Dark Heir

by Faith Hunter

  The Kid had a listing of places where dead humans had been found since sundown—three homeless people drained and dead not far from Louis Armstrong Park. And more recently, places where strange lights had been seen and horrible smells of smoke had been detected—four locations that were near water. The Kid had hacked the NOPD network, which no one mentioned because we needed the intel he had discovered. He pinpointed the sites on a map and sent them to our cells. Each location was farther from the park, as if the stink of burned flesh and odd, unexplained fires had been leapfrogging, moving uptown and beyond, toward the Garden District, which made something in the back of my mind feel all squirrelly, as if that direction made some kind of sense that I didn’t want to think about.

  The Kid stayed busy uploading all the intel to our cells as we debriefed and reweaponed up and found new boots. Blades clicked and slid into sheaths, the schnick of chambers sliding and magazines snapping closed punctuated the commentary as Eli gave us the short version of his time in the pokey. It was succinct. “I was taken in.” Schnick, snap, slide, tap-tap, clack, schnick. “Made my one call to HQ.” Repeat of same sounds but faster. “Leo made a couple calls to the mayor and the governor.” Soft slide of blades being checked and repositioned, leather against steel. “I was let out.”

  I couldn’t be as succinct, but I told the guys about the failure of the snare of thorns trap, about Molly trying to get to the blood diamond, about Sabina being burned, and about Brute chasing Santana. I ended with, “I can’t trust my best friend and I don’t know what to do about it. Or about anything else either.”

  The Kid said, “The first time Molly misused her gift was when?”

  “In Evangelina’s garden, fighting her sister off. She stole the life force of every living thing in the garden to keep her sister from killing us all.”

  “And the blood diamond was present?” Eli asked.

  “Pretty sure Evangelina was using it at the time,” I said, sitting on the couch to pull on my last pair of combat boots. All I had left after this were my Western Luccheses, and no way was I going to ruin the pretty boots on a hunt for a big-bad-ugly. Boot shopping was in my near future. “She had already called the demon in her basement, so, yeah, she had to be drawing on it.”

  “Molly’s magic was tainted in the garden, before she came into contact with the angel Hayyel,” Eli said, testing the movement of a gun into and out of a holster. That statement seemed important too, but nothing was becoming a cohesive whole in the front of my brain. “And since then, she’s been wavering close to out of control.”

  I nodded. “The angel Hayyel did good stuff and bad stuff to us all. It seems kinda weird that he did nothing to Molly.”

  “That we know of,” Alex said. “Anything might have happened then.”

  “And KitKit?” Eli asked. “Was the cat there tonight?”

  I had forgotten about the cat. “No.” I sat back on the couch and closed my eyes, feeling a little weird, doing this in front of the boys, as I breathed in, sniffing for the cat. I placed the highest concentration of cat scent at the stink of the litter box in the back, in the utility/laundry room, and the whiff of cat food from upstairs. The next strongest concentration of cat pong came from behind me. I got up and followed my nose through the kitchen into the butler’s pantry. The cat was curled, asleep, on the top open shelf, among some dusty teapots I hadn’t had a chance to investigate, her small tail hanging down.

  Back in the living room, I said, “Molly doesn’t want the other witches to know she has a familiar.”

  “Peer pressure,” Alex said, seriously, nodding. “She’s afraid they’ll make fun of her.” Which wasn’t what I was thinking, though it fit.

  Eli said, “She needs to take the cat with her all the time because now her affinity for the diamond grows every time she’s anywhere near it. It’s black magic just like her death magics, and they feed off each other.”

  I looked at my partner in surprise. For a former active-duty Army Ranger who, until recently, knew nothing about magic, the guy had come a long way. “Makes sense,” I agreed. “The cat has a den on the top shelf of the butler’s pantry. Alex, can you handle Molly if she comes back while we’re gone?”

  Alex lifted a shoulder. “When I hear her coming, I’ll throw the cat at her. If that doesn’t work, look for a warty frog hopping on the keyboards when you get back. Find me a princess to kiss me. I want tongue.”

  “Gross,” I said.

