by Faith Hunter
I turned in a circle, once again taking in the lower floor. “Did Derek seem surprised at the number of”—I rolled my hand from one blood splatter to another and then another—“deaths that took place here?”
“No. He didn’t.” Eli glanced from Derek to the bloodstained rooms around us and back. “Was Derek working for Leo during the vamp war?”
“Yeah.” The cold closed on me with icy claws, and I checked on Derek again. He was bent over, his head inside his SUV, his weapon down beside his leg. He had said guns were equalizers in a war with vamps. Why had he drawn his gun?
“Juwan,” Eli said.
I thought back to Juwan. What had someone learned when Juwan was interrogated? What if Juwan was acting under Derek’s orders when he had attacked? What if someone had called Derek and warned him that I was onto him? What if I was paranoid? What if I wasn’t paranoid enough?
Eli bladed his body so he could keep Derek in his peripheral vision and looked back into the house. “That one is head height. So is that one,” Eli pointed to blood spatters high on the wall beside the door. “Then below them, on the floor.”
I followed his finger, putting it all together. “They were shot, head shots, not staked. Not killed in sword fights or blood duels. Just shot and then beheaded,” I said. Execution-style.
“Human soldiers did this. Not vamps.” Eli and I both positioned Derek again—still at his vehicle, but I realized I hadn’t seen the driver and I couldn’t tell if he was there or not. We turned, quickly quartering the room, counting the wall spatters and the floor splatters. They matched. Eli said, his tone musing, “And Derek did say that guns were equalizers. Can you tell if he was here then?”
“Not unless he was injured. There’s too much vamp-blood smell. It’s been too long.”
“He’s coming back. He’s got something in his hand.”
“Not a gun. Paper.” The gun was missing. In his spine holster?
“Still.” Eli stepped into the living room, taking cover behind a small bureau, which allowed him to see the entire foyer and keep me out of the line of fire. He pulled his sidearm and readied it for shooting. “Just in case Derek just got orders from on high to take us out. Or he’s changed sides and is working for the European vamps. Or some other scenario we haven’t considered.”
“Crap,” I said. But I rolled my head on my shoulders and blew out my tension, pulling on Beast, who rose in me and sent tendrils of power through my bloodstream. “No shooting. I’m taking him down and asking questions later.”
“Good by me.”
I positioned myself so that I’d be behind the door when it opened. When Derek opened it, I stuck out my foot. He tripped. I rode him down and banged his head on the marble. He went still. Easiest takedown ever. I picked up the paper he had been holding, which turned out to be an envelope, one of the fancy kinds Leo used. I suddenly had a bad feeling about knocking Derek out. Concussions could be healed by a vamp, but insulting a vamp’s hospitality might result in waking up dead. I flipped the envelope over and saw the word Lachish written on the front, in Leo’s fancy penmanship. “Well, crap,” I said.
“Don’t move,” a soft voice said. I looked up to see a guy in jeans and T-shirt, with a weapon pointed at me. Juwan was holding the gun, and he looked way too pleased to see me in his sights at a time when his boss—Derek—was unable to do anything to help or protect me. Juwan had been the driver. Or had followed Derek. Someone had let Juwan out of his cage at vamp HQ, healed him, and sent him after me. His finger began to squeeze the trigger. Rather than reply, I dove to the side, dropping the letter and drawing two nine millimeters. Juwan’s weapon tracked me, and I heard the first shot.
CHAPTER 15
By the Fluids of His Undeath
The next shots were overlaid, concussing and echoing. Half-deaf, I heard a muffled shout as I hit the floor, sliding, swiveling all at once. Only to see Juwan fall. Blood on both thighs.
