With this guy, I didn’t waste words, just pulled a throwing knife and let the overhead lights glint off it. When I spoke it came out in a lower-register Beast-growl. “Who ordered you and your pal to attack me?”
Tattooed Dude snarled at me. I flicked the knife. I’d been aiming at TD’s hand, but caught him higher up, the blade entering between the two bones of his lower arm and sticking into the wall at his back. He squealed like a stuck pig and Edmund was on him.
The squeal stopped, choked off. Edmund plucked the knife away and rode TD to the floor, perching atop the big guy’s chest like a small raptor on the chest of a larger, fallen prey. Edmund drank once long and deeply, from the cut arm, his hand making a rotating “get on with it” motion to me.
“Who ordered you and your pal to attack?”
Edmund gave me the sign again, which I figured meant he had the answer. Dang, the guy was fast. Below him, Tattooed Dude relaxed as he gave in to the feeding and the compulsion of a master vamp. Edmund might no longer be a clan master, but he’d lost none of his skills.
“Were you supposed to kill or just injure?” At the hand signal again, I sped up my questions. “What was on the blade? Poison? What herbs? Where did the concoction come from? Was a witch involved? Did Grégoire know about the attack?” Ed shot me a glance of ire but didn’t break contact with the prisoner. “Did Dominique know? Did Adrianna know? Did anyone in Clan Arceneau know about the attack? Did anyone at this compound know? Are there any more attacks planned against the Master of the City? Are there other attacks planned against me or those I claim as mine?”
Edmund’s eyes shot to me and he withdrew his fangs. He lifted the hand still holding the knife and checked his watch. “Get to your home, Enforcer. They are there now.”
I said something crude, grabbed the knife that was covered with my attacker’s blood, and raced out the door. Wrassler, back from running errands for Del, was on my heels, and for a big guy, he managed to nearly keep up with me, talking through his headset mic as we ran. “Secure the premises,” he said into the mic. “Lock down!” But when I reached the front door I slammed the bloody knife tip into the table that held the trays for weapons and cursed again. “I don’t have a car or my bike.”
“I’ll drive,” Wrassler said, pushing ahead of me and out the door. We dove into an armored SUV, the powerful engine turning over. The roadway in front of HQ was wreathed in mist, the fog rising from the Mississippi and enfolding the entire French Quarter. Streetlights were halos of yellow, the mist capturing the light and keeping it close. Spell or natural, it made no difference. It would make fighting harder.
Wrassler drove like a maniac and we were at my place before my heart rate could settle. He braked about a hundred feet out. The street was silent, no radios played, no music or TV came through windows, no people wandered the pavement, drunk or homeless or bored. “This don’t look right,” he said.
The street in front and the houses to either side of my freebie house were free of fog, as a cold wind shunted through, dropping down from above, swirling around, and blasting away. With Beast-sight, I could see sparks of green in the wind; I heard distant flute music and a slow tapping, like a drum. It was Big Evan, warding the house with air magic.
Kits attacked in den, Beast hissed at me. Kits not safe!
I pulled my cell and called Eli. “Jane,” he answered.
“We’re out front. What have they done and how many are there?”
“They firebombed the house. Evan put it out, but it was risky. Wind tried to fan the flames at first. Four targets that I can see with low light. Two vamps, two humans.”
Firebomb? Again? I needed to get a magical something put over the siding so it wouldn’t burn. Low light meant he was using his toys to see in the dark. “Witches working with them?”
“Not so I could tell.” A moment later, he said, “Evan says he can’t sense anyone. The fog seems natural, coming off the Mississippi.”
“Kids?”
“Asleep in the safe room. Front door is my twelve. Tangos are four, total. Human encoms are two: at two o’clock, on the side of the neighbor’s house, and at six o’clock, outside the fence. Evan says that the human in back is coming over the wall. Vamp encoms are two: standing on the wall at our six, and standing hidden in the edge of the fog, in the street at twelve. I say again, four tangos.” Tango was Eli’s shorthand for unknown human or supernat targets. Encom was Eli’s shorthand for enemy combatants, which meant they were armed.
