Death's Rival (22 page)

I remembered thinking at one time, in the last hectic days, that vamps were being
made sick by drinking diseased blood, but that had seemed impossible unless a normal,
natural plague had entered the human population. There had been no reports of horrific
human illness in the media, and no way could that have been kept quiet.

There were also so many cities where Blood-Call was operating, cities that had no
sign of sickness. The lack of plague and the specificity of attack had made me put
the idea on the back burner. But then, there were the sick humans in Seattle who had
claimed they were getting better. They weren’t Blood-Call employees, they were blood-servants
who lived and worked at the Seattle Clan Home. Without explaining, I pulled my cell
and dialed the Seattle Clan Home. When a woman answered, I said, “This is Jane Yellowrock.
I was there a few days ago, and took some blood from some blood-servants who were
left on the premises after the revolt staged by the Mercy Blade failed. Are they still
alive? Did they get well?”

The woman said stiffly, “Yes and yes. And then our new master removed them. Don’t
call again.” There was a click and the call ended.

I stared at the cell and smiled. “Of course he did.” I looked up at the brothers and
said, “Alex, how certain are you about the money trail of the corporations that own
Blood-Call?”

He was standing at the sink, drying his hands; he pushed a tiny laptop to the center
of the table and opened it. It must have been sleeping because it opened to a company
Web page instantly. Blood-Call’s graphics were red and black with two beautiful, scantily
clad couples on the front. One partner of each couple was a vamp, and the other was
being a meal. It was clear that sex was on the menu as well as blood. Eli scooted
his chair closer to me and we both leaned in, studying the screen, arms almost touching.

“I’ve traced it back through several shell corporations to an offshore account,” Alex
said. “The mailing address is a PO box on the main island. The shipping address is
here.” He pointed to the screen. “I have a
World of Warcraft
buddy on the island and he’s doing some footwork to see what’s at the address. I’m
betting it’s a café or an empty lot. The finances trace back through four shells to
a numbered account. There’s no way to find out anything further. No way to see if
it ties to Lucas Vazquez de Allyon.”

“Why not?” I asked. “Someone has to come in from time to time and deal with the accounts.”

“Not offshore accounts. Not if they have the numbers and the passwords. Back in the
day, someone had to show up in person and open an account. Now it can be done electronically
and no one at the bank ever sees the client. I tried tracking the money back, but
I couldn’t get through.”

He looked at his brother with a sly grin. “Offshore banks have better security than
the Pentagon.” Eli raised his eyes without lifting his head, and Alex laughed at whatever
he saw on his brother’s face. He looked back and forth between us, his expression
changing to speculation. He grinned at his brother and went back to the dishes.

That speculative look suddenly made me aware that I was sitting close enough to feel
Eli’s body heat, close enough to feel the fine hairs on his arm graze mine when he
moved. My limbs went heavy. A slow warmth settled deep inside me. I felt Beast start
to purr.

I kept my eyes on the screen as Eli sat back. When I could trust myself to speak casually,
I stood and said, “I’m beat. I’m heading for bed.” Beast hacked deep inside and Alex
looked over his shoulder again at his brother, then at me, and he grinned.
Crap.
I turned and went to my room without another word. And I slept in boy shorts and a
tank instead of naked.
Men
.

* * *

The phone rang, waking me before dawn. I knew without looking that it was Leo—I could
feel him pulling on the blood-bond. I wanted to ignore the cell’s insistent ringing,
but my hand went out all its own and I picked up the phone, hit the TALK button. “What?”

Bruiser said, “At sunset yesterday, Lucas Vazquez de Allyon, Blood Master of Atlanta,
Sedona, Seattle, and Boston, claimed blood-feud with Leonard Eugène Zacharie Pellissier,
Blood Master of the southeastern states, in direct contradiction of the Vampira Carta.”
His tone was stiff and formal, and I knew that Leo was right there, listening, exerting
all sorts of emotional overtones to the conversation.

For a moment, I froze, that electric stillness of remembered fear and pain, Leo’s
fangs buried in my throat. Beast placed a paw on my mind, all claw and spiking demand.
We are not prey.

I sucked in a breath that sounded of sorrow as much as remembered agony, and shoved
down on my fear, letting Beast trap it beneath her claws as if it were her dinner.
The memory of the feeding eased. Beast was right.
We are not prey.

His voice even more unyielding, Bruiser said, “We believe that somehow he knows we
discovered who he is, and this forced his hand.”

