Urban Enemies

by Jim Butcher

  George opened his mouth to protest. George was always protesting something. Leo lifted his finger, silencing his primo. “I will speak to Marcoise alone. You may cover the outer exits. You may not enter. The cleaning crew will be working and, as former military, they will be armed. I will calm them. I will not have a bloodbath in my club.”

  George hesitated, clearly thinking about the number of potential victims and hostages. “Derek Lee’s company is new,” George said. “I’m not certain of the extent of his knowledge, or of his biases.”

  He did not need to add, Many have refused to work for the vampire Master of the City of New Orleans.

  He raked through his hair with his long fingers, worried.

  “Alone,” Leo insisted and tapped on the window. The chauffeur opened his door. “Thank you, Alfonse,” Leo said. He was always polite to the help. Into the night, he exited with all the grace of his kind, part ballerina, part snake, part spider, all predator. The night smelled of humans and blood. Saliva filled his mouth, hunger riding him. The girl earlier had been a tasty diversion, her body a delight as she used it to seal his promise, but this . . . this was the hunt. There was nothing like it, and even civilized Mithrans such as himself knew the desire, the overriding craving for shadowing and stalking prey.

  Leo leaped to the door, his speed creating a pop of sound as the air around him was displaced. He keyed open the lock and entered. His men, left behind, rushed to provide the protection his kind seldom needed. He slipped into the shadows. Standing behind a brick pillar, he watched the cleaning crew, scenting them. The men were all dressed alike, in one-piece gray uniforms; they were healthy, their blood touched with alcohol and marijuana. He had known it for centuries as hemp, MJ, ganja, and by a hundred other names and grades and varieties.

  He took in a slow breath and parsed the chemicals in their blood. The marijuana smelled . . . odd. Impure. He watched as a small man, no more than five feet, five inches tall, lifted a bucket and then, oddly, dropped it. The pail landed with a clatter and splash of water on the concrete floor, and the man stood, hunched over, staring at the mess as if mesmerized. Certainly confused.

  Leo sniffed again. There was something mixed with the marijuana, some chemical he did not recognize. The small man took a breath, a faint gasp of sound. He fell.

  Leo held still, as only undeath allowed. The other men rushed to help. Another fell, his head bouncing on the floor. A third dropped. And another. Only Derek was still standing, the boss of the crew. Leo had hired Derek Lee’s fledgling company because of his service in the military, though the man was destined for far more. Derek pulled a weapon and backed to the bar, the brass rail at his spine, analyzing the room, the short hallways.

  Leo said, “You did not partake of the smoke offered to the others.”

  Derek swung his weapon toward the column hiding Leo. “Who’s there?”

  “Leo Pellissier, Master of the City. The smoke? The weed?”

  “Owner of the Royal Mojo. Fanghead. And no, to the weed,” Derek said, his weapon steady on the brick pillar. “One of the guys brought it. Said his brother had gotten a deal on the streets.”

  “Mmmm. And a gift is always a good thing.”

  “No.”

  “And what shall you do to the man who injured your cohorts?”

  “Better you don’t know.” Derek’s voice was harsh, unyielding.

  Leo chuckled. “There is more here than meets the eyes.”

  “No shit, dude. I got free weed, four downed boys, and the Master of the City hiding behind a brick column. How ’bout you come out. Make nice-nice wid me.”

  “How about we take down whoever is waiting for us in the office? I smell six. One is a Mithran, one is female and bleeding, one is a dead human.”

  “My men?”

  “They are breathing. I will offer them healing blood if they are not awake before dawn.”

  Derek considered. “You take the fanghead. I’ll take the others.”

  Leo stepped from behind the column, hands where they could be seen.

  “You seem certain that you can contain the humans,” he said. “Three against one?”

  “This trap wasn’t for me. Makes sense it was for you. I’m supposed to be down and out, so they won’t be expecting me.”

  “Better things, indeed,” Leo murmured to himself, reevaluating the young man. “You are correct that this is a trap for me. I was sent here by a woman, to chastise an employee named Marcoise. You don’t perhaps know if he is with the others?”

