Blood Cross

by Faith Hunter

Chapter 12

 

  Would Little Evan go crunch?

  I called a part-time cabdriver I used, catching Rinaldo just before he hit the sack after his third shift at a local plant. He showed up pretty quickly; I was only a mile or so from Aggie's street, trudging along in my flip-flops, hands in the pockets of the loose pants, and already sweating in the day's heat. He pulled his bright yellow Bluebird Cab over and hung halfway out the window. "You look like something the cat dragged in. "

  I was pretty sure the line didn't deserve the amount of laughter it got as I climbed into the front seat, but Rinaldo thought I was a party girl, always needing a ride home after a wild night out, so he probably assumed I was on a giggly high. I slammed the door and buckled in as he tire-crunched through a three-point turn and eased his way toward a paved street in the distance. With a sly grin, he slanted a look at me. "Hungry?"

  "Starving. Where's the nearest fast food joint? I could eat a buffalo. "

  "If I ate like you, I'd be big as a house. There's a Bojangle's near here. Chicken okay?"

  "Long as it's fried protein, I'll be happy. " My stomach punctuated the statement with a growl. I ate as Rinaldo drove, putting away three Cajun filet biscuits, two egg and cheese biscuits, a sausage biscuit, and three servings of Potato Rounds, all washed down with a gallon of sweet iced tea. I treated Rinaldo to a biscuit and let him watch me eat, which always seemed to give him enormous pleasure and cost me next to nothing. It paid to keep my emergency transportation happy. The meal was wonderful. Half asleep, belly rounded out against the thin fabric of my T-shirt, I lolled all the way to my front door while Rinaldo listened to zydeco music on the radio, his fingers banging out the African rhythm on his steering wheel. I handed him thirty bucks, which was my standard payment, and made it inside just as Molly and the kids came downstairs, Angelina knuckling her eyes.

  "Morning, Aunt Jane. " She held her arms up, and though Molly had been telling her she was too big to be picked up all the time, I hoisted her to my hip and nuzzled her hair.

  She smelled of sleep and pillow and safety. "Did you and the ladies have a nice swim?"

  Molly met my eyes over Angie's head as we maneuvered the kids into the kitchen, and she took in my damp hair. I nodded. At this further demonstration of her daughter's rare and potent gift, a gift she was trying to keep under wraps from the human media and government, Molly's reply was carefully neutral. "Sweetheart, how did you know Aunt Jane went swimming?"

  "Biscause she did. And they were all naked. " Angie yawned, her mouth open wide, face scrunched. "Mama, we can't go home yet. Aunt Boadacia and Aunt Elizabeth is fighting a big bad ugly that showed up in their circle last night. It was purple and red and had big teeth and it wanted to eat them, and Aunt Boadacia says to stay gone, that it would eat Little Evan. Mama, would Little Evan go crunch? Like the deer bones Aunt Jane ate this morning?"

  Molly closed her eyes and mouthed what looked a prayer, maybe for guidance and protection for her gifted children. Or maybe she was cussing silently. I couldn't help it.

  I laughed and squeezed Angie.

  Molly's sisters, both the witch sisters and the humans ones, owned Seven Sassy Sisters'

  Herb Shop and Cafe near Asheville. Business was booming, both locally and on the Internet, selling herbal mixtures and teas by bulk and by the ounce, the shop itself serving gourmet teas, specialty coffees, breakfast, brunch, and lunch daily, and dinner on weekends. It was mostly fish and vegetarian fare, whipped up by Mol's oldest sister, water witch, professor, and three-star chef, Evangelina Everhart. Her sister Carmen, an air witch, newly widowed and newly delivered of a bouncing baby, ran the register and took care of ordering supplies. Two other witch sisters, twins Boadacia and Elizabeth, ran the herb store, while the wholly human sisters, Regan and Amelia, were waitstaff in the cafe.

