by Faith Hunter
The fireball and sprinklers were ruining the wedding decorations. Oh crap. Jodi was gonna kill me.
“Did you get the Firestarter?” I asked.
“Negative,” Derek said, his tone like a curse.
Koun relaxed his grip on my arm, but he didn’t let go. More vamps gathered around us. All of them were armed with weapons, blades, and stakes. Except me. The most recent arrivals headed up the stairs into good firing positions to defend the entrances. But nothing was happening out back. Or anywhere. Except sprinkler water still soaking Jodi’s wedding preparations.
An alarm went off, and I spotted the location of the alarm on the plotting map. It was coming from out front. On the only screen currently dedicated to the front of HQ, I saw that the “tankworthy” gates were standing open. In the center of the circular parking area, visible only by its interior lights, was a suburban, still running. Doors open. Windows seriously tinted. A vamp-mobile.
Wrassler was in the small security nook, firing at someone I couldn’t see on the big, overhead screen. Wrassler. My friend. Who had nearly died once already.
Movement appeared in a corner of the screen. Two other screens showing video from cameras out front appeared in the top right of the screen. There were two dead bodies in the shrubbery on a low-light cam, not showing on infrared. Cool bodies meant downed vamps. Another vamp was inside, having passed through a small melted circle in the airlock glass. She was firing at Wrassler. He was pinned down in the foyer.
Battle chemicals flooded my body. I felt the shift start. “Not now!” I shouted at Beast.
Beast wrenched our arms from Koun’s and Tex’s. Faster than anyone expected. She ripped a nine-mil out of Koun’s hand. Rushed up the stairs. Koun, Tex, and my vamp protection unit pounded behind us.
My body began the shift. “Nononono!” I shouted.
I fought the shift. Racing the need away. Tamping it down.
At one entrance to the foyer, I rushed to the left behind one column, then darted back right, behind another, getting a full view of the foyer. Wrassler was down, just inside the security nook, lying on his side.
From behind the column, I fired three shots at the vamp pinning Wrassler down. As I fired, Koun leaped ahead, barely out of my line of fire, a sword flashing. He beheaded the vamp.
Tex on my six, I rushed to Wrassler. I was deaf from the weapons fire. I had no headset. But Tex shouted into his comms, “An asshat got in. Maybe more than one. Cowbird is among us.” We had enemies mixed with our loyal.
I fell beside Wrassler, checking him over, feeling for blood.
Wrassler pushed me away, his chest jerking in laughter. Loud enough for me to hear, he said, “Watch the handsy stuff, Janie. That part of me belongs to Jodi.”
“Sorry,” I said. He wasn’t shot. Relief flooded through me.
The shift rammed into me. Hard and fast as an avalanche. My hands popped and shook. My spine arched back. Snapped forward. I rolled on the floor in a writhing ball. Breathless. I threw back my head and screamed.
Thirty seconds later, I was half-form. Gagging. Retching. With a blinding headache and double vision. I pushed myself into a sitting position. My boots were off. Wrassler stood holding them. My clothes were ragged where I had clawed them, but the girly bits were covered.
He helped me up to my paw-feet, and I breathed hard, trying to throw off the shakes. From the tiny store of edibles kept in the nook, Wrassler offered me a Gatorade, and I drank it down. He opened a new box of PowerBars, and I tore three open, chomping down with puma fangs. As I ate and the pain eased, we studied the scene out front. There was a firefight taking place out there.
“Headset.”
Wrassler looked at the position of my ears, up high and furry, and chuckled. He pulled a headset out of a box on a shelf and adjusted its shape, adding two rubber bands and a bread tie to hold it on me. I put it on and let him adjust it, twisting the bread tie into my hair. There was another rubber band in the box and I put my hair back in a tail to keep it out of the way. I heard shots fired.
On the screen, two of our vamps went down. A familiar form appeared on the edge of the screen—Bruiser’s body mechanics. My heart clenched. He was pinned down.
Koun shouted, “Open the airlock doors, you whoremongering goat!” He was standing outside the security nook door shouting at Wrassler.
Wrassler had seen Bruiser too. He reached for the controls.
