Black Water: A Jane Yellowrock Collection (6 page)

This story takes place just before
Broken Soul
. In it, you’ll meet Nell, who will be getting her own series! The first book will be published in 2015.

I’d stayed in Charlotte for two days, overseeing the latest repairs on my bike, Bitsa. She was pretty well trashed, and she’d be a different bike when I got her back, very slightly chopped, with wider wheel fenders, and this time, no teal in the paint job. Jacob—the semiretired Harley restoration mechanic/Zen Harley priest living along the Catawba River, the guy who had created Bitsa in the first place using parts from two busted, rusted bikes I’d found in a junkyard—had shaken his head when I asked when the bike would be ready to ride to New Orleans. Bitsa had been crashed by a being made of light, and the damage was extensive. It sounded weird when I said it like that—a being of light—but my life had gotten pretty weird since I went to work for the Master of the City of New Orleans and the Greater Southeast, Leo Pellissier. Jacob had taken my money but refused to discuss the paint job, saying only that I’d love it. And then he plopped me on a loaner bike and shooed me out of his shop as if I were twelve.

I’d ridden the loaner before, a chopped bike named Fang, and though the balance on a chopper-style bike was different from the easy, familiar comfort of Bitsa, it hadn’t taken long to settle in for the ride to Asheville, where I’d hugged my godchildren, eaten at their mother’s café, and then hit the road for Knoxville, Tennessee. My visit north had been occasioned by a request from Knoxville’s top vamp, the Glass Clan blood-master, to try to solve some little problem she had reported to her up-line boss, Leo. Nothing urgent, but Leo was stroking his clan blood-masters’ egos a lot, now that the European Council vampires were planning a visit.

The ride had been great, the weather not too hot for spring, not rainy or cross-windy, but my cell phone battery hadn’t survived the trip across the mountains, roaming the whole way. I had no communications when I hit the town, and no way to find out contact info.

Without my map app, I had to ask directions, which was kinda old school, and my badass motorcycle mama facade made the Starbucks clerk’s eyebrows rise in concern, but she knew her city and I made it to the Glass Clan Home just after dusk. Not
at
dusk, which might be construed as an offer to be a breakfast snack for the fangy Glass vamps, but just after dusk, which in early summer meant nine p.m. I was entering the clan home without backup and without coms, with no one in New Orleans knowing I had arrived safely. I was acting in the capacity of the Enforcer of the NOLA MOC, which meant I’d arrive at the Glass Clan Home fully weaponed out, and I wouldn’t be giving up my guns, blades, or stakes to security guards at the door. I wasn’t expecting trouble, but I try to always be prepared. It was kinda the modus operandi of a rogue-vamp hunter turned vamp Enforcer for said MOC.

The house was off U.S. 70, not far from the Confederate Memorial Hall, and overlooking the Tennessee River. I’d Googled the house and seen it from above; it was maybe ten thousand square feet, with a six-car attached garage, a slate roof, a swimming pool, a tennis court, and what might have been a putting green. There was an outbuilding, probably a barn, a deduction made from the jump rings set up on the sculpted lawn. Lots of spreading oak trees shaded the heavily landscaped grounds.

The entrance to the address was gated, and I pulled off my helmet, presented ID, and tried to look both unthreatening and as though I could kill without a thought—a difficult combo—to the camera, before the gate rolled back on small, squeaky wheels. It was the perfect ambience for a visit to a bloodsucker. But the midlevel-grade security gate quickly became wood fencing and trailed off into the night, turning into barbed wire only yards out. No cameras followed the fencing, no motion monitors, nada, nothing. The security sucked unless there were armed human guards patrolling, working with dogs. I’d started out in security and I knew an antiquated system when I saw it.

My Beast liked the low-hanging limbs of the old oaks and sent me an image of her sprawled over one, waiting for deer, followed by another one of her swimming in the river, which I could smell close by. “Maybe later,” I muttered to her. “Business first.” Beast chuffed at me in disgust.

The drive was long and winding, concrete made to look like cobbles, and I could smell horses, a chlorinated pool, clay (maybe for the tennis courts), and the west-flowing river. It was a distinct scent, different from the raw power of the Mississippi by the time it reached New Orleans, different from the North Carolina rivers that flowed east. The Tennessee flowed west, toward the upper Mississippi, a snaky and slow flow, deceptive in its sluggish nature and far more powerful than it looked or smelled. The house the drive led to was an old renovated historical home, the original house made of dull brown river rock, added onto over the years with brick of a similar color.

