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It turned out, we couldn’t get everyone together to form the new Senatus for another two nights, so the following day, just after the sun went down in the Alps, Kirsten flashed twenty-one of our people to Leonardo’s castle, and Marco made quick decisions about the prisoners we’d return home with versus the ones who needed to die. We also opted to bring some of Leonardo’s flock back with us. All of the vampires who’d chosen to oath to Leonardo were slaughtered, but those who’d been turned against their will, or who’d been purchased after being turned, had to submit to Marco and allow him to go through their memories. Most of them, Marco gave the true death to, but he gave others the choice of whether to oath to him and return to America with us, or whether to oath to another vampire Marco approved of. We came home with fifteen new vampires, and seven were allowed to oath to other Master Vampires. We had to kill hundreds of shapeshifters and dozens of vampires, but Marco was intent on ridding the planet of Leonardo’s energy, and I approved.
Etta was the first to figure out that Ryan’s death-energy had negated the effects of the skins she and Marco had been forced to wear. Neither craved coffee or any other foods or liquids again, and we hoped to keep it that way.
We decided we didn’t want the headquarters for the new Senate to be in Chattanooga, but Marco wanted it in his territory. Memphis is much closer to the center of the continent anyway, so we had Gen get with a Realtor in Memphis to find a place we could buy right away and take possession of in time for the first meeting. They found an old preschool/daycare building in a super-affluent neighborhood just over the line in Mississippi, and a fifteen minute drive from the Memphis International Airport. It cost four and a half million dollars, but it suited our purposes, complete with a large recreation room we could turn into a ballroom, and an auditorium we could turn into the main meeting space where the new Senate would convene.
Best of all, it was on a large lot, and there were adjoining lots for sale, so we ended up purchasing eleven acres, meaning we could expand if necessary, and we could keep humans a good ways from us with fences.
Patience had oathed to the Master of Chicago, and he allowed her to go to the new space and begin setting it up for the new Senate. Actually, her Master Vampire went with her, but that was okay.
The idea was that once the Senate was formed, this space would be sanctified by all those who took part in the orgy that would define the power structure. In fact, that orgy would give the space power, and would unite the group without the need for blood oaths.
Each Master was allowed to bring one shapeshifter who’d taken the final oath to fully belong to them. No guards, no food, no companions. Only a fully oathed shapeshifter whose life was now irrevocably bound to their vampire.
Though, in retrospect, Leonardo had broken my bond with Marco, so it wasn’t actually irrevocable, just practically impossible to break without killing one or both of the parties. Also, Mordecai told me ours had been new, and that it’s possible the break would’ve killed us if it’d been better established.
At any rate, the Master of Memphis was ordered to find a minimum of a dozen shapeshifters from the local university who desperately needed their tuition and living expenses taken care of, and who would agree to be flock to the new Senatus. He found seventeen of them, and once the top five of the new Senate was established, they oathed the seventeen shapeshifters in.
Each of the twenty-one vampires in the new Senatus put one million dollars into the bank account. A treasurer was elected by the top five — the Master of Illinois and Wisconsin, which meant he assigned the task to Patience. With twenty-one million dollars, less the nearly five million the group voted to reimburse Marco for the purchase of the building and land, there was plenty of money to pay the new flock and to pay contractors and decorators to turn the building into the showplace necessitated by vampire traditions. It was already impressive on the outside, but it would be even more impressive once the work was done.
And the name of the town, Southhaven, Mississippi, helped them name their new headquarters: Dark Haven.
Shortly before the first meeting, Apollonius flashed in to tell the vampires who’d arrived that our Senatus would still fall under the demesne of the Concillio, but so long as our rules didn’t contradict those of the planetary ruling body, and so long as we adequately policed and protected our territory, we’d be allowed to exist.
Marco, Augustus, and Gavin were present when Apollonius appeared, and the three basically told him if the Concillio wanted to pretend they still had influence in the territory claimed by the Senatus, they were welcome to it, but if they tried to push the issue, they would have a fight on their hands.
By the time the next meeting rolled around six weeks later, the Canadian and Mexican vampire leadership had joined as well, and it was expected the Central American Master Vampires would decide to join in the coming months.
And I had Marco alive with me during the day for seventeen days. The effect only lasted for fifteen days for Etta, again confirming how close in power the two were.
