Shadow Rites

by Faith Hunter

  Which made my eyebrows go up. Godspeed? For a vamp? Weird and weirder.

  CHAPTER 8

  Eww, Ick, and Grody

  It was early by vamp standards, but I hadn’t slept and if I didn’t get some shut-eye, I was in trouble, so Eli and I went to the break room. I spent little time in the room, mostly because on one memorable occasion, I met two heavily tattooed men who later tried to kill some people. And succeeded. More vamp machinations. In the back of the room was a small door, set flush with the wall, a door I hadn’t known about back when. Behind the door was a small bunk room, available to anyone, human or vamp, seeking a place to sleep. There were twelve double bunks in a row, so close together that any hope of privacy was long lost. But it was better than asking to bunk in with a vamp.

  Three of the bottom bunks were inhabited. A greater number of the upper bunks were being used. The room stank of sweat, old beer, bad breath, and the sort of bodily gasses that tended to accumulate around people who ate a lot of highly spiced food. I didn’t care. The sheets were clean and the room was dark, so I crashed on the bottom bunk closest to the door. Eli swung up into the one above me.

  With Leo’s clan home still not finished, and stuck in the peculiar hell of seeking a certificate of occupancy permit while not really being ready to be occupied, HQ was stuffed full and the room was seeing a lot of action. Too many humans in one small place meant very restricted sleeping arrangements. Leo had thought he could speed up things in his clan home by offering a building inspector a little cash flow and had the misfortune of meeting up a parish employee who had an unbreakable moral code. Or who hated vamps. The guy had turned Leo over to the police, who’d had no choice but to file charges. Leo had been ticked off. I’d had the wisdom not to laugh. Go, me. On that self-congratulatory note, I fell into dreams.

  * * *

  There was a new dream, but familiar to me. A green eye in my left palm, opened to see me, to read me. The feel of energies scanning through me, learning who I was, what I could do. And then the dream was gone, as if it never was. I dropped deeper into sleep.

  * * *

  It was after midnight when Eli woke me, his watch making a tiny beeping noise, too soft to wake the others. I had kicked off my shoes in my sleep and I pulled them on, stretching before following my partner into the break room and the hallway beyond.

  “I got a text from Alex,” he said. “Ming of Mearkanis is in the special lair.”

  “Okay,” I said, counting and resetting the stakes that had come lose in my bun. “Special lair, as in the one between floors where Leo keeps my favorite redheaded psycho, Adrianna, the so-far-immortal vamp Leo won’t let me kill?”

  “One and the same.”

  “You know it ticks me off to wake up from a nap after too little sleep, to see you looking so wide-eyed and bushy-tailed,” I grouched.

  “Babe. My tail is not bushy. Syl says it’s slick as a baby’s butt.”

  I almost said I wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole, but thought better of it. Instead I made a gagging noise and let him lead me down the hallway to the elevator, and then down more hallways, some steps, and finally to the special scion lair.

  The guard, a tall, slender woman with prominent shoulders and a narrow waist, let us into the lair. The room was small, white, and featureless with one door and no windows. The floor was smooth and sloped to a drain in the center, presumably for hosing off the inmates, though the opportunity to use it for torture had occurred to me. Vamps are treacherous, double-crossing, unstable creatures. Torture would seem to be right up their alley.

  Tonight there were six steel mesh cages, like small jail cells. Each made of woven steel strands, making the walls and floors of the cages pliable but strong. In the bottom of each cage was a stainless steel, traylike bottom. The edges of the trays were cupped to hold whatever the chief suckhead wanted to put in it—mixed blood to speed healing, some newspapers to catch droppings, bird kibble, whatever. For now, there were only two occupied cages, one imprisoning Ming of Mearkanis, who was sleeping on the filthy foam mattress that had been in the transport coffin, and swaddled in a mass of linens and an electric blanket. To say the former clan Blood Master stank was an understatement, but I had to guess that sleep was more important than a shower.

  At the door to her sister’s cage stood Ming Zhane, the Blood Master of Clan Glass in Knoxville, not breathing, heart not beating, something my kind can hear. She was doing that motionless, more-immobile-than-a-marble-headstone thing vamps do when they aren’t trying to ape human. I had been around vamps for a long time, but it still unnerved me.

