Death's Rival (6 page)

I met Ro’s calm eyes, and she smiled slowly, tilting her head the barest fraction.
The expression on her face suggested that she had accomplished a goal, and I was reminded
of the photo that arrived at Leo’s from an anonymous source. Yeah. Ro had sent the
photo and had known that Leo would send help. She might have preferred an armed rescue,
but she trusted Leo or she wouldn’t have allowed me to draw the blood. Vamps were
sneaky. I liked that about them. I nodded back slightly to show I understood.

I held the site while I dropped the torn packages, the bottles, and tubes into a zip-lock
baggie and sealed it up. I was supposed to label the tubes with name, date, and time,
but that could wait. I was ready to get out of here and so was Beast. I could feel
her unease padding through my mind like a lion in a cage, back and forth, back and
forth.

Chilled moisture soaked my thumb and I glanced at the puncture site to see blood oozing
up from beneath my grip. I grabbed more gauze, applied it, and held harder, but the
blood welled faster. Vamps don’t bleed. Not like this. “Crap,” I whispered.

Nik pushed me aside and took Rosanne’s arm. And he did something I’d never seen a
vamp do before. Instead of licking it clean, he wiped the puncture site, tossing the
bloody gauze into the garbage. A vamp ignored blood. Didn’t lick it. And then he spat
onto the wound. I almost said
eeeewwww
but caught myself in time. I realized he was worried she was contagious.

Vampire saliva closes wounds, causing the veins and skin to contract and constrict.
It’s usually applied with a tongue laving. This was weird. Okay. This gig was making
me rethink everything I thought I knew about vamps, and I had been on a steep learning
curve ever since I hit New Orleans.

The tiny wound stopped bleeding. Nikki-Babe looked at me and I nodded my thanks. “I’ll
be going now,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” a voice said behind me. I turned and saw a man, human—or as human
as the fangheads’ dinners ever are. I knew this guy wasn’t one of Ro’s usual blood-servants;
even if I hadn’t been able to smell the new master on him, he wasn’t in the dossier.
He was maybe seventy years old, looked twenty-five, and was powerful—meaning that
he had fed on the blood of a master for a very long time. Bald, six feet and a smidge,
blue eyes, reddish beard needing a trim, casual clothes, shirt half-tucked, as if
he’d dressed and gotten here in a hurry. He was a righty.

And he had a gun pointed at my chest.

CHAPTER THREE

I Started to Squeeze the Trigger

Holding his eyes, I slid the tote strap around my shoulders, shoved it back out of
the way, and walked straight toward him. Keeping loose. Letting Beast bleed into my
bloodstream and into my eyes. My heart rate sped as her adrenaline pumped into my
body. His blue eyes widened. Beast-fast, I swerved right, forcing him to move cross-hand.
And back left, into his personal space. I body-slammed him. Hard. Hooked his ankle
as he shifted and shoved.

The gun went off. Wild shot. Toward the ceiling. I caught his gun hand, flipped him,
and landed one knee in the middle of his spine with all my weight. Took his gun away
while he tried to remember how to breathe. Banged his head on the floor so hard he
had to see stars.

Fun,
Beast thought.
More!

The shadow over me shifted. I lifted my eyes. Nikki-Babe was standing over me, still
vamped out, blocking the light. Fangs latched down, claws out, waiting. If I really
tried to hurt the stranger, he’d kill me, and I didn’t know why. Ignoring the looming
shadow, I leaned in and sniffed. Blue Eyes smelled of witchy-power, not his own, but
something he had obtained from a powerful witch or coven—probably an amulet of some
sort. The witchy stench nearly overrode the blood-signature scent of his master, but
not quite. It was a vamp-scent I recognized. The undertang made me hesitate, but only
for a moment. For now the amulet was more important. Whatever spell he had was underneath
him, inactivated, and I had better keep it that way. I pulled his arms back and secured
them with a zip strip. Then added three more strips. He was a blood-servant to someone
very powerful, with a witchy charm on his person. I wasn’t taking chances.

I flipped him over, slamming his head against the marble floor. He grunted.

“Have a care with our
guest
,” Nikki said, his mouth near my ear. The last word was nearly spitting, as if he
would have used another, less kind and less hospitable term.
Curiouser and curiouser.

“I’m taking care,” I said, my voice flat. I fished in Blue Eyes’ pocket and pulled
out a pocket watch. It was neither old nor new, cheap nor expensive. It was something
no one would ever notice twice, but it was charmed. I sniffed the amulet, and the
magics smelled like blood. Like meat. Weird. I tucked it into my lead-lined pocket
with the silver cross while Blue Eyes was still disoriented, and patted him down.
I searched for wallet, ID, or a cell, but he was clean.
Figures
.

