Ayatas didn’t resist, and when he was deposited on the parking area of the drive at vamp central, with his cell, his badge, and his weapon, he managed to still look like a fashion plate. He was wearing a suit, black, but with shimmering midnight blue tints when the light hit the fabric just right. His shirt matched the blue tints and his tie was a glistening black that perfectly matched his long black hair. Leo would get one whiff of him and want the man in his bed.
As Eli removed the agent’s cuffs, Bruiser leaned to me and murmured, “You are wearing the blade I gave you, love. You look beautiful and deadly.”
This man knew just what to say. I leaned my temple against his, watching my partner but stealing a quiet moment. With the shoes, I was right at Bruiser’s height, and his skin was heated, a peaceful warmth. His Onorio scent filled my nostrils and I blew out the breath, more calm than I had been since my brother tried to kill me. No. Not my brother. Not proven yet. FireWind. Since FireWind tried to kill me. But the thought let me know just how much I wanted it to be true. Him. His stories. A past I might learn of, and might remember someday. Questions he might answer about who and what I was.
“You look amazing too,” I said. “Can we just skip all this and go to your place?”
Bruiser chuckled and encircled my waist, pulling me closer. He had to feel the other weapons against his body, but he said nothing about them. We had come a long way since the time he kissed me on a limo floor and found a weapon strapped to my thigh. “Be safe, my love,” he said. “Be wise.”
“Ditto to you.” I stood straight as he kissed me on the temple and I stepped out of his embrace to climb the steps after Eli and our prisoner guest. As Enforcer, I had a defined place among my people, but no way was I letting Ayatas FireWind behind me. We went through the front door, between the metal detectors, and directly into the bullet-resistant glass cage. The others started to remove weapons as part of the security measures, but I leaned into the mic on the wall and said, “Operation Wise Guy, by orders of the Enforcer.”
Wrassler appeared at the front of the inner doors as they whooshed open, blowing in the scent of vamps and sex and something tasty like roast venison. Derek Lee stepped out from the area near the elevator. Both men wore charcoal suits and dove gray shirts with slightly darker dove-ish ties. The grays were Clan Pellissier colors, the livery of the clan for hundreds of years. It was disconcerting to see them in the clothing, though the special-order, thin, cut-resistant Kevlar-Dyneema-based body armor vests they wore beneath their clothes made me happy. I glanced around to see all the security types in similar suits and shirts, armored vests peeking out beneath. Derek stopped several feet back and waited, hands at his sides, less than inches from his weapons.
“Enforcer,” Wrassler said.
I glanced at Ayatas and caught him sniffing the air, nostrils widening and contracting. Yeah. HQ was a full olfactory onslaught. I led the way out into the foyer. “Senior Special Agent Ayatas FireWind, of PsyLED, to see the Master of the City of New Orleans and the Greater Southeast United States. We have been scheduled in for tea, though we’re early. We can wait in the green room.” The green room was a decorative little sitting room with couches and a kitchenette with snacks, colas, coffee, and a variety of teas. It was also a room that could be secured from outside.
“His weapon?” Derek asked.
“Empty of ammo,” Eli said. Ayatas gave a micro flinch and I smiled. The skilled PsyLED agent hadn’t noticed the weight difference. He might look all smooth and calm and sophisticated, but his emotions had overwhelmed his instincts and training. It might be silly, but that made me like him a little.
“Mr. Pellissier is running a bit late,” Wrassler said. “May I suggest a visit to the gym. He’s integrating the Mithrans visiting from Canada. Our guest might find it instructional.”
At my side, Bruiser shifted slightly, not happy with current events, especially the word instructional. Wrassler was a seriously big guy, his nickname derived from the World Wrestling Federation, for which he could have auditioned and become a star if he hadn’t sworn loyalty to Leo. But, instructional? I thought. Instructional for whom? Inside me Beast chuffed. I was not going to ruin these clothes just to put on a show for Leo’s guests. A sparring match would ruin my outfit. I liked these clothes. They were girly enough to be . . . well, not guy clothes. And they hid the weapons. I glared at Wrassler. He looked back at me with complete equanimity, even as he passed out the mini-earbuds and mics that would tie us to the comms system. Ayatas didn’t get one.
When I didn’t answer, Bruiser answered for all of us, saying, “The Enforcer, her second, the Onorio, and Special Agent FireWind would be happy to observe the activities in the gym.”
“I’ll sit it out,” Eli said. He tilted his head to the new security room off the entrance.
Derek met my eyes, his questioning, asking if my guest was a danger to Leo. I shrugged slightly. Derek was Leo’s part-time Enforcer and my immediate subordinate. We both knew my position was short term. Finish with the Sangre Duello and I was done with the vamps, but Derek wanted long-term employment and the blood Leo was feeding his mom to keep her alive. Even part-time Enforcer was way above acting as guide and bodyguard. Yet, he said, “If you’ll follow me?” He touched his earbud and led the way to the elevator. I put on my mini-headset and followed at the back of the pack, ignoring the inscrutable look Ayatas sent my way. Tribal people did inscrutable well. I wanted to stick my tongue out at him, but I sent him a matching look instead.
