Raven Cursed jy-4

by Faith Hunter

  Her head tilted, that birdlike or snakelike motion they do when they forget to act human. “Her name’s Roseanne,” she said, her expression full of resolve, eyes narrowing at me. I was pretty sure that determination was her intent to kill me if I tried to stake her child. I addressed Pickersgill. “Is there any chance the victim can be turned?”

  “If there’s a spark of life left in Sarah, yes. But it doesn’t appear likely.”

  I stared them down, sliding one hand into my surprise supplies. “If she can be turned, then it isn’t murder. If she’s dead, I don’t care what you want.”

  The vamps swiveled to me almost as one, like pack hunters sighting prey. Grizzard took a slow breath as fear pheromones laced into the air from his skin. Scrawny’s eyes bled black in an instant. A young vamp touched her arm in warning. “Mom. Don’t.”

  Without taking my eyes from Scrawny, I took in the young female. It was Amy Lynn Brown, the miracle vamp who came out of devoveo in two years time. I inclined my head at her and went on. “Any of the chained who get away from this house get staked when I catch them, even if the human woman can be turned, so it’s in your best interests to keep them contained. I won’t risk letting them kill a human. Another human,” I corrected.

  Scrawny’s fangs snapped down. I stared down at her. “You have a problem with my methods, call Leo Pellissier.” I held out my cell. “Speed dial seven.” Scrawny breathed deeply, which she didn’t need to do, but it seemed to calm her, that and her daughter’s hand on her arm. She closed her eyes and stepped back from me, her pupils shrinking when she opened them again. Maybe it was the thought of talking to Leo. Or maybe at the thought that I talked to Leo. Or called the MOC by his first name. Or Amy Lynn’s insistence. Whatever. It worked.

  I looked at the sheriffs. “Unless y’all want to take them in for murder?”

  Scoggins said, “Hell no.”

  Grizzard said, “What am I gonna do with crazy-ass vamps, begging your pardon, Constantine, Dacy, ma’am. If they signed the papers, then they’re treated accordingly. That’s the law as it reads right now. Of course that may change if the Supreme Court decides to look at the Vampira Carta before the Congress gets around to making a decision on citizenship.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But all they do is talk,” I reminded him. He chuckled and gave me that hale-fellow-well-met political grin. I turned back to the vamps and told them how the situation was going to be handled, drew out a map of the scion lair, and walked them through it twice. I finished with, “Adelaide, grab a fire extinguisher.” She looked puzzled but went to the corner of the room, returning with a red extinguisher.

  To the others I said, “When the door opens, close your eyes, turn away, and cover your ears. Understood?” I looked at Scrawny. “If you can immobilize your child, you can appeal a death sentence to Leo.” Her eyes filled with bloody tears. Crap. A weepy vamp. Which made me feel all kinds of guilty. Sometimes I forgot that they used to be human, and still have humanlike emotions. Amy Lynn patted her arm.

  From my box of supplies I pulled two silver mesh nets and unfolded them. They were designed after a net I’d once seen used to immobilize a vamp. That one had been constructed of sterling, interlocking crosses, which burned and scarred most vamps on contact. Mine was made of silver-plated steel rings with tiny sterling barbs all over them. They weren’t sharp, and so wouldn’t hurt humans, but they were extremely painful, almost incapacitating, to vamps. I’d had the nets made, at Leo’s expense, when I discovered I was going to be security on this gig. They were for close-in work, useless at any range, but perfect for this job.

  I gave one to Grizzard, and one to Scoggins, explaining how they worked. “Have you ever used a fishing net? Throw it out and pull it back in? This is just like that. When you throw, you hold the silver and this rope. When it lands on a vamp, or a vamp and a human, you release the silver and yank the rope. It pulls the silver mesh taut and encircles them. It’s painful but if the net is removed quickly, the wounds can be healed by a master’s blood.”

  I pulled out a grenade, and saw every eye land on it with reactions from curiosity to fear to humor. Grizzard chuckled under his breath, teeth showing. “Now, why didn’t I think of that?”

