by Faith Hunter
Satisfied that I had a plan of action, I opened my eyes to see that a dim light came from a small electric lamp on the bedside table, cast from some form of metal, old enough to have a patina of verdigris in shades of green and brown, topped by a square, buff-colored shade. It was elegant in ways I didn’t usually appreciate, formed by an artist’s hand in a stylized shape of a woman holding a child. It sat on a green-veined, marble-topped table with metal legs of the same style and material as the lamp. A gilded mirror hung over the fireplace, which was faced with more of the green-veined marble, as was the mantel. The walls were a green so pale that they looked almost white, but for the white-painted moldings at the ceiling, door, and floor, which contrasted brightly. The floors were wood, with rugs tossed here and there in black and greens and tiny spots of red, as if blood had splattered across them. Everything in sight was really expensive, even to my untrained eye.
The linens were shades of greens—natch—from emerald to fern to celery, and the bed itself was a humongous four-poster of black wood carved with vines and flowers. Two chairs nestled at a dainty, antique tea table were upholstered in pale, shimmery fabric that looked like silk. I didn’t know much about furniture, but there was something that said this was stuff Edmund had brought with him into slavery to Leo. Master-vamp furniture. And that meant that Leo had allowed him to keep it. More secrets to discover about the vampire Edmund Hartley.
Carefully, I lifted Edmund’s arm from my waist and slid to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. My right arm was bandaged and twinged with pain as I rose, like being stuck with tiny needles all over its skin, from fingertips to the middle of my back. I stretched it slowly, not liking the feel of the healed but still tender flesh, and gathered up my boots, spotting my cell in a boot bottom. I looked around for the rest of my clothing and weapons. Zilch. Somebody had made off with my stuff, hopefully to clean the body fluids off it.
However, my headset hung over the doorknob, and I carried what I had left from the room, to put on in the hallway. One-handed wasn’t the easiest way to boot up and get into coms, but I managed it and turned on the set as I moved down the hallway in the direction of the elevator. “Jane Yellowrock here,” I said into the mic. “Who’s on at coms?”
“Juwan here, Legs. Good to hear you up and around.”
I came to a quick stop in the hall and leaned against the wall. Juwan was the real-world name for one of Derek’s men. He was a sharpshooter home between deployments when I first met Derek. I had ridden Bitsa, my Harley panhead, into the hood to get permission to hunt for a rogue vamp. Derek had come out to talk to me. Juwan had targeted me, a dead-on hit with a laser scope between my shoulder blades. I wasn’t sure what a shooter was doing there, running security after a breach, but I’d find that out later. First, it was likely that I had to establish boundaries. Most of Derek’s men seemed to need that from time to time, and with Juwan seeing me for the first time, wearing a fuzzy purple dragon T-shirt, I’d better start right away. “Twizzlers, Juwan,” I said.
Twizzlers had been the code word Derek had used to make Juwan not shoot me. Juwan laughed, his voice mellow over the in-house coms channel. “You remember that, do you?”
“Hard to forget the moment when Uncle Sam’s finest has the spot between your shoulder blades all lit up like Christmas lights. What did you have on me that night?”
“USMC M40A5.”
The M40A5 was essentially an AK-47. “Ouch. That one mighta killed me.”
Juwan laughed. “Yeah, maybe. I hear you’re kinda hard to kill.” Not happy that I was an ongoing topic of gossip, I grunted, and he went on. “Course, shootin’ you from that angle and distance would likely have punched right through you and taken down one of Derek’s other guys. He’da been pissed. Sorry. I hear you don’t like the way marines talk.”
He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded challenging, the way men did when other men have built you up into something to be confronted and defeated. Lucky me. I might have to fight this guy someday soon. Just not today, please, I silently asked the ceiling. I stretched my hand and made a grip, the skin moving painfully beneath the sleeve and bandage, the muscles feeling tight. The entire arm was tender. But . . . I smiled and looked up, searching, knowing there had to be a camera on me somewhere. When I found it, I grinned into it, showing teeth. “You wanna make a big deal out of language, we can do that, Juwan. But understand. If you challenge me over something so stupid as polite conversation, when I beat your butt, it’ll go on YouTube so all your marine buddies can see you get your backside handed to you by a skinny Cherokee chick.”