  “Fried frog legs,” Eli said with a slight twitch of his lips.

  Alex flipped his brother off and we left the house on that loving family moment.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Stench of Barbecued Vamp

  Eli’s SUV had been released by the police to Leo, and a lower-level blood-servant picked us up out front and drove us to vamp HQ. Eli and I dropped the driver off around the block from the Council Chambers when he said he could get back through the mob safely, and I figured he knew about the secret entrance in the outer wall. We headed into the night, following up on police reports, answering calls from Jodi, and talking to the vamp who had interrogated Juwan—meaning drinking from him until he was blood-drunk, making him take a sip or two of vamp blood, and then reading his mind, which essentially made Juwan a plaything. It was the way vamps fed, and when it was with the human’s agreement, it was legal, if morally questionable. When the human was not in agreement, it was . . . despicable. Making me despicable for ordering it. But if it helped me stop the Son of Darkness, I could live with despicable. The conversation was pithy and not very informative.

  “Yo. Edmund. You’re on speakerphone. You get anything outta Juwan?”

  “Jane. Such a pleasure to talk with you. Are you certain I can’t do anything to share that pleasure with you?”

  Eli laughed. More a snicker, really. And it was too dark for him to see my scowl. I wanted to swat both of them, but Edmund Hartley was inside vamp HQ and I had a feeling that swatting Eli could get a bigger hit back.

  “Eddie. Focus. This is business,” I said.

  “Eddie?” Eli said, incredulity lacing the word.

  “You wound me, my darling Jane. When my only desire is to ravish you with sensual delights and bring you to intense heights of carnal satisfaction.”

  Eli’s eyebrows went up. It was stupid and, with us in the middle of chasing down a murdering vamp on fire, not the right time, but I laughed, which was what Edmund intended. If I could like a vamp, I liked Edmund, and I still wanted to discover his story, but another time, another place. “Yada yada yada,” I said.

  “True. But are you more relaxed?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Thanks. Now, about Juwan.”

  “For a human, he is inordinately difficult to read.”

  That stumped me, because Edmund, though technically a bond slave, was tremendously powerful, a master vamp under any other circumstances. “So you got nothing?”

  “I saw Adrianna in a variety of lascivious positions, none of them likely to have been a result of reality, but he was definitely smitten. Other than our brain-dripping prisoner, I saw only one other Mithran, and it was a bare glimpse.”

  “And,” I said, letting my impatience show.

  “It may have been nothing. Or everything.”

  “Okay. I got it. I can’t skewer her on sight.”

  Slowly, he said, “Dominique.”

  There were a lot of vamps. Hundreds in the New Orleans territory alone. But there was only one Dominique, and that was the heir to Clan Arceneau. Arceneau’s blood-master was Grégoire. Grégoire was Leo’s second-in-command. And Leo’s lover. I had been hoping I had been wrong about Adrianna’s partner in crime, but it seemed the scents in Adrianna’s bed were not misleading. “Well, crap,” I breathed.

  “Yes. My sentiments exactly.”

  “Edmund, when the prisoner in sub-five got away, he left a pile of nearly dead humans on the floor, humans who had to be fed and turned, and a bunch of you showed up just in time. Dominique was there. So were you.” Edmu
nd didn’t respond, so I asked, “Who was there first? How did you all know to come down there?”

  Cautiously, Edmund said, “Dominique was standing at the top of the stairway on sub-three. She called us down, to turn the humans.”

  Just as carefully, I asked, “Why was Dominique at Council Chambers? Was she invited? A party? Something?”

  “No. She is seldom here. I admit to surprise at seeing her, though at the time it didn’t register as odd.”

  I remembered seeing Grégoire sniffing around sub-five after the Son of Darkness got away. Had he been smelling Dominique? I asked, “Was there any indication that she had, possibly, just maybe, been in sub-five?”

  “There was blood on her dress. A fine mist of it up the front of the skirt in a slender V shape, as from an arterial spray. Human blood, fresh, by the smell. But that could have come from anywhere.”

  “In a V shape,” I said. “As if she had been wearing a cloak and took it off after she had been sprayed with blood?”