We opened the door to the roar of voices and the clack-clack-clack of multiple wood staves. I took it in with a glance. All of the fighting rings were in use. There were five now, since the new mats had been delivered and installed. In the back of the room, Leo was sparring with Ro Moore, Katie’s Enforcer. Katie was sparring with her sister. And in the ring closest to me, Gee DiMercy, my Enforcer—which still felt weird on my tongue and in my mind—was sparring with a tribal woman, a Canadian vamp.
The woman Gee fought was as tall as I was but with much stronger bone structure and enviable shoulders, with long hair the color of the night sky. Amusement and interest sparkled in her black eyes. Her name was Namida, which meant Star Dancer in Ojibwe, and my Enforcer had been enamored of her since the first time he laid eyes on the vamp in Canada. Judging from the smell of blood and pain on the air, the Canadians were learning how New Orleans’s vamps fought. In a word, dirty.
Gee was gifted at personal glamour, and because Namida was so tall, he had made his human-shaped body taller and leaner, and his face more traditionally Anishinaabe than his usual Spanish. Two other Canadian vamps were fighting with local vamps. They were good, their technique different from the La Destreza taught in NOLA.
All the fighting pairs were using sticks instead of longswords, one in each hand, bruising hardwood. Bone-breaking hardwood. Some sparred with two long sticks, some with one long and one shorter. The longer staves had the length and balance and heft of flat swords. The shorter staves were styled to match the caja corta, loosely translated as “short box” or “short trap.” Both kinds were made for killing Mithrans. And Namida was landing taps on Gee. My Enforcer was one of the best fighters in NOLA, and Namida was laying a hurting on him. She was fast, even for a vamp. But then, Gee might be executing some deceptive courting, letting her beat him up as foreplay.
I stepped inside and out of the doorway, beneath the camera over my head. The others lined up next to me and the door closed. The gym was old-fashioned, with ancient wood floors, patched in a few places since I joined Leo’s team. (Beast’s claws were hard on floors.) There were cameras everywhere, covering the entire room with its full basketball court, newly painted shuffleboard court, and the padded circular fighting mats.
Gee danced out of the way and I caught a glimpse of Ro in the back, completing a move I hadn’t seen her use before. She swept across at Leo’s collarbone with her right stick—a decapitation move—and then shoved Leo with the end of the left stick. Had she been wielding swords, she would have taken off his head and pierced his heart, two fatal moves against a vamp at once. As it was, Leo was shoved out of the ring and onto the wood.
He laughed. It was a pleased sound, silken, joyful, captivating. I glanced at Ayatas to see him narrow his eyes at the sensation of the laughter dancing along his skin. I couldn’t be mesmerized, but I didn’t know if it was a skinwalker thing or a Beast thing. Ayatas didn’t roll over and pant for attention, but he did seem a little rattled. Leo’s laughter made his people happy, ready to follow him to the ends of the earth. Ro Moore joined in the laughter and Leo said, “You are faster than I expected. The sharing of blood was well worth your healing. I am pleased.” Ro clacked her staves together, crossing them without looking away from Leo. He wasn’t above cheating. This time, he clacked his sticks together and held out a hand for Ro’s staves, before turning to the doorway. “My Enforcer,” he called. “You bring us a guest.”
I gave him a small nod. Leo was wearing fighting clothes fashioned with a twist all his own. He was shirtless, to show the pure white of his scars, scars from wounds that no human could have survived, and not many vamps. Nudity in the fighting rings was uncommon among the Europeans and there had been a lot of chatter about Leo going naked for the entire Sangre Duello proceedings, just to shake them up. Sadly, that had sorta been my idea, when I suggested they play Petruchio and Kate in Taming of the Shrew to shake up the EuroVamps. I hadn’t meant naked. I really hadn’t meant naked.
There was also chatter about Leo leaving blood on his body after feedings and fights, and acting the crude, naïve thug, to throw off Titus’s fine-tuned sensibilities. It would make a good show, but Leo was fastidious. No way was he going to be messy, bloody, or dirty or display unsophisticated or bad manners for any length of time. I was pretty sure Derek had a pool going for how long Leo would last unshowered.
The Sangre Duello was a more violent, less systematic version of Les Duels Sang, the codified legal duels that decided a vamp’s place in clan and city. While it started out polite, Sangre Duello had no matches where the winner moved up in a predetermined order. The Duello meant death at the end as challengers dueled and killed opponents until the only vamps left were the most protected, the very best fighters, and the MOCs. First blood in the battles was meant to maim, and duels to the death were expected. There was no way to think of the contests as games. They required mental stamina, clear thinking, excellent understanding of tactics and strategy, physical endurance, and skill. And in the end, the willingness to kill.