Juwan laughed over the headset, the confident tone slowly changing to one less certain as he saw my expression over the security camera.
“Think about it.” I pushed off the wall and continued down the hallway. “And while you’re thinking, do a search of archived footage from the sparring room. Make sure you want to pursue this. Otherwise, we’ll just let it go and pretend this little convo didn’t happen.”
“Yeah. Roger that.”
I could hear little faint tappings, the sound of fingers on a touch screen. “Meanwhile, I need to know where the priestesses are. Are either of them on-site?”
“Yes, ma’am. Interesting that you asked. They turned off the system at thirteen hundred forty-two, when they entered the library on the floor where you are now. Take a left and a right, and you’ll see the door. It’s closed but not locked. They used the remote to turn on the gas logs.”
Interesting that I asked? “Gotcha. Thanks.”
“Welcome, Injun Princess. Anytime.”
Still pondering the statement Interesting that you asked, I moved toward the library, deciding that the priestesses had probably told him to send me in the moment I woke up. Outside the library door I pulled my cell and flipped open the armored case. I texted Alex with, Why Juwan in security? He alone?
Instantly I got back the answer to the last question. Angel with him. Out USMC. Hon. disch. Retraining for civilian life. I interpreted the message to read that Juwan was out of the marines with an honorable discharge and starting a new life.
I sent back K, knocked on the door, and waited until I had permission to enter.
CHAPTER 4
I Am the Keeper
Sabina Delgado y Aguilera and Bethany Salazar y Medina sat together at the library table, in the afternoon, with the sun still up outside. There were no windows, so it wasn’t a miracle, but seeing any vamp awake and active in daytime was enough of a rarity to throw me off my stride. A pile of old books, teapot wrapped in a quilted cozy, and teacups sat on the table between them. The aroma of tea mixed with the scent of old books, leather chairs, and wool from the carpet in a soothing fusion.
As I moved across the room, my fingers found my wounded arm, still feeling not quite right, the skin tender. Even after my nice rest, I wanted nothing more than to curl up with a cuppa and maybe a novel—not that I read books. Not ever. But the smell here made me want to try.
There were other cups on the table, and as I approached, Sabina placed one on a china saucer, the kind shaped to hold the cup secure and catch any minor spills. She placed it at an empty chair and poured tea into the cup. I guessed that was my invitation to join them.
I said, “Thanks,” sat, and added cream and sugar to my tea. The spoon was sterling silver and tinkled as I stirred. I noted that the outclan priestesses were also using sterling, handling the silver as if they no longer had to worry about silver poisoning. I could count on my fingers the number of vamps who could do that without getting blistered, and have digits left over. I sipped and discovered that the tea was delicious. Not that I was surprised. Vamps spent money on the things they treasured.
“You are welcome in our house. We offer hospitality to you,” Sabina said.
I was flying by the seat of my pants already and the vamp day hadn’t even started, but I figured that the formulaic welcome meant they would let me keep my blood supply inside my skin. I dredged up the manners taught to
me in the children’s home where I was raised and said, “I am . . . honored for the hospitality and, uh, recognize the gift of it, and, um, thanks for the tea. Too. The tea also,” I clarified. Crap. This was stupid. But I didn’t say that aloud. I was learning. “It’s . . . enchanting.” Could tea be enchanting? I wondered. Poisoned, yes, but enchanting? I shook away the mental wanderings.
Sabina and Bethany were both nearly two thousand years old, belonged to no clan, and were the keepers of the holy relics. They were also the arbiters of most anything that Leo couldn’t or didn’t want to handle. And both were scary powerful. I was smart enough to know that being allowed to drink tea with them was intended to be a humongous honor, but all I could think was that they were about to put me in a bind, one way or another. I’d come in there to ask them how to track Joses Bar-Judas, per Leo’s order, but I had a feeling they had agendas of their own.
