Death's Rival jy-5

  Death's Rival

  ( Jane Yellowrock - 5 )

  Faith Hunter

  Jane Yellowrock is a shapeshifting skinwalker you don't want to cross — especially if you're one of the undead...

  For a former vampire killer like Jane, having Leo Pellisier as boss took some getting used to. But now, someone is out to take his place as Master Vampire of the city of New Orleans, and they're not afraid to go through Jane to do it. After an attack that's tantamount to a war declaration, Leo knows his rival is both powerful and vicious, but Leo's not about to run scared. After all, he has Jane. But then, a plague strikes, one that takes down vampires but leaves humans untouched, as carriers of the dread disease.

  Now, to uncover the identity of the vamp who wants Leo's territory, and to find the cause of the vamp-plague, Jane will have to venture into the underbelly of vamp society, where rules were made to be broken. As she circles closer to the truth, she finds the answers to the secret that could turn every vampire in the U.S. true-dead...

  Death's Rival

  (The fifth book in the Jane Yellowrock series)

  A novel by Faith Hunter

  To my own Renaissance Man,

  who takes me Class III kayaking, Zip-lining through mountain trees, who writes the songs, and rubs my feet.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A book is not a solo endeavor; it takes a village. In addition to all the usual suspects, I am giving a huge “thank-you” to my editor at Roc Books, Jessica Wade. This book was so complicated in terms of the progression of the clues, that it needed a lot of work and effort from outside sources (read: fresh, well-trained, professional eyes).You are the BEST! I also must thank the wonderful copy editor, Dan Larsen, who caught dozens of errors. Jesse Feldman was a huge help, and ferried requests to all the right people. To Rosanne Romanello—thank you for letting me use your name and some personal details for the vamp MOC character in Sedona. You were great. As always, my agent, Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency, was invaluable. I literally (koff-koff) could not have written Death’s Rival without all of you. My humble thanks.

  And I wish a huge thank-you to my fans. You made Jane Yellowrock a bestseller. You told your friends, you shared your excitement for her and for Beast and Leo and Bruiser and Rick and Molly and Angelina and . . . all the others. You took Jane to the stars, and I know how much I owe you, each and every one. So to honor that trust, I promise to write the very best book I can, every single time. No cutting corners. No silliness. No stupidity. My word of honor.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I’m Gonna Need Some Stitches

  “Vamps don’t get sick,” I said. “They may go nuts at the least provocation, but they don’t get sick.” Air currents buffeted the small jet; I held on to the phone and the seat arm with white-knuckled grips. Inside me, Beast was purring, enjoying the ride entirely too much for a creature who used to be afraid of flying.

  Static fuzzed the connection, but I made out the words “—two of these did. And maybe the third one, don’t know.” If Reach didn’t know something, it was better hidden than the identity of Kennedy’s killer—assuming that there really was a coven of blood-witches on the grassy knoll. Conspiracy theorists have a consensus on that, but there never was any evidence to back it up. “I’m still searching,” Reach said, “but it looks like the masters of the city of Sedona and Seattle are still showing signs of malaise. Boston’s MOC has vanished, and rumor has it the suckhead’s dead.”

  Malaise, I thought, unamused, reading the description of their symptoms. It was a heck of a lot more than malaise. In spite of what I’d said, the vampires were sick—maybe dying. “Give me details.”

  “According to my latest timeline, this vamp came out of nowhere two months ago and vamps started getting sick, which should be impossible, I know,” he agreed. “Once they were sick, they each got an ultimatum from an unknown vampire to swear him loyalty in a blood-ceremony, or face that master in a Blood Challenge, not something they could survive while sick. As soon as they swore allegiance to the new guy, the vamps got somewhat better. He didn’t kill them once he deposed them, but left them to run the cities as his loyal deputies. Each went from masters of independent strongholds to completely loyal subjects overnight. He’s successfully created a new power base and no one knows how he did it or who he is. Yet.”

  “No vamp is loyal,” I said. “They’re all egocentric blood-sucking fiends.”

  “True. But rich egocentric blood-sucking fiends, which is why we work for them.”

  I grunted. I hated to think of myself that way, but he had a point. I’m Jane Yellowrock, and I used to kill vamps for a living. Until I started working for them. It wasn’t easy money, and I’d dumped the contract with Leo Pellissier, the chief fanghead of the Southeastern U.S., when the retainer ran out. But when Leo had requested my help yesterday, I’d re-upped to resolve this problem, because it was the right thing to do. Leo and his people had been attacked under my watch. Humans had been injured. Blood-servants had died. I’d killed some of them. No one knew who this new enemy was, and now vamps were sick, maybe dying, and a new, powerful vamp had entered the vampire political scene.

  Which was why I was in a Learjet flying at way-too-dang-high. I didn’t like flying. Well, I didn’t like flying in planes. Wings are different.

  Reach continued to update me on two months of data and to answer a lot of questions. I’d need it. We’d touch down in Sedona in minutes, and assuming I got out alive, I’d be off to Seattle almost immediately. Listening to Reach’s matter-of-fact tone helped to keep my mind occupied and my heart out of my throat. Sorta.

