by Faith Hunter
Grégoire laughed softly as if he had read my mind. “I offer my word and a boon.”
“Done.” I set the small man on his feet. “Hold my hand.”
Grégoire placed one hand in mine. With his other, he drew his sword. We moved back into to the hallway, where Grégoire saw his tormentor, his sire. Grégoire vamped out so fast, if I’d blinked I would have missed it. In the small warrior such a fast transition wasn’t a sign of loss of control, however. It was deliberate. Focused. A controlled speed.
“He has been wounded,” Grégoire growled around his fangs.
“With silver. Like you. Eli cut his throat and shot him. Don’t tell my partner, but the wound wouldn’t have been lethal. It entered the temple, missed the brain, and came out the other side. It blinded Le Bâtard, but his optic nerves will probably heal in seconds. Throat too. He’ll be hungry.”
Grégoire laughed and the sound traced along my spine like jagged sleet from outside. A glacial hatred centuries in the making. “So long as he can see me when I kill him, I will be happy.”
“I’m leaving you in time. I’ll be slipping out. Don’t play with your supper too long. Leo is under attack at HQ. We could use you and Sabina and Gee there.”
“Attack? Our enemies are here.”
“Factions?” I asked.
Grégoire snarled, “Oui. And Titus would use them all.”
I dropped Grégoire’s hand, leaving him in real time, staring at his tormentor. I hefted Louis’ body over my shoulder. I carried him through the warehouse, pausing for a moment over Bruiser, knowing he was alive, seeing how well he was healing, and then trotted into the night.
Back at the SUV, I spotted Eli, his legendary badass calm long gone. His mouth was contorted in fury as he shouted. Droplets of spittle hung on the air; his breath was a cloud of condensation in front of his face. I was pretty sure he was cursing me.
I dumped Louis on the ground and went to stand by Eli. I touched him and he whirled out of time, into the Gray Between. I caught his arm as he finished his scream, which was inventive and foul. “No pizza for you tonight,” I said.
“Son of a bitch!”
“Neither.” I opened the front door, which may have warped it in its frame as it pulled too fast through time, deposited him in the car, and slammed the door. Sometimes I loved the incredible strength of my half-form. Okay. All the time.
In back, I lifted the hatch, tossed Louis in and closed it. Letting the Gray Between go, I opened the passenger door and climbed in. Eli grabbed my hand. “Jane? What the fu—funny bone of Satan. You’re okay?”
“I’m . . .” I stopped and touched my stomach. “I’m amazingly good.” I touched my fangs and smoothed my pelted face. “Hunky dory.” I pointed out at the weather. “Right as rain.”
“Ha-ha. You ever carry me out of a fight again and I’ll break your neck.”
I play-socked his upper arm. “I love you too. Update on HQ?”
“Alex? You got that?” he asked his cell.
“I got it. You can break her neck tomorrow. For now, we got more problems at HQ. Unknown vamps came in through the side entrance again but disappeared. Seems there’s a hidden stairway in the brick passageway leading from the side entrance, one you can see with a four-thousand-lumen flashlight. Once you’re beneath the building.”
“Another passageway we didn’t know about,” I hazarded.
“Yeah and it opens straight in Leo’s bedroom. Macario and Gualterio Cardona knew about it. Just the two of them came in. They attacked Leo in a hidden lair, a tiny room off his bedroom, trying to take him away with them. He was better, but not healed. He was able to fight them off, but they hurt him bad.”
My heart might have stopped, but he continued. “Wrassler was on guard on Leo’s room and heard the commotion. He broke the door down.”
“Get Wrassler on conference.” I looked back at the metal fence around the compound, seeing lights moving in the parking lot. I needed to get back there. Now.
Alex said, “Wrassler, I have Jane and Eli on conference. I was telling them you got to Leo before the MOC took the shadow bridge to vampy hell. How is he now?”
Wrassler said, “Katie and Bethany are with him, healing him.”
“What?” I said. “Wait. Did Leo feed and read Troll? Katie’s primo?”
“No. His injuries weren’t bad enough for Leo. He was passed off to a lesser Mithran.”