I left my helmet on the bike seat, adjusted my weapons to be visible but not insulting, and climbed the steps to the front entrance. The door opened before I knocked, and the butler—an honest-to-God butler, wearing a dove gray tuxedo—showed me into the parlor, asked after my ride in, and offered me iced black tea with lemon or mint, which sounded great. I accepted the minty tea, and it appeared in about ten seconds, carried in on a silver tray by a maid, also in gray livery. The butler pointed to the guest restroom with the offer that I might freshen up, which I accepted. I carried the tea glass—draining it—into the powder room and washed up, put on bloodred lipstick, and smoothed my hip-length braid with spigot water. I also plugged in my cell to charge.

My summer riding clothes—jeans and a denim jacket—were sweaty from the day in the sun, and I would rather have showered, eaten, and taken a nap, or shifted to my Beast form and taken that swim in the river, than carry out all the posing and proper etiquette that the older vamps expected, but I didn’t have that choice. Leo’s primo had made the appointment and I liked my paycheck. Back in the parlor, I settled on a comfy leather chair, in a room with as much square footage as the entire first floor in my house. It had high ceilings, attic fans, modern furniture—all leather, of course. Vamps had a thing for dead skin. I rolled my empty glass between my palms, patient as my stalking big-cat.

Blood-Master Glass didn’t keep me waiting, but her entrance was calculated. I caught movement from the corner of my eye as she walked slowly into the room, with a black-suited human and the butler behind her, the servant carrying another tray with more tea glasses, a pitcher, and tiny sandwiches that smelled like cucumber. Taking them all in with a sweeping look, I set the glass down on the coaster that had been provided and stood.

My Beast moved into the front of my brain and peeked out of my eyes, evaluating the blood-master by sight and smell.

The blood-master was elegant, petite, and of Asian descent, with almond-shaped eyes of a peculiar dark honey hue, black hair worn long but up on the sides in a fancy do that probably took a personal servant or two to create, and pale, smooth skin the color of ivory. She was wearing a silk gown of gold and black brocade with touches of crimson embroidery—golden dragons cavorting on a black background that suggested rugged hills, the dragons spitting red fire. Vamps were partial to that particular shade of bloodred. And they liked rubies. Glass was wearing one the size of a robin’s egg on a gold chain around her neck.

The butler set the tray on the table in front of me and said, “The Glass Clan blood-master, Ming Zhane.” Technically, Ming should have changed her last name to Glass when she defeated the clan founder about a hundred years ago, but Ming wasn’t one for abiding by the rules unless they suited her, according to her dossier. Yeah. I had a dossier on most of the vamps in Leo’s hunting territories. My team stayed busy.

The butler withdrew after pouring tea into two glasses and refilling my own. The other human stood to the side and I figured that meant it was time for the fancy chitchat. I nodded, a sort of half bow, and introduced myself. “The Enforcer of Leonard Pellissier, Master of the City of New Orleans and the Greater Southeast, Jane Yellowrock, at your command, ma’am.”

She smiled, looking pretty much human, except for the paleness, and the thin lines along her eyes contributed to the human appearance. They looked like stress lines, which was odd. Vamps didn’t feel or show stress. Mindless insanity, blood thirst, and a tendency to kill anything that moved, yes. Stress, no.

Ming moved closer and breathed in my scent. Her nose wrinkled as she smelled the predator in me. I had discovered that all vamps could smell the danger that I presented, and until the blood-master of a clan or a city approved of me, they all had a tendency to react with violence. Leo was Ming’s up-line boss, but he was far away and that meant she was top dog here. It was hard not to pull away with her so close, but I held still as she sniffed again. “Your scent is not unpleasing, and the photos in your dossier and on your Internet page do not do you justice,” Ming said. “You are most lovely.”

