by Faith Hunter
My Beast liked the low-hanging limbs of the old oaks and sent me an image of her sprawled over one, waiting for deer, followed by another one of her swimming in the river, which I could smell close by. “Maybe later,” I muttered to her. “Business first.” Beast chuffed at me in disgust.
The drive was long and winding, concrete made to look like cobbles, and I could smell horses, a chlorinated pool, clay (maybe for the tennis courts), and the west-flowing river. It was a distinct scent, different from the raw power of the Mississippi by the time it reached New Orleans, different from the North Carolina rivers that flowed east. The Tennessee flowed west, toward the upper Mississippi, a snaky and slow flow, deceptive in its sluggish nature and far more powerful than it looked or smelled. The house the drive led to was an old renovated historical home, the original house made of dull brown river rock, added onto over the years with brick of a similar color.
I left my helmet on the bike seat, adjusted my weapons to be visible but not insulting, and climbed the steps to the front entrance. The door opened before I knocked, and the butler—an honest-to-God butler, wearing a dove gray tuxedo—showed me into the parlor, asked after my ride in, and offered me iced black tea with lemon or mint, which sounded great. I accepted the minty tea, and it appeared in about ten seconds, carried in on a silver tray by a maid, also in gray livery. The butler pointed to the guest restroom with the offer that I might freshen up, which I accepted. I carried the tea glass—draining it—into the powder room and washed up, put on bloodred lipstick, and smoothed my hip-length braid with spigot water. I also plugged in my cell to charge.
My summer riding clothes—jeans and a denim jacket—were sweaty from the day in the sun, and I would rather have showered, eaten, and taken a nap, or shifted to my Beast form and taken that swim in the river, than carry out all the posing and proper etiquette that the older vamps expected, but I didn’t have that choice. Leo’s primo had made the appointment and I liked my paycheck. Back in the parlor, I settled on a comfy leather chair, in a room with as much square footage as the entire first floor in my house. It had high ceilings, attic fans, modern furniture—all leather, of course. Vamps had a thing for dead skin. I rolled my empty glass between my palms, patient as my stalking big-cat.
Blood-Master Glass didn’t keep me waiting, but her entrance was calculated. I caught movement from the corner of my eye as she walked slowly into the room, with a black-suited human and the butler behind her, the servant carrying another tray with more tea glasses, a pitcher, and tiny sandwiches that smelled like cucumber. Taking them all in with a sweeping look, I set the glass down on the coaster that had been provided and stood.
My Beast moved into the front of my brain and peeked out of my eyes, evaluating the blood-master by sight and smell.
The blood-master was elegant, petite, and of Asian descent, with almond-shaped eyes of a peculiar dark honey hue, black hair worn long but up on the sides in a fancy do that probably took a personal servant or two to create, and pale, smooth skin the color of ivory. She was wearing a silk gown of gold and black brocade with touches of crimson embroidery—golden dragons cavorting on a black background that suggested rugged hills, the dragons spitting red fire. Vamps were partial to that particular shade of bloodred. And they liked rubies. Glass was wearing one the size of a robin’s egg on a gold chain around her neck.
The butler set the tray on the table in front of me and said, “The Glass Clan blood-master, Ming Zhane.” Technically, Ming should have changed her last name to Glass when she defeated the clan founder about a hundred years ago, but Ming wasn’t one for abiding by the rules unless they suited her, according to her dossier. Yeah. I had a dossier on most of the vamps in Leo’s hunting territories. My team stayed busy.
The butler withdrew after pouring tea into two glasses and refilling my own. The other human stood to the side and I figured that meant it was time for the fancy chitchat. I nodded, a sort of half bow, and introduced myself. “The Enforcer of Leonard Pellissier, Master of the City of New Orleans and the Greater Southeast, Jane Yellowrock, at your command, ma’am.”
She smiled, looking pretty much human, except for the paleness, and the thin lines along her eyes contributed to the human appearance. They looked like stress lines, which was odd. Vamps didn’t feel or show stress. Mindless insanity, blood thirst, and a tendency to kill anything that moved, yes. Stress, no.
