Aya pressed the intercom. “Fifteen. Count Pichot is in traffic as we speak and will arrive shortly.”
Sweat beaded on Aguillard’s brow. His gaze darted again to the mirrored window, then he licked his lips. “I want it in writing that I won’t be killed.”
My uncle smiled. “I can do that.”
Five minutes later, they slid a printed document in front of the vampire and he signed his name across the dotted line.
Thib swept the paper off the table and glanced over it. “Now you gotta do your part, man. Who did your mother in?”
“Beaumont. Lord Francois Beaumont,” Charles said in a shaky voice. “He came to me two months ago and offered to guarantee my position. I didn’t know how he planned to do it, but I also didn’t ask.”
“So you knew she was considering passing you over.”
“The selfish bitch,” Charles spat. “She said our blood was weak and our family unfit to maintain control. I argued with her for weeks about it. When Francois approached me, I said I’d make it worth his while if he changed her mind. I didn’t think he would kill her.”
“And the senator’s daughter?”
Charles jolted back in his seat, eyes wide. “I don’t know anything about that, I swear. You must believe me. I don’t deal in killing tourists. It’s bad for business. My only contact with him has been about my mother. I did not even realize she was dead until your people pulled her corpse from Jacoby’s bayou. I thought—I just knew she had gone off with her most recent addition to the harem.”
“And when did you last hear from him?”
“He sent a note congratulating my good fortune. When I mentioned the recent murders, he…ah…”
Hiroto raised a brow. “Mentioned the favor he did for you in return, right?”
Aguillard nodded. “I did not ask for him to murder my mother. She may have been a spiteful bitch, but we were still related.”
“You don’t seem to be mourning her passing either.”
The vampire lord tucked his chin. “Our relationship was complicated.”
The interrogation ended with Aguillard signing an official confession. In return, they invoked one of the SBA’s few privileges from the Sanguine Court and promised the death penalty was off the table.
“Aya, run a search for Francois Beaumont,” Hiroto called out the moment he stepped onto the main floor again. “Thibodeaux, gear up the teams, I want people ready to go as soon as we have a place to send them.”
“On it!”
Sky shook her head. “Do you think he really didn’t know Beaumont would kill his mother?”
“Dunno. Sanguine Court will decide that.”
“But what do you think?”
I hesitated, unable to even conceive the thought. I’d break a dude in half before I let him touch my mom. “I think it takes a despicable being to value power over family. And I think he had to guess the guy didn’t plan to sweet talk her.”
Over at her desk, Aya muttered a few choice words in Japanese, the sort that would make even my father raise his brows.
“You okay over there?” I called out.
“Fine. The name isn’t uncommon but I believe I have it narrowed down. Yes, here.” Her fingers danced across the keyboard. “Only one vampire fits the bill, a Jean-Philippe Francois Beaumont. There’s a picture.”
“Get confirmation from Lord Aguillard before they take him to a cell.”
Jolene grabbed the picture Aya printed out and went to see the prisoner while everyone else continued their tasks. With everyone so busy, I felt useless, with no idea what to do except watch, learn, and stay the hell out of their way.
A few minutes later, Jolene returned and flashed my uncle the thumbs up.
We had our man; now our most pressing duty would be finding him.
11
Excessive Force
Beaumont owned three local properties, two in the country and one in the city. Not taking any chances, Uncle Hiroto divided his available men into three groups to hunt down our suspect, wanting us to bring the aristovamp in before he had any reason to suspect his little friend had squealed on him.
About an hour after receiving Beaumont’s arrest warrant, Skylar and I reached an old farmhouse outside the city. It looked like it had seen better days, with some of the cedar shingles missing and the outer brick wall covered in damp moss. The wrought iron gate lay on its side in the overgrown grass.
“This place should be on a haunted tour or something,” Sky muttered. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in months, if not longer.”
I glanced at her. “Appearances aren’t everything. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What’s it look like in the Twilight?”
