Kicking It (16 page)

Jane looked at the vampires, at two in particular. Liz clenched inside. She had lived in Asheville all her life, and she had never been in the presence of the blood master or his heir. Now, the two stood together, staring at them—Lincoln Shaddock, tall and spare, and his heir, Dacy Mooney, short and round and blond, both of them as old as the missing mountain town . . .

“Ohhh,” Liz said. “The vampire in the circle. She’s an old rogue and she got free.”

Cia added, “And they’re responsible for what she’s done.”

“Yeah. Got it in one. Or two,” Jane said, making a twin joke. “Her name is Romona, and she’s deadly dangerous. She never came out of the
devoveo
, the insanity that vamps descend into after they’re changed, and she was supposed to be put down a century ago. Unfortunately, the mayor of Mayhew Downs, who was her husband and her maker, couldn’t do it.” Jane’s tone sounded tired, as if she had dealt with this before. “The last time she got free, she killed the entire town. The vamps hushed it up.”

The twins breathed in with shock.

As if she had shared their thoughts, Jane said, “But things are different now.” She nodded at the line of vamps, unmoving in the night. “They know they can’t let her go unpunished. They can’t let her maker go unpunished.” She nodded to another man standing silent and vamp-still beside Dacy Mooney.

It was the mayor from the daguerreotype. It was also the man who was trying to develop Mayhew Downs.
Evelyn’s boss was a vampire.
Everything fell into place with a little thump in Liz’s mind. It was all tied together. Mayhew had made his wife into a vamp. It hadn’t gone well, and he had kept her prisoner for over a hundred years. Mayhew was wearing silver chains at his wrists and neck. If the wind had been right, Liz was sure they would have smelled charring skin.

Jane finished with, “You need to know. Romona is a witch.”

Something clicked in Liz’s mind and she took a slow breath. Beside her, Cia put it all together as well. Her voice so low it was barely a caress on the night, Cia said, “Romona drained the whole town of Mayhew Downs. But she didn’t do it just as a vampire, she did it as a vampire
witch
. She put their blood and their death energies, the power of their souls, into the earth.”

“Yes,” Dacy said. “Then Mayhew decided to develop the land that she had made her own with the blood of the townspeople. When Romona learned about it, she got free.” Dacy shook the chain on Mayhew’s neck. “But he didn’t tell us. Romona couldn’t find him, but she did find Evelyn, his right-hand gal, and she took her.”

“The mountain is soaked with blood magic,” Jane acknowledged unhappily.

Cia squeezed Liz’s hand, communicating the message,
That’s why our magic was so strong tonight. We mixed our magics in the working. We absorbed stored blood magic.

Liz squeezed back, thinking,
It was like the mountain was . . . feeding us. And Jane knows.

Cia’s face went white, but her jaw hardened. “We’ll get purified. We’ll call a coven—” She stopped. They didn’t have a full coven anymore. Not with Evie gone. Not unless they brought in another witch on a permanent basis, someone they could trust with this knowledge. “We’ll find a way.”

Jane said, “The vamps have a request. By today’s laws, now that Romona has attacked a human, she’ll be brought to true death. By my hand. And they want you to agree not to talk about what you learned here tonight. They’re willing to pay for your silence. Vamps are always willing to pay,” she said, her tone grim and tired.

“Like we said,” Cia said, drawing on her power. “If they save Evelyn, we’ll agree to keep quiet. If they don’t . . . well, we’ll have to see.”

Liz smiled in the night. “And if they think they can make us, remember that blood magic doesn’t just go away. I’ve had my hands in the soil tonight.”

“And I’ve had my face in the moonlight,” Cia added.

As one, the line of vamps stepped back. Jane relaxed and laughed, her laughter flowing down the hillside, through the fog. “Good to hear.”

Liz realized that the tension she had felt in Jane was gone, replaced by something that was nearly jovial. “You’ve been worried,” Liz said, “that you were going to have to figure out a way to protect us if the vamps decided we might talk.” Liz looked at the blond vamp, standing beside her maker and master in the moonlight. “We’d have fried you to a crisp, lady.”