  “This is a stun grenade, called a flashbang,” I explained to the vamps. “Unlike grenades designed to maim and kill, these are nonlethal incapacitants, designed to temporarily neutralize enemies in combat. When detonated in a closed space, the concussive blast and bright light is enough to overwhelm the enemies’ ears and light-sensitive cells in their eyes, making them temporarily deaf and blind.” I stopped. Flashbangs had been designed for human combatants and there were no studies of them being used on vamps. Vamp eyes were different from human eyes, and while I didn’t think the devices posed a permanent danger to vamp vision, I didn’t know it for sure. It wasn’t like I’d been able to experiment. Until now.

  Other than blindness, my biggest concern was that the flashbangs had been known to ignite accelerants, and the myths said that vamps burned fast and hot. One of Evangelina’s paintings depicted a master vamp with her arms on fire, and she had survived, so I didn’t know for certain if the myth was true or not. But I saw no reason to take chances, which was why I had Adelaide standing by with a fire extinguisher.

  “Okay. Pickersgill, you and Scraw—the mother of the true child inside, yank open the door fast, I’ll toss in the stunner, and you slam it. They’ll likely throw themselves at the door, so be ready to muscle it closed. Once it detonates, with any luck, they’ll all be down, but I’m not betting that they stay down long. Yank the door back open. I’ll enter first, followed by Grizzard and Scoggins. Adelaide comes in next to put out anyone on fire.”

  Scrawny blinked at the phrase as if deciding how to react to its coarseness. I shrugged. It was what it was. “The rest of you follow, but don’t expect to see much. There will be a lot of smoke that’s painful to breathe and hurts your eyes. Try to hold your breath.” Right. Tell vamps to hold their breath. “Humans, I mean.

  “Dacy,” I located the heir’s blue eyes and delicate form. She was like a doll, but a powerful master. Her eyes were bleeding to black in a slow, controlled manner, the sclera brightening to red at the same cautious speed. “If the girl is still alive, you start her transformation. If she’s gone”—I looked around—“then we’ll need these.” I passed out wooden stakes. “A belly thrust will immobilize them. Then, if Lincoln Shaddock, Blood Master of the Shaddock Clan wants, an appeal can be made to Leo for mercy. Or old Linc can stake them. If they get off the property, I’ll handle it alone.”

  Dacy looked away, her eyes brimming with tears. Great. Now I was making them all cry. “If Lincoln was master of the city,” she said, “we would have a Mercy Blade to help us. We wouldn’t have to—” She stopped, and drew in a breath thick with tears. “We wouldn’t have to hurt our scions, risk their deaths.” She dashed a hand across her cheeks, leaving blood smears.

  “Dacy,” I said gently, still holding out the stakes, “Mercy Blades don’t chase down freed young rogues. They only”—I searched for a kind word—“help out with the long chained.” Help out. Right. Help out as in stake and behead them while they lay chained to a bed. But I didn’t say it. Go me. “If your chained ones killed a human, then they’re rogues. But I won’t kill them if I can help it.” She stared at me in surprise. As slowly as a human, she took the stakes and passed them to the scions, her motions reflected in the huge windows to my right. I handed more to the humans, reminding them to belly thrust.

  I led the way into Lincoln’s bedroom and jutted my chin, indicating the hidden door. Scrawny and Pickersgill took up position, Pickersgill at the side that opened, Scrawny on the hinged side, which I figured was smart. If Scrawny had a chance, she might get in my way. “Turn off the lights inside. And be sure to turn them on after the flashbang goes off.” I thought for a moment, wondering if I had left out anything. Probably.

  “On three,” I said. I rotated my head on my neck and stretched m
y throwing arm. “One.” I reached deep, drawing on Beast-speed and strength. Pulled the pin. “Two.” I reared back. “Three.” The door opened so fast I didn’t see it move. The flashbang flew, ballistic, into the unlit room. The door slammed shut with an explosive gust of air. I covered my ears, just in case. So did the others. We could hear the detonation and the resultant screams even through the heavy door. Vamps who are dying, or think they are, give a piercing, eardrum-bursting shriek, like the love child of a screech owl and a mountain lion on crystal meth, amplified like a seventies rock band. Drawing two wood stakes, I said, “Open.” The door opened even faster than before, the lights blazing overhead, turning the noxious smoke inside into a thick cloud.