“Have you seen the camera film of Leo after the Son of Darkness escaped?” Sabina asked, her nunlike, starched white gown rustling.
“No, ma’am. Should I?”
“Yes. Turn on your device and ask it be sent to you.” She poured more tea for her and Bethany and sat back, looking relaxed. I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and lunch was long past, and my stomach growled, deep and low. I pressed a hand there to keep it quiet. I had food to eat and stuff that needed doing, but if the priestesses wanted me there to watch video, that is where I’d be. Into my cell I texted to Alex, Footage of Leo after Joses escaped? Send to me. He sent back a K, and moments later, my cell tinkled with the incoming video.
I waited as the vid opened on my cell and clamped down on a gasp before it got free. The footage was of Leo, holding Gee DiMercy down in the hallway, surrounded by humans who looked like they were waiting on something. The humans looked jittery, uneasy. I didn’t blame them. Leo wasn’t being kind to Gee; there was no tenderness or laving with tongue to stop pain. Leo was savaging Gee’s throat.
My own throat spasmed, shutting off air as remembered pain became real again. I clamped my good hand around my throat protectively as I watched. Over the vid, I heard Leo growl like a wild animal, a grizzly, deep and sonorous. This was violence far worse than what Leo had done to me. There wasn’t going to be anything left of Gee DiMercy’s throat. If he were human, he’d already be dead. I waited for a human to pull Leo off, to shout for help. That didn’t happen. Had Leo killed Gee? Was I gonna have to watch that? The pain in my stomach ratcheted up a good six levels into an inferno.
What was Leo upset about? He had been fine when he left me, carrying Adrianna.
On the video, Gee’s hands unexpectedly came up and encircled Leo’s shoulders, patting him tenderly, the way a mother might a fractious baby. Leo’s body went limp for a space of seconds, and then he pulled away, wiping Gee’s blood from his mouth with a shaking hand. Gee’s throat closed up, healing as I watched.
Leo looked better now. Calmer. So what was I seeing? Maybe what Gee had just done had calmed the savage beast? Something similar? Leo looked up at the humans and gestured for them to follow him, which they did, down the hallway. One was carrying Adrianna, who was still dripping blood and brains. That was gonna be hard to get out of the carpet. Brains were sticky and adhered to fibers.
There was a blink in the digital vid, and I was now seeing the camera down the hall from Leo’s office. Three humans were stumbling along, all heavily blood-drunk and weak looking—anemic. I checked the time frame. Half an hour after Leo had bled Gee.
“Is Gee okay?” I asked.
“Our Misericord is well,” Bethany said. “But he will not remain well if the master of this city continues to drain him in anger.”
“You must find the Son of Darkness and bring him back to us,” Sabina said, echoing Leo’s command.
“Once he is caught like a bird in a raptor’s talons, we will remove his sacred blood to tame him and place him back upon the wall,” Bethany said.
“And his blood will fill the holy relic for preservation,” Sabina said, her voice carefully bland.
I stared back and forth between the two priestesses. Those statements were so confusing I had no idea where to go with any of the information contained in them. Their faces were expressionless and cool, as if the idea of starving a vampire into greater, but compliant, insanity and using him for their own ends was an acceptable practice. And I had no idea what the holy relic was, but chances were it wasn’t anything to do with religion as I understood the word.
Humans had been researching ways to preserve vamp blood so they could test it for use in human medicines and drugs. So far, no go. Vamp blood decomposed quickly, no matter the preservative they tried, and even fresh, it didn’t cure every human illness; some of them seemed impervious to vamp blood, unless the patient was turned. And even turned, they had to go through years of the devoveo—the madness of the turn—with no certainty of surviving physically or mentally intact. Vamp blood was no panacea, sometimes healing, sometimes not, which was why vamps still existed as free beings at all.