Our joining resolved so many issues. Furio, for instance, now runs with our wolves and is completely accepted. He’s part of the Homewood Pack even though his oaths are to Marco. One of the weakest of Marco’s vampires is living at Homewood because he needs to be close to his Master in order to survive. Yet, when Marco is out of town, it’s fine that Winston is near me. I can power him up with only proximity as well as Marco. Also, it’s a bonus for Homewood because Winston is a hacker extraordinaire, and one of his jobs is to help out in our control room.
In a nutshell, the magic of everything we’d done to build up power for the battle had a mind of its own, and it had joined us in ways I don’t think any of us had imagined were possible, but no one was regretting anything, to my knowledge. And because of the way we were joined, I’d know if anyone — wolf or vampire — had resentments.
And so, months later, Homewood threw a huge party for all the supernaturals in the Chattanooga metro area on the Saturday night closest to the summer solstice.
Vampires are big on sending out fancy invitations, and as a powerful Alpha, I was obligated to do so as well. But we were a power couple now, and this needed to come from both of us, but I wanted to include Kirsten and her men, too. Homewood was hosting this party, but how to word that, to include all of us, without twisting up the politics?
In the end, we had a professional photographer take a picture of the five of us — Kirsten, Mordecai, Nathan, Marco, and me — and we included the image to the right of the Homewood logo, to be clear who was inviting them. All of us.
Marco was now a permanent resident, and we no longer tried to keep his time with us to less than forty-nine percent. The orgy had cemented him as part of us and tied him and his people to our land. Not to mention, my ties to him were nearly as strong as my ties to Kirsten. Possibly stronger, over time, but the fact of the matter was that Leonardo had broken my tie to Marco but had only damaged my connection to Kirsten. It was enough to keep her from finding me deep underground on another realm, but not enough we couldn’t repair it once we were in close proximity again.
Alaric and Lazlo are still out there, and we know the skins are going to exist. That bell can’t be unrung. The pregnancies aren’t likely to continue though, because the offspring were the DNA of the dead human the skin was taken from and the human or shapeshifter female who was impregnated, so there’s still no way for a male vampire to produce babies.
A female vampire wearing a skin during the entire pregnancy, however, is a little different. The child ends up with some of the DNA of the dead human, some of the DNA of the vampire, and a whole lot of the DNA of the human or shapeshifter father. The children seem normal enough as infants, but only time will tell what will happen when they hit puberty. Also, the vampire mother is more human than vampire when she finally takes the skin off. Marco is of the opinion there aren’t many powerful vampires — with enough money to purchase a suit and pay for protection while vulnerable — who’ll willingly handicap themselves, but I have a feeling the number who desperately want to become mothers might surprise him.
The Celrau vampires are operating mostly in other realms. Eventually, we might have to deal with an army of human-shaped animals, but everyone assumes that scenario is at least ten years out. Meanwhile, we’re working with the slayers on ways to stymie the Celrau from taking humans in our cities. Genocide is an ugly word, and I actually agree with the Concilio about keeping a number of Celrau prisoner, in case the ecosystem needs this other race in ways we don’t understand, but for now, the aim is to kill them all off, even if we have to get the other realms involved.
But on this night, with more than seven hundred guests on Homewood’s land enjoying the evening, the food, and the companionship, I was at peace in my heart.
I hadn’t known for certain whether Marco and I would be able to work. I hadn’t wanted to give up my autonomy, and the thought of sharing power had terrified me, but here we were, equally in charge of each others’ people, and rocking it.
Rather than feeling exhausted when the evening ended and the last of the guests were either gone or in a guest room, I felt energized, and I levitated Marco up along with me and said, “Take us to the boulder?”
And yes, I formed it as a question because the two of us try hard not to give each other orders — mostly because we respect each other, but also because we’re both hard-headed and sometimes refuse to follow orders on principle.
We weren’t far from the farmhouse, so the flight didn’t take long, and I leaned down to unlace my boots. “As often as we’ve been having sex up here in the previous weeks, we should probably figure out a way to install some kind of mattress, or other soft surface.”
He levitated down to the field, to the little cubby area our wolves can store their clothes on full-moon runs, and returned with a camping mat, double-sized rather than single-sized. He unrolled it, and I heard it sucking air into itself.
