She never did kill him that I saw. His head was intact and screaming when she ordered the pieces packed into baskets to be carted off to the Senate. I never saw him afterwards, and nobody present that day, to my knowledge, ever again challenged Mei Ling.

"Why did the Consul bring in a ringer? I'd think she or Mei Ling could deal with a simple challenge."

"The Consul's powerful, but she ain't a duelist. And Mei Ling don't have Rasputin's experience. He was already old when he tried to take over in Russia; rumor is that he's never been defeated in a fight, and that he don't much care how he wins. No one saw the fights with the dead senators, but the first two to be attacked are still alive—so to speak. And Marlowe stayed conscious long enough after they found him to say that Rasputin somehow turned three of his own vamps against him, and one of them had been with him over two hundred years."

A few scattered puzzle pieces started to come together. I filled Billy Joe in on my most recent escape, and he looked thoughtful. "Yeah, that would make sense. I don't know how the Senate guards are chosen, but it's almost sure to be from the stable of one of the members, since who'd ever think any of them would turn?"

"But why would Rasputin want me dead?" I shivered, and it wasn't from cold. I was used to the idea that Tony wanted to kill me, but there were suddenly a whole bunch of newcomers trying to jump on the bandwagon. And any one of them would be enough to give a sane person a serious case of paranoia.

"Beats me." Billy Joe looked way too cheerful and I glared at him. He enjoys recounting a good fight almost as much as being in one, but I wasn't his entertainment. He hurried on. "But you haven't heard the best yet. Marlowe took out a couple of his attackers before passing out, and the bodies were left behind when his reserves showed up. But nobody can ID the dead vamps. It's like they came outta nowhere."

"That's impossible."

I didn't doubt the part about Chris Marlowe being tough to kill. Before he crossed over, he'd been the bad boy of Elizabethan England and had been in a few hundred bar fights in between writing some of the best plays of the era. The only ones anybody thought rivaled them were by a guy named Shakespeare, who conveniently showed up a few years after Marlowe transitioned and had a real similar writing style. Eventually, when the two-bit actor he'd set up as a front died, Marlowe turned to his other hobby for kicks. He'd done some spying for the queen's government in life, and he added to his bag of tricks afterwards. He was now the Senate's chief of intelligence, using his family of vamps as spies on the supernatural community in general and the other senates in particular. He helped ensure the peace by taking out anybody likely to disturb it, which might explain why Tony had been more worried about Marlowe than about Mei Ling. The only time I'd ever seen him, when he dropped in to talk to Mircea one night during his visit, I'd thought he looked rather nice with his laughing dark eyes, messy curls and a goatee he kept getting in the wine. But, of course, I hadn't been planning to take out the Consul. If I had, I might have hit him first, too.

The part of Billy Joe's story I found hard to credit was the two unidentified vamps. That was literally impossible. All vampires are under the control of a master, either the one who made them or the one who bought them from their maker or won them in a duel. The only way not to have a master is to reach first-level master power yourself. Anything else, including killing off your own master, won't do any good; someone else will simply bind you to them. Since there are fewer than one hundred first-degree masters in the world, and they mostly hold seats on one of the six vamp senates, this makes for a nice hierarchal structure and keeps everyone organized. Most masters give their more powerful followers some freedom, although a certain amount of their revenues are sent as yearly "presents," and any servants they make are subject to their masters' whims. The masters also check on them from time to time, like Mircea with Tony, because they are always responsible for them. If Tony had ordered an attack on me after he knew I was under Senate protection, it would be Mircea who would be expected to deal with him.

It's a fairly uncomplicated system, at least for a government, because there aren't that many vampires powerful enough to have stables of followers. Unlike Hollywood seems to believe, not every vamp can make new ones. I remember watching an old Dracula movie once with Alphonse and having him laugh himself sick at the sight of a vamp only a few days out of the grave supposedly raising another one. He'd been impossible for weeks afterwards, mercilessly teasing all the weaker vamps in court about the three-day-old baby that was more powerful than them. But for all who do reach master level and create new vamps, it is a requirement that they record them with their respective Senate. As a result, there simply aren't any unknown vampires running around.

"Were they babies?" It was the only thing I could think of, although that didn't make sense, either. What good would a couple of newly made, and therefore weak, vamps do against any Senate member, much less Marlowe? It would be like sending children off to fight an armored tank. And what master would risk his head and heart by failing to report any new vamps he'd made? All the senates were strict on the rules, since anything else raised the specter of a master secretly assembling an army, and brought back memories of the bad old days when there had been almost constant war. As it was, the number of vamps anyone could have under his or her control at one time was strictly regulated to maintain a balance of power.