“Vague and blurry. Definitely a lot of wards in the walls.”
“Not typical for a place like this. Check your bodycam.”
Sky glanced down at the device pinned to her vest. “It’s good.”
“Ready to proceed?”
“As ready as I can be.”
The whole place gave me the creeps. We checked our comms then made our way up the gravel drive on foot, pausing outside the door.
I touched one of the brick walls and felt the static buzz of magic permeating the structure. Most mortals didn’t know what they were searching for when it came to identifying a building imbued with magic. A smell lingered beneath the odors of rotten wood and decay, stinging my nasal passages like the chlorine miasma around a pool.
“Knock first?” Sky whispered.
“Yeah. Honor’s all yours.”
Biting her lower lip, she rapped her knuckles on the door. “New Orleans SBA!” Sky called, loud voice ringing with authority and the force of a megaphone. I winced. Sensitive shifter hearing. There must have been some glamour behind it. “We have a warrant for Lord Francois Beaumont.”
No one answered her call-out or emerged from the dwelling, but actively pursuing a murder suspect meant we could go in guns blazing. I gave a silent count to three and then kicked in the door.
It slammed against the adjacent wall with a bang, and dust stirred, bits of stucco and asbestos raining from the ceiling. I stepped in first with Skylar behind me, not because she wasn’t tough enough to take on a hostile vamp, but because I had the better nose and eyes for spotting hidden danger.
We moved from a cramped foyer into a moldy living room, an open arch leading to the dirty kitchen. Old water stains crept over the sagging ceiling in every room and an underlying stench filled my nose each time I dragged in a deep breath. I couldn’t place it. Something rank and foul.
Looping back around, we came to the base of the stairs just off the foyer. I tapped my ear piece. “First floor clear. We’re proceeding up—”
A tingle crawling down my spine from my nape warned me a split second before two figures appeared in the doorway behind us. Intuition and a sense for danger were basic shifter traits, but it took years of practice to hone it.
Being Sky’s sentinel and now her partner meant I’d picked up the skill double-time.
I dove into her, knocking us both out of the line of fire as bullets peppered the wall. The rainbow light of Sky’s Prismatic Barrier flared around us, and we hustled to more secure cover in the kitchen.
“Where the hell did they come from?”
I shook my head and dragged a deep breath through my nose. Both men carried the metallic stench of old blood. “I didn’t even smell their approach, and I should have.”
“Warded,” Sky said, confirming my guess.
“Status,” Hiroto barked into the comm.
“Two armed opponents. We’re uninjured but pinned in the kitchen.”
A third man crashed through the kitchen door, his feral features more animal than human. His shots ricocheted off the barrier around us, but it was only a temporary protection, not something Sky could keep up indefinitely.
“Make that three.”
Sky popped up from cover and squeezed the trigger. Her shot
slammed into the closest man’s shoulder. He jerked back as blood bloomed in a bright red stain against his filthy blue shirt. I followed and pegged the second between the eyes. Soon after his head snapped back, he crumpled to the floor.
Holy shit. That guy had been human. A blood slave, yeah, but technically still a human, augmented with a few drops of vampire blood to grant him superhuman abilities. The key difference was a vampire cranium, unless hit point blank, usually withstood a couple shots before fracturing.
I shrugged it off, no time to hesitate or feel remorse. The third guy had fangs and cheekbones sharper than razor blades—definitely a vamp on the verge of becoming a nosferatu. I engaged him and left the remaining vamp to Sky, using my enhanced speed to cross the distance. He whirled on me, throwing a punch. I blocked it with my right, simultaneously drawing my stake with the left. Being ambidextrous rocked.
Dude twisted to the side and narrowly avoided my first swing. We traded blows back and forth, moving across the kitchen floor. A close range bullet from his gun almost clipped my arm. Almost. I wasn’t Agent Smith or anything, but my professors had always praised my speed and evasive maneuvers.
