by Faith Hunter
I skimmed down until the word jumped out at me. Leukemia.
The Kid said, “Several docs are proposing that vamp blood might cure leukemia,” he said.
Recently, I’d met a Cajun preacher man who claimed that vamp blood had cured his cancer, though it had taken a long time and a lot of blood, a debt he was still paying off years later. I thought of Charly, her body thin and her hair already falling out. I wasn’t sure, but I thought hair didn’t fall out until later rounds of chemo. The stuff Charly was on was pure poison, and it had only a slight chance of curing her. But maybe mixed with vamp blood . . .
Because of her research, Misha had known vamps could maybe offer a cure. Misha was a single mother with a daughter who meant everything to her. Misha was desperate.
“I have a feeling that Misha’s not just planning to interview vamps for her book,” the Kid said, sounding worried. “She’s also trying to find a vamp who will give Charly blood.”
Which, if I’d had half a brain, I would have realized from the moment I saw the child. I am such a dweeb about humans. Asking a vamp for blood was offensive, and humans who were so importunate or stupid as to ask had been known to vanish without a trace. Mish hadn’t replied to my voice mail or text about her dead contact, Ryder. I frowned and checked my cell. Nothing.
“Another thing,” the Kid said, sounding uneasy. “It might be nothing.” I gave a little finger curl to continue. “Misha has a concealed-carry permit for the state. And I found a receipt on her bank card for a load of silver shot. So maybe if the vamp she was going to interview wasn’t willing—”
“She might be planning to shoot him, kidnap him—or her—and force him to feed Charly,” I said. “Crap.” I scrubbed my hand across my head, mussing my braid. “I’ll go see her after dawn. Talk her back down from this stupid plan.”
“That might be a good idea. Assuming we’re reading it right. But maybe we’re not. Bright side and all that.” The Kid picked up his laptop and backtracked through the room, turning off the lamp. “Get some sleep,” he murmured, and closed my door. Like that was gonna happen.
CHAPTER 8
Makes It Easier to Stomp ’Em to Death
But I did, somehow, get two hours of catnap before my phone alarm sounded just after four a.m. I dressed in jeans and weaponed up, the movements so automatic I seldom even thought about the process anymore, and slung the medical kit with Leo’s vamp-plague cure across my shoulders. I met Eli in the hallway, catching a whiff of aftershave and man.
“You think our captive is alive again?” he asked as we quietly descended to the main floor. “And sane?”
“We should check,” I said, yawning.
“He’ll be hungry.”
I chuckled. “Kinda counting on that.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you have a cruel streak?”
My step faltered, a slight hitch that I caught, hopefully before Eli noticed it.
“Not that I think that’s a bad thing,” he added. “Too many people are fu— freaking bleeding hearts without the guts to survive when the sh— uh, malodorous refuse hits the fan.”
Cruel? Me? Beast purred, happy, while I felt . . . what? Not much of anything. Not even guilt, which was odder than I wanted to admit. I lifted a shoulder and turned through the house to the kitchen, where I opened the fridge and lifted out a raw, chilled steak. Watery blood was pooled in the corner of the zip-lock plastic, and so I grabbed a roll of paper towels and some hand sanitizer on the way out back. Cruel. I didn’t have time to deal with the accusation, and filed it away in my hind brain for later consideration. Hopefully, I had a starved Naturaleza vamp to interrogate. I could deal with the truth later. I said, “Thank you for not cursing in front of me.”
“I can kill in front of you, but not curse?” He sounded amused.
I shrugged again. “We all have boundaries.”
Eli pulled his shotgun around front, from where it rested like a sling on his back, opened the door to the garage, turned on the light, and stepped through, the motion gallant, the big man willing to take the hit for the little lady. Gallant but kinda stupid. I could heal from most anything with my skinwalker metabolism. Eli was human. He couldn’t. Still, I appreciated the gesture.
