by Faith Hunter
I looked away, thinking that through. Derek had nearly died. On my watch. That was terrible. And weird. And made me crazy. “Okay. Fine. But why is your life-changing event resulting in being nice to me?”
Derek snorted. “What it took was for me to stop being a hypocrite. I hated monsters. You were a monster. Now I’m one. That’s what kept me alive that day. Being a monster. A human would have died. And that’s why the anger when you walked in. It was power I expected you to abuse, but you didn’t. And somehow that made me mad too.”
The elevator doors opened on sub-four, and we both stepped out. The doors closed behind us. He didn’t attack me. I said, “I accept your apology. I’ve been a jerk too.”
“Is that an apology?”
“I’m working up to it.”
Derek grunted out a laugh. Neither of us moved away from the elevator as it rose to an upper floor.
I said, “I’m sorry for egging you on and making you feel insecure and uncertain. I’m sorry for being a jerk.” Taunting, guy-style, I added, “And for being a better fighter than you.”
Derek nodded, considering, also guy-style. “I may be a bigger monster than you now. We should spar. And maybe put a little money on how fast I can take you down.”
“We did that once. I beat your butt. Sure you want to lose to a girl again?”
“I’m a lot faster now, girl. So, how’s it feel, being half cougar so much? Does the pelt itch?”
Serenely, I said, “Ahhh. Trash talk.” I liked it, but I didn’t say so. “It severely limits my wardrobe choices. My legs look weird in dresses.”
Derek laughed as I intended. He gave my shoulder a fist bump. I gave him one back.
“How’s your mom?” I asked. She had cancer, and Leo had been feeding her, hoping to help heal her.
“She’s good.” His smile softened even more. “Better than good. No more chemo. She’s still cancer-free. Leo’s blood made all the difference. Another reason to stop hating the monsters. The biggest monster of all saved my mom. Hating him would be pretty hypocritical.”
I thought so too, but agreeing might be rude. I made a soft “Mmmm” sound instead.
“So what are we looking for down here?” Derek asked, leading me into the storage room.
“Books. Specifically journals, diaries, that sort of thing, preferably from the early eighteen hundreds.”
I looked around. Someone had cleaned it up and organized it. There were trunks along one wall, shelves of knickknacks and expensive objets d’art, clothing in vacuum-sealed bags hanging on racks. There was furniture arranged according to type: bedsteads in one area, tables stacked in another, chairs stacked or hanging from pegs on the walls. Stacks of rolled-up rugs. I followed Derek to the shelves of books.
“They’re organized according to name, then by dates,” he said. “Who are you looking for?”
“Adan Bouvier, Ka, his primo, Bethany, Sabina, Leo, and anyone from the last two hundred years you might think noteworthy. Preferably in English.”
“Interesting mix. Okay.” He pulled a ladder from across the room and then toted over a trunk and opened it. It was empty and the bottom was clean. From a shelf at his eye level, he removed a spiral notebook and flipped pages, making little humming noises. Seeming satisfied, he replaced the notebook, climbed the ladder, and handed me down four leather journals. “So far as I know, and so far as this room holds, Ka and Sabina, neither one, kept journals here. Adan kept them. Bethany did too, though she wasn’t sane, so they may not make sense. And I don’t think many of them will be in English.”
I placed the journals into the trunk. He handed me down four others. “Leo’s from the eighteen hundreds. He handed down six more. “Amaury’s from the same century, up to 1912.” That was the year Leo had taken over from his uncle as MOC of NOLA.
I placed them in the trunk too. “Anything else you think I might need?”
He looked over the shelves, climbed up and removed two more journals. On the way down, he reached into a nook I couldn’t see from my angle and handed down a framed daguerreotype of Leo. In the early years, photography was all done with silver, and vamps hadn’t photographed well, if at all, usually looking smudged or faceless. Until one photographer, Ernest J. Bellocq, had managed to photograph some famous vamps of the time, despite the fangheads’ inability to reflect on the silver used in both daguerreotypes and the later wet collodion-process photographs. So far as I knew, no one knew how he had done it. This was one of his works, and Leo stood with Katie and another man, arm in arm. Very still, unsmiling, formal. The year on a plaque on the front of the frame was 1840. I thought that Bruiser might like it and tossed it in the trunk too, with the two last journals.