I leaned in again. Now he smelled only of his master. A close perusal of the blood-signature
proved that the master wasn’t someone I knew, not someone I had ever met, but I had
killed a blood-servant belonging to the vamp recently. In Asheville, when I’d been
attacked in my hotel room. Once again, everything went back to Asheville and I didn’t
know why. Beast didn’t have the olfactory memory of a bloodhound, but she was no slouch
either. She remembered this scent, though it was much stronger than the last time
she had scented it. It was peaty and spicy and, oddly, a little beery. The servant
also had a funky chemical top-note, acrid and clear as a desert sky, in Beast’s synesthesia.
A nonguest in the house of a deposed master . . .

I put it all together and looked over at Rosanne. She was leaning her weight on her
elbows on her desk, as if it took all her strength to hold herself upright. “This
is your treatment, isn’t it? You suck on him and his blood fights the disease in you.
Kill him and you die.” When no one disputed my claim, I looked up. “Back off, Nikki-Babe.
I’m not gonna kill your mistress’ antibiotic.”

Nik took a single step back but didn’t let his eyes bleed back to human. I grabbed
Blue Eyes’ head and banged it against the floor again. Leaped to my feet before Nik
could react. Shrugged. “Didn’t say I wasn’t gonna hurt him a little. I want him out
until I’m ready to go. Is he the only one for Ro to feed on?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “And he is not enough.”

“And he’s to call his master at prearranged times,” I said, “to let his boss know
everything is okay here, right?” When she nodded again, moving as if her neck and
head hurt, I asked, “Are you going to be able to handle this—my being here and knocking
your new boy around—or do you need backup?”

“We will be fine,” she whispered. She sounded certain, unwavering, and maybe it was
just her trying to get rid of me, but I nodded.

“Okay. I’m gone. If you change your mind and need help—”

“We need nothing from you,” Nik said through his fangs.

I looked him over, thinking,
You let your mistress get defeated in a Blood Challenge. And now someone else has
to fix your screwup.
Seems to me you needed
something
, Nikki-Babe.
But I didn’t say it. If I had given in to temptation, I’d have had another fight on
my hands and I’d done enough for one night.

I walked between the score of blood-servants and clan-vamps and out the front door.
The night smelled wonderful here. Huge and free and heated. Beast wanted to hunt,
but even she wanted to get down off this cliff first. I got in the car and fished
out the key, drove down the drive and out through the soundless gate. Following the
GPS directions, I made it back to Sedona proper without incident and pulled in next
to a FedEx drop box. I labeled the blood tubes and bottles, wrapped them in bubble
wrap, taped them up, boxed them, added more tape, and affixed Leo’s mailing label
to the front. There were laws about putting biohazardous materials through the mail,
and I was breaking all of them, which is why I used Leo’s address as both return and
sender. If my plane crashed, at least the blood wouldn’t go down with me. I dropped
the blood into the drop box and heard it hit other packages with a soft, slithering
thump.

I texted my ETA to the pilot, with the question “Can we use current plane?” at the
bottom. With the police involved, Leo’s personal jet might be grounded. Unless Leo
pulled strings, I might be getting on a charter. Satisfied, I whirled the steering
wheel and pulled back onto the road. Following the directions of the GPS voice, I
headed back to the airport. The pilot texted back a succinct “Yes,” which I read before
tossing the phone into the passenger seat.

My primary mission was accomplished, which meant a nice fee would be electronically
deposited into my account as soon as Leo got the package. Mentally, I calculated my
payment for the travel part of this gig. I was getting a base fee for each visit,
travel pay, hazard pay, and I was getting a bonus for each sick vamp who let me bleed
him or her. A
very
nice bonus, because vamps didn’t give up their blood to anyone who wasn’t family,
scion, servant, master, or slave. Never. Now if it was just as easy to get a sample
from the Seattle MOC, I’d be set.

Behind me down the road, headlights pulled onto my street. I took note of their shape
and the outline of the car they were attached to. GMC sedan. Another car moved parallel
to mine one street over, which could be a standard tailing procedure, but when I turned
right at the next intersection, the cars didn’t follow. They pulled on past and disappeared.
I didn’t know Sedona at all, but maybe they were just leaving a club. Or getting off
work somewhere on the night shift.

It was long after midnight when I dialed Leo’s number, but it’s never too late to
call a vamp. Bruiser answered, his voice like a long, low caress. “Jane.”

I couldn’t help my smile. Or Beast’s inner purr. Beast likes Bruiser—George Dumas—and
though my cat had been oddly quiescent, she always paid attention to Bruiser. He was
Leo Pellissier’s right-hand blood-meal, and arguably the most powerful nonvamp in
New Orleans. He probably had more political clout than the governor and he definitely
had better looks and charisma than any purely human politician.

I opened my mouth to say, “I have a report.” What came out was “Hi.” And a soft, sexy-sounding
“Hi,” at that. I clamped my mouth shut. Bruiser chuckled at my tone, that secure,
masculine laugh men get when they know a woman is interested. Which ticked me off.

Two months ago, I had lost my first boyfriend since my early twenties and I was
not
in the market for another. Especially one who was bound to a vamp for his very existence.
Blood-servants like Bruiser must have drops and sips of vamp blood on a regular basis
to keep their vamp-blood-induced extended-youth thing going. I was not taking second
place behind Leo. So even though Bruiser was sex on a stick, he was not going to be
mine.