Both of the vampires looked nonplussed, and Jane laughed again. “Vamps and witches go back a long way. Vamps seem to have a . . . let’s call it a fascination with witches. Sometimes that makes ’em stupid.” Dacy frowned at that, but Jane indicated that the twins should lead the way. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

—

T
he vampires stood in an arc outside the unpowered outer circle, their faces white, still, pale as marble statues. The mayor was unchained and stood with them, Dacy’s hand on his shoulder. He was holding a Neiman Marcus bag, and tears ran down his face. “Do it,” Dacy said, applying pressure to his shoulder. “Do it or I will.”

The vamp walked to the
hedge
, where Romona sat, watching them, her eyes vamped out, blood on her face. Beside her, Evelyn lay in a boneless tangle of limbs. She was breathing, fast—far too fast.

Mayhew opened the shopping bag and lifted out a shoe box. The vamp in the circle was suddenly standing, her hands behind her back, leaning forward in that odd birdlike, snakelike motion that just looked so wrong. Her face took on an expression of sharp avarice. “For me, my darling?”

“For you, my love.” He opened the box and pulled out a pair of gorgeous shoes. Cia sucked in a breath of desire. “Those are ruby-toned Giuseppe Zanotti five-inch stilettos, encrusted with Swarovski crystals and beads. They sell for nineteen hundred dollars. Oh. My. God.”

Mayhew went on. “I’ll trade for them.”

Romona tilted her head. “Trade?”

“Shoes for the human.”

Romona glanced at the woman and said, “She’s nearly gone anyway. Yes.” She held out her hands. “Shoes. Mine.” Then she pointed at the black boot on the ground. “Mine too.”

“Yes,” Mayhew said, bloody tears on both cheeks. “Yours too.”

“Acceptable to me.” And Romona smiled, a nearly human expression, full of delight and a winsome mischievousness.

Jane pulled two silver stakes from her hair and nodded at Liz. She and Cia sat on the cold ground just outside the
hedge of thorns
. They buried their hands in the chilled soil and Cia said, “From blood and death and moon above, release.” Everything happened so fast, like photos that overlaid one another, shuffled in a strong hand. The
hedge
fell.

Romona leaped. Jane whirled the stakes out in dual backswings. Cia and Liz rolled out of the way. Romona landed on Mayhew, thrusting him back. Jane stepped across the falling bodies, her hands coming together and down, like a scissors closing. The stakes slammed through Romona. A shriek sounded, so piercing it was deafening. A death keening. Cia and Liz covered their ears in shock. Blood fountained up over Jane’s hands.

The keening shut off. Jane pulled the dead vampire away from her husband. He was sobbing, his anguish human and pitiable. Two other vamps reattached his shackles as Jane hefted the dead vampire to her shoulder and carried the body into the dark. Mayhew raised his face to the night sky and screamed his grief. The sound of a blade chopping echoed. Once. Twice.

Dacy knelt over the limp body of Evelyn McMann, a small knife in her hand. With an economical motion and no flinching at all, she sliced her own wrist and placed it at Evelyn’s mouth. The blood trickled in, and Dacy held Evelyn’s jaw until the human woman swallowed. Liz and Cia stood in the cold wind, arms around each other for warmth and comfort, watching the second-most-powerful vampire in Asheville healing their enemy’s mother. Evelyn reached up with two skeletal hands and gripped Dacy’s wrist. The vampire looked at them and said, “She will live. Your word, if you please.”

“We’ll never speak of this to anyone without your permission,” Cia said.

“We’ll never speak of this to anyone unless it means the life of another,” Liz amended.

“Acceptable,” Lincoln Shaddock said. Dacy picked Evelyn up like she was a baby and started for the cars.

