by Faith Hunter
Deep inside, Beast leaped to her feet and stared out at the world. It was just my name, but the way he said it sent tremors through her, and therefore through me, that settled into my belly with a liquid heat. Beast started to purr with delight. Which was all so very, very unfair. Because of her, my body was a traitor to the man who had handed me over for the violation of forced feeding and binding. I needed to hate him with a white-hot passion, but Beast’s binding to Leo also made her want Bruiser even more. My life was so horribly messed up.
“How are you?” he asked.
I shoved down on Beast’s autonomous reaction and managed to sound businesslike. “Bruiser. I’m good.” No thanks to you, I thought.
“I certainly expect so.”
I ignored that. “I need help.” He took a slow breath and I shook my head, saying flatly, “Not that kind of help.”
“Reading my mind, little sweetheart?” Bruiser was one of few men who could reasonably call me little; he was six-four to my six feet even.
“Not psychic, Bruiser. And it’s business, not personal.”
“If the help is for Hieronymus, Leo has forbid me to help you unless you give me excellent reasons. Do you wish to barter for my services?” He sounded so British at times like this, when he was flirting, or when he was angry.
“No.” I knew what Bruiser would barter for, and my bedroom services were not going to be used as payment, no matter how much fun Beast thought that might be. “I have a missing octogenarian human female, last see near Silandre’s Saloon. She’s vampire hunting.”
“Silandre . . . Silandre. Oh. Yes,” he said as the name found its place in his memory and the relationships, political and romantic, sorted themselves out in his brain. “Hmmm.” His tone changed, sounding uneasy. I let him think about it all for a moment as Eli studied the streets, keeping watch. “If this grandmother has staked Silandre,” he said, “there will be political repercussions. But if the grandmother is disappeared or drained,” he said, “that would reflect badly on Hieronymus and therefore eventually on Leo. So as the MOC’s primo, it behooves me to assist, even against his express command. You are tricky, Little Janie.”
“I’m learning.”
“I will make a call and see if I can provide you with access.”
“Thanks. And while you’re at it, Big H and about twenty of his scions have the vamp plague. I’m going to give them treatment.”
The light-and-playful tone disappeared. “Leo will not be pleased.”
“He pays me to protect him from dangers, and the way I see it, part of that includes danger to his reputation and his public image. An image that will suffer if vamps in his territories start spreading the plague. So tell him I said to get off his blood-sucking ass and negotiate a parley with Hieronymus.” I started to hang up, but stopped midthumb and said, “We’ll be at Silandre’s Saloon in ten minutes.” Then I disconnected the call, and heard Eli’s quiet laughter.
“When are you going to give the guy a break,” he asked, and spoiled it by adding, “and jump in the sack with him?”
The Kid sniggered into the headset.
Men. I didn’t answer, and Eli handed me his cell with pics of our prey displayed, as he eased back into traffic and down the hill.
The bluff on which Natchez sat was huge, and the road zigged and zagged and curled and twisted and dropped—like something Dr. Seuss might have imagined in a book titled The Cat in the Hat Drinks Blood. It was definitely interesting. While atop the bluff everything was high-class, the preserved remnants of plantation owners’ slave-labor past, while along the drop to the Mississippi it was something else entirely. Not that it wasn’t old—a lot of it was really old—but it was a mishmash of styles and colors and building materials, many unrestored, unpainted, and unrefinished, dives that hadn’t seen a hammer or nail or paintbrush in a hundred years sat right next to cute, well-maintained cottages, some with dream catchers hanging in windows or pentagrams and witch circles in backyards, and even stained-glass windows rather than clear glass. Bare dirt yards and sullen, chained dogs were separated from tiny lush gardens by picket fences, gardens that should have been winter gray but were brilliant with winter flowers, demonstrating the hand of an earth witch with her classical green thumb. Saloons were five feet from old-fashioned banks. A white-painted chapel with a tall, slender steeple was across the street from what looked like a yurt with a hand-painted sign advertising PALM READING and YOUR FUTURE READ BY A DIVINER, with a note to bring your own chicken or goat, presumably for sacrifice. My house mother would have had apoplexy. Beast was having a ball with the scents, and I stuck my head out the window to give her better access.
