a man, that he has chosen not to be for quite some time.

  She is not surprised, although if she knows the name she should be: his face is not as it was when last he used it. So perhaps she does not know it, and assigns no importance to it. But no, that is almost certainly not true, not with what she says, not with the stunning simplicity of her response: "My name is Hajnal."

  #

  Memory hammered him, all the sides of a story gone untold. Four centuries past, in the year that London burned. More than the city had burned then. So too had need, desire, even love, all hot enough to leave marks that still ached hundreds of years later. Hajnal, whose family name was Obsidian, but who in the human fashion had taken her mate's last name, because the Germanic-sounding Korund raised fewer eyebrows than her own name. That, and it was only the most powerful of royal females at the time who might dominate their marriage with their own name instead of taking their husbands', but that was a detail of the future intruding on the past.

  She had been small for a gargoyle, and dark: obsidian indeed. Small and dark had meant of a height with modern women, golden skin tones, and black hair, rather than six feet tall and alabaster and white in coloring, as most of her kind were. She had been particularly striking beside Alban, who was monstrously tall even by gargoyle standards, and whose paleness was emphasized by her color. And Alban had been—was still—romantic, where Hajnal had a pragmatic streak as wide as the Thames. She had chased Janx away when a human woman needed space to breathe, and Janx, who could not be cowed, had gone, though he'd been hissing and spitting fire by the time he returned to the estate he owned and Daisani had taken up un
invited residence at.

  With that response, Daisani had been obliged to go and meet her, this Hajnal, this gargoyle who could order a dragon around without fear or consideration. And she had met him outside the small but stately church-like home she and Alban kept; had met him under the stars, as her kind were forever barred from daylight; had met him as though she expected him, and had said without introduction or remorse, "You're a fool. She's human and fragile, and you're going to destroy her."

  "I do not even know of whom you speak." He met her eyes precisely: she was no taller than he, but neither was she smaller. Obsidian was glass: it would fracture easily, if hit at the right angle. But there was nothing of fragility in Hajnal Korund, not that night nor any other for long years, until bullets fired in the rain brought her down.

  "You are a terrible liar," she said, and even today he was uncertain if she meant he lied badly, or if the lies he told were dreadful ones. The latter, he thought, had always thought, if only because most of the Old Races lied well. "Do you pretend to tell me you haven't gone to glimpse the woman Janx is so taken with?"

  A shudder ran down Eliseo's spine, rare emotional response. His voice thickened and his tongue swelled in his mouth: "She works in the slaughterfields. I went to look, aye, but it was unwise to stay."

  "Then you may be a trifle wiser than your companion, but neither of you is wise. Do her a kindness, Eliseo Daisani. Stay away from her. Keep Janx away from her as well. We are not good for them, and you know it."

  "They," Eliseo recalled saying, recalled saying it as clearly as if the words were only just now passing his lips, "they are not good for us, Hajnal Korund."

  A crack in her facade: she glanced over her shoulder, as if expecting Alban to be there. The motion said everything it needed to about the sentimentality of the two gargoyles; about youthful Alban Korund and his much older mate, about how she recognized the truth in Daisani's words, and about how she would protect Alban, and indeed the humans he became enamored of, from the dangers they represented to one another. "What," he said, surprising himself, "if it proves that we are the fragile ones instead? Will you be as fiercely protective then?"

  "Would you accept it?"

  "Of course not."

  Hajnal Korund's mouth twitched, as much humor as he was ever to see from her. Then she turned her hands up, a human gesture of helplessness that made him like her because it said she was lying, as badly as he had. She would protect him too, and Janx, if she could, because that was a gargoyle's nature. They would be lost without the gargoyles, all of them, because they and their steadfast ways were the bedrock of the fractured Old Races community. Daisani barked a soft hah on a breath, dismissing the pun as unworthy of explaining when Hajnal arched an eyebrow. "You and Alban must come to dinner soon, I think. There are not so many of us in London that a gathered few would garner attention."

  "You may come here," Hajnal said, "you and the dragonlord both. But I will not come to you, not while Sarah Hopkins is your pet. She may need refuge, and I will not compromise Alban or myself as a source where she can find it."

  #

  That, then. that is the essence of Hajnal to him: uncompromising, wise, perhaps wry beneath the stern visage. But also dead, dead for well over a century, and this girl who lays claim to the name is Asiatic, pale, and most important, sitting beneath an afternoon sky. A cloudy one, to be sure, but it is fully daytime, and gargoyles cannot be abroad in day. The girl is not Hajnal's daughter, nor Alban's, and there is no comprehensible way she can carry the stillness of the Old Races within her and bear that name.

  Eliseo Daisani, who has not been truly, fundamentally surprised in longer than he can remember, sits down heavily beside the girl who calls herself Hajnal, and eventually, as if a fool, says, "…who?"

  "My father's name is Biali."

  Inside a breath, the pieces fall into place. A jolt zings Eliseo's spine, making his posture more perfect than usual. "Isabel. The Mexican woman. Alban—Biali—"

  As if he has spoken coherently, the woman—Hajnal, though he cannot yet think of her that way easily—nods. "Yes. I believe I owe my life to you, for saving my mother's. Thank you."

