by Faith Hunter
The hard-muscled man jerked upright, his shoulders going back in the way that only time in the military can produce. “Yes, ma’am. On it.”
I let out an Eli-worthy smile. “And, people. Despite the tongue-lashing, thank you.” With no further words, I picked up the Coke and a headset that would allow me to interact with security and made my way to the elevator, the doors closing behind me, leaving me in stale, frigid air that chilled my sweat-damp body. It wasn’t really cold. I knew that. But my body didn’t, not yet. I shivered hard and finished off the Coke, leaving the empty in the elevator. Housekeeping would put it in the recyclables.
I stared into the elevator door’s reflective, polished surface. I didn’t normally stare at myself in an elevator, or anywhere for that matter, but this time I got a good look. I hadn’t rebraided my hair and it was sticking out everywhere. I had dark circles under my eyes, and frown lines pulled down on my face. I looked as peevish as I felt. Peevish was a good word, combining exhausted and sleepy and running on fumes, with a side order of irritation, anger, and annoyance. I smoothed my wild hair, my only concession to neatness.
My cell dinged with a text that said, The SoD was on fire when Brute and he fought. The text was from Edmund and it answered my question, though the data did nothing for me. Most info in an investigation actually provided nothing and ended up as loose threads of information that never went anywhere.
I stepped out on the main floor and dialed Del, Leo’s primo. She was on vamp time and I surely woke her up, though she sounded perfectly alert and composed when she answered. I interrupted her pleasantries with, “I was just shot at in front of HQ. I need Leo. Get his butt out of bed and into his office, now.” Face growing tight, jaw knotted, I ended the call and took the stairs to Leo’s office, not wondering why people were moving out of my way. I could smell my own anger.
Leo’s office was locked, a problem I remedied with a shoulder to the door, knocking the dead-latch plunger and the latch bolt free from the strike plate. Stupid finger latch. I’d been putting off changing out the cheap lock for one of the new models that scanned handprints, knowing that Leo would gripe about not being able to get into his office easily. Maybe the broken lock would change his mind.
I stood in front of Leo’s desk and slammed the pertinent papers down on top, bending forward, supporting myself on one fist as I spread them for view. A tapestry moved and Leo entered his office. He was wearing the yoga pants and knit top ensemble and he looked cool, untouchable, and every inch a king. An angry king.
He moved with that inhuman grace and took his chair, deliberately placing himself below me in a gesture that clearly said he didn’t need bogus gestures of height to be more important than me. And that he wasn’t the least bit afraid of me.
My finger stabbed the deed. “Why didn’t you tell me Joses Bar-Judas, aka Joseph Santana, aka Jesreal St. Anna, once owned this property?”
“I didn’t know, Jane Yellowrock, who is no longer my Enforcer,” Leo said softly. “Had I known, I would have so informed you.”
Which took all the furious wind out of my sails and left me tired and deflated.
“My uncle and Bethany brought the dying Son of Darkness here. They knew that the European Mithrans would hold us all responsible if they found out what had happened and that we had their leader prisoner. They would cast us into the day for the actions that resulted in his injury and imprisonment.” Leo looked down to his hands and back to me, his face so very human and pensive. It was either a very real and human moment or he was playing me. I couldn’t tell which. “But back then,” he said, holding my eyes, “so long ago, and yet only yesterday, there were ways to hide many things that are much harder to hide today with the electronic media and digital cameras and all the changes.”
I decided to change tactics. “Where did you get the bracelet that matches the one Adrianna wore?”
“My uncle had it in his possession when he died. I have seen no reason to return an object that sings with power to a blood-sworn scion who is untrue and seeks my death. And who I might yet use to my own ends.”
Smart move, I thought. “Why are you answering my questions?”
Leo let a small smile slip free. “Because, while you are technically and contractually released from my service, you remain my Enforcer. I know this. You know this. Though you are currently free of the obligations attendant to that office, and though I have charged you with an unrelated task, you are loyal, Jane Yellowrock, to my people, and to me.”
I frowned. I was?
