Death's Rival (13 page)

The blood-servants and humans had pushed the furniture against the walls, and two
cube-shaped, six-foot, tarnished silver cages took up the floor space, gleaming blackly
in the light of a chandelier. Beast reared up and I fell back a step as terror slammed
through me, intense and hot as a heated blade.
Danger,
she thought.
Run!
And I had an instant vision of steel mesh and a room beyond, gray and dim with night.
Cage! Run!
Fear spiraled through me, slamming my heart into my ribs. I could feel the cage beneath
my paws, metal cold and unyielding. Feel the place in my hip, sore, where white-men-with-guns
had shot me.
Made me go to sleep.
RUN!

I caught the doorway with both hands, forcing myself up from my Beast-mind, shoving
away the memory, one we had never shared, tamping down the fear-stink, knowing that
only an idiot entered a roomful of angry, tired, hungry vamps smelling like terror—like
dinner. Idiots who wanted to come out on a slab, drained. I held my breath, forcing
it out slowly, slowly. Took another. Beast retreated far into the dark, watching,
claws working in and out, piercing my mind with pain. Big-cats purr when they are
happy and they mutter a low growl when they are not happy. Beast was growling with
each of my breaths, hyperalert, watchful. Worried.

The vamps would have heard the soft growl, except that the vamp in the cage closest
started screaming. Derek was prodding the half-naked vamp with a long stick. On the
end was a silver cross, and where the cross touched his skin, the vamp was burning.
Smoke swirled up, contaminating the air like the stench of rotten meat on a hot grill.
The prisoner carried the vamp disease, and it was heavy on the air with a ripe, sick
stench.

The captive leaned as far from the cross stick as he could, his back only millimeters
from the silver mesh; when he overbalanced, he fell into the cage walls, skin sizzling.
His wail pierced the air, making my eardrums vibrate. The scream was nearly as earsplitting
as a vamp’s death wail. The vamp in the other cage was whimpering, his black pupils
so wide they almost obscured the scarlet sclera. It was Corpse, who showed his own
silver burns, and he knew he was next. I smelled scorched flesh and vamp blood, and
at Derek’s feet were vials of blood, labeled, dated, and timed. Someone had drawn
the two vamps’ blood for testing. I doubted it had been done with their approval or
cooperation.

Angel Tit, Martini, and Chi-Chi, three of Derek’s Vodka Boys, were watching the torture,
faces in battle mode, unyielding and closed. Leo’s vamps were standing apart from
one another, vamped out as well, staring, mesmerized by the caged vamps’ pain and
fear. I could smell their arousal and bloodlust, hunting instincts quickened, even
for the pain and blood of one of their own. The blood-servants were busy with handheld
electronic devices, or looked bored, or stared at the portrait of Katie with rather
more interest than the painting warranted, except that it was not in the line of sight
of the cruelty.

“Your master’s name,” Derek said, his voice holding no inflection, no clue to his
feelings. If I hadn’t been able to smell his anger and self-loathing, I’d never have
known how he felt about the job he was doing. “Your master’s name.” When the vamp
shook his head and whimpered, Derek jabbed him again. The smoke was reddish, as if
suffused with aspirated blood.

“Where is the master of New Orleans? Where is Leo Pellissier?”

The vamp shook his head violently. “I don’t know. I saw him taken away. I don’t know
where.
I don’t know!
” he screamed, when Derek touched him with the cross again.

“Ramondo Pitri,” Derek said, changing the subject of the interrogation, pulling the
cross away. A layer of skin clung to it, crinkled with heat.

“The Enforcer,” the vamp shouted. “Pitri was my master’s Enforcer.” As if the admission
had released a dam, he took a gasping breath, his ribs shivering oddly as they expanded,
not a human breath at all, ribs moving snakelike. He kept speaking, the words gushing.
“He was sent to reconnoiter and research Pellissier’s Enforcer, in preparation to
initiate a legal blood-challenge to her as laid out in the Vampira Carta.”

I blinked. Stepped into the room. Leo’s scions turned as one to me, staring, still
as death, still as vamps. A laugh wanted to titter up in my throat. I’d killed Ramondo
Pitri. I’d killed a man and started a vamp war.