“That was easy,” I said. “Who organized this room?”
“Vodka Boys. Angel Tit and Chi-Chi were in charge. They also organized the storage room on sub-three.”
“Find any magical stuff?”
He looked at me as he climbed down the ladder. “A few things. They’re in the safe. If you’re interested.”
“Not now. But would you mind sending a copy of the log to Alex in case I need something? Save me a trip over?”
“I don’t know, Janie. You’d miss out on my scintillating conversation.”
“It’s a loss, true. I’ll just have to pull up my big-girl panties and deal.”
He was still chuckling when the elevator doors closed, but his face went tight, and he touched his earbud while he slid his card into the security slot. “Lee with Yellowrock. We’re on the way.” His face was set in a familiar expression. Battlefield ready. Something had gone wrong.
CHAPTER 10
Wrassler Was Down, Just Inside the Security Nook, Lying on His Side
I let Derek take the lead. Drinking so much vamp blood after he dragged himself back from captivity and near death had made him faster, and I didn’t have to hold back much. I followed him to the main security room, and we burst through the double doors into the area. The scent of coffee, peppers, and fried seafood whacked me in the face.
The big table took up most of the room, and there were four security people sitting there with laptops open. No one looked up. The screens overhead showed the grounds and the entrances to HQ. It was dusk out. I had been here longer than I thought. My body might switch from human form to another at any time, which could be unfortunate. And embarrassing.
“Update,” Derek said, opening a weapons’ safe at the back.
Tequila Blue Voodoo was at the main station with a woman I vaguely recognized.
Voodoo said, “Something on the security screens. At least one hotspot on the grounds. Walls are still warm from the sun, so it isn’t easy to follow.”
Hotspot meant that the person showed up on infrared camera, meaning that it wasn’t a vamp.
“Back corner,” Voodoo said, putting up a camera feed on the main screen, “behind the garden.” There was a flash of movement on the screen, reddish light, human shaped. “No indication of anyone else on the motion sensors or low light.”
“Front gate locked down?” Derek asked. He was weaponed up like the warrior he was. It had taken less than thirty seconds. But he wasn’t in armor.
“Like a tank,” Blue Voodoo answered from the main security panel.
“Which team is ready?” Derek gave me a single nod and raced out the door, heading for the action.
“Tango is on the way down. Clearing the hallways in case one of the delivery people made it past the sensors and guards.”
I wanted to go with them, but I hadn’t trained with them. I’d be a liability. Which I understood but I could still hate.
On the screens overhead, I watched as the six-man Tango team raced through the hallways, splitting and converging at the intersections, separating into three minigroups, each third taking a different set of stairs, communicating through the hardwired Wi-Fi comms booster system we had installed a couple years back. Then they were at the inner stairs near the rear entrance, and there were eight of them. I rea
lized that Eli and Derek had joined the team. I had vaguely noticed my brother, off and on, carrying out Eli duties.
Derek said into his mic and to Voodoo, “Copy. Tango in place. Lights.” The lights inside the entrance and outside, under the porte cochere, went dark. Derek took off like his pants were on fire. His men and women, all human, unlike the vamp forces that he utilized after full dark, sped to the back exit. Stopped. One by one, they eased into the covered area. With the security lights off, they were visible on the infrared screens, low-light screen, and on a positional layout screen that showed the house and grounds and the trackers each wore. They spread out, communicating with Derek. I wasn’t wearing a headset, and though I didn’t want to disturb anyone, I said, “Audio on.”
Not that anyone was speaking. It was all mic taps and hand signals when the speakers went live.
The light was fading. The vamps were rising. The cameras in the hallways showed them leaving their rooms, alone or with a human in tow. Some of them were day-stupid and had to feed to be alert. Others came out of their rooms weaponing up, and those few were the warriors among the vamps. A group of six vamps met just off the foyer, weapons trained toward the front entrance. Wrassler was in the secondary security room off the foyer, visible to them and on one camera. He gave a hand signal, and the vamps moved closer to the foyer.