Ming moved closer and breathed in my scent. Her nose wrinkled as she smelled the predator in me. I had discovered that all vamps could smell the danger that I presented, and until the blood-master of a clan or a city approved of me, they all had a tendency to react with violence. Leo was Ming’s up-line boss, but he was far away and that meant she was top dog here. It was hard not to pull away with her so close, but I held still as she sniffed again. “Your scent is not unpleasing, and the photos in your dossier and on your Internet page do not do you justice,” Ming said. “You are most lovely.”
“I’m just the Enforcer, ma’am. I’m not paid to be pretty.” Her eyes darkened and instantly I knew I’d miscalculated, so I said quickly, “But you’re thoughtful and . . . uh . . . courteous to say so. Your kind of beauty is something I’ll never achieve.” Which was all true. She was a stunner. Ming looked a little mollified, so I revised a line Alex had written into her dossier, and piled it on a little more thick. “Your photos show elegance and loveliness, and your personal presence suggests a powerful magic.” Yeah. I was getting pretty good at blowing smoke up vamps’ backsides, what they called gracious conversation, and I called a load of bull-hockey. But not to their faces.
She tilted her head, one of those miniscule, wrong-angled-move gestures vamps can do, and I figured I was out of the woods as to protocol. She indicated with a wave of her hand that I should sit, and weirdly, her fingers trembled, just a hint. Vamps didn’t tremble either. Ming took the wingback chair beside mine and folded her hands in her lap. The human stood beside her, watching my every move. Ming said, “The master of New Orleans is kind to send assistance in this, our time of need.”
“Yes, ma’am. Blood-Master Pellissier is eager to assist all those loyal to him.” As I said. Smoke up her backside, though my words were still true. Leo was a good master, as far as a blood-sucking-ruler-over-all-he-surveyed type of loyalty went. “How can the Enforcer assist the Glass blood-master and her Mithrans?”
The human in the black suit reached into his jacket at chest level, and I tensed. He stopped the action instantly and then continued, much more slowly. This was Ming’s primo, Asian, slender, and deadly. Very, very deadly in a martial arts kinda way. As if he could break me into tiny little pieces with his fingertips, a hard look, and a toothpick, before I could blink. “A Mithran has gone missing,” he said. “She was last seen with this person.” The man—Cai, no last name, or maybe no first name, I wasn’t sure—pulled out two sheaves of papers, not a weapon, and placed them on the small table between Ming and me.
I lifted one batch of pages and saw the photo of an old man, maybe in his seventies, with sun-lined skin, sunspots, raised and rough age spots, kinda brown and freckled all over. Faded blue eyes. He was mostly bald. A narrow-eyed, mean-looking man, the kind who was raised on whuppin’s, hardtack, and moonshine, and who hated the world. I flipped through the three attached pages. The info said his name was Colonel Ernest Jackson, but there was no mention of military service in the scant record.
The second file showed a digital photo of the vamp in question, Heyda Cohen. She was tiny and very beautiful. Vamps offered people the change for lots of reasons, and personal beauty was high on the list. But Heyda’s intelligent, piercing eyes suggested that she was special in the other ways as well.
“Heyda was in charge of my personal security and she was contacted by that human man”—Ming pointed at his photo—“a communication that carried a threat to me. She tracked him.” Ming’s speech, accented by her native Asian language, sped up and her syntax grew more
fractured. “Then she met with that human and three of his followers. In a park. In the city. Then she went away with him. Without contacting us or alerting her support team, who were waiting in the park, watching. They allowed her to leave, as she did not appear distressed. We do not know why she left with him. She did not come home afterwards.” Suddenly Ming was all but wringing her hands, leaning toward me in her chair, shoulders tense. “The man refuses to see us. Refuses to allow us to see her. He hides in his compound and . . .” She glanced up at her primo, and her face crumpled. Her shoulders went up high, and Cai placed a hand on one in tender concern.
