My mouth.
The sensation became my own, his thumb sliding across my lips, the taste of Leo on my tongue. I blinked. Found I was gasping. Crying.
Alex grabbed my arm and dragged me away from him, whispering harshly, “Bruiser staked the MOC to protect you.”
The room was in an uproar. People shouting. The smell of blood and anger and battle. The ebony table was empty of clan leaders except for Sabina, wearing fresh whites, healed, her fangs schnicking down, all five inches of them. Her jaw was still unhinged. I was leaning limply across the table, entirely too close to the outclan priestess. Eli and Bruiser were squared off together against Leo, who was sliding to the floor in a boneless heap. It was the blood of the MOC that I smelled.
I wrenched my arm free and croaked, “I’m okay.”
Alex’s face said I wasn’t. I scrabbled, fighting for balance, my bare paws on the cold floor. I’d lost my shoes when I half-shifted. I fought for control. Bruiser raised the bloody stake high. I pulled the Mughal blade. Shouted, “Stop!” But my throat was dry, voiceless. So I pulled a gun and shot into the only thing dense enough to safely stop a fired round, damaging the antique carved table that was probably worth more than my house. But it worked. The table stopped the round, splinters flew, and the Council Chambers went still and silent. “I’m okay,” I said. “Bruiser. He didn’t attack me.”
Alex asked, “Janie?”
“Leo, did you give me that or did I take it?”
“I gave myself to you,” he said, as his blood pooled on the floor beneath him.
I smelled his truthfulness. Saw it on his face. I said, “He didn’t try to bind me. Stand down.” No one relaxed from combat mode, but I ignored them. I was still holding a blade and a nine-mil. I checked in to my soul home. Everything there was peaceful. My soul was still my own. I was slightly deaf from the gunshot, but otherwise I was good.
“Leo,” I said. “How badly are you wounded?”
The Master of the City slid his hand into his black jacket and it came away scarlet. “Nothing immediately mortal,” he said, with the faintest of smiles. His fangs clicked back into the roof of his mouth; his eyes bled back to human.
Eli said, “Janie? You’re sure?” He still had a gun aimed at Leo. Bruiser still held the stake.
He had fought the MOC for me. That was so sweet it made tears gather in my eyes. “I’m good. He”—I looked at Leo again—“gave me a gift, I think. I’m fine.” A little teary eyed, a little weepy, a little off-kilter, but mostly okay.
Leo huffed out a breath he might actually need, and, with two fingers, removed a neatly folded white hankie from his pocket. After wiping his bloody hands, he folded the hankie and pressed it against his side. He said, “Jane Yellowrock, I cannot bind you. I cannot even know your mind. But you now know mine. Will the Dark Queen swear to me, to protect and guard my city, to guard me, to fight by my side, to avenge my death, should I fall and die true-dead?”
Except for the Dark Queen title, the last part was essentially what Leo had asked Ming. This was part of the swearing-in ceremony of a blood clan. My breath went fast and my heart rate sped, things I knew Leo could detect. This was the creation of a new clan. Of Clan Yellowrock, in the way of the Mithrans. Holy crap. This was really happening. And then it hit me. As Dark Queen, I could avenge his death . . . Plans within plans.
I looked at the floor, at the feet of the Master of the City of New Orleans. At the feet of the creature who had abused me. Who had crowned me. Who would always want to use me, whether I agreed to that use or not. Who would do evil in the name of good, horrible evil to protect his people. A creature who was rebuilding his own power base even as I was building my own to protect my people. In his shoes would I do any less? Softly, not sure who I was talking to, I quoted, “Because I’m a Scorpion. It’s in my nature.”
“From the traditional tale of the Scorpion and the Frog,” Leo said. “But scorpions are creatures of instinct. I am a man. While it is my nature to use you, I will not do so unless the need is urgent. I have learned and changed and evolved, thanks in large part to you, my Jane.”
It wasn’t likely, but it was remotely possible that Leo had grown emotionally and might change. Me? I was the city’s champion. Which was utterly ridiculous. I am an idiot . . . But I’m NOLA’s idiot. One who might, one day, do evil to protect it. “Yes. And yes, I accept and I so swear.”