In a leaping crouch I crossed the floor and shoved the guns away from the fallen man, checking him for additional wounds. Except for pinpricks of closed fang wounds on the skin at his jugular, there were none, but Juwan’s left leg had sustained arterial damage, and blood was spurting into the room. Eli dropped to the floor beside me and went to work, medical supplies appearing from pockets and pouches. He sliced open Juwan’s pants with a small blade and tore open a sterile package—the latest medical wonder, developed for battlefield injuries, injectable, foam, pill-like blocks, contained in a modified syringe. Still deaf, I dialed for help on my cell and held the phone to Eli’s head for him to handle. Fortunately, his headset had protected his hearing in one ear. Then, while he worked to stabilize Juwan, I gathered up all the unfired weapons, my gobag, the envelope addressed to Lachish, and all Eli’s extra ammo, and carried everything to the back fence, dropping them over and beneath a shrub, where it would be hard to spot them from any direction. Just in case.
Minutes later an ambulance and police were out front, probably called by nervous neighbors, and the primo had called a lawyer from Leo’s high-priced firm. The attorney was on the way, my partner was in handcuffs, in the back of a cop car, along with Derek’s driver, and the cops would soon want me at cop central for questioning. Because, yeah, we had one unconscious guy and one shot guy lying on the foyer floor, with evidence of multiple shots fired. But, ummm, we also had a crime scene with multiple bloodstained sites, and no record of police being called to address a vamp problem. How did I explain that? I couldn’t. I had guesses, and all of them might be wrong. After all, it looked like I’d been wrong about Derek and his driver being out to get me.
I caught Eli’s eyes through the unit’s side window, and he gave a single quick nod, off to the side, away from the ruckus. It was a tacit order for me to make our next appointment without him. It also meant that he had likely overheard someone saying I should be arrested too.
I frowned but nodded. I had given a preliminary statement to the cops, little good that it did, and if I stuck around, I’d be in cop central for hours while Joses/Joseph was still on the loose, with backup from some traitorous vamp at HQ. Pulling on Beast’s stealth abilities, I slid into the early shadows and along the house to the back. I leaped the low fence and picked up all the gear.
Crossing yards, courtyards, and streets, jumping fences, and weaving through the falling dark, I hoofed it out of the district, calling for a cab on the way. I hadn’t contacted Rinaldo in ages, but he was working the dinner shift and said he’d pick me up in ten. I emerged on Jackson Avenue and spotted the cabbie in the rush-hour traffic. Which was even more heavy than usual. I was going to be very late to the appointment with Lachish, Molly, and Sabina. On the way, I texted Alex with the deets of the ambush and told him to start reviewing all video showing the entrance to the scion lair where we had trapped Juwan. Fat lotta good it did us.
* * *
I entered the park off of North Rampart Street, rushing up to the iron fence and leaping, grabbing the cross piece at the top, below the stylized, blunt spikes that pointed to the sky. Using my momentum, I levered my body up and over, landing silently on the grass in a crouch. The place smelled like water, grass, flowering plants, pesticides, and other poisons, but not crowds of people. There hadn’t been an event there that day, and if one had been one scheduled for that night, it had been canceled due to the vamp affair and citizen safety. The only sounds were the traffic, the splashing of the fountains, and the movement of the breeze.
I pulled on Beast’s sight and let her night vision, which was so much better than mine, take over. The world turned into greens and silvers, shading off into gray and blue. No reds, not much in the way of yellow, but everything sharper and cleaner and clearer. There was also something I was learning to recognize might be hints of ultraviolet or fluorescent colors—letting big-cats see body fluids the way a crime scene tech would under a black light. Though I had to work to see them, they were occasionally present in night vision, even in human form.
On the b
reeze, I smelled witch magic.
Keeping to the shadows and downwind of the scents, I followed the magic smell, moving across the grounds and the narrow walkways, across bridges over pools of water that had been sculpted to look natural, until I reached the redbrick main building. One side had shutters closed over the windows, a space between the building and a wide pool, and an open lawn with few trees and no privacy, except the shimmering of the magic that hid the gathering. It wasn’t an invisibility charm—there was no such thing—but the obfuscation charm made it hard to focus on the women in the circle. I was supposed to be in the park at sunset to be enclosed in the circle with them. Yeah. I was late. I wondered how much butt kissing I’d have to do to make up for being so rude.