“Okay. I’ll take the front.” I pulled my vamp-killer and palmed the blade that had cut Tattooed Dude. And smiled. “Tell Evan to let the fog closer at the street. I’m out.” I closed the phone.
“Human at the side of the house next door, there.” I pointed for Wrassler. “The space between houses is something like six feet, so it’s close quarters. I’m going after a vamp in front of the door, hidden in the fog.”
“I’ll take the human.” Wrassler turned off the engine, leaving the vehicle parked in the middle of the street. Reached up and disabled the interior lights, drawing a long-barreled semiautomatic with the other hand. “Go.”
I went, sliding out of the SUV, leaving the door open. Beast rammed her power and vision into my bloodstream, adrenaline like a drug, speeding my heartbeat. Her night vision sharpened my own, the night glowing silver and green with tints of blue. The vamp standing in the fog was a warmer shade of pale melon, his body heat, slightly warmer than the fog, making him nearly glow. This was something I hadn’t ever seen before, and I realized that Evan’s spell must have now included a search out vamp component. Nice. Moving on little cat feet—which made me want to laugh—I circled around the vamp so I was downwind. He smelled of gasoline and the sharp stink of struck matches. If I’d been in Beast-form, my ruff would have stood on end.
I tossed the bloody knife through the fog, to land at his feet with a clank.
Distraction of blood scent and noise.
CHAPTER 8
B-b-b-b-bad to the Bone
The clatter and the smell of blood shocked the vamp, and he crouched. I was already launching myself through the air, right at him, intending to knock him to his back and place the blade at his throat. Beast took over the leap. The vamp and I collided, almost gently, my open left hand catching his right shoulder, gripping hard, my right hand moving across his body with a fast swipe, like claws. No! I thought at her. Alive! But I couldn’t wrench control away.
The blade caught his throat just below his larynx. My momentum and mass-in-motion carried the sharp edge through his tissue with only the slightest resistance, to jar into his spine.
We hit the ground and I tucked, rolling across him, letting go the vamp-killer handle to keep from damaging him any more. Bending my arms to take the fall, cradling my head down, curling my spine into the somersault and instantly up to my feet. I was splattered with vamp blood, cool and sticky on my skin. He hadn’t fed recently, which ruled out Naturaleza vamp.
I smelled the silver that finished the job of killing him true-dead. No one to question. I snarled at Beast, I needed to question him.
She growled back, Hunter of kits. Must die.
Furious, I pulled my blade free of his flesh, wiped both it and the throwing knife on his clothes, free of blood, and left him lying in the street. With Beast’s vision and Evan’s spell, I could see two forms wrapped together in the lee of the house at two o’clock, both a vibrant orange, both human. Wrassler had the human in a sleeper hold, and eased him to the ground as I raced up. “It’s me,” I whispered. “Stay here. I’m checking the back.” I sprinted around the brick fencing, pulling Beast’s speed through me. I leaped high, grabbing the fence with one hand and swinging myself over, the brick grinding into my human-soft palms.
Stupid Jane. Needs paws.
Yeah. And living attackers.
Beast didn’t reply.
I landed inside the fence, silently, in a crouch. From the second story at the back of the house, I heard a single shot. Rifle
fire. An oof of pain and expelled breath was followed by the sound of a body hitting the ground. I found the human, the bright orange of her body warmth half hidden by the pile of mostly crushed boulders in the garden. I crawled to her on all fours, keeping the stones between me and the last vamp. The human didn’t smell of blood, and when I touched her, my fingers found a vest beneath her clothes. It had to be one of the new combat vests just released on the market—Kevlar, silver mesh, and fibers spelled against magic. The woman was alive and unharmed, except for, maybe, a broken rib or two. Which was nothing short of a miracle, considering the range. But the breath had been knocked out of her.