“Ramondo was trying to discover information,” he continued, “to find out why Jane
Yellowrock was so special.”

“Shut up, Kleto. Shut up!” the other vamp whimpered. That gave us one name and one
nickname, Kleto and Corpse. We were making progress.

Kleto ignored him. “He wanted to learn how Leo’s Enforcer made her way up the ranks
so quickly, before he challenged the stranger to draw first blood.”

Katie stepped toward me, her blond hair falling forward in a wave that swished like
silk as it moved. Her interest pricked my predatory and territorial instincts; I almost
reached for a blade but stopped myself before I could complete the move, which would
have been taken as the gravest insult. A smile answered my abortive attempt, and it
was like being studied by a hungry predator, daring me to try and take her down. It
all happened inside of three heartbeats, banging against my ribs.

And the caged bird kept singing, as if having something he could say were a lifeline.
“He was supposed to issue a Blood Challenge to Yellowrock according to the Carta,
but he was worried that she was some kind of supernat, a were or something, so he
went to her hotel room.”

“A blood-challenge, Enforcer to Enforcer, for first blood,” Katie said, her eyes holding
me, unblinking, black and bloody, “is one acceptable first step to one master issuing
a Blood Challenge to another—mortal combat for his position.”

“But Leo’s Enforcer killed him. Without provocation.”

I didn’t think shooting an armed man in my hotel room, one carrying multiple weapons,
including the gun he had drawn—the gun with an illegal suppressor—was exactly without
provocation, but I kept my mouth shut. Or Katie stared me down, which was not something
I was willing to consider. Once again, flying by the seat of my pants and without
enough info to do my job had caused problems—this time, big problems—and had resulted
in a ticked-off, vamped-out vampire holding me within her sights. I could feel her
compulsion wrap around me like electric razor wire, cutting and burning.

She took a breath, and I forced myself not to take one with her. Katie tilted her
head to the side, that snakelike movement they do when they forget to act human. “You
killed an Enforcer before he could issue challenge to you. This is not allowed under
our law. You are permitted to take a life only in self-defense, official challenge,
or mortal combat. As an Enforcer without a blood-bond, you are a danger to us all.”

“Leo got a copy of the police reports. It was good enough for him.”

Her shoulders lifted and her fingers opened out, claws dropping down and spreading.
Her fangs clicked down, not instinct, but a carefully controlled action, something
she did with purpose, a control only the very old ones, and very powerful ones, have.
“Leo is not here,” she said. “He has been taken by an enemy. For now, perhaps forever,
I am master.” Which made little lizards rush up and down my spine on cold, sticky
feet. “This war appears to be, technically, legally, your fault. Now the rival Mithran
may do anything he wants.”

“Not Jane’s fault,” a voice croaked behind me.

I whirled and caught the naked man before he hit the floor. “Bruiser,” I whispered.

His skin felt colder than a cadaver’s. He was sweat-slicked and ashy and he stank
like a three-day-old grave. But he took a breath and I felt his heart against my chest,
beating like a wounded kitten’s, fast and weak. Not concerned about what I was giving
away by a show of strength, I lifted him up and over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry,
steadying his bare lower back and his thighs, his arms dangling over my shoulder;
Bruiser was too big to cart any other way without dragging his feet or banging his
head on the floor. I carried him back down the twisty hallway into the office and
set him down gently on the leather sofa, found a throw, and wrapped it around him.
It was teal cashmere with aqua silk tassels and fringe, the soft textures sharp as
nails on my fingers, the colors overbright, almost harsh. Shock. I was in shock.

The priestess was nowhere in sight, but Katie knelt at his side and stroked his temples,
her claws scraping his skin. She focused on him as if she could read his state of
being through his skin. And maybe she could. What did I know? “George,” she murmured.
“You will live. And still mostly human. Do not despair. Do not despair.”

Mostly human?
What did
that
mean?

CHAPTER EIGHT

Your Security Sucks

The heir of the Master of the City—and most of the Southeastern United States—looked
up from Bruiser’s face, her eyes gathering up my consciousness like a spider weaving
a silk grave for its dinner. My mind struggled in her grip, kicking. “You claimed
the position of Enforcer. Leo did not refute you. Yet you did not drink from him?
And he permitted this?”