  “Beats the hell outta me.”

  Leo chuckled. “I shall enter at speed and engage the Mithran. If there are humans held against their will . . .”

  “Understood. No collateral damage. After this, I suggest you get a better security system. Cameras woulda gone a long way to keeping this place safe.”

  “Undeniably so.” Behind him, he heard the door open and George’s scent blew in. George seldom followed orders he felt were unwise. “Do not shoot my primo. He follows,” Leo instructed Derek. Silently, he led the way to the back, Derek following, and George behind.

  At the door to the office, Leo paused, pressed his ear to the crack and listened. There was silence on the other side, the scent of blood and pain and gun oil wafting from beneath the door, but no scent of a fired weapon. He gently attempted to turn the knob. It was locked.

  He nodded to Derek and to George, both armed, weapons at the ready.

  He stood back, positioned his body, lightly balanced on both feet, and kicked out with all the strength of a well-trained Mithran. His foot impacted the door where the lock’s bolt entered the strike plate. The frame splintered, the door banging open. Moving with faster-than-human speed, Leo leaped inside. Still in the air, he took in the room’s layout in an instant.

  Three humans bracketed the doorway. Two with cudgels, one with a long rifle, the battlefield kind, fully automatic, created to bring down multiple enemies. If it hadn’t been pointed at him, he might have approved of the choice. And the girl, in the center of the room. Fastened to a chair with duct tape. Unconscious. Bleeding. Near death. No Marcoise in sight.

  The true enemy stood in the back of the room, holding two silvered blades, his fangs down, eyes scarlet and black in fighting form. Shock sped through Leo in recognition. El Mago. Leo had left the mage on the fighting floor, his body in pieces, over three hundred years ago on a visit to Madrid. The fiend was dead. Or should be.

  Leo snarled, bending his legs to touch down. Heard three shots from the door. Derek, behind cover, taking down the shooter. George screamed, a battlefield roar, intended to shock the other two humans. Leo landed, let his body fall forward over the chair, taking it and the girl with him, into a roll, and shoving her and the chair across the room, out of the line of fire. He drew two small steel blades and rose upright, into El Mago’s face. Inside his reach. Thrust both blades into his abdomen, twice each. Stab-stab, high, low. He withdrew the blades for another double thrust.

  Pain ratcheted up and through his body. He looked down. El Mago had dropped the longswords and performed the same maneuver on him—two shorter blades were buried inside him. Agony shredded his belly. The blades were silvered.

  And then El Mago yanked upward, the blades slicing into his core, then out to the sides.

  Leo fell to the floor, the blades still buried in his body.

  Standing above him, El Mago extended an arm and turned over his hand. White crystals poured from a black bag. Salt? Sea salt? Crystalline flakes of a brilliant white fell over him. El Mago removed his blades, wiped them on a cloth. Darkness descended upon Leo, his vision telescoping down into nothingness. The sound of gunshots was a muffled hollow drumming as the darkness stole even that.

  When Leo woke, El Mago was gone and his own scions had filled the office of Royal Mojo. He was fighting exhaustion, the thirst, and a rage that he could scarcely control. Not since he went through the devoveo, the decade of madness experienced by all his kind when they were turned, had his need
for blood been so strong that he could not force his fangs to retract. The broken thing, the girl who had been tied in the chair, had been bled almost to the point of death. She was being attended to by his heir, life coaxed into her, so that she need not be turned. Another drop of blood lost, and she would die a true death. Still, he could think only of sinking his fangs into her throat and draining her dry. Even Marcoise’s dead body, bloodless and cold, on the floor across the room, was appealing. Marcoise, the bait to this trap, which had been sprung on him with such exquisite perfection, had been dead for hours.

  “Master?”

  George stood behind him, his heart strong and pounding. He had been honed into a weapon so perfect his body was little more than a sheath for the blade he was. Hot, perfect blood, pumping through his primo. Son sang est rempli d’énergie, puissant, merveilleux sang.

