Oberon, do you still smell dead people?

"No, it’s gone now."

According to what I saw in the magical spectrum, everyone in the bar was human except for Leif. Once we were both satisfied, he approached us.

Granuaile had never met Leif—he was nocturnal, after all, and she tended to stay in her condo at night—so she had no way of knowing if he looked the same or not. But as he grew closer, I had to school my features not to reveal any of the horror I felt. Leif hadn’t recovered fully after all.

Chapter 17

I could still recognize him easily—even from a distance in dim light—but up close his complexion had the consistency of a Play-Doh sculpture, lumpy and clumsily shaped with chubby fingers. His hair, once full and shining with undead lustre, lay lank and greasy against his head. Patches were missing; I’d salvaged only a few hairs in Asgard, so it was remarkable that it had even grown back in this much, but the effect was to make him look diseased.

“I know I have looked better, Atticus,” he said, extending his hand to shake, “but I have also looked much worse. And I am still healing, thanks to you.” I wasn’t sure he should be thanking me. Though I’d done my best to bind his head back together after Thor pulverized it into chunks of bone and brain, one could not look at him now without feeling seriously disturbed. The symmetry was gone. The shadows were wrong. One eye sat higher than the other—though it was a miracle he had eyes at all.

Taking his hand, I could not help but notice that his skin there was tight and smooth, in sharp contrast to his face.

“Leif, this is my apprentice, Granuaile.”

He turned his unsettling gaze to her and nodded once. “It is my pleasure.”

Granuaile bobbed her head in return, lips tightly pressed together. Perhaps she did not trust herself not to vomit; Leif’s head was more disturbing than anything we’d eaten at the Double Dog Dare Café.

“Please, sit,” I said. He took a seat opposite me, and the waitress appeared to drop off our drinks and take his order. She flinched when she saw his face, glanced guiltily down at her order pad, and flinched again when he ordered only water.

“So you will continue to improve?” I asked.

“Yes. The hair is coming in. The bones are still shifting around a bit.”

“How’s your memory?”

“There are gaps,” he admitted. “Hal told me we were successful but that Gunnar did not make it.”

My jaw dropped. “You don’t remember killing Thor?”

He shook his head sadly. “I wish I did. But it gives me great pleasure to know that he is dead and that I was the instrument of his doom.”

“What’s the last thing you recall?”

“The frost giants stomping on Heimdall. Did they make it out?”

I shrugged. “They might have. Last I saw, they were chasing Freyja. So you’re missing most of the battle.”

“Yes. Can you fill me in?”

“Certainly.” I spent some time rehashing our trip to Asgard—who died, who survived, and what happened afterward. Leif smiled when I recounted his face-off with Thor. His teeth weren’t straight.

“So what now, Atticus?”

“What do you mean, what now? We move on. That’s what I’m doing.”

“It is not that easy. My situation is a bit dangerous.”

“You mean the other vampires? I’m sure you’ll take care of it soon enough. Give yourself a bit of time. You’re not a hundred percent yet.”

Leif sighed, intensely dissatisfied—whatever he wanted me to understand, I wasn’t getting it. He cocked his head suddenly to the right, as if startled by a thought. “Did I tell you once that I was the shit? Or am I imagining that?”

“You said that once, yes,” I said, smiling.

“Well, I am no longer the shit, Atticus.” He twirled a finger at his face to emphasize the point. “I am excessively weakened, and I do not know when or even if I will regain my former strength.”

“So these other vampires are out to destroy you?”

“Some are. Others are working for Zdenik.”

“Zdenik? Your creator?”

Leif nodded.

I picked up my pint for a contemplative sip. “He’s in Prague, right?”

“No. He’s in Phoenix.”

That almost caused me to inhale some Smithwick’s into my lungs. I coughed a bit and put down the pint. “Um … why?”

“On our journey to Asgard, you’ll recall, I went to visit him in Prague while you and Gunnar remained in the forest near Osinalice?”

