Red gripped her stake and rose.
The dominatrix rushed her.
Lucas appeared, sprinting out of the gate, and met the unsouled vampire head on. Growling, he blocked the dominatrix and grabbed her wrist. He tugged her back. “Human’s not on the menu, love.”
“The name’s not love, its Evelyn.” The dominatrix snarled.
“Take Evelyn alive, Lucas.” Red tossed her stake to Quinn as he passed by. She pulled out her revolver from the holster pocket of her hunter’s kit.
Quinn charged, fangs flashing and stake raised.
Evelyn pivoted. Her grip shifted and she caught Lucas’s arm, tugging him forward in a blink. She raised him like a shield.
Seconds slowed.
Momentum propelled Quinn forward, and the stake pierced Lucas’s shoulder.
Lucas roared, throwing his elbow back into Evelyn’s face.
Quinn yanked the stake out.
Black Veil be damned. Red lifted the revolver, but the vampires were too close together to get a clear shot.
Kicking Lucas’s back and sending him falling into Quinn, Evelyn dashed to her axe, sliding on the sand as she grasped the handle.
Twisting, Red aimed for the dominatrix. The vampire was gone before the bullet hit the ground. Only the ringing in her ears remained.
“Let the Dague liberate you. We can show you who you really are.” Leaping up, Evelyn kicked Lucas under his chin before she spun into a crouch. She swiped the axe at Quinn’s ankles. “You can be of use to the cause, but I’d have to bring you to heel first.”
Quinn jumped and punched downward, hitting her face. “I’m not much for being on a leash.”
Shoving him away, the dominatrix adjusted her bleeding nose. It stained her white coat. The cartilage cracked in the night. She licked at the blood on her top lip. “You’ve never been in my laboratory, pretty.”
Tensing, Red almost pulled the trigger until Chang barreled into her shot.
Irises amber and fangs jutting out from bared teeth, Joe Chang rushed the female. His pumping legs were too fast to see. Curved fingers reached for the dominatrix’s jugular.
Large arms pulled back like a baseball slugger, Evelyn swung her axe.
Joe Chang, decorated officer of the LAPD and dedicated raver, had been dead over half a century. For six decades, he had been faster than anything the night could throw at him. Tonight, he was too slow. The blade caught him under the chin. Mystical decay hit him quickly. Blood spurting, the force sent his head flying back. It landed a bare skull. His bones scattered on impact with the dirt road.
Evelyn laughed. “We should have gotten that on video!”
Bile gagging her, Red gawked at the sightless sockets of Chang’s skull even as she aimed for Evelyn. She pulled the trigger without thinking. The roar of the blast deafened her.
Staggering from the bullet hitting her shoulder, the dominatrix growled. She pulled the bullet from her shoulder, dropping it to the sand. Her lips curled back to reveal her elongated canines. She stomped at Red.
Eyes rolled back from fury and fangs out, Lucas jumped on the vampire’s back. His pale fingers dug into her temples and twisted.
Collapsing to the ground, white lab coat fluttering around her, Evelyn’s black platform boots twitched. Even an immortal couldn’t walk off spinal damage. She’d heal in time… if they let her.
Lucas jumped back, panting more from emotion than biological necessity. “Fucking hell, that was Joe!” Wiping his mouth, Lucas grabbed the axe. He lifted it high.
“Stop!” Red put her hand up, fingers spread. She could barely hear him over the ringing in her ears. She didn’t need sound to know what he wanted to do. “Cora will want to question her.”
“She’s right.” Quinn hoisted the captive up by her vinyl-covered arm pits, lifting her high.
Lucas shook his head, flashing fang. Lips curled in a growl. “Cora will want to do more than question this one. Chang was one of hers.”
A gunshot ripped through the air.
Gasping, Red ducked.
Lucas pulled Red down lower and huddled over her.
Quinn staggered. Blood seeped onto the back of his shoulder. “Sniper!”
The dominatrix in the lab coat turned to bones and dust in Quinn’s arms.
Cursing, Red darted for the Honda.
Faster, Lucas lifted Red and bundled her into the backseat. He climbed into the passenger side from the back.