Blood and vamp—lots of vamp scents—and witch and human and water, water everywhere. Meat cooking and the smell of milk, goats, dogs, and house cats, mold and flowers and growing things.
Eli pulled past a white-painted, narrow, shotgun-style house and idled the SUV while we studied the facade through the back window. “You’re kidding, right?” I asked. Even in the uncertain light, the building was not what I’d have thought a vamp saloon would look like. The house had dark fuchsia shutters and elaborate fuchsia gingerbread at every eave and all over the tiny front porch. A pink front door, with a brass doorknob and knocker, was centered on the porch, and a pink wreath with pink bows hung in the middle of it. The yard was planted with pink-flowering sasanqua bushes. And, honest to God, there were a dozen plastic pink flamingos in the minuscule patch of grass.
“This is supposed to be a saloon, and the vamp is supposed to be a badass?” Eli deadpanned.
“The pink is camouflage?”
We both snorted. The bright and innocent color scheme could also mean that Silandre’s mental state had shifted, a polite way of suggesting that she was no longer completely sane. But there were two ATVs pulled to the side of the narrow road, and in one was a leather Gucci bag, metal buckles reflecting the moonlight. The sight made my mouth tighten in worry.
The building was three times as deep as it was wide, maybe more, with a back corner hanging high over the water, propped on stilts that looked new, as if the Mississippi had taken out the building’s foundation in some flood and it had been replaced. It didn’t look very reliable, more like a stiff breeze or a good rain could take it down.
“Typical Jane Yellowrock entrance?” Eli said. At my questioning glance he said, “Seat of our pants, weapons ready, shoot anything fanged that moves?”
“If he gives us a go-ahead, yeah. That.” My phone vibrated, and it was Bruiser. I opened it and said, “Jane.”
“You are difficult,” Leo said, using the captivating tone they employ when they go after free-roaming prey. “Most cats are.”
Beast sat up and stared out through my eyes at the cell. I pulled my gaze back to the house as a light came on inside. “I do try,” I said.
“My George has explained what you are doing and why, and though you deserve punishment for going beyond my wishes, I will allow you the latitude to pursue this in your own way. For now. I approve your desire to approach Silandre and deal with whatever events may be transpiring—and their ramifications. My George will call Hieronymus’ primo and inform him of my decision.”
“Thanks,” I closed the cell and put it in a pocket, “for letting me take the heat.”
“Problems in blood-drinking paradise?” Eli asked.
“Always. We have access to Silandre,” I said. “Let’s go before the fanged monster changes his mind and gives her a call with orders to kill us instead.”
“You like to yank his chain too,” Eli said, holding up his cell phone so I could see the photos. “One redheaded beauty coming up.” Silandre was a classically beautiful woman with scarlet hair, according to the photo on her driver’s license, sent by Alex. Which was just too weird—vamps with driver’s licenses.
Together we exited the SUV and moved quickly to the front door of Silandre’s. Eli had his little deadly toy in the crook of one arm, but since this was ostensibly a visit by Leo’s
Enforcer, I left my weapons holstered, going for rep, street cred, and moxie over bullets. I didn’t bother to use the knocker; just turned the knob and entered. It wasn’t locked.
Knickknacks met my eyes everywhere I looked, kitsch down the ages, salt and pepper shakers, boats in bottles, and hundreds of dolls, most of them the collector’s porcelain type about eighteen inches tall, wearing hoop skirts or evening gowns, with real hair and perfect painted faces. And fangs. Collector’s dolls with fangs. I just shook my head.
There were Tiffany lamps, tassels, rocking chairs, piles of silk pillows, fanged stuffed animals, and everything had price tags hanging on them. Silandre’s Saloon had been converted into Silandre’s Shoppe. The smells were nearly overwhelming: scented candles, dried herbs, potpourri, popcorn, vodka, and blood. The dried herbs were mixed vamp; the blood was human. I tensed, hearing a gurgle from ahead in the depths of the shop. No one was screaming, no one was fighting; whatever was happening was obscured and muted by all the stuff in the building.
