Death's Rival (4 page)

Heart thudding, I heard clattering. Tory. Joining the fight.
Idiot man
.

One man turned toward him. Pulled another gun. I opened my mouth to shout a warning,
but Tory kicked, straight from the hip, his entire body in the move. A practiced,
fluid motion that bent his body into a tight V and then snapped it open. I wondered
what he studied.

The gun went flying. A shot rang out behind me, sounding dull beneath the concussive
damage to my ears. Somebody had an extra gun. It sucks when the bad guys start thinking
like me. Tory kicked again, but I smelled his blood. He’d been hit.
Enough
. I pulled a throwing knife and let it fly, the motion all one thing���pull blade,
elbow back, wrist back, shoulder back, set up, throw, wrist snap, release. It took
the shooter midchest, just left of his sternum. A lucky hit, between two ribs. The
knife hilt thudded into his chest. Blood fountained out.

I whirled to the other guy. He was aiming at Tory, his extra gun in both hands in
a Chapman stance. I dove forward. Grabbed his head. Our bodies impacted. I rode him
down. Slammed his head into the tarmac.

He went limp. I didn’t. Not even for a split second of victory. I’d been taught better.
I banged his head again. Hard. And rolled, kipping to my feet. Tory was dropping back
onto the metal steps, his movement so slow it looked arthritic. The fight was over.
I remembered to take a breath. My heart thudded into my chest like a jackhammer. Time
snapped back to normal speed. I huffed for breath as I checked the two bad guys. One
no longer breathing, one down and out.

“How bad?” I asked Tory.

“I’m gonna need some stitches.” He leaned left, hit the railing with his shoulder,
and slid down. His blood flowed out, venous, not the fierce, arterial pumping of the
man I’d just killed. But still, not good. Not good at all.

CHAPTER TWO

Oh, Goody. I Wasn’t Gonna Get Sucked to Death

The pilot stuck his head out of the door above me, back inside, and then raced down
the stairs. “I’ve called airport security and 911. They’re sending an ambulance and
the cops,” he said.

I said something that would have gotten my mouth washed out by the house mother at
the Christian children’s home where I was raised. “Medical kit!” I demanded. But the
pilot was ahead of me and knelt beside Tory, opening the small kit. With actions that
were medic-fast, he ripped open boxes and plastic packages and applied a thick layer
of gauze over Tory’s wound. Over that he folded a blanket from the jet. The entry
wound was low in the upper left quadrant, above his waist, below his ribs. I tried
to remember what organs were there and came up with upper colon and maybe spleen.
The exit wound was directly behind it and way bigger. The pilot adjusted Tory’s limp
body, stuffed another blanket over that one, and wrapped them in place with gauze
and a sticky-wrap bandage. He leaned in, applying pressure, his knees on the tarmac.
“Come on, boy. Don’t die on me,” he muttered. “Don’t die. Fight. You can fight this.”

I lifted Tory’s feet and propped them on the steel step, got more blankets from inside,
all treatment for shock. I’d taken an emergency medicine course between life in the
children’s home and life as an adult as the junior member of a security firm. I’d
taken a lot of classes in a lot of things. Some of what I’d learned was even useful
occasionally.

Needing to be doing something for the man who had thought I needed help, and knowing
there was nothing I could do, I secured the unconscious attacker, hands and feet,
with double zip strips, cleaned out his pockets, and made a fast reconnoiter of the
area while I called Leo’s to report in. Bruiser answered. “We’ve landed. Two blood-slaves—”
I stopped.
Yeah. Multiple vamps had fed off them. Blood-slaves, not blood-servants. Expendable
weapons.
“—attacked me as I got off the plane. I took them down, but the first mate, Tory
somebody”—I slid a hand over my face. I didn’t even know his last name—“jumped in
to help. He’s injured. The pilot called 911.”

Bruiser swore. Vamps took care of their own, avoiding all human agencies when possible,
but this time it was too late. “Dan’s a part-timer. Leo’s regular pilot is sick today,”
Bruiser said. The phone fell silent as he thought, probably going over the vamp-political
implications of Leo’s self-proclaimed and uninvited Enforcer killing someone in the
city of another master. Unlike me, Bruiser had a political mind and an elegant surface
in addition to his ruthless side, which was the reason he was Leo’s
real
Enforcer. That and the fact that he had the blood-bond with Leo that I had refused.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll get someone there to handle things. You get to the Romanello
Clan Home.”

Which was what I’d known he would say, but the words were still cold and heartless.
Something twisted deep inside me. As if he knew what I was feeling, Bruiser added,
“Or you can stay and spend the next two days answering the questions of local law
enforcement.”

