by Faith Hunter
“Jane?”
I turned to see Gee, standing in the doorway, two long swords out to his sides. “I haven’t cleared the house,” I said, my voice too low, too rough.
His eyes fell to the wreath on my arm but he didn’t speak of it, instead asking the question that warmed more than my body. “Where is Alex?”
I knew the answer by the scents in the house, scents I hadn’t parsed until now. “In the weapons room. He’ll be holding a shotgun. If you open the door, try not to let him kill you. It would hurt him a lot.”
“Your concern for my welfare is touching.” Gee stepped closer, his eyes taking in my face, with the huge upper and lower cat fangs and my oddly shaped body. “Brandon and Brian are missing,” he said, and I remembered the incident at the docks when the Robere twins had left the scene precipitously. The outcry from the mayor’s office.
“You think they found Grégoire’s attackers and are—” I almost said dead too. But none of them were dead. They couldn’t be. I changed it to, “in custody of Le Bâtard and Louis le Jeune?”
“I don’t know. Find them before it’s too late.” He held out a fist, closed around something rounded. I didn’t really trust the big bird, but I held out my huge, big-knuckled paw. In it he dropped a small black stone, one with white inclusions in it. “It’s called an Apache tear. If you need me, you can crush it. I will come.”
I tucked the stone in my jacket pocket, far away from the Glob. The pocket was full of water. I had to get some water-wicking fighting armor. “I’ll get some guards from HQ to watch my house, but will you keep an eye out too?” I looked outside and added, “Keep it and my partners safe?”
“If you will keep le breloque safe.”
“I’ll do my best. But people are more important than magical implements. I’ll use it to save lives if necessary.”
Gee hesitated. Slowly he said, “We have a bargain, little goddess.”
Together, we went to the shelving that covered the weapons room and I tapped three times, waited, and tapped once. Tomorrow we’d have to change the knock code. Gee and I stood back as the shelves opened and Alex peeked out, his curls in high kink, his face ashen, a shotgun in a two-hand grip. His eyes swept the room, taking in the rev and its head. The head in my hand. He started laughing. It was mildly hysterical but at least it was laughter. “Kit,” Beast said, using my mouth.
Alex dropped the shotgun. Gee swiped it from the air before it hit the floor and discharged. Alex fell into my arms, pale and shaking, making the wreath clank against my weapons.
I said, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” I patted his shoulder awkwardly. “Gee is here to take care of you. He’ll see that the rev is taken away and Leo’s cleanup crew will take care of the rest. And I’ll get you some of Derek’s Tequila team.”
“Sure. Fine.” I heard him lick his lips, a dry, panicked sound. His heart was racing against my chest. “I gotta say. I may move into Ed’s room. It’s the safest place in the house.”
I grinned. “Take that up with Edmund.”
“Yeah. Right.” He stepped away. “Thanks for coming.”
I heard a vehicle door open as I touched his curls, stalked to the front door, and opened it. Nearly took a foot in my face where it was about to kick in the door. I caught the foot in midair—all those catlike reflexes—and held it high. Derek was balancing on his other foot, extended for the kick, able to stop momentum. It wasn’t something he’d been able to do back when he was just human. I wondered if he knew that. I grinned a feral cat-grin, all fangs, and said, “Awww. You were coming to save me.”
I dropped his boot and Derek shook his whole body. Battle energies flushed through his skin, unused and rancid to my expanded scent capabilities, his body full of vamp power and strength. His eyes rested on the head in my hands. “Alex?”
I let the snark flow out of me. “He’s okay. Thank you for coming.”
“Yeah. Well. I like the Kid.”
Meaning that if it had been me in trouble he wouldn’t have bothered. Check.
I shut the door in his face, went to the kitchen, and set the vamp head in the kitchen sink. Put the rev head beside it. Opened the fridge. Took out a Coke can and popped it with a single claw in the ring. I drained it, letting the sugar and the caffeine hit my system like a sweet, high-kicking brick. “Oh. Praise baby Jesus and dance on the head of a pin.” Before Alex could ask, I said, “One of my house mothers used to say that when she had her first sip of coffee in the mornings.” Alex had stopped laughing and now looked troubled. I lowered my head to him and asked, “What?”