  Ming of Glass was wearing black from head to toe, some kind of tone-on-tone-striped, silky fabric pants and a Mao jacket. Her black hair was up in a tight bun and her claws were out, suggesting that she was close to vamping out. She was holding her own wrist and when I caught a whiff of fresh vamp blood, I knew that she had fed her sister. I stayed at the door to give the Mings some privacy.

  The room’s other occupant was Adrianna, my nemesis and a vamp I had killed several times. Leo kept bringing her back to undeath, and while I didn’t understand it, I figured he had his reasons and I’d figure them out about ten seconds before Adrianna tried to kill me again.

  The last time I’d seen the blue-eyed, nutso vamp, she was an unbreathing, lifeless, naked body lying in mixed vamp blood like something a chef was about to barbecue. At the time she had a hole in her head made by a silver stake, and gray matter had been seeping from the head wound. A horror movie trope. Now she was sitting on a beanbag-style cushion, her head appeared healed, and she was fully dressed, wearing Lycra yoga pants and a stretchy top, her feet in soft fuzzy slippers. Her scarlet hair was up in a French twist and she was wearing makeup, something sparkly like mica on her cheeks, mascara, and coral lipstick. She looked fantastic, but her blue eyes were still mad as a hatter, and she laughed as if she found me amusing and a bit silly, like a younger sister who needed to grow up.

  I turned my back on her as I stepped into the room. Adrianna was more dangerous than an atomic bomb and no way was I giving her any kind of attention until Leo allowed me to behead her. Even he couldn’t bring a vamp back from that.

  “Jane Yellowrock,” Ming Zhane of Glass said, without turning, knowing me by my scent from when we met in Knoxville. From when I rescued her scion from a group of cultists.

  “Yes, ma’am?” I took three steps inside, my shoes loud on the smooth floor, but I kept my distance from the vamps. The mixed scents told me that Ming of Glass was emotional, and no way was I getting closer unless I had to.

  “You will find the persons who did this to my sister,” she said, her tone so low it was hard to hear, even with me drawing on Beast’s hearing. “You will bring them to me. Do you understand?” It wasn’t a question. It was more in the nature of a threat. And I didn’t work for either of the Mings, I worked for Leo, so it wasn’t as if I could agree to her orders. Beside me, Eli drew two vamp-killers, not trying to hide the sound of steel-edged blades leaving leather sheaths. Someone stepped into the lair behind my partner and I knew it was Cai, Ming Zhane’s primo and Enforcer, without even turning. I lifted a single finger to Eli, knowing he would understand the cautionary gesture. But I had waited too long to answer and had been unintentionally rude. Ming Zhane was turning her head to me, a slow, controlled swivel like a doll’s head, but too far, inhumanly too far. Her eyes were vamped out, though her fangs were still in place. I had a chance to fix this. One.

  “Blood Master Ming—” I started.

  From the open doorway Leo said, “Jane will bring the culprits to me.” Ming whipped her entire body to him, vamping out so fast I missed it altogether. Leo didn’t seem distressed by her emotional reaction or her three-inch-long fangs, however, stepping in behind me, saying, “Together we will decide their fates, my old friend, you and I. Together we will mete out justice. Allies, as always.”

  Ming’s
shoulders, which were hunching up under her black jacket, halted their rise. A moment later she said, “You will not withhold from me the right to vengeance.”

  “No. I will glory with you in vengeance against our enemies. Together, in the way of the Vampira Carta, by rule of law. As always. But for now, come, you and your blood-servant. You scent of hunger and blood loss and your sister sleeps.”

  Ming seemed to be on the verge of refusal, but after an interminable time, her shoulders drooped and her fangs schincked back into her mouth. Almost visibly, she pulled the power and dignity of her Blood Master status around her and said, “The hospitality of the Master of the City of New Orleans has always been most exemplary.” She gave Leo a small bow, her elegant and perfect face a total contrast to her sister’s cadaverous one. “I am honored.”

  “No, it is my clan that is honored,” Leo said. “Come. I have a small repast set aside for you, one who has been known to bring healing to the long-chained.”