“Wait!” I banged open the weapons locker to our left, grabbed up a second nine-mil semiautomatic with an extra-large grip, and slammed home a full magazine marked in silver for silver-lead loads. Vamp killers. Stuffed two extra mags in my jeans pockets. I handed Wrassler a shotgun, which he placed beside his Taurus Judge. I gave him a nod and led the way to the front airlock.
“Now!” I said.
The airlock doors opened, though the outer one was heat-warped, and it stuck midway open.
Koun pressed down on my shoulder and ordered, “Stay here. You will not die.”
“If Bruiser dies, I’ll die,” I said, my voice like the doom of a funeral bell.
Koun cursed in a language probably long dead.
I raced through. Dropped off the porch into a corner, falling into the dark. I landed on top of a dead vamp. Stumbled off the body. Caught my balance. I was protected on two sides. A vamp raced out of the dark, raising a weapon at me. I shot her. Koun landed beside me and took her head.
Three vamps raced across the circular parking area from the vehicle. I knew one of them. From Asheville. From the winter war. He had attacked Eli in the snow. My brother had nearly died, hanging in a tree.
“Center,” I said, claiming my victim. I took him down. It took six shots and he wasn’t dead. Not yet. He struggled to his feet. Still kicking. That made him old. “No mercy,” I directed. The other two vamps were already down.
“My Queen,” Koun said. He raced out and beheaded the vamp.
Tex took the heads of the other two. I had three shots left and changed out the mag. Wasting shots to his chest had been stupid. I should have aimed two to the chest and one to the head. Shift-nerves.
Three humans raced out of the dark. Tex and Koun took them down.
Another vamp sprinted toward the open car. She was shot down. Thema darted out and took the vamp’s head.
And it was over.
I stood in the shadows, shaking again. I remembered the feel of the holy water on my fingers. Mercy was a tenet of my belief system. And I had just denied it. “Bruiser?” I murmured.
“He is well, My Queen,” Koun said.
To the side, I saw my Consort checking out the bodies of the dead. I heaved a relieved sigh that started at my toes.
Koun knelt at my feet, offering his sword. “I failed you. I allowed you to face danger.”
“Nobody failed me,” I said. I wasn’t sure what he wanted, but I had a feeling he felt he had been insufficient in some way about the battle we had just fought. I pulled on all the vamp lore I could think of, and nothing fit. I settled on, “Koun. Put that thing away. I suck at staying safe, and I . . . I order you to stop trying. You did good, dude. Get up.”
He stood and sheathed his sword, but he still looked unhappy. Tex joined us and set a dog on a leash free to scout the bushes in the dark. It made snuffling sounds and moved fast, excited at the hunt.
“Okay,” I said, tapping my mic. “Is the Firestarter gone?”
Over the headgear, I heard Voodoo say, “I have cam recording from outside the grounds of a human-temperature form climbing over the back fence. And we haven’t had more fireballs.”
Meaning yes, she was probably gone. The Onorios, vamps, and their humans had brought war on the Dark Queen, just as I had expected after seeing Monique’s bloody-hull soul home.
It wasn’t the first time we had more than one group after us, but the makeup of this group was different. I
pulled on everything Leo had ever taught me by example and said into the headgear, “Our vampire enemies are coordinating with the Firestarter. We are on lockdown until further notice.” The dog barked, a sharp vicious sound. Tex reached to pull his weapon. Koun whirled, sword shushing out of the scabbard. A vamp rose out of the foliage. Aimed a weapon at me. Fired a three burst.
I felt the rounds hit me so fast it was like one massive punch. The vamp fell. I looked down. “Well, that sucks donkey toes.”
Bruiser raced toward me.
To Koun I said, “Why can’t this ever be easy?”
And I fell. Lying facedown on the mulch, I thought, Why am I not shifting? I should shift. I should change shape and live. Instead I was dying. Weird, I thought, I’ve died before. And I’ve never seen heaven like Sabina did. Why vamps and not me?
* * *
* * *
I woke, eyes closed, my face buried in pillows, sheets over me, topped by an electric blanket. It was Leo’s bed. I knew it was his because it still smelled of pepper and papyrus and blood and sex. I also smelled Bruiser and Eli and Koun and Tex. Especially those last two, because they were cradling me, spooning me, one on each side. I was no longer in my clothes, so . . . what the actual . . . ?