  Boadacia and Elizabeth, the youngest and most adventurous of the bunch, were always trying new incantations and spells, and had been known to get into trouble with the results. It sounded as if they had a minor demon trapped in a circle and weren't quite sure how to dispel it.

  Usually, they spent quite a while trying to extricate themselves from the messes they made before calling in the big guns, their elder sisters. I could imagine the ruckus when they admitted to Evangelina that they had messed up again. The eldest often had assisted with the cleanup and her tirades were legendary and generally ignored by the twins.

  "Angie, how did you know that Aunt Jane went swimming this morning?" Molly dropped Evan Junior into the highchair that had appeared at my table with my guests.

  "Did you dream it? Were you awake and just thought it? What?"

  Angie shrugged as I sat her into her chair, the table nearly to her chin. "I want oatmeal like Aunt Jane fixes it. "

  "It's important, honey," Molly said. "How do you know things like that?"

  "I just do. I see Aunt Jane a lot. But sometimes other people. And Aunt Elizabeth sometimes talks to me inside my head. Can I have oatmeal?"

  Molly's mouth formed a thin line, and I knew what the expression meant. Visions and mind-speech were new and troubling indications of her daughter's power, which shouldn't have manifested until she was sixteen, and which should have been tightly bound beneath the magical constraints applied by Big Evan and Molly when the power came upon her too potent and far too young.

  "I'll fix it," I said, meaning the oatmeal. Pans banging, I turned on the gas and began making oatmeal the way my housemother had taught me so long ago. As the water heated for oatmeal and tea, I flipped on a light switch and realized that we had power. I plugged in the refrigerator and adjusted the AC down to a bone-chilling seventy-four, making a circuit around the house to close all the windows. It was already a sweaty eighty-five degrees inside. Thank God for air-conditioning.

  While my guests ate, I asked Molly, "Why would the big bad ugly eat Little Evan?"

  Molly touched her ear and gave a warning glance at her kids that said she couldn't say much in front of big ears. "Some things think witchy X and Y chromosomes are tasty. "

  Witchy X and Y chromosomes meant the things that made Little Evan a male witch, or what some called a sorcerer. I nodded. Demons like to eat male witch babies. Ouch.

  "Comosos are tasty," Angie repeated, trying on the words. "Like Aunt Jane thinks deer is tasty. Would Little Evan go crunch?" Angie wasn't going to be deterred.

  I grinned and poured hot water over tea leaves, a strong gunpowder green that had a good caffeine kick. "Probably. But we love Little Evan. " When she tried to interrupt, I said, "Even Beast loves Little Evan. But we don't talk about Beast or big bad uglies, right?"

  "I can't even tell Uncle Ricky-Bo? Biscause he's wanting to know stuff. "

  "Especially not Ricky-Bo," I said dryly. "He's nosy. Speaking of Mr. Nosy, I need to go to NOPD and do some more research. You okay today here, Mol?"

  "We have power, and I can wash clothes over at Katie's, including the stinky diapers piling up on the back porch. I'm fine. " Molly was a firm believer that diapers were the most dangerous disposable item ever invented, to be used only in emergencies. She used cloth with old-fashioned pins. Before I could ask who would watch the kids, she smiled into her teacup without looking at me and said, "Bliss will watch them. " Angie wasn't the only Trueblood who could read minds upon occasion.

  After a long shower to wash off the bayou stink, I multibraided my hair with lots of beads that clicked pleasantly when I walked, dressed, and made several phone calls that required me to leave messages this hour of the morning. I kissed the kids, strapped on Beast's pack in lieu of a pocketbook, made sure my cell and camera had battery power, tied my braids back, powered up Bitsa, and roared into town.

  My first stop was Audubon Park, at the Audubon Trail Golf Course, one of the sites in the city where there had been young-rogue attacks on humans in the past, and the only one I had never visited. The last attack on record had been in 2001, and I quickly discovered why. The
golf course had been redesigned in that year, and there was no place suitable for a grave site. That left me only two locations to worry about, which made my life easier. Able to cross it off my list, I gunned Bitsa and headed for NOPD.

