True Dead

by Faith Hunter

“Twelve, including Dovic. The highest-ranking member of the clan currently on-site appears to be a three-hundred-year-old Russian Naturaleza female named Zariyah. She’s wearing a silver earring, the clip-on kind. Thema is staring at her and smiling. If vamps could sweat, Zariyah would be sweating bullets. But the parley was for twenty-four on each side, so I’m not ruling anything out.”

  “The second string arrived first,” I said.

  “Except for Dovic. Which means the first string is busy elsewhere or waiting to make an entrance. We have lookouts on the roof and two drones flying, one directly overhead and another one in a wider circle that covers the downtown side of the Garden District. There are spotters at each hotel where our uninvited guests are staying, and we have shooters for three blocks around the clan home.”

  “Mr. Prepared.”

  “Always, babe.”

  “When do you want me to make an entrance?”

  “Why don’t you be fashionably late. I’ll send up tea and a laptop for you to watch the security cameras.”

  I brightened. “Ducky. And something else to eat? I finished off the burgers, so maybe cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches?”

  “You don’t eat cucumber sandwiches,” Eli said distinctly.

  “I do tonight. And though I needed the burgers to shift into half-form, I’m pretty tired of protein.”

  Eli’s silence was telling. Because I was never tired of protein.

  * * *

  * * *

  Tea and cucumber sandwiches were the reason I was sitting in my swanky bedroom at Yellowrock Clan Home when Shaun MacLaughlinn and his small army showed up.

  CHAPTER 19

  Yada Yada Blah Blah

  Thanks to the drones and the spotters, we had plenty of warning, and I even had time to brush my fangs before the action began. Shaun MacLaughlinn’s people came racing through the city in Jeeps with no doors, all heavily armed. The police had reports of “armed gang activity” from the time the vamps left Marigny and hit the streets, heading uptown. Thanks to the lines of communication between local and state officials, roadblocks were ready and went up everywhere to keep the city’s usual revelers from danger. Cops gave chase from a safe distance, SWAT was already in position in the outer perimeter around the clan home, and Bruiser joined Aya on conference calls to the chief of police—Chief Walker, who owed his life to me—to coordinate the defense of the public.

  By the time Shaun reached the Garden District, the invading vamps and their toy soldiers were locked down from a military standpoint, and by the time they pulled up in front of the clan home, they were surrounded, laser targeting sights on all of them. Comms was a screaming chaos, SWAT and Eli’s teams were everywhere, working together because they had to. There was more than the number of attackers we had planned on, far more than the additional twelve vamps Shaun had agreed to. He had brought a ragtag army of humans and forty vampires. Not that the vamps fully understood what the targeting lasers meant. Powerful vamps always had blind spots where modern machinery, electronics, and military equipment were concerned.

  But the humans with the invading vamps were a different matter. Mercenaries, accustomed to attacking unarmed foes for pay and walking away unharmed, knew what the tiny targeting lights meant. They simply put down their weapons, locked their hands behind their necks, and sat on the street as cops surrounded them at close range, weapons trained on them. I hoped the mercenary group had already cashed their check, because replacing the weapons was going to be pretty pricy. NOLA law enforcement would surely confiscate the high-powered weapons.

  That left the vamps who had broken parley and then shown up with armed soldiers to break it again. None of the vamps put up a fight either. Within sixty seconds of the mercenaries quitting, most of them voluntarily disarmed and were lying on the ground under Eli’s guard. That was the thing about making a clan out of the remains of disbanded clans and rogue vamps. No loyalty. It wasn’t lost on me that I had done exactly the same thing.

  When the scene was secured, local cops were allowed to take the mercenaries away, and Bruiser had his team bring all the vamps to the porte cochere, where drones couldn’t hover overhead and watch him work. He and his crew went through the vamps, staking the ones not on the invitation list. We couldn’t simply behead them in sight of the cops and the neighbors. The uninvited extras would be moved off site, read and bled, and either claimed by a stronger vamp or . . . dispatched. For now, we had a row of staked vamps on the property, which no one liked, because a staked vamp could be unstaked and put back to fight quickly, but it was the best we could do.

