He had a feeling it wouldn’t be that easy. Lately, it never seemed to be. Surely some of the vampires drank less blood, or refrained from these humans altogether.
“Come on.” He jerked his head toward a ladder and climbed up, a knot in his gut loosening when he heard Aiyanna following. With creatures like these around, he preferred to keep her in his sights, where he could make sure she was okay. She was more than formidable, but illogically, that didn’t matter to him.
She could bleed; therefore, she could become injured or die. It was enough to merit his concern.
Once they were safely upstairs, he realized these vampires had a great view of their dead cohorts’ smoke.
“I’m surprised none of them tried to leap off,” Aiyanna remarked.
Cael reached back and took her hand. “Me too.”
Like the downstairs area, the vampires could stand in a square. On the neutral ground side, there was no one to be found.
The other side was a different story.
Two of the vampires lay on the floor, smoke rising.
“That toilet’s on fire,” a woman cried, effectively bringing a hush over the disgruntled paraders. Whether the humans were angry or worried, his pack would have a lot to answer for by the time they met with the police.
Which was especially true because of the six other vampires openly fighting Katarina and Vale…who were not winning. There was nothing fumbling or sluggish about the men’s movements, while both Vale and Katarina were moving more slowly than they should have been. Both had scratches and bruises on their faces and necks, and Vale cringed when he leaned his weight on his left foot.
“It’s about time,” Vale gritted.
Katarina screamed. When she’d turned at Vale’s words, one of the vampires took advantage of the distraction and hoisted her over the edge of the float. A number of humans shouted, pointing at the woman being held high off the ground.
She wouldn’t survive that fall. Her head would hit the asphalt first. Katarina wasn’t immortal yet—she was a witch, and witches reached immortality when they were in their mid-twenties to early thirties. Any injuries she sustained would heal like any mortal’s would.
Cael punched the vampire holding Katarina as hard as he could in the back of the head, making him lose his grip. Immediately, another was on him, but not before he reached out and grabbed the witch. He couldn’t keep his grip on her, but he swung her in, letting her go when he knew she would land in the first story of the float.
“Katarina!” Vale yelled, his face going white.
It was the most emotion Cael had ever seen the other werewolf project.
“Behind you!”
Aiyanna’s shout gave him barely enough time to avoid a knife to his gut. Coward. It made Cael sick for these men to attack a group of unarmed humans with their teeth and knives. He hit the man’s arm as hard as he could against the wall, cracking it. The knife dropped onto what looked like a wallet, which must have fallen out of a human’s pocket.
Before he could reach down, Cael unmasked both the man who’d dangled Katarina and the vampire he just disarmed. Both burned quickly in the sun with no roof over their heads to provide any protective shade. Strangely, both men’s skin took longer to blacken and burn, making Cael wonder if they were older or stronger than the vampires he’d encountered on the lower level of the float.
Then again, the alcohol in their blood likely made them more flammable to begin with.
Now that they didn’t stand in the shadow of the second story, he could tell they were heavily muscled underneath their costumes. It wasn’t obvious while they stood, but became more apparent when the material lay against them where they were sprawled on the floor.
Cael picked up the wallet and knife, pocketing the wallet to give to the authorities and holding out the knife to Aiyanna, handle-first.
Only she wasn’t standing behind him safely, as he’d presumed. She was engaged with a vampire twice her size, who backhanded her so hard her head snapped to the left and hit a bundle of glowing plastic light sabers that leaned against the brightly colored wall.
He saw red.
“No.” Belatedly, he realized he’d yelled the moment her face recoiled. Still, he moved too quickly for the vampire to anticipate him coming.
He punched the man so hard, his mask came off without Cael meaning for it to. Screaming, the vampire clutched his face as the sun cracked his skin and caused it to smoke.
“When they found out about this…” was all the man could say before his oral and pharyngeal mechanisms were too damaged for speech.
Ignoring the vampire’s cryptic last words, Cael moved to Aiyanna’s side. “Are you okay?” he asked, glancing at her quickly to gauge the damage the man had done. Nothing stood out at him. Her arms crossed over her belly. She didn’t uncross them, but awkwardly stuck her hand out for the knife he’d tried to give her.
“Let’s finish the rest of these jackasses,” she answered.
There were three vampires left. Two ganged up on Vale, and the last decided Aiyanna was the weakest. He used a gloved hand to hold the flaps protecting his ears in place as he swiftly stepped toward her, uncaring of the bodies underneath his feet. He moved with more confidence than even the men Cael had defeated a moment ago, and it didn’t take long for him to see why: the vampire held a gun with a large silencer screwed onto the barrel.
In what Cael hoped to be less than a second, he assessed the situation. He couldn’t call for Vale to transport this man away before he could shoot—and kill—him or Aiyanna. A bullet to the head would kill either of them, and a bullet to the throat or heart would have them incapacitated for weeks, which they couldn’t afford.
That left him with one option. He looked to Aiyanna meaningfully where she stood at his side. At the same time, he kicked up the body of a human man, using it to knock the vampire off-balance.
I’m sorry. Cael hated to desecrate a body.