  I launched myself into the scion lair. Smoke stinging my eyes, burning my nose. A naked form rushed out of the smoke, vamp-fast. I swept a leg forward and around and followed the rogue down with a belly stab, midcenter, deep enough to hit the descending aorta. Vamp blood sprayed out over me. I braced for a burn, but there was no chemical sting from the splatters. He was down. I left the stake in his belly and pulled another. I caught a flash of silver as a net was tossed over a female form. Three rogues came at me, vamped out, small fangs snapped down. Their pupils were smaller than a human’s at noon on a desert. They were effectively blind, but their nostrils were wide, sniffing, their breathing fast. I stabbed, took a step, thrust, pulled a new stake, stepped, thrust.

  I’d taken down six, with eight stakes, when I realized that I should have counted the chained or thought to ask how many there were. Crap. Stupid, rookie mistake. I slammed my back against a cage, facing two vamps who came at me in concert. It wasn’t the usual mindless action of a rogue. These two were older than the others, their fangs longer, whiter. And they could see. They hesitated a fraction of a second, half a heartbeat. One dodged in. The other kicked out. I blocked the first one. Took the kick in the knee joint. Something popped. The world tilted. I went down.

  A net flashed over the one who’d kicked me, glittering silver. He squealed like a pig being slaughtered. The other one fell on my injured leg. I smelled his hunger, his need. I was out of stakes. Training and instinct took over. I stabbed up with a vamp-killer, into the notch below his sternum. And remembered midstrike that I wasn’t supposed to kill him yet. I adjusted aim halfway in, trying to avoid a heart-thrust with the silvered blade. He grunted and slid from me. Curled up on the floor in the fetal position. Panting, mewling. I took a breath and started coughing, even as I pulled more blades.

  Overhead, fans and the AC had come on, sucking out the smoke and the reek of vamp blood, filling the room with clean but frigid air. As the smoke cleared, I could see. It was all over.

  Naked vamps were lying everywhere, most curled into the fetal position, bleeding profusely, their blood running across the stone floor to the central drain. Scarlet had been sprayed over the ceiling, walls, and cell bars like some kind of postmodernist paint job. Three blood-servants were down, all getting blood-sips and healing tongue-laving from the scions, which creeped me out, even though I’d been on the receiving end of healing laves and knew their benefits. One scion was holding his back as if he’d taken a tumble. He was feeding off Pickersgill, the two men in an embrace that made me feel like a voyeur. Scrawny was in a cell feeding a vamp, Amy Lynn cradling them both like babies. The girl was the one who had been weeping when I was here last. Now, her needlelike fangs were buried in her mother’s wrist, getting an infusion of vamp blood from mommy dearest.

  I swiveled to my butt, and stretched out my right leg with both hands. It had been kicked and slashed by vamp claws, and it hurt. Blood coated my palm, not pumping, thankfully, so not arterial, but still a lot of blood. Some vamp-baby had hit a big vein. I wouldn’t be walking on it. Not until I shifted. But all the scions were down, all were alive, and miracle of miracles, the girl, Sarah, was being fed Dacy’s blood. I could make out a pulse beneath her ear, weak and too fast. She swallowed. I blew out a laugh and remembered to breathe. Pain radiated up and down my leg. Crap. This is bad. Good for the vamps. But bad for—

  “Jane! The front door is open.” Grizzard stuck his head into the scion lair.

  Dacy looked around, counting. “One got out.”

  “Thomas.” There was dread in Pickersgill’s voice, and I couldn’t imagine what might alarm a vamp who had lived through the cold war, the Cuban missile crisis, and the death of President Kennedy, as well as all the post 9-11 stuff.

  I really didn’t want to know, but I asked anyway. “What’s so bad about Thomas?”

  Pickersgill said, “He was Lincoln’s primo blood-servant until he was injured in the line of duty and Linc brought him over. He’s been sane for three years, but he . . . uh—”

  “He’s a Naturaleza,” Dacy stated tonelessly. “We didn’t know until he came out of devoveo.”

  “Well, crap,” I whispered. The Naturaleza believed that they had a right to hunt and kill humans, just because they were at the top of the food chain. They were way more dangerous than any rogue, because they were thinking, intelligent, sociopathic killers, often with resources like safe houses and bank accounts their masters didn’t know about. If Shaddock had known, Thomas would never have been turned. He would have been allowed to die a normal human death, or been put down. If he was sane, and hadn’t yet killed a human, then he didn’t fall under the category of young-rogue, therefore he wasn’t mine to hunt until I was asked, and I wasn’t sure who was supposed to hunt him. Things had just FUBARed. I pulled a length of leather off a thigh strap and bound my injured knee, almost gagging with the pain, but the bleeding slowed. I rolled to one hip, pulled my phone, and speed-dialed Leo. He answered on the first ring.