A team of four vamps gathered in the main security room downstairs, congregating around me, speaking so softly only a vamp could make out everything they said. They were Clan Yellowrock vamps and visitors: Tex and Koun were actually breathing hard. They had crossed the French Quarter vamp-fast from the freebie house. Thema and Kojo were with them.
On the screens, vamp and blood-servant security worked the backyard in what was clearly a well-trained and practiced maneuver. The exterior steel shutters were still closed over the windows for the day. A lucky happenstance. Over comms, someone screamed, “Incoming!” The screens lit up. Blinding. The vamps and I jerked our heads away, closed our eyes.
The screens were so bright they faded only slowly back to visuals.
A fireball had exploded.
On speakers, there were a lot of overlapping orders and updates.
Outside, three more fireballs detonated, a second apart, each from a slightly different location. The attacker was moving and casting at once. Over the speakers was gunfire. Presumably from our side. Derek and Eli were out there. In that firestorm.
I took a step for the door, but Koun and Tex each grabbed an arm.
“I am sorry, My Queen,” Koun said, his grip like iron. “No. You are no longer a grunt. You are the Queen.”
A fireball hit the back entrance.
I jerked. Adrenaline shot through me. I made a sound that might have been a puma scream of frustration. Koun’s grip tightened.
Bullet-resistant glass cracked and began to melt. How hot was this fire? It had to be magical in origin. It had to be the Firestarter.
“There may be more than one attacker,” Wrassler said over comms. “The fires are overwhelming the infrared and the low light. All we have are the lasers and the normal-light security cameras.”
Over the speakers, I heard Derek say, “Team Delta, out front. Firing positions. Shoot anything that moves. Alex. Voodoo, Spieth. We need to verify that this isn’t just a diversion.”
“Already on it,” Alex said, working from the freebie house.
The exterior lights were off, and on low-light cameras I saw the vamps, male and female, as they edged out of their protected spaces and out the front airlock. Down the stairs. Wrassler and one vamp remained, and locked down the airlock before they took up position behind reinforced walls to cover the front stairs and entrance.
Out back, three more fireballs were thrown, this time more like three seconds apart. The pitcher was in a different location each time, though closer to the house. Fire devils roared upward, tornadoes of flame. One of the vehicles still parked out back was on fire, as if hit with an incendiary weapon.
“We have enemy combatants on HQ grounds,” Voodoo said. “Repeat. Enemy combatants are on the grounds. I count three. See HQ plotting map for locations. Red dots are encom.”
Alex said, “Teams at the queen’s personal residence and at Yellowrock Clan Home are on high alert. No enemy activity at either location. Checking the other Clan Homes now.”
Eli ordered people into different positions. While I stood here twiddling my thumbs.
The outdoor sprinkler system came on and began dampening the fires. On the plot screen, I placed each of my guys. With the sprinklers, everything stopped. No fireballs, no gunfire. No one moved.
“Our people?” I asked.
“Minor burns,” Voodoo said.
“Where did the attacker go?” I asked.
“Unknown,” Voodoo said. “No longer showing on system. Wait. Garden shed roof.”
“Fire,” I said. I heard shots.
On a tiny screen at the bottom, I watched as a fireball arched from the roof of the garden shed, up high, and out of the screen. On another screen, from an inside security cam, even tinier, a light bloomed, brightening the dark ballroom. Stained glass and fire fell, glittering as the fireball broke through the overhead dome. Inside, the overhead water sprinklers came on, putting out the fire.
The fireball and sprinklers were ruining the wedding decorations. Oh crap. Jodi was gonna kill me.
“Did you get the Firestarter?” I asked.
“Negative,” Derek said, his tone like a curse.
Koun relaxed his grip on my arm, but he didn’t let go. More vamps gathered around us. All of them were armed with weapons, blades, and stakes. Except me. The most recent arrivals headed up the stairs into good firing positions to defend the entrances. But nothing was happening out back. Or anywhere. Except sprinkler water still soaking Jodi’s wedding preparations.