“Here. Bleed on her here. It looks as if the round fragmented. She may need surgery to get them all out.”
No, I said. Except nothing came out.
I felt Bruiser’s hands on my head, gripping me. A weird power was shoved into me. It was green and smelled of roses and catnip. It was prickly and yet soft, like coarse wool and angora. It was a malleable yet demanding buzz of electric-hot-and-cold at once. Heavy and lethargic.
I took a breath. My lungs felt weird.
“She’s breathing,” Koun said. “Cut me again. Jane, drink.”
I tried again to say no, but tepid blood was filling my mouth. It was easier to swallow than to argue. Koun’s blood tasted different from any other vamp blood I had drunk, though I couldn’t say why, maybe . . . meatier? As if his blood had more red cells in it than other vamps?
Beast rose in me, eyes glowing. Good vampire blood. Beast likes Koun-blood.
“I need to feed,” Koun said.
“Give her mine,” Tex said.
They rolled me over, and Tex’s blood filled my mouth.
Beast likes good vampire blood. More. Beast hungers.
I had changed shape in the foyer. Right. I needed more calories than the PowerBars and electrolyte drink to replace the energy use, and Beast took every opportunity to drink vamp blood. Bruiser clasped my head tighter. There was a desperation in his grasp. More power pushed through me. It was uncomfortable, too hot, too rosy. Too something. And then I remembered. I was still in half-form. I hadn’t shifted to Beast or back to human. I hadn’t healed. I should have shifted. And didn’t. I died. Or near enough to not count. Bruiser’s worst nightmare. And they had brought me back. My shifting was out of control. I had hoped this worst-case scenario wouldn’t be true, but it was. I had been mortally wounded, and I hadn’t shifted. I was truly a danger to everyone around me because keeping me safe just got a lot harder. If I was stupid and ran into battle again, I’d get my own people killed while they tried to protect me. And I had ordered Koun to stand down. Crap.
“This is why we need an Infermieri,” Koun said, his tone icy and furious. “With Jane, we need a dozen.”
My body felt strange. Cold.
But I remembered the attackers. I got a hand up and pushed at Tex’s wrist. Swallowed the last of the blood in my mouth. Gasping, I told Bruiser who they were.
“I know,” he said, his voice suffused with fear and rage. I had died. Bruiser was ticked. Really, really ticked.
Koun said, “My Queen. We killed them all but one. From him, we received a challenge from Melker’s heir. It was a Sangre Duello request to challenge for Blood Master of Clan Yellowrock and Master of the City of New Orleans.”
Tex shoved his wrist to me. I took more blood. My old self going gack at the thought. My new self knowing I needed it.
“This heir is a much worse creature than Melker,” Koun said.
I made a rolling gesture with two fingers to keep him talking.
“Melker’s heir’s name is Shaun MacLaughlinn,” Koun said. “I have accepted the challenge for you, in your name. The monster is mine to fight,” his voice grated. “You will accede to me in this. My Queen.”
I had a feeling the last two words were added as an afterthought to make it less of an order. Koun was blaming himself that I got shot.
Shaun MacLaughlinn. I knew that name. I poked into my memory as I drank. Bruiser pushed power into me.
As I drank and healed, I remembered who the man, the vamp, was. Shaun MacLaughlinn was the anamchara of Dominique, who had been heir to Grégoire until she was sentenced to burn to death on a beach as the sun rose. Anamchara meant mind-bound, sometimes soul-bound, though I was pretty sure now that vamps didn’t have souls. Dominique had died on the beach at the Sangre Duello at dawn. Her death should have broken Shaun’s mind, leaving him a gibbering vegetable. Instead, like a few others I knew about, the anamchara Shaun had survived and joined the forces who fought against Dominique’s killers. Us.
And Shaun had been in one of Sabina’s visions. Unlike the others who had survived the breaking of a mind-bond, Shaun had looked sane. That meant Shaun was vastly stronger than anyone had ever thought.
And it came clear. Shaun might have been one of the faces I had glimpsed in Monique’s soul home. Well, crap.