“Yes. You said you were paying your respects.”

“I also arranged for him to take over my territory in the event of my death or severe injury.”

“Leif, that sounds like an extraordinarily bad idea.”

“It seemed like a good one at the time. But now he’s bought Copenhaver Castle on Camelback Mountain. You know it?”

“Hard to live in the valley without hearing about it. I heard it has a hot tub with room for twenty people. Bow chicka big orgy, eh?”

“Yes, but it also has a dungeon, which I believe was more attractive to him. He is renovating and fortifying the place. It is not the behavior of a vampire who is planning to return to his territory.”

He said this in a way that implied I should be concerned. I was anxious to demonstrate that I wasn’t, so I shrugged. “Well, you have only yourself to blame. You arranged for the takeover.”

“The terms of the arrangement stated that he would return to Prague once I was fully recovered. Right now he is making the very credible claim that I am not and it would be irresponsible for him to abandon this territory to an all-out war. He argues that he and his lieutenants are doing me a favor by defending the territory from would-be usurpers. Yet he is bringing in more lieutenants than he truly requires. He has four of them now spread out through the state, and I am nominally in charge of the east valley while he takes care of the west.”

“Are they older and stronger than you?”

“Not older,” he scoffed. “They are all less than a half century old. I am not sure whether I can match them in strength or not, considering my condition. But they are all spending large sums of money on permanent residences. I fear that when I am fully recovered, I will face a flat-out refusal to leave.”

“Fine, Leif. That’s when you throw down and kick his ass.”

He regarded me silently and drummed his fingers a few times on the table before saying, “You are being obtuse. I cannot kill my creator.”

Granuaile frowned and broke in. “Pardon me for asking, but why not?”

Leif shifted his uneven eyes to study her. “It is a form of control vampires never relinquish over those to whom they grant undeath. He can command me to do most anything, and I must obey. It is similar to when I charm a human.”

“Wow,” I said. “I honestly didn’t know that, Leif. Never cared much about the social lives of vampires. The situation is regrettable, but I guess you need to find a new territory. Good luck with that.”

Leif’s eyes returned to me. “I was rather hoping for more than your good wishes, Atticus.”

“What more do you want?” I smirked at him and gestured at the untouched glass the waitress had dropped off in the midst of our conversation. “Tell you what, I’ll buy you that glass of water.”

Leif did not appreciate my teasing. He said in a stone-cold voice, “I want your help in removing Zdenik from my territory.”

My easy grin disappeared. “No way. That’s not rational, Leif. There’s nothing in it for me, and as far as I can see, there’s nothing in it for you either. Don’t you remember that talk we had in Siberia? You told me you came to Arizona to wait for me, all so that you could befriend me and secure my aid in your vendetta against Thor. Well, you’ve done that now: You’ve befriended me, Thor is dead, you’ve got your revenge, and there’s no need to stay here anymore. You’re still a badass, or you will be again very soon. You can take over any other territory in the states you wish, no sweat, and let Zdenik have this place. Hell, I bet you can take over a small country. Costa Rica is beautiful, why don’t you go there?”

“You don’t understand.”

“And I’m fine with that, Leif! Perhaps you don’t understand that I don’t owe you anything. If anything, you owe me. Not only did I discharge my debt to you, I put your head back together and hauled you out of Asgard. You wouldn’t be here talking to me now if I hadn’t done that.”

“I am both aware and grateful. Please allow me to explain.”

“It would save time if I just told you ‘no’ now and took the explanation for granted.”

Leif leaned forward and jabbed a finger at me, his lip curling in a Billy Idol snarl. “This state can support sixty-five vampires, under the Accords of Rome.” Ah, what a delicious slip he made right there. This is the benefit of getting people annoyed with you: They say things they wouldn’t normally say. I’d never been able to get Leif to admit before that vampires controlled their population, but now he’d gone and done it—and the ratio, based on that number in relation to Arizona’s population, was one vampire per one hundred thousand people. It also told me Rome was the capital of the vampire world, as I always suspected.

