Blood Trade

by Faith Hunter

  I sheathed the knife and pivoted on my heel.

  “I need blood. Human blood. I’m starving!”

  I paused, thinking. “I’ll have more questions. When I ask them, if you answer sufficiently well, I’ll see about getting a blood-slave in here to feed you. Fame Vexatum.”

  “I am a Naturaleza,” he said, nearly spitting the words.

  “And that makes you a dead fanghead. Forty K, remember? Think about it.” I closed the door to the garage after me and went to Bitsa. Someone was sitting in a deck chair, positioned in front of my bike, holding a pocket knife, whittling. Whittling? I couldn’t remember seeing anyone whittle, not ever, except on TV reruns of Mayberry and in Western movies.

  I cocked a hip. “Whadda you want?” I demanded.

  Without looking up, Eli smiled, that tiny quirk of expression almost impossible to catch unless I was watching for it, and sliced a long, sharp sliver from the wood. It tumbled off his hands to the ground, joining dozens of others there. “I want you to chill, babe.”

  “I am not your babe. And I’m plenty chilled.”

  “You’re raging mad, worried about your old school friend, who you feel that you somehow failed way back when. You’re even more worried about the child upstairs, who may be dying of cancer. You’re upset because your boyfriend-who-isn’t is here and acting like an ass. You’re upset because a beautiful woman has a relationship with him when you don’t. And you haven’t been laid in ages.”

  Laughter bubbled up in me at the final comment, and he glanced at me under lowered brows before returning to his work. Some of the tension eased out of me with my laughter, and when it had run its course, I said, “That is such a guy comment.”

  “Yeah. It is. But it’s true. You’ve been depressed, impossible to live with for weeks. Now you’re here, finally doing something, and nothing is going right. And then Rick shows up. And his Soul. And you get punchy mad. By the way, is our prisoner still alive?” Another curl of wood hit the ground.

  “Marginally. If undead is actually considered alive.”

  He gave me that twitchy smile. “So. You need to hit someone? Spar a bit?”

  I blew out the rest of my irritation. “Thanks. Yeah. Maybe later. Right now, I need to check out an address our prisoner gave me. “You want to ride shotgun?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.” He closed the knife and rose to his feet in a single fluid motion and looked me over. “That all you’re wearing?”

  I knew he was talking about my lack of firepower, and I grimaced. “No. Guess not.”

  “Pissed off is not the same as well armed,” he agreed, leading the way into the house.

  “I’ll remember that.”

  • • •

  Minutes later we were pulling into town in the SUV, and shortly after that we were on Orleans Street, looking down cross streets. It took a while, like, maybe half an hour, before we had narrowed the houses down to the most likely. Natchez had several houses with what might have been classed as towers on them. We parked on the street and made our way to the door.

  I smelled vamp and blood and put a hand on Eli’s arm to stop him. I opened my mouth and drew in air over my tongue as Beast might have done, smelling, identifying, and classifying the various scents. Eli watched me and the street and the house all at once, a gun in each hand, but hidden out of sight behind his leg and behind my back. “Blood-servants, too many to count, have been in and out of this house. Vamps too. But mostly we have something dead inside. I think several somethings.”

  “Recently dead? Human dead? How many?”

  “Yeah. More than one. We need to call your girlfriend.”

  I drew a weapon as Eli holstered one of his and hit a single number. He had Sylvia Turpin on speed dial. Wasn’t that sweet? I didn’t say it, but it must have showed on my face, because Eli said, “Shut up.”

  I laughed softly as he said, “Syl. We have a house in town with multiple DBs in it. I’d rather not call it in to the city LEOs, but we need to see it. We also have PsyLED in town, and we have not notified them. How do you want to handle it?”

  I heard her say over the phone, “It’s never too soon to start campaigning. I’ll meet you there and call it in myself, if you don’t mind. I’ll call your PsyLED pals too. Address?” He gave it to her, and the sheriff signed off with the words, “I’m close. I’ll be there in twenty. Meanwhile, stay out of my crime scene.”

