Author: Kalayna Price

Turning, she never broke the gently coiling dance. The tattoo ended with the snake’s fangs piercing her bare breast.

She beckoned the last dancer, and the girl hurried over with an ornate wooden box. Akane threw open the lid and removed a large snakeskin—the largest snakeskin I’d ever seen. I shivered. Wouldn’t want to meet the snake that shed that. It could swallow a cougar whole.

Akane tossed the tail of the skin over her shoulder. Then she pressed the head of the snakeskin to the tattooed snake head. When she pulled the skin away, the tattoo vanished.

The snakeskin expanded as she lifted it over her head like a hood. As she pulled the two sides to meet in the front, the skin knit together seamlessly, and suddenly not a woman in snakeskin but a five foot snake stood on its tail in front of us.

Then the snake unbunched, flowing forward to triple its length and half its width.

As the enormous snake coiled itself in the center of the room, the skin along my spine tingled. If I’d been in cat form at that moment, all my hair would have stood on end.

“She’s magnificent, is she not?” the Collector asked, the stunned silence filling the room.

Tatius said nothing, and I wrinkled my nose. The snake smelled of reptilian musk, a chilly serpent smell that assaulted my senses. The way her head darted, her tongue tasting the air as she swung to face me, I had the feeling she didn’t like my scent any better.

“Your collection is world-renowned. Your newest acquisition is… unique,” Tatius finally said, a note of boredom clear in his voice.

Boredom he couldn’t have possibly felt.

I’d never seen anything like her. Is she from Firth? I’d never heard of shifters who stored their skin. It was different.

Strange. She slid closer, and I reeled back, plastering myself against Tatius’s chest.

“Your companion has quite a unique background herself, Puppet Master,” the Collector said, as the snake’s head swayed a few feet in front of me. “I wonder if I could convince you to part with her. She would make a lovely complement to my collection. I would compensate you generously.”

My heart stuttered to a stop, my whole body tensing. I shot a desperate glance at Nathanial. His gaze crawled to mine, and he shook his head, just a small movement, but it lacked his normal confidence, and I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me or Tatius.

Tatius wouldn’t… Honestly, I had no idea what Tatius would and wouldn’t do.

“I’m quite fond of my companion. I think I’ll keep her.”

Tatius announced, and the breath I’d been holding tumbled out.

My muscles all but melted in the rush of relief that washed through my body, and there was no holding back the smile I felt slide over my face. Nathanial’s body also relaxed, releasing tension I wouldn’t have believed was there if I hadn’t watched it dissipate.

Dragging my gaze back toward the Collector, I forced my face to what I hoped was blank. My eyes tripped over Elizabeth. She wore a small, I-know-a-secret smile again. She delicately pushed off the ground and sauntered to the Collector’s side. She curtseyed, then, at the Collector’s nod, leaned in and whispered something in a lyrical language I couldn’t follow.

By the time she finished, the Collector was also smiling.

Her eyes sparkled as she glanced at me. Then they went black.

The room slipped away in darkness—the darkness I’d seen in her eyes. What—? I tried to look around, but there was nothing, no one, just blackness. The void? But it wasn’t. The void was oppressive in its vast nothingness. This, this was darkness filled with a presence. The presence so close, so all encompassing, that I felt like I was suffocating. Vamp powers. It had to be.

“Return to your true master, child,” a voice in the darkness commanded.

The words seeped under my skin. Urged me to move. To go. The darkness pulled back, revealing ghost-like silhouettes around me. Nathanial stood out more clearly than the other gray shapes. I had to go to him. I needed to.

Springing to my feet, I reached for him, but I couldn’t move. Something held me back, held me still. I frowned. I had to move. Had to go. I glanced back. A gray ghost of Tatius clung to my arm. Gray light glowed in the center of his face, growing lighter, brighter until green burst through the obscuring fog. His eyes.

The light he generated reached for my flesh and his control slipped over my body. I couldn’t move, but I still wanted to.

The world remained gray except Tatius’s eyes and glimpses of Nathanial.

“Do you think you can hold her? Can fight me?” the voice in the darkness asked, and the fog grew thicker, the suffocating presence heavier.

The fog billowed around Tatius. The brilliant green light faded. My body became mine again. I tugged my arm from Tatius’s grasp and ran for Nathanial. His ghost accepted me with open arms, pulling me against his chest.

Color poured over the world in a dizzying kaleidoscope. I blinked. Nathanial’s familiar scent surrounded me.

