Beatrice had glammered the shit out of the agent guarding the door to the parking level elevator. It had been a little freaky to watch since the agent had been decisive and firm, all business. Beatrice had squinted at him really hard, focusing all of her concentration. The agent had blinked a couple of times, really fast, like he was waking up for the first time ever and then had just given her the biggest shit-eating grin ever.

"Shoot anyone who tries to follow us," Beatrice had said, and the agent had nodded decisively.

I had followed Beatrice into the elevator. She had grinned at me, but there was a look in her eye that I had never seen before.

"You okay?" I asked. "You don't look too good."

"Let's hope I don't have to do that too often," she replied. "Glammering a vampire is much harder than it looks. It can take a lot out of a person."

"What are we running from, exactly?" I wanted to know.

"Most of the major vampire houses, like ours, have agreed to let Madame Vera look after their Old Masters as part of this trade agreement everybody's so excited about. Apparently, they're doing the transfer tonight instead of tomorrow like they're supposed to. This whole gala is a diversion to make sure nobody notices the extra security."

"So what does that have to do with us?" I asked, despite having a sense of where this conversation was heading. I was beginning to get a panic attack, the kind that leaves you laughing even though absolutely nothing is funny.

"Oh, right. You're going to love this part. See, the agents went to get the one that Harry keeps down in his doomsday vault, crusty old bastard hasn't woken up in forever, you know what I mean? Only thing is that I stole him months ago."

"Oh, we are so fucked."

Ding! The elevator doors opened, and the guard outside the door looked up in shock, surprised to see us. Beatrice moved on him fast, one hand grabbing his face and pulling him close for a moment of intense glammering. The guard relaxed and blinked. Beatrice owned him now.

"Holy shit, that's insane," I said as Beatrice gently pushed the guard back into the elevator lobby. There were locked doors on opposite walls, long, thin vertical windows above the door handle. I could see a white corridor through the right door, but couldn't quite figure out what was going on through the left door. Whatever it was, it was noisy, lots of clanking and the sounds of distant idling engines. The facing wall was concrete with a huge glass window.

"You're insane," the guard quipped at me.

"Shut up," Beatrice snapped at him, which he happily did. "How many other guards down here?"

"Marius and Samael are guarding the outside door to the garage," the guard said helpfully. "They're having us report in fifteen-minute intervals, and the next one is in about two minutes, so you can either wait, or you gotta go now. If you go that way," he pointed at the door to the left, "that's just asking for trouble. There're ten Special-Ops guards overseeing the transfer from the other houses onto the trucks, and four more agents brought down this guy a little while ago for interrogation."

"Blue tie?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"That's the one. Word is that he has an explosive device that crapped out on him. Detonator didn't work. Probably the only reason upstairs isn't a bloodbath right now." He held up a finger for us to wait as he listened to his headset.

"Did you know anything about the bomb?" I asked Beatrice, trying to chase images of exploding rich people out of my head. Blue Tie had only been two tables over from us, so I would have been one of the exploding bodies. And Sammy would have been right there too. That thought made my head feel a little light. I could feel saliva suddenly flood my mouth like I was preparing to throw up.

Beatrice shook her head thoughtfully. "I make it a point not to have any plans that involve me getting blown up."

The guard nodded to us, suddenly tense. "Yeah, Agent D'mallo is coming down to oversee the interrogation, so you guys kinda need to hustle. Like right now."

"We'll follow you," Beatrice said. "Do you think you can distract the other two guards long enough for me to glammer them?"

"Sure thing!" the guard said cheerfully and quickly exited the elevator lobby into the white corridor.

"Is he just going to do anything you tell him to?"

"Only for about ten minutes or so, then he's going to start to fight it more. The real trick to this type of glammering is convincing him that I'm his best friend in the whole world and that he wants to help me."

"Could I do that?"

"We'll see. Right now, let's just get out of here before Cristian shows up. He's already pissed enough about that bomb-making it into the building, and the note I left in the sarcophagus is not going to make him any friendlier."

"Of course you left a note," I said to myself more than anything since Beatrice had gone ahead into the corridor.

