Death's Rival (17 page)

I went back into the living room, leaving Eli inspecting his own weapons, his face
like a thunderhead. Once the swinging shelving in the main room was in place, the
weapons would be better hidden than when they had been kept in the small locked gun
safe in my closet. Here, they were safe from children, not that any lived with me
any longer. And that was a pain I had no intention of dealing with just now.

Saying nothing, but smelling Eli’s irritation, I went back to my room, let my hair
down, and showered off before plopping down on the corner chair to read. It was boring
stuff, the financial pages of a publicly held company. I was much more interested
in the drugs Greyson Labs made, but I couldn’t make heads or tales of that part either.
Having taken an emergency medical technician course after high school didn’t prepare
me to understand the making of drugs I couldn’t even pronounce. To stay awake, I got
out my gun cleaning supplies and started to clean my .380s and nine-mils. It quickly
became read a paragraph, work on a gun, read a paragraph, work on a gun.

Even with the necessary chore, I was about to nod off in boredom when the Kid knocked
on my bedroom door. I set the weapon to the side and called for him to come in. Alex
pushed in the door, his left leg shaking uncontrollably, his eyes wide, and his scent
full of the adrenaline of excitement—which smelled a lot better than the kind of adrenaline
that comes from fear or shock. Instantly, I knew he had found something, and the breath
I took felt icy as it scored through my lungs. “What?”

“A vamp owns Greyson Labs. And Blood-Call. And all the other interconnected companies.”

I got up and walked into the living room. “You might want to hear this,” I said to
Eli. “Did you know your brother is a genius?”

“Yeah. The court system said so,” he said wryly.

“Spill it,” I said to the Kid.

“His name is Lucas Vazquez de Allyon. The dude is a twelve-hundred-year-old, suckhead
creeper, who fell off his rocker, like, five hundred years ago. He’s seriously whacked.”
When I looked confused about the rocker part, he added, “A perv. A freak. A crazy-ass
crackhead. An old dude who—”

“Alex!” Eli said. It was a military-grade reprimand in two syllables.

Alex’s mouth slapped shut. I wondered what the Kid had wanted to say, and figured
my cussing ban had been about to be abused. Instead, after a moment’s hesitation,
the Kid said, “He owns the company Ramondo Pitri worked for, though Pitri was way
down the line. And de Allyon is a violent, narcissistic pervert, even for a suckhead.”
The Kid handed us each a sheaf of papers and, by unspoken agreement, we all went to
the kitchen, Eli to make a pot of black glue he called coffee in an old percolator
he’d found in the small butler’s pantry where the tea things were kept, and me to
start a pot of water for tea.

Lucas de Allyon had been around a long time, making a place now and then in history.
He had lived in Spain about the time that Leo had been turned, and became a conquistador
in search of gold, sailing to the Americas. A vamp on a ship at sea. I wondered how
many of the sailors made it alive to the new world. Once here, he seemed to have reverted
to the practice of Naturaleza.

Vamps and their killing bloodlust were kept in check by adherence to the Vampira Carta,
which governed everything in their lives from how to care for their young scions while
they went through the curing process, to how to address the need for territory and
hunting grounds. Vamps who believed in the Naturaleza refused to be bound by the constraints
of the Carta; they hunted and drained humans and killed without remorse or pity. Lucas’s
history was well documented. He had killed and enslaved hundreds, maybe thousands,
of American Indians, putting them to work and to death as he saw fit. He had created
himself a little kingdom and killed and drunk his way through his slaves: Choctaw,
Cherokee, Natchez, and maybe even Mississippi Indian tribes.

I dropped the pages on the table, stood, and poured hot water over the tea leaves
in a green ceramic pot. Moving by muscle memory and instinct, I got out a mug, Cool
Whip, and sugar, and prepared a cup. Thinking. Remembering a painting of a Cherokee
slave on the wall of an old vamp’s house. She had yellow eyes like mine, and had probably
been a skinwalker like me, but she couldn’t have been trained, or she would have fought
her way free of her slavery. She was dead now. Another of my kind I had found and
lost without ever meeting her. I put my own failed hopes of finding another like me
aside and carried my mug back to the table and pages Alex had prepared.