  “Okay,” I said. “And you’re—” Leo’s Learjet dropped several feet before leveling out. My mind went blank and I swallowed my dinner—again. “And you’re sure the attack on Leo in Asheville was this same guy who took over Sedona, and Seattle?”

  My question wasn’t argumentative. The attack on Leo had happened before any of the others, and had been purely weapon-based, a frontal attack, no disease, no ultimatum, no nothing. I didn’t know what to make of the discrepancy. “If it’s the same vamp,” I said, “his attack on Leo falls completely outside his subsequent M.O. Of course, he did try to kick sand in Leo’s face, and Leo’s people busted his chops. Maybe when that happened he tried this new tack.” I hated guesswork.

  The sound of leather squeaking reminded me to relax my grip on the seat arm. I took a breath, blew it out, and drank half a bottle of water to settle my stomach. Computer keys clacked in the cell’s background, sounding like a quartet of castanets as Reach—the best research and intel guy in the business—worked.

  “I stopped believing in coincidence,” he said, “about ten seconds before I stopped believing in Santa Claus. It’s like this. Leo visits Asheville, is attacked in a hotel, and wins a gun battle. Within weeks of the attack on Pellissier, Lincoln Shaddock and three of his vamps in Asheville become ill with a brand-new vamp disease. Then Sedona gets sick, then Seattle, and now Boston. They got challenged, swore loyalty, and got better. Leo’s Asheville vamps are still sick, unlike in cities where the MOCs got sick, challenged and defeated, and then received treatment. Shaddock’s peeps are dying—as if it’s a punishment rather than a takeover tool.”

  Which thought made me sit up in my chair. Vamps were big on sneak attacks and vengeance. This scenario made all kinds of sense. Shaddock was bound to Leo and an attack on Shaddock was, by extension, an attack on Leo.

  Reach went on, “Yeah, it’s outside the attacking vamp’s modus operandi, but the symptoms of Lincoln’s peeps are exactly the same as those of the other masters of the city who fell through the looking glass.”

  “Peeps,” I muttered. I knew those vamps. Among the sick ones was Dacy Mooney, Lincoln’s heir. The t
wo were vicious killing machines. The fact that I sorta liked them may have said something not quite sane about me. “We only think the other vamps were treated. We don’t have empirical evidence,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the disease is circumstantial evidence I’m willing to bet on. I think our BBV”—Big Bad Vamp, I thought with a smile—“started in Asheville with a frontal attack, and had to abandon his plans there when Leo’s people kicked his butt, and he left the disease as a punishment, a calling card, a warning, and a threat. The evidence you obtain in Sedona and Seattle will either confirm or deny that theory.”

  “Ahhh,” I said. “That makes sense, which is why I pay you the big bucks.” The jet bumped up as if slapped high by a giant hand; then the bottom fell out. The small craft dropped what had to be a thousand feet before catching itself. On air. “Crap,” I whispered.

  My things in an overhead compartment thumped around as gravity was again defeated. I wrenched my seat belt so tight it nearly cut me in two.

  Inside me, my Beast huffed with amusement.

  Beast is the soul of a mountain lion that I absorbed when I was a child and fighting for my life. It had been accidental, as much as black magic can ever be an accident. When I shifted, Beast’s was the form I most often took, and her thoughts and opinions counted nearly as much as my own. Fun, she thought. Like chasing rabbits in hills.

  I slapped my brain back on, swallowed my dinner yet again, and focused. “Agreed,” I said, wishing I’d turned down this job. “But that theory still leaves questions. Why did the attacking master choose vamp strongholds so far apart on the map? Running three cities at a distance has to be a pain. Why not announce to the world who he is and what he’s doing? Every vamp I know is a megalomaniac and would publicize his conquest. This guy hasn’t.” And the newly subdued master vamps weren’t talking about what had happened on their turf or who their new master was—at all—which was another reason for this flight.

  “The attacker is cheating, not challenging, according to the Vampira Carta,” Reach said.

  I grunted again. The Vampira Carta and its codicils were the rule of law for the vamps—or Mithrans, as they liked to be called—and it contained laws and rules for proper behavior between vampires, their scions, blood-servants, blood-slaves, and cattle—meaning the humans they hunted. It provided proper protocols for everything, including challenging and killing each other in a duel called the Blood Challenge. The new vamp had challenged his conquests, but there had been no fights. None at all. And Boston, attacked a week ago, had gone off the grid. There had been no communication from that MOC in days. He was presumed to be true-dead.

  Reach said, “If an unknown vamp is making a major power play, one that involves vamps getting sick, and Leonard Pellissier, Master of the City of New Orleans, is attacked, and then Leo’s scions get sick, it’s the same dude.”

  “That isn’t quite ipso facto. It’s still more than half speculation.”

  “Ipso facto? Janie knows her Latin. I’m sending you a folder on the vamp you’re visiting—the ex-master of Sedona. It’s put together from the files you loaned me to collate and organize.”