My mouth went dry. When I didn’t reply, she went on. “An Enforcer must be bound by
the Master of the City, bound body and soul by blood and . . .
Pourtant, vous n’avez pas fait l’amour
.”

I had an idea what she had said, and,
no way, José
, but I settled for a succinct “Uhhhh.”

“You claimed a right that you did not understand. I did the same once, when I was
offered the life of the immortal night. I was young and beautiful and so very sure
of myself, and foolish beyond understanding.

“As I did, you claimed the honor, not knowing what was required. No, you are not bound.
I do not smell his blood in you. You are without the protection of the Master of the
City.”

That part felt like a threat, and Beast thought so too. She bit down into my mind
and shook it like prey, her canines like ice picks in my soul. The action and the
pain brought me to high alert. I took a deep breath and blew it out. Put a hand on
my new vamp-killer. Slowly. Deliberately.

Katie’s eyelids widened, pupils constricting in surprise. Her mouth made a pretty
little O, distorted by fangs worthy of an African lioness.

And I grinned, showing my blunt human teeth and my beast-soul. Feeling Beast rise
in me, knowing my eyes were glowing golden, like my Cherokee name. Golden Eyes. “Leo
could have taken me at any time,” I said, “and forced me into submission.” I realized
how true it was as soon as I said it.

We would have resisted,
Beast murmured; I ignored her.

“So Leo
wanted
me unbound. He wanted me unbound, uncompliant, and unsubmissive. Free. Unlike the
rest of you.”

“He wanted your love, free and willing.”

“Maybe that was part of it.”
Most certainly that was part of it, but we don’t always get what we want,
I thought. “But he left me free, for his own reasons. I’m guessing one reason is
that some enemies require a clear mind. Some . . .” I cocked my head and let my eyes
take in the vamps between me and the way out, the only door. Old vamps, all of them.
Not one younger than early nineteenth century. “. . . some youth. Some creativity.”
With my left hand, I pulled the brand-new cell from a pocket and tossed it to Katie,
only feet away. With animal reflexes she caught it. “Call him. Maybe he has his cell
with him, wherever he is, and assuming he isn’t true-dead. Maybe he’ll tell us where
he is and to come rescue him. And while you have him on the phone, ask Leo why he
left me unbound.” Katie looked from me to the thing in her hands. Someone would have
tried to reach Leo already, but I knew from experience she had no idea how to use
a cell phone, and only with reluctance would dial the old-fashioned landline on her
desk. I let my smile widen. “Yeah.” I glanced at Bruiser, lying pale and broken. He
had two scars on his chest, bullet wounds. His chest moved with a breath, faint and
shallow. Abruptly I remembered the tearing sound when something deep inside him gave
way and he bled to death.
He had died. Right in front of me
. And he was alive again.

I looked back at Katie, keeping my feelings off my face. “Keep him alive. Keep yourself
safe. Leo values you both.” I paused and tested the words on my tongue before I said
them. They tasted of truth. “Leo loves you both. I’ll be back soon.” I walked past
Katie, snagging my cell, giving her my back, just as an African lion would give his
pride his back, knowing he was bigger, badder than the others. I pushed through the
vamps at the door.

I stopped midway and took Koun’s wrist in my hand. He was still cold, pale, and shaky.
“Thank you. Leo will be proud of you for saving his primo.” Maybe it was my imagination,
but he seemed to stand taller. “He is honored to have the great Koun as his warrior.
But even more honored that Koun knows when to fight and when to heal.” It wasn’t a
lie—or not exactly. Leo hadn’t actually said the words, but he had chosen Koun as
one of his four closest scions at a time when Katie was unavailable for duty. That
was a lot of trust from a vamp as powerful as Leo Pellissier, Master of the City of
New Orleans and half of the Southeastern states.

There was a lot of divisiveness in Leo’s closest scions, at a time when that seemed
dangerous. Maybe I could heal that some. “Leo will grieve the loss of the vam—Mithrans,”
I corrected, “Louise and Peter and their blood-servants.”

The Celt met my eyes, his own human blue in white orbs. He turned his wrist to grip
mine, his fingers and palm calloused and stronger than mine would ever be. He nodded
and let me go.