  “Ahhhh,” Ming said. “I have long desired to taste of this Mithran scion. My master,” she said to Leo, “will the Mithran, Amy Lynn Brown, be offered to my sister as well?”

  “The very moment it is deemed fully safe. Until then, Katherine, my heir, has fed Zoya of the mixed blood of the gather, and your Zoya is much improved.”

  “You show much kindness to your old friend, my Leo.”

  “There is little I would not do help one of the Mings, loyal and beloved, friends, allies, and comrades at arms.” Leo was pouring it on thick, but Ming of Glass seemed to take him at his words—every flowery one of them.

  “For now, you shall taste of me,” Leo said. “You spent much of your powerful blood to bring your sister ease, and I sense your weakness. Forgive me for saying such, but my regard is too high for Ming of Clan Glass, and I will not have a guest who hungers.” His voice held a laughing note when he said, “And as tonight is a night for celebration, for rejoicing in the return of your sister, I have also chosen a young man for you, one who might fulfill the desires of the Ming I remember from our last visit.” Leo took her hand and their heads bent close together, his black locks waving toward her as if with a will of their own. “Your stamina was enough for four men the last night we spent together, but I have found a treasure, who has been waiting just for you and your primo.”

  Eww, ick, and grody. But I didn’t say it.

  Together they left the room and the door closed behind them. Eli muttered under his breath, “Blood and orgies.”

  I said only, “Mmmm,” and wandered over to the cage holding Adrianna, to stare down at her. Despite being a captive, she still managed to give off an air of stylish superiority and predatory arrogance. Her eyelids slitted nearly shut and she tipped back her head, exposing her throat to me a in gesture that said, Come on. Try it. You couldn’t take me even if we started with my throat bared. I didn’t rise to the bait. Instead I turned my back on her again and walked out of the room, Eli on my heels.

  The door closed with a solid thud that said it was soundproofed. I didn’t remember it being so solid last time. I asked the guard, “Why didn’t Adrianna talk? She used to be big on taunting and threats.”

  The slender woman said, “No one’s heard her speak in weeks, ma’am. There’s speculation that the part of her brain used for speaking is still regrowing. And then there’s other speculation that she’s forgotten English. No one’s bothered to spend the time with her to see which it is, or if there’s something else going on.

  “We haven’t met, ma’am. I’m Ro Moore,” she added.

  “I’m Jane or Legs. Not ma’am.”

  “Copy that.”

  “Military?” I asked her.

  “No, ma’am. Alabama backwoods hillbilly, boxer, wrestler, and MMA cage fighter.”

  “MMA?” I asked.

  “Mixed martial arts,” Eli said, approval in his tone. “Why not military?”

  “I tried, but they wouldn’t have me except as officer material ’cause I got a bad ear. I wanted to fight, sir.”

  “Hearing aid?” Eli asked.

  “Had one. Vamp blood healed me. Now I got twenty-twenty hearing,” she said, laughter in the words.

  Eli nodded. “I’m an MACP level-four instructor. We should spar.”

  “I’ll kick your butt,” she said, totally without braggadocio.

  Eli said, “It’s a match.”

  “I’ll bring snacks and beer and cheer you on, Ro. Come on, Eli. We got people to see and fires to put out.” And I needed my bed, but I knew that was unlikely until after dawn.

  * * *

  The elevator doors opened on the conference room level, and I saw Bruiser. He was leaning against the hallway wall, one hand in a pocket, the other dangling. He looked nothing like the mud-spattered man in the video screens, but was dressed in brown cuffed pants, brown belt and shoes, and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his forearms. I had developed a serious appreciation for his arms, the veins corded, muscles long and ropy beneath lightly tanned skin, the hair thick enough to make me want to run my fingers through it as I slid my hands down his arms. Bruiser was no waxed and smooth man, and I loved that about him.

  “Hello, love,” he said.

  “Bruiser,” I said, not running to him like a sixteen-year-old with her first boyfriend, but letting my happiness show, not hiding it. I didn’t know what we were to each other yet, but I liked it, whatever it was.

  “Get a room,” Eli said.

  “We have a room,” Bruiser said, a half smile warming his face for a brief moment before falling back into solemnity. “And we have a problem. Is the Enforcer available to talk?” I saw the headset he was wearing around his neck. Business, not fun and games, then.