To my side, I saw a pale amber form moving away in the dark. Vamp fast, she vaulted the fence and disappeared. I knew her. I’d been right. Adrianna. “When the cat’s away, the mice will play,” I muttered.
Beast snorted softly. Knowing that Eli would have me in his sights, I sheathed my blades and gave the “all clear” signal by tapping my head. I opened my cell and dialed Wrassler. “I got a human. Alive, but having trouble breathing.”
“I got one taking a nap.”
“Bring yours inside. Front door. Ring the bell. And just so you know, Adrianna got away.”
The woman at my knees sucked in a breath that sounded pained—her first since she was shot. “Bet that hurts,” I said softly. I confiscated a fully automatic weapon with a full thirty-round mag. There were other magazines on her person, enough rounds to chew through the back of the house and anyone inside. I lifted her up and tossed her over my shoulder, glad that my secret was out and I didn’t have to hide what I was anymore. Her newly found breath oofed out once again, along with her scent. She stank of Adrianna and something else, something vaguely familiar, but the blood and Adrianna’s reek overpowered it and I couldn’t isolate the scent marker.
I carried the human along the side porch and in the side door. And dumped her to the floor at Big Evan’s feet. Without looking at them, I handed the weapons to Eli and he chuckled nastily as he looked the midsized subgun over. I yanked three zip strips out of his utility belt and secured the woman’s hands. It only took about seventy-five pounds of force to break a regular-sized zip strip. Let’s see her break three of the bigger ones at once.
“Let Wrassler in the front door, please,” I said to Eli as the bell rang. “He has another prisoner.” Eli headed to the door, his footsteps silent.
“You remember me telling you about the Damours?” I asked his retreating back. He made a waffling motion with one hand. “Adrianna was part of the Damours’ blood family, and was a mind-locked anamchara to one of the top people in the family. When I killed the Damours vamps, Adrianna was there. Leo saved her when I killed her lover, for reasons I’ll never know.” I glanced at Big Evan. He knew all about the history of the Damours. The witch-vamps had been trying to sacrifice his children when I killed the fangheads true-dead. Though memory was a dicey thing—especially when one was technically insane—Adrianna had to know that I was the one who killed her anamchara. Vamps liked vengeance, so she thought she would kill me and mine. I got that. But it wasn’t enough to make it all sit easily with me. There was still too much that didn’t fit. Unless . . .
I looked at it another way. Unless there was more than one thing going on. Maybe some of the weirdness had something to do with the European Council coming to visit. I put that possibility on the back burner of my brain.
I dialed the council house and asked to be put through to Edmund Hartley. “We’re safe,” I said. “Thanks to you. Talk to me. I need to know everything pertinent that you drank out of Tattoo Dude.”
“It was my pleasure,” Ed said. And the way he said it meant way more than a simple “You’re welcome.” But he went on, his words succinct. “In order of your earlier queries, the man I questioned was under heavy compulsion. The two were supposed to alert Adrianna when you would be within their influence, and kill you while Adrianna attacked your home to steal something of value. They don’t know what it was.
“Adrianna gave the men the weapons. They knew the blades were poisoned, but not what the poison was or if a witch was involved in making it. Neither Grégoire nor Dominique knew about the attack—a suggestion that was insulting but necessary,” he added. “No one else at Clan Arceneau knew about the attack so far as he knew. No one else here at the council house knew of it. He did not know if there were more attacks planned. He was compelled, and quite well.”
The men had been at HQ for weeks. So that put the planning of the attacks on me and my home back much earlier than that. It took time to set up a compulsion, even longer to get the men so deeply under that they would attack me in front of witnesses, though a violent compulsion might work faster in a violent human, last longer without reinforcing. I didn’t know.
If Adrianna wanted vengeance for the death of her lover, then attacking my house and my friends and my person . . .Yeah. Adrianna had been busy. Vamps strategized with the long view and might wait decades—centuries even—to carry out a plan. Yet Adrianna had seemed too unstable to make any of this work. So, either I had read her wrong or her kind of crazy was the kind that got things done. Or I was missing something.