Inside, the vamp shielded his eyes with an arm and moved through the small space where he was trapped, his body flowing weirdly, like one of those vamps in the woods. And the vision of what he looked like was suddenly there, blinking on my eyelids. He moved like one of those feathery centipedes, all long legs and bizarre body mechanics and aggression. He hissed. It was a primal sound, and Beast rose in my mind and stared out through my eyes.
I gave her control and dropped the plastic baggie to the floor. Squatting in front of the vamp’s silver cage, I chuffed softly and pulled my vamp-killer. I twirled it in my hand so the silvered blade caught the light. I smelled the peculiar scent of silver-poisoned vamp, his blood on the spikes of the cage. It was sickly and slightly burned, like the studio scent of a metalworker, pickling solution and fire and heated silver, topped off by the old blood like a rancid top note on a really bad perfume. Ugly, but fascinating to Beast. She growled low in my throat, a sound no human can make.
I smiled when the vamp’s eyes widened. He was Caucasian with the pale, pinkish skin of the Irish, dark hair and green eyes, handsome, as most vamps are. He was also vamped out, sclera bloodred, pupils so dilated his eyes were black, and I could smell the hunger on him. Dangerous. I widened my smile, showing blunt, human teeth and a predator’s confidence.
“You should know,” I said, conversationally, “that the Master of the City, Hieronymus, has put a bounty on your head. I make around forty thousand dollars if I take it to him. Separated from your body, of course.” The vamp snarled. It was really effective with the fangs and all, but Beast’s fangs were longer. I didn’t flinch; I smiled wider, twirling the vamp-killer. The blade was fourteen inches long, the flat plated with polished sterling silver, the steel edge so sharp it could cut flesh before the human eye could even see it.
“I am hungry,” he said, his fangs making it hard to understand. His ability to speak meant that he had at least one lung functioning in the hollow of his chest.
“Tough. But we can make a deal. Dinner for answers. I have questions.”
He hissed at me. I shrugged. And opened the raw steak. His eyes darted to the baggie and stuck there like a fly on flypaper. “Give,” he demanded, thrusting his open hand at me. “Feed me.”
“Nope.”
His eyes flashed back to mine, compelling. “I’m hungry, little nonhuman.” It was a Southern accent, a well-bred one, with a hint of old in it.
“Don’t care, little fanghead. If you want to drink anything, or even suck on the juices of this steak, you have to tell me what I want to know.”
“Animal blood and meat will not nourish me.”
“It’s better than nothing, fanghead.”
His eyes went back to the steak and his fangs clicked shut on the little hinges in his mouth. “And what is it you wish to know?”
“For starters, your name.”
“Francis Adrundel, at your service.”
Yep. Only one of the old ones would say at your service. And poor Francis was on the bounty list, good for nothing but a good beheading. He’d been eating humans, a Naturaleza, transported in by the now-true-dead vamp who had started this whole mess, Lucas Vazquez de Allyon. But at least I had Francis talking, which, as everyone in the interrogation business knows, is a necessary first step to getting your subject to tell you anything. “Age?”
“I was born in the seventh month, on the twelfth day, in the year 1820.”
He was older than I expected, by nearly a hundred years. Interesting. “How did you get here to Natchez? Did de Allyon fly you in?”
He closed his eyes and took a slow breath through his nose, scenting, smelling the blood in the bag. And maybe my blood. I’d forgotten that my scalp had taken a scratch or two. And Eli, who had shaved very recently and lik
ely drawn blood to the surface of his skin even if he hadn’t nicked himself. It was like a vamp buffet in the garage. “Answer the question,” I said.
“Yes. Flight,” he said, with his eyes still closed. “And the lovely place in town. And all the slaves and servants I could drink. I liked being sworn to Lucas. I like being Naturaleza here, in this town, where the humans are such easy prey.” His eyes popped open and he vamped out, fastfastfast. Eyes bled wide, sclera went pale pink, and fangs dropped down on their hinges again, with a snick of sound. “The Naturaleza here have much power, all the power that Lucas ever dreamed of having, and more. Here we are finally free. Feed me,” he commanded, his compulsion wrapping around me like a silken veil.