As if I hadn’t kept him waiting while all that raced through my mind, Leo said, “George, please bring Edmund Hartley, Jane’s primo, back into the room. Meanwhile, Gee DiMercy, do you accept the position of Yellowrock Clan Enforcer?”
Gee dropped from the ceiling to the floor, landing beside me on the balls of his feet and one hand, like a monkey leaping from a tree. It shocked me so much that I nearly shot him. He flowed to his feet like a snake. “I do,” he said, holding out his hand. Leo cut downward with the blade. That was getting to be a pretty unhygienic, unsanitary thing and I was glad my part in the cutting was over. Except it wasn’t. Gee offered me his thumb to suck on.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Really?”
Gee waggled his thumb at me, blood trailing down it. And then he grinned as if this was the funniest thing ever. “Just think of it as sushi, my mistress,” he said.
“Bird blood? I hope you washed that thing.” I opened my mouth and Gee hesitated, meeting my eyes. The grin slid from his pretty face. The blood on his hand shifted from scarlet to sapphire blue, its true color. There was something vital, weighty, even imperative about the misericord of the city offering me his blood unglamoured. Black eyes intent, he placed his thumb into my mouth. His blood was thick and bright, sweet like agave syrup. Beast’s synesthesia flared, giving Gee’s blood the chill of deep blue water; the smell of midnight in a winter forest, thousands of stars overhead, shimmering through naked branches; the sound/vision of indigo or woad splashing in a vat, staining a pair of hands. The sensations shimmered into taste and texture of ground lapis lazuli and sugar on my tongue, the sound of sapphire wings in flight.
“I am yours, my mistress, my little goddess,” he whispered.
I encircled his wrist with my long knobby fingers and pulled his thumb away. Irritated, I said, “I’m not a goddess.”
“As you say, my mistress. I swear loyalty to you above all others, in every circumstance outside of my misericord duties. In your absence, I swear to your clan and to its scions and cattle.”
“Backatcha, little bird.” But it didn’t come out flippant, as I intended, but somber, unsmiling, and resolute. Gee stepped back and when he was about five feet away, he bowed, bending one knee and sweeping with one hand, as if to push a cape back. Or his glamoured wings. He took a seat.
Crap. This was getting heavy.
Leo said, “Edmund Hartley, you have claimed to be bound to your mistress. Is this so?”
I whipped my head to the side and saw Edmund, a nondescript, brown-haired, brown-eyed man, small statured, at least compared to modern-day norms and my own height. He had been healed of the stakes in his belly and was now sober, wearing a tux, when Eddie had been drunk and wearing a navy suit last time I saw him. Edmund looked pretty good in a tux, his dark hair swept back with goop, his expression strangely gentle.
Ed stared at me, his lips up in the smile that had surely been the reason he was turned. “It is. We are bound. She called me back from true-death and I answered.”
It hadn’t been my intent. I didn’t want a slave. But it had kept him alive and at the time that had been a bargain worth making.
Leo said, “You have sworn privately to Jane Yellowrock. Do you renew those vows now?”
“I do.” Ed’s smile widened and he pretty much quoted what he had said more privately, not so long ago. “Jane Yellowrock. I, Edmund Killian Sebastian Hartley, do hereby swear fealty to you and to yours, to your entire extended and many-peopled and many-creatured family, and to Clan Y
ellowrock. I swear to provide for, protect, care for, fight for, and die true-dead as you may need. I place all my needs second to yours and to theirs. I place my hunger second to yours and to theirs. I place all that I am and all that I can be and all that I can do at your disposal, into your hands, for the duration of the next nineteen years. I am yours in life and undeath and in true-death.”
Those danged tears gathered in my eyes again. But Eddie wasn’t done.
“I swear fealty to the Everharts and Truebloods, for as long as Jane Yellowrock is theirs and the Everharts and Truebloods are yours, one clan, placing my own well-being beneath your own. I promise that I shall protect your godchildren and their parents and their children’s children unto the laying down of my own undeath.”
Edmund smiled slightly. “Since I first spoke these words, I have become heir to Clan Pellissier. Jane Yellowrock has become the Dark Queen and I am primo to Jane Yellowrock. You no longer must protect me, my mistress. It is my job to protect you. Our lives are now intertwined. My blood is yours to spill.”
