Round the back of Carolina's mansion, Damian smoothly opened one lock and broke his picks on the second. Topher squeezed it until it opened. Beyond the door was an ornamental garden full of statues, which I didn't trust at all, not least because I could feel a magical energy coming from the garden. Damian threw a stick into the garden, one of the statues moved, and the stick exploded.
There had to be some way to either get across safely or turn it off. I used the Blackberry to ask Damian to throw a stick higher up. It did have a height range, so no barrier to me, and Topher seemed pretty sure he could run fast enough to dodge it, but that was no use to Fiona and Damian. I flew up higher to see if I could see a pattern in the garden's layout. I couldn't, but I did spot the marble control pillar on the roof. Of course, that's what the romantically entangled vampires were guarding.
Taking them both on by myself would likely have gone badly. Instead I caused a distraction, flying between them as they were about to kiss, so they were too busy worrying about almost getting a mouthful of feathers to notice Topher sprinting across the garden and climbing a drainpipe. He smashed their heads together, and while they were stunned, Topher stabbed one while I drove my silvered claws into the other's scalp. His flesh melted like butter under my claws, and then both of them turned to dust.
I stole their designer jeans, and rejoined the others. Topher smashed the pillar, and the hum faded. I gave the others the heads up, and once Damian had tested with another thrown stick, in we went.
Fiona disabled the alarm and soon we were in the kitchen. Everything here looked ancient, like nothing had been updated since the 80s, including the spice rack full of dusty jars of expired herbs. Appalling. The only exception was the jar of garlic powder, which was large, new, and had a fill line on it. Used for pranking other vampires, no doubt.
Fiona gave us a run down on vampire societal structure. Given the number of cars outside there could be as many as seven vampire lords here, and at least twelve fledgelings, probably a lot more. At least the mid level vamps would be asleep. There were also human guards to worry about, although Topher had hit up some horse owning acquaintance to get tranquilisers to deal with them.
We made our way quietly past a mostly empty larder and up the stairs into a ridiculously opulent dining room, fitted out like we were in the palace of Versailles. On the table were the remains of a meal. They'd actually turned blood into haute cuisine. I could see the remains of jellies and foams and actual flecks of gold leaf. Disgusting. I was almost impressed. Almost.
The next room was the kitchen full of the molecular gastronomy stuff needed to make a meal like that, where Damian thought we would find the secret entrance we were looking for. Topher went in first, disturbing a naked young woman who sounded an alarm, waking up two guards with machine guns, and grabbed a kitchen knife. So that could have gone better.
Topher knocked out one guard. I tried to disarm the other, but missed, and took a spray of bullets for my trouble which almost drove me into the path of the naked woman's knife. Fiona had her own problems with a fledgeling showing up to try to strangle her. She dealt with it, but at the cost of a cracked wheelchair axle.
Once Topher had finished throwing people out of the window, we got the alarm switched off, but a call came through a radio asking what was going on. Fiona dealt with it. I was still trying to deal with the amount of pain I was in after that fight. Or rather, deal with the fact that the pain was fading faster than it should have done. I had a cautious stretch, and I could feel things already starting to knit back together.
The pain was fading, but still present, so Fiona spent some time patching us both up. We still had to find the secret entrance. Fiona and Damian found the trapdoor under a kitchen island. I found the tile that opened it, and hopped up and down on it until I could get someone to come and step on it. The entrance opened, and a stench of gore rose up from the staircase. Everything was quiet.
The room at the bottom was a mess. Dead bodies everywhere. So much gore. It wasn't so much the innards that bothered me, especially in falcon shape. It was what was left of the outsides. What there wasn't, as Damian pointed out, was any vampires.
Topher opened one of the side doors. There was a man in there, old but fit looking, and asleep. Possibly the head of security. Definitely the kind of person who'd be trouble if he woke up. Topher went in to deliver a sedative but I guess horse tranquilisers are kind of bad for using on humans as he didn't react well, and then another fledgeling dropped from the ceiling. I dealt with the vampire with the increasingly familiar talons to the face approach, while Fiona made sure the man didn't die. I was worried for a moment. These people aren't monsters, just humans who made bad choices, and I know all about that.
While we were dealing with that, Damian had spotted that some of the bodies on the floor looked a bit more intact than most. I went in to investigate. Vampires aren't the easiest thing to identify through the Sight, especially when in their case it's more of a smell and I was already overwhelmed with the smell of death in there, but I did find eleven of them. Topher sprinted around the room applying silver zip ties. They started to scream, and we had to stop ignoring the pair of big double doors at the end of the room.
I didn't even bother counting the number of vampires in there. Too many. The one that mattered was Carolina, sitting on a white marble throne with two vampires sitting at her feet chained to the throne. The other thing that mattered was Celia, covered in lacerations and lying on a dais in the middle of the room. Grabbing her and running was out of the question. We wouldn't even make it to the dais. And we'd just walked into a nest of vampire lords. None of us were getting out of this alive.
Except Carolina hadn't actually called for our deaths. She was in full villain monologue mode, making a big show for the other lords about how they were going to take over the city now they controlled the Sibyl. And I realised that was what it was. A show. Because incredible as it seemed, she was actually scared of us. Killing us would have implications. I might not have wanted the job of Seneschal of the Steamwheel Court, but it wouldn't be good for vampire/fae relations to take me out. Killing Topher might well antagonise his father, and I have a feeling Fiona would make a very nasty ghost.
Anyway, I couldn't say any of that while in bird form, so I hopped over to the Blackberry and entered 🧛🐔👆 a couple of times and hoped the others got the message. Fiona did, and started taunting her, until we ended up with an agreement. We would fight, her against all of us.
It was a tough fight. She was fast and deadly, but we had the right gear. We took her down, and Topher threw her at the feet of one of the oldest looking vampire lords who looked like she'd been around since Viking times. That one demanded that we kill Carolina in exchange for our freedom. Topher looked hesitant. I would have done it, but Fiona had already fired her crossbow.
We got a bit more than anticipated. There was another young woman they'd picked up along with Celia, and both of them were handed over. I didn't recognise her, but Topher obviously did. He picked them both up and we got out of there.
It was a scary drive to A&E and I found myself wishing I'd not shifted back to human for the drive, but I was far too tired for another shift by then. We took both women in. Celia was in a bad way, and the other woman didn't look much better. I sat down with Topher in the waiting room. He looked even more stressed than I was, which wasn't easy. There was some reassurance to having him there though, and I hoped he felt the same. Fiona was no help, off calling wheelchair repair companies.
Finally the doctor came out. Both of them had lost a lot of blood. Celia was still unconscious. But Genevieve Blogg-Herald was awake and wanted to see her brother. That explained a few things, while raising a lot more questions, like what she'd been doing in the car with Celia in the first place. But there was nothing else I could do at the hospital and I was exhausted. Fiona had called for a wheelchair taxi, so together we went back to the pub.
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