It worked. The man stumbled, giving Cael enough time to lunge forward and take the gun, while Aiyanna threw her knife. It landed in the center of the man’s throat. Crimson poured down even quicker than a human would bleed, saturating the man’s white tunic and pants.
Before a human noticed, Cael unmasked the vampire and left him on the floor, exactly where he’d left the humans who began this day expecting nothing more than a few drinks and a good time.
“Nice,” he told Aiyanna, impressed. Her aim was perfect—she’d hit the vampire in the exact place that would draw the most blood, weakening him. “Do the same to this guy.”
Cael pointed to the larger of the two vampires fighting with Vale. The other werewolf didn’t transport himself, but fought as if he had no elemental abilities, likely for the sake of observant humans. With the two vampires between him and Vale, Cael couldn’t see what he was doing, but they seemed to be evenly matched.
Aiyanna’s intervention wouldn’t hurt anything.
Silently, one arm still wrapped around herself, Aiyanna took the blade from the dead vampire, wiped it on his shirt and flung it at the man Cael had pointed out. It struck true, hitting the center of the back of his neck right beyond his spine.
He fell, distracting the other vampire and giving Vale the chance to unmask them both.
“Is that all of them?” Vale wiped a few beads of sweat from his brow and shook out his leg.
“I think so.” Cael hadn’t seen any others on this level, and he knew everyone on the first story was dead, except his group. A glance down told him they were throwing out the remainder of the beads to a bemused crowd.
When he turned and stepped over one of the vampires, his boot hit something hard and slippery.
It was a gun. He leaned over to look where the vampire with the gun had landed a good four feet away and saw another one there, not far from the man’s limp hand.
That meant two of the vampires had guns. Shit. What if someone had been shot?
He shook off that dev
astating thought, grateful they’d gotten so lucky. Next time he would have to be more careful—and stay armed. Usually he always kept at least some sort of knife on him, but today he hadn’t anticipated any threat, only alcohol and an abundance of beads.
If he were honest with himself, he hadn’t been thinking clearly when he and Aiyanna left the firehouse. Even now, after everything that had just happened, he was still reeling from their kiss. A few minutes after it happened, he’d been helpless to remember something so small as a weapon.
I’m going soft. This mistake couldn’t happen again. It could’ve cost him or one of his friends their life.
He saw Aiyanna amble off to the emptier side of the float. Exchanging a nod with Vale, he followed her while Vale took the ladder down to the first level. To his surprise, Aiyanna didn’t take a stuffed Friar Tuck and toss it to the child shouting for her to throw him something, and neither did she take a bag of Tucks capes and empty it into the crowd.
She merely leaned her back against the wall with an enormous white flower painted on it and slid down until she sat on the floor, her arms still wrapped around herself.
Still. She’d held that position for at least the past ten minutes. Something was wrong.
He crouched next to her and lightly touched her arm. “Lift it,” he commanded. When she met his eyes defiantly and held her arms against her even more tightly, he felt the breath whoosh out from his lungs. No, no, no.
It took a moment for him to see the blood, as her shirt was crimson and black plaid. Had he not been looking for it, he wouldn’t have noticed the stain. Gingerly, he pried her arm up, revealing a small hole just below her right breast.
“Damn it, Aiyanna, why didn’t you say anything?” he whispered. His words didn’t have the sting he was going for, but he didn’t care.
His Aiyanna was bleeding out, and it was so shocking to him, he wished he could close his eyes and will her healed. Only he couldn’t, and she had no capability to heal herself.
In truth, she looked worse than any immortal should, even when shot.
Her skin grew paler by the second, turning the color of strong coffee with far too much milk. Even her eyes weren’t as bright. They were a dull amber, unlike their usual fiery gold.
With a sigh, she laid her dark head against his chest, resting her forehead to his sternum. Both of her hands clutched his shoulders. “I’m not meant to get hurt and hurt others,” she murmured. “Causing harm takes away just as much from me as healing such a wound would, and getting shot on top of that?” She shook her head, pressed her cheek against his collarbone. “This isn’t good, darling.”
Darling. Aiyanna had never held back on doling out endearments, but this time felt different. There was no sarcasm in her voice, no trace of humor.
Breaking his own promises to himself, Cael clutched her to him tightly, his heart jerking in his chest when Aiyanna sighed happily at the contact.
“If I’d known getting shot would merit me this, I would have taken a few more risks a long time ago.” Nuzzling into his neck, she closed her eyes.
Panic seized him.
“No, no you don’t.” Cael lifted her into his arms and shook her gently enough for her to wearily open one amber eye. She shot him a weak glare.
“You stay awake. Do you understand me?”
Carefully, he walked to the ladder and climbed down with one hand holding her against him and another keeping his balance. Aiyanna blew a raspberry and murmured something along the lines of, “Yes, Captain Asshat.”
It was good enough for him.
“Vale!” he shouted.
The werewolf didn’t appear in front of him, but stepped into their view, took one look at Aiyanna and traveled through the air, his movement blocked by the giant toilet.
“What happened?” he demanded, his expression darkening.