I had to wonder why this had been reported as a minor problem, and not the urgent one that a kidnapping represented. Especially the kidnapping of a head of clan security. When I asked that question, Cai said, “Heyda gave us no signal that she was in danger. She often worked with the human community to forge ties. We assumed that was what she was doing. But she didn’t return. She didn’t contact us. That is not like her.”
“In this day and age,” Ming said, “one with cameras and detection devices, there are many places we dare not enter. We are not allowed to protect our own.” Ming’s eyes bled slowly black, her sclera going scarlet, but her fangs remained up in her mouth on their little bone hinges. It was a demonstration of intent and control. “Heyda must be returned to us. Or avenged. If they have made her true-dead, I will drink them all down. Humans go too far in this modern time.”
Aw righty, then. “Did Heyda’s team video the meet? Do you have an idea where she might have been taken?”
“Yes,” Cai said. “We have gathered all video and intelligence related to this situation. The compound’s security is tight, using cameras, guards, and patrolling dogs. And we smell silver in their weapons. We could raid the compound, but my people smell explosives in addition to the other weapons and measures. My master is disturbed.”
I focused on the word making the most impact. “Compound?”
“That human male has land,” Ming said. “It has been in his family for longer than I have been blood-master. He calls his holdings a church, but it is not. It is something else.”
I looked my question at the primo. Cai was standing with his hands loose at his sides, and he shrugged slightly. “They claim the right of religious freedom, but their women are not free to choose.”
“Ah. A cult,” I said, cold starting to seep into my bones as I began putting this together. It had FUBAR written all over it.
“Yes,” Cai said.
A powerful vamp in the hands of a cult likely meant they’d drain her, starve her, torture her, and eventually stake her. And until they finished her off, they would have access to her blood to make them stronger, healthier, and longer-lived, blood that would heal any of their sick. They also would become addicted to the effect of vamp blood on their systems, but people are inherently stupid about addictive substances. The kidnappers—if that was what they were—had to know that the vamps would come after her. So someone in the compound had a reason to drink vamp blood—an important human was sick or dying. Or it was a trap. Either one was a problem. Oh, goody.
“I’ll need everything you have on the cult, the grounds, any legal problems, legal names and aka’s, everything. All electronic info. Anything in paper form needs to be scanned and sent.” I handed Cai a card. “This is my electronic specialist’s contact info. He’ll be collaborating with us on intel. For now, I’ll let him work with you and anyone else we need to talk to. And I’d like to see Heyda’s rooms.”
“Of course,” Ming said. “When will you attack? It must be before dawn.”
“Not tonight.”
“Tonight!” Ming shouted, her fangs dropping down with little snicks of sound, her hands clenched on the chair arms, her talons shining in the lamplight and piercing the expensive leather. She was completely vamped out, that fast. Ming looked fragile, but vamps are freaky strong. I didn’t want to have to stake her to save my life only to have Cai kill me later. And probably a lot slower. So I sat still, unmoving, my eyes on Cai, not running like prey, or fighting like a contender for territory. Not focusing on Ming; keeping my eyes averted. But the hand by my thigh was holding a silver stake. I’m not stupid.
Moving slowly, as if he were reaching out to a wild animal, Cai placed a hand on Ming’s shoulder again, the gesture a soothing caress. He said something in Chinese. Mandarin was their first language, according to Ming’s dossier. Ming turned away, hunching in on herself. It looked as though she fought for control.
Her primo said, softly, “Heyda has been in their hands for four days and four nights. We fear for her.”
“I understand. But I have to know where to place troops, where all the entrances are, and where they might be hiding explosives. The situation was never expressed to me as urgent or an imminent danger, and I don’t have my tactics guy here. Alex is the next best bet. He’s good at finding out things others can’t, so I need his intel or the rescue team might trigger an explosion that will kill them or the hostage.”
“Her name is Heyda. Not hostage,” Ming said, her back still turned.