“Crap!” I shouted. “Get someone in there. Katie’s sister is a prisoner of Le Bâtard. He turned her against Leo!”
Wrassler cursed and a clatter came over the connection as he shouted for reinforcements. “On my way to the lair,” he yelled back into the phone. “Janie! Are you one hundred percent sure of this? A false accusation against the heir of Clan Pellissier, who is also the heir of the Master of the City, is a certain death sentence.” Wrassler sounded short of breath, a very big man, still in physical therapy, running on his prosthetic leg. “Janie? How sure?” he demanded.
I didn’t know how to answer. If I was wrong . . . “Sure enough to kill both of them myself, not sure enough to risk you. So don’t make an accusation. Just show up and stand there, unless Leo’s in danger. We have video of the woman known as Madam Spy, Alesha Fonteneau, in chains, coming ashore with a small group of unknown vamps in the storm. Madam Spy is Katie’s sister. She looked bad. Bethany, on the other hand, has probably been working with the Europeans, or a faction of them, for centuries. She always wanted the Blood Cross— Crap. Get someone to the vamp cemetery to guard Sabina’s stash. If Leo’s enemies get the Blood Cross—”
Wrassler interrupted with orders for a security unit to take motorcycles and back up the security team at the burial grounds.
I listened as he gave instructions to his crew and heard the sounds of wood splintering as they took down the door to Leo’s room. “Alex. I need to know where the Deadly Duo, the Cardona brothers, are, right now.”
“Working on it,” he said. “They don’t know the warehouse was taken, so they may be on the way there.”
Hope shot into my throat, but I strangled it. “Right. Something’s going to go our way. The bad guys are going to walk right up to us and I’m going to kill them. Really?”
“Okay. Snark away if it makes you feel better,” Alex said, sounding more adult than I did. “Just stay put until I find them. I got three people at HQ working with me on traffic cams and security video. We’ll find them.”
“Where’s Brute?” Eli asked.
“Haven’t seen him or Pea. Or Bean,” I said. “I’m going back in. I need to bring out Bruiser.”
I left the uncertain warmth of the SUV and leaped the gate. On the other side I took the oversized padlock in my oversized hands and twisted it until the hasp broke off. I shoved open the swinging door and waggled my fingers at Eli. He started the SUV and drove into the compound. I trotted back for my team. Gee, Derek, and Edmund were standing in the parking lot, in the protection of a food truck awning they had let down. Bruiser and the two other Onorios were on the ground at their feet. The twins were still out cold, Bruiser was pale and bloody but breathing. More relief flooded through me and I dropped down to him. Took his hand. It was colder than normal, but still warmer than my own. “How you doin’?”
He squeezed my hand. Placed a chilled kiss on the back of it. “I’d steal a term from you and say Ducky, but I feel as if you could tell it was a lie, love, so I’ll settle for no longer bleeding. Healing. Edmund fed me. I fed him.”
“Eddie’s a good guy.”
“Edmund,” my primo said distinctly. “Not. Eddie.”
I grinned but had the good sense to hide it. Bruiser gestured with our clasped hands inside the warehouse, through the garage door, which now stood all the way open.
Still squatted down, I swiveled around until my back was to the truck’s oversized wheel, and watched the wonder boy, Gré
goire, with his toys. And his sire.
Sleet shushed down all around us, peppering onto the layer already deposited on the asphalt. The events inside were personally disturbing on multiple levels: visually, scentwise, and emotionally.
Le Bâtard’s clothing was sliced and ripped and falling in shreds, exposing bloody flesh beneath. His face was slashed, one amputated ear on the ground at his feet. His swords were up and circling in the Spanish Circle fighting form, but he was gasping, sounding all too human. He reeked of blood, fear, fury, and desperation.
Grégoire stood with only one sword, against his sire’s two. Leo’s secundo heir was bleeding only slightly and not breathing at all so far as I could see. Even with only one sword, Grégoire was winning. His face was frozen in a rictus of horrible delight as his sword circled and circled, in La Destreza. Sword flashing, steel clashing, he stepped inside and then away, performed a swivel motion, and one of Le Bâtard’s weapons went flying. Grégoire cut his sire twice more. They were using dueling flat-bladed swords, lighter than vamp-killers, faster, but more brittle. He’d never be able to behead an opponent with it. But that wasn’t the purpose of this fight.