“Am I gonna be in trouble with Leo?” He swept his arm to the blast damage on the wallboard, the blood splatter, the heads, and the bodies, one in my bedroom with a bloody mess and one in the living room with much less blood but a stink of decomp.
I chuckled and opened a Snickers bar. I tossed the entire bar in my oversized mouth and chewed, talking as I did. “Not a lick. You did good.”
“I may have nightmares. I may be having one now,” he confessed. “And Jane? You look really weird in that form. Especially with chocolate in your teeth.”
“Uh-huh.” I told him about the blood on the Son of Darkness and my theories about the attack on HQ and finished with, “What else you got on the Big Bad Uglies?”
I heard a ding and Alex pulled a small tablet from his pocket, scanning and swiping the screen. Excitement began to overwrite the stink of fear in his pores. “Oh yeah,” he mumbled. “That’s good intel. Especially with this.” He waggled the screen in front of my face. “The old vamps don’t seem to understand modern tech. It’s like following footprints in the snow.” He gestured me to his table-desk in the living room, which, semimiraculously, was still upright. He opened a laptop-tablet and transferred the info from his small tablet to the larger one. “I tracked the ones who took Grégoire on traffic cams and the private security cams I had already acquired.” Acquired. That was a hacker term for hacked. “I know where Grégoire is,” he finished.
My adrenaline pumped hard. “And?”
“You sound like a cat trying to talk.”
I grinned around my fangs and popped in another Snickers. He had a point.
“He’s currently in the Garden District. Specifically at Arceneau Clan Home. The security system just went down, which means that Grégoire gave up the codes. Better hurry. I already called Bruiser to pick you up.” Lights lit up outside, a car pulling into the slot next to the SUV I sorta stole. I pocketed the .380 and grabbed a heavy gobag with better gear and clothes and a nice fluffy towel. The bag was waterproof, thank God. I stomped into the blasting rain.
I opened the SUV door, threw my bag into the floor, and climbed in, wet leathers and leather seat meeting with a grinding squeak. “Hey, gorgeous,” Bruiser said. And though I looked like the love child of a wet cat and the creature from Swamp Thing, I knew he was serious. He thought I was pretty no matter what I looked like. That alone melted my heart. Bruiser pulled away from the curb and I stared out the window, not wanting him to see what his words did to me.
• • •
It was still an hour before dawn when we parked down from Arceneau Clan Home. The house was standing open, the door wide and the house seemingly dark inside. Bruiser and I both pulled weapons. I chose the Benelli M4 and silver fléchette ammo, which had been in the huge gear bag. The combat shotgun could fire seven three-inch shells before I had to reload. It also could also accommodate my bigger hands and knuckles. Bruiser chose two long swords and two .45s with silver-lead ammo. He was going with the big guns.
Silently, we moved through the rain and the dark up to the front door. I stopped him with a raised hand and stepped in first, sniffing for explosives. Instead I smelled Brandon and Brian and Grégoire, but their scents were fading. Grégoire’s captors had brought him here to get something, and it had to be something that would affect the EV’s takeover of New Orleans
. But Grégoire was gone. The twins had arrived only moments too late, if my nose was telling me things as it should. Overriding all of them, I smelled unknown vamps. Strangers. Were the Deadly Duo here? Did we have them cornered?
I held up three fingers and mouthed to my honeybunch, Brandon, Brian, Grégoire, gone. I pointed out the door, then held up two fingers. Two unsub-vamps. Some humans. Maybe four. I pointed to the kitchen at the back of the house. Bruiser nodded. Started inside. Stopped when a door opened and closed, unseen, the sound hollow.
A muffled scream sounded in the instant the door was open. A wind whooshed through. I caught a whiff of burning human flesh and terror and bowels and urine. Bruiser took an uneasy breath. Glanced at me in warning and question. I gave him a quick nod to show I smelled it too. But no one moved this way when the door closed. We slid into shadow.