Poured on the grass with what smelled like powdered chalk was a circle; I stood outside it, watching, waiting. Inside the circle, which, in my Beast-sight, flowed up from the ground looking like a wall of pale white wind, were five witches, sitting equidistant from one another. There was no chalk pentagram or pentacle, but I could picture an imaginary star from their positions. I didn’t understand witch workings, though I had learned that there was nothing inherently evil about the star shapes. Pentagrams and pentacles were simple geometry through which energy could flow without stopping, just as it could within a circle, but with points at which the energy could be drawn off and used in a working. A star was a way to control power, like a resistor or regulator.
Molly had once told me that magic users could have used squares, equilateral triangles, or a golden rectangle (a Greek mathematical concept), but the five points of a star—the shape taken from the shape of the human body, just as Leonardo da Vinci had shown with the Vitruvian Man—had proven to provide the best geometric and mathematical stability for a working, and was best when five magic users came together to work energy to a purpose, what laymen called a spell.
The woman I identified as Lachish, an air witch, was sitting at the east and was directing the energies of the working. Molly, an earth witch, was sitting to her left, with Sabina at the fire point, and two others at the moon and stone points. I recognized the last two as Butterfly Lily and her mother, Feather Storm, not their real names, but the only names I’d ever gotten, the two wearing similar flowing skirts and feathers in their hair. The two witches had only weak power and were used by other local witches as routing stations, or bodies through which the workings of energy could flow.
It would be rude, and possibly dangerous, to interrupt a working, and since I was late, I dropped to the grass, crossed my legs guru-style, and pulled patience to me like a cloak. My crosses had started to glow in the presence of the vamp, and I tucked them beneath my shirt to both preserve my night vision and avoid offending Sabina. I could be patient. I could. If they’d hurry up. Within ten minutes of my arrival, Lachish dropped her hands to the ground, bringing down the wall of energy. A slow breeze escaped and tugged at my braid before dissipating, and the tingle of faint magic danced across my exposed skin.
Lachish held up her hands when Molly would have stood to greet me, and my friend settled back to the ground, her expression guarded. “You are Jane Yellowrock,” Lachish said.
“I am. I . . . uh . . . I come in peace.”
Molly rolled her eyes and even Lachish looked amused. She looked a lot like the photo I had seen, though her face was more lined and sun damaged than the picture had indicated. She looked like a farmer, with short, stubby fingers and blotchy, grooved skin. She smelled of horses and chickens and green hay and strong magics.
“No. Seriously,” I said. “I’m not currently working as the MOC’s Enforcer. I come as a partner in Yellowrock Securities, and, yes, we have a contract to do upgrades on the MOC’s properties, but I owe the vamps only the loyalty to keep Leo and his properties safe, not to take on other duties like causing trouble for witches. Oh. And I have a letter for you.” I reached to my side and pulled the envelope from the gobag. It looked rather the worse for wear, the paper creased and scuffed, but the blob of wax that held it intact was still doing its job.
Lachish motioned me in and broke the circle by dusting away the chalk. I stood and stopped, glancing to Molly. “Weapons?”
“Silver and steel must be left outside the circle,” Lachish said for her.
I grunted in dismay and started stripping off the weapons and crosses, my belt buckle, harnesses, and anything else that might interfere with the magic they were working. I kept the ash-wood stakes, but against a master vamp, they were likely worthless. I was about twenty-five pounds lighter, and considerably less secure feeling, when I was done. Leaving my weapons outside the chalk, I stepped through the opening, approaching Lachish across the grass. She snapped her fingers and I felt residual energy spin from the circle, and a tiny flame of witch-light appeared at Lachish’s side. It took serious control to create a witch-light from damping energies, and even more to keep it going and stable. Lachish was showing off and letting me know that she was not someone to be trifled with. And she kept seated, another show of being in control while I came to her.