When the European emperor’s servants came ashore, onto Leo’s territory, and attacked by means both magical and weapons based, Leo’s U.S. vampire scions and human servants started dying in greater numbers, and Leo could see his power base slipping away. To keep his people alive and safe, the MOC felt he had no choice but to demand Sangre Duello. But if Leo lost, his loyal people lost and would likely be killed outright, as would all his blood-servants, blood-slaves, cattle, and every other para as Titus and his victorious fangheads rolled over New Orleans and took over the United States. Hence Leo’s consideration of most anything to throw off the EV emperor’s plans and reasoning.
Eli had suggested getting together with some former Navy SEALs and swimming out to the emperor’s boat with enough explosives to sink them to the bottom of the gulf, but there were likely prisoners on the boat. Leo had nixed that idea, but it was still floating around the security types as a last-ditch strategy. And likely it was something the U.S. military was keeping on a back burner as a black ops possibility should Titus win.
Leo popped in front of us, moving with vamp speed and the distinctive sound of displaced air. His black hair had come loose from its fighting queue at the back of his neck and the old scars on his torso were bone white against his vamp-pale skin. His fangs were out. His still-human eyes were on Ayatas. “My guest for tea this evening,” he said around his fangs. “My sworn ally Rosanne Romanello, from Sedona, has hinted that you are quite the warrior.” He extended Ro Moore’s staves. “Shall we?” It was more a demand than an invitation.
I turned to Ayatas. He had visited the Master of the City of Sedona? I knew Rosanne. I had probably helped to save her life. She knew what I was, and would have had no reason to keep any secrets from Ayatas. I gave the special agent a toothy expression that couldn’t really be called amusement. More like gotcha. Holding his eyes, I said, “Have fun, Ayatas. And, Leo, watch out. He’s sneaky as a snake.”
“The better to spar with.” Leo waggled the staves.
His face showing nothing, Ayatas slid out of his jacket, then his shoulder holster, and unclipped his badge, handing them to Derek. He pulled an elastic out of a pocket and pulled his hair back, tucking it into his shirt where the long strands couldn’t blind him. The tail could still be used as a weapon, but it would take close contact to get a hand on it. Then he kicked off his dress shoes and peeled off his socks. Even his sweaty feet smelled floral as he accepted the staves and walked across the gym to the empty fighting mat.
The fighting mats cleared out and the number of spectators along the walls and sitting on the bleachers increased. Someone whispered, “Prepararse para la muerte,” which was Spanish for “Prepare for death.” I said, softly, but loud enough for Leo to hear, “This man is a special agent of PsyLED and under the protection of the Enforcer.” And he may be my brother. Or not. If Ayatas somehow hurt Leo, I might be able to keep him alive long enough to get him outside.
The men went through the meet-and-greet ceremony, a truncated version that skipped the names and titles and went straight to tapping staves together in a salute. Ayatas moved in and tapped Leo’s staves, then back out, fast. Faster than human. Skinwalker-fast. I knew that speed. Without Beast, it was my own speed. Pulling on Beast’s abilities was like skinwalker on turbo.
Leo backed away and his staves started circling in La Destreza, the cage of death, the magic circle. So did Ayatas’s. Interesting and interestinger. Ayatas knew La Destreza.
They engaged slowly as Leo tapped Ayatas’s staves, a two-tap with his long stick. Ayatas tapped back with lunges, feeling out his opponent. His feet were long and slender at the heels, wide at the toes, the shape of the feet of a man who wore moccasins in his youth, not boots or shoes, yet the skin of his feet was smooth—the feet of a man who got regular pedis. Or who shifted shape to an animal and then back into the form of his human DNA, with no calluses or scars. His knees were bent for balance, his quads pushing against the suit pants. He was poised, posture neat, his body stable, rock steady. The taps sped up, becoming clacks, loud enough to echo on the bare walls. No one was taking bets on the winner. Not yet. Ayatas landed three taps on Leo. The Master of the City laughed and tossed his shoulder-length hair. I realized he had left it down to give Ayatas an advantage. Leo’s version of fighting honor.
The clacks sped. And sped again. I found myself moving closer, watching every move. Beast crouched at the front of my mind, panting, chuffing when one of the men landed what would have been a bloody deadly wound had they fought with steel. Leo’s long stave caught in Ayatas’s hair, ripping out the elastic, sending the hair in a swan-wing arc, free.
And then, with his hair flying, Ayatas raised the short stave back over his shoulder and threw it. Like a small ax. Like a tomahawk.
Time seemed to slow down for me. Not the Gray Between of time bending, but the battle time slowing that allowed me to see everything happening. The muscles in Ayatas’s arm flexing and releasing. The spin of the practice sword. The stave hitting Leo in the collarbone, slightly to the left of middle.