  I had a lot of questions and not much info. I needed to see if there was anything in the history files about the last vamp war. And I wanted to see if I could find out what Innara had been talking about last night, the devoveo. It sounded as though it had to do with the madness of young rogues. Mad young rogues was what the city of New Orleans had on its hands. And maybe I would try to get a handle on what the Sons of Darkness were.

  They had come up twice now; if they had something to do with young rogues, I needed to know it. And then there were the witches I'd seen across the street, likely standing in a pentagram. What could their connection be? What had seemed like a simple contract to track down a vamp breaking vamp law was turning into a bewildering investigation into vamp history and politics.

  The wind in my face was damp and heated, like a warm, wet blanket, and Bitsa purred beneath me like Beast when she slept. With the world flashing by, I was feeling peaceful, rested, and strangely calm, even without any sleep. I was pretty sure the emotion I was experiencing was serenity, though I'd never felt that before. I didn't expect it to last. Cynical, but true.

  I parked at NOPD, signed in once again, and waited for the armed guard to look over my credentials and make his phone call. This time, Rick came to meet me.

  Like the last time I was here, he was in street clothes, but not the jeans, T-shirt, and boots from his undercover days. Today, Rick wore black slacks, a black jacket, and a white button-down shirt. With a tie. I started to grin. The tie had little orange kittens scampering over an aqua background.

  "Yeah, I know. I've fallen so far. " He propped a hand on his hip, pushing back the jacket to reveal a shoulder-holstered 9 mm, and flicked the offending tie with his fingers. "My niece gave it to me. "

  "It's . . . cute. "

  He laughed, a breathy, disgusted sound. "My captain came down on me hard yesterday about NOPD dress code. They won't let me wear jeans now that I'm not undercover, so I had to buy some stuff. The tie's revenge. He hates it. " He plucked the pants and jacket.

  "You know how long it's been since I wore clothes like this? Catholic school, grades one through six. I had to goshopping . " He looked pained. "But no one specified what had to be on the tie. Yanks their chains, you know?" He flashed me a grin, revealing the little crooked tooth at his lower lip. He was just too dang pretty. "I have another one with pigs on it. "

  The casual business look suited him. But then, I had a feeling that Rick LaFleur would look good in anything. Or nothing. "You gonna yank their chains until you hang yourself? Pardon the mixed metaphor. "

  "Something like that. Entering the real world sucks when it comes to wardrobe. But there's good things about it. My mom is overjoyed to discover that her degenerate son isn't a reprobate after all. When she's not being pissed that I didn't tell her. "

  My brows rose. "Yourmom didn't know you were a cop?"

  He lifted a shoulder in awhat can I say gesture. "Mom can't keep a secret. "

  I nodded, though I had no idea what it would be like to have a mother. "So. You gonna let me in or keep me out here with the cons and the reprobates you've left behind?"

  "I'm guessing you want to see the woo-woo files again. Come on in. You're not armed, are you?"

  "No guns, no blades. " I handed off my fanny pack to him, which wasn't heavy enough to contain a gun. He didn't bother to search it or me; I passed through the metal detector without a beep.

  Beads clicking softly, I followed him. In the bowels of NOPD in room 666, he tossed the file cabinet keys onto the table, lifted one finger in good-bye, and locked me in the tiny cell. Before I could call out, he was gone, and there still wasn't a phone to call for my release. I thought about the possibility of being trapped down here if a fire broke out, or if Rick forgot about me and I was left overnight without food or water. The door wasn't steel or barred, and its hinges were within easy reach. If I could find a sturdy piece of wood or metal, I could beat or pry the pins out and use some of Beast's strength to rip the door off that way. But the next time I was down here, I was going to bring a picnic lunch.

  Now familiar with the filing system, I found the key marked 666-0V, opened the vamp cabinet, and started looking for history, specifically for info on the devoveo.

