by Faith Hunter
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 voice. 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.
“Ah, man,” I murmured. Two amulets constructed with arcenciel blood in NOLA at the same time. Coincidence wasn’t possible.
Alex turned just his head and looked at me from under his too-long spiraling curls. “Yeah, right? Continuing the timeline, fitting the Firestarter into it.”
He pointed at the final screen and a bit of security footage, froze it, and pointed at the still shot on the screen. I recognized the brick wall at the side of HQ. Once upon a time, there was a not-so-secret access point in the brick that led to Leo’s office. It was now sealed from the inside, but the small group of people shown gathered there hadn’t known that.
“During the attack on HQ, Shaun”—he touched the screen, showing me the vamp—“who is running around not wearing a shirt, presumably to show off the amulet on his arm, was trying to get inside. I’m guessing that this”—he pointed to the other vamps—“is his primo or secondo, and his best fighters. And here”—he pressed a button, and another view took its place—“is where the Firestarter finished her attack in back and joined up with Shaun.”
“The Firestarter hates vamps,” I said, remembering the bound beings in Monique’s soul home. I searched the screen. Ka wasn’t there.
“The enemy of my enemy is my short-term friend?” Alex asked. “They seem to be working together, for now, since she was part of the attack that had been intended to draw off your forces front and back while he gained access from inside.”
“Well, that sucks,” I said.
“Good Lord, woman,” a female voice said from the door. “You look like death warmed over and twice as furry.”
I looked from the screen to the door and smiled, happiness filling me all over. “Jodi.”
“Don’t you go getting all nice-nice on me. I hear you let my wedding site get blown to smithereens.”
“Sorry,” I said, seeing by her expression that she wasn’t really mad at me. Well, she was, but it was a different version of mad from all my male subjects’ mad. “I need to use the ladies,” I said. “All you menfolk, go down to security and update the crews. Jodi, will you stay?”
“Stay and what? Help you pee? God help me, the things I get stuck doing for you. Out,” she said to the vamps and humans and Onorio. “Get out.” When no one moved she said, “I may be wearing exercise clothes, but I am never unarmed. Don’t make me shoot you. The lady needs a little privacy.”
“The lady,” Tex said, pointedly, “was just shot to hell and back, ma’am. If you spot bleeding, we’d be appreciative of you bringing one of her Mithrans back in to finish up healing her. Koun and I’ll be outside the door.” He wasn’t wearing a hat indoors, but he touched his forehead as if tipping one anyway. I could feel Bruiser’s and Eli’s eyes on me, but I took refuge in Jodi and pretended not to know they were still really peeved.
When it was just Jodi and me and the door was shut on menfolk, she yanked the sheets off of me and
shoved me to my feet. Pain shot through me, and I was suddenly too weak to care that I was naked. I nearly fell, and short, rounded Jodi caught me. I was also too exhausted to care that she got dried blood all over her exercise clothes. By the smell: sweaty exercise clothes. She hadn’t been working at the cop shop when she got called in. That was probably my fault. She started me walking toward the en suite.
“You do know that the fire department and the eighth district all got called out because of gunfire and fire-fire tonight, right?”
“I’m not surprised,” I whispered.
“And we’re still all out there, waiting on a stand-down order, which no one will give us because of the political ramifications if this turns out to be important on a State Department level.”
“Sorry,” I breathed, wondering why I could apologize to Jodi and not my people.
“Are you the only one dead?” she asked.
I tried to laugh, but it hurt too much as she eased me down onto the closed toilet lid. “No. We were attacked, and there are a number of attacking humans and vamps dead.”
“Any of your people?”
“I don’t know yet.” Dread drenched me like a cold flood.
“How many attacked?”
“One in back.” I started to tell her about the Firestarter but changed my mind. “With an incendiary device. I think six in front.”
“How many were humans?”
I realized that Jodi had been interrogating me, which made me tired and a little sad. “Stop asking questions, Jodi. Pretty sure this is Dark Queen stuff. If there’s questioning to be done, the State Department can send someone to do it.”
“Are you calling diplomatic immunity on this? ’Cause if you do, that makes it a lot easier on us.”
So maybe she wanted an excuse to not ask me stuff? That hadn’t occurred to me. “They called you in tonight to ask me that?”
“Yes,” she said sourly. “Thanks to you, I’m the official liaison to the fangheads in this city. I got a promotion and a raise and everything.” The last sentence was even more sour, nearly bitter. I figured that was because she had gotten the promotion not by skill but because she knew me. That had to rankle. She turned away and started the shower on hot.