I needed to talk to Adrianna. And by talk I meant communication of a kind that made my blood run cold just thinking of it. But no one around me was safe as long as Adrianna ran around free. I wondered if Leo would give me leave to go after her. I need to talk to the MOC. I needed to decide how far I’d go to keep my people safe. I said, “Thanks, Ed. We’ll talk later.”
I closed the phone in its bulletproof case as Wrassler entered, his treads heavy on the wood floors. The door closed behind him and he dropped his burden on the floor beside the woman. The man made a satisfying whomp when he hit. Evan whistled a note and I knew the wards were back up. The big man stood in the foyer, watching us across the rooms; I figured he was trying to control his temper and not accidentally zap the prisoners. “Evan, you got any magical truth-serum-spell-whammies up your sleeve? ’Cause we need some answers from these two, and now.” I rolled the human woman over, faceup. She was muscular, a bodybuilder who also worked on endurance training. Her arms were buff, and her thigh and calf muscles beneath the black skintight running suit were long and lean. She wore her hair short and slicked back with gel, and her eyes were darkly lined in black. She stared up at me with disdain.
Evan stepped closer and looked the woman over as I frisked her again, finding a knife I’d missed before, a thin, narrow-bladed weapon sheathed in a thigh pocket. “Cute,” I said. “I guess it would be corny to say”—I pulled my vamp-killer with its fourteen-inch blade—“this is a knife.” She narrowed her eyes and didn’t laugh. Some people have no sense of humor.
“I got whammies,” Evan said, “but they won’t work on these two.” When I looked my question at him, he bent down and yanked a metal charm off the woman’s neck. The chain broke with a snap and she grunted again. Fear spread over her face, and she looked around, as if startled. Evan said, “Somebody’s been mixing vamp compulsion with magic on them.”
As soon as the chain broke, the smell of old blood hit me, and I realized that the compulsion charm had been activated with blood. I backed away, wrinkling my nose.
“Where am I?” the woman demanded, struggling to rise, her bound hands pushing at the floor. Her body took on the scent of confusion and, beneath it, the smell of fear.
Prey, Beast whispered to me.
“You don’t remember coming to my house with a submachine gun and enough ammo to finish a small war?” I asked.
Her eyes went wide. “Are you nuts?”
“You came to my house! My home!” I shouted. I wanted to hit her with my fist, or with my claws, slashing open her face. But I controlled myself, gulped a breath, and shoved down on my fury, because the woman on the floor in front of me was truly, completely confused. Adrianna had been part of the Damours’ black magic rituals. Seemed she had learned something from them. Maybe picked up a few magical things, like amulets that ma
de humans willing conspirators in crimes. And I didn’t beat someone to a pulp for being brainwashed by magic, no matter how satisfying it might feel while I did it.
I said, “Wrassler, would you be kind enough to drive these two to vamp HQ and see if Edmund Hartley will drink them and their memories. I need proof who ordered this.” Because I was going to hurt that person. Badly. Yeah. And every dime I had said it was Adrianna.
“You do know that among Mithrans, such acts are said to be close to Naturaleza methods?” Wrassler asked, his voice neutral and without inflection.
I thought about Edmund’s tone when he said it was his pleasure, and the spike in the center of my soul grew colder. “Noted,” I said shortly.
Wrassler looked into my face and shrugged. “Sure. I’ll ask.” He held out a hand to Eli for more strips, and the two men zip-stripped the humans to within an inch of not breathing before carrying them to the SUV still parked in the middle of the street. I stood at the door and watched as they also loaded the dead vamp. If Leo’s usual rates for killing vamps who acted out and put humans at risk applied to this guy, I’d just made a few thousand bucks. Somehow that fact, and the fact that I had just told a vamp it was okay to abuse a human, didn’t make me very happy. Anger roiled under my skin, building up like steam with no place to go. I wasn’t liking myself much. Not at all. But I also didn’t know what to do different. I didn’t know how to protect the ones I cared about without crossing lines. Lines I might not be able to cross back.