Somehow. Yeah. Like the leak I warned you about that you can’t find. All I had to
do was send you a report on Blood-Call and Lucas, and everything changed
. But I didn’t say it. I didn’t rub salt in the wound. Go, me. “Okay,” I said to Bruiser
and to Beast. “Why blood-feud and not a Blood Challenge? What’s the difference between
the two?” I asked, rolling up to my butt, sitting in the middle of the bed, the covers
wrapped around me in the chill. I was facing the windows at the front and side of
the house, seeing car lights move past one, seeing the bushes move with a slight wind
in the other.

“A challenge follows the protocol of the Vampira Carta, all the rules and regulations
set therein. A blood-feud is a much older contest, one from before the Carta was written,
and it puts aside the Mithrans’ most important legal document. According to historical
precedent, there are no established protocols for the feud. Because you killed his
Enforcer, Ramondo Pitri, unprovoked, de Allyon can declare blood-feud, according to
the old ways.”

It always came back to the man I had killed in Asheville. But I remembered what Aggie
had said yesterday morning. “His Enforcer was in Asheville to check me out, to see
why I had moved ahead of all of Leo’s people into the rank of Enforcer, cutting you
out of the position too. He could have looked me over on the street, in a restaurant,
anywhere. Yet he was in my room, his gun drawn, with an illegal suppressor on it.
Seems to me he was going off the reservation, hoping to take me out first. Seems to
me that I’m lucky to be alive.”

I heard background noises and then Leo said into the phone, “Unfortunately, my Enforcer,
we have no evidence of that. When my George suggested that very scenario to de Allyon’s
messenger, he asked for proof. We had none to offer, except for the human police reports,
which are not sufficient in a Mithran court. Only a Mithran eyewitness would be acceptable
to others of my kind.”

“Right,” I said, and though I knew he could hear the sarcasm, he went on, unperturbed.

“Therefore, the demand for blood-feud remains. I have petitioned to the Outclan Council
of Mithrans for a ruling on the matter, and they have put it on the agenda for when
they meet again in the new year.”

“Meantime we’re all in the crosshairs,” I said.

“Precisely. My George will send you the information we have on the methodologies of
blood-feuds.”

I heard background noises again, thinking over the “my Enforcer” and “my George” phrases
as the cell was passed around. Leo was staking claims—pun intended—as I had done with
my use of the words “my Eli” last night.

George said, “You need to know that de Allyon offered another way out of this. Leo
could turn himself and you over and de Allyon would let all the others live. Leo turned
him down.”

Yeah. I bet he did.
“Wait.” The winter chill of the room made goose bumps rise on my arms. “Let all the
others live? Does the blood-feud mean he can kill everyone?”

Bruiser made a sound, very British, all nose and curled lip. “Historically, all of
one side or the other died in a blood-feud, all the Mithrans, all the servants, all
the slaves. Everyone.”

At last I understood, and lots of things fell into place, including Leo binding me—just
after sunset, yesterday. “Well, crap.”

“I’ll send you all the information I have on the precedents and the histories. Most
of it isn’t electronic. Most is in the form of letters and reports, so it’ll be photocopied
and messengered over later today.

“My master will agree.”

I hated that “my master” crap and wanted to hurt Leo for trying to bind me to him,
and for tying Bruiser to him so tightly, even if it did save his life. I felt something
pull again in my mind, a compulsion to help Leo, a
need
to help him, and my anger at Leo flamed out. Leo needed a huge takedown or maybe
some sensitivity training, delivered with the pointy end of a stake. I smiled grimly
at the thought. My grandmother had been very adept with sharp pointy things. “Later,”
I said, and ended the connection.

“What?”

I turned and found Eli in my bedroom, standing in the dark with his back to my wall,
the door open beside him. I eyed the door. Then Eli. He was in boxers and a tee. His
arms and legs were corded with muscle, his eyes dark in the shadows. He was holding
a weapon in each hand, both semiautomatics. “When I lock my door, it’s to stay locked,”
I said.

“Not when the house is under surveillance.”

“You mean the guy who appears to be sleeping in the alcove across the street? Small
guy, dressed like he has money, but no place to crash?” It was a guess, but Leo’s
Mercy Blade had used that doorway to watch my house before. So had Leo.

“You knew?”

“I’m not surprised. Next time, knock.”

“Next time, tell me when we’re being watched.”