Moments later Jane came back, from a different direction. There was blood on her white shirt. “We’re done,” she said. “The policing of Lincoln Shaddock for his clan is acceptable to Leo Pellissier, the Master of the City of New Orleans and most of the Southeast United States, including the Appalachian Mountains where we stand. Pay the Everharts.” She pointed to Cia and Liz.

Lincoln Shaddock removed an envelope from his pocket and extended it. Cia accepted it. The twins gathered up their belongings and raced to their car to find Evelyn asleep in the backseat. They were halfway down the mountain before they caught their breath. “That was wicked weird,” Cia said.

“Yeah. Let’s get Evelyn back to Layla and start studying up on how to get purified before the blood magics sink too deep.”

“Yeah. Good plan.” Cia tore open Lincoln Shaddock’s envelope and drew in a slow breath.

“How much?”

“A hundred thousand dollars. Combined with Evie’s estate, I think we just made enough money to put a huge down payment on a house, sister mine.” They started to giggle. Neither of them said anything about the hysterical edge to their laughter, or what it hid. Not yet.

—

W
hen the twins left the elegant house in the Montford Historic District, Layla—sans makeup and wearing old jeans—was crying and hugging her mother, having wrapped her in a blanket in the middle of her bed. She was force-feeding her water and Gatorade and cucumber sandwiches.

“Like, who keeps cucumber sandwiches on hand?” Cia said as they walked out of the house.

“People who don’t know the value of leftover homemade soup and yeast bread from Seven Sassy Sisters.”

Cia said, “Oh, yeah. We eat, and then we figure out how to get the blood magics off us.”

“Done.” Liz took a slow breath. Her lungs and ribs didn’t hurt, not at all. She didn’t want to say the words, but couldn’t keep them in. “Jane Yellowrock might have saved our lives. If Romona had gotten free and drawn on the blood magic of the mountain . . .”

“Yeah.” Cia’s tone was grudging. “We’d have been her dinner.”

The silence after her words stretched, as the sisters got in the car and drove away. Cia finally said, “When you had the rock on you, the rock Evangelina threw at you when she was trying to kill us all? I tried to push it off. I couldn’t. It was too heavy. You weren’t breathing. Like, at all. Jane—in her cat form—pushed it off. She saved you. I think she saved Carmen that day, too. And she did what we couldn’t when she . . . ” Cia heaved a breath that seemed to hurt. “When she
took care
of
Evie, too.”

Liz knew that “took care of” meant “killed.”

“Not because we didn’t have the power or the skills to handle Evangelina, but because Jane
thinks
, instead of being frozen by fear.”

Liz blinked away tears and said, “Why didn’t you tell me? Now we
have
to forgive her for killing Evangelina.”

“Which is why I didn’t tell you. I’m not . . . I
wasn’t
ready to forgive.” Cia turned away, looking out into the night. “Maybe I’m ready now.”

“Yeah. Well.” Liz took a deeper breath than any she had been able to manage in months. “The blood magic? I think it healed me.” She took another breath. “No pain.”

“Crap. We used blood magic, just like Evie did.” Cia’s mouth pulled down. “And it felt good.”

“
Addictive
good,” Liz whispered. “I can feel the pull of the mountain even now. We are in so much trouble.”

“Yeah. But there is a silver lining. The totally cool Christian Louboutins Layla gave me—once I get the blood off them.”

Liz erupted with laughter, which was what her twin intended. “
Us
. She gave them to
us
.”

“Fine,” Cia said. “And the cash. Share and share alike.”

“Yeah. Like always. Even a blood curse we don’t know how to get rid of.”

“We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

A Luc and Lindsey Story

It was the curls that killed me. Those dirty-blond, tousled curls. They practically screamed to be run through by manicured fingers.

The manicure wasn’t the problem. Tonight I was sporting a complicated matte black and charcoal pattern that varied from nail to nail. It probably would have been more appropriate on a socialite than on a veteran guard of a House of vampires, but I’d decided a long time ago not to give up style for fangs. It was part of my credo, my firm belief that immortality should be dressed up and flaunted like a deb at her debut. I’d been a vampire for more than a century, and I was proud of my genetics. And from my blond hair to my favorite stilettos, I tried to show it.