  "Your mother." Eliseo remembers her, though he saw her only once, and nearly dead at that. She was small and dark like Hajnal. Darker than Hajnal, with African blood mixed with the Mexican Indian and European Spanish to make a singularly striking woman. That was whence this Hajnal's epicanthic folds came: not Asian stock, but American native. Biali had left his mark too, in the whiteness of her skin; Daisani could see it now, all the reports of her heritage written on her face. "Your mother gave you the sunlight."

  "A gift beyond measure."

  This girl has no evident humor in her: he has rarely seen such a solemn and unchanging face. But then, what little he knows of the gargoyle gestalt, of the vast overmind of memories that they share, it is possible that a half-blood chimera like Hajnal the younger dares not release her hold on sternness for fear of being overwhelmed by it. It is a mental discipline, navigating the gestalt, and there is a real possibility she has no idea what manner of thing it is that presses constantly at her mind. She speaks suddenly, a spark of hope breaking in the words: "You knew my father."

  "I know him."

  There: that change of tense is what she hoped for, and it changes the tension in her as well. Her shoulders become less like the stone that is part of her, and her jaw softens. Daisani, who is alive with curiosity, says, "You haven't met him, then. And your mother—"

  "Dead."

  Of course. He gave her a single sip of blood, a sip for health. For healing, to drive away the pain that had been visited on her, but it would have taken a second sip for Isabel to survive through as many years as have passed since that night. Twelve or thirteen decades now, and that is as long as any woman Eliseo has given the second sip to has lived. One is simply not enough. It takes two, to extend life. "But you know who I am," he says cautiously. "What we are. She told you that much before she died."

  "No." Only with that word, to which his ear is attuned to hear as an English one, does Eliseo realize they are speaking Spanish and have been all along. Quietly, as to not be overheard, but the conversation is not taking place in Japanese, which in this city offers them a measure of privacy beyond their lowered voices. Hajnal—it is hard to think of her that way. He wishes he had a human name to assign her, even a surname so that he might differentiate between the woman he knew and the one sitting beside him now. But he did not know Isabel's last name, and is strangely reluctant to assign Biali's daughter her father's clan name. So it is Hajnal, and he will have to become accustomed to it.

  Hajnal takes up the story after a moment to gather breath, perhaps to gather courage, though there is no uncertainty in her voice or eyes, which remain as stoic as any gargoyle might offer. "She knew my father had secrets, of course, but not their depth. Not until I was born at night, and became stone at dawn. Then she understood, at least, why he always left her before the sun rose. And you, of you she knew only the name, and the blood. You…are an easier guess than the stone. Eres un vampiro, no?"

  Eres. The familiar verb, not usted. That is part of why he didn't notice the language they spoke: she has no qualms about using the personal and intimate terms, when most people default to formality when they speak to him. For a moment Eliseo Daisani wishes he had known Biali's lover Isabel better, because it appears she was not only formidable enough to draw a gargoyle's eye, but also to instill an unswerving sense of self-worth in her half-breed daughter. "Si," he answers, "soy vampiro. Eres una gargola."

  "And the others? Because there are others," she says with certainty. "The way my father spoke of his people to my mother…there are others." This time it's a question, though the lift in the words is barely audible.

  "Dragons. Djinn. Selkie. No others that I know have survived. You're well over a century old, but you've never met any of us before?"

  "How would I know?"

  Daisani's eyebrows draw down. "You
knew me."

  "No. You knew me. And I knew your name, when you said it. You began this dance, Señor Daisani. Why?"

  He does not know the answer before he says it, and that is as rare as any of this, to a creature his age: "Because you're a thing that's not supposed to be."

  #

  And memory again, rushing through him more powerfully than the blood in his veins. This time, a girl whose mother's beauty only showed through in flashes. His stamp was stronger on her: the sallow tint to the skin, the black hair and the not-quite-handsome features tainted with rage. She had all but lost control of the gift—the other gift—that was a vampire's real power. It was true that no one saw a vampire's true face and survived to tell about it, but anyone looking on Ursula Hopkins might sense what they ought not see. It was the one thing vampires and djinn seemed to have in common: a form that was always human. But no; djinn turned to dust riding on the wind, and vampires turned to something nameless, vicious, always hungering and ready to feed. That other face stretched Ursula's in the moment she met her father; in the moment she met Eliseo Daisani, and learned what he had done to their people.

  Betrayal was not an expression intended to be featured on the faces of vampires. Expressions were not intended to be featured there, no more than a snake or a preying mantis might have expressions. But there had been betrayal in Ursula's eyes, visible even through the fire and smoke filling the room. She had made one move toward him, toward his bleeding, dying body. Then she had stopped, fury greater than familial bonds or a child's curiosity about her parent.

  And then she had been gone, gone as breathlessly fast as any vampire could move, and he had been left to die. No, never die, because vampires did not, but the recovery would have been unbearable, had it not been for the Negotiator. There was the source of all betrayal: a human woman, a lawyer, a player as fine as Eliseo had ever met, when nearly every player of note was of the Old Races. Margrit Knight had told him she would betray him, had betrayed him, and had then survived by offering her life for his.