I lifted my hand to show that I was prepared. I was holding one of the twin Walthers,
the grip bloodred. Eli gave me one of his lopsided smiles. “You look good curled up
in that bed, wearing a thin tank and not much else but a gun.” I didn’t reply except
for a faint flush he couldn’t see in the dim room. He moved out of my room and pulled
my door closed behind him. I flopped back on the bed. “Crap. Crap, crap,
crap
,” I whispered to the ceiling.

Seconds later the cell rang again. “What do you want, Bruiser?”

I could have kicked myself when I realized what I’d said, and there was a smile in
his voice when he said, “Callan was sick, and Sabina has healed him.”

I ignored both my gaff and his tone. “Who is Callan?”

“One of the vampires in a cage at Katie’s. He says he served de Allyon only because
his master kept him alive. He has asked to join Leo’s power base and it’s being considered.
Leo would like you to speak to him before dawn, find out, if you can, what de Allyon’s
plans are.”

“Yeah. Fine. I don’t need to sleep anyway,” I said crossly. I threw the covers away
and hung up on Bruiser.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Free Dick Dot Come

I took the back way to Katie’s Ladies—over the back brick wall. Troll opened the door
for me before I knocked, as if expecting me. “Little Janie,” he said, his voice like
two rocks grinding together.

“Morning, Troll,” I said as I passed him. “Your scalp needs shaving.”

He rubbed his hand over the pale dome as he closed the door on the morning’s predawn
light. “When I get time. George said you wanted to talk to the new guest.”

“Yeah. It’s all my idea. Where is he?”

“Upstairs with Christie.”

I stopped and looked back. “Not . . .”

“Not. Christie came home this morning and took a liking to the newcomer. He needed
to be fed and she was willing, but that’s over with now.” He grinned at me. “You won’t
walk in on anything.”

I shook my head and went through the twisting hallways to the back stairs and up.
Walking in on something with Christie could be detrimental to my sexual well-being.
Christie was the resident S&M practitioner, with a penchant for whips, chains, and
pain, able to play the part of top or bottom in BDSM games. The fact that I now understood
what that meant was kinda scary. Not my thing. I knocked on her door and entered when
she called out.

The inside of Christie’s room was decorated like a gym, but without the charm. Bare
mattress on a plain, steel bed, the four corners and headboard adorned with flex-straps
and chains and cuffs. Bare white walls, bare wood floor, plastic rolled up in the
corners. I didn’t want to know what
that
was used for. Steel shutters and padded blinds were over the windows, blocking out
the coming dawn, the latest vamp fad.

Christie was lying on the mattress with a dark blond vamp curled around her. Both
were dressed, but only barely, Christie in a sheer top that exposed steel chains through
her nipple rings—ouch—and the vamp in black silk pajama shorts. Seemed that Corpse
had a name after all. The vamp looked vastly different from the way he had looked
the last time I saw him, covered in blood and burns. Now he was clean, his hair combed,
and his face stretched in a contented, well-fed smile as I looked him over. His silver
cross burns were healed, and that kind of burn usually took a long time to heal. I’d
burned Leo with one once and really ticked him off.

“Christie. Callan,” I said.

Callan roused enough to lift his head from Christie’s shoulder and I could see the
tiny pinpricks on her throat that marked the constricted vamp bite marks. “You’re
my new master’s Enforcer,” he stated, his accent Southern, maybe a mill-town accent
from the piedmont of South Carolina. He climbed slowly from the bed, moving like a
feral animal, all smooth muscle and grace. Callan stood in front of me and slung the
hair back from his face, holding my gaze, letting me look my fill. He was pretty.
Dang pretty. And he knew it. Like a lot of vamps, he’d been turned for his looks,
no doubt about that. He had a boxer’s shoulders, a cyclist’s thighs, and a painter’s
long, slender fingers, with an angel’s face on top. But something about him made me
think he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier—maybe the fact that he was posing.
He held the pose a moment longer and then dropped slowly to one knee, like an old-fashioned
bow, but with a dancer’s sense of balance. He bent forward, curling his spine so his
hands and his hair fell forward to the floor, exposing his back, which was a swimmer’s
back, tapering to a tiny waist.

“Get up,” I said. Before he could rise, I asked, “How did your former master infect
you with the disease?” I expected him to say that he had dated a sick human at Blood-Call.

Callan stood, his shoulders back, a sculptor’s model on display. I held in an exasperated
sigh. “My former master fed me a woman. He feeds her to lots of us.”

“
One
woman?” I said, not sure I heard correctly.

“Yes, ma’am.”

My amusement vanished. A Typhoid Mary? A human with a disease that infects vamps?
A prisoner, kept to be fed upon?
Like a slave?
I thought I had it all figured out, that sick humans were being passed around. I
wasn’t sure how a single sick human connected. Not sure at all.