"Nope. It's kinda hard to tell with only the bodies to work with, but based on how much damage they did, the rumor is that they were masters." At my expression, he put up placating hands. "Hey, you asked me what I heard, and I'm tellin' ya."

"Where'd you get the info?"

"A couple of vamps in Mircea's entourage." Billy Joe didn't mean that he'd asked them. He has the ability to drift through people and eavesdrop on them mentally, picking up whatever they're thinking at the time. It isn't as good as real telepathy, since he can't go digging for information, but it comes in handy surprisingly often. "It wasn't hard to get. It's the main topic of conversation these days."

I shook my head, puzzled. "I don't get it. If Rasputin has been messing with the rules and ambushing people, why is the Consul preparing to fight him? He lost that right when he ignored the rules, didn't he?" It seemed to me that Rasputin was in deep shit, a thought that made me feel much better. If he got himself killed, it was one less bad guy for me to worry about.

The problem wasn't the attacks on senators—that was perfectly legal—but rather the way he'd gone about them. During the Reformation, the six senates had collectively banned open warfare as a way to solve problems. After the religious divide, both the Catholic and Protestant clergy had been supersensitive, warning their flocks to be watchful for evildoers who could rob them of God's favor. Religion had also been a big political issue, with Catholic powers trying to assassinate Protestant leaders and vice versa, a Catholic armada trying to invade Protestant England and a major holy war going on in Germany. Everybody was spying on everybody, and as a result, more people were beginning to notice supernatural activity. Even though most of the accused were as human as their accusers—and usually more innocent—the authorities occasionally got lucky and staked a real vamp or burned a real witch. Open warfare between senates or even feuds between prominent houses were only going to draw more notice to the supernatural community. So dueling became the new, approved way of solving disputes.

Of course, Tony wasn't about to risk his fat little neck in open combat, and there were plenty of others whose skills didn't run to battle who also didn't like the new system. So the practice evolved into choosing champions to fight for you if you didn't want to do it yourself. Once the two duelists were agreed on, though, the rules were very strict about what was and was not allowed. Ambushes were definite no-nos, and what Rasputin had done would earn him an automatic staking anywhere in the world. The North American Senate would never stop hunting him, and the others would lend a hand to discourage this type of thing in their own areas. I decided that he was either crazy or really, really stupid.

"I guess she figures it's better than letting him pick off people one by one. Besides, unless Marlowe or Ismitta pulls through enough to testify, there's no actual proof he cheated. Right now he can say he challenged them and they lost, fair and square."

"But if he has to meet the Consul in front of the entire MAGIC council, he can't cheat."

"Bingo. Besides, she don't got a lot of choices. CM' Ras has left the Senate with a diplomatic nightmare on its hands 'cause of his rampage. The Fey are livid and say if the vamps can't deal with this they'll do it themselves. They lost one of their nobles in the crossfire, and you know how they are about that kind of thing." Actually, I didn't. I'd never even seen an elf or talked to anyone who had. Some of the vamps at Tony's didn't even believe they existed. The rumor was that they were some elaborate prank the mages had been playing for centuries, to try to convince the vamps that they had powerful allies. "The mage's circle is pissed, too, though I don't know why, and are calling for Rasputin's head on a platter. The Consul has to deal with this soon or people will start thinking she's weak. Mei Ling's good, but she can't fight all the challengers who're going to climb out of the woodwork if this ain't stopped."

"But she isn't fighting Rasputin."

"No, and like I said, she ain't happy about that. Word is, that's why she ain't here—she's off hunting him. She's almost outta time, though. The duel is set for tomorrow at midnight. I think she plans to bring back his head on a pike before then."

"Okay, I wish her luck. But you still haven't told me what all this has to do with me."

" 'Cause I don't know, honey chile." I hate it when Billy Joe gets southern. It means he's either joking or about to turn sarcastic, and I didn't want to deal with either. His usual accent is a Mississippi drawl combined with bits of Irish brogue left over from a childhood starving on the Emerald Isle. He'd immigrated, changed his name, and made a new life in the New World, but he'd never completely lost the accent. I glared at him. No way was I putting up with attitude now. He'd done pretty well, but I was pissed that he'd totally missed Tony's return. That was, after all, his main job.