* * *
* * *
I was curled on Leo’s bed, in Leo’s old bedroom in HQ, awake, mostly healed, and surrounded by my very irate subjects. I was not looking at any of them, in fact, looking at everything but them. But I could smell the stink of their anger on the air, and the body language was pretty clear.
I was still naked, covered in dried blood that cracked through my pelt when I moved. Some of the blood was mine. At least the bloody sheets had been taken away, and fresh clean cotton ones had been brought in and tucked beneath me, around me. The electric blanket was wonderful. And no one was touching me. That felt wonderful right now too.
For a vamp bedroom, it was stark—just the bed, a small sofa, three cute chairs, small tables, a two-person eating area in the corner, and bookshelves. Rugs were everywhere, though a different style from Bruiser’s. Leo’s were oriental, with a sheen only silk could give. I could see an en suite and a closet through the two open doors, and the clothes in the closet were mine. I was guessing that I now had a room at HQ.
I also guessed that I needed to apologize. Was a queen supposed to apologize? If I acted like a queen now to keep from apologizing, did that mean I had to always act like a queen? Did I have to be a queen twenty-four-seven, or was it something I could do off and on?
To keep from having to deal with the stink of ticked off humans, vamps, and Onorio, I said, “I want current info on Shaun MacLaughlinn. Someone send for Alex.”
“We have done so, My Queen,” Koun said. His words didn’t say stupid and horrible queen, but his tone did. “He is in the building.”
“ETA thirty seconds,” Eli said, equally harsh.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “Thank you.”
A moment later, Alex bopped into the room. He was no longer a kid but an adult, and fully grown, though still gangly. I hadn’t raised him, but I was inordinately proud of the man he had become. He stepped inside the door, stopped, and looked around. “You really fuuu . . . screwed up this time,” he said to me.
“She raced into the fight without armor, without proper protection. And. She. Died,” Eli bit the words off.
“Not dead dead, or I wouldn’t be breathing,” I whispered, remembering the sight of Bruiser out in the thick of things. Pinned down.
“And you didn’t shift when you died,” Alex said, recent terror in his voic
e. Terror for me, nearly dying. He continued, his voice rough, “We’ve been telling you this could happen, and you still had to lead from the front. Idiot.” His hand touched my foot through the blankets as if to reassure himself I was really there. “We had Bruiser covered. Backup was coming from the side of the house. And you had to jump in.”
“Yeah,” I said, fully ashamed. “Um, sorry, everyone. It won’t happen again.” I hoped. Beast had her own ideas sometimes.
“Well, at least we know what happens now.” Alex shoved a vamp over and plopped his backside on the mattress with me. Exhaustion in every cell, I pulled the sheets and blankets up over me tighter as he opened three laptops and put three different screens up.
“Screen one,” he indicated the screen to his far left, “is the bloodline. Grégoire was, and still is, Blood Master to Clan Arceneau. When he took off to fight in Europe for the DQ, Dominique, Grégoire’s heir, took over running Arceneau things here in NOLA. Shaun MacLaughlinn was Dominique’s anamchara. Dominique did a big-bad no-no at the Sangre Duello and was punished by burning to death in the sun. Shaun should have died. Weaker vamps either die or go insane, like some you knew. Instead he survived and began challenging European vamps who had come here. He managed to cobble together a long list of powerful followers and fought his way up the ranks to a position as Legolas slash Melker’s heir.” Alex looked at me. “Shaun knew everyone in NOLA. Knew all about the changes in HQ and our protocols. He created a huge clan of powerful, disaffected, dissociated, unhappy vamps from the U.S. and Europe.”
And he was also mind-bound in Monique’s slave ship soul home. Probably Dominique had been too. Dang. I hadn’t seen that possibility. “What helped him to overcome the mind-break?” I asked.
“I think he came into control of an old amulet,” Alex said, pointing to the screen in the middle. “This one.”
On the center of the screen was an arm band in the shape of a snake, the kind that’s worn on the upper arm. I had seen that kind of amulet before. In fact, I had two similar to it, though mine now contained only a trace of power. This one . . . this one had several shimmery spots trailing up its back. Just like the shimmery spots on the flying lizard amulet I had gotten when Sabina pulled me underwater.