Silently, slowly, Grégoire administered death to his sire, a death sentence that I knew. The hairs on my pelted body lifted in alarm. My hands began to ache as my claws extruded. I began to pant. Fear whispered through me.
“Jane?” Bruiser murmured, catching my scent change.
I shook my head. Grégoire was passing judgment on his sire. The punishment of a thousand cuts. It was exactly as it sounded, La Destreza taken to dark heights, bloody, painful, and because the sword was silvered, a slow and certain death unless help came. It never would. Eli walked up carrying a small subgun in the crook of one arm and an automatic rifle over the other shoulder. He took up position, ready to fire should more EuroVamps appear. No one was stopping this fight. It would end only when Grégoire ended it. As it had ended for me, when my grandmother had chosen so.
I had a flash vision of my fist, holding the cross-hatched bone hilt, blood dripping down the blade, covering my small hand. In memory, I looked down at the blood splattered over my dress. Over my feet. Ground into the mud beneath where I stood, my feet cold and bare and filthy. I blinked and the memory vanished.
Grégoire slashed. Le Bâtard lost his other ear.
His nose.
All the fingers of his right hand. Le Bâtard switched the sword to his left.
Grégoire took his left eye.
Delivered a series of slashes to Le Bâtard’s forehead, blinding him with his own blood.
Sabina appeared at the opening to the brick room and stopped in the doorway. Gee DiMercy stood at her side. Both were bloodied, faces cold as they watched the slow methodical dismemberment of an ancient enemy.
On the battleground, Le Bâtard whimpered. Grégoire laughed, the sound pitiless as death. I looked down at Bruiser’s hand in mine. His flesh was too pale against my golden Cherokee glow, far cooler than normal. But Bruiser was alive. We were alive. His hand tightened on mine again. I looked at him from the corner of my eye to find him watching me, a look so tender, so gentle, that without even knowing why he felt so, tears gathered in my eyes. “What?” I murmured.
“Only that you still feel sympathy, mercy. If it were you who fought him, you would show forgiveness. Kindness. You would let him live.”
I tilted my head farther away from the slow slaughter. “I killed a man with a death of a thousand cuts. Killed him for killing my father. I was five years old. You know that. How can you believe that I would show mercy to a serial rapist, sexual predator, Naturaleza blood drinker, and murderer for centuries?”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Because you carry guilt in such great measure that you would do most anything to assuage it.”
“But setting a predator free is not the way to assuage guilt.” As the words left my mouth, I realized the truth of them. A mini revelation in the middle of battle and a sleet storm. “Has he begged?” I asked. “Asked for mercy that you say I would give?”
“No.”
I nodded. “Good.” I turned on my cell, set it to video, and handed it to him. “We’ll need a witness. An official record.” In one lithe motion I rose to my feet and pulled a vamp-killer, the blade fourteen inches of steel, silver-plated. Walking to the side, so the camera view was unobstructed, I crossed through the sleet to the entrance of the warehouse and up to the fight. Pulled on Beast-speed and caught Le Bâtard’s sword in mine. Whipped it away. It spun, catching the lights in the torture room. Still moving fast, I blocked Grégoire’s blade as it fell. It clanged onto mine. Grégoire slid his eyes from his tormentor, slowly to me. There was emptiness and confusion in his gaze. A blankness that went soul deep.
I drew on all the training in suckhead politics, stuff I hated, and discarded all insulting names, like Blondie, which totally would not do in this moment. I said, “Grégoire, Blood Master of Clan Arceneau, of the court of Charles the Wise, fifth of his line, of the Valois Dynasty. You have challenged your sire, François Le Bâtard, for control of his body, his house, and his line. Blood Challenge, Duel Sang, has been fought. You have won the challenge. Do you wish to dispatch your opponent or do you wish me to do so for you?”
At my side, Le Bâtard sank to the floor, a languid, boneless motion, like a dance move.