And memory flashed over me.
The trees had been brilliant with fall colors. The smell of meat in the smokehouse and the wisps of hickory smoke had filled my lungs. The house was part cabin, part white-man house, with long, smooth boards over the outside, painted white, and chinked logs on the inside for warmth. It was Elisi’s house, on land she farmed. But Edoda was the hunter, and he had brought back black bear and two bucks, all three animals scored with claw marks.
I wanted to hunt with Edoda, not farm like Elisi. Edoda was humoring me. The clan women were butchering the meat, watching while Edoda taught me to fight.
“Did you see?” he said. “The moment of release?”
I nodded.
Edoda placed the smaller ax in my hand. It was a white-man ax, the head made of steel. It was very expensive and Edoda had bought it with the skins of his hunting and the dalonige’ i he had found in the riverbed. White man’s first love—gold—had purchased the ax and the new dress I wore, the spinning wheel, the hoe, and other farming tools for Elisi. Edoda pointed out the parts of the ax: “Head, handle. On the head is the poll, the eye, the cheek, the toe.” He touched different spots on the sharp edge. “The bit or blade.” He slid his long fingers down to where the head joined the handle. “Beard, shoulder, heel.” His hand reached the curved handle. “Belly. This curve is what gives the ax its balance and its strength.” He slid his hands down the handle. “Throat, grip, knob.” He placed my hand on the grip. Adjusted it. Showed me how it felt by swinging his weapon, grip only tight enough to guide, not strangle, the wood. I swung mine.
Edoda nodded. I had done it right. He spun, his arm flashing back, muscles tightening and releasing. His larger ax flew. Bit deeply into the dead tree. I copied his movements. My small blade sank in beside his. Not so deeply. Only the toe of the blade. But it held.
“Well done, Gvhe.” He patted my head.
His hand had been warm, smooth. I had been safe.
I blinked back into the gym, my body bathed in a cold sweat, the memory a fleeting moment, now gone.
Leo laughed and I focused on the combatants. The battle was over. Leo had a bloody ear and Ayatas had blood on his face and a busted lip. They had played rough. Ayatas shook an injured hand and Leo offered to heal him. Ayatas refused with words that showed he knew vamp politics. “I am honored, Leo Pellissier, Master of the City of New Orleans. But my kind heal well on our own.”
The men were bruised and one of the battle-hard staves was broken. That was a first.
“You’re both stupid,” I muttered. But I must have spoken too loudly as they both shifted to me, bodies bladed, two warriors facing a common foe, though relaxed, the foe not attacking and of no real danger.
I turned and left the room, walking alone down the empty hallways, leaving behind the echoing voices and the smell of testosterone and blood. Remembering the sound of my father’s voice.
“Well done, Gvhe.” Gvhe. Wildcat. My name had been Wildcat.
I still had a few minutes before tea and wandered to what once had been the conference room but for now was the main security area. The walls of HQ had been newly spelled, top to lowest basement, against flood and rising water table by the local witch coven. There was a hidden weapons storage unit on the back wall behind a new shelving unit, one of four in the complex. There was enough coffee and tea for a platoon to survive a week-long hurricane. HQ was now equipped with three different methods of making power, plus batteries big enough to run all the computer systems and one coffeemaker for that same week. We had guns, computers, and coffee, everything we’d need in case of problems. We might go hungry, but we’d be well caffeinated.
The big view screens over the table and around the room were all lit, all showing images of different parts of the compound, captured on camera, divided as to location. There were a series of the grounds. Tex (a vamp) and his dog were patrolling. There weren’t a lot of vamps who liked dogs and vice versa. Three humans and two more vamps covered the grounds with him, inside the tall walls. A loyal sniper provided overwatch on our roof and grounds from his hide across the street. Things were as safe as I could make them.
There was a series of views of the gym, the area outside Leo’s office, and his new, more secure bedroom. There were two from inside the blood-servant rec room. A series of camera views showed the entrances and the elevators (including the ones that had once been secret) and the various stairwells.
I looked at the tea room screen. I was late. Pulling on Beast-speed, I took the stairs. At a dead run, pulling on Beast’s power and the application of Newton’s Laws of Motion—inertia and all that stuff—I raced down the halls and spun into the tea room off the gym, using the doorjamb to fling myself inside. The others were there—Leo; his primo, Del; Scrappy; Bruiser; Grégoire; Katie; Eli; and Ayatas. An eclectic bunch and too many people and scents for the small room. The table, laden with food and carafes, had been placed in the center of the small couches, and extra chairs had been shoved in.
To the guard at the door, I said, “No interruptions,” and I locked the door. Breathing hard, I tapped off my earbud and started the intros, keeping them short and truncated, leaving off all historical titles and lineage, which was usually so boring to humans.
“Master of the City and the territories of Louisiana, the southeastern states except Florida, and holder of goodwill treaties of loyalty from six other Masters of the City from across America, Leonard Pellissier,” I said.