“I’m just the Enforcer, ma’am. I’m not paid to be pretty.” Her eyes darkened and instantly I knew I’d miscalculated, so I said quickly, “But you’re thoughtful and . . . uh . . . courteous to say so. Your kind of beauty is something I’ll never achieve.” Which was all true. She was a stunner. Ming looked a little mollified, so I revised a line Alex had written into her dossier, and piled it on a little more thick. “Your photos show elegance and loveliness, and your personal presence suggests a powerful magic.” Yeah. I was getting pretty good at blowing smoke up vamps’ backsides, what they called gracious conversation, and I called a load of bull-hockey. But not to their faces.

She tilted her head, one of those miniscule, wrong-angled-move gestures vamps can do, and I figured I was out of the woods as to protocol. She indicated with a wave of her hand that I should sit, and weirdly, her fingers trembled, just a hint. Vamps didn’t tremble either. Ming took the wingback chair beside mine and folded her hands in her lap. The human stood beside her, watching my every move. Ming said, “The master of New Orleans is kind to send assistance in this, our time of need.”

“Yes, ma’am. Blood-Master Pellissier is eager to assist all those loyal to him.” As I said. Smoke up her backside, though my words were still true. Leo was a good master, as far as a blood-sucking-ruler-over-all-he-surveyed type of loyalty went. “How can the Enforcer assist the Glass blood-master and her Mithrans?”

The human in the black suit reached into his jacket at chest level, and I tensed. He stopped the action instantly and then continued, much more slowly. This was Ming’s primo, Asian, slender, and deadly. Very, very deadly in a martial arts kinda way. As if he could break me into tiny little pieces with his fingertips, a hard look, and a toothpick, before I could blink. “A Mithran has gone missing,” he said. “She was last seen with this person.” The man—Cai, no last name, or maybe no first name, I wasn’t sure—pulled out two sheaves of papers, not a weapon, and placed them on the small table between Ming and me.

I lifted one batch of pages and saw the photo of an old man, maybe in his seventies, with sun-lined skin, sunspots, raised and rough age spots, kinda brown and freckled all over. Faded blue eyes. He was mostly bald. A narrow-eyed, mean-looking man, the kind who was raised on whuppin’s, hardtack, and moonshine, and who hated the world. I flipped through the three attached pages. The info said his name was Colonel Ernest Jackson, but there was no mention of military service in the scant record.

The second file showed a digital photo of the vamp in question, Heyda Cohen. She was tiny and very beautiful. Vamps offered people the change for lots of reasons, and personal beauty was high on the list. But Heyda’s intelligent, piercing eyes suggested that she was special in the other ways as well.

“Heyda was in charge of my personal security and she was contacted by that human man”—Ming pointed at his photo—“a communication that carried a threat to me. She tracked him.” Ming’s speech, accented by her native Asian language, sped up and her syntax grew more fractured. “Then she met with that human and three of his followers. In a park. In the city. Then she went away with him. Without contacting us or alerting her support team, who were waiting in the park, watching. They allowed her to leave, as she did not appear distressed. We do not know why she left with him. She did not come home afterwards.” Suddenly Ming was all but wringing her hands, leaning toward me in her chair, shoulders tense. “The man refuses to see us. Refuses to allow us to see her. He hides in his compound and . . .” She glanced up at her primo, and her face crumpled. Her shoulders went up high, and Cai placed a hand on one in tender concern.

I had to wonder why this had been reported as a minor problem, and not the urgent one that a kidnapping represented. Especially the kidnapping of a head of clan security. When I asked that question, Cai said, “Heyda gave us no signal that she was in danger. She often worked with the human community to forge ties. We assumed that was what she was doing. But she didn’t return. She didn’t contact us. That is not like her.”

“In this day and age,” Ming said, “one with cameras and detection devices, there are many places we dare not enter. We are not allowed to protect our own.” Ming’s eyes bled slowly black, her sclera going scarlet, but her fangs remained up in her mouth on their little bone hinges. It was a demonstration of intent and control. “Heyda must be returned to us. Or avenged. If they have made her true-dead, I will drink them all down. Humans go too far in this modern time.”

Aw righty, then.
“Did Heyda’s team video the meet? Do you have an idea where she might have been taken?”

“Yes,” Cai said. “We have gathered all video and intelligence related to this situation. The compound’s security is tight, using cameras, guards, and patrolling dogs. And we smell silver in their weapons. We could raid the compound, but my people smell explosives in addition to the other weapons and measures. My master is disturbed.”