Leo stabbed Ed’s thumb. Red blood welled and ran down, fast, faster than most vamp blood would run, since their hearts didn’t beat much. I had been fed Edmund’s blood. I knew its taste, its power. I took his wrist and guided his thumb to my mouth, wondering for a single instant what outsiders would think of this ceremony, so nonhuman, so foreign to any culture of any group of humans, so . . . sacrificial.
Such blood drinking had guided the actions of Torquemada and the Inquisition for so many years, fueling fear and hatred and torture. And then Ed’s flesh was in my mouth, between my fangs, his blood on my tongue, his power open and moving, fast as a mountain stream. I swallowed and took in his magic. It was a river of might, raging but held in check, the way water thundered down a gorge, kept in its bed between massive boulders. Whitewater, powerful enough to destroy, but full of life. Held into its course and purpose by tall and mighty rock walls.
In his blood, I saw myself as Edmund first saw me.
On a night battlefield, bodies piled high behind the female warrior, flames leaping. Gunshots sounded in the distance. The reek of bowels that had opened as humans died, the particular odor of Mithran death, smoke, blood, and the stink of gunfire hung on the air. Koun was stepping from an ambulance, the broad-shouldered man wearing only a loincloth, a sword at his hip, and Celtic tattoos, dark blue and black. He was pale. He had lost blood. Or given it.
“I left my master’s fight to heal a human,” Koun snarled at the armed warrior. “You owe me a boon, woman.” The warrior was a woman. Black haired and golden skinned. Jane Yellowrock, the woman Pellissier had hired for some obscure reason. Koun pulled his sword.
The woman stepped back, going for a handgun at her side. But Koun was on her in an instant, moving Mithran-fast. His longblade sliced for her throat. Her eyes blazed golden. Edmund moved closer, to watch.
The blade cut into her throat just as she leaped. She dropped away, tucking into a shoulder roll. Officers shouted, “Put down the weapon! Police!” They fired and Koun stumbled before coming upright. He stood over the golden-eyed woman, his sword in both hands, the blade pointed at her belly. “A boon!” he demanded.
Edmund expected her to scream or cry or wail. She shouted, “What boon?”
“I am weakened, and the primo requires yet more blood. You will fight in my place.”
“Done,” the woman said.
Koun stepped back and the woman, Jane Yellowrock, rolled to her feet, the motion more fluid than a Mithran’s, as impossible as that seemed. “How many are there?” she demanded. “Who are they?” And then she fought. Edmund had followed, protecting her rear. Watching.
I swallowed again. Yanked Edmund’s hand away from me. From where he . . . kneeled at my feet. Which I freaking hated. I reached out and placed a fingertip beneath his chin and lifted his face to my half-lion face. “I swear loyalty to you,” I said.
“Yes, my master. And I to you.”
Mistress. Master. I had bound Ed long ago. I had sealed that binding now. I was a monster. I almost ran out of the room.
CHAPTER 10
My Fangs Were Bigger Than His
Leo said, “Eli Younger and Alex Younger.”
“I’m not sucking on their thumbs,” I said, just as the Kid said, “I’m not sucking on Jane’s thumb. It’s got hair on it.”
I snorted. Leo laughed aloud.
“Eli Younger. You have warred,” Leo stated. “You have fought and won and fought and lost. It is the way of the warrior. You have survived with honor, though the scars you carry are heavy, and you walked away from the battlefield. If needed, will you war beside Jane Yellowrock?” It was a formal question, with an equally formal response.
“If Jane asks me to war,” Eli said softly, his dark eyes moving from Leo to me, “I will war. If Jane is attacked, I will war. If Jane’s friends and those she has sworn loyalty to are attacked, I will war.”
“She calls you brother. Will you guard her and keep her clan safe? Will you make certain that she takes time to think and to plan, to strategize, to know all the weaknesses and strengths of her enemy?” Leo asked.
“I will.”
I frowned. Leo had just said I was foolish and stupid and needed a protector and teacher. I didn’t. I had done pretty good flying by the seat of my pants all this time. Then again, I was snarky to beings who were more powerful than I was, who had more magic, bigger teeth, and sharper claws. Maybe Leo was right.