Vamp blood also made the drinker susceptible to the mind-warping abilities of the vamp he or she was drinking from. A few sips and the drinker would be willing to do anything the vamp said, including removing shackles and shooting guards. The addictive properties of vamp blood kept most powerful humans from becoming blood-servants or paying for the privilege of drinking it. Vamps made dangerous captives.
So vamps weren’t being kept prisoner, or not openly, anyway, and drained of blood for sick humans to become healthy. But if human researchers ever discovered that there was a way to preserve vamp blood, there would be all-out war, as humans caught and shackled the vamps and drained them little by little for healing and cures and whatever else they could devise, all in the name of humanity and compassion. The relic, whatever it was, needed to remain secret.
Keeping my tone as grim as theirs, I said, “Preservation? Not supposed to be possible.”
“Joses’ blood is different,” Sabina said, her dark eyes on her teacup. She sipped, her robes shushing in the quiet library as she lifted her arm. “It has been known to survive the test of time.”
“We need his blood. It is necessary to bring my Leo to great power,” Bethany added, also not meeting my gaze, but watching Sabina, a disturbing light in her eyes. Bethany wasn’t always sane, even as vamps went, and the jewelry in her ears and twisted and knotted and braided into her hair caught the lamplight with shots of gold and the glint of rubies. “It is necessary to make him fierce and stalwart enough to defeat the Blood Challenge of the Son of Darkness, when our enemies come to us for war.” She meant the other Son of Darkness, Joses’ brother. The EuroVamps were already making plans to show up there. When they found final proof that Joses had been held prisoner in NOLA vamp HQ, they would be there pronto, probably not waiting for any parley date decided upon. Joses was already an open secret even before draining a few vamps and humans and taking off into the day. If he wasn’t caught / killed true-dead / whatever, that just increased the chances that the EuroVamps would declare war on the New World vamps.
When I caught up with him (when, not if), I could kill Joses outright, like he needed, or capture him, like the priestesses and Leo wanted, but capturing a rabid vamp was a lot harder than staking him and beheading him. And from where I sat, we were all screwed, no matter what I did. Rather than voice that, I sipped the très expensive tea.
“Our master did not drink of the blood of the son of his body. Think on this.”
I had a feeling this arcane tidbit of info was important, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it just then. “Yeah. Whatever. How am I supposed to track and capture one of the two Sons of Darkness, the maker of all vamps? Are you gonna show up with the Blood Cross and herd him into a silver cage?” I asked Sabina.
She still didn’t meet my eyes. I wondered if that was an admission of some kind of guilt or if she was afraid I’d read something in her gaze that she wanted kept secret. Or maybe not meeting a person’s eyes was
a cultural thing from her own time and people. Like not making eye contact when asking a favor or standing in a crowded elevator. Something like that. I didn’t know, and there was no way to ask.
“I still cannot embrace the true Blood Cross,” Sabina said. “The injury I suffered the last time I wielded it burned deep. I am not healed from the fire I suffered.”
“You may never be healed enough to wield it again,” Bethany said. “You should give it over to a stronger priestess. To me.”
Oookaaay, I thought. The rift between the priestesses wasn’t getting any smaller, in spite of the tea and the apparent agreement on the subject of Joses Bar-Judas.
“When it is determined that I am permanently no longer able to carry out my duties,” Sabina said, starting to sound testy, “I will turn it over to another. For now, I am healing, and—”
“For now? You have been healing for too long!” Bethany said, anger ringing in her voice.
I had seen paintings of the last time Sabina had wielded the Blood Cross, trying to stop the Damours, a vampire-witch clan, from practicing blood magic on witch children. That had taken place hundreds of years ago, so no way was I entering what had to be an old, old argument. The idea of Bethany in control of that powerful icon was terrifying. The idea that Sabina might not be up to using it in a time of war was just as terrifying. I sipped and kept my eyes on my tea. Very pale, with the cream. And in a lovely china cup.