  We sat parked in front of the old house until the sheriff’s car pulled in to the drive. Sylvia got out of her unit, looking trim and fit and—if Eli’s scent signature was anything to go by—incredibly sexy.

  I got out, and we three met at the steps to the front door. “Eli. Yellowrock,” she said. “So how do you know we have DBs inside?”

  “I can smell them,” I said.

  “Dead dog? Dead cat?”

  “Nope.”

  I could see her thinking about calling the city cops for backup, but she decided not to.

  She shrugged at her own conclusion, saying, “If you’re wrong, if it is a dead dog, we’ll be wasting their time.” And looking stupid, which she left unsaid. She went to the front door. It was unlocked, and even Sylvia backed away when the smell gusted out. She cursed under her breath and ended it with a head shake and the word, “Okay.” She drew her weapon, off-safety’ed, and chambered a round. She looked at Eli, and the sexual tension between them was like little sparks of static against my skin. “I’m guessing you two will follow me no matter what. Wipe your feet, stay behind me, put your feet where I put mine, avoid stepping in anything. When I say back out, do it.” She pushed open the door, and I steadied my nine mil.

  Sylvia Turpin might not have had paramilitary training, but she knew her moves and stepped past the door fast, her back to the wall. The foyer was clean, but the living room was a mess. Someone had drained and killed four humans, including a teenager, and someone else had staked a vamp to the floor with a four-foot ash spike and then chopped off her head. It hadn’t been an easy task. From the amount of blood, she had been drinking freely, which meant speedy healing.

  The vamp was Esther McTavish. The one potential lead we’d just found was already dead. Whoever had killed her hadn’t been working alone. From the bruises and talon cuts on her limbs, it had taken several very strong vamps to hold her down and take her head.

  The scents on the still, chill air told me that the place had no living inhabitants, so while the gun nuts searched the house as a weird form of courtship, I pulled my phone and snapped shots of the entire room and close-ups of the vamp. I then followed my nose to a hidden door in the kitchen and opened it. The charnel-house effluvia that burst from it was enough to gag a hippo, and I left the kitchen in a hurry. When I met the happy couple in the hallway, I said, “I left the concealed basement door in the kitchen open. I didn’t go down the stairs and I don’t want to go down them.”

  I stopped, knowing that one reason I didn’t want to go down the steps was because one of the bodies might be Misha. I managed a hoarse breath and said, “And I recommend whoever does the brave deed wears a full biohazard suit. It smells like dead vamps—sick from the vamp plague and killed and left unburied. Those kinds of dead vamps. And enough of your missing and now-dead humans to fill a graveyard.”

  Sylvia cussed once, succinctly.

  Eli wrinkled his nose and swore, saying, “I smell it from here.”

  CHAPTER 11

  So Let’s Get It on, Baby

  It was well after noon when I got back to the B and B, and instead of going inside I went straight to the garage and kicked open the door. This time, I left it open, allowing the thin winter light to brighten the place. Instantly I smelled scorched skin and was delighted that at least something hurt the vamp captive. He was asleep, whimpering, both hands tight around his middle, like a hungry child.

  It had worked well last time, so I slammed my booted foot into the cage. He groaned and covered his eyes with skeletal hands. There were ragged talons at the tips of his fing
ers and his beard was growing, a tangled scruff. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen a vamp with a scruffy face. “I am hungry,” he said from behind his hands.

  “Stop this,” a soft voice said from the shadows. I turned to find Soul standing at the door, which she closed with a tolerant, quiet sound. “You will not hurt this vampire again.”

  “Yeah?” I gave her my back and slammed my foot into the silver chain again. “How many humans in that house just off of Orleans Street did you drink down and kill? Huh?” I felt Soul at my back, but I kicked the cage again, shouting, “How many?”

  The vamp on the floor of the cage started laughing, and if it started out as a pathetic gallows laughter, it ended up the goading taunt of the unrepentant killer. He dropped his hands and opened his eyes in the dark, staring at me through the gloom. “I lost count of the adults. But the children,” his laughter grew in power and resonance, seeming to bounce off the garage walls, “I remember them, each and every one. I drank down their terror and their whimpers. I sucked down their fear and panic like the elixir of life it was.”