Not only had de Allyon enslaved the Cherokee. According to historians, he was also
the first man to own African slaves on land in what was now South Carolina. He was
bloodthirsty in every way an undead nonhuman could be. The accounts, even couched
in terms acceptable by the Europeans of that time period, were gruesome. He supposedly
died of a fever in October 1526, disappearing and reappearing in Charleston in the
early sixteen hundreds. He stayed there for fifty years, and disappeared again. He
later terrorized Boston for a few years before the tea party of 1773. De Allyon resurfaced
in Atlanta during the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War, eventually buying
old plantation land and setting up a sharecropper system that “employed” nearly a
thousand freed slaves.

Quickly thereafter, Lucas claimed most of the state of Georgia as Blood Master of
Atlanta—all the Southeastern territory, excluding Florida, that was not claimed by
Amaury Pellissier, Leo’s uncle. Now, it was possible that Lucas wanted Leo’s territory
and figured he was the undead man to take it.

I flipped through the pages. There was still no financial trail to prove that Lucas
wanted Leo’s territory. No proof that he had taken over Seattle and Sedona and Boston.
No proof that he had sent his vamps to attack Leo in Asheville weeks ago or again
at his clan home last night. No clues to where he was staying, or if he was even in
the state. No nothing, except that he was powerful and a lot older and more vicious
than Leo. And might be dominant enough to take what he wanted. I flipped back to the
file on Blood-Call. It had businesses in Sedona, Seattle, Asheville, and Boston, with
one slated to open in New Orleans in the next few months. Of course Blood-Call was
also open in New York, San Francisco, L.A., Vegas, and a few other places, so it could
be a coincidence, in which case I’d look stupid taking the information to Leo. Except
for the fact that de Allyon owned Blood-Call, and had been Ramondo Pitri’s up-line
employer, there was nothing physical or financial or real that actually proved Lucas
Vazquez de Allyon was the bad guy who had attacked Leo in Asheville or was making
vamps sick and taking over their territories.

But my gut was saying our bad guy was de Allyon, and that Greyson Labs and Blood-Call
were part of the attack on the vamps. Somehow. Even though all I had was a name from
history, it was time to tell Leo.

I gathered up my laptop and retreated to my bedroom again. Copying and pasting, I
prepared a report for Leo and Bruiser on Blood-Call, the lab, and de Allyon, making
certain that they understood my concern was mostly conjecture at this point. With
a single keystroke, I sent it off and then curled around the laptop to question myself
and second-guess my research.

I must have fallen asleep because I woke before dusk to the smell of steak grilling
and a dead laptop battery. Groggy, I freshened up and put on a clean bra and shirt.
Having men in the house was going to seriously impact my comfort clothes. Before I
left my room, I dialed Leo, but it was Bruiser who answered. “H-h-hello, Jane.” His
voice was low and warm and breathy, with a faint English accent and nearly a purr
of sound.
Bruiser
. Who did
not
sound like himself.

“Bruiser. You sound . . . odd. Do you feel okay?”

“I discover that I quite like the way I feel.”

“Uh-huh.” Bruiser had been partially healed by Koun, a vamp who claimed to be pure
Celt, and who would, if true, be much older than Leo. Then he’d been brought back
from the dead, or near enough as not to matter, by an infusion of the blood of Bethany
Salazar y Medina, a vamp who was nearly two thousand years old. And Katie had said,
“
George. You will live. And still mostly human. Do not despair
.” “Crap,” I said softly.

Blood-servants were much faster and stronger than regular humans, because of the sips
of vamp blood they regularly took in. They had better night vision, better hearing.
I didn’t know what Bruiser was now, but I had a bad feeling about it. “Have you heard
from Leo?”

“I have spoken with my master,” he said. “With your help, he escaped the Mithrans
who held him for a time last night. But he was injured badly. I have sent the priestesses
to his lair where he sleeps, to heal him, and his most loyal blood-servants, to feed
him when he wakes and to complete his healing.” He paused, then added slowly, “He
brought a Mithran with him when he escaped, and will be interrogating her soon. I
am driving there. Leo requests your presence as well.”

Going to any vamp’s lair when he was injured and bleeding and had not been sent to
earth to heal was not a smart move. I thought about the vamp Leo had captured. I didn’t
want to be part of that, not again, with the silver and the questions and the stink
of burning vamp-flesh, but I thought it was more likely he’d let her live if I was
there to temper his mood. Assuming I didn’t tick him off and make him kill her outright.