I glared at Eli, who smiled back at me with the exact same expression I’d seen him use on a lost puppy in the street. He shook his head at whatever emotions had crossed my face. “Babe,” he said, in a long-suffering tone. In an entirely different tone, he said to Leo and me, “I will care for Jane Yellowrock. I will be her second when she is challenged or when she challenges another. I will keep her safe. I will be her friend and her brother. Being part of Jane’s family has made life worth living again, when battle had stolen all my joy and my belief in goodness.” Eli’s somber expression disappeared and he grinned widely. “Even when she has fangs and a cat nose and a pelt. Even when she insults the powerful and the mighty and steps all over their egos. And I will love her as sister of my heart.”
Sister of my heart was a formal vamp saying that meant adoption. My own heart melted into a puddle of goo and mush.
Alex said, “I’ll do the same. Except for the being-her-second part. I’d suck at that.”
I turned the sappy face on the Kid.
He shook his head. “Janie. Please. Don’t get all girly. It’ll ruin my image as a bon vivant, a lady-loving man-about-town.”
Eli snorted. I snorted. Alex looked as if he was fighting tears.
Leo said, “For ten years, until the clan can support itself, Clan Yellowrock will be paid an annual stipend to be negotiated with Alex Younger. Clan Yellowrock will be given a property for a clan home commensurate with Jane’s status as Enforcer to the Master of the City of New Orleans. Clan Yellowrock will be given property that is currently unused, or was never rebuilt after Katrina, to build upon and invest in. Clan Yellowrock is established.”
“I have a house,” I stated.
“You have a personal home,” Leo clarified, “which you may keep. But you need a clan home large enough for scions and the humans who will feed them.”
I thought about the house, the new rooms upstairs, the construction, and the crowded feeling, with people everywhere. How much worse if Leo stuck me with lots of fangheads and their dinners. It would be good to have fewer people in the house. “Ducky.”
“Ducky,” Leo repeated, as if sticking the word and its usage as an affirmative into some spot in his brain not currently occupied with important stuff. Maybe one labeled “Bizarre Modern Words.” “Choose a home from among the Mithran properties. One not currently occupied.” Leo gave me a wolfish grin. “And one not currently claimed or used by a clan.” r />
Leo had me figured out. I had been gonna take his clan home on the west side. I gave him back a grin, and currently my fangs were bigger than his. Take that, master suckhead. I said, “I’ll take the Rousseau house in the Garden District not far from Grégoire’s place.” If I was gonna get a house, then I wanted one with a pool.
“Oh yeah,” Alex breathed.
“Unlike Ming, who must rebuild her clan from the ashes of what once was, Yellowrock has options. You will choose your clan members from among my own and from among the clanless, those dispossessed by the war that saw the decimation of four clans. Are there those you would choose?”
“Koun,” I said, “if he’ll accept.” Koun didn’t like me, but he was a good fighter. And Leo had known I’d want certain people. He’d sent personal invitations to them. The sneak.
“Brute, the white werewolf. Kemnebi, the African black wereleopard.”
Leo’s left eyebrow lifted just a hair. “Will they accept?”
“Brute just got a new dog bed. He won’t care. Kemmie has no choice. He’s zeta to my beta. I claimed him so I’m stuck with him. Same with Rick LaFleur. Pain in the ass, but there you have it. I didn’t kill them when I should have and now I’m responsible for them. Twenty-twenty hindsight and all that.” Yeah. I’d had to claim my ex and his slave. That sucked.
Leo looked at me with the most peculiar expression, which I couldn’t interpret and so I ignored it and went on. “Evan Trueblood, Angelina Everhart Trueblood, Evan Trueblood Junior, Molly Everhart Trueblood, and the baby she carries.”
I thought Leo was gonna choke on his own fangs in surprise. Yeah. Suck on that one, MOC. I got a witch family willing to join my vampire clan. “Shiloh Everhart Stone and her friends and blood-servants if they are willing. I haven’t asked them. Tex.”
“Who?” Leo asked. I could tell he was off-kilter at the list of names. But it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been thinking about all this.
“Tex. The fanghead from Texas who has the guard dog. I don’t know his name.” I figured Tex could handle Brute if the wolf lost all humanity and became pure wolf.