  Leo spun up from the floor like a snake striking, too fast for George to dodge. He sank his fangs into George’s throat.

  He heard gunshots. Felt the impacts. Whirled to confront his enemies and took a stake to the belly. Leo fell to his knees at the feet of his assailant. His own heir. Katherine.

  He slid to the floor, where he lay in a spreading pool of his own blood, paralyzed by the ash wood that pierced him. Above him, around him, other Mithrans, his scions, rushed to heal George, whose blood was spurting across the room.

  Heal George.

  He had attacked his own primo, the human blood-servant who most trusted him. The human he most trusted. Shock flowed through him, filling the empty veins that had been drained out on the cement. Katie bent over him, her silvery-blond hair upswept, her long teal gown split up the side, a bastard sword at her hip.

  She toed him, cocked her head far to the side, her eyes luminous and thoughtful. Very, very quietly, she murmured, “I know you can hear me. Understand this, my master. If I wished your lands and hunting grounds, I could take them this night. If I wished to be forsworn and yet powerful enough that such treachery was no matter, I could take your head.

  “You attacked your primo without provocation and mortally wounded him. Had I not been informed that things had gone wrong and seemed off-kilter this night, your George would now be turned and in my scion lair, not yours. Had I not been here, you might have died at the hands of your humans.

  “Now you are at my mercy. However, I am loyal still, and do not wish to rule. This bargain we shall strike. Someday I may require all your power and influence to save me, to protect me, keep me in my undeath and not true-dead. At such time, you will remember this moment and provide such assistance as I might need. Until then you are in my debt.” She stood straight, her body positioned so that he might see up her split skirt. “Think on this as you bleed, my lord and master.”

  If he had been able to draw breath, Leo might have laughed, knowing that Katie meant both her threat and what she displayed. Had he been able to move at all, he would have run a questing hand up her leg. His heir ran a bordello in the French Quarter, and half the state’s elected and law enforcement officials had visited her at one time or another. Her peep show was a reminder of her strengths—human friends in high places and a sexual libido and prowess unmatched in his centuries of experience.

  She drifted from view, her grace and balance impeccable in her five-inch stilettos. Katie had been a small woman in human life, and, after so many centuries, with each generation of humans growing taller than the last, she was apt to be taken as defenseless and vulnerable. But his lover and heir was never that. He was truly in her debt. After this night, he would be in the debt of many.

  His blood ceased to flow. His hunger was growing prodigious. His eyes were drying out—perhaps the most uncomfortable of his small miseries. The cleanup was well under way, his people moving around him, working silently. No one had attempted to remove the stake embedded in his belly, not with Katherine wearing her duel sang bastard-sword. It had been forty-two years since Katherine Fonteneau had dueled for position in his clan, but no one who had seen it would ever doubt her wicked expertise with the blade nor her cunning strategy.

  Leo Pellissier, Master of the City, owed his heir much this night. Though he would make her pay for the paralysis, humiliation, and discomfiture. It was the kind of punishment that would take place in his bed.

  One good thing came of the enforced immobility: the time to remember, to reflect. El Mago had been on the far side of the room when he entered. There had been a sword in each hand. The sorcerer had been wearing long sleeves that hid his arms, likely places to conceal weapons, such as the short blades he had used. Hidden blades were Leo’s own strategy. Clearly El Mago remembered from the last time the tactic had been used against him, when Leo had killed him. Almost killed him.

  Leo had been predictable. The mage had expected him to step inside his reach. He had dropped the swords, incapacitating him with the blades in his own sleeves. He had carved his way deeply into Leo’s entrails.

  It was time to rethink his dueling methods. But . . .

  Silver should have rendered him incapable of healing without massive amounts of blood. Yet when he awoke, his belly was uninjured. There had been a scent like silver and marzipan. The scent of bitter almonds. Cyanide was not lethal to Mithrans, but when coating a silvered blade, unable to purge from his body after entry, and allowed to fester with an unknown spell that both healed and fettered him . . . Leo did not know what effect that might have. His ancient enemy had intended to disable him, not kill him. Or, at least, not right away.