Deep in my mind, Beast huffed.
We will see the vampire in his den. We will know much, just as when we saw his hidden
place in his Clan Den
. I had seen one of Leo’s lairs, deep beneath the clan home, which was now burned
to the ground and beneath it probably. And yes, I had learned a lot.

And hey, Leo paid the bills. I’d probably suffer vamp-consequences if I didn’t go,
once Leo was up to meting them out.

I checked the time and said, “Okay.” And I wondered if I had just screwed up badly
or made the smartest move a vamp-hunter could make.

“I have sent the location to your cell phone. Meet me in ninety minutes.”

An hour later, after I had eaten a fabulous steak and a mediocre salad, I dressed
in the kind of clothes I wore when I went to visit a vamp instead of to fight a vamp.
No armored jacket, no Benelli strapped to my back, no guns except the one I tucked
into a boot beside the hidden vamp-killer. Thick denim jeans like bikers wear instead
of armored leather vamp-fighting pants. Only three vamp-killers. Hair braided tight.
Stakes in the loops at my belt, ready to be tucked into my hair like ornaments when
I unhelmeted. I put on the silver choker to protect my neck from fangs. Leo would
have plenty of humans around to feed him, but that was no reason to be provocative,
and a bare throat was a clear provocation to an injured vamp.

I pushed Bitsa into the street. I felt the eyes of the brothers on my back—and legs
and other body parts—as I straddled the bike, rose, and kick-started my Harley. I
could also feel their misgivings, which did nothing to quell my own. I checked the
phone for the address and GPS directions Bruiser had sent to it, before heading into
the Warehouse District of New Orleans.

The Warehouse District was just what it sounded like—the centuries-old storage facilities
of the New Orleans docks, where indigo, rice, cotton, food crops, cloth, tobacco,
and other items had been shipped downriver and to Europe, in return for silk, porcelain
china, tea, and slaves. Later centuries had shipped cars, mechanical tools, raw and
formed iron, steel, coal, technology, imported illegal drugs, and exported sexual
slavery, cash, liquor, cigarettes. Everything, legal and illegal, moral and immoral,
had been stored, for a time, in the warehouses. Now the old refurbished buildings
housed artists’ lofts, cafés, exclusive restaurants, galleries, apartments, spas,
fitness centers, and all manner of upscale social businesses.

The address I turned in to was a recently rehabbed warehouse, updated and secluded.
There were bars on the windows, the wrought-iron fleur-de-lis made so popular by French
immigrants, pretty as well as effective at keeping out burglars. The building also
had electronic security up the wazoo: dynamic cameras with low-light and infrared
capability, keypunch locks; two armed guards with earpieces, bulges suggestive of
guns, and the look of trained soldiers patrolled the place. It was all stuff I had
recommended to Leo for the Mithran council’s headquarters and his now-burned clan
home. I’d have to remember to send him a bill, now that he’d finally followed my advice.

Blinding-bright security lights brought tears to my eyes and threw the place into
sharp-angled shadows. I wheeled into the parking area and Bitsa’s roar went silent.
I pulled my riding gloves off. I didn’t really need to, and didn’t often ride with
gloves, but the finger-by-finger let me scope out the place.

Sitting on the seat, I smelled seafood, hot grease, and coffee—natch—and wine and
beer—also natch—and the scents of mold, hot tar, exhaust, stagnant and moving water,
and flowers—jasmine, I thought—that marked the city. I saw the last traces of the
sun on the horizon, bleeding reddish in the cerulean sky. I smelled humans I recognized.
Two of Derek Lee’s Vodka Boys were among the security I saw patrolling. I smelled
Bruiser and Wrassler. I smelled Leo’s Mercy Blade, Gee DiMercy somewhere close by,
and I smelled several vamps too, which was a surprise. Sabina, the oldest outclan
priestess, had been in the parking lot before total dark set in. Day-walking, or dusk-walking,
was something only the really old ones can do and live. I could think of no reason
for any of them to be here unless they were here for Leo to drink from. Injured vamps
needed a lot of blood to heal really bad injuries, even vamps as powerful as the Master
of the City. Something tightened deep inside, though I refused to name it fear or
worry for the MOC. I unhelmeted, strapped it to the back of the bike, and stuck the
hair sticks into my bun, wishing I had brought more than six. I adjusted the vamp-killers
so they were easy to hand.