  Quint laughed at the sight of staked vamps on my computer screen. It was a weird sound, a kind of laughter I both liked and hated at the same time. My feelings about Quint were all over the place. I hoped they settled into something stable soon.

  The cameras shifted to inside as Shaun MacLaughlinn and his allowable additional twelve vamps were permitted to enter the house. Following them, I switched the security view to the inside cams.

  Even with Shaun wearing his Snake of Snakes armband over a silk shirt the color of fresh blood, it was an ignominious entrance, and the vamps who had been waiting inside looked frustrated and angry, possibly because they had seen their army taken down without a shot fired or a single instance of personal combat. The big ugly video screen had carried it all live. I guessed they would move to plan C now, because no way did they have only one plan for tonight. But until they started something our people could kill them for, everything rested on the outcome of the duel. The futures of the entire city, and probably the entire U.S. Mithran organization, rested on Koun and Dovic. Except . . . They had broken parley. I opened the parley agreement and saw that one type of ammo wasn’t among the list of proscribed weapons, an omission—probably accidental—which gave us an advantage.

  A smile stretched my face. Quint watched me the way a mouser cat watched a mouse.

  I asked Eli over comms, “Were our enemies carrying silver-lead hollowpoint shredders?”

  “No My Queen,” he said.

  Into my mic and to Quint I said, “They broke parley multiple times. If everything goes to crap, silver-lead hollowpoint shredder rounds are not proscribed. No mercy.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Quint said, her eyes lighting with glee.

  “On it,” Eli said. “I’m also having your Infermieri, Florence, brought here. Things could go bad in a heartbeat.”

  I could hear Quint changing out mags. Snap, slap, click. Four times. Eli was giving orders. On the laptop, I studied each face as my enemies entered the main room, watched the body language, and concentrated on Shaun as he walked up the few steps to the landing on the staircase. He started an irate monologue about the rights of vamps to command, hunt, and own humans. About how no Mithran or Naturaleza should ever allow a foul creature to rule them and how the only way that anyone would pledge loyalty to that beast was if they were weak or if some great magic was forcing them. Yada yada blah blah.

  Except the great magic he was talking about was the Glob and le breloque. The old stories suggested that the corona gave the wearer the ability to force vamps to comply. The stories were right, but only for a limited time and to a very limited extent, at least for this Dark Queen. Those same stories said that the vamps had risen up against the last Dark Queen and killed her, probably because she tried to rule with an iron fist and could only control a few of them at a time. Me running amok and treating them like puppets was not a happy-happy-joy-joy thought being planted in my loyal vamps’ heads. By their expressions, it wasn’t taking, at least not for now.

  When Shaun wound down, Bruiser let a silence build before he walked the four steps up to the small landing to stand beside Shaun. He introduced himself, beginning with his previous title as primo and ending with “and I am now honored to be the Consort of the Dark Queen of all Mithrans.” My heart melted.

  Shaun sneered.

 
Politely, Bruiser suggested that Shaun’s herald provide the introductions and announcements of titles, but he didn’t cede the dais to the herald, which left the enemy’s ceremonial vamp standing on the first step, his back to Bruiser, which I could tell Shaun hated. The herald had an amazing voice, deep and sonorous, but since Shaun had no land and no city—which had been turned over to Grégoire when Shaun’s anamchara Dominique was executed—the intro didn’t take long. The herald had little to work with.

  Dovic’s intro took quite a bit longer, as his intro included all the vamps he had beheaded in battle, personal combat, and duello. It was an impressive list, except it was clear at the end that he had avoided a duel with Edmund and Grégoire, which meant he had been in hiding during the takeover of Europe. The entire time the herald called out his kills, Dovic stared at Koun. His body was positioned so that I couldn’t see his face from any camera, but his hatred of Koun was evident in every line of his body.

  Koun, on the other hand, looked bored. When the long list of kills was done, the herald turned back to Bruiser and said, “And your warrior?”

  Koun raised his eyebrows, stared at his rival, and said matter-of-factly, “I am Koun. No past kills have value tonight, only the kill I shall register moments from now. This night, I shall be known as the executioner of Dovic, the Arrogant Fool.”

  Dovic didn’t like that. His head came up, and he vamped out, fast.