  “Things did not go well,” he said. The MOC was prescient. Maybe he read tea leaves. Or blood stains in the bottom of his glass. Or maybe he had access to the security system here at Shaddock Central. He had access to the cameras in all his Louisiana vamps’ clan homes, so why not here as well?

  “No. They didn’t.” I considered Leo. Yeah. The MOC may not know much about computers, but Leo’s wealth could buy all the knowledge and expertise he wanted. Smart money said he had access to everything. “They had a sane vamp in captivity, a Naturaleza. He got free.”

  Leo breathed a string of French curse words into the cell, then broke off right in the middle, and laughed. It was one of those silky laughs they do when they have you over a barrel, a gotcha laugh that made my skin want to crawl into a hole and curl protectively around itself. “It is my understanding,” he said, “that you are my Enforcer.” He capitalized the term, saying it the way he did Rogue Hunter, making it a title.

  Titles and Leo’s delight meant that I was in trouble. If I said no, then I had lied to the vamps. If I said yes, then I was agreeing to a relationship with him. Which meant that I had to drink from him. And to Leo, drinking and sex went hand in hand. Or fang in vein. Leo had tried to kill me enough times while he was seriously whacko for me to avoid that like the plague. Crap. A dozen possible responses flashed through my mind. I settled on, “Not . . . officially.”

  “Not . . . officially,” he repeated, as if tasting the words. “This is correct. I would advise you to choose your words with more care in future, when you claim to be something you are not.” I took a breath. I had dodged a bullet. “Yet,” he added. Ooookay. Maybe not so much dodged as still in the laser sights, but the trigger hadn’t been squeezed. “For now, I confer upon you the temporary entitlement to pursue and dispatch this Mithran who holds the Vampira Carta in such disregard. Allow me to speak with the sheriff.”

  Yep. Ol’ Leo had access to the security cams. “How much?” I asked.

  “Pardon?” he said, going all Frenchy on me. Leo knew what I was asking. When I didn’t reply, he sighed into the cell, and said, “I will meet your usual terms, plus twenty percent, as this Mithran is no young-rogue, and will be more difficult than others to dispatch.”

  I thought about that for a long moment and nodded, though he couldn’t see
it. Except in the cameras. I looked up at one and said, “Thirty. And you pay for any and all research and hazard pay for any backup, assuming I need them.”

  Leo laughed, a low caress of sound that brought a flush of heat to my face even from hundreds of miles away. “Your terms are acceptable, my Enforcer.” The endearment flowed over me like a caress. Vamps, the really old ones, can do that—affect the pleasure centers of the brains with just their voices. Dang it. “Compel Pickersgill to heal your leg,” he added.

  Yep. Leo was in Shaddock’s system. “I’ll make sure I’m healed,” I said, skirting an honest acknowledgment. I needed to shift to fix my knee. No vamp was gonna get his tongue on me if could help it. The mention of my leg brought the pain in it hammering to the surface.

  I called Grizzard over and handed him my cell. I was just about to be assigned carte blanche to execute a thinking killing machine, and the local law was being told to stand down and let me do my job, all under the auspices of a clause under the Vampira Carta that was tenuous at best and down right illegal at worst. My only other choice was to let him go on a killing spree and allow the sheriff’s men to try and take him down. Between a rock and a hard place. Again. Go me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  You Are Dead Meat

  Working the accelerator and brake with my left leg, I sped down 70 into a low-hanging fog, a bag of ice strapped on my knee with a length of flex. Using the speakerphone, I made calls as I negotiated the curves, the first to Reach. Fortunately Leo was paying for his services. “Jane Yellowrock,” he answered, “my most interesting client. What can I charge you for today?”

  “This goes on Pellissier’s tab.”

  “My favorite words,” he said. The tab had just gone up by a huge percentage. Reach would work for anyone, but his prices were on a sliding scale and vamps had to pay more. I could hear keys clicking in the background. “Work order name?”