by Faith Hunter
“No, but I’m close.”
“Good. Now go take a shower. You’re living up to your nickname.” At his puzzled look, I said. “Stinky. I’ve named you Stinky and it’ll stay Stinky until you remember to shower every day.”
“And when I remember?” he asked, sounding belligerent.
“Then it’ll be Kid.”
“Like Kid Rock?”
“More like Billy the Kid, Cisco Kid, the Durango Kid.” When he still looked puzzled, I said, “Do an Internet search. And it’s a crying shame when an American teenage boy doesn’t know his gunslingers.” I slapped him on the back of the head. “Good work, Stinky.”
I finished making my tea and went back to my laptop. Shortly, I heard footsteps up the stairs and then shower water going. “The Durango Kid? He’s a modern-day shooter.”
I looked up to see Eli standing in front of the open bookcase. He had a habit of standing with his arms loose, one hand near the spot where a military sidearm might go, the other on his thigh where he might wear a military knife. “Yeah. A cowboy six-shooter. There was an old black-and-white film about the Durango Kid.”
“You watch old black-and-white cowboy films.” It was said with a hint of disbelief.
“Yeah. The kind where your people kill off my people and steal our land, and somehow make murder and theft seem heroic.”
A hint of amusement twinkled into Eli’s eyes in response to my sarcasm. He said, “My people? You mean the mongrels of society? I have ancestors who were slaves and ancestors who owned slaves.”
He was of mixed blood, mixed race, which I had suspected from his skin tone. Alex was much paler than Eli. Maybe they were half brothers? I brought my mind back to the conversation and tilted my head to show he had made his point.
“You’re good with Alex,” he said. “We were doing nothing but fighting about him showering.” The twinkle bled away. After a moment he said, “We were fighting about everything, actually.”
“Yeah. You treat him like a son or a soldier, instead of like a brother. He wants you to like him and admire him and love him. Maybe in that order.”
“Hmmph,” Eli said. “And you know this about families when you were raised in a children’s home?”
That could have been intended to be snide or even hurtful, but the look on his face was simply puzzled. I squelched the retort budding on my lips. I didn’t explain about my early years very often, mainly because it sometimes brought the memories back, like a tsunami, overwhelming, overpowering, visceral, and intense. With Alex’s ability to ferret out info on the Web, it wasn’t a surprise that the brothers knew about my history. “I came out of the woods at age twelve, give or take, with no language, no social skills, no nothing. I watched the body language and interactions between the kids and the adults in the home long before I could understand what they were saying. Tone and intent were clear enough even to the outsider. Your tone and body language say you don’t trust him. Your tone and body language say you are the boss and he better listen to you or else.”
“Yeah? So?”
“What do you mean So?” Men can be so obtuse sometimes. “He’s not a soldier under your command. This is family, not the army. And Alex doesn’t understand that you love him and want to protect him and that’s why you are all over him like white on rice. Tell him you like him. Tell him you admire what he can do. And back off and let him make mistakes. He’ll respect you more for it. Sheesh.” I went back to my research. Eli tucked his thumbs in his pockets and meandered up the stairs, I hoped to play nice-nice with his baby brother.
Before dark, Alex sent me an e-mail with an attachment, and stood over me with a half-proud, half-sheepish grin as I opened the document he’d sent. As I studied the file, he fidgeted, sitting down, standing up, roaming around and around the room. Without looking up, I said, “Stop. Light somewhere. Explain this to me.”
“It’s how Lucas Vazquez de Allyon is making some vamps sick when they to go Blood-Call for a date, without letting his Typhoid Mary out of his sight.”
I felt lighter, as if someone had just taken a lead overcoat off me. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Proof that Blood-Call has everything to do with the sick master vamps.”
I leaned back in my chair and said, “Okay. Shoot. Convince me.”