Using standard paramilitary urban-operations, conceal-and-clear techniques, we slid from shadow to shadow and room to room, clearing each, moving faster than human, but still silent and far too slow. The sound of muffled screaming grew strong, but despite my instincts, I didn’t rush back, not until I knew we would be safe. No point in giving them more people to hurt, whoever they were.
The place was deserted. No people, no furniture. No furnishings at all. Walls were cut, broken, shot up. Blood was everywhere. I didn’t know whose.
Grégoire had gotten his people out. Grégoire’s primo, Dominique, and Shaun Mac Lochlainn, her anamchara, were in Atlanta, with Del, Leo’s primo and his lawyer, Del flying back and forth as needed to deal with Leo’s legal needs in New Orleans and cleaning up the legal and physical mess that existed in Atlanta since Leo had defeated the Blood Master of Georgia. Grégoire’s scions and blood-servants had been with him at HQ. He might have been a quivering ball of terror at the thought of Le Bâtard being in New Orleans, but he had still been thinking. Until he was taken.
We moved quickly to the back of the house and met at the kitchen door. A woman’s voice carried through the door, smooth, velvet tones, accented, perhaps Greek. But definitely European. “Where are the Onorios Brian and Brandon Robere?” she asked. A muffled scream followed. Grunting. Then again, soft and pleasant, the woman asked, “Where are the Onorios Brian and Brandon Robere?” There was no mention of Grégoire. They had him already. The victim, clearly being tortured, screamed again. Through the door we heard, “I shall remove the choke gag from you and you will answer me, every question, this time. And then I will kill you quickly. If I sense prevarication, I will replace the choke and proceed as I have until now. Nod if you understand. Good boy.”
Bruiser looked at me and his face was both intent and weirdly happy. He leaned in and whispered, “Six against two. No place I’d rather be. No one I’d rather be with. Not in all of my long years.”
My heart did a little somersault and pirouette. Bruiser kicked in the door.
CHAPTER 14
If It’s Ass You Want . . .
Time sped up with battlefield awareness. I took in the upscale kitchen in an instant. The kitchen stovetop burners were on, gas flames a bright, too-hot blue. Knives glowed red in the flames. Two foreign vamps and six unknown blood-servants. Another blood-servant was stretched out over the island, face up, arms and legs cinched back. Naked. Exposed. Torso and thighs burned where he’d been tortured.
Before I could blink, the vamps whirled and drew swords. Bruiser fired twice, fast, two-tapping the vamp closest to the tortured human. The other vamp popped toward Bruiser. The blood-servants swept toward me like a wave of death, blades in every hand. I braced the Benelli against my shoulder, aimed at the first human, midcenter, fired, the shot pattern tight and deadly. She fell. All sound blasted away by the shot. We had miscounted at four humans.
The others spread out, moving so fast I could barely follow, humans hyped up on vamp blood. I fired again, missing, wasting my expensive ammo on humans.
Stupid thought.
I aimed, fired. Fired. Hit a second human, too low for a mortal wound, but she was down. Four shells gone, three left. Two humans down.
Three humans ducked behind the furniture, one on the far side of the island.
A fourth leaped atop the island. Even as her weight landed on one foot, she fired down at the man tied there. Three shots midchest. Pushed up, transferred her weight again, and fell onto me. I dropped back and down, the weapon pointed up. I had clear and complete focus on the woman’s face as she fell. Onto me. Onto my shotgun.
Miscalculation. Shock at the sight of my face. Fear. In midair, she tried to roll away. I squeezed the trigger. Upper chest, center. Took out her sternum and everything beneath it, including heart. I rolled away and she landed on the spot where I’d lain.
Three down. Three bad guys to go. Two shots left before I had to reload. At the speed the humans were moving, I’d never get that done.
The human behind the island was crouching around the side; I took aim at where the head should appear. Someone outside my field of vision tossed a pile of kitchen cloths onto the flaming stove and slammed a bottle of something on top. It shattered. The scent of good brandy filled the air. The cloths ignited in a whomp of sound and bright light. Flames leaped high Beast retreated from the forefront of my brain, shouting into my thoughts, Fire!