Beast pressed claws into my brain and flopped down in the forefront of my mind, her thick tail tip twitching slightly. She gave me the control I needed to withstand the coercion in his eyes. “Nope.”
Francis rushed the bars, vamp fast, appearing inches from me, growling, but without the pop of sound that most vamps make crossing a larger distance. I didn’t drop away, but it was a near thing. I felt Eli tense. “Feed me, woman,” Francis demanded.
“Tell me who’s in charge of the Naturaleza now that de Allyon is true-dead. Tell me where the monsters sleep. And tell me where the humans they’re feeding from are being kept. Be a good boy, and you might earn yourself a pint of human blood.” I let a smile start, showing my blunt human teeth.
“Give me a human to drink and I will tell you what I know,” he bargained.
I tossed the steak on top of the cage and the vamp followed its transfer with his entire body, a near backflip of motion that ended with two fingers pinching a corner of the baggie and letting the watery blood drain into his cupped palm. He slurped it while his other palm caught more. He made a face like it was nasty, and Beast agreed. Nasty water-blood of old dead cow, cold and tasteless. Vampire will hunt us and kill us for this.
“Maybe,” I said aloud, not caring that no one knew what I was talking about. “Talk.”
“I know nothing about humans except the ones I owned, and they are drained husks.”
I kept my anger off my face and forced down the spike of fury that followed his statement. Behind me, Eli had no such skills, and his anger swirled into the air. This undead dude was a true-dead man, just as soon as I could arrange it. Too angry to allow him any respite, I reached to take away the steak, but he grabbed the baggie through the silvered bars and yanked it, tearing it and releasing the blood in a wide splatter.
The caged vamp sucked on the tip of the steak and said, “I was going to gather more cattle, but you arrived, and now everything is changed.”
Go me, I thought. Nothing made my day like screwing up vamps’ plans. But I didn’t say it.
“But I know other things,” he said, his fingers getting a grip on the steak and squeezing it, forcing out the watery blood. He was hungry enough that he didn’t even care that the silver was touching his back where he lounged and blistering his skin through his tattered shirt. The metallic stink of poison and scorched meat filled the garage and made me want to sneeze. He bit off an edge of the steak and sucked, which was what I’d expected but was still icky.
“How about your master’s cattle? Ones still alive? Are they penned?” I asked.
“My mistress keeps her humans beneath the ground, in basements and darkness.” He looked at me slyly. “She owns many properties, and her cattle will be in one of them. She detests them, except those she has for dinner.” He sucked the gob of raw meat until it was dry and spat the husk to the floor before biting off another. Which was just ewww.
“Is her name Silandre?”
“No. But I know her. She is growing into a Naturaleza power to be reckoned with. You will give me a human to drink?” he asked.
“For that info? No,” I growled. “Starve.”
Beast stared out through my eyes, and the caged vamp paused, his mouth on the dried out gob of meat. “I have heard one other thing,” he said. “You should search for full circles. The great one is once more complete.”
Which made no sense to me, but the vamp smelled of truth, beneath the stink of whatever he was becoming. So maybe it was important and fitted into the picture somewhere, somehow.
Keeping my reaction off my face, I stood and left the garage, turning off the light as I went, Eli on my heels. “Food?” Francis shrieked. I shut the door as my answer.
“If our friend Francis gets free, he’ll come looking for you,” Eli said casually.
“Yeah. He will. He’s on the list, though, so it won’t be a loss.”
Eli snorted through his nose, a near-silent laugh.
“Have your brother do a search for circles. Crop circles, witch circles, even tribal circles. Maybe some local tribe had one in the past that’s been reactivated or something.”
“And maybe he can get a handle on this new female master he mentioned,” Eli said. “Could there be a new, secondary master of the city here? Maybe two different masters claiming one city? Hieronymus and de Allyon’s heir?” I shrugged, and Eli finished with, “I’ll get Alex to start a search on her too. We need a name.”
“Good. While he’s at it, get him to see if there’s any record about what happened here in Natchez while de Allyon was in charge. That info would go a long way toward helping us see what’s happening now. And see if he’s turned up anything on why these vamps are moving like insects. It creeps me out.”