  Koun still looked bored.

  “And that’s your cue,” Quint said.

  I slapped the crown on my head, and it tightened painfully. Standing, I walked out of my bedroom, down the hallway, and stopped at the top of the stairs.

  Bruiser called out, “The Dark Queen of the Mithrans.”

  Every head turned to me. I exhaled a long slow breath, letting my scent fill the room. I had never smelled like a typical skinwalker, all flowery with spring blooms. I had always smelled like what I was. A predator.

  Four of Shaun’s first twelve vamps vamped out in reaction, uncontrolled, a sign of weakness. All but three of the others shifted body positions slightly, as if to ready for attack. My people stood their ground.

  Bruiser continued, “She has many titles and land and clans, but nothing can eclipse the crown she wears.”

  Shaun, Dovic, and three vampires are predators worthy of us, Beast thought at me. All others are weak.

  We could die, I thought at her. Let’s not start any fights we can’t win.

  Inside me, Beast chuffed. Beast does not fight what humans call fair. Beast is best ambush hunter.

  Quint stepped in front of me, her eyes darting here and there, indicating she was at high alert. She started down the stairs.

  Much slower, letting them look, letting my scent fill the room, I started down, one slow step at a time. Beast poured strength and power into my bigger frame, and a kind of grace that only a hunting cat has. She looked through my human eyes, giving them that odd gold glow of my cat. I moved slowly, seeing everything the way a cat does, every inhalation when the vamp should be still, every slight shift of weight. The enemy vamps had never seen such a thing as I was. It made them flinch.

  I saw faster than Quint, when Zariyah twitched to draw a throwing blade. The old Russian Naturaleza snapped back her arm. Beast fast, I pulled my own, dodged down and gripped the railing in my offhand. Leaped into the air. Released my blade. Heard the sound of a blade spearing, impacting the wall where my head had been.

  Quint’s blade and mine pierced Zariyah’s throat almost simultaneously, above her gorget. She staggered back. Eli put a round into her forehead. She slumped. Everything went still for a heartbeat, for those of us whose hearts that still beat.

  Shaun screamed a challenge that I barely heard over the deafness from the gunshot. “You have broken parley!” He drew his sword and took a step toward me.

  Quint shouted back, “No! Your people did!” She pointed at the blade, still quivering in the wall.

  “You put that there!” Shaun shouted.

  “Cameras!” I demanded.

  Shaun shut up.

  “All the outclan priestesses sworn to this city are dead,” Eli said calmly, his weapon aimed at Shaun’s head. “There’s no one here to judge a duello, so we placed cameras to prove or disprove parley infractions. Put away your sword, or I’ll put a round in your brain too.”

  “Cameras?” Shaun sounded dumbfounded, as if he had never heard of cameras.

  “Onscreen,” El said into his mic. He tilted his head at the ugly screen on the wall. All heads turned to the screen. Four camera views came up in slo-mo, quarter time. Zariyah’s hand reaching down, pulling a blade. Snapping back her hand. Me doing my amazing acrobatics. Zariyah’s blade just missing me in the air. My blade and Quint’s landing in Z’s throat. Eli’s headshot.

  “Your people have broken parley multiple times in this night alone,” Bruiser said. “We will show the world your perfidy.”

  Eli said, “The footage has been loaded up into the V-web.”

  Shaun asked, “V-web? What—”

  “Think of it like the dark web but for vampires,” Eli said. “The Dark Queen set it up to monitor vampire honor. Most of you have none.”

  I had done what? I had heard that V-web term before and had found no time to discover what it was.

  “Me,” Alex said into my earbud. “I did it. You can tell me I’m brilliant later.”

  Oh. Alex. You brilliant little stinker, you.

  In his vampire ceremony tones, Bruiser said, “Your perfidy is known and exposed. All will scoff at you and yours.” He lifted one hand to show the screen with the proof. “No one will do business with you. No one will trade blood-servants. All will give you the cut direct.” That meant they would be shunned by everyone in the vamp world.

  “Enough of this!” Shaun shouted. “Duello!”

  Two of Eli’s hidden snipers raised up and aimed into the arena. Koun drew his swords. Everyone drew swords. Two shots rang out. Two enemy vamps fell.