Grégoire blinked, his blue eyes still empty except for the tears that gathered there. He looked down at his sire, his eyes raking Bâtard from his slashed head to his boots, all bloody and torn and broken. A sound like a sob broke from Grégoire, so shattered, so torn, it might have been a scream. Or laughter. Or all three. It sliced into the memory of my hand, holding the knife, covered with blood. He shifted his gaze to me. “This is my right.”
I swallowed against rising gorge. “Yes.” I flipped the vamp-killer to him, hilt first. Extended my empty hand for his sword. Gingerly, hesitantly, Grégoire placed his weapon into my hand. The hilt was colder than the frigid air. He accepted the vamp-killer. Stared at his hand on the unfamiliar, warm hilt. I stepped back.
“Your reign is ended,” I said to Bâtard.
Grégoire pulled his small frame upright and said, “All you possess is forfeit. All you owned is mine. I claim all you are and all you have, your titles, your position, your power, your people, your land and holdings.” With a single massive swing, he took the head from his sire.
It flew toward Sabina and hit the floor and she picked it up by the hair—now confirmed to me as the official way to carry a severed head—and walked to us, the head dangling and dripping. The body of Grégoire’s enemy and sire slumped flat to the concrete floor.
Grégoire knelt before the body of his maker and lifted the vamp’s left little finger. From it he pulled a ring, gold beneath the blood that was drying on it. He slid the ring onto his own finger and even beneath the gore, it was a ring I recognized, a crest ring he often wore.
Le Bâtard’s men had taken Grégoire to Arceneau Clan Home. Had this been what they were looking for? What they had retrieved? Was this the official seal of Clan Valois?
Grégoire spread his hand as he studied the ring, and his fangs retracted. His eyes bled back to human. “It is mine in truth. I am now Le Valois. Le Orleans.”
“So witnessed,” Sabina said. “Do you still honor your vow to Leonard Pellissier, Master of the City of New Orleans and surrounding territories?”
Grégoire raised his eyes to hers. “I do so swear, surrendering any claim to the lands of the Louisiana territory, as purchased by the United States of America.”
“I bow to Le Valois.” Sabina inclined her head. “Long live the undead ruler of the court of Charles the Wise.”
I looked around and said, “I don’t think there’s room in the cooler for all the heads.”
From a cell phone beneath the awning of the food truck, I heard Alex’s voice. “I think we need a bigger cooler.
”
Eli laughed.
CHAPTER 21
The Shooter Fired a Last Shot
From out of the sleet storm and the darkness, I heard footsteps. Ricky-Bo LaFleur walked through the opened gate. His walk was all tracking cat, slinky and loose and intent. Beast perked up. I batted her down.
Rick was wearing postshift clothes, loose and cheap and thin, too thin for the weather except that he was were, and were-creatures could stand the cold better than humans. He said, “Dead bodies in the food truck, stacked up like cordwood. Car parked down the road pulled away, toward the Quarter and the river. We going after?”
I walked from Grégoire, who stood, sword down, blank eyes on the body at his feet, to the awning. I glanced at Bruiser and he shrugged slightly. “Not with you,” I said to Rick. “I don’t know where you were during the battle.”
Rick didn’t flinch, but his scent went hot and angry at the implication that he stayed away from fear and cowardice.
“The battle lasted a grand total of twenty minutes.”
It was much longer in my subjective time.
He said, “I take twenty minutes to shift forms, forty minutes combined.” He stopped beneath the awning and held me with hunting eyes, Frenchy-black and glowing green still, from his cat. “You shift fast. Faster than any werecat I know. Show me?”
“No. I’m not a were. We won’t shift alike.” I almost stopped there, but despite myself, I added, “Ask Paka.”
“Hooah,” Eli said softly, in a tone that meant gotcha.
“Paka’s gone,” Rick said. “Permanently.” He looked away from whatever he saw on my face, taking in the dead bodies and the cage. He walked away from our small group and inside the garage door. For reasons I didn’t understand I followed, though I stayed well back. Over his shoulder, Rick said, “This is now a PsyLED crime scene. I’ve called in PsyCSI and the local LEOs. Legally I should keep you here. But for old times’ sake, your people and you need to get out.”