“Just makes it easier to stomp ’em to death,” Eli said, “emotionally, and morally.”
He had a point.
We left the property, hearing only the soft purr of Eli’s SUV, and arrived at the Clan home of the Natchez MOC a little after five a.m. The house was an amazing structure, three stories of brick and sandstone. The windows were full of light that spilled out into the night, windows even in the roof, showing that under the eaves was more living space. Rounded towers were on either side at the front, topped by peaked roofs like parapets with flags flying from them. The house was surrounded by live oak trees with sinuous twisting limbs so heavy that they had lowered toward the ground and now seemed to dance across the grass like massive, frozen snakes. Moss hanging from the higher limbs moved in the night breeze. Cars were everywhere, parked on the grass and along the drive, a few vehicles I recognized from the first meeting in the converted warehouse.
Pulling on Beast’s night vision, I spotted humans in the dark, keeping watch, noting that security was better there than in town. Or perhaps the fact that Eli and I had taken the humans down so quickly had warped up the human servants’ awareness.
Eli pulled directly to the front door and stopped, the tires grinding on the white shells. Not asphalt made with white shells, which was common in the South, but loose white shells used like gravel. When we got out and walked to the front steps, the sound of the shells beneath my boots was like the sound of crunching brittle bones. We walked up the seven steps and stopped in front of the door. To the three well-armed humans standing there, I said in my best vampire fancy talk, “Jane Yellowrock and company, here to provide surcease from illness and pain for the Master of the City of Natchez and his scions.” Which I thought sounded spiffy.
One of the humans opened the door and two stepped aside. I walked in, knowing that Eli had come through the doorway on my heels, moving fast, and faced back at the opening until the door closed softly. Then he moved out to my left into the formal foyer, checking it out while I stood in the center of the magnificent circular space and took it all in. The scents hit me first: vamps, candle wax, smoke, leather, roses, and the faint smell of human blood that pervades every vamp dwelling.
I had been in Leo’s Clan home, and Grégoire’s, and Rosanne’s in Sedona, and others’, and they were all like something out of a magazine titled Cribs of the Disgustingly Rich and Fanged, but, frankly, I’d never seen or imagined anything like Big H’s house. The foyer was thirty feet wide, round, and three stories tall, with a three-tiered, humongous chandelier hanging d
own from forty feet overhead. A stairway curved around and around the walls, rising the full three stories, its handrail painted gold and shimmering in the light.
There was gold-veined white marble everywhere, on floors, pillars, walls, and statues, gilt work on the ceiling moldings and floorboards, and gold candles burning in white and gold candle holders, the flames flickering. On the ground floor, there was a large round table to my right—white, of course—centered with a scarlet vase three feet tall and filled with white, gold, and scarlet roses. A sitting area was across from it, the furniture upholstered in white leather and tone-on-tone cloth, set with scarlet pillows and resting on a scarlet rug. White silk draperies cascaded along the windows, tied back with scarlet tassels. A scarlet and gold family crest—a lion and something geometric—on white silk took up one wall.
There were arched openings in the marble walls, and through one was a dining room with an ebony table and chairs that could easily seat forty. The table was covered with a white linen cloth and set with white-and-gold place settings. Through another was a traditional living room, all the furniture upholstered in white leather. Another room sported a full-sized white concert grand piano. Through a fourth opening came the aroma of old books, and I wondered if they had all been re-covered in white bindings or wrapped in white paper, and a small smile lifted my lips. It was overdone and tasteless, and the blood-splattered-on-drained-flesh image of the color scheme could not have been by accident.
“You like my home?”
I lifted my head, saw Big H standing one floor above me, and said, “It’s awesome.” But my mind was thinking, Awesomely gaudy. I didn’t say it, of course. He was wearing a red silk dressing gown that matched the scarlet of the décor, with white silk jammies beneath. On his feet were white calf-skin slippers that I could see when he leaned over the balustrade, hands on the banister, his ugly necklace dangling away from his chest, the chain swinging negligently.