Oh crap. The Collector had vamped out, had done something to me. It wasn’t my fault. But would that matter to Tatius? I pushed against Nathanial until he released me enough I could move. Then I twisted so I could face the room.

“As I suspected,” the Collector said, her eyes brown again.

Shaking her head, she stood and walked toward me. I cringed from her hand as she reached for my face, but I had nowhere to go with Nathanial’s body behind me. She touched my cheek only briefly with her cool fingertips before turning to face Tatius. “Dear boy, you who have stolen so many companions but never sired one of your own, you could not possibly understand what a master goes through when their companion is taken from them.” She gave him a sad smile, and his face darkened.

“I—” Tatius started.

“Silence,” she snapped, and turned her back on him.

She gave him her back? Trust or… dismissal? Definitely dismissal. She’d just declared Tatius not a threat. Over her shoulder, I saw him bristle. His anger wrapped around him, and the candlelight flickered, each tiny flame shivering in the rising tension.

The Collector didn’t seem to notice.

“Hermit,” she said, “I have a proposition for you. Come to my city, bring your companion, and I promise no one will take her away from you.”

I swallowed and glanced at Nathanial. His face was carefully empty as his gaze traveled from me to Tatius then back to me again. The Collector watched him with a growing smile.

“You need not decide on the spot, Hermit. But soon, very soon.” She gestured to the Traveler, and he and Elizabeth hurried to her side.

Tatius strolled across the room, his stance casual, and yet the fluidity of his movements spoke of a predator prepared to pounce. He stepped between the Collector and me, knocking Nathanial’s hand from my waist as almost an afterthought.

“How dare you come into my city and cause such disruption.” He crossed his arms over his chest, and though he loomed over the Collector, she managed to stare down her nose at him. He stepped forward, into her space. “You’ve made allegations, insulted my hospitality, and now you are trying to fracture my council? I want you out of my city.”

She laughed, a mirthless sound. “You don’t have the power to back up that command if I choose to stay. You couldn’t even hold onto an infant vampire you’d already begun to bind.”

Nathanial stepped around me, blocking me from the rest of the room as the other council members surged to their feet, responding to the Collector’s blatant threat. The vampires lining the walls on both sides of the room straightened. Neck ties were loosened. Knuckles were cracked. The possibility of violence saturated the air. Filled it until I was afraid any movement might ignite bloodshed.

Someone yelled, and every gaze in the room locked on the hall’s door as it swung open. The beefy enforcer the Collector had brought with her the night before stormed into the room.

He carried a box with him, innocuous enough in appearance, but the scent of old blood, of death, reached me across the room. My fingers dug into the sides of Nathanial’s tux, and his hands moved to cover mine.

“Something dead,” I whispered, as quietly as possible, and heads swiveled my direction.

The enforcer knelt before the Collector, his head bowed over the box. “Forgive the interruption, Mistress. This was just delivered.” He opened the box and held it out for her inspection.

Her eyes rounded like the dots on exclamation points, and for once, I didn’t think her display of emotion was measured or feigned. Her fingers shook as she reached into the box.

Her hand emerged with her fingers twisted in short brown tuffs of hair attached to the death-slackened head of a stranger. His jaw hung open, revealing two gaps in his top gums. Gaps where his fangs had been removed.

“What is the meaning of this, Puppet Master?” The Collector’s voice trembled slightly, but I couldn’t tell if it was shock or anger. Probably both.

Tatius glanced around his court, then his gaze landed on Nuri. She shook her head and he turned back to the Collector.

“I’m at a loss.”

“At a loss? At a loss?“ Her voice lifted from her regular tenor. “First one of my collection is murdered and now one of my enforcers? Are you behind this? I believe you are starting a war!”

Nathanial’s hands, still cupping mine, had turned so stiff he might have been made from stone. Tatius leaned back, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops and striking a casual pose that was so at odds with the fine tux he wore that it almost looked blasphemous. He was posing, I felt it in my bones. I barely knew him, and if it was obvious to me, it must have been clear to everyone. He was stalling, trying to remain in control of the situation—at least in appearance.

“My people were thoroughly questioned. No one knew anything about your albino’s death. I would gamble that no one will have knowledge of your enforcer’s murder either.” He cocked his head to the side. “Are you cleaning out your own ranks? Doing it in my territory so you can move against me and my city and justify your actions as retribution?”