Leif continued, “But I have been the only vampire here for centuries. This is practically virgin hunting ground. There are flavors and nuances of blood here that no one has sampled save me. These people … they taste of the sun. That makes the territory incredibly valuable on its own, Atticus. But add to that the prestige of taking it from me, and it is even better. Plus that group of Kabbalists called the Hammers of God have managed to stake a few of us, so that increases the challenge, and when you add in the news that the world’s last Druid was rumored to live here, this territory is currently the most valuable on the planet. The Old World vampires are taking notice.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should. Whoever winds up controlling Arizona will have plenty of cachet, but in these circumstances you are almost guaranteed to get the most ruthless, evil sort of vampire in charge—unless you help me.”

“No, Leif.”

He turned up his intensity. “Zdenik enslaves people and makes new vampires who commit every possible atrocity in his name. I neither enslave nor create new vampires. There is a definite difference between having me or someone like Zdenik in charge. And Zdenik is not the worst of them.”

“Look, as far as I’m concerned, there isn’t a vampire in the world who’s worse than an oil executive, and I don’t go around assassinating them either.” Peripherally, I noticed that this earned me a sharp glance from Granuaile. “I’m through, Leif. I can’t stick my neck out again. I just went to a lot of trouble to disappear, and my advice is that you should do the same.”

So intent were we on our conversation that we did not pay attention to our surroundings as we should have. That allowed the vampire I’d spotted earlier in the Double Dog Dare Café to walk up behind Leif without being noticed until she spoke. She wasn’t wearing the courtesy fashion coat anymore, but she still had on the American Eagle T-shirt. Her college-boy snack was absent. Her voice was thick and liquid with a Bohemian accent.

“This man can assassinate vampires, Leif? No wonder his blood smells unusual. Who is he?”

I would let Leif worry about her. I was worried about Oberon. Why hadn’t he warned me that she had entered the restaurant?

Oberon? I got no answer. Oberon?

Chapter 18

“Ah.” Leif looked embarrassed. “Natalia, this is, ah, a friend of mine.”

“I assumed as much. Who is he?”

Leif was uncertain how to introduce me. He knew he couldn’t use Atticus, but Hal hadn’t told him our new identities. I didn’t want this vampire to know them either, so I provided a name off the top of my head, gambling that this foreign vampire would be unfamiliar with heavy-metal drummers. “Lars Ulrich,” I said, nodding at her. “Nice to meet you, Natalia.”

“Do not speak unless you are spoken to,” she snapped, her eyes boring into mine. She was trying to charm me, but that wasn’t going to work.

“Awful bossy, aren’t you?” I said, a small smile on my face. She blanched. “More than a little rude, in fact. Still, it’s no reason for me to forget my manners. Would you like to join us?” I gestured to a small empty space next to Leif.

She eyed me suspiciously. “I prefer standing.” Leaning toward Leif, she asked him, “Who is this Lars Ulrich who can resist my charms?”

My mind raced through possible scenarios. There was no way that we could talk our way out of this. Now that she’d identified me as someone who could kill vampires, my entire future was jeopardized. She would investigate, eventually discover the truth, and all my efforts to fake my death would be for naught. I had to assume, based on Leif’s statements, her accent, and her behavior, that she was one of Zdenik’s lieutenants. She couldn’t leave alive. Or undead. Whatever. Once she was out of my sight, all it would take was one phone call, and I couldn’t guarantee that I’d catch up to her before she could make it.

“That’s just as well,” I said, scooching over a bit so that I could stand. “I feel like getting some air anyway. Kinda stuffy in here. Shall we talk outside?”

“Here is fine,” she said, shifting her position so that the seated Leif was between us, “or it would be if Mr. Helgarson would answer my questions.”