An hour later, I realized that the Kid had hacked into another government agency and found something in the CDC’s employee files that might help lead us to someone who could heal all the sick vamps in the nation—proof of what the plague really was, and how it had been developed—because it wasn’t something that had appeared naturally. Alex was grinning like a trained monkey, and I smiled back. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“So, do I rate a Big Mac?”
“Nope. The lady had to tell you to shower,” Eli said from the opening to the safe room. “But you did good, kid. Real good. I’m proud of you.” Eli turned back without waiting to see what effect his words had on Alex. The Kid glowed pink from his palms to his ear tips. I managed not to grin, which might have spoiled it for him, and nodded instead, my eyes on the screen. “What he said. Good work.”
“Okay. Okay, then.” Alex stood, bristling with energy, with purpose, with poorly concealed delight. “I’ll have a cup of coffee. You want one, Eli? Jane, you want tea?”
“Sure,” we both said at the same time. Eli tipped his head around the door just enough to see his brother go into the kitchen. When the Kid was gone, Eli tilted his head at me in thanks. And I realized that, maybe, we had just become a team. Turning away, I called a high-level parley at Katie’s.
* * *
Alex, showing his nerves by the way one knee jerked spasmodically, stood in front of a specially picked small group of vamps and humans. I stood over to the side, where I had a good view of every person in the group. Leo, who I wanted to stake on sight or curl up at his feet, sat front and center in a padded chair that looked like a throne. Katie, his heir, Grégoire, his second heir should Katie predecease him, Troll, Grégoire’s B-twins, Brandon and Brian, all the clan heads still alive after the battle, and a smattering of humans and servants sat or stood around the walls. The room was crowded, even with the silver cages removed and the furniture back in place, and over it all rode the half-muted tingle of power and the scent of Leo Pellissier, peppery parchment, still tainted with the faint, fermented hint of too much blood. It made me grind my teeth, and I had to breathe slowly to keep my heart rate from speeding and betraying my emotional state. The MOC didn’t look my way, to see if I was okay, or still hurt from his attack.
The room fell silent for long, awkward seconds and finally Leo turned his head and met my eyes, his own guileless and superior. Even though my brain said to ram a silver stake through his black heart, I still wanted to fulfill his wishes, the result of the dregs of the binding that still trapped me. I wondered fleetingly how bad it would be if I had no way to resist, if the binding was permanent, and not something that Beast and I could destroy eventually. I didn’t want to think about what a person would do or become if she had no will at all. Rather than do what I wanted most, I broke the master’s gaze and nodded to Alex.
He cleared his throat. “Hi. I’m Alex.” He wiped his sweating palms on his pants. “Okay. Well. Yeah. Okay.” He took a breath and launched into his spiel. “The disease is from a mutated strain of the Filoviridae ebola virus, one that can be safely carried by humans,” Alex said, opening with a bang. It was clear from Leo’s reaction that even old vamps knew of the Ebola virus. The MOC sat back in his chair slowly, as if putting distance between himself and Alex. The other vamps took a collective half step back.
“The only human known to have contracted the virus,” Alex said, oblivious of the vamps’ reactions, “was one Tanya Petrov, a virologist who worked at Greyson Labs. Two weeks after she contracted the virus, the lab was purchased by de Allyon’s company, and the victim vanished from a level-four containment facility, while under lockdown, something that was not supposed to be able to happen. Subsequent
electronic forensics showed the disappearance took place between four a.m. and four-ten a.m., when there was a disruption in the digital security system.
“A few years earlier, a boutique pharmaceutical company called DeAli, owned by our head evil dude, announced trials for a new drug that was supposed to help an existing cancer chemotherapy drug locate and penetrate cancer cells with the help of a deactivated virus. This drug was never released to the general market, though it went through all the trials with excellent results and has been in production for months in small batches. The drug never got a market name, and goes by the moniker VR1389. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll call it VR.” Alex grinned when he looked up, seeing all the vamps concentrated on him. To me it looked like a pride of African lions fixated on prey, but the Kid seemed immune to that imagery.