“Against her will?”

“She’s his prisoner. We all were.”

“Crap.” So what
now
? I’d have to kill de Allyon
and
rescue all the vamps and the blood-servants? I didn’t say it, but I could feel the
need burrowing under my skin. Saving people, fighting for people, is what skinwalkers
do, when we aren’t torturing them. “Is she here in Louisiana?”

“No. She is in Atlanta, in my mas—my former master’s lair.”

“So how did de Allyon infect all the vamps in Sedona, Seattle, and other places? Does
he fly her around?”

“Lady, I got no idea how he did his thing. It ain’t like I was up high in the pecking
order or nothing. But I will say that he never let that woman out of his compound.
Like not never.”

I felt my hope deflate. “Is de Allyon in Louisiana?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where?”

“No. Somewhere north, and maybe west. In a little town on a river. I’m not good with
directions.”

The comment was so unexpected I almost laughed. Was the guy really dumber than a box
of rocks, or was he dissembling, somehow hiding his true mind even from whichever
old master vamp had fed him to heal him? That would have made Callan the best spy
in history. Nope. He was no spy; Callan smelled of truth. And Callan was intellectually
challenged—pretty, but dumb. Nearly every place in the state was north and west of
New Orleans. “How did de Allyon know about me? How did he know I was Leo’s Enforcer?”

Callan shrugged. “I don’t know. Somebody tells him things.”

“Yeah. I was afraid of that.” A few more questions convinced me that I had discovered
everything that Callan knew. Which was sad in all sorts of ways. Leo had a mole, a
dissenter, a spy in his camp. I wanted it to be someone who recently joined the ranks,
but it had to be someone who was in Asheville with the parley there, which limited
the number of people involved. I had to study the Kid’s deep background search info
on the Vodka Boys and the Tequila Boys. I had to unearth the mole. Unfortunately,
Callan would be no help at all.

* * *

It was nine a.m. when I got back to the freebie house. I’d stayed and eaten breakfast
with Deon. My meal had consisted of eggs Benedict, Caribbean-style, with spices and
peppers and some really melty, gooey, fabulous Hollandaise sauce. Totally delicious
and totally sinful. Eli would have turned up his nose at the fats. I scraped my plate
clean.

Back at my house, I found a postal box on the front porch, filled with the CS canisters.
They were plain metal canisters, like spray paint cans, but with a lever system on
top to lock them on, so they could spray until empty or be stopped at will by the
wielder. “Cool,” I said, and packed them away.

Sitting on the couch, I booted up my laptop and opened the file containing the English
translation of the Vampira Carta. I scrolled down to the part about the Blood Challenge
between masters and checked the footnotes for other info. There were four codicils
to the challenge and three histories, none of which were in English. It looked like
Latin, probably from a millennia ago. “Crap,” I muttered.

“Anything I can help you with?” Eli asked.

Instantly, I remembered his predawn comment about how I looked in bed. I was pretty
sure I blushed and didn’t raise my head for him to see. “Not unless you speak Latin
from the tenth century.”

“Free dick dot come.”

I lifted my eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

He laughed and bent over the laptop, typing “www.free dict.com” in my browser. I’m
pretty sure my blush was visible even through my Cherokee coloring. He smelled good,
all pheromones and self-confidence and man. “Oh. Thanks,” I muttered. Still grinning,
he wandered away, leaving behind his scent and the echo of his laughter.

I went to that site and three others, subscribing to two that looked reasonable. I
typed out the Latin info and started getting translations, none of which matched exactly.
To be on the safe side, I sent snippets to all four sites and compared and contrasted
the translations, taking the ones that seemed to match best. I quickly discovered
that the VC’s Blood Challenge was instituted in direct response to a blood-feud that
took out nearly two thousand humans and vamps in southern Italy in the mid-tenth century.
The descriptions of the dead in that history were horrible, humans and vamps drained,
torn apart, discarded, their bodies left to see the dawn. It was wanton destruction,
leaving even the children of blood-slaves drained and dead in the streets. And a blood-feud
was what we had here, what had been staring us in the face all this time, and I hadn’t
really understood.

I went back to the date. If the history of Lucas Vazquez de Allyon was correct, he
would have been alive back then. Just because his name was Spanish now didn’t mean
he hadn’t traveled, or even been Italian—Roman—originally. As I worked, the smell
of coffee filled the house, rich, dark, and wonderful. Too bad that coffee smelled
so much better than it tasted to me.