“Katherine Fonteneau, formerly the heir to the Master of the City. Current status in flux. Grégoire, Blood Master of Clan Arceneau, and secundo heir to Leonard Pellissier. Also Blood Master of European territory and clans.” Blondie had killed his EV master, but until the threat here was satisfied, he wouldn’t be spending any time overseas.
“Adelaide Mooney, Leo’s primo and legal counsel, formally a blood-servant of Lincoln Shaddock of Asheville.” I caught up on a few breaths and sat in an empty chair, before continuing. “George Dumas, Onorio, former primo to Leo Pellissier. Lee Williams Watts, personal assistant to Mr. Pellissier. Eli Younger, of Yellowrock Securities, second to the Enforcer of Leo Pellissier. And the Enforcer, Jane Yellowrock.” I pointed to myself.
“Mr. Pellissier and others, please meet PsyLED Senior Special Agent Ayatas FireWind, direct subordinate to Assistant Director Soul, in charge of the eastern states, recently promoted and moved from a western law enforcement territory. He is an unclassified, noncontagious, non-moon-called shape-shifter.”
Leo said, “It was my understanding that Rick LaFleur was the PsyLED agent over my territories. Has he been deposed? Deceased?”
“I’m technically Agent LaFleur’s superior in PsyLED chain of command. I expected him to be here for this meeting. He must have been held up.” Ayatas gave a charming smile and added, “I’ve already discovered that New Orleans’s traffic is difficult to navigate.”
I managed to control my shock. Rick was coming here? When had Ayatas called him? A tap sounded on the door and a faint scent wafted beneath. Rick. Standing, I unlocked and reopened the door. “Special Agent Rick LaFleur,” I said as my ex entered.
Rick nodded but didn’t meet my eyes. The black wereleopard took the only other seat, beside mine.
Beast growled inside. Bad mate. Did not scent-mark Jane. Did not look at Jane. I ignored her. She thought at me, Rick is not mate now?
No. Rick is not mate. Not now. Not ever again.
I retook my seat and looked over the room, taking in the mingled scents. Six men, four women. Multiple paras and humans, in a room built for half that number of creatures. Rick looked different. His hair had been stark black. Now there were long, thick strands of silver-white all through it. His face was furrowed and lined and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. I frowned, not knowing what it might mean but having no way to ask.
Leo inclined his head and added, “My Enforcer neglected to mention many of our titles and lands, including her own. Jane Yellowrock, Enforcer to the Master of the City of New Orleans and . . . the Dark Queen.”
Rick slanted me a look, a sad smile on his face. Bruiser watched Rick watching me. Ayatas frowned slightly, obviously searching for some correlation for Dark Queen in his studies. “Means a formality in place for the upcoming duels,” I lied. “Scrappy?”
Lee leaned toward the table, her red hair swinging at her shoulders, and prepared cups of coffee or tea to our usual specifications, and then cups for the guests, as was appropriate for low-level humans and low-level, nonvamp paras.
Ayatas said, “I am honored to have sparred with the Master of the City of New Orleans and even more honored to take refreshment with him and with his people.” He accepted the coffee, black, and sipped. “The coffee is very good.”
Huh. Not bad. I leaned back, cup in my left hand, my right in a faux pocket, fingers on the small weapon strapped there. I sipped, keeping my eyes on Ayatas in case I had read him all wrong and he was here to kill Leo or maybe all of us.
The scents in the room were overlapping and heavy. Vamp, blood, skinwalker, werecat, Onorio human.
I sipped and breathed through my mouth, tasting the scents. There was nothing of anger or hostility present, despite the testosterone and general irascibility, so I concentrated on the tea instead of the diplomatic chitchat. Boring, dull, tedious, and mind-numbing conversation. And thankfully, not dialogue the Enforcer had to pay attention to beyond listening for cues that could lead to violence, anything that meant I needed to shoot someone. If anything else came up, Scrappy would send me a memo and then beat me over the head with it until I read it.
Ayatas was droning on and on about the duel and the technicalities of the law regarding hosting and broadcasting and gambling. And the tax status of said gambling monies. He used phrases like the Interstate Wire Act, the Department of Justice, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, and the Bradley Act, some of which might have been the same things. Or not.
Ayatas wanted to be present, no matter where the Sangre Duello took place. Right. Like Leo was going to allow a cop on-site—unless he had claws in the cop’s life and total control over him. Again, I got to ignore it all, which was a good thing, because booooring. And then the meeting was over and Leo and his cadre, including Bruiser, Rick, and Ayatas, stood for small talk.
I didn’t look at my ex, slipping out the door as he greeted the other special agent and Bruiser. I might have stayed or pressed my ear to the door, listening in, but I caught a scent that made my hackles rise. Beast snarled and growled softly deep inside. Werecat. Were-big-cat. Have smelled big-cat before. Am alpha.