He was right. I knew it. Still . . . “Okay. But someone knew we were coming. That
list is limited to the pilot and first mate, the pilot who called in sick, any of
the vamps y’all told on your end, and Derek Lee and his guys on my end.” Derek’s old
team all went by monikers based on vodka drinks: V. Martini, V. Lime Rickey, V. Chi-Chi,
V. Hi-Fi, V. Sunrise, V. Angel Tit. Derek had been called V. Lee’s Surrender—a joke
with historic connotations. I trusted these guys.

“Derek has new men,” he said.

I thought about that. In some way I had never questioned or understood, Derek was
Leo’s before he was my guy. And Derek was merging ten new men into his team, shooters
fresh out of combat, honorably discharged, all with nicknames based on tequila drinks,
like T. Sunrise, T. Cheek Sneak, T. Grenada, T. Blue Voodoo, T. El Diablo, and T.
Firecracker. They were a mixed crew, not all from the same unit, as Derek’s Vodka
Boys were, but picked from several different units, or whatever the marines called
them. I hadn’t gotten to know them well enough yet to say what I thought of them,
except they probably weren’t part of our current stool pigeon problem. “Derek’s new
guys were in service overseas when we first got our leak back during the Asheville
parley. No. It’s not someone new, unless our bad guy covered his bases and used some
big bad mojo to recruit
two
former military guys—which would be nigh unto impossible. So, I’m telling you,
again
, you got a leak in vamp security. You had one in Asheville, and you got one now.”

“Noted. You have a mission. Get on it. And see if you can make the security footage
of the fight disappear.”

Post-9/11 means there are digital cameras at every mom-and-pop airport in the nation.
I disconnected. Checked Tory. He was still breathing. I should have left, but I pulled
my phone and called Reach.

“Evening again, Paycheck,” he said.

“I need to make all the outdoor security footage from Sedona Mountaintop Airport disappear.
Review it first and see if you can ID the blood-slaves who just attacked me.”

He cursed, and there was a long silence on the other end. Then keys started clacking.
“This is going to cost you, Little Janie.”

“Yeah, yeah. Bill it to Leo. Can you do it?”

“Yes.” The connection ended, but I had no doubt that Reach was ticked off. And maybe
worried. If he got caught, it had to be a federal crime.

Security raced in on an electric golf cart, a red light on the top. I started laughing,
and the sound had an edge, sharp and caustic. I cut off the laughter. Somehow, Tory
was still alive ten minutes later, when the paramedics got there. I slid into the
shadows as the real cops showed up, and made my way through the terminal, head down,
away from cameras to the ladies’ room, where I pulled off the jacket and washed my
clothes, drying them under the hand dryer. It didn’t take long. I had remarkably little
blood on me, but I’d still smell like dinner to any vamp who got a whiff. And here
I was, going into the clan home of one. My life was totally out of control. I dropped
my weight onto the counter, the edge cutting into my palms. I stared at myself. I
was shaking.

I’d just killed a man.

And my lipstick was still in place, vibrant against my coppery Cherokee skin. As if
it never happened.

Nausea rose in my throat, but no tears started. My eyes didn’t fill. They were glowing
Beast-gold. I’d left the pilot and Tory to the cops. The blood-slave I’d tied up and
the blood-slave I’d killed. I was a traitor and a coward. I closed my lids and breathed,
finding a small calm place inside myself. Though he had attacked me, I offered up
a prayer for the spirit of my enemy, Cherokee-style, to the Christian God I had worshipped
for all the life I remembered. Wondering if there would come a time when God no longer
heard me, or worse, when I no longer prayed. That happened sometimes when one wandered
into unfamiliar spiritual areas.

When I opened my eyes again, they were my ordinary amber. I finished cleaning up.
Jacket back over my weapons, I smoothed the wisps of black hair that had come free,
up into the braid and fighting queue. Straightened the hair sticks. Tugged the jacket.
I looked long and lean and fashionably unremarkable. No one noticed me as I exited
the terminal, careful to avoid the metal detectors.

The car with my initials in the windshield, written in marker on a piece of white
cardboard, was waiting out front, and I slid into the backseat. The driver pulled
away but wanted to talk about the appearance of the cops. I looked behind us, as if
just noticing them, and said, “Really? Huh.” He took that as me not knowing anything,
shrugged, and drove into the night.

* * *

The driver, gathering that I wasn’t the chatty type, concentrated on the road, for
which I was grateful. It took us over forty minutes to reach the Romanello Clan Home
on the outskirts of Sedona, a long, silent drive. I opened the e-file of the Romanello
family dossier and tried to read, but the dark pulled at me. As the city fell away,
the sky was so black it looked like being in space, and I had never seen so many stars,
not ever, anywhere, not even in the Appalachian Mountains a century ago, before electricity
lit up the nights.