Trying to block out smells and the small sounds made by men moving around in my house,
I translated segments on blood-feuds, spending two hours before I realized that, basically,
a blood-feud was a no-holds-barred free-for-all with winner take all. This one would
be blamed on me for killing a man who had likely been intending to murder me the first
chance he got.

“Jane,” Alex called from the kitchen. “I got something.”

I put the laptop to sleep and went to the kitchen, stretching on the way in. In the
kitchen, I discovered where the coffee smell originated. The men taking over my life
had purchased an espresso coffeemaker, a fancy stainless steel version by DeLonghi.
According to the box at the back door, the thing cost nearly a thousand bucks. I hoped
I hadn’t paid for that.

Before I studied the info Alex had, I put tea together. While the tea water sizzled
on the stove top, I pulled up a chair near Stinky. Who definitely was not getting
any fast food today. “Show me,” I said.

“Lucas Vazquez de Allyon purchased property in several states, including Louisiana
last year. He has property in New Orleans, in Lafayette, and in some little towns
between Lafayette and here. I put them on a map.”

It was a melded map, showing topo, streets and street names, bayous, rivers, airports,
bus stations, and a lot of other stuff I would need if I had to go to each of them
hunting him. “Have you found de Allyon yet?”

“No, but I’m close.”

“Good. Now go take a shower. You’re living up to your nickname.” At his puzzled look,
I said. “Stinky. I’ve named you Stinky and it’ll stay Stinky until you remember to
shower every day.”

“And when I remember?” he asked, sounding belligerent.

“Then it’ll be Kid.”

“Like Kid Rock?”

“More like Billy the Kid, Cisco Kid, the Durango Kid.” When he still looked puzzled,
I said, “Do an Internet search. And it’s a crying shame when an American teenage boy
doesn’t know his gunslingers.” I slapped him on the back of the head. “Good work,
Stinky.”

I finished making my tea and went back to my laptop. Shortly, I heard footsteps up
the stairs and then shower water going. “The Durango Kid? He’s a modern-day shooter.”

I looked up to see Eli standing in front of the open bookcase. He had a habit of standing
with his arms loose, one hand near the spot where a military sidearm might go, the
other on his thigh where he might wear a military knife. “Yeah. A cowboy six-shooter.
There was an old black-and-white film about the Durango Kid.”

“You watch old black-and-white cowboy films.” It was said with a hint of disbelief.

“Yeah. The kind where your people kill off my people and steal our land, and somehow
make murder and theft seem heroic.”

A hint of amusement twinkled into Eli’s eyes in response to my sarcasm. He said, “My
people? You mean the mongrels of society? I have ancestors who
were
slaves and ancestors who
owned
slaves.”

He was of mixed blood, mixed race, which I had suspected from his skin tone. Alex
was much paler than Eli. Maybe they were half brothers? I brought my mind back to
the conversation and tilted my head to show he had made his point.

“You’re good with Alex,” he said. “We were doing nothing but fighting about him showering.”
The twinkle bled away. After a moment he said, “We were fighting about everything,
actually.”

“Yeah. You treat him like a son or a soldier, instead of like a brother. He wants
you to like him and admire him and love him. Maybe in that order.”

“Hmmph,” Eli said. “And you know this about families when you were raised in a children’s
home?”

That could have been intended to be snide or even hurtful, but the look on his face
was simply puzzled. I squelched the retort budding on my lips. I didn’t explain about
my early years very often, mainly because it sometimes brought the memories back,
like a tsunami, overwhelming, overpowering, visceral, and intense. With Alex’s ability
to ferret out info on the Web, it wasn’t a surprise that the brothers knew about my
history. “I came out of the woods at age twelve, give or take, with no language, no
social skills, no nothing. I watched the body language and interactions between the
kids and the adults in the home long before I could understand what they were saying.
Tone and intent were clear enough even to the outsider. Your tone and body language
say you don’t trust him. Your tone and body language say you are the boss and he better
listen to you or else.”

“Yeah? So?”

“What do you mean
So
?” Men can be so obtuse sometimes. “He’s not a soldier under your command. This is
family, not the army. And Alex doesn’t understand that you love him and want to protect
him and that’s why you are all over him like white on rice. Tell him you like him.
Tell him you admire what he can do. And back off and let him make mistakes. He’ll
respect you more for it. Sheesh.” I went back to my research. Eli tucked his thumbs
in his pockets and meandered up the stairs, I hoped to play nice-nice with his baby
brother.