The inn was designed in a large, wide-mouthed, blunt-nosed V-shape, with the entrance and main public area in the blunted point of the V and the two V wings containing five suites each, on two stories. When he first saw the place, Alex had called it a “humongous, freaking big house.” He was right. With a stone façade and four massive, wood, unshaped timbers that rose from the entry-level floor to the top of the second-story domed ceiling, actual trunks all twisted and golden and gorgeous. The trunks were the kind of logs one might expect to see in a Hobbit home, but bigger, and had been blasted with corncob grit to polish them, making them shimmer softly.
Besides the five family bedrooms and five guest suites, there were twelve one- and two-bedroom cottages, with entrances on both the inn and the gorge/creek sides. Three of the cottages were finished and set up as vamp lairs; nine of the more outlying units were unfinished, barely dried in. The previous owners had big aspirations.
The inn’s central main rooms had been designed with weddings, tours, and other public events in mind and had originally consisted of a public tasting room, wine shop, gift shop, bakery, two half-finished kitchens, and summer café. In the last months, all that had been converted, giving us a chef’s kitchen with commercial fridges and freezer, and a baker’s kitchen with three commercial ovens, a real brick pizza oven, and commercial mixers. We had three dining spaces, multiple sitting areas, and a game room with space for a future pool table, all currently unfurnished.
The TV lounge and office space was located against the outer wall and walled off from the rest of the living areas. In it, Eli had installed an egress access in the floor, leading to a ladder and a wide tunnel that the previous owners had hoped one day would be a personal wine cellar and a doomsday bunker with its own outside entrance.
We entered the central part of the inn. The two-story, vaulted, tongue and groove, natural wood ceilings and marble floors meant the air was always just a little chilly in winter and the audio ambience was bright, sharp, and echoing. Even with the four polished golden timbers and the warm cream color of the two-story wallboard walls, even with the fans pushing warmer air down into the living space, even with the heated floors in some rooms, it wasn’t homey. Not yet. Not even with fires burning in the three fireplaces. It still looked like a public space for weddings. Bruiser had ordered furniture and rugs to turn it into a home, but they hadn’t arrived, nor had most of the furnishings beyond the bedroom furniture for the suites. The main area was open and empty, so we lived in the kitchens and the TV lounge/office, where we ended up now.
I placed the empty insulated shake cup in Bruiser’s hand and sat gingerly on the comfy recliner. Bruiser had purchased the chair just for me, and it had a push-button mechanism that laid me back and raised my feet. Bruiser covered me with a soft, fuzzy blanket and turned the chair’s warmer up. I sighed in relief. I was always cold these days. A game was on the big screen, as usual, muted, the score and team names on the bottom banner. I ignored it and gave my attention to Alex. Bruiser disappeared with my empty tumbler and returned to position a cup of ginger-honey green tea on the small table at my elbow.
“What do we have?” Bruiser asked. He took an oversized pillow off the sofa, dropped it beside my chair, and sat on it, resting one arm across my raised foot stand.
Eli told the house system—which Alex had named Merlin—to turn on the lights, and the hidden fixtures in the ceiling and along the walls came on. They threw dark gold highlights across Bruiser’s dark hair and caught lighter tones in his beard. In jeans and flannel shirts, he looked nothing like the primo to the Master of the City of New Orleans he had been when we first met. Eli, wearing jeans and layered T-shirts, took his position at the stone-faced fireplace, facing the room and all the entrances. It was the location that allowed him to see the foyer, out a front window and a back window, and into the kitchens and mudroom. He was armed, a double thigh rig and a shoulder holster, nine-mils in each. He was always armed, but the in-your-face abundance was a new addition. He was worried and I wasn’t sure why.
Alex spun in his office chair, facing us, and glanced at his brother. Eli nodded. They had been talking. Or hiding something. From the sick and dying me, too weak to deal with troubles. I glowered at them. Hurting, feeling the winter chill, I pulled the fuzzy blanket over my shoulders and watched the guys settle in. Inside me, Beast thought, Littermates. Mate. Strong den, safe against predators. Beast is . . . what Jane calls happy.
Yeah, I thought, surprised, especially in light of what I’d planned when I discovered I had cancer and had run away to die. Me too. Even with still being the Dark Queen, it hasn’t been bad. Not bad at all.
Other than the Dark Queen, I’d abdicated my titles in favor of Ed, my primo, who was now Master of the City of New Orleans and most of the southeast U.S., with loyal but independent masters of various cities owing him allegiance. He was also the titular emperor of Europe if he could take it and hold on to power. Or he had been before he was kidnapped. “Out with it,” I said, as my body settled into some semblance of comfort.
Alex said, “You abdicated the emperorship of the EuroVamps. We know that. But apparently no one in Europe knows that. If Ed ever got the papers, he never said anything.”
I had sent my abdication letter to Edmund and Sabina, the outclan priestess of the Mithrans. I hadn’t heard back from either of them. But . . . Sabina was old enough to take a decade to reply to correspondence. Ed was sneaky. Ed played the long game. What had Ed done? Maybe more important, what had he not done? “That little sneak,” I said, trying to sound calm and not mad enough to chew nails. Lying by tone. Before they could reply I added, “And what is Grégoire doing? Is he safe or is he in as much danger as Ed?”
“Grégoire is fighting duels and battles in France, challenging the Mithrans who are killing humans, and trying to hold his own lands,” Bruiser said. “He is scheduled to fight Titus’s former heir this week.” He turned his head and gave me a cheeky grin. “At each duel, he declares that he is fighting as the proxy of the emperor—Edmund—and for the Dark Queen, holding her up as some sort of King Arthur, and her reign as some sort of Camelot.”
“Oh . . . crap,” I said, incredulity and laughter lacing my words.
“He is gathering an army that he doesn’t intend to use, planning to gift it to you.” Bruiser’s smile faded and he touched my ankle through the blanket as if to reassure himself I was still here. “Brandon and Brian keep me in the loop.”
Brandon and Brian were Onorios, like Bruiser. They would talk. And no one was talking to me because what good was I? “Why not keep the land himself? Become the next emperor. I’d let him have it if Edmund . . .” If Ed dies, but I didn’t say that. “. . . doesn’t want it.”
“Grégoire once told Leo that ruling is tedious,” Bruiser said.
I breathed out a soft laugh. Yeah. That sounded like Blondie. The gorgeous diminutive fanghead would rather seduce his way through France and fight battles than rule in a might-makes-right bloodsucking world. And he was still grieving for Leo, so that meant he was geared for violence, not politics.