In the driver’s seat in a blink, Quinn reversed the car before hitting the gas. They zoomed forward. The laptop cracked under their tire while the open trunk thumped with each bump in the road.
Heart stopping, Red ducked her head as a bullet hit the bumper. The new gun blasts dialed up the buzz in her ear drums. Sweat rolled down her forehead. She panted as her mind tried to keep up with the violence.
The car zig zagged on the dirt road before turning onto a paved one. Quinn gunned the engine and left Slab City behind. The silence of the desert transformed into a scared hush.
“Joe and I…” Leaning back in the seat, she released a deep breath. She swallowed a lump of grief. Joe Chang had been a solidly good vampire. He had helped her escape Michel’s cells. Now his bones decorated the sand. He had given his life to their mission. She saw it as a job, but it wasn’t to him. Red sniffed back the clump of tears in her throat. “We saw their new burrow before they took out the drone. They have dozens in there.”
“Joe…” Lucas ran shaking fingers through his hair, clenched jaw sharpening his high cheekbones. “He said they did a drone sweep last week and found the same old.”
“I guess they got newcomers.” Red rubbed her eyes.
“I recognized Evelyn Weiss. Cincinnati, Ohio. 1930s.” Quinn shook his head, expression invisible in the rearview mirror. “Last time I saw her, she had a soul.”
Lucas raised an eyebrow. “Did she use safe words then?”
Quinn glared at Lucas. “This isn’t the time to be a smartass. The Dague aren’t just staking souled vampires anymore.”
“Are they stealing souls? How can we secure yours?” Red choked on the words, throat closing, as a chill spread up her arms. Lucas joked, but there was nothing funny about it. She joined Quinn in glaring at him.
“Bloody hell.” Lucas rubbed his eyes. “Love, you don’t have to worry about that. Our souls were stapled in. We don’t lose them.”
“Except that time that I did.” Quinn ducked his head.
“Damn it, Quinn.” Lucas sighed. Fatigue creased the corners of his eyes. “Soulmancy on vampires isn’t just outlawed, its bleeding difficult. Slapping a soul into a vampire takes juice. Ripping it out takes even more. You must be close to the vampire, have a soulmancer do it, to be sure, and it’s a one at a time job. My soul is as safe as houses. We’ll root these bastards out.”
“I know the mechanics. It doesn’t matter if it’s difficult.” Red chewed on her lip. She didn’t point out that Father Matthew had souled four in one go. Lucas knew that better than she did. “I’m spooked for you. Both of you.”
“We don’t know what they are doing. We only know where they are.” Quinn looked over his shoulder. “We do, right?”
Red nodded. “Lost the laptop in the fight, but I have the coordinates where the drone went down. I texted it to one of you.”
“Nope.” Lucas scrolled through his phone.
Quinn shook his head.
“Vic then. It happened fast, but the message is saved on my phone. Let me forward it on.” She slapped her forehead, distracted from her screen. How could she have forgotten? They needed to tell the supreme about Joe before anything else. It wouldn’t be easy. Cora had been hit with loss after loss for months. Red might have had mixed feelings about having a vampire guardian, but she couldn’t deny that Cora had a good heart. It would twist when she learned about Joe Chang. Red never got the romance vibe from her end, only trust from decades of partnership. “Oh, god, what do we tell Cora?”
“She already knows.” Quinn gri
pped the steering wheel tighter. “The power is in the blood. When you give so much of yours to create a true childe, you always know when the bond is severed.”
Red shook her head, hand on her temple. Her heart hurt for Cora. “Chang was one of the best.”
Lucas hung his head, then frowned. “Orval, Patrice, and Joe—we’re losing institutions here.”
“I’ll make the call,” Quinn said. “Let’s just get a little farther down the highway. I don’t have signal yet.”
“That sniper…” Lucas shook his head. “Was a rutting set up. Not a random raid. Everyone knew Patrice. Her Palm Springs weekends were wild.”
“I don’t think they anticipated the drones. The gimp I was fighting went for the tech first.” Red wedged herself between the front seats, resting an elbow on the middle console. Life as a hunter had taught her how to put primal terror and cutting grief aside once the smoke had cleared. She pieced the night together before it turned into a violent haze with a BDSM theme, trying to find the pattern. “What do Orval and Patrice have in common? Besides souls? People knew them?”