“I know. I’m trying to get Heyda back to you in one piece. I’ll get back to you before dawn with an update.”
“Quarters have been arranged here for you,” Ming said.
“Thank you for that consideration, but the Master of the City of New Orleans has booked rooms for me uptown.” No way was I staying under a vamp roof, where there might be collaborators in Ming’s capture, or vamps wanting to try skinwalker blood. Or a blood-master on edge. No freaking way.
“As you wish.” Ming, again looking mostly human, turned her face to me and stood. I stood just as fast. Protocol and all that. The butler appeared at the entrance to the parlor like some kind of magic trick—gone one moment, present the next. “I expect a report before dawn. You are dismissed.”
Yeah. Right. I gathered up the papers and followed the butler to Heyda’s rooms, which I searched as well as I was able, getting Cai to take photos of everything and send them to Alex with a text telling him I had arrived and was okay. Before I left, I removed Heyda’s pillowcase from her pillow and took it with me. I might need a scent item to track her and wanted to be ready. I grabbed my cell on the way out, happy to be back in communication with my team.
***
With the cell battery at least partially charged, I called the Kid back home. The Younger brothers were frantic, and I spent the ride to my hotel updating them.
By the time I got checked into the suite—one of those corner rooms with windows on both outer walls, all with a view, a sitting area, a king-sized bed, a desk with computer access, and a fridge—it was two a.m. and I was exhausted. To wake up enough to function, I took a fast, frigid shower, dressed in the clean jeans and T-shirt I had carried up from Fang’s saddlebags, and made my way to the business lounge. Access to that department was quickly facilitated by the hotel night manager, who let me into the computer room for a number of twenties. In the short elapsed time, Alex had gathered more info to add to what we knew. A lot more.
***
A cup of double-strong black tea on the desk beside me, I opened up the file compiled by Alex and read the summary he had prepared. Colonel Ernest Jackson was a third-generation cult member, grandson of the founder of the God’s Cloud of Glory Church, a backwoods religious cult of polygamists who lived on three hundred acres of hillside property not far from Beaver Ridge, which sounded appropriate for the cult in so many ways.
God’s Cloud had a recent batch of problems, however, with papers filed against them by the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services and the Department of Human Services for human trafficking and child endangerment. Reports suggested that they married off their female children long before they were women. Two days prior to Heyda being abducted, there had been an attempted raid on the complex, but the church had clearly been alerted to the law enforcement plans, becaus
e by the time the LEOs got there, the access roads to the compound had been barricaded with recently felled trees and booby-trapped with nails, scrap iron, and rolls of rusted barbed wire. The social services types and the cops hadn’t exactly gone home with their tails between their legs, but they were stymied at the front gates of the church compound. It was looking like a combo of Ruby Ridge and the Nevada Showdown.
I had to wonder how the colonel and his pals had gotten off the property to kidnap Heyda and then gotten back in without a law enforcement incident. I made a note to look for hidden entries. Cave passages, maybe? There were lots of caves in the hills of Knoxville. Maybe an undocumented cave accessed the property.
Satellite maps and topographical maps of the area showed ridges of hills running through Knox County vaguely north and south and making a long curve, like a fishhook. It looked like a fault line, but nothing in the maps said so. The rivers ran between the folds of hills with large flatlands between. Tax records indicated that some areas of the hills were affluent, some much less so. I pored over the topo maps, water table maps, survey maps, and photocopied maps from the nineteen fifties and sixties that still revealed logging roads, farm roads, and other access points not on current maps. The satellite maps of the church lands showed buildings, outbuildings, barns, places where large earth-moving projects had been initiated and later finished, and foundations where new buildings were being started. But the most recent sat maps were six months old and there was no telling what was happening there now.
While Beast slept in the back of my mind, bored, I sent texts to Eli, Alex’s former Army Ranger brother, the tactics and strategy part of our three-person-team. I needed him to give me an opinion on the best way into the compound, the most likely location of the missing vamp—anything that looked like a prison or holding cell—and then the best way out.