  Dovic, swords at high and middle positions, raced into the ring. Exactly as he was supposed to. Except Koun wasn’t there, I was. Where I had landed when Zariyah attacked. Koun was still at the stair landing. Dovic raced at me, vamp-fast, air popping. I reached for a vamp-killer.

  But my blade hung slightly out of place on the new armor. I hadn’t given it a final adjustment before I came down the stairs. I was going to be far too slow against the master fanghead dueler.

  Koun was instantly behind Dovic. Vamped out eyes wide, fangs down.

  Quint was suddenly just there, in front of me, two short blades up, two throwing knives clenched in her front teeth. She was tiny. So tiny.

  I got my blade free.

  Quint ducked, rolled, took out Dovic’s legs. Knocking into him. He began a flip, which slowed, slowed, slowed as battlefield time took over. His swords swooped down toward me.

  Eli bowled me over. Drawing up into a ball. Pushing off the floor with his left foot, that leg behind him stretched out.

  Quint stabbed up into Dovic’s crotch. Into the small join between Dyneema and plasticized armor. Into his groin. Dovic screamed the ululation of a vamp in mortal peril. He was still falling.

  Dovic’s longsword cut down, slicing into a seam in Eli’s armor, into his thigh. The blade stopped. I heard/felt the blade hit Eli’s femur. Blood spurted. Our momentum pulled the flesh and bone free of the blade with an audible crack. The sword ripped out. Folding back armor, muscle, and tendons in startling scarlet. Almost as an afterthought, blood pulsed out.

  We rolled into the kitchen. Battle erupted behind us.

  Before we even came to a stop, I was ripping open Eli’s medical pouches and pockets and pulling out supplies. I remembered bits from my medical training. Don’t use a tourniquet on a limb that you hope to save.

  Except in arterial damage cases.

  Blood spurted,
spurted, spurted.

  Around me and behind me, battle had broken out. Screams, the clash of swords, gunshots. Quint and Thema stood over Eli and me, weapons slashing and firing. Kojo covered us from the other side and shot a vamp who tried to get to us there. Raising his sword, he beheaded the vamp. Dovic’s head dropped to the floor, followed by his body.

  I shut down. No emotion. I gripped the fabric of Eli’s armor, tearing it down his leg. Exposing the avulsion. The position of the sword strike started just below his butt, a lateral cut that had impacted the bone, fractured it, then slid down, separating the muscle from the bone, cutting/tearing tendons, muscles, veins, and arteries. Deadly. In seconds, not minutes.

  Beast shoved power in to me. My knobby hands were strong as I strapped a tourniquet on Eli’s upper thigh at the groin. Yanked it tight.

  Littermate, Beast whispered. In addition to the strength, she poured speed into me.

  Florence landed beside me. She ripped the flesh of her own arm and her blood poured over Eli’s wound. Infermieri blood. “Close the wound,” she demanded, her words sharp as glass.

  Drenched in the blood of my adopted brother, I slapped the muscle back into place over the fractured bone. Began wrapping rolled gauze around and around. It wasn’t enough. Blood still poured through. He was dying. Florence cut her wrist again and held it over Eli’s mouth. He swallowed twice. His mouth went slack.

  I couldn’t save him.

  Sabina could. Sabina was dead.

  Bethany could save him. Bethany was dead.

  Leo. . . . He had said he would come if I called, but I didn’t have a number for him. But I had other things.

  I pulled a small blade and sliced a cut along the side of my forehead, just above my right temple. Not too deep, but enough to make a big freaking damn mess, my blood pouring over le breloque. With my other hand, I wiped Eli’s blood onto the crown. In my pocket, the Glob heated and burned, a frigid burn like dry ice applied to my flesh. I wrapped my mind and my will into the Glob. Into le breloque. The magic of the Dark Queen was crystalline and bright. With it, I saw all the tiny pockets of time-no-time and space-no-space where the Glob stored all the energies it took when it ripped magic out of the world. All the stored energies I might ever need were contained and stored in the Glob. I let my own crystalline might touch three of the small pockets, emptying them all into the power that was mine. Pouring magic and power into me. Into me. With my bright power, I shaped that magic.