Mine,
Beast murmured.

I firmed my tone and said, “I have a report.”

I could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Go ahead.”

I talked for twenty minutes as I drove out of the city, toward the stark country of
red hills, cliffs, bluffs, and buttes, detailing everything that had happened. The
sky was black overhead as I drove, too big, too dark, with too many stars. Beast liked
it. Sedona was a pale glow, like a halo on the horizon. I finished with “Ro wouldn’t
name her new master. She looks and smells sick. She’s covered in pustules. She’s bleeding
from her nose, and when I took her blood—”

“You obtained her blood?”

“I got it. It’s in the FedEx box. But when I stuck her she didn’t stop bleeding on
her own. Nik had to spit on her arm to stop it. Which, by the way, was gross.”

“Spit? Not lick?”

A familiar pair of headlights pulled behind my car. GMC sedan. Behind it was another
car, about a quarter mile back; it had the same configuration as the car riding parallel
to me earlier.
Beast is not prey,
she whispered into my mind. “Right,” I said to them both. “I’m being followed. If
I’m not back at the airport in an hour, tell the pilot to—” I stopped. The substitute
pilot who had been one of the few people who knew exactly where I was going and when
I’d get there. Before I could say all that to Bruiser, the sedan launched at me. I
tossed the cell. Took the wheel in two hands. And floored the car.

I wasn’t fast enough. The sedan roared up. I gripped the wheel hard enough to make
the leather groan. The car rammed me. My spine whiplashed. The seat belt cut into
my chest and abdomen before slamming me back into the seat.

“Jane?” Bruiser’s voice, tinny. Far away. From the floor.

The sedan raced closer. Rammed me again. The tail of my car spun into the oncoming
lane. I hit the brakes. The antilock braking system kicked in. The car danced across
the road.
That shouldn’t have happened,
was my last thought as my car hit something slick on the road and its slight spin
turned into a twisting spiral. Off the road and down.

The car bucked over the rough terrain. Up into the air, the headlights illuminating
the red stone of a low cliff wall and the night sky, and down, into a ditch. The car’s
frame shrieked, contorting as its own momentum forced it at an angle up the other
side. My window flexed and shattered, raining me with rounded nodules of safety glass.
Down the car went again, at a sharp angle, a long, fast slide. A bouncing, jouncing
ride that ended suddenly. Too hard. Whiplash took me again, from my toes to the top
of my head. The air bags released with explosions of sound. Socked me in the face.
I saw stars and then nothing.

I roused to the sound of an engine hissing. My headlights picked out a spiny cactuslike
plant through the bashed windshield. Bruiser’s voice called me from somewhere, insistent.
Frantic. My ears were ringing and I couldn’t focus to locate the cell. But my brain
was starting to work again.

Footsteps were approaching the car. One pair, booted. Skidding downhill over the rock
and dirt. In the far distance, maybe near the road, I heard a voice talking, the words
lost in the buzzing aftermath of being hit in the face. The breeze shifted, blowing
into the car. I smelled gun oil and cheap aftershave. Over it all, I smelled the scent
of a blood-servant. But not Rosanne’s. Another vamp. Not quite a stranger, yet not
entirely familiar. But exactly like the blue-eyed man I had left bound on Rosanne’s
floor.

I fumbled with the seat belt, but the car was at an angle and I was bound by the flex
and gravity, leaning into the car’s console. I pushed against it, and when I took
a breath, something stabbed me in the chest; I was pretty sure I’d busted a rib. I
tasted blood, salty. I’d bitten through my tongue.

Beast flooded my system with strength, claws sinking into my mind, more
here
than she had been in weeks. The pain in my side faded beneath her claws. My night
vision sharpened into silvery blues and crisp greens, the night a thousand shades
of black. My heart, beating erratically, smoothed out, fast and strong. I fumbled
under my jacket and managed to pull my nine-mil. Focused on the night sky through
the broken window. Stars. Millions and billions of them.

The footsteps stopped. To see inside the car, my attacker would have to lean over
and in. I steadied my aim at the window opening.

Shuffling of booted feet. He leaned in. I started to squeeze the trigger. He slipped
and nearly fell. I didn’t fire, didn’t move. He reappeared in the corner of the open
space. Anglo. Light-colored hair. Big-assed gun. Though humans don’t have good night
vision, he seemed to see me and adjusted his aim at the same time I fired. Three shots.

He ducked and fired twice, our reports overlaying one another. The muzzle flash blinded
me, but I fired again, through the door. He rose into my window, moving freaky fast,
and fired two more shots. A punching pain hit me, like a hard strike delivered by
a black belt with something to prove. Burning and icy. Chest shot. He’d hit me.

I fired back, emptying my gun before I harnessed my fear.
Stupid. Crap! Dumb, dumb, dumb.
But I smelled blood, his as well as mine. Blinded by the flashes, deaf from the concussive
explosions, I felt along my boot for my backup. My chest stabbed with pain and I couldn’t
reach the holster.