  I felt Soul step back. I smelled her reaction and so did our captive. With that fluttery, feathery motion, he crossed the small space to me and reached out, gripping the silver supports of the cage with one hand, his palm and fingers not smoking where they touched the metal. He pulled himself to his feet and crouched, his hair a scant inch from the cage top. His bare body was covered in scars and welts and fresh skin from the accelerated healing. Even starving, he was healing.

  “Come here, nonhuman woman,” he said. This time he was speaking to Soul. “I will show you what I do to women. I will show you how I drink them down.” He closed his eyes at the remembered experience and swallowed, his dry throat making a noise like rubber tires on muddy earth, a squelch that lasted far too long. It left me with a sensation of how much he had enjoyed drinking the helpless to death.

  Soul turned and left the garage, closing the door with an entirely different sound. I didn’t know how she could direct emotion into the sound of steel on steel, but I felt it. Soul would not try again to interfere with my treatment of the prisoner. She wanted him dead too.

  Francis laughed, the sound low and vicious. “She should have stayed. I would have told her how my cattle died, with the women and their children weeping and begging.”

  My foot slashed out and hit the cage so hard it slid across the small space into the back wall. Francis’ laughter died. He gripped the cage, stinking of ammonia and death, his body whipping with the force of my kick.

  “Which vamp is in charge of the Naturaleza of this city now that Esther McTavish is true-dead?” I asked.

  His face changed, his eyes bleeding back to near-human, his fangs snicking back into his mouth. He dropped to his knees on the floor of the cage. “She is dead?”

  “Yeah. Headless, in the living room. And the basement was full of dozens of dead humans and several other vamps, all staked with silver.” Francis’ eyes lost focus at the thought, and when he didn’t reply, I said, “It looked like there had been a fight. A Blood Challenge, maybe?”

  “Naturaleza do not challenge. They die by blood feud. They die by war. And each war is different from the others. How did my mistress die?”

  I smiled this time, and his eyes widened at the expression. “She was staked through the abdomen and her head sawed off. Not hacked off. Sawed.” I chuckled slightly. “It’s the way I killed Lucas de Allyon, and it takes determination, a lot a free time, and a really sharp blade.”

  His face changed again, and this time I couldn’t follow the emotional voyage. “You are the creature who killed my master?”

  “Yes. In mortal combat, mano a mano, so to speak. So. Who might have killed your mistress and her scions? And who is in charge now?”

  “There are three possibilities.” Francis sank back onto the cage floor and wrapped his arms around his legs. “I’ll give you one possibility for each Naturaleza blood meal you provide.”

  I was willing to dicker, because I knew that nothing acquired—or given up—easily is truly valuable, so I thought about his offer and who I could hit up for blood meals while I let the silence build. “All three names,” I said finally, “today, for one drink, Fame Vexatum style.”

  The vamp frowned, but I could tell he was going to bargain. That was one thing the older vamps understood—the art of bargaining. They had lived preretail, when humans often traded goods for goods in a marketplace. “One possibility,” he corrected me, “per drink, full meal, Fame Vexatum,” he said.

  “All today—three drinks, for three names, within the hour. And if you drink and don’t tell, I’ll treat you like I did de Allyon.”

  “To give you the names is to foreswear my allegiance. But the words I say will guide you.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  Francis seemed to ponder that a moment. “I will give you the possibilities first. Then, if you are satisfied, you will feed me.”

  “Done.”

  “You have my former mistress, Esther McTavish.” At my lifted brow, he waved that away. “But of course she doesn’t count, due to the pesky circumstance of her unfortunate demise. Charles Scarletti is Esther’s favorite scion.” I must have given something away when he said the name, because Francis gave a chuckle, low and hollow, like something from a Friday the 13th remake. “Yes, Scarletti joined us quickly after we arrived from Atlanta, eager to taste the wonders of the Naturaleza.”

  “One.” I made a little give-it-to-me gesture with one hand.

  He gave me a sly look. “And then there are the ones closest to Hieronymus’ heart.”