An alarm went off, and I spotted the location of the alarm on the plotting map. It was coming from out front. On the only screen currently dedicated to the front of HQ, I saw that the “tankworthy” gates were standing open. In the center of the circular parking area, visible only by its interior lights, was a suburban, still running. Doors open. Windows seriously tinted. A vamp-mobile.
Wrassler was in the small security nook, firing at someone I couldn’t see on the big, overhead screen. Wrassler. My friend. Who had nearly died once already.
Movement appeared in a corner of the screen. Two other screens showing video from cameras out front appeared in the top right of the screen. There were two dead bodies in the shrubbery on a low-light cam, not showing on infrared. Cool bodies meant downed vamps. Another vamp was inside, having passed through a small melted circle in the airlock glass. She was firing at Wrassler. He was pinned down in the foyer.
Battle chemicals flooded my body. I felt the shift start. “Not now!” I shouted at Beast.
Beast wrenched our arms from Koun’s and Tex’s. Faster than anyone expected. She ripped a nine-mil out of Koun’s hand. Rushed up the stairs. Koun, Tex, and my vamp protection unit pounded behind us.
My body began the shift. “Nononono!” I shouted.
I fought the shift. Racing the need away. Tamping it down.
At one entrance to the foyer, I rushed to the left behind one column, then darted back right, behind another, getting a full view of the foyer. Wrassler was down, just inside the security nook, lying on his side.
From behind the column, I fired three shots at the vamp pinning Wrassler down. As I fired, Koun leaped ahead, barely out of my line of fire, a sword flashing. He beheaded the vamp.
Tex on my six, I rushed to Wrassler. I was deaf from the weapons fire. I had no headset. But Tex shouted into his comms, “An asshat got in. Maybe more than one. Cowbird is among us.” We had enemies mixed with our loyal.
I fell beside Wrassler, checking him over, feeling for blood.
Wrassler pushed me away, his chest jerking in laughter. Loud enough for me to hear, he said, “Watch the handsy stuff, Janie. That part of me belongs
to Jodi.”
“Sorry,” I said. He wasn’t shot. Relief flooded through me.
The shift rammed into me. Hard and fast as an avalanche. My hands popped and shook. My spine arched back. Snapped forward. I rolled on the floor in a writhing ball. Breathless. I threw back my head and screamed.
Thirty seconds later, I was half-form. Gagging. Retching. With a blinding headache and double vision. I pushed myself into a sitting position. My boots were off. Wrassler stood holding them. My clothes were ragged where I had clawed them, but the girly bits were covered.
He helped me up to my paw-feet, and I breathed hard, trying to throw off the shakes. From the tiny store of edibles kept in the nook, Wrassler offered me a Gatorade, and I drank it down. He opened a new box of PowerBars, and I tore three open, chomping down with puma fangs. As I ate and the pain eased, we studied the scene out front. There was a firefight taking place out there.
“Headset.”
Wrassler looked at the position of my ears, up high and furry, and chuckled. He pulled a headset out of a box on a shelf and adjusted its shape, adding two rubber bands and a bread tie to hold it on me. I put it on and let him adjust it, twisting the bread tie into my hair. There was another rubber band in the box and I put my hair back in a tail to keep it out of the way. I heard shots fired.
On the screen, two of our vamps went down. A familiar form appeared on the edge of the screen—Bruiser’s body mechanics. My heart clenched. He was pinned down.
Koun shouted, “Open the airlock doors, you whoremongering goat!” He was standing outside the security nook door shouting at Wrassler.
Wrassler had seen Bruiser too. He reached for the controls.
“Wait!” I banged open the weapons locker to our left, grabbed up a second nine-mil semiautomatic with an extra-large grip, and slammed home a full magazine marked in silver for silver-lead loads. Vamp killers. Stuffed two extra mags in my jeans pockets. I handed Wrassler a shotgun, which he placed beside his Taurus Judge. I gave him a nod and led the way to the front airlock.
“Now!” I said.
The airlock doors opened, though the outer one was heat-warped, and it stuck midway open.