But that was neither here nor there.

The problem was the curls, and the vampire they belonged to. Luc, the Captain of the guards of Cadogan House. I was a guard, which meant he’d been my boss for years. My colleague. My friend.

Now he was my something-more-than-that.

I was still trying to put a name to what “that” was.

Luc wasn’t having the same trouble, which was why he stood in front of me in my smallish dorm room in Cadogan House holding a glossy black shoe box and a pair of the sexiest boots I’d ever seen. Buttery black leather, nearly knee-high, with pointy toes and stiletto heels long and thin enough to be weapons on their own.

I stared down at them with obvious lust, but kept my arms crossed and my fingers away from leather I knew would be as smooth as silk. “You bought me boots,” I said for the fourth time.

“If the shoe fits . . . ,” Luc said with a crooked grin, which was just as effective as the curls.

“I don’t need boots.”

He gave me a flat look. “Since when did that stop you from buying
anything
? You have five pairs of black heels.”

“And I’ve explained this a hundred times.” I counted them off on my fingers. “Stilettos, kitten heels, patent, round toe, open toe. A girl needs options.”

“The point is,” he said, “I don’t care if you need the boots. I just want to see you
in
them. And clothes are completely optional.”

“But you didn’t need to buy me anything.”

“It’s not about need,” he said. “It’s about want. I wanted to buy them for you, so I bought them for you. There’s no expectation, Linds.”

I knew he was telling the truth. It was clear in his expression, in his magic, in the way he looked at me.

I was gifted—or cursed, depending on your perspective—with empathy. It was a rare gift for a vampire, and not always a welcome one. Every bad mood in the House leaked into my subconscious, and I’d had to learn to filter out others’ emotions or risk their overwhelming me.

So, yeah, Luc was being honest, and I could tell.

But it wasn’t that simple.

“Luc—,” I said, but he shook his head.

“I don’t want to talk about it again. I don’t want to talk about moving too fast or not fast enough.” He put the lid on the box, and the box on the bed, only a couple of steps away. And then he pulled his best cowboy move, putting a hand around my waist and whipping me against him.

He smiled cockily down at me. “I’m not afraid of your issues, Linds.”

“I don’t have issues,” I said. “And we need to get downstairs. Maybe we should talk about this later.”

“You’re a walking issue,” Luc said, nipping at my earlobe before releasing me. “Fortunately, you’re also a hottie and a very good guard.”

“I’m the best guard you’ve got.”

He shrugged carelessly, obviously trying to rile me up. “You’re all right.” He walked to the door, opened it, and gestured into the hallway. “Let’s go.”

—

C
adogan House was several stories of European opulence and vampire drama. Situated in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, it was home to nearly ninety vampires. Or, more accurately, ninety vampires and the psychic stew they cooked up on a nightly basis. Their happiness, their sadness. Their angst. Their fear. I lived in a cauldron of vampire emotions, in a neighborhood of human emotion, in the third-largest city in the country.

Collectively, there were a lot of emotions out there.

I’d been a vampire long enough that I’d learned to turn down the volume, but each person’s mood still bobbed like a buoy in my brain. Little tricks kept me sane. For lack of a better word, “stuff” helped filter out the extra noise. That’s why my room looked like I’d been hoarding souvenirs from my hundred and fifteen years as a vampire. The knickknacks, pillows, posters, and other odds and ends worked like insulation, which was also the reason I spent so much time in the House basement.

Granted, I worked down there, too, but that was mostly a coincidence.

The first floor of the House held the offices and public rooms, and the second and third floors were primarily dorms. But the basement was where the magic happened. Luc’s Operations Room was there, as were the old-fashioned, wood-paneled training room and, my personal favorite, the House arsenal. Weapons galore . . . and even more insulation.