In the hallway, I met Derek’s eyes, dark and hostile. I opened my mouth to give him
orders. Instead, I said, “You are the most brutal human being I have ever met.” I
hadn’t intended to say the words, but they matched my thoughts. Deep inside, Beast
huffed with amusement.

“Unlike humans, the vamps will heal,” he said shortly, lip curling. “It’s war.”

“The excuse of soldiers for millennia.”

He didn’t react. I didn’t expect him to. “The blood you sent was lost in the fire,”
he said. “We got some from them”—he canted his head down the hallway toward the parlor
and the cages—“but we need some from the others to compare.”

“I have some in my house from the Seattle clan’s humans.”

“Yeah? I’ll send Chi-Chi for it.”

“Sure. Whatever.” I walked away from him, showing him my back too. I left the house,
closing the front door behind me. And dropped against the red-painted door, heaving
breaths. “Holy moly.” I put a hand to my chest. “I’m not dead.” And I fought laughter,
knowing they might hear me inside. Or smell me. Sweat started to trickle down my sides,
sticky and stinking of the aftereffects of fear.

When I had myself under control, I pushed away from the door and melted into the shadows.
The night was warm and muggy, and the sweat wasn’t likely to dry. So far, winter in
the Deep South was a joke. I needed a shower, fighting leathers, and info. I needed
food. I jumped the fence into the narrow alley separating Katie’s from the building
next door and walked down the narrow space, checking the cameras I had installed as
I moved. Instinct. Habit, to check my security work for Leo’s heir. It all seemed
okay.

The brick fence behind Katie’s was taller than I was by far, and I took advantage
of the small hand – and footholds as I half climbed, half vaulted it, landing on the
other side in the dark, and relaxed. I could tell by the smell that no one was here.
I was alone. Safe. For now. Weird how a house that wasn’t mine, and never would be,
felt like home.

Inside, I stripped and showered, standing under the heated water, letting it pound
my muscles, washing the smoke and blood off me. There was remarkably little blood,
and almost none of it mine. I washed my hair, shaved my legs, all the girly things
I do so seldom. When I shift and then shift back, the hair is always fully grown again,
which, even with my Cherokee-lack-of-hairiness, is a pain to remove. But this time,
it felt like therapy, like feeding my girl soul, which I so seldom did.

Afterward, standing in my bathroom in the steam, the exhaust fan going, I coated my
skin with pure jojoba oil and plaited my wet hair into a tight French braid. It wouldn’t
dry quickly, but the damp didn’t bother me. I dressed with care in my long silk underwear,
and when I could put it off no longer, I dialed Leo. He didn’t answer, and I closed
the phone.

I opened the bathroom door, heard a click, and stopped in the doorway. Sniffing.
Someone was here.
I looked around, breathing in silently, slowly, thinking, analyzing the sound I had
heard. The click was the kitchen door. I had changed the locks, but that didn’t stop
anyone really determined. I switched off the bathroom light, throwing the house into
night shadows.

A man had been here. I sniffed again. Yeah, a he. Male. Sweaty. Nervous. A stranger.
Just like the stranger in the hotel, the one I’d killed weeks ago. I sniffed again,
mouth open. Gun oil. The stink of a gun, recently fired. Herbal shampoo. Not Chi-Chi,
here to pick up the blood; not anyone I knew. But if I survived tonight, I’d recognize
his scent again.

Soundless, eyes on the bedroom doorway, I stepped to the bed and felt around on the
fighting leathers for the holstered Walther and a vamp-killer. I came up with the
smallest one, six inches of silver-plated steel, crosshatched steel grip, and gripped
it backhanded in my left. Safety’d off the gun, and stepped slowly, weight balanced
evenly, into the foyer. Night sight kicked in, the shadows growing lighter, the light
through the windows brighter.

By the scent traces, he hadn’t come in through the front door. I stepped across the
foyer, paused at the stairs. He hadn’t gone up there, but he had paused here for a
while. More nervous. Edgy. I followed his scent back to the kitchen, to the side door.
He had come and gone through here. While I was in the shower. Weapons on the bed.
Nothing with me but a hair stick I could use on a vamp as a stake. Nothing to defend
against humans. Stupid! He could have opened the door and shot me. So why hadn’t he?
Because he had come in to kill me and heard the shower go off? Seen the weapons? Assumed
I had a functioning brain cell and that I’d be armed, and had decided not to try to
kill me. Instead, he had done . . . what?

