Icicle earrings sparkled in her ears; seed pearls, diamonds, and bits of blue ice crusted her ice-blue gown. In her delicate hands she carried an ice wand and a large fan made of packed snow that had a pattern of snowflakes. But it totally blew Sasha’s mind to see her strut down the center aisle in ice stilettos, eyes locked in hatred with Sir Rodney’s.
“Clearly you did not believe that I would allow you to put a member of my court to death without the proper trial and formalities to be sure that action would be sanctioned.” She gave Sir Rodney the evil eye and then promptly slid into the Vampire booth, taking the baron’s arm.
“I might have known that you would be in bed with that cold-blooded Vampire bastard,” Sir Rodney spat. “Ice water also runs in your veins, so I’m not a bit surprised by the alliance.”
The queen fanned herself as the Vampires hissed, remaining cool. “Always hotheaded, my summer prince,” she said in a deceitfully sensual tone. “It is uncomfortably warm in this swamp of a location you’ve exiled yourself to… therefore, I do not take your unchivalrous welcome as an affront. It must be the heat that has you so cross and unmannerly.”
“Welcome to New Orleans, Your Majesty,” the baron crooned, his eyes black with rage as he looked over at the Seelie bench. “Although this has at times devolved into what amounts to a kangaroo court, today our objective is justice for your captured national who is being held hostage-as well as for my wrongfully attacked lair and establishment.”
“Held hostage?” a Fae archer shouted from the back. “The bastard killed me brother!”
“Order, order!” the gavel yelled, whacking itself on the empty judge’s bench.
“My top advisors tell me that when the Seelie Fae archer died, my court member was in iron chains,” the queen said coolly.
“Metaphorically speaking,” Sir Rodney argued. “Your man was in custody at the time, true, but he is at the root of all of this.”
The queen turned to the Vampire box, and looked at them and then the Unseelie who were seated behind them, her gaze falling on her top advisors. “Surely a man shan’t be put to death for meta phors?”
Loud jeers rang out from both sides of the aisle and it took several minutes for the gavel to regain order.
“Let us have the first complaint,” the crone screeched, making the pen above the pages quiver.
“We do this with blood oaths,” Sir Rodney demanded.
“I object on the grounds that there is no presiding judge or neutral party, thus any testimony that is inadvertently twisted could endanger the life of the witness called,” the baron sniffed. “It is the law.” His black gaze raked the courtroom. “Testimony is taken, then corroborated with blood seals after all testifying parties are safe within their respective fortified encampments or in some sort of protective custody-unless there are neutral peacekeeping forces present… which, if you have a look around, there are not.”
“Objection sustained,” the gavel called out and flailed itself against the bench with a loud whack.
“You always have an angle, don’t you, Vampire. Well, tonight, one night before Midsummer-the height of our Fae power-your luck has run out!” Sir Rodney stepped forward, recounting the series of events as the pen wrote furiously. “We have evidence,” he said, concluding. “The human girl who now lies injured in the human hospital-Tulane-took cell phone photos… and we have eyewitnesses who went to the three attics, and were attacked. Only, this time, they all lived to tell about it, so you do not have the shroud of death making the evidence impossible to fathom.”
“Step forward,” the crone said, curling her finger toward Sasha, Hunter, and Shogun. “Speak. One at a time.”
“You saw for yourselves what has been reported in the human news,” Sasha said, looking around the court. “Normally we cannot produce evidence, because magick fades or Vampire stealth cannot show up on any device that captures an image. But a fire that burns like the one captured on the news, you all know to be from Unseelie spells reacting with a backlash. Each spell had a dead man’s switch in it so that it would be hard as hell to defuse without blowing yourself up… And that’s what happened to one of my human teammates. She saved our lives, but hers is hanging in the balance. If nothing else comes out of this trial, I hope that someone with the specialty of unwinding bad magick will help us help Clarissa.”
Murmurs of discontent filled the courtroom, but Hunter stepped forward and that brought curious silence.
“As Shadow Wolves,” Hunter said, “we cannot lie. Lies are caught in our aura and trapped by the silver in it… The scent of burning sterling gives us away. So, I am no liar when I tell you what we encountered in the shadow lands… and how my family was barred entry to our natural right, and stripped of our gift to travel free and unfettered, by evil spells cast by the Unseelie named Kiagehul-aka Kennan MacDougall, when in Seelie Court.”
“Dual identities, leading a double life,” Sasha snarled from the sidelines.
The court grandstands were rapt, so quiet that only the sound of inhales and exhalations could be heard as Hunter gave a full accounting of all they’d endured. Shogun stepped up next and told the heart rending tale of brother being turned against brother, editing out some of the more personal issues. He described the firefight that took place at the Buchanan Bayou House and ended his argument with a challenge.
“Anyone that has the capacity for crystal-ball magick, or is a seer of the past, can go in and slowly replay the events that took place that night,” Shogun said, folding his arms over his chest. “My brother came in and pulled me and my men out of an ambush-one that was orchestrated by the Vampires through the agency of the one named Kiagehul! The Buchanans attacked, but Vampires and Kiagehul were behind it!”
Wolves turned toward the Vampire side of the courtroom and growled. Vampires hissed as the Fae erupted again.
“The Buchanan Werewolf clan must be exiled for siding with Vampires!” the North American alpha Werewolf leader shouted from the back.
Pandemonium broke out as stronger wolves leaped over the box rails and took the sparse remaining members of the Buchanan Broussard pack into custody. Once the snarling outlaws were secured, the commotion died down.
“We demand a full and fair trial of our own,” a beta said between his teeth, but quieted when he got punched in the face by the big alpha.
“Bet on it,” the alpha snarled and then returned his focus to the court proceedings at hand. “Let the lady tell the story.”
“But the worst of all offenses,” Sasha said, striding up to the Vampire box, staring past Elder Vlad and taking on Baron Geoff Montague in a bold eye-to-eye challenge, “were the human deaths. You brought this to the streets and outside of the supernatural community, where the beef should have stayed, you rat bastard!”
Order of the Dragon bouncers tried to gently nudge Sasha back to her side of the room, but fury had a stranglehold on her and Hunter was over the edge of the box, challenging the security guard, who backed down.
“You are dangerously close to a breach of court procedure, young lady,” Elder Vlad said in a menacing tone. “State your case from inside your box.”
“Fuck you!” Sasha shouted and pointed at the ancient Vampire.
Gasps cut through the courtroom from the Vampire box.
“Touch her, black bolt her,” Hunter said in a rumble, “and there will be blood. Lots of it. Wolves can sniff out lairs and we’ll open everybody’s up if anything untoward happens to my mate.”
“You all killed innocent people back there, human and Fae alike!” Sasha said, her voice trembling with rage. “That matters!”
Baron Geoff was on his feet. “You are out of order, and after the blood you let at my estate and at my establishments, how dare you disrespect our leadership! Since when is a human life more valuable or sacred than one of ours? We did not retaliate tonight until we had to fend off your attack at the Blood Oasis-the same as when you wrongfully breached my lair!”