  Instead I spotted the bio of a certain near-rogue named Bethany. There wasn't much to go on - Bethany hadn't exactly hogged the limelight in the City of Jazz.

  There were no photos of her, but someone had compiled a breakdown of vamp-clan hierarchy back in the seventies, and at the bottom, Bethany and Sabina Delgado y Aguilera, the priestess of the vamps, were listed as "out-clan. " That word again.

  Interesting. I'd have to ask a couple people what it meant, as I couldn't trust the vocabulary of just one person, not about vamp stuff.

  I'd seen both Sabina and Bethany in action, and they were vastly different. Bethany was slightly unhinged, African, and full of that icy shaman magic I'd never encountered before. Sabina was Mediterranean, nunnish, and sane. The only thing they had in common was power. A lot of it.

  I took photos of the file to download later, and settled a folding chair close to the file cabinet. I went through it methodically, and quickly found something I hadn't seen before, a red file folder markedLegends . It consisted of unverified reports about vamps, all gathered through unnamed sources, paid informants, and by debriefing blood-junkies who had gone through rehab and tried to keep straight. The folder had been compiled by the same cigarette smoker, and handled by Jodi.

  There was a lot of wacky stuff in it, things I discounted or knew had been disproved at one time or another, but there was a snippet about the Sons of Darkness, the term Bethany had used for the vamps who had turned her. The Sons were supposed to be the first vamps in their own recorded history. The very first. And according to blood-junkie scuttlebutt, they had been feral for a few days, not ten years. Somehow, they'd been able to skip the curing process. At least one of them was purported to be still alive, sane, and had visited in this country in the last decade, as guest of Clan Pellissier. It might not be true, but Bruiser had blanched at the mention of the Sons. I had no idea if any of this had anything to do with the vamp I was hunting, but he'd been raising young rouges for a long time. And almost anything could be evidence pointing to him.

  I pulled my pad from my fanny pack and took notes from the Legends file, things that might help me find the rogue maker, things that caught my fancy, and things that might lead me in a new research direction. I found a mention of feeding frenzies, which had been on my mind since last night, but it was from a source the cop in question doubted.

  The blood-junkie had told him that "Clan Desmarais went nutso crazy and killed half their servants and all their slaves. I barely got out alive. " No bodies had ever turned up, and the report had been buried. Like so many of the reports in this room.

  I glanced at my phone for messages before I remembered where I was. One of my calls before I left the house had been to Bruiser, who hadn't answered. If he called back, I wouldn't know until I got out of here.

  I returned to the file, deliberately hunting for red folders, and I found a slim one containing a stack of police reports written in the same distinctive handwriting as the cigarette smoker, the cop who had been investigating the vamps and the disappearances of witch children: Detective Elizabeth Caldwell.

  In the red folders, I found dozens of small scraps of paper, each smelling of old smoke and containing terms, names, questions. Little made sense until I found a scrap that read:A few sips of witch blood brought the devoveo back to sanity for nearly an hour.

  On another I found one that saiddevoveo: the Curse of the Mithrans . Andyoung rogue: the cursed .

  I sat, holding the two scraps of paper, my gut telling me that
something important was contained in them, but my brain couldn't see it. So I copied down the phrases and went on with my hunt.

  I wanted to read more about Caldwell's investigations, and remembered Rick's key ring. No door keys on it. But there was a key marked 666-0W. I tried it on a file cabinet I hadn't been able to get in to last time I was here. With a metallic click, the drawers loosened and the top one eased out an inch. Every file was red. Every single one. I opened the drawer and let my fingers do the walking through the tabs. It was a file on area witches, compiled by Elizabeth Caldwell. And there was one file markedDevoveo .

  Inside were reports of young rogues who had also been witches. Which made no sense at all. Vamps would turn shamans, but not witches, yet I was pretty sure they were collaborating with witches. Nothing made any freaking sense.