“Any information that I have is yours to know, insofar as it pertains to the task at hand.”
I scowled at him, using my ankle to hook the stool on rollers that was half beneath the desk, pulled it out, and sat, putting us on a level. “So why didn’t you tell me that?”
“You did not ask. I did not think to offer. There is much that happened so long ago, and that I have forgotten, and that comes back to me often in small flashes and rarely in great shocks of memory.”
Leo was being nice. Honest. Charming. Dang it. “Sometimes you really get under my skin, like a chigger or an embedded tick—which is an appropriate analogy.”
“You insult when you desire a favor. Odd behavior.”
“I thought I was entertaining.”
Leo smiled. “I am tired. I have been informed that you were shot at while attempting to gain entry here. Are you well? I do not smell blood.”
My anger abruptly evaporated. I hated it when Leo was the calm, rational one. “I’m okay,” I said on a sigh and closed my eyes, scrubbing my face with both hands. “I was driving one of your armored vehicles. Now I’m turning it over to NOPD and I’ve requested another be made ready. Yes. I was shot at. I’m fine.”
“Yes. You are,” he said, a soft, almost compassionate note in his voice.
With my eyes still closed, I smiled. Only Leo could be so totally disarming. But I didn’t say it aloud, shaking my head, instead.
Leo said, “The local police did not capture your assailant, but they did find fingerprints at the windowsill from which the shots were fired. If they are on record, there will be an arrest.”
“Which will just tick off the populace even more.”
“Indeed. What do you want, my Enforcer who is not?” he asked.
“I need access to the properties owned by the SoD, especially this one.” I opened my eyes and tapped the paperwork. “Every room, every nook and cranny. And I need any magical item in your possession that will put out the fire of the Blood Cross. I hooked Santana and I think he’s still burning.”
Leo’s smile widened. “I may die for your foolishness, but I will die truly entertained.”
“You happiness is what I live for, Your Great and Mighty Fangy-ness.”
“I could only wish that were true.”
I decided not to reply to that. “Magical weapons? Something that will put out the fire of the Blood Cross?”
“I have nothing that will douse the fire of the Mithrans’ creation. But what I have you may have.” Leo stood and walked to the tapestry that had shifted when he entered his office. I wasn’t invited, but I followed him anyway, through the previously hidden passageway into the next room, the one with the formerly secret elevator. A lot of Leo’s secrets had come to light since he met me, and now I learned another. He stood in front of a bookcase, wearing his skintight yoga clothes—which showed way more of him than I needed to see, though the vision of a perpetually young, perpetually toned and fit man was no eyesore—and started removing books and putting them back. It reminded me of the trope movie scene where someone removes a book and the bookcase swings open, but was much more complicated.
After a series of moves that might have nothing to do with opening the case, and might have been nothing more than sleight of hand, he pressed a panel in the back of the bookcase and I heard a click. Leo replaced all the books before he pulled on the case, which took some leverage and upper-body strength. The muscles of his shoulders, back, and b
uttocks stood out against the stretchy fabric. I had never looked at Leo’s backside in skintight knit pants before and the view was mighty nice. Again—something I would never tell him, and would only even think when I was sleep deprived and under stress.
Rusty hinges and warped wood screeched as the case opened. Inside was another safe, a twin of the one on sub-four. Leo opened it with little spins and clicks, and the thick door swung open to reveal five compartments. From the upper-left compartment he removed three pocket watches and held them out to me. “You have several at your disposal,” he said. “It takes twelve to activate a witch circle, and until recently—when Adrianna used many to activate the spell to free Santana—we had enough between us.”
I took the watches, letting the chains drape over my fist. Carefully, I didn’t let my expression change because there was no way that Leo should know how many watches I had in my possession. And I was not gonna let him have the pleasure of knowing that he’d just thrown me. Fortunately, the MOC wasn’t looking at me but at the watches in my hand.
“Since the ones that once hung on Joses were destroyed by my enemies, we are several short. This is all the priestesses had left of the iron spike.”