I moved through the dark house to the kitchen door leading to the ground-floor level
of the long, two-story porch. The door was shut, but the wood jamb was splintered
where it had been kicked open, light-colored wood splinters on the darker floor. So . . .

I turned and studied the house, feeling, smelling, tasting the air.
The blood vials
. I raced back to the bedroom and bent over the shipping container. “Crap!” The bag
holding the blood vials was gone. Rage boiled through me, Beast’s fury.
Mine,
she thought at me.
Came into my den. Took what was mine. Thief of blood,
she thought. Beast was possessive of her belongings. Of my belongings, for that matter.
But . . . The laptop was still on the bed, the tiny green light showing standby mode.
So was my arsenal. The intruder stole only the blood.

That severely limited who the traitor in Leo’s organization might be. Because only
a very few vamps, blood-servants, and humans knew I had the blood, and even fewer
might have guessed it was in my house. A human from Seattle might have figured it
out, but more likely, the traitor had been in Katie’s house only moments ago. And
he or she called the enemy. Mentally, I listed the people in Katie’s tonight. Derek
and his boys: Angel Tit, Martini, and Chi-Chi. Katie. Koun. Alejandro and Estavan—vamps
of Spanish descent who had been loyal to Leo for centuries. Girrard DiMercy, who had
not always been loyal. Five blood-servants. Bruiser. The priestess.
Crap. The priestess?
She was loony tunes. Or so she appeared. Reach had included her in the list of possible
bad guys, Leo’s possible spy. Reach . . .
Crap. Reach.

If
he
had access to the security, and I had to assume he did, then Reach knew a lot more
about the internal workings of the whorehouse, and more about Katie’s plans and thoughts,
than I did. For all I knew, he had eyes in my house. I hadn’t done a sweep for electronics
since I first moved in. I put a search in the back of my mind for later.

There were an awful lot of choices to consider for the position of traitor. Anytime
the number of possible suspects went above five, things got sticky, especially when
one of them was my security expert. But what would be Reach’s motivation? He didn’t
need money. He couldn’t be forced to be a traitor, like somebody kidnapped his dog,
like on a cheesy TV crime show. But then, everyone had a vulnerability somewhere.

Leo would know the hearts and intentions of any of his scions he fed from and shared
blood with. Had he fed from all the vamps there? I had no idea. No one but Bruiser
would know that, which meant that Bruiser might be in danger. Again.

Still in the dark, I dressed fast in fighting leathers and when the knock sounded,
I was ready. I shoved the last blade firmly in place, gripped one of the Walthers
as I walked to the front door. Drawing on Beast speed, I ripped open the door and
grabbed Chi-Chi’s shirt collar, yanked hard, pulling him across my leg. He overbalanced
and I stepped back, letting him fall. But he was fast. He drew his sidearm as he fell,
took the landing on his shoulder and rolled, the gun in a two-handed grip. He had
me in his sights. I smiled as I stared him down the barrel of my own weapon. “My 380
will kill you just as dead as your nine-millimeter will me, and all we’ll be is dead.
Let’s both just take a minute, okay?” I took a breath and blew it out to show him
how to relax. “Did you send someone here to steal?”

“Huh?” Honest confusion leaked from his pores, but confusion from what? Landing in
my foyer? My question? Or surprise that I had figured it out?

I sniffed, searching for anything that might suggest change in his pheromonal state.
“Someone broke in here while I was in the shower and stole the blood I collected.
That was too fast unless someone was dispatched here from Katie’s. Maybe with orders
to kill me if the opportunity arose. Who did you call?”

His aim steadied. His full lips firmed. His dark skin gleamed in the streetlight pouring
in. “Legs, don’t make me shoot you.”

I detected no scent of deception on his body, heard none in his tone. Saw none in
his body language. But I firmed my stance. “Who at Katie’s used a cell after I left?
Because someone called in a thief with a gun.”