  Settling down with several files, I spent another hour doing research and trying to find a common thread in Elizabeth Caldwell's investigations before thirst drove me to put everything away, lock it all up, and again bang on the door. And bang and bang. And bang. Eventually I heard the lock click; the door opened to reveal Rick himself, hiding behind two drink cans. "Sorry. I forgot about there not being a phone in here. Coke truce?"

  I propped a hip against the doorjamb, took an icy, sweating can, popped the top, and drank. Wryly, I said, "There isn't a bathroom either. " Without a segue, I said. "Who is Elizabeth Caldwell?"

  Rick's expression went instantly to cop face as he shut down his reactions. "She was a good cop, killed in action in 1990. By vamps unknown. She was also Jodi Richoux's aunt. "

  My mind went into overdrive. Jodi had pointed me to red files, all belonging to Elizabeth. Jodi had a reason to hang around me, other than friendship. I had a strong hunch Jodi had secretly taken over her aunt's research, an aunt who had died by vamp attack . . . I'd gotten Jodi into vamp HQ. I had contacts with the vamps. I was research.

  I don't know why it hurt, to learn that she was maybe using me for a case. It's not as though we were bosom buddies. But it did.

  Rick didn't seem to notice my reaction. "Come on," he said. "I'll walk you out. "

  Silent, we took the stairs, and Rick let me stop off in the ladies' room, where I didn't bother to e-mail the photos; instead, I checked my voice mail. One was from Bruiser, and unexpected relief flooded me. If there had been a feeding frenzy, he had survived it, sounding bland, factual, and surprisingly helpful. I hadn't expected to get anywhere with my latest request.

  Back on the main floor, Rick stuck his hands in the pockets of his black slacks and casually asked, "So. Want to get dinner on Saturday? My treat. "

  A frisson of uncomfortable heat roiled through me. A date? It sounded like a date. His treat and all. It had been years since I'd had a real date. And Saturday was just after the three days of the full moon. Beast would still be feeling . . . amorous. I swallowed and was pretty sure I blushed, hoping it wasn't easy to tell with my coppery skin. "Um. I should be finished with this contract by then. Sure. Maybe eight?"

  He nodded, ducking his head and glancing up at me. "Bikes. Burgers. Okay?"

  "Yeah. " Actually, that sounded like a fun date. And I had houseguests, so I didn't have to worry about any awkward leave-taking or expectations. "Um . . . Eight, then. "

  Rick nodded at me, gave a little one-fingered salute-style wave, and disappeared back into the bowels of the NOPD. Crap . I had a date. I flipped open my phone and returned the most important call that had come in while I was trapped in the woo-woo room. It was answered on the first ring. "George Dumas. "

  I straddled Bitsa and helmeted up. "Jane. So, you got permission for me to visit the official vamp cemetery?" Not to be confused with the grave site where I'd killed the rogue the other night.

  "Yes. When?"

  "No time like the present. "

  "On my way. "

  When I'd marked my map with the location of all the reported young-rogue vamp attacks on humans, there had been three clusters, and one had been in the two miles around the vamp cemetery. I needed to look around a bit.

  The call ended. A man of few words, our Bruiser. But a man of really good kisses, especially the kind delivered on the floor of a limo. Uncomfortable prickly warmth spread through me. I was interested in a blood-servant. Interested as ininterested. And Bruiser seemed pretty interested in me. He could have turned off the security system at the cemetery from Leo's house. Was he just using the alarm system as an excuse to see me? The scratchy warmth spread, barbed and maddening. Yeah. I was interested.

  Yet I had a date Saturday with another man entirely. A breathtakingly gorgeoushuman man, who would be a far better choice for romantic entanglements than the blood-servant of the master of the city. I'd once figured Rick for a player, but that was back when he'd been undercover. I didn't really know him at all.

  Thinking about men was frustrating and tied up my mind in barbed wire. Not something I had time for right now. I switched mental gears to more pressing matters, like the feel of Bitsa between my thighs, the heated wind beating against me, and the ripe smells of the city.