  Edmund said, “Anything is possible.”

  “Thank you, Edmund. I’ll not divulge where I learned of this.” I ended the call. I had no idea how to handle this. None at all.

  * * *

  Eli and I talked for a bit as he drove, trying to think like an old vamp and trying to decide what to do about Dominique and checking out every site that might lead us to the Son of Darkness, without having to bring her or Grégoire into the picture. Because going after his heir based on only a glimpse from a traitor’s blood-drunk brain could get us both killed, fast.

  I texted Alex to have security at HQ look for footage of Dominique before, during, and after Santana got away. I texted the security team at HQ to search for a scarlet cloak. Nifty electronics and digital toys could get us only so far; then the human eye had to take over and search. I got back a text telling me that Derek had shown up at the house, ticked off at being ambushed in the empty clan home. In the next second, I received one from Derek himself that said, You and me gotta have this out. No more bullshit.

  I texted back, Watch your language. Thought you mighta switched teams, hanging out with Juwan.

  No. I. Gave. My. Word.

  “Ouch,” I said aloud. The punctuation suggested that Derek was severely ticked off. And yeah, with reason. I had a feeling I was gonna have to make nice-nice with Derek for a long time over this. I texted back.

  I am sorry. When SoD is caught we’ll talk. Though I had a feeling it might be more fists and feet and less talking. I really needed to work on my social skills.

  Eli and I stopped first at an alleyway near Louis Armstrong Park, not far from where Santana got pricked by the sliver of the Blood Cross. The homeless men had been living in cardboard boxes behind a Dumpster, and according to the scent on the dead men’s throats, they had been drained by a burned and bleeding Joseph Santana. After that, things were less certain. The total draining of three humans had been enough blood to get Santana away from the park, but not enough to heal him completely. Not enough to put out the fire burning him from the inside out. For that he needed vamp blood, priestess blood in particular. Fortunately for us, there wasn’t a priestess handy and unprotected.

  Unfortunately, there were old vamps around and less protected than I would like. I remembered the consensus about the SoD being out of touch with modern times. There had been four clan homes in the Garden District, back then, when Santana came to New Orleans as visiting royalty. He had been feted and entertained and wined and dined—or wined and blooded—at all of them. Currently, three of the Garden District’s clan homes were vacant—Mearkanis, Rousseau, and Desmarais—empty of everything but ghosts, as the visit to the old Mearkanis home had demonstrated. But one was still inhabited. Arceneau Clan Home, Grégoire’s home, and Grégoire had been drinking from Santana. The Son of Darkness might want revenge. And a traitor had seen Dominique, the Arceneau heir, who was currently controlling the clan home in the Garden District while the clan blood-master waited on Leo. We went there first.

  Brandon and Brian, Onorio twins and Grégoire’s primos and security specialists (despite the fact that Onorios can’t be bound to a vamp), met us at the front drive. The wrought-iron gate was locked, the house was dark, the shutters closed, and the twins were decked out in low-light and infrared headgear, top-of-the-line coms gear, a multitude of blades and arms, including shotguns in spine holsters, and full Enforcer regalia. I had never seen them wearing the leathers of Enforcers. And all I could think was Oh. My. Gosh. Holy. Crap. My reaction must have showed on my face when I exited the SUV.

  “She likes the way we look,” Brandon said, identified by his scent, and sounding satisfied.

  “Too little too late. She turned us down in favor of George,” Brian said, automatically repositioning so that his brother and he could both shoot and take us down with ease but not catch each other or the house in the cross fire.

  “The way I heard it,” Eli said, beeping the SUV locked and stepping behind it so he was protected but in an excellent firing position, “you boys never offered her anything. George got her by default.”

  “Never offered?” Brian said. “She clearly never told you about the nights in Asheville.”

  “She stayed in our rooms. With us.”

  “I had my own room,” I said crossly, sniffing the night and searching the shadows for signs of anything out of place. For the smell of Santana. For the smell of Dominique. Someone had been cooking spicy fried food, the smell/taste of peppers, shrimp, and hot oil on the air. No smell of scorched vamp or Dominique. “No fighting in the ranks, boys. We need to know that Grégoire is safe. Joseph Santana got burned and he’ll be looking for strong vampire blood to feed him.”

