Page 55 of Blood and Bone

“Just to clarify…” Eoghan said. “Whoever you did this thing you don’t want to talk about with, was a willing partner?”

Champayne sighed deeply. “Yes…and to complicate things, I’m afraid the man who walked in on us was Victoria’s brother.”

“Wait,” Ari said, “your brother-in-law turned you in?”

“It pains me to say so, but yes.”

“Your accuser was your brother-in-law?” Eoghan asked, looking as surprised as Ari was.

“Yes, and unfortunately, it explains why my mate insisted I be prosecuted for the crime. Honestly, it shouldn’t have been such a big deal but because my accuser was Victoria’s brother, it all just got complicated.” Champayne sighed again. “My beloved Victoria is a very forgiving woman. I believe she only went ahead with the charade to save face with her family. I was a little upset by that but we’re both past it now. After all, we’ve been together for almost three centuries and have twelve progeny.”

“That’s…a lot, right?” Ari asked.

“We live long lives, Marshal Brown,” Champayne explained. “I admit, I hurt Victoria when I did what I did but the temptation was overwhelming. I couldn’t help myself. I spotted the man and followed him into the restroom where he consented to the act. My brother-in-law caught us when he came looking for me.”

“Wow, that must have been embarrassing,” Ari said. “I’m sorry it happened.” He was absolutely dying to know what Beauregard Champayne had been caught doing but figured he’d pressed the issue enough. Plainly, he wasn’t going to say what he’d done and was embarrassed, wanting to drop the subject.

“Thank you.”

“So, you see? I’m not the murderer or a killer as the warden claims,” Champayne said. “I’m a perfectly normal vampire with yearnings that have gotten me into water over my head. Please don’t tell my daughter. Peg doesn’t know anything other than the story about the unregistered donor, and I positively don’t want her future husband to know anything about it.”

“I see,” Ari said. “They think you’re in prison because of the unregistered donor crime.”

“Yes.”

“Your secret is safe with us,” Eoghan said. He pointed out the window at the hotel which had come into view. “We’re here.”

Champayne glanced out the window and let out a long sigh. Ari dragged his eyes away from the vampire in the backseat. He could feel the nervous energy radiating from Champayne as Eoghan parked the car at the back of the lot. They got out and Eoghan unlocked the handcuffs before letting the prisoner take off his coat. As soon as he’d done it, Eoghan refastened the cuffs and draped the coat over them so they could enter the hotel discreetly. Sure enough, the lobby was crowded. They headed for the ballroom where the reception, as well as the mating ceremony, would be held. Almost the moment they stepped through the double doors, Ari could feel the hair on the back of his neck rise as a hundred pairs of glowing, red eyes turned to look in their direction.

Chapter Fifteen

The mating ceremony was nice. Beauregard was so happy, in his element with his family and friends all around him. His mate, Victoria, turned out to be charming, a beautiful woman who possessed ethereal beauty, something not many three-hundred-year-old women could pull off easily. Beau’s daughter, Peg, was waiflike, with an almost Wednesday Adams quality. She had long, black tresses wound into an elaborate chignon on top of her head and threaded through with black and white pearls glowing blue and pink respectively.

Her goth-like makeup was overdone, Ari thought, reinforcing his Wednesday description of the vampire girl, but her dress was a pale, light blue silk, draped over her slight frame in multiple layers. Her neckline was framed by a low-cut décolletage, making her small breasts look like mouthwatering rose-hued fruit, tempting and ripe for plucking. She was beautiful but when she turned and flashed glowing, red eyes at Ari, he shuddered. He wondered whether he’d ever get over the chill he got whenever he spotted that glow.

Peg’s mate—Gilroy Conway—was a strapping, young vampire who weighed double what she did, with so much muscle layering his body, he looked like he spent all his time at the gym.

Ari counted two hundred guests in the room and assumed most, if not all, were vampires. For that matter, even the minister who conducted the mating ceremony and the waiters passing around champagne glasses filled with blood, possessed the same glowing, red eyes. In a roomwhere everyone danced and laughed and perused the buffet table with overt interest, he felt like a fish out of water. He wondered what vampires put on a buffet table and then hated himself for looking. It consisted of silver platters of blood-red canapes and champagne fountains flowing with blood. When he spotted people drinking blood from punchbowl cups as they stood beside a bowl filled with more blood, he felt somewhat nauseous. He had to remind himself that he and Eoghan were the only two warm-blooded creatures in the place.

They stood close to Champayne, ensuring that they stood out to everyone in the room. All the guests had been warned that I.S.R. marshals would be Champayne’s escorts for the evening, so Ari expected them to be on good behavior. He and Eoghan had armed themselves with loaded dart guns and vampire ammunition, hanging on their belts but they were mostly for show. He was sure they wouldn’t be any match to the speed of a vampire if one decided to attack.

Ari reminded himself that there was a superb variety of vintage human blood readily available, served warm, just the way the guests liked it. Everyone seemed reconciled to the fact that he and Eoghan were there with Champayne. Several people stopped by to talk to the vampire, congratulating him on his progeny’s mating and wishing him well. Champayne introduced them to each and every guest who approached, and Ari found them to be a polite bunch. Every last one of them looked down to the dart guns on their belts before walking away with uneasy looks on their faces but no one remarked on the weapons. Perhaps that explained the civility.

As the night wore on and the ceremony became the reception, more and more guests filled the ballroom until it was quite crowded. As the dance floor became fuller, Beauregard was pulled onto it over and over again. Ari noticed he danced not only with women but with men. Several of thevampires at the reception, paired up with same-sex partners, and Ari watched in fascination as several gay couples kissed at the end of a romantic ballad or instrumental.

This part of vampire culture surprised him at a bone-deep, visceral level, and it left him with feelings of both joyandhope. After all, these were ancient beings. Maybe that meant they’d either lived in cultures who didn’t care about how someone fitted on the rainbow or been instruments of changeinthose cultures. He knew that ancient Romans and Greeks hadn’t cared who a man slept with, so he was energized by the displays of affection. He noticed that no one started fights with the gay couples or even looked twice at them. Vampire culture seemed to have no inhibitions about their sexuality which just made him more curious to know what Champayne had done.

Nearing ten o’clock, with about an hour left of the reception, Ari noticed Eoghan bobbing and weaving his head, appearing to search the crowd. “What is it?” he asked, feeling mildly alarmed as he turned to look in the direction of the dance floor.

“Do you see Champayne?” Eoghan shouted over the loudspeakers.

“Yeah,umm…he’s right—” Ari looked out into the crowd where he’d seen Champayne dancing only a minute before.

“Where? Do you see him?” Eoghan shouted. He was visibly worried, something that never boded well. The last time he’d heard him this concerned was when they’d been creeping through the Sequoia Forest moments before finding Oberon and Titania’s offspring hanging half-eaten from wooden stakes.

“He was there,” Ari pointed, “a second ago.”

“Goddammit!” Eoghan shouted over the music. “Fan out, Ari. We need to find him.”

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