Chapter Sixteen
Damali didn't say a word as she stood by Carlos's side on the top step of the castle's grand entryway, Harold and Evelyn three steps below them, watching the entourages dismount from the choppers. It was a spectacular sight as they watched each master inspect the staff lines, not trusting the skills of the master that had walked the line before him. Paranoia was thick in the air. She was just beginning to understand the whole twisted culture of the vamp empire.
Everything meant something. Every conversation was about power shifts, even play was about the acquisition thereof, or to show prowess and ward off an attack. The way they ate, they way they spoke, the way they made and betrayed alliances, the way they had sex - made love was too nice a phrase, this shit was carnal. Primal, beneath the polished exterior.
One by one, she sized up the targets. The first to arrive had been the Chinese ambassador. He was slim, muscular, of moderate height, and wore a very understated navy blue suit, white shirt, silk tie, and dark shades and a large insignia ring on his left hand where a wedding band might have been. He looked like he had been in his late thirties when he had turned, and he carried himself like the King of Siam. His gaze was mildly haughty but civil. His wife, however, was over the top. Damali had to give it to this female. She was all that.
Wrapped in a raw silk red sari trimmed in gold, she had a body like she could dance the seven veils and start a war. She had large, dark brown eyes set in her perfectly proportioned, beautiful face. Her jet-black hair hung in a long straight wash of silky onyx down her back all the way to her behind. Her skin looked like it had a faint hint of bronze beneath, and her cultured voice had an opalescent quality to it that practically shimmered as she spoke. She nodded before she bowed, her eyes seeming to hold a lethal secret. But her aloof air was like that of a pampered, arrogant, pedigreed cat
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