  “That sounds ominous,” I said, sharing a look with Eli as we followed Bruiser into a room off the gym. The room had a small sofa, chairs, and a few tables, and reminded me of a private waiting room in a hospital, the place where they put a family for a private chat with a surgeon who was about to deliver bad news. I sat on the couch. Bruiser and Eli both took chairs.

  “Before I left the pit where we found Ming, I called the local parish law enforcement agencies and PsyLED,” he began.

  “Okay.”

  “An experienced forensic pathologist or medical examiner will see the bones. The damage to the bones will eventually point to a vampire.”

  “Okay,” I repeated.

  “The last vampire who was known to eat humans was Immanuel, and law enforcement has his teeth imprints on record from the postmortems on the police officers he ate.”

  “And the imprints won’t match. So now they’ll assume that vamps killing and eating humans is common,” I said.

  “When it is not at all,” Bruiser said.

  I let out a tired-sounding sigh. “I’ll notify Dell to prepare a PR response to those potential problems. And Jodi,” I added, “just in case someone calls her about the cop-eater vamp.”

  “The second item I need to share with you,” Bruiser said, “was something that we found at the bottom of the pit. A small gold knife that once belonged to Edmund Hartley. He claims that it was lost during the time he moved from clan Blood Master to minor scion.”

  “And since no one understands how a freaky powerful vamp like Edmund lost his clan to a weaker vamp like Bettina, that makes him suspect in some machination to overthrow Leo or cause trouble in general,” I said. “Got it.” I might not like vamp politics and quarrels, but I was getting a handle on them, even the quarrels that went back centuries.

  “Edmund has been bled and read to verify his claims.”

  Bled and read. I liked that. “Has Bettina been asked to HQ?”

  “She has, and she arrived some hours ago. She has refused to be questioned about the Blood Challenge that led to her taking over Clan Laurent, Edmund’s old clan, however, so Leo is simply serving strong vintag
es to her, to Ming of Glass, to Cai, and to Shaun Mac Lochlainn, Bettina’s anamchara, in a party room, in the hopes that some verbal insight might be allowed to slip out in the gaiety.” His tone was droll, and I knew that gaiety meant way more than party hats and balloons. Strong vintages meant that the humans the vamps were drinking from were terribly drunk on expensive liquors, making it possible for the vamps to enjoy themselves as well. Sex and blood, as Eli had said.

  I was too tired to put what it all might mean together without banging my head on the nearest wall in frustration, but Bettina had once been clan master of Rousseau. She had been taken down by rivals within her own clan, not according to vamp law, in personal sanctioned combat—Blood Challenge—but outside proper channels. Clan Rousseau had been ruined in the war and the claimants to her title had died. Then Bettina called the sire of Clan Laurent, the powerful and charismatic Edmund Hartley, to personal combat and she had bested Edmund.

  Bettina, a beautiful, tiny, curvy woman, was of mixed race heritage, mostly African and European, and while her sexuality could make the air burn, she hadn’t appeared that powerful in other vamp gifts, as least not to me. Vamp one-upmanship stuff wasn’t my department, but I said, “Okay, so we have two witches.” I raised a finger, counting. “Ming in a pit with dead humans.” A second finger. “With Edmund, who wants to be my primo, and maybe Bettina, who is keeping secrets, and a Witch Conclave coming up.” I had five fingers in the air. “Just five little things to deal with. So far.”

  “So far,” Bruiser agreed.

  I dropped my hand. “And two, count ’em, two, magical brooches tying them all together. Were there fingerprints on the brooch you were carrying?”

  “Yes, but no matches with AFIS or military databases. The brooch that was on Ming of Mearkanis had been underwater, so no prints there at all.”

  “May I see the brooches?” I asked. “Together?”

  “Yes.” Bruiser slid the headset up and into place, switched it on, and said, “Bring the brooches to me.” He gave his location and said, “And please bring the small repast I requested. Tea and some scones for the Enforcer. Coffee for Eli Younger and myself.” He switched the set off. Eyes twinkling, he said to me, “In case you didn’t get enough donuts while I worked in the mud to . . . satisfy you.”