  I could have searched the vamp cemetery alone once Bruiser had disabled the alarms, but he was a careful man, less trusting than Rick when it came to keys and security precautions. Once inside the barred gate, he entered the first mausoleum we came to.

  When he left the crypt, he nodded at me once. I figured that meant I could do whatever I wanted, but he didn't leave. He leaned against the hood of his car, watching me from behind mirrored sunglasses. He looked patient. Which made me nervous. If he'd been impatient, I could have been annoyed and recalcitrant and deliberately taken my time. It was harder with a calm and peaceful man.

  I removed my helmet and tossed my denim jacket to the seat. From the saddlebags, I pulled a pad and pen and began sketching the layout of the cemetery. It didn't have to be exact or to scale, but I wanted a map to trigger my memories later if I needed. I drew in the eight mausoleums, labeling them with clan names and descriptions, including the naked angel statues on top of each. The last time I'd been here, several of the mausoleums had been damaged. Now there was evidence of repair work: tire tracks crushing the grass, a ladder lying flat, a device that looked like a portable cement mixer but likely was something else, and a few cigarette butts littering the ground. Bruiser picked them up as I worked, looking disgruntled. I watched him from the corner of my eye as I sketched in the chapel from which the priestess had emerged the time I'd been here in owl form. Today the place looked deserted.

  When I returned the pad to the saddlebags, Bruiser wandered over. He looked pale, as if he'd been badly fed upon and not restored enough by sips of his master's blood. Last time I saw him he'd been facing a feeding frenzy. "You look a little pale. Okay, a lot pale," I offered diffidently. "You okay?"

  "I've been better. Tell me again why you have to be here?"

  I explained about the clusters of young-rogue vamp attacks. "Like the rogues had risen close by, and attacked the first humans who happened to be in their path. "

  He looked interested. "Where else have they risen?"

  I briefly detailed the map, then told him more about the rogue I'd taken down the other night. "I'd never seen a rising before, and there was something really strange about it, something I don't think is part of a normal rising. The site had a pentagram and a casting circle shaped in shells on the ground. There were crosses nailed to the trees at the points of the pentagram. "

  I glanced at him, catching a look of utter disbelief on his face. "What?"

  He shook his head. "Not possible. The crew sent to clean up the grave site in the park would have reported on that. "

  Now, that was interesting. There were crosses when I'd been there. Someone had gotten to the city park pretty quickly after the rising to get them down between my visit and the visit by the sanitation crew. Or . . . maybe the lightning strike I'd smelled when I first got there had changed the timing of the rising? Was that even possible? Fr
ankenstein had risen after his maker had channeled a lightning strike into his body - early cinematic defibrillator. I grinned and Bruiser raised his brows. I shook my head to show that my thoughts weren't important.

  He went on. "Any young rogue who woke in the presence of crosses would be driven back into the grave, screaming in pain. "

  "Maybe the pentagram and the magics performed in the soil prevented it?" Bruiser stared off in the distance, face closed, thinking thoughts he had no desire to share with me. When he didn't reply, I insisted, "But why the crosses? Okay, I get that vamps live and breathe religion, which is pretty weird for the undead, who don't need to breathe. "

  That startled Bruiser out of his funk. "Religion? And vampires?" His tone added, "Are you crazy?" though he didn't say it. But there was something off about his body language.

  I looked out over the graveyard, keeping him in my peripheral vision. Calmly, I said,

  "Vampires and religion should be like oil and water, but they aren't. Because vampiresbelieve . Organized religion pervades everything they do and everything they are - the myths attached to the holy land, their reaction to crosses" - I thought of the priestess, Sabina - "all the formal Christian trappings. There's no such thing as distant history with vamps. All their grudges, alliances, even though they shift, seem to have roots in events that took place hundreds or thousands of years ago. Their history, as humans perceive it, impacts their present, and whoever the rogue maker is, he's been raising young rogues for a long time. He may be driven by something that happened yesterday, a century ago, or two thousand years ago. "

  Bruiser shifted on his feet, an unconscious adjustment of balance. "I suggest that you not repeat such nonsense to the Mithrans. " But his scent change suggested that I was dead-on with my religion and vamp analysis.