  “And what burned him?” Brandon asked, his voice a little too silky for my tastes. And for Eli’s too, seemingly, since he showed the nine mil he had drawn, aiming it between the brothers. I took two steps to the side so I was out of the line of fire. “It’s okay, Eli,” I said. “Sabina’s sliver of the Blood Cross burned him. She’s burned too, but Del is sending Leo to her.” And if my answer let them believe that Sabina was burned when the priestess wielded the sliver of the ancient weapon against Joseph Santana, well, I was learning to lie by omission way better than I wanted. It made the skin between my shoulder blades twitch, as if God was watching and wasn’t happy with my methods.

  “Is the priestess okay?” Brian asked.

  “Arm burned to blackened bones. Not in very good control.”

  The brothers looked at each other and flipped their night-vision goggles out of the way. “We’ve heard tales about the months after she used the Blood Cross to stop the Damours back in the late seventeen hundreds. It was bad.”

  Brian rested his left elbow on the hilt of a sword. “Amaury cleaned out his scion lair and locked her in. It took the better part of a decade for her to heal enough to regain control around humans. Or so they say.”

  Or so they say was a common phrase humans used around vamps, because vamps explained nothing and offered even less fresh intel. Vamps were born and bred on secrets. Or rather, raised from the dead and nursed on bloody secrets.

  “Some say she didn’t come back to herself until Amaury put her on a boat and sent her to the Europeans. They fed her on the oldest Mithrans. The Sons of Darkness even offered blood,” Brandon said. “Or so they say.”

  “Old tales,” Brian said, and changed the subject. “Grégoire is safe, here. He rose with us at dusk, fed, and is currently on conference calls with his businessman in the Philippines.”

  “Here?” I asked.

  “Yes. Why?” Brian asked.

  “Who’s watching him?” Eli asked.

  “As per the orders of the Enforcer,” Brian said, his tone going glacial at a perceived questioning of his decision-making process, “we’re integrating the teams. With our master are three of the new people from Atlanta and four of the Tequila boys.” Team Tequila had been with Derek since the beginning.

  “No offense, Grandpa,” Eli said, his
expression and tone proving his words a lie.

  “None taken, Sonny.”

  “I can’t take you anywhere,” I said to Eli. And then I asked the Onorio twins the really important question. “And Dominique?”

  “Away. With her scions.”

  “I’ll need that address,” I said slowly.

  The twins altered position in the dark, the difference subtle but certain. They were ready to draw weapons. “Why?” Brandon asked.

  I shifted my own position, just as delicately, to keep any stray shots from neighboring houses. It was like a dance. The boys might like me, but if they thought I was the slightest threat to their master, they’d hurt me bad. “Because there is some indication that she was involved with Adrianna.” Behind me, Eli’s weapons ratcheted as he readied two, seemingly at the same time, which took dexterity. My partner wasn’t subtle at all.

  The twins glanced at each other, and some indefinable communication occurred, a twin thing where layers of exchanges were taking place, even as they glanced back to us. Brian said, “You understand that this request places us in a difficult position. You understand that as head of clan security, we know the most personal and confidential details of our clan Mithrans’ lives and are charged with their protection, well-being, and their privacy.”

  “I do. I know how to protect those who give me the information I need,” I said. “And I know that we have a killer on the loose who threatens the delicate balance of safety between the Mithran world and the human one.”

  Silence settled between us as the two thought and impatience crawled under my skin. No way to bash the info out of them, but I wanted to. Thoughtfully, Brandon said, “Dominique is in love with Grégoire.”

  I considered that for a bit, before saying, “And Grégoire is in love with Leo.”

  “Yes,” Brandon said, his tone weighty. There was a lot of meaning in that simple word.

  “Our clan heir has a new lair in the Garden District, but we don’t know where,” Brian said, the words formal and guarded. “Dominique has been staying there often, for the last few weeks. When she comes home she smells of blood. Mithran blood.”