She was right. We were alpha to the werecat I smelled in the hallway. It was the scent of the black wereleopard Kemnebi, part of the International Association of Weres and the Party of African Weres.
Black wereleopards were from Gabon in the African Congo. Kem’s mate had turned Rick. The female had then been summarily executed for the deed, leaving a lot of bad feelings between the survivors. To keep Rick safe from Kem, I had sorta become alpha over him and claimed my ex. It was complicated. And Kem was in HQ.
My life was a soap opera with fangs and fur.
I tapped on my comms unit. “Update on weres,” I said. A voice I didn’t recognize verified all I had deduced by scent. Dang. I trotted up the hallway and took the elevator, tracking Kem’s personal aroma.
According to the scent patterns, Rick and Kem had met in the foyer, among a group of weres, several of whom were unfamiliar and not catty, and Kem had embraced Rick. That must have been awkward.
I sniffed, pulling in the air over my tongue as Beast would do, parsing the scents. Two African werelions, whom I had met. And . . . oddly, I smelled werewolves. Leo and the wolves still didn’t get along, and most hated me, since I’d killed off an entire pack. The dogs and cats didn’t get along. The mismatched group had a grindylow with them, one I hadn’t sniffed before and who, presumably, had traveled with the Africans. Grindys were supposed to keep the peace, but they were good only for were-on-human violence. Were-on-were or were-on-vamp wasn’t covered in the grindy’s job description. According to the scents, the various para groups had separated and some had moved off to different areas of HQ.
“Legs? Everything all right?”
I looked up in surprise to see Wrassler standing over me. I put my shoulders back and dropped my arms. “How long have I been standing here?”
“Immobile? Hunched over, sniffing the air like somebody’s brought in Hot-N-Now Krispy Kremes? ’Bout three minutes.”
I explained the problem to Wrassler. “And if a law enforcement officer, say Rick LaFleur, dies here, on land that isn’t technically U.S. territory, but technically belongs to Leo, then Leo also has to act as judge and jury and I have to be executioner. And we’ll be right back where we were before Leo made peace—sorta—with the were coalition. We could have a war.”
“So you think the weres are here to sabotage the duel?”
“Maybe?” I pulled my cell and texted Alex: Werecats and werewolves in HQ. Check status. To Wrassler I asked, “Where are they now?”
Wrassler limped to the doorway on his prosthetic leg and called to the woman at the small room to the right of the entrance, a room that held a compact version of HQ’s communication and security control system. “Location of the weres?” he asked.
“On the elevator,” a woman’s voice said. “Hell. It’s going down. Should be going up to the library. No weapons on the scanner or pat-down. Dogs and cats in same elevator. Guided, guarded by Tequila Antifreeze.” She cursed foully. “Elevator cam shows Antifreeze is out cold.”
To access any of the floors, the elevator required a palm print, but the print could be made under duress. I met Wrassler’s eyes. “SOD,” we both said at the same time. Side by side, we whirled for the stairs.
“SOD’s guards?” I asked.
“Two. Human. You can move faster than I can,” Wrassler said. “Go! I’ll get a team to meet you there.”
I pulled on Beast-speed and raced down the steps, my feet barely touching every third or fourth tread, my hands shoving me off the landings and pulling me around tight corners. If they killed the Son of Darkness we could be in trouble. Besides, that was my job.
Slowing on sub-four, I let Beast into the front of my brain. She took over my footsteps and my body movements, making me silent. Stealthily, I moved to the bottom of the hidden stairs, in the shadows of sub-five. The lowest basement at vamp HQ had a claylike floor, poor lighting, and a distinct scent that combined stale walls, damp, mold, the herbal and funeral-flower-sweet stench of vamps, a hint of something tart, and the particular stink of the Son of Darkness. The elevator was to my right on the far end of the basement space and the SOD hung to my immediate left, shackled to the wall by silver. The bag of bones and goo was Leo’s ace in the hole to any act of war by the Europeans. They had tried to get him back several times, but taking him by magic or dragging the heartless—literally—and broken thing up five flights of stairs while fighting a pitched battle had proven impossible.
The SOD had gone by many names in his life; the most recent was Joses Santana, preceded by Joses son of Judas, and before that, Yosace Bar-Ioudas. He was one of two sons of Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed Jesus. Joses and his brother were the fathers of all fangheads. His blood was so strong that he had survived poisoning by a rainbow dragon, silver poisoning, and the removal of his heart. I was particularly proud of the heart removal as that had been my coup, but I should have broken my word and taken his head, because he was still a threat and a danger to us all.
I could hear people talking just ahead and below, and no more blood scent than usual. No battle. No danger. At the moment there was no threat of the SOD getting away and no humans or vamps to protect, so I eased up and pressed against the wall in the shadows to evaluate everything. Why were they here? What did they want? And why were they all together? I was downwind from the group. The stench of SOD and various were-creatures was overpowering, rushing up the stairs.