Luc and I headed into the training room. The other official guards, Kelley and Juliet, were already there and stretching for a workout, with Merit, the House Sentinel. She wasn’t a guard per se, but the job was close enough that she trained with the rest of us. Merit was a relative newbie to the world of vampires—only ten months out. She was finding her place as Sentinel—and as the Master, Ethan Sullivan’s, girlfriend—but she was still learning the moves. She’d picked up the moves of vampire sword fighting remarkably quickly, probably the perfect mix of Ethan’s vamp-genetics—transmitted when he changed her from human to vampire—and her dance training.

Ethan was also already in the room, shirt off and wearing the same martial arts–style black pants that Luc favored. While Merit, Juliet, and Kelley sat on the edge of the woven tatami mats that covered the floor, Ethan stood in the middle, stretching his arms over his head, flat stomach and abs tensing as he moved.

I couldn’t fault Merit for her taste in men. Ethan was tall, blond, gorgeous, and imperious as fuck. I appreciated the first three, but preferred a little less control freak in my relationships.

Luc slapped me on the ass and stepped onto the mats. “Eyes on the prize, sunshine.”

I rolled my eyes and took a seat beside Merit. With long dark hair and a fringe of bangs across her forehead, she was pretty in an almost old-fashioned way. Regally so, like a princess from a different time. It was probably appropriate she’d been studying medieval literature before Ethan made her a vampire.

“You did good, you know,” I said, gesturing toward Ethan.

“Oh, I know,” she said. “He reminds me at every opportunity. And with much detail.”

Apparently not to be outdone by Ethan, Luc unbelted his martial arts–style jacket and dropped it to the floor, revealing that perfect fuzzy chest, the very bitable nipples, and the lines of muscle at the base of his hips that ached for roaming fingertips.

I gave him a hard time. I knew it. We’d been friends for a very long time, and I didn’t want to lose that connection. In my experience, romance came and went. Attraction came and went. Yes, we spent a lot of time together. And technically, we were exclusive. But I didn’t want to put a label on it, something that would create expectations and lead us to hate each other when we couldn’t live up to them.

I was smarter than that; I wouldn’t let us fall into that trap.

Luc chose that moment to catch my eye and wink, which thrilled me—and made me feel guilty at the same time.

He looked over the small group and clapped his hands to get our attention. Not that that was necessary. His audience consisted of women clearly intrigued by the two bare-chested athletes standing before us, barefoot and ready to rumble. Who
wouldn’t
pay attention to that?

“Good evening, my minions,” he said, looking us over. “Tonight we’re going to talk evasive maneuvers. Escaping from enemies in hand-to-hand combat, as opposed to trying to get out of House patrol duty on the basis of ‘fang ache.’” He actually used air quotes. He also looked directly at me, because I’d been the one who’d tried the excuse.

Vampires had quick healing abilities, which explained why I’d been freezing my petite ass off on patrol a few minutes after the attempt.

“Now, it’s crucial to remember that evasive maneuvers—getting out of a grapple, breaking a hold—are all about physics. Using your opponent’s body weight and weak spots to your advantage.”

“And if that fails, just knee him in the grapes,” Kelley muttered. I bit back a chortle, but not very well. Ethan didn’t seem to mind.

“A time-tested strategy,” Luc said. “And if an enemy’s attacked you, he’s given up any complaint about the sanctity of his grapes.”

“Grape sanctity,” Merit whispered. “Sounds like the name of the world’s worst sacramental wine.”

“The human body has various and sundry pressure points,” Luc said, raising his hand to gesture, but pausing in midmotion, his eyes on the door.

We all glanced back and saw a girl in the doorway.

She wore jeans, a Loyola sweatshirt, and had a dark gray messenger bag slung diagonally across her body. She was tall and sturdily built, with long blond hair, pale coloring, no makeup—and absolutely no need for it.

I was so surprised to see a human in the doorway that it took a moment to peg her as family.

Human
family.

“Ray?” I stood up and jogged to the door, my mind reeling.