  I flipped my palm up in a hand shrug and turned away. Over my shoulder I said, "I'm going to walk the perimeter of the grounds. It won't take long. " Bruiser didn't reply, and I paced away, walking sun wise - clockwise - around the ring of trees surrounding the cemetery. The sun was hot, the air muggy, sour, and unmoving. Sweat trickled down my spine as I walked, trying to get a feel for the place, something I hadn't allowed myself the previous times I was here. Of course the first time I'd been in the shape of a Eurasian hunting owl, and the other time I was with Rick, so it wasn't as though I had the right senses, time, or opportunity to let the place seep in under my skin, to get to know a patch of ground the way Beast did.

  Now I mentally nudged Beast awake and let my senses loose to absorb the place through its smells, the taste of its air, the springiness of the grass beneath my boots, and the magics wafting across the ground. There was power here. Not holy ground power, not ley line power. Not power that has seeped into the earth at old churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, or other places where faith makes the ground holy. Not quite the power of belief. But power nonetheless, of an old and vital kind. Though I couldn't place it, I recognized the taste of it.

  I was halfway around the large clearing when the ground became damp, giving beneath me with a squelch. The air cooled, thinned, became wetter, though how that was possible with all the humidity I couldn't have said. I breathed in and scented something peppery and astringent, the faint herbal scent of vamps on the breeze from the woods, the odor itself dry and desiccated. Beneath it was the tang of decaying blood, and a trace of magic. Witch magic. I moved into the trees. The signature of power tingled faintly along my arms. Shade from the trees above me closed out the sun and some of the heat, shadows darkening the ground.

  The scent of it pulled me north, along an overgrown trail just wide enough for my feet.

  A rabbit trail, according to Beast. She sent me an image of a rabbit and flooded my senses with the remembered hot taste of blood. "Thanks for that," I murmured to her,

  "but I prefer my protein skinned, gutted, boned, cooked, and seasoned. " Beast hacked in amusement.

  Not far into the woods I found a patch of saplings in a circle of older trees. It looked as if it might have been a ten-foot-round space once, maybe five years ago. Kneeling, I ran my hands over the bare ground, between the roots of the young trees. I found a broken white shell. Traversing the outskirts of the circle, I scuffed the ground, finding more shells. This had been a blood rite circle involving both witches and vamps, and I bet that it was used as the first resting place of one or more new rogues. Whatever was going on now had been happening for a lot longer than I'd been told. Maybe a lot longer than the vamp council knew.

  I found two other old circles in the forested land around the vamp graveyard, one younger than the first, one older, which I had missed on my first pass and caught on my second. Back at my bike, I marked their locations on my map, with the approximate length of time they had been abandoned, my guesstimate based on the age of the trees.

  A city girl might not have been able to tell that part, but I had been raised in the country, and the children's home had used the earth for more than just a playground and parking.

  We had grown a lot of our own vegetables, and had once reclaimed a patch of land to increase the size of the garden. I remembered the backbreaking work of tree-clearing. I knew how long it took forest to steal back land left fallow too long.

  I stood in the edge of the woods, wondering if there were more such sites in the trees. It wasn't impossible. But Bruiser was waiting. Patiently. Which made me feel guilty.

  He was still beside his car when I walked back, his butt against the high gloss, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses against the light. Unlike me, he wasn't sweating in the heat and humidity. I wondered if his ability to withstand temperature changes was a result of the blood sips he got in return for being a blood meal to Leo, or if it was natural to him.

  No way to ask and be polite, of course, though if I hadn't needed something from him, I might have asked anyway. I grinned at the thought and he cocked his head. I waved it away and said, "I don't guess you'd consider giving me access to the security around this place so I can come back anytime I want. "

  His lips twitched in what might have been a smile and he shook his head once, an abbreviated but unequivocal no.