He changed tactics and charged at me. His weight slammed into my midsection and his arms wrapped around my waist. That might have worked against a wolf or a bear, but I was a raven. Before he had a chance to squeeze I shifted and swooped from his arms, then I transformed midair behind him and kicked both feet against his back. The vampire stumbled forward, headfirst into the wall. The old rotted plaster gave way and sent him falling through into the next room. Not giving him any time to recover, I drove a stake through his back into his heart.
The moment he went down, I spun around to check on Sky. She stood over her opponent with her gun drawn, wings blazing bright behind her. The brilliant light had the man huddled in a ball on the bloody floor while steam arose from his blistering skin.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, but Gabe, look.”
“What?”
“This is the vampire Rebecca went off with, I’m sure of it.”
The fucker was still breathing, so the first thing I did was cuff him. Then I turned him onto his back and gave his banged up face a long, hard look. At one point, he had been a handsome dude with fair hair, but one side of his face had been seared, now having an approximate resemblance to bacon. “You’re right. This whole thing just got a lot more complicated. You hearing this, Chief?”
“I am. Is there any sign of Miss Monette?”
“Not yet, and this guy is in no condition to answer questions.” A few more layers of his skin peeled off. “He’s a little crispy around the edges.”
“Secure him and finish your search.”
Together, Sky and I dragged our prisoner to the car and locked his ass in the backseat. The warded doors would make sure he stayed put. We returned to the staircase and proceeded to the second floor, but the rest of the molding house was a bust, a haven for cockroaches with no visible evidence.
“The barn is the only place we haven’t checked.” Sky pointed to the large structure several yards west of the house.
Gazing at the building gave me the creeps. It could have set the scene for any horror movie starring a chainsaw killer, and the horror movie enthusiast in me expected to find corpses on meat hooks in a basement storeroom. “Weren’t those doors shut when we arrived?”
“They were. Bet it’s where our three dudes came from.”
I nodded. “Let’s check it out.”
This time we approached with more caution, on the alert with our weapons out. Whatever magic had concealed our earlier attackers was topnotch, and I had no intention of being caught in another ambush.
Despite the open barn doors, stacked piles of molding hay ruined any visual of what awaited us inside. I tried looking through a window on the structure’s left wall, but it faced away from the sun and had been boarded, providing an inch-wide crack. The place was shrouded in shadows, too dark even for my heightened night vision to discern much, though I thought I saw a square-shaped formation beside what I assumed were old farm tools and pitchforks.
At a loss, I rejoined Sky at the opening. “I’ll sweep left. You take right,” I told her in a low voice. “On three.”
My silent countdown ended with us moving forward through the door. A flash of light preceded an invisible force knocking us both back on our asses into the damp grass.
Sky recovered around the same time as me, though I had no idea how long we both lay flattened, half-blind and staring at the clouds. Once I regained enough balance to stand and my vision cleared, I stepped forward with both hands outstretched. A static buzz tickled my fingertips a split second before they touched the barrier. Light spread out from the point of contact, red and blue wards crackling.
“This is some high-level magic. Think you could jinx it?” When no answer came, I swiveled around. “Sky?”
Crap. Just when I needed it. Sky stared at nothing with a familiar, glassy expression in her eyes, appearing lost in a daydream. Rather than call her again, I moved to her side and touched her arm. Even after four years of working with fae, their tendency to spiritually wander off into a vision unnerved me. Two key reasons for that: first, a fae trapped in a Twilight dream resembled a mannequin, and second, I never knew what she was seeing or how long she’d be effectively blind to the real world.
“What’s going on, Gabriel?” Hiroto’s concerned voice crackled over the line. “Your comms went out for a moment.”
“We ran into a ward wall. Judging by the footprints, this is where our attackers came from. I can’t see much else to get a clearer picture.” The dark interior, coupled with the fact I couldn’t get inside, didn’t exactly help. I wasn’t down to make another attempt at crossing the barrier either. My ears were still ringing. “Looks like there might be a hatch in the floor.”
“Any more guards?”