Two guards lay on the clay floor, bound and gagged, mad as heck, but not out cold. Over them was chained Joses Santana. The SOD had begun to heal, even without a heart, and looked human rather than like a sack of broken bones and slime. His legs and arms were in the right places, his joints aligned the correct way, and his eyes seemed to be focusing on the group in front of him, though his mouth hung open at an angle and his dry triangle of a tongue protruded to one side between oversized fangs. He was a little more hairy than once before, but that was likely just an oddity of his healing. Or of the werewolf who bit him from time to time. Life in vamp HQ was weird.
The mixed were-group stood in a small semicircle facing the vamp prisoner, but slightly to my left, in front of me. Asad, the African werelion, and his wife, Nantale, in human form, were in the forefront of the grouping. Were-creatures mostly corresponded with the body-weight-to-mass ratio, making Asad a huge man and his lion a midsized-to-smaller cat. He was black skinned, with coarse hair in shades of black streaked with lighter brown, and he wore white robes in the Arabian style. Asad looked human enough until you saw his eyes, a lion-gold with a predatory gleam. The man was a war chief for his human tribe, the Fulani, and his wife, Nantale, looked like a Nubian goddess, even without the cloth of gold and all the beaten gold jewelry she had worn when I saw her last. She was tall and muscular with broad shoulders and long legs.
The other werecat was my personal pain in the butt. Tall and thin, his muscles were well defined, his ebony skin stretched over a frame without an ounce of fat. Beautiful, he had the sculpted features of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus with full lips and tip-tilted eyes blacker than a moonless night. Like Asad, he was dressed in the flowing white outer robe of an Arabian prince, and beneath it, he wore black that vanished into the shadows, regal garb, which . . . I stopped. Dang it all. Kemmie was wearing an emblem sewn on his robes, a lizard eating his tail. I hadn’t seen that emblem in months, and hadn’t paid much attention at the time, but the tail-biting lizard looked like something that had been stitched into the clothing worn by the blood-servants of Jack Shoffru, one of Leo’s sworn enemies, now dead. Some of Shoffru’s people had survived, and the living and the dead had been wearing a similar emblem embroidered on their inner shirts. Had someone taken over Shoffru’s clan, suborned Kem, and come back for Leo? Was this happenstance or a declaration of war?
There were three werewolves, four if I counted my wolf. And I did. Brute stood in front of the SOD as if guarding him, fangs bared at the grouping, growling low, a sound that shivered up through the clay floor and the walls like the vibration of a generator. He had seriously huge teeth, and at over three hundred pounds, the white werewolf was big enough to take on Asad and maybe live to tell about it. He’d put on weight in the time I’d known him, but even bulked up he couldn’t defeat the whole crew. I could envision the werewolves bearbaiting Brute while the cats tore the SOD to pieces. Or stole him off the wall.
Unless Brute timewalked.
The wolves were in human form, and I spared a glance to take them in. Two white, one black, all of them young, hip, dangerous. There had once been half a dozen small packs in the Mountain States. Then a new guy had emerged, taken over, and united the packs from several states into the Bighorns, making a megapack. The social structures of were-creatures were nothing like human social structures, and werewolf packs were the most abnormal of the weird and strange, having no wolf females. Werewolves were temperamental, and without a strong pack leader, they fought. A lot.
On the floor behind the wolves was Tequila Antifreeze, putting a hand to his skull. Someone had knocked him down. He’d been injured the last time he followed orders. I didn’t want him—or anyone—hurt like that again. For now, they hadn’t killed Antifreeze.
Beast stared at the bad guys. Beast is best ambush hunter.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. I thought, trying to decide who to take out first.
Asad took a step closer to the SOD, licking his lips, his wife at his side. Had they gotten a taste of the SOD before Brute got there? I looked up at the cameras and made a mental note to get someone to check the feed.
The midsized grindylow hiding above the weres wasn’t a surprise, as the creatures tended to appear whenever were-creatures went near humans. This one was bigger than Pea and Bean, but still the neon green of a juvie, and cuter than any steel-clawed killer had any right to be. She was perched on a beam up high, watching.
At that moment Brute must have caught my scent because he stopped growling and glanced at the stairwell. Into the sudden silence, the visitors started speaking.
“What is it?” one of the wolves asked in a British accent. It was the black guy. He leaned in, sniffing the SOD. To the wolf beside him, he said, “I can’t believe that you brought me here to look at this. Pathetic artwork, if that’s what it is. And the stench is dreadful. The vampire bitch must have no nose at all.”
Vampire bitch? I thought.
“Not art. This thing is alive,” Asad said. “The fanghead female told me it is very powerful. The blood drinkers value it greatly. If we take it and drink from it we will grow in strength and power and be able to defeat the bloodsuckers.”