The room was maybe eighteen feet wide—the width of the house—with narrow windows down each side in rows like in a church. From what I could see, which wasn’t much, the building was at least sixty feet long. Shotgun style for real. From somewhere ahead, a phone rang with an old-fashioned, tinny sound. The gurgling got louder and took on a gasping rasp.
I pulled two ash stakes and moved down the aisles between all the stuff. I could immobilize with ash, keeping the vamp alive for questioning. Or whatever. Or I used to be able to do that, before vamps changed into the things we’d fought in the trees. And me holding only ash. Rethinking, I replaced the stakes with vamp-killers. With Eli covering my back, I stepped into the second room. This room was painted in the same garish pink as the trim on the house and it was full of handmade quilts hanging everywhere, in every kind of fabric: silks, satins, wools, even flannel, many in what were probably traditional patterns, others in modern scenic patterns—whales and dolphins cavorted next to angels and trees of life and pentagrams. This room was short, with an old-fashioned fridge and stove in one corner and a closed door in the other marked RESTROOM, in hot pink, of course.
The gurgler just ahead started to moan, a rhythmic, pained sound, and the scent of human fear added to the stench riding over the perfumed air. My cell buzzed. I ignored it and sped ahead, into the last room. I took in the details fast.
It was lit with candles on every surface and was decorated in white and pink, with a Victorian four-poster in the middle of the floor space. The linens were thrown back and mussed, as if it had been used recently, but the bed was empty. There were silk and tasseled ottomans and dainty chairs and more dolls on shelves. The windows were covered with modern, sunlight-blocking shutters, but the back door was open, letting in the night and the sound of the Mississippi skirling past. Against the back wall of the feminine bedroom, beside the propped door, two humans stood, each with black bags over their heads, hands behind their backs, as if they were lined up for a firing squad. Judging by the clothes and stature, the one on the left was Esmee.
Four vamps stood at parade rest, two on either side of the humans, all male, wearing powdered wigs and those weird clothes they wore way back when, with stockings and big buckles on platform shoes, and padded shorts. Vamped out, with blacker-than-black eyes and fangs just a bit over an inch long, which identified them as young vamps, easy to kill.
The details merged into a deadly whole. I was already moving as I took in the final particulars and bloody minutiae.
On a chaise longue lay a female vamp wearing a scarlet dress the exact shade of her hair and of the blood that smeared her red lips. In her lap was a human, blood drunk, his head lolling, his camo fatigues open to the waist, exposing his hairy belly and unshaven neck and face. Blood poured in a steady stream from his neck, which had to be deliberate. Vamp saliva was both healing and a constrictor, causing blood vessels to close and skin to tighten, stopping bleeding almost as soon as a vamp withdrew her fangs. The human was breathing, but his pulse, visible from the way his head and neck were extended, was too rapid, and he was pale. She had taken too much, too fast. The vamp’s head snapped up and she met my gaze.
As my arm swung back, the blade catching the candlelight, I recognized Silandre from her photo, her hair the color of a sunset before a storm, eyes the blue of hyacinths. In her photograph, her skin had been the white of a corpse, blue veins visible beneath its pale surface, but was now pink and flushed. She had been drinking her fill. Whatever she had been before and whether she was on Hieronymus’ list or not, Silandre was now a Naturaleza. She hissed at me like a cat, and I realized she was also totally nutso. Crap. The crazy ones were always the worst.
I slashed forward.
In one of those faster-than-possible moves, Silandre tossed the body at me. Into the path of my blade. I spun, dodging the flying human. Silandre rose to her feet, eyes vamped out, her lips curling in a snarl, revealing bloody, two-inch fangs. Her bodyguards attacked. Knowing I would be too slow, I continued my spin, blades out to my sides. As we all moved, Eli shot, the clatter of his weapon ripping into the air. Time slowed and shifted, and I saw the bodies of the guards to my left fall. The ones on my right reached me, slipping past my knives. Instinct made me leap to the side and down, rolling, scissoring my legs. I cut behind the knees of both bodyguards and rolled again. The gun clattered. Herbal-scented blood splattered me. Both vamps fell. Heads mostly gone from the automatic fire, hamstrings severed. I pivoted to my feet.