  It was clever: the bag of white powder upended over him had healed his flesh over the wounds, so that he and others might not know what had happened. Buried within his body was poison, silver, and a spell—the spell that was perhaps the reason he had attacked his primo. Either one he might have defeated, but all together were deadly, had he not been stopped with a stake to the same damaged area.

  The bag El Mago had emptied on him seemed to contain a white powder—crystalline flakes like salt. It had made a quiet shushing as it left the cloth sack and fell upon him. When Leo stood after he awoke, nothing had fallen from his clothing or his person. He remembered the sound of Katie’s shoes on the floor as she walked through the room. There had been nothing between her soles and the concrete, no grinding or crushing or near soundless compression of some softer material.

  He was poisoned. Likely dying. What seemed a minor inconvenience only moments past loomed large. If his heir didn’t remove the stake, and soon, so that he might ask for aid, it might be too late.

  Another hour passed. Pain had begun to grow in his belly, cold and harsh and remorseless, spreading through his empty veins and arteries. By the time Katie meandered back, he knew with certainty that he was dying.

  She knelt beside him, aligning their faces. Her eyes, hazel gray, met his. She had applied fresh scarlet lipstick, and when she smiled it was the smile of a court courtesan, practiced and perfect and only slightly sadistic. “My master, you look miserable,” she said. “But perhaps it will cheer your un-beating heart to know that our George is once again fully alive and will neither perish nor be forced to take our curse. No? No comment?” She shook her head, making a small tsking sound.

  Katie bent and kissed him, her lips as cold as his own. She held the kiss before pulling away, and as she did, she took a breath, then froze. Her remarkable eyes widened. “Bitter almonds.”

  She ripped his shirt open, revealing his abdomen and torso. “Mon dieu.” Katie yanked the wood from his belly and ripped the flesh of her left fingers with her fangs, her healing blood spurting. She dug her fingers into his flesh, inserting her blood at the point of the original damage. She ripped her right wrist and placed it at his mouth. “Drink, sire. Drink!” When he did not swallow, Katie shouted, “Get the priestess!” Then, to herself, “Oh, no.”

  Astonishment flashing across her face, Katie staggered back and fell to the floor beside him. She held up her left hand. The fingers she’d tried to heal him with were blackened and smoking. “Poison. I am poison
ed. How is this possi—” She swooned.

  Leo’s body was lifted and carried to the front of the club. He was placed on the bar, where he could see only the bottles and the brass-backed mirrored wall behind them. Not a silver-backed mirror, but one in which his kind might be seen as more than a blur. Katie’s body was placed on two tables shoved together.

  The outclan priestess, Bethany, floated into the room and stood over him, her dark skin catching the lights, her skirts swirling in brilliant shades of blue. She sniffed his small wound, then Katie’s hand, which appeared in the mirror as blackened and smoking. Bethany pointed at three humans and said, “Feed her copious amounts of blood. Bring in more servants. Tonight Katherine is a Naturaleza.” Which meant she would drink humans down if they were not careful. Returning to the bar, she tore her own throat and climbed over Leo, her limbs moving like a praying mantis on the hunt, elbows and hips high. She placed her ripped flesh at his mouth and began to chant softly in her native tongue.

  Magic swirled over him like a dense fog from the Mississippi River, a coiling mist of light, whirling and twisting, enveloping him. Sliding down his throat. Convulsively, he swallowed. Again. And again. Magic and blood twined and flowed down his throat. Magic pressed into his abdominal wound and snaked through him and curled tight with the blood of the priestess.

  The magic of the assault spell that had woven itself into him parted before the onslaught of the priestess’s own power. He felt strands of El Mago’s spell snap. Agony speared through him. He gasped. Lifted one hand and gripped Bethany close, drank, sucking down her healing blood. He lost track of time before she peeled herself away and another took her place. And then another. Trying to heal the damage of the poison, the silver, and the magic with blood.

  After the third human was wrenched away, he gasped out to the nearest blood-servant: “George?”

  “He is well, my master.”