  I drew in a slow breath. “Zoltar and Narkis?”

  “I am not foresworn,” he reminded.

  “Yeah. Whatever,” I whispered. “Big H’s sons. I am so stupid.”

  I left the garage, dialing the number Big H had given me for his primo, Clark. When the call was answered, I said, “Jane Yellowrock here. I need three full meals for a hungry vamp prisoner. How quickly can you get them to my base?”

  “I take it that you have bargained with food?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “Half an hour. If the vampire hurts one of my master’s blood-servants, I’ll kill him,” Clark said, his tone conversational.

  I felt a real smile cross my face. “I’ll hold him down for you.”

  Clark laughed, and it was strangely carefree for a guy who had just threatened death on a vamp. “One thing. Is the vampire in question ill with the Sanguine pestis?”

  Crap. I’d forgotten that. Drinking from an uninfected human might infect the human. “Yeah. Send me someone who’s had the vamp plague and has gotten better. And thanks for thinking about that.”

  “You’re welcome, Miss Yellowrock. All in a day’s work. Shall I send someone to supervise the feeding?”

  I thought about what he might mean and said, “To keep the vamp from taking too much or hurting the . . . um . . . donor?”

  “Exactly.”

  Both, then. “Well, you need to know that silver isn’t going to hurt him and can’t be used as a deterrent.”

  “Yes. I understand. But sunlight is still effective. And it’s daylight.”

  I chuckled again, squinting up at the sun. “Yes, it is. Sure. Send along a bodyguard or two. And feel free to hurt the little vamp if needed, but don’t burn him to a crisp. He’s essential to my investigation for a while longer.”

  “Understood. Half an hour, Miss Yellowrock.”

  I hung up without telling him that his master’s sons were plotting against him, and went into the house. I came back out with the dart gun and medical kit, loaded the weapon with a one-dose dart, walked into the garage, and, without asking his permission, shot the vamp. He wasn’t expecting it, and the dart hit him midcenter of his body, just above his navel, where a mass of fading, puckered scars showed. Francis yelped and flung the dart away, cursing. It landed at my feet and I picked it up, turned on my heel and left the garage. Just before I cl
osed the door behind me, I said, “You’re cured. You’re welcome, suckhead.”

  Back inside, I was putting away the weapons when my phone rang. I could hear a car and the sound of tires on roadway in the background. I was on speakerphone. “Yeah.”

  Eli said, “Two things. One: no way to track Misha’s location from her cell. It’s a dead end. Two: one of our staked vamps was Charles Scarletti,” he said, “his human servant, Wynonna, dead in the crook of his arm.”

  “Well, crap. My sources in the Natchez vamp community are dying off faster than I can locate them for a tête-à-tête. According to Francis, Narkis and Zoltar have been plotting against their dad.”

  “He did name his boys Narkis and Zoltar.”

  “Good point. I’d have shot him too. Okay. I’ll get the Kid to see what he can dig up.” Pun intended. Before Eli could groan, I hung up. Staring at my cell, I considered my next call. I now had names given to me by a caged prisoner, yet I needed more data. I dialed Bruiser.

  “Jane,” he said, and my insides twisted. “How are things there with the boyfriend?”

  I sighed, but kept the sound away from the phone. How was I supposed to answer that when Bruiser and I had . . . issues? Beast’s wanting-to-fool-around issues, and my the-man-betrayed-me-and-should-die-for-it issues. I decided to ignore it all. “Just ducky. What effect would vamp blood have on a child with acute lymphoblastic leukemia? The worst kind of all.”

  “One moment.” I heard clicking and realized he was typing. Looking something up in a database I knew nothing about? I wanted access, but was in no position to ask for it. Dang it.

  “The news is neither good nor bad,” he said. “Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it does not. Are you talking about the little girl? Misha’s daughter?”

  “And you know about Charly how?”

  I could almost hear his smile when he said, “Reach, of course.”

  “Humph.” This call was on an official cell, so I figured that Reach was listening in. I said, “Hey, you big-eared rat. Telling tales works both ways.”