A flash of scarlet caught my eye at the open door. Silandre fleeing. Eli followed her while I bent over the human on the floor. He was still breathing. I raced to the back wall, pulled the black bag off Esmee’s head, and ran a short blade through her bonds. Her arms fell limply to her sides and she dropped to her knees. Just as the vamps on the floor started to struggle.
“Stay put!” I shouted to Esmee, my own voice lost beneath the roar in my ears. I dropped my bloody knives on the bed and pulled an eighteen-inch blade, effectively a short sword. Picking the vamp who seemed the most lively, I shoved him flat on the floor with my booted foot. Raised the vamp-killer over my head and brought it down. Hard. It’s a lot more difficult to behead someone with a sword than most people think. Sometimes it’s more like chopping wood with a dull steak knife. It was a lucky strike, because his head rolled cleanly away, gallons of fresh blood gouting from the stump, a lot more than usual in vamp kills.
Rogue vamps, Naturaleza vamps, uncured vamps still in the devoveo, and crazy vamps murder humans. I get paid to kill them for it. So I’ve become somewhat of an expert at head lopping.
I stepped across his body to the next one, prepared to repeat the measure. The vamp struggled on the floor and got one arm beneath him, pushing to rise. On the vamp’s chest were a line of holes; the stink of silver and vamp blood reached me. Eli had used silver rounds and, just like the vamps in the woods earlier, the silver hadn’t stopped the vamps any better than lead.
My partner stepped back inside and shouted, “She’s gone. Down the scaffolding to the water.” Which was not what I wanted to hear.
I beheaded the second vamp and moved to the others as vamp blood gushed across the floor in spreading pools, staining the white rugs. The third vamp didn’t want to die, and despite the silver in his blood, he grabbed the handle of the sword as I brought it down. I didn’t have to be able to hear to know he was growling. His fangs slashed at my ankle, and I kicked forward, breaking a fang with a snap that reverberated up my leg, into my spine. Fangs were hard. When his head snapped back, I struck down and again. And again. Until he was in two parts. The fourth vamp was fully awake by then and I realized I had made a crucial mistake. He came at me.
CHAPTER 7
Sheet Creases on His Left Cheek
I raised the bloody, silvered vamp-killer. Before I could bring it down, Eli emptied his gun into the vamp’s chest. Which disintegrated like a watermelon at a shooting demonstration. It was easy work thereafter to pin him to the floor with my
blade. I stood over the vamp corpse, breathing heavily. He wasn’t moving and he might even be true-dead, but I wasn’t betting on it.
Eli touched my shoulder to get my attention and motioned to the vamp, then tapped his own neck with the edge of his hand, asking me why I hadn’t beheaded him. We were still deaf from the weapon fire and I mouthed, Prisoner. To question. Eli frowned as if he didn’t think that was such a good idea and started checking over the injured humans, freeing the last one. Actually, I didn’t think it was a good idea either, but I needed info on the Naturaleza, and one of Silandre’s goons might give it to me.
While Eli made sure Esmee was okay and led her to the doorway of the room, I texted Big H’s primo for three things: a silver vamp cage, and to send a cleanup crew to the house and another one to the woods where we had left the other body. Vamps didn’t want medical professionals to have access to vamp bodies, blood, or genetic material. Until recently, even Homeland Security hadn’t gotten hold of a true-dead vamp corpse, but on my last visit to Natchez, we had left so many lying around that I figured at least one vamp had gone missing and into their clutches. Rick had been on scene so it stood to reason that some giddy government forensic anthropologists and pathologists had carved one up. Not that I had mentioned that to Leo yet. I was getting smarter. I also texted the Kid to tell him we had Esmee and that she was unhurt.
Esmee tapped my arm and I jumped. I had gotten so busy texting that I’d forgotten to keep aware of my surroundings. Not smart. I was getting too dependent on Eli for backup. I put my phone away and led the tiny older woman outside. It was testament to the political power of the vamps Under the Hill—or to Bruiser and Leo’s helpful interference—that no sirens had sounded despite the gunfire. I put her in the backseat of the SUV, where she sat, silent, staring down at her wrists. Though my ears were still ringing and hers had to be even worse, I tapped her wrist above where it had been abraded by the rope that had bound her.