“People respected them,” Quinn said slowly, turning his head, squinted gaze calculating her question.
“They were legends!” Lucas said. “Orval killed four soulmancers before the fifth cursed him. The Brotherhood sent them in to stop his night raids on the border. The fight was epic.” He tapped his hand on the car door. Squinting, he bit at his lip and twisted in his seat to face her. “Then Patrice… Make you a drink, listen to your problems, have you create outsider art. She lived in a hut, but she didn’t stay there. What do you need to say about Joe Chang? He busted heads aplenty to get and keep Cora in power. He was the vampire everyone knew on the street beat.”
“Orval was an influencer, in human terms. That’s what gets the clicks, right? If the Dague want attention, they aren’t going to bother with randos.” Red rubbed her rising goosebumps through her sleeves. Eyes darting between Quinn and Lucas, she couldn’t think of better targets for the Dague. “You two have to be on the top of the hit list. First vampires with a soul, after all.”
Lucas snorted. “Not going to happen.”
Red could have screamed at him, but she was too freaked out to be angry. “Why are you acting so calm? If they’re going for the infamous and the souled in LA, why wouldn’t you be a target? You would be my first!”
“We’ll stop them first.” Leaning between the front car seats, he captured her lips in a quick kiss. “I’ll stick to you like glue if it makes you feel better.”
“It doesn’t.” Worry crumpling her brow, she pushed him away before leaning into the back seat. Was he not taking this seriously because it was too scary a topic or was he really that devil-may-care? She sighed. It could be both with him. If he wasn’t going to take this seriously, she would.
Red looked down at her phone, looking for the text message she had recorded the coordinates in. She looked in her last messages and almost swore. She had sent it to Kristoff. Only the lack of signal had stopped it from going through. Her thumb moved to tap to cancel it.
“Signal,” Quinn said, looking at his phone.
Red’s eyes widened at the data signal on her screen. Four bars suddenly popped up before she could confirm the message cancel. Closing her eyes, she bit her lip. Wincing, she looked out the window. She had texted the very last person she should have. That was bad. Epically bad.
“I’m going to call Cora,” Quinn said. “Send the coordinates.”
Red robotically copied and pasted the coordinates into a text to Quinn as she mentally kicked herself. Nedda’s suspicious face popped up in her head.
Red’s phone vibrated. The cracked screen read Kristoff.
Mysterious. What’s by the Salton Sea? Is this the start to an adventure?
---
Hours later at Moon Enterprises, Red nearly backed out of the penthouse office when she spotted the denim skirt. Steadying herself, she followed behind Kristoff and Lucas to the conference table.
“You know what to do, Cora. Now, I need to debrief with Director Czernin before I catch my flight home.” Like an owl, Hilde Higbee turned her head an unnatural degree. Her bright blue eyes squinted at their approach. A golden beehive pin glinted on the lace collar of her ankle-length denim dress.
Nose flaring, Cora stood by the windows, draped in a black sack dress and a virtual collar of mismatched crystal necklaces. The lights of her city only cast her haunted gaze in sharp relief.
Lucas stepped in front of Red.
Red didn’t mind the old-fashioned protectiveness just then. Hilde Higbee might have been on their side against the Dague, but she gave Red the creeps.
“Thank you for coming on short notice.” Cora said the pleasantries without lifting her sight from the floor. Fingers curled around a rose quartz hanging from her neck. Her voice had the horrible absence of emotion that only meant that she had too many too process.
“Let me show you the way, Mrs. Higbee.” Quinn inclined his head before offering his arm.
“Old manners, I had thought they were lost in this city.” Hilde rose and rested her pale fingers lightly on his elbow. She sniffed at Red before whispering something to Quinn as they left the room.
“What is Little House on the Prairie doing here?” Lucas jerked his thumb at the doorway.
“You. Go. Now.” Cora glowered, head shaking, arms folding and unfolding as if they couldn’t find purchase. The crystal and rough stones on her neck shifted like an angry wasp nest. The supreme looked so alone, surrounded by servers filled with her records in the wide office. She didn’t even have bodyguards.
Red waved Lucas away when he reached for her. She tried to tell him with her eyes that Cora needed someone.