Movement behind the other door caught my eye. I decided that I had to look at least once to satisfy my curiosity. The door was locked, but through the window, I could see an underground loading dock, several Mack trucks lined up to take their cargo. A small army of men was inspecting five huge metallic cylinders that had pipes and wires attached. They were all moving carefully and deliberately as if they were terrified of breaking something fragile and expensive.

"That's what I was talking about," Beatrice said, right by my ear, scaring the shit out of me. "Five of the Old Masters, from the oldest vampire houses in the world. They are older than any other vampire. Some people believe that they are the first vampires and that they have some hidden wisdom to share with us. They haven't woken up in over five hundred years, so nobody really knows what they know. It's all just stories at this point."

I really didn't know what to say. The guard poked his head back into the room now, since he had gone ahead down the corridor and nobody had followed.

"You guys, Agent D'mallo is in the elevator. We gotta move now!"

"Come on Bobbikins," Beatrice said, and I nodded, still looking at those sarcophagi and the sleeping vampires. I started to turn away, but then something caught my eye, a familiar walk on a man holding a clipboard.

Sure enough, there was Claude giving orders like he had every right to be there. What the hell was going on?

After a moment, I followed Beatrice.

We entered the underground access tunnel, the guard leading the way to a tunnel that ran perpendicular to the one we were in. The walls were cinderblocks, painted white and lit by fluorescent lights all the way to the end of the corridor. The ceilings were about ten feet high, a maze of pipes that seemed more random than they really were. There was a heavy security door at the far end--

The door suddenly burst open, and a blood-spattered guard rushed in, eyes wide with panic.

"What the hell?"

There was a blur of white and the schnict sound of a slicing blade cutting through meat with incredible ease. A woman with dark hair and dressed all in white now stood in the corridor, Katana coming forward to finish the killing slice. The guard had stopped running and just tumbled forward, his head separating from his body, the blood only now realizing that nothing was keeping it into the body. I'd say that it spurted, or maybe even gushed, but that doesn't begin to describe just how much blood was coming from the guard.

Our guard, the one will with his head attached, pulled his gun, but he wasn't fast enough.

The woman looked up, her brilliant blue vampire eyes taking in everything, seeing the guard aiming at her--

BLAM! The woman was no longer where the guard was aiming. She moved forward fast, running up the side of the wall and then dropping down, sword slicing right through the guard's wrist as if it wasn't even there. She landed and somehow turned the sword and drove it through the guard's heart.

As the guard folded, his life's blood spurting out onto the floor, his eyes lifeless, the woman stepped over his body, sword pointed at Beatrice, who through all of this violence had managed to look unimpressed.

"You wouldn't happen to have a weapon, would you?" I asked, completely scared of our chances. I mean I knew Beatrice was a badass and everything, but this woman was incredible, and she was making my girlfriend look bad.

"Nope," Beatrice said glibly, eyes on the woman with the sword. "I like your sword," Beatrice said to the woman.

"I know who you are," the woman said and readied her sword.

"And you're still going to try to kill me?" Beatrice asked.

The woman raised an eyebrow. "Try?"

That's the point I decided to back the fuck up. Beatrice might be a badass, but I was maybe going to need a little bit of a running start if this went badly.

She attacked, slicing fluidly through the air, faster than anything I have ever seen. It was a dance of balletic movement and death, the woman clearly a master with the sword... but yet Beatrice was better and faster. Her hands deflected off the side of the sword, easily blocking, always controlling the attack until she suddenly turned, holding the sword in her hand, She grabbed the woman by the hair and with an easy slice, she separated the woman's head from her body.

"Holy fucking shit," I breathed after a moment, deliberately not looking at the woman's surprised face; her mouth was still moving, possibly trying to ask how this had happened. Her body was collapsed against a wall, busily spraying blood all over the white brick.

"You thought she was a badass, didn't you?"

I tried not to look too guilty, but Beatrice could see right through me.

"Well, I'm a bigger badass," she said and flicked the blade sending a spray of blood to fan out on the wall. Beatrice flourished the sword in a way that spoke volumes of how at home it felt in her hands. "And now, I have a weapon."