I centered the sights on the very edge of the island. The human behind it stuck out his head just as the woman who had thrown the brandy rushed me. I squeezed the trigger. The top of his head burst all over the cabinets behind. It was still splattering when I rolled flat to my back, weapon pointed down along my body. Tucked my toes down hard. Fired.
Last shot. The weapon bucked slightly in my arms.
The female blood-servant dropped. I was out of ammo with one human left. Where was he? Where were the vamps?
The last human raced through the kitchen doorway and into the predawn, a blur of darkness. I rolled over again, now holding a nine-millimeter that had been in the gobag. Smoke roiled slowly across the ceiling. Flames danced up the wall and dashed across the ceiling, separating the smoke and sending it rolling faster. The room was hot. My wet clothing started to steam.
Fire dashed across the room. Ignited a tablecloth. The kitchen was empty.
Except for Bruiser and a vamp.
They were sitting together on the floor, the vamp’s legs splayed like a child’s in a sandbox. Bruiser sat on her lap, his arms around her, her head pressed to his neck. She was drinking.
I scuttled close to separate her from her undead life. But Bruiser’s arms tightened, pulling her closer. Something dark and deadly crawled through me. Bruiser, loving a vamp. I centered the weapon on her head. Bruiser held up a single finger, telling me . . . Telling me to wait? Wait! While another woman sucked on him? My heart did a twisting dive.
Beast dove to the forefront of my brain and growled. Mate. My mate. Kill other.
“Bruiser?”
Bruiser’s finger rose again. I realized the vamp wasn’t drinking. She was sitting with her fangs at Bruiser’s throat but not inside his flesh.
I saw it then. The magics. Dark red rose, the color of watered blood, clear and sparkling, as if it contained bubbles. Magic like champagne. Flowing from the female vamp and into him. Into Bruiser. Into Bruiser. Into . . . He was draining the vamp.
Onorio magics, unknown magics. No one had any idea what Onorios did. What they could do. Only that they were rare. And powerful. And that Leo had three. Or he’d had three until today.
Slowly, I lowered the weapon. Safetied and put it away.
Flames roared as my hearing came back online. Heat like an oven blasted across the room. In the distance, sirens wailed.
Hunched over. Gathered and holstered my weapons. Crab-walked to the human who had been tortured and checked his pulse. He was long gone. I knew him, but didn’t remember his name. Jim? John? One of Grégoire’s people. He should have been in HQ, safe. I had no idea what had made him stay her
e or come back here. It had been a deadly blunder, whatever the reason.
Something darkened the doorway. I found a nine-mil in my hand again. Pointed at Gee DiMercy. “Get out,” he said. “The entire place is—” He spotted Bruiser on the floor. His eyes grew wide and a look of intense satisfaction settled there for an instant, like a bird touching down and pushing back off. The expression, whatever it had meant, disappeared.
“Why aren’t you with Alex?” I demanded.
“Edmund is with him, as are a quartet of Derek Lee’s liquor security. Arceneau Clan Home is burning,” he said to Bruiser. “The fire department has arrived.”
Bruiser nodded and reached around to the vamp’s face. He closed her eyes and stood. Her magics were a taut, twisted layer pressed tightly to her skin. She was still alive. Undead. Whatever. Bruiser lifted and carried her from the room. I followed. Gee went around front. Or flew over the house. Whichever.
Out front, Bruiser laid the vamp’s body into the backseat of the SUV. She was mostly unconscious, her eyes rolled back, her fangs out. She looked drunk. Gee walked up as the fire truck pulled into the driveway. Firemen in heavy gear piled out and began to disgorge hoses and axes and ladders. A rotund man was shouting orders. Rain fell in slow spatters, not much help against the fire.
Lightning struck close by. The Gray Between flickered on and off. Finally. Time did its little dance. I stood still, hating that the storm was in control and not me. I leaned against the SUV. Gee swiveled to me and focused on the space around me, where the Gray Between glimmered. He could see it. I said, “You told me that the storm wasn’t natural. That it’s magic. What kind of magic? Anzu magic?”
“Not a power I can control alone, but if you give me le breloque I can try to—”
“No. I remember you and the vamps and the witches fighting over that thing. Not happening. The storm. Is it witch magic?”