Turning, Lucas gave Red a shrug that told her he would be waiting.
Stepping forward, Red didn’t put a friendly hand on Cora’s shoulder. Touching a grieving vampire could be dangerous. She just didn’t want the supreme to be alone. “It must have been hard, calling in the Blood Alliance.”
Cora sighed heavy through her nose. “I ate a helping of non-vegan crow tonight, but Higbee didn’t rub it in as much as she could.” Her shoulders trembled under her baggy black mourning dress. She bit her lip. “Ego. That is what it would have cost me before. I waited, and instead it cost me Joe.”
Red didn’t know what to say to that besides uttering heartfelt if short condolences. She could say more, but it would only dig the knife in deeper to know that Joe was thinking of Cora to the end. It was obvious when Joe looked at his sire that he’d do anything for her. She knew Cora was beating herself up for ordering him there. Red waited a beat. “Higbee is the chairwoman of the DVA Oversight committee. Posting snuff films of vampires online has to be breaking the Dark Veil. Is she taking the Blood Alliance black ops to the burrows?”
Cora turned away. “Not yet. Hilde has leaks on her own end. The Dague apparently has been around long enough to get sympathizers. I’m on my own until she can root out the mole. A few days ago, she might have sent someone, but this was a recent ‘screw you’ from the universe. If I knew that, I wouldn’t have… We’re worse off than I thought.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck is right. Joe… I made him a month before we were cursed. Told him that he would be carefree and young forever. I lied to my best friend.” Lowering her head, Cora’s towering presence shrank as her shoulders shook.
Red took the risk and put arm around the supreme. She murmured quiet soothing nonsense. Her heart ached even as fear pooled in her belly. Michel had tried to take Cora’s city, but he never broke her spirit. He fought with a tarnished kind of honor toward his vampire foes within the Blood Alliance. The Dague might have held him as a beloved martyr, but they weren’t playing by his old rules. They meant to disrupt the status quo and they were winning.
Chapter Nine
January 25th, Evening, Pandora Hotel, Sunset Strip, Los Angeles, California
Perched on a bar stool, Red spied over the ri
m of her wine glass at the screened alcoves beyond the dimly lit tables in the elegant Pandora Hotel restaurant. Wiry energy balled up in the tension in her shoulders. The horror of the night before had made her toss and turn, tormented by the very real visions of Chang’s death and the chilling possibility of the Dague stealing Lucas’ soul. She tamped down the urge to use her spirit gaze. Red didn’t need magic to hunt.
She scrutinized every passing patron in the restaurant. Eerily fluid movements, unbreathing chests, and unnaturally white teeth—the subtle signs of a vampire. The human metamorphosis into a vampire was internal, changing the circulatory system, adding venom glands, and transforming the teeth. To even an experienced eye, they looked like everyone else. Tonight, every unsouled vampire was suspect.
Cora had sent Quinn and Lucas to the other less luxurious sanctuaries. She wanted to know which schemers were making rounds in the city. The burrow had been empty when Cora sent another drone over Slab City during the day. They were back at square one.
Despite being annoyed that she couldn’t be backup to Lucas, Red had to admit that any recon job that allowed her to order sashimi was pretty good. The Pandora Hotel radiated old Hollywood glamour along with a sanctuary spell. Its art deco décor took on an oriental flair in the restaurant. Sea dragons and wild waves outlined in jade and silver leapt on the screens shielding the diners from view.
Its kitchen served authentic Japanese cuisine for humans and an impressive array of demon delicacies like Swedish bezoars and yak bile soup. The Pandora Hotel didn’t just have a five-star kitchen. It was neutral ground where the upper crust of supernatural society could mingle freely.
Creak. The door to the side hall, hidden by screens near the bar, opened. A blond male with thick eyeliner stepped out. His breathing chest confirmed he was human.
Red pursed her lips and looked away. She wasn’t exactly looking for a fight, but it was better than the rotating worries about the Dague, the Brotherhood, and the Blood Alliance. She was really fucking tired of ominous proper nouns. Rubbing her neck, a shiver ran up her spine as she glanced over her shoulder and back again. She bit the inside of her cheek to stop her shocked inhale at the vampire suddenly at the stool beside her.
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