“This part is guesswork, but what I think happened is that de Allyon—whose base is the same city as the CDC, by the way—wooed some top people from them. A virologist, a microbiologist, and a couple of people who specialize in genetic recombinant studies left within the last couple of years.” He looked at me quickly and back to the room before adding, “They all disappeared, like totally, literally.” He wiped his hands down his pants again. “I think that one of de Allyon’s pet virologists or microbiologists discovered that the new cancer drug, VR, worked like cocaine on vamps, making them all mellow and buzzed. I think that after he got all his medical team together, they discovered that it also would bond with the new strain of Ebola. De Allyon kidnapped Tanya Petrov, injected her with VR, and made a vamp . . . ire,” he added, “drink from her.
“The combo of the virus and the drug seem to work like a highly addictive narcotic on vampires. They are both sick and stoned. They need more of the drug, which is available only in a virus combo cocktail. And they eventually die. Meanwhile, it looks like de Allyon discovered that a very few of his humans, who had been dinner to vampires infected with the VR combo, were able to pass along the disease and the addiction for several days before falling really sick themselves and developing antibodies to the virus. If what I think is true, de Allyon now had a disease and a treatment. If the sick vampires drank from these humans, and no longer drank from a recently infected host, the vampire would survive.”
It was a lot to take in, and I had heard it already once. The small crowd in Katie’s sat in silence. A lot of what Alex had pitched to the vamps had started out as thinly supported conjecture on our part, but Reach had contacted a researcher at CDC and managed to confirm most of it. This scenario was the only thing that explained why the Seattle humans had gotten sick, then better, and then been taken away. It also explained why the new MOC had left only one human antibiotic factory in Sedona for Ro to drink from.
Alex looked at me for his cue. We had planned the timing of this part of the lecture carefully, to allow the vamps and humans time to take it all in without panic, and for me to study them all while they did. When I thought there had been enough time, I lifted a finger to Alex.
“There is also a new nationwide corporation called Blood-Call,” he said. The attention of several vamps sharpened at the name. “VR,” Alex said, “may be administered to unsuspecting vampires on a Blood-Call appointment. A vampire drinks from a Blood-Call lady or man of the evening, one who is freshly injected with the drug and virus combo. The vampires who drink from the infected humans get a feeling of euphoria, driving them back again and again. After a few visits, they begin to bleed internally. They need more drug and they need the treatment, and they’ll give anything to get it.”
I figured that VR was the metallic scent I had detected early on, in victims of the disease, but saw no point in saying so. I could identify the drug by its smell. Not that it would ever do me any good.
A vamp raised his hand, and I covered a snort with a fake cough at the sight of an elegant undead requesting permission to speak, like a kid in class. Grégoire asked, “Are all of the blood-meals offered by Blood-Call infected?”
“No. Most of the humans are healthy,” Alex said. “I’ve traced indications that special transportation is arranged to the city of choice when de Allyon is ready to make a move on it. He uses a charter company based in Atlanta, and flies his infected humans into the city for dinner.”
Grégoire, Leo’s secundo and heirs’ heir, nodded, one finger in the air. “So, perhaps we can trace the location of the next attack by the movements of this special charter service, oui?”
“Good idea,” Alex said, typing into his little electronic tablet thingy. “I’ll see if I can get into the system and trace down the accounting. That way we can tell when a flight is being activated by de Allyon. In fact, I can take a look-see and find out how many have been sent here.” The silence in the room was intense at that, as the vamps all considered who they had sipped from recently who might not be in their own personal menagerie.
Into the worried silence, Katie said, “Leo owns two small research laboratories, one in Arizona, one in Houston. They are currently working on a cure to the disease and an antidote to this drug. We have Sabina and Bethany, two of very few priestesses in his land, both of whom have the power to heal, even to cure this disease. Few masters of the city have such outclan at their disposal. We also have the Mercy Blade, with the power to heal. This new information will accelerate the process of finding a cure. Our people need not worry, should any become ill with this plague. We will care for our own.”