“None that I see, but if those three put out an alert, more could be incoming.”
“Chief, there’s more,” Skylar said, back from her mental journey into Lala Land. “I caught a glimpse of the destiny lines. Rebecca Monette is here and she’s in very real danger. That’s all I was able to get.”
“Thibodeaux and Aya are already en route with Jolene and Douglas. Stay put and monitor the barn until they arrive. Clear?”
“Will do.” My gaze cut back to Sky. She stared at the ward wall, but this time her gaze was focused and clear. “What’s going on in that mind of yours?”
“Huh? Oh, no, nothing. I just haven’t seen anything like this before. It sort of reminds me of my Prismatic Barrier, but obviously a whole lot stronger—and permanent—since no one is here actively casting the spell.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get through it. Jolene knows her stuff.”
No sooner had the words left my mouth than a static charge filled the air. In the span of three heartbeats, a glowing circle materialized on the ground two yards away, and then our reinforcements appeared within its circumference. As much as I loved flying, teleportation was cool as fuck.
“Situation?” Thib barked as he stepped from the circle.
“We’ve got a suspect in the car and two more dead inside the house. The barn is warded.”
“Not for long,” Jolene said. She crossed to the doors and drove her staff into the soft soil. There had been a metal cap on the end before, but now I saw that had been to disguise the sharp point on the end. It must have been carved from rowan or ash, a perfect tool for a vampire-hunting mage. She ran her hands along the magical barrier. “Some powerful shit, here, but it’s also rushed. Sloppy.”
Sky’s brows shot up. “That’s sloppy? It knocked us on our asses.”
“Oh yeah. A truly masterful ward would have veered you away, thinking you forgot something in the car before you ever touched it, and if you did get past that, it would have knocked you unconscious rather than on your ass. There’s a lot of room for improvement, but what we have here isn’t awful, and it wasn’t d
one by an amateur. Just someone lacking a lot of time on their hands.”
“Lesson learned.”
The rest of us stood back while our mage handled the ward wall. Jolene walked the whole perimeter, tracing runes in the air every few feet. When she circled back around to us, the barn lit an eerie blue, the color fading within seconds. She rubbed her hands together and grinned.
“All done. Let’s go see what they were trying so hard to hide.”
Aya and Thib took point, with Sky and me in the middle, and Jolene and Douglas bringing up the rear. We swept through the barn first but found nothing more than cobwebs, rusted tools, and old hay. The hatch in the floor was bigger than I’d thought. Pulling the two doors open revealed a steep staircase descending into darkness. No one volunteered to head into the ominous hell hole.
“So…,” Thib said. “Ready to take point, rookies?”
“No thanks,” I replied, brave but not stupid. Sky and Jolene both summoned balls of light, but their little spheres were like two drops of soap in a grease bucket and the shadows practically devoured the illumination shining from their palms. More wards. More protections.
“Found a switch,” Aya said. A moment later a line of old, dim bulbs lit up in a line leading down a narrow hall. The flickering light cast sinister shadows against the rough stone. Because my cousin went down first and I couldn’t let her upstage me, I followed. Thib grunted and went down next, Sky a few steps to his rear. Douglas followed last and guarded our backs.
The hall made a sharp left and after another five feet, opened into a room longer than the barn above us. Cells lined the walls, though that description was probably kind. They reminded me more of kennels; small, cramped, and stacked two to three high. And almost every single one was occupied.
“Oh my God.” Sky’s horrified voice echoed my sentiments.
“The fuck?” Thib barked out. “Christ. It’s like a zoo.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The prisoners closest to us snarled and lunged at their cage doors, reaching out through the bars with grimy, clawed hands. I counted at least five nosferatu, and that was only the ones I could see clearly. They ranged in age from young adults to the elderly, some in months-old rags and others in tattered but recognizable club wear. One man’s shredded clothes might have been a high-end suit at one point.
Birds of a Feather: The Paranormal University Files: Skylar, Year 2, Summer Page 10