“Do tell. It bloody well reeks of several old vampires, rotting blood, and wet wolf.”
“You smell the dog at his feet,” Nantale said, dismissive.
“Call werewolves dogs again and I’ll slit your throat and eat your entrails before you can blink,” the British wolfman said with a patently false smile. “As long as we rescue the white wolf, I don’t really care what you do with the artwork.”
Rescue?
Stupid dog thinks Brute is prisoner, Beast thought at me.
The werecats took a collective step forward, crowding Brute. His growl came back, louder, deeper. His hackles rose, shoulders hunched.
“Phillip, I don’t think he’s a prisoner,” one of the wolves said, warning in his tone.
The third wolf drew a weapon and racked back the slide.
The faintest footsteps sounded on the stairs behind me. Help was on the way. Beast-fast, I drew a vamp-killer and the Walther PK .380. Stepped from the stairs into the shadows, into a decent firing position.
“Bugger it all. Are you insane?” the Brit demanded of the wolf with the gun.
Overhead, the grindylow shivered and gathered herself for a launch.
The armed wolf pointed the business end of the gun at Phillip.
“What the bloody hell?”
Raising my voice I said, “Who let the kitties and puppies down here?”
The small group whirled to me. The wolf with the gun snarled. Stepped away to get a line of fire and pointed it at me, back to Phillip, then at Brute, indecisive, his body rotating slowly, leaving him open to attack. My own aim was steady on him, but I didn’t want to fire into what sounded like internal werewolf politics. My killing a were in HQ could complicate a lot of things.
“Antifreeze, you okay?” I asked.
He mumbled, “I was taking them to the library. They said they had an appointment with Ernestine. It wasn’t on the calendar, so I called her. She said to send them up, that she’d meet them there. After that, I don’t know. I don’t remember how I got here.”
It hadn’t been willingly. Ernestine was the vamp accountant, a withered, wrinkled ancient woman I called Raisin. People met with her all the time, but not usually in the library, and the mention of a female vamp indicated that the weres had had inside help in staging this FUBAR. Dang it.
The wolf with the gun growled; aimed it steadily at me. I whipped my blade into a modified La Destreza stance and took two steps, edging between them and the SOD and Brute. I gave them my best menacing grin. Beast glowed through my eyes, a bright golden shade. The wolves stared.
“Furballs and hairballs with guns, working together,” I said wonderingly, giving the help behind me access and time to position themselves. “Who’da thunk it?”
Nantale stepped forward, ignoring my insults. “Jane Yellowrock. We are pleased to know that you still live. The Party of African Weres is happy to see you breathing.”
“Really?” I angled the blade, spinning it so the light caught the edges, so the dogs and cats could see the silver plating. A lot of paras were easily poisoned by silver, including were-creatures and vamps. But I didn’t have enough silver on me to take them all down. Come on, Wrassler. Get here. Move it! “The reason I disbelieve you, kitty cat, is because I recall you bringing Paka, a black wereleopard in heat, into NOLA and siccing the little kitty on my then-boyfriend.”
“We were not informed that Rick LaFleur was involved in a romantic relationship. It was unfortunate you suffered because of the spell she wove.”
Kem had known. I smelled, felt, sensed Wrassler and at least four others moving into the stairwell behind me. Finally. But I needed to stall. “You knew that Raymond Micheika, the leader of the International Association of Weres, paid Paka to do exactly as she did. But you might not know that Paka had taken a prior deal, from Kemnebi, to spell Rick and bring him intense pain, turning him into his cat and then leaving him that way. Forever. Terrible thing for a were to do to an officer of the law, wouldn’t you say?”
Asad slowly turned to Kem-cat, a question on his face. “Paka made parley with you prior to her agreement with us?”
“The woman lies,” Kemnebi said, speaking of me.
“You are impudent,” I said. “This woman is your alpha”—I tapped my chest with the hilt—“and though I never sent the video file to the Party of African Weres, I have you on film, groveling at my feet.
“Wrassler, now, if you please.”
Blood-servant-fast, my backup boiled into the basement. Now we were more evenly matched and my heart was no longer in my throat. I slowed the pirouetting vamp-killer and holstered the H&K. Kept my vamp-killer pointed at Kem. “Tell them,” I commanded.
“She smells of alpha. She smells of power and nothing of fear. Does she speak the truth? Is she your master?” Asad asked Kem, horror in his voice. Nantale looked at the SOD on the wall, indecision in her eyes.
“Not worth fighting all of us and a grindy to steal the bag of bones,” I said. Letting Beast into my voice, I growled, “Kneel, Kem-cat. Kneel and give me your throat or you die tonight for the crime of disloyalty to your alpha.”
Kem snarled and leaped at me.
The werewolf fired.
The Brit attacked him.
They tumbled onto the floor, biting, snapping. The gun went off again.
In the space of two heartbeats, everything went to hell in a handbasket.