There wasn’t enough light to sightsee, but I cracked a window and the smells kept
my nose busy. The car’s headlights lit red stone bluffs, spiky foliage, low trees,
scrub. I was quickly able to pin certain smells on specific plants. A coyote trotted
across the road, stopped, and looked at the slowing car before trotting on. I smelled
rodents and maybe some kind of squirrel. Baked earth. Smelled an animal with a musky,
odd underscent—armadillo roadkill— half roasted from the late autumn sun.

The clan home of the former blood-master of the city was in a canyon, about halfway
up, on a ledge. It was in a position that would have been easily defended in the eighteen
and nineteen hundreds. The only way to attack it today, barring helicopter, parasailing,
ultralight plane, or parachute, was the road. Or a really horrible hike, a mountain
climb, and rappel down from the cliff behind the manor hall.

A mile out, a wrought-iron gate blocked the road. We slowed and stopped at a dynamic
camera, one that could be operated via joystick from a security console elsewhere.
It was a top-of-the-line model with every bell and whistle on the market: motion-sensor,
heat-detector, low-light capability, a PIR sensor—passive infrared—and traditional
optical. The screws holding it in place were fresh and shiny. The system was new.
The fence that trailed out from the road had motion sensors on it and a current running
through its wires.

I rolled my window down and heard a mechanical voice say, “State your business.”

I repeated the words Leo had told me to say. “I am Jane Yellowrock, seeking shelter
and hospitality, here under parley rules, sent by Leonard Eugène Zacharie Pellissier,
Blood Master of the Southeastern United States. I am armed, an Enforcer, but offer
my word and guarantee that none shall be harmed by my hand except in defense.”

“Wait.”

Well, that was sweet. The camera swiveled to center on my face. I let them stare while
I drew on Beast’s night vision and studied the house in the distance. Constructed
of brick and the red stone of the land, it was large, with a wraparound porch, huge
arched openings on the outside of the porch that protected matching arched windows
on the house wall. The windows were uncovered, revealing the inside. Rugs and wood
and plaster interior walls met my enhanced gaze, and though I couldn’t see them, I
knew there would likely be automatic steel shutters on the inside to protect against
sunlight and attack—vamp security.

A red clay roof had a solar array on its south side and three windmills. Two were
modern, tall pipes, white against the black sky, with whirling, spinning tops that
looked like serrated blades encased in steel. The third one looked more like a traditional
windmill, and on the night breeze I could smell water. Only a little water, maybe
pumped into an underground cistern, but a sharp contrast to the arid land.

It was a place of wealth and power, two stories tall, nearly impregnable. I’d seen
specs of the clan home, such as existed, drawings made by visitors, but I knew how
poorly most people remembered exact dimensions. And no one had mentioned a lair, neither
for the vamps nor for their chained-scions, young vamps still in the devoveo of madness
after being turned. So there was a lot I didn’t know about the house. I would be flying
by the seat of my pants, which I was good at, but it was never safe, and eventually
I’d pay the price for my lack of knowledge. I always did.

“Go ahead,” the mechanical voice said. The gate opened with a soft whir and Driver
Dude pulled forward, up the hill toward the house. As we moved, low lights along the
sides of the drive came on, brightening our way, and screwing with my night vision.
Deliberate, I was sure. I closed one eye, peering at the world through the lashes
of the other eye.

At the top of the rise, in the shadows of the house, I spotted five men. Each carried
guns I could make out in the low light. I couldn’t tell what kind, but I could guess
they were modified fully automatic and fully illegal weapons.
Ducky. Just freaking ducky
. My heart rate sped, and a slow trickle started down my spine. I took a deep breath
and blew it out, forcing away the nerves. Fear—and anything close to fear—is not wise
when one is in the presence of vamps. They can smell it, and they sometimes like to
play with their dinner before sucking it dry.

A dark shadow stood out against a broken-rock wall just ahead, a black triangular
shape with coppery glints where the stars picked out brass rounds. Even in the dark,
I thought I recognized a belt-fed machine gun, maybe an HK 21 .308 Shorty, one with
the standard nine-inch barrel. My breath caught, and, oddly, my fear subsided. If
I was right, it was a rare gun and I wished I could just walk over and take a peek.
But since it was pointed at me and the guy manning it was wearing nighttime camo and
expected to be unseen, I figured that might get me shot. I grinned, showing teeth,
feeling better for some reason I couldn’t name.

The driver pulled to a stop in front of the house. Calmer, I studied the house’s perimeter,
taking in the rest of the security measures. Three men and a woman exited the front
door and stood, widely spaced, in a semicircle around the car. If I planned to jump
out shooting, I’d never get them all before I was brought down. Each of the welcoming
committee was standing out of the way of direct line of fire of the gunmen. Excellent
positioning.

Driver Dude turned off the car and tossed the keys over the back of the seat, which
I caught. “I’ll be hiking back to the road for my ride. You leave the car back at
the airport. We’ll pick it up.”