Ray hugged me fiercely, enough to make me worry about whatever brought her here. “Aunt Lindsey. Thank God.”

I wasn’t actually her aunt; I’d been a vampire much too long for that. She was my great-great-niece—my sister’s great-granddaughter. I’d kept an eye on my sister’s family as they’d spilled across the country from our hometown in Iowa, including Ray, who was now a student at Loyola, on the north side of Chicago.

I pulled back just enough to get a glimpse of her face. Even if I hadn’t been empathic, it wasn’t difficult to catch the concern there. “What’s wrong?”

She seemed to suddenly realize she was in a room of vampires who were watching her curiously. “Could we talk somewhere?”

“Of course.” I glanced back at the group, planning to tell Luc I was stepping out. But they were already surrounding us like paparazzi around a starlet.

“Who’s this?” Luc asked, hands on his hips.

“This is Ray—,” I began.

“Rachel, actually,” she interrupted, apology in her eyes. “I prefer Rachel these days.” There was pink in her cheeks, but her shoulders were square. Whether Ray or Rachel, she was definitely my niece.

“Rachel is a relative,” I explained. “One of my sister’s descendants. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve got a problem, Aunt Linds. And I think you’re the only one who can help.”

—

W
ith apologies to the training group, Luc, Rachel, and I reconvened next door in the Operations Room. Rachel sat in a chair at one end of the large conference table, the messenger bag in her lap. I sat beside her, and Luc edged a hip onto the table across from us.

“Any niece of Lindsey’s is a niece of mine,” he said.

“Great-great-great-niece,” I clarified.

“That just makes you sound older,” Rachel said with a grin. It was my sister’s grin, or the hint of it that had managed to make its way through the generations. The look clutched at my heart, filled me with longing.

“So why haven’t we met you before?” Luc asked.

“I try to keep the family out of our drama,” I said, smiling conspiratorially at her. “It’s like a vampire soap opera around here.
The Young and the Fanged
.”

“That’s kind of the thing,” she said, tracing a nervous finger across the tabletop. “Something happened, and I’m not really sure what to do about it. And I think it falls in your territory.”

“Start at the beginning,” I suggested.

She nodded, fidgeted in her seat. “So you know I share a house near campus with my friends Emily and Georgia, right?”

“Right,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I remembered Emily and Georgia. Like most girls her age, she had a fluid roommate situation. But that wasn’t the point, so I nodded.

“I just finished a really massive lab project. I didn’t even leave campus for twenty-four hours. I got back home last night, and when I did, I found this.”

She opened her messenger bag and pulled out a magazine, which she placed on the table.

It was a copy of the
Chicago World Weekly
, a gossip magazine. With vampires being at our most popular, the
Weekly
kept paparazzi stationed outside the House and followed us around town. In this particular issue, my face stared back at me, my eyes hidden by dark glasses, and I was wearing stilettos and jeans that couldn’t have been any tighter or more flattering.

But the denim was hardly the point.

Someone had scattered thick red ink across the page, so it looked like my body was riddled with bullet holes. And scratched across the bottom of the cover was a message:

Dearest Rose:

Madmen know nothing, but I know everything.

Come home, Rose.

I pushed down a bolt of recognition—and fear. That was a name I hadn’t heard in a long time, hadn’t expected to see again, and shouldn’t be seeing now.

I pushed the magazine closer to Luc for his review.

“Where did you find this?” I asked her.

“On my bed,” Rachel said, nibbling her lip nervously. “In my house. Why, Aunt Lindsey? Are you in trouble? How did they know we were related? And who’s Rose?”

“I’m not in trouble,” I firmly said. “This is from someone trying to
cause
trouble. Someone from my past. They left it with you because they knew you’d come to me, and they knew I’d pay attention.”

“What kind of trouble?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. Not exactly.” But it was serious enough that they’d mocked up a magazine and delivered it to my niece. I made a quick decision. “How did you get here?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, confused by the sudden change in topic. “I drove. Emily let me borrow her car. Why?”