I lowered the envelope and the leader of the New Orleans coven took it, broke the seal, and removed the letter within. She read while I waited, sneaking a look at Molly’s face, which was asking me what the letter was for. I shrugged back, also with my face, pulling all the muscles down to indicate that I had no idea. Leo could have given the letter to me earlier, assuming it was written then, or could have given it to Sabina to bring, but he hadn’t, so this was an addendum, or . . . whatever. I was a glorified messenger girl. Sabina—vamp face like a white plaster statue—looked neither surprised nor expectant, so that was no help.
I took a look at the two weaker witches, mother and daughter. They looked and dressed alike, wearing filmy skirts and peasant blouses, pastel feathers and shimmery crystals in their earrings. They had been injured last time I saw them, but they looked okay now.
“This—” Lachish stopped. She looked at Sabina, sitting cross-legged to her left, the old vampire looking more peaceful than I had ever seen her. Sabina’s white, white skin and her white wimple gleamed in the darkness, her humongous vampire teeth were retracted on their hinges, and her eyes were almost human looking. “Did you know about this?”
“It is no secret that the Master of the City of New Orleans intends to parley with the Witch Coven of New Orleans and the Witch Coven Council of North America,” Sabina said. “As I have spoken, Leo Pellissier knows that the Mithrans are guilty of much evil against witches and have great reason for contrition. There is ample sin for which to pay penance. And though the evil against witches began long before he had the power to end it, he accepts responsibility for foul deeds. This is the beginning of . . . not payment for the lives lost, for that is never possible, but an offering to show that he intends peace and protection for qui operatur magicae, the opus virtutis, in his hunting grounds.”
Lachish looked to me and I shook my head before she could ask. “I’m thinking Latin,” I said.
Lachish’s teeth flashed white in her witch-light. “I know what the words mean, Jane. I was about to ask if you knew what this was.” She indicated the envelope.
“I have no idea. All I can tell you is that looks like Leo’s handwriting on the outside, and his seal was intact until now.”
“He chose an interesting messenger boy for his offer,” she said, and I was pretty sure the “messenger boy” comment was meant to be both demeaning and full of curiosity. Fortunately I’m hard to insult.
To Molly, Lachish said, “The Master of the City has deeded a piece of property to the coven to be used for the conclave and for future coven needs.”
“Wait,” I said, feeling suddenly sick. “Is it the property on First and Chestnut streets?” Lachish nodded and I settled to my seat in the grass, our eyes now level. I said, “There may be a problem. It may be a while before the house is released by the police.”
Lachish’s eyebrows went up in affront, as if I meant that Leo had deliberately deeded a problem
property to the witches.
“Leo didn’t know when he wrote the letter,” I said quickly. Or maybe he had. He had to know about the blood inside. “A man was shot there today, and also crimes took place in the recent past. It’s a crime scene at the moment. But it won’t involve the witches. I don’t think.” Well, that certainly made her feel all better. Not. “There’ll be quite a few bullet holes to repair, but Leo is handling that. Or I will. And the place needs a good smudging, according to Leo’s head of security and new Enforcer.”
Lachish’s eyebrows were still up. I realized I was running on at the mouth, and also that what I had said made Leo sound like a tightwad or a guy who would deliberately give a bad gift.
“Look,” I said. “The mess with the shooting today was all my fault. I kicked a guy in the nuts earlier after he jumped me in a hallway. Then my partner shot him in the legs.”
“Both of them?” Lachish asked politely.
It took a sec, but I realized she was smiling at me. Well, laughing at me with well-bred restraint, of course. “Yeah. Both nuts, both legs. Eli’s a good shot. I’m thinking a traitor vamp set him on me.”
Lachish said, “We can discuss this offer and its ramifications later. For now, we’re wasting time. The moon won’t be up long tonight, and we have a monster to find.”