  "Okay. I ran across some things in my research into vamp attacks that you can help me with instead. " Bruiser's brow lifted a bit, as if he was amused that I'd put him into the role of assistant. "How about out-clan and devoveo?" I was pretty sure I knew the answers, but in my business, "pretty sure" was worth roughly zero. I needed to know for dead certain.

  The heavy-lidded look slid away. "Where did you come across this information?"

  Bruiser was my best source of all things fangy and I knew I had to give to get, but not this time. I hated negotiation. "My source" - if the NOPD woo-woo files could be described that way - "is confidential. I want to know what they mean. "

  Thoughts flickered deep in his eyes. After a moment he cocked his head and seemed to come to a decision. "Devoveo is the state of the young rogue. The ten years of insanity when they have to be kept confined. The curse of the Mithrans is the fact that they must enter the ten years of the devoveo and may not come out of it. "

  "Have you ever heard of people drinking witch blood to stave it off?"

  He looked confused. "No. The reason witches are seldom turned is that they suffer from devoveo far beyond the usual decade, and often must be destroyed by their sires. But I have no idea what the effects of drinking their blood would be. "

  "Oh. " Though I'd expected no new revelations, I was still disappointed.

  "The out-clan are part of their history. Before the vampires were divided into clans or families, they were all one family. When their society became too large and unwieldy to manage on their own, and when humans began hunting them, there was a diaspora and many of the oldest sired clans in new lands, others later joined existing clans, banding together for safety and defense, and some few chose to be considered out-clan. From the out-clan group came the keepers of the past. They act as historia
ns, ambassadors, deal brokers. Peacemakers when necessary. "

  "So Sabina and Bethany really are among the oldest. Like, nearly two thousand years old. " When he inclined his head, I added, "And the ground they inhabit is holy to the vamps. "

  "Not holy ground. The eldest Mithrans are respected, venerated, perhaps, not worshipped. The priestess is the oldest Mithran in this hemisphere. And Bethany was her acolyte. "

  "Was?"

  "There have been disagreements between them several times over the past centuries; the last time was over the issue of slavery during the Civil War. The rift has never been healed. "

  Bethany had been a slave. I could see where discord might be possible. I had a feeling there was more to everything he'd said, but Bruiser stood straight and opened his car door, leaning inside to pick up an envelope and a box, handing them to me. "The check is for the heads you delivered to the vampire council. And Leo wants you to have the other as a gift, but he didn't want it wrapped. And no, I have no idea why it should go to you. "

  I tucked the envelope into a saddlebag. Taking the box, I flipped back the lid. Wedged between layers of packing material were bones and teeth. The small bones looked like paw bones, the larger long ones like foreleg bones. The teeth were encased in a lower jawbone, the canines several inches long, one with its tip broken off. I was pretty sure they all came from a sabertooth cat. A cold chill shot through me. Leo had given me his

  "son's" fetishes, the things Immanuel had used to become a sabertooth lion and kill.

  The things that might have driven him insane. My instinct was to refuse them.

  I heard shells crunch beneath footsteps and looked up, but Bruiser was sliding his long, lean form under the wheel. Without another word, he closed the door and started the car, backing into a three-point turn. I took it as my cue and strapped the box to the back of my bike and powered up Bitsa. I still needed info about witch blood bringing the young rogue to sanity; I'd have to ask that one later. I followed the blood-servant of the master of the city out of the vamp cemetery, hardly noticing the passage of the road beneath my tires.

  Why had Leo given me the bones? What was the purpose of the sites in the woods when vamps could be put to earth almost anywhereexcept a place with crosses on it? A couple dozen other questions piled on to the original one of who was raising young-rogue vamps. I had lots more questions, but I had proved one thing to myself. Vamps and witches, likely a small, renegade group of them, were definitely working together to raise new rogues. And if the new growth in the woods was an indication, it had been going on for decades.