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"Come," I called, careful not to take my hand away from the small of her back.
Dennis Smirl walked into my field of view. "What are you doing?" the Chicago
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shapeshifter asked, looking first at me lying on the bed and then at Bethany
sitting primly on the side, fully clothed and facing away from me.
"Tipping the waitress."
He circled around where he could see her vacant, empty stare. He took in the
perspiration that misted up from the white flame that burned beneath her skin,
the tremors, the clenching and unclenching of her hands, and then listened to
the soft gasps and quiet moans that punctuated the paragraphs of silence.
"What is she seeing?"
I shrugged, careful again not to break physical contact. "I'm not a mind
reader, yet. I can make suggestions. Force them, if necessary, through mental
domination. And my psionic influence is greater if there's a blood-bond, even
if it's only a one-way sharing. I'm not really privy to Bethany's fantasy
life. I
just probed a little to find her pleasure centers and she seemed happy to have
me stimulate them."
He grinned. "Probed, huh?"
"Talking above the eyebrows, Dennis. What are you doing here?"
"Do you mean here in New York or here in your bedroom?"
"Both, actually. Though it looks like you're attempting psy-
coitus interruptus at the moment."
"Well," he said, pulling up a chair, "as you may have heard, a new Doman is
being elevated to the throne of the New York demesne and all the other
enclaves are sending representatives to the ceremony "
"Or bloody coup."
He nodded as he sat. "Obviously, whoever sits on the throne when the dust
settles will be a power to reckon with. So, there're going to be a number of
ambassadors lining up to reckon, negotiate, and curry favor. I'm just
presuming on our friendship to push my way to the front of the line."
I nodded. "And?"
"And," he reached inside his suit coat and pulled out a thick envelope, "my
Doman sends this with his
compliments. He hopes you will find the information useful and will remember
Chicago favorably in any future business dealings."
"What is it?"
"Intel on your enemies."
I broke contact as I reached for the package. Bethany fell back across my lap
with a gasp as I took the envelope and opened it. There were thirty or forty
pages, typewritten, all on very thin, slick-feeling sheets.
"Flash paper," Smirl said as Bethany heaved and thrashed a bit. "A match, a
candle flame and the evidence is all gone." He snapped his fingers. "Just like
that!"
Bethany sat up, startled at her emergence from the interior world to the
exterior.
"Just in case I don't come out on top," I observed.
"Might be safer for you if your enemies don't find it in your possession."
"Yeah, that's Chicago, the city of altruism."
"I wouldn't be comparing urban reputations if I were you."
"Where am I?" Bethany gasped.
"New York, New York," I said, "it's a hell of a town."
Chapter Ten
I read over the material and tucked it away before Kurt returned for my
briefing. If I could trust the intel and there were at least a half-dozen
reasons why I shouldn't my best hope lay in playing the various families
against one another. The pages contained psychological profiles of both known
and suspected leaders as well as lists of closeted skeletons, literal as well
as figurative. It was a blackmailer's dream.
This wasn't what I signed up for, however.
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I wasn't risking my neck to be monster-in-chief like Vlad Dracula or Elizabeth
Báthory. Maybe it was a fool's pipe dream but, if I had to rule through terror
and bloodshed, I might as well turn the reins over to the rest of the fiends.
Unfortunately, idealistic missions to change the system all too often end with
the system changing the idealist. What shall it profit a man that he gain the
whole underworld but lose his own soul?
But then, I hardly thought of myself as an idealist any more.
Kurt, ignorant of my Chicago cheat-sheet, provided much of the same background
material, drawing most of the same conclusions in terms of viable strategies:
undermine the strong, elevate the weak, divide and conquer. And the iron glove
for my hand of power would be the Szekely Clan who had historically served as
the demesne enforcers and was presumably loyal to me.
Through Kurt.
Who was most concerned with my positions on the issues. He kept pressing me
for details on what I
would tell the various clans and ambassadors when tonight's meet and greet
began.
He was not alone in his concerns. By signing on as the new ringmaster for this
circus of the damned, I
was gambling that mostly human me was still the best chance for the rest of
humanity. Better, anyway, than something whose blood had cooled to below room
temperature. But mostly human me wasn't as human as I'd been a few months ago.
And getting less human as time went on. How much longer would I
remain a preferable choice to the other monsters?
What would happen when my blood cooled sufficiently?
"You understand," Kurt was saying, "that you simply can't order an entire
species to voluntarily starve itself to death."
"There are blood banks."
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