The iron spike of the hill of Golgotha, the spike that would allow the bearer to control all vamps. Right. The fabled weapon of mass destruction, the weapon that was said to have come to the Americas in the care of vamps fleeing the Inquisition. The one thing that would allow vamps to be controlled. Or so they said. Who really knew what it did? So far as I had been able to determine, it had never been used against vamps. All we really knew was that when twelve of the pocket watches were placed in a witch circle, one that forced witches into a full-coven working, it did as intended. Of course, it killed the witches it used, but vamps would never worry about the deaths of nonvamps.
“Question. Why didn’t you give these to me the morning Santana got away?”
Leo turned back to the safe and began to close it up. He said, “I did not have them the morning that the Son of Darkness was set free. I requested them from the priestesses and they were delivered after dawn today via human courier.
“Sabina has been studying. According to what she has discovered, you must take out the discs that were smelted from the spike,” he said, a safe door shutting with finality. “Shape them into any device with an edge or point. She believes that cutting or pricking one of us with the iron will place a Mithran into some form of suspended animation. Perhaps even Joses Bar-Judas. Or perhaps it will kill him. Or perhaps it will do nothing. It is only a theory. It has never been tested.”
I remembered Sabina and Bethany in the library, drinking tea. Researching? “Why are you giving me this?”
“I give it to you because you once told me that the citizens of New Orleans would attack this Council House and drag us into the light of day. My Enfor— My Jane was shot at upon entering the heart of my domain. I believe you now.” His back still to me, Leo finished closing up the safe. His head was bowed as he spoke, one knee on the floor, his hair falling over his face. There was something regal about his position, and something broken as well. “I was advised to not give it to you, because no matter your loyalty to me, I know that one day you may try to bring me to the sun. Giving you weapons that would help you in that task may be foolish, even with the Son of Darkness insane and drinking down the populace of my city.” Leo breathed a soft sound of laughter. “Again, you being shot at changes many things.”
He twisted his body and looked at me over his shoulder, his eyes fathomless black, like a moonless night over a restless sea. “The horde at my gates changes many things. It is as though I live through the revolution all over again, and I fear for my head upon my shoulders. I fear for my people.
“I do not know if the weapon you will devise will work, my Jane. I do not know what it will do at all. But according to Sabina, the outclan priestess, without the full iron spike of the Place of the Skull, it is our last chance to stop the Son of Darkness, yet keep him alive for our use. Or at least in some semblance of undeath, a hostage that might avert a war. And no. She did not tell me of this possible use until after the Sun of Darkness escaped or I would have tried it on him myself.”
I figured the SoD in suspended animation would have been way easier to control than the SoD just crucified and hanging on a wall. Wisely, I didn’t say it aloud. Instead I said softly, “Thank you.”
Leo rewarded that with a regal tilt of his head.
* * *
I was halfway down the stairs from Leo’s office when I heard my name called. I turned and stopped, mostly in surprise. It was Raisin, though I called her that only under my breath, and never where she might hear. Her real name was Ernestine, the human blood-servant CPA who handled the Mithrans’ corporate finances, wrote all the checks, and upon occasion reamed me a new one for costing the fangheads money. And I had never, not once, seen her outside her nook of an office with its huge black safe.
I wondered if she knew about the deeds, financial certificates, gold, and gems in Leo’s safes and decided instantly that she couldn’t possibly know, because if she did, they’d be in her safe, where she could keep an eye on the fortune. “Can I help you?” I asked.
“Yes, Miss Yellowrock, you may,” she said, tottering toward me, using a cane to support her right leg. Raisin had gotten her secret name because she looked like dried fruit, wrinkled, shriveled, and ancient, but well preserved—made that way on vamp blood for who knew how many decades. “I wonder if you would do me the honor of a favor?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I fidgeted as she caught up with me. I had things to do, vamps to track.
“Would you please be so kind as to look in on Acton House for me? I received the most bizarre telephone call from Pinkie this morning, and now she doesn’t answer. And she never goes out. Agoraphobia, don’t you know.”
I didn’t know, but I didn’t like the sound of Pinkie not answering. “What did she say?”