Cael gripped her tighter. “She was shot, and made damn sure neither of us knew about it until all the vampires were dead.” With so much blood spilled, there hadn’t been a way for him or Vale to detect her injury. “Can you get her to a healer?”
Vale shook his head. “I don’t know any.”
It wasn’t a surprise. Healers were few and far between, and Vale wasn’t from a huge city. He was in demand and powerful in terms of their werewolf hierarchy, but healers were often human—his connections wouldn’t necessarily cause him to cross paths with one, even over a span of centuries.
“I know where some are,” Raphael said. Both he and Mary moved behind Vale with solemn expressions. “But taking her to them would be a risk.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Cael could feel her heartbeat weakening, hear her struggling for breath. Where the bullet went in, her lung was definitely punctured. He only hoped it went straight through, rather than bouncing off her ribs and hurting any other organs.
Don’t think about it.
“Do what you have to,” he growled when Raphael remained still.
Nodding curtly, Raphael took out his phone and dialed, his mouth tightening. “Christian? Aiyanna was shot by a vampire. Care to explain that to me?”
The volume on Raphael’s phone was turned low, but Cael clearly heard the expletive Christian shouted.
“Where can we find the healer in San Francisco? You said there were half a dozen living there, and they might be the only chance she has at surviving this.”
Christian spoke quickly, and Raphael hung up without another word.
“Did you hear that?” he asked Vale, who inclined his head.
Cael carefully handed Aiyanna over, and both she and Vale were gone before he could threaten Vale’s life. Reminding himself to gut the man if Aiyanna came back anything but healthy and whole, he halfheartedly threw toys and beads until the parade reached the end of its route, making a loop on Canal Street.
Of course, the police waited for them when they finally stopped.
A female officer walked up, her sunglasses darker and less glittery than Aiyanna’s had been, reminding him Aiyanna had left hers somewhere on the float.
“You’re supposed to wear masks at all times,” she chided, her voice mild. “Hey, where’s Aiyanna? She said she was riding this float.”
Raphael took a moment to explain the situation to the officer, who wasted no time leaping into the float to assess the damage.
“I hate vampires,” she spat. With a sad shake of her head, she extended her hand to Raphael. “I’m Charlotte—I think I’ve met you before, but we weren’t formally introduced.”
They all shook her hand. Cael may have met her, but he didn’t recall. With her brown hair in a tight bun, her baseball cap and sunglasses, he couldn’t see enough to have anything to recognize.
The next hour or so went by in a blur. Raphael and Mary spoke the most, answering Charlotte’s questions about the vampires and humans, whether any humans witnessed anything they shouldn’t have seen. She was soon joined by another three officers, along with a number of paramedics to take the humans away from the scene.
Some humans watched curiously, whereas most ignored their float for more festive sights. The flashing red lights drew attention; police officers were common at Mardi Gras, but paramedics weren’t.
Luckily for Cael, the police deftly intercepted anyone too curious before they saw any of the gore the vampires had left behind.
“Here.” Cael interrupted something Raphael was saying about having never seen these particular vampires before, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want to forget this.
“This fell out of a human’s pocket.” He held out the wallet he’d collected earlier, catching a slip of paper when it fell out.
It was a picture of a young girl. In block letters, the name of a local middle school and the years 2015-2016 was printed below her slight shoulders.
Cael’s hand shook as he lifted the paper for Charlotte to see. Most likely, this child lost her father today, and was it much better if the man was her uncle or another relative? He had
family, and now he was dead.
“What will you tell the family?” he asked. To his knowledge, creatures generally left humans alone. Other than the incident with botos—dolphin shapeshifters—last spring, they were safe from creatures unless they somehow sought them out. Particularly stupid people had a tendency to attempt dealings with the Fey, resulting in nothing left to give their families anyway.
That was another reason why their relationship with Christian’s group of vampires was so important. Raphael, Sophia and Heath had hoped to avoid this very conversation.
“We have ways to mask the bite marks,” Charlotte said evasively. “And we’ll ask for family members to identify the victims. When an autopsy is done, we will keep the sole copy and replace it with one that blames their death on something humans will understand.”
“Every rider on a float turning up dead on the day of the parade?” Another officer, Raj, wore a hardened smirk. He cracked his knuckles. “This is going to be a huge story, especially if anyone saw you boneheads rolling down the parade route. Without masks on, all of you stuck out like sore thumbs.”
“You’re right.” Charlotte nodded briskly. “Eva, would you get in touch with our contact at the Times-Picayune? If she can break this story on Nola.com our way, we can prevent a panic.”
A different female officer, one with dark skin and hair cropped short, had already begun dialing her phone. “Winnie’s going to start charging us for this,” she murmured, exchanging a look with Charlotte before she walked around the corner of the crumbling building they stood in front of.
“I’m thinking some kind of gas on the float killed them?” Raj cringed, then shook his head. “Nope, that won’t work.”
“Say there was something in the alcohol,” Cael offered, remembering how drunk these humans must have been before the vampires drank from them. “Their autopsies will show alcohol, and if they were all drinking from the same case, it’s a logical conclusion.” He felt his jaw tighten. “Not that I like lying to these families. They’ll never know what truly happened to these men.”
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