Alex looked up from his keying. “Sorry. Okay. So. How does the virus work? The vampire immune system is attacked by the Ebola variant and VR combo, and other bacteria quickly take over,” Alex went on, “the same way that bacteria would break down any dead body.”
I almost groaned. He had just called some of the most powerful vamps in the nation dead. Which they were, but still. I glanced around, gratified that none of them seemed to be taking offense. I’d hate to have to stake someone for hurting Stinky, and I was already in enough trouble with the vamps.
“It makes the victims look like plague victims. The important thing to remember is that the vamps are addicted and sick. That’s why the masters of the city in Sedona, Seattle, and Boston gave up without a fight. De Allyon owns them undead body and soul.”
I spoke up. “And do we know who from Asheville, um . . . dated a Blood-Call escort?” All the vamps in the room turned as one to me and stared.
Finally Leo said, his voice all Frenchy and stilted, “An internal investigation will take place. Those who need to be notified of the results will be informed. Please continue, young man.”
Ah, I thought. As in “not me.” Gotcha.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Vampires Are Like Boars. And Like Kits
An hour into the meeting, my phone vibrated in my jeans pocket. I stood to slip out of the room. So did Bruiser, holding his own cell. We met in the hallway and both of us took the calls.
“Jane. Derek here. I just got word that Sabina is sick. The crazy nutso priestess, the one with loose marbles, that Bethany chick, wants to go to her, but I’m not risking one of my men to take her.”
“Wait, wait. Sick? How sick?”
“She woke up this evening and she was bleeding. She called in, but my men are not driving Bethany. And Leo’s cars all got torched along with the house.”
“Bleeding,” I whispered. Sabina had healed the once-sick vamp Callan. Now she was sick. “I’ll make sure that Bethany is taken to Sabina. Thanks.”
“Copy.” The call-ended light appeared on my cell.
Bruiser was hanging up too. “Bethany wants a ride to the Mithran graveyard,” he said.
“Yeah. Sabina is sick.” My mouth turned down. “She probably has the illness she healed Callan from, and if Bethany sips from her while trying to heal her, Bethany will be sick too.”
“Understood,” Bruiser said. “I’ll handle it.” But he didn’t hurry away, instead, standing apart from me in the narrow hall, watching me, giving me space. Giving me time.
I remembered the way B
ethany had healed Bruiser from the dead. She had been more than half naked, sitting on top of him in Katie’s office, giving him her blood, her essence, to bring him back from the dead. I wanted to be angry at him for his subsequent betrayal—okay, I wanted to hit him so hard my fist would pop out his back—but I knew what vamp blood, especially large amounts of vamp blood, could do to a human. “You know, if the vamps and their pals would tell me what was going on and I didn’t have to fly by the seat of my pants all the time, I’d make fewer mistakes. Like maybe I’d have carried the Enforcer I shot into Grégoire’s room and made him heal him. Instead, he’s dead.”
“Had Grégoire’s blood-servants known the man you shot was going to die, and had we known he was a valuable blood-servant, and had we known his master was going to attack so many other masters, the man would still be alive.” Bruiser’s face softened and something odd sifted through me. He was being kind. “You did the best you could with the information you had, Jane. So did we. No one knew that you had hit an artery with your second shot. No one knew he would bleed internally. None of us could read the future or delve into the heart of an enemy. Don’t carry guilt that isn’t yours.”
I stared up into his eyes as he spoke, trying to remember to be angry at him, unsettled by his kindness. But after all the events and memories of my own, that was hard. Instead I just felt . . . more empty, if that was possible. Bruiser cocked his head at me, as if trying to read my thoughts. He looked younger, leaner than only a few days past, and his skin glowed with health. The amount of vamp blood he had ingested had given him back ten years. I wanted to smooth my hand along his cheek, just to see if his skin really was as velvety as it looked. I also still wanted to belt him a good one. I curled my fingers around my cell and shook my head. “None of you ever leads a normal life, do you?”