“She said, ‘It is lovely to have the old ways back.’ Just that. And then she disconnected.”
A frisson of premonition raced through me. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll check on her.”
The crowd out front had been sent packing, but I still took the back way out of vamp HQ, bringing with me the deeds to land in all the names that Santana had used to buy property, not that I thought we were going to find Santana at any of the houses, but who knew? They might come in handy.
On my way over to Acton House, I called Bruiser and then dialed the house. Eli answered on the first ring. “You left without notifying us. Someone shot at you.” His voice was toneless, totally without inflection, the way he sounded when he was mad.
“Yeah. I suck. Get weapons and meet me at the boardinghouse. Bring whatever’s left of the holy water. We might have found Santana.”
“And are we going to bring him in to Leo?”
“Or kill his ass. Whichever works.”
“Hooah.” The connection ended.
CHAPTER 23
Ashes and Shattered Bones
We reached Acton House, the old vamp boardinghouse, at about the same time, Bruiser, Eli, and I, Eli driving his old SUV. I got out, scanning the place, opening the two passenger doors for partial protection.
Bruiser emerged from the icy interior of the armored car, decked out in military-style pants, body armor, weapons, and a face harder than stone. His expression said, I will kick your butt. Come on. Make my day, without the need for words of any kind. Dirty Harry, times two.
Eli slammed his SUV door and tossed me a body-armor vest. To Bruiser he said, “Your driver is taking my vehicle back to HQ. No one drives an unarmored car until this is settled.”
“Not even then,” Bruiser said. “Change in protocol per Leo.”
Eli nodded to the house and spoke to us both. “You think he’s inside?”
“It would be too easy,” I said. “Find him asleep, stake him, and cut out his heart? All because he went back to lair at his old haunting grounds? Nah. Too ea
sy.”
We gathered in the semiprotection of my open doors, the house only feet away, the breeze wet and swirling, as if rain was on the way. I shrugged into the vest and slapped the Velcro closed, pulled the nine mil, checked the weapon, holstered it in the shoulder rig, and let Eli help me into it. I opened my mouth to speak and caught the scent of death. The words died in my mouth and I inhaled in a soft scree of sound. Eli pulled weapons, offering me cover. “Something dead. Someone,” I said.
Bruiser whipped his head to the house. “From inside,” he said.
I didn’t ask how he could smell as well as I could. He was Onorio. There was a mountain of stuff I didn’t know about him yet.
Bruiser took point and Eli fell in behind me, keeping me in the middle. Keeping me safe. I might have objected to the positioning, but it wasn’t sexism. At the moment, they had way better toys than I did. My nine mil in a two-handed grip, I scanned the area, the house, the high places where a shooter might hide.
The solid-wood front door was closed but unlocked, the knob turning easily in Bruiser’s fist. He took the left side of the door, Eli the right. I stood out of the way, feeling useless with my single nine mil and no backup mags. The smell of death was coming through the edges of the mail slot on the artificial, air-conditioned breeze. Bruiser and Eli met gazes and Bruiser shoved the door open. The two men rushed inside, split up, and stopped. Eli motioned me in.
Pinkie was sprawled on the horsehair sofa, her suit jacket folded neatly beside her. It was burgundy today, her blouse a pale pink, like her name. The pearl buttons of her shirt had been unbuttoned, the silk pushed aside, now lying curved around her rib cage, which rose high and rounded, with small, tight breasts lying far to the sides, easily visible beneath the paler pink, child-sized camisole. The exhaustion that had been dogging me welled up inside like magma in a volcano. The breath I took was jagged and harsh.
Her lipstick wasn’t smudged. She was smiling. Pinkie looked almost peaceful. Or as peaceful as a human can look without a throat. One shoulder and the side of her face had been burned to the bone. Her dyed pink hair had been singed and the stink still tainted the air along with the stink of bowels released in death, the slightly sweet smell of blood going bad, and the overriding reek of burning vamp. And still Pinkie’s expression was relaxed. Almost happy. A lot like most of the faces of the fifty-two people in the kill bar.