  Back when I had a working relationship with the head of NOPD’s weird cases (not that the New Orleans Police Department used those words to describe the official department. Local cops called it lots of things, none of them very flattering), I’d had access to NOPD’s supernatural crime’s hard-copy files. It was kept in the woo-woo room, and I copied copious amounts of info directly into my own electronic files. I was paying Reach an arm and a leg to organize the info.

  Reach said, “The ex-MOC’s name is Rosanne Romanello. Check your e-mail.”

  Peeling my fingers off the armrest again, I pulled the Lear’s laptop across the table to me and logged on, checking e-mail. The Lear had all the office and party bells and whistles and its electronic gear was easier to use at jet speeds than my own. “Yeah. Got it. Thanks.”

  “Your business is my pleasure and profit.”

  “You oughta get that trademarked.” I hung up the jet’s phone and sat back with the laptop, reading the collated records—which was way easier than finding and reading scraps in individual files. Not that I’d tell Reach that. No way. He’d find a way to make a bigger profit off my now effortless search.

  Rosanne Romanello had an exceptionally well-documented history. She had been born in 1787 in a small town in Calabria, the eldest child of grape and olive growers and olive oil exporters. A beautiful woman, she had been turned in a violent confrontation with a young rogue. Rescued by her fiancé, Luca, she appeared to die and was placed in the church for the death watch, which ended when she rose on the third night, killed the acolyte who had fallen asleep in the nave, and vanished into the hills. She survived there for four years, a rogue in hiding, until Leo Pellissier, traveling through the countryside one night, saw and chained her so she could grow out of the posttransformation insanity vamps called the devoveo. He had taken her west with him when he returned to the United States, and set her free seven years later, sane and strong.

  According to Reach’s notations, there were indications that the relationship between Rosanne and Leo had been more than just passing friendly. Well, duh. Leo believed in something he called the Dark Right, an authority that gave him the right to rule, and that permitted him to sleep with and drink from anyone under his power or his scions’ power. Leo was charming and charismatic, but he was an old-time sleazeball too. I had a lot of sleazeballs in my life right now, and some important people who were seemingly out of my life for good. Old grief welled up in me, but I shoved it back down, hard. There was nothing I could do about the past. Not a thing. And I could grieve the lost relationship with Rick LaFleur later. Much later. I went back to the dossier.

  Rosanne had emancipated herself from Leo and risen slowly in the ranks of the U.S. vamps, moving west until she claimed and settled in Sedona. She had been the blood-master of that city for nearly two hundred years, comfortable in her stronghold—literally. Romanello had started an olive oil business much like her family’s, and built an Italian-style fortress-home where she still lived. Over the centuries, she had made friends with several blood-covens of witches and, with their power base, had protected her land and her scions. Until now.

  Now things had changed. She had lost in direct Blood Challenge to an unknown master—and she was sick. The digital photos accompanying the file were hard to look at. In one, taken only last month at the full moon ceremonies with her witch allies, she had been stunning, pale-skinned, dark-eyed, almost ethereal in her delicate beauty. The poor-quality photo that arrived in Leo’s headquarters e-mail yesterday showed a very different woman. Wasted, wan, with dark circles under her eyes and a dark crust at her nostrils that was presumed to be blood, she looked like death warmed over. Or worse—death still chilled. On the back of her hand was a lump, which looked like a pustule. I didn’t know who had sent the file photo, as it came through a circuitous route and an e-mail account that went nowhere, but it was clearly a cry for help. I was betting on the MOC herself sending it to her former lover and friend, and Reach agreed it was likely.

  Leo wanted her healed and restored, his Asheville scions healed and restored, the new master vamp identified so he could kill the bastard, and the vamp disease wiped off the face of the earth. To achieve that end, Derek Lee, my second-in-command, was going to Asheville to get blood samples from Shaddock, and I was supposed to obtain a few vials of Rosanne’s blood. Just walk in and say, “Hey, Ro. Feel like making a donation?” Right. Like that was gonna happen.

  Even less likely was my obtaining blood and a cogent report from the vamp-stronghold in Seattle, another conquered master of the city who was reputed to be sick. The should-be-impossible vamp-disease seemed like it was everywhere.

  The door to the cockpit opened and the first mate, Tory, stuck his head out. “We’re approaching Sedona’s Mountaintop Airport and will be landing in fifteen minutes. Can I get you anything before we land?�
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  I thought about my stomach and shook my head. The smoked salmon he’d served, cold, with toast points, a salad, and a light beer, just after takeoff in New Orleans, was still sitting uneasily in my stomach. “No offense, but I’ll just be happy to get my feet on the ground. Locked in this tin can with the mild turbulence you talked about back in New Orleans has not been fun.”

  He grinned. “This tin can is a Bombardier Learjet 85, valued at over fifteen million dollars.”

  I gulped and tried not to let my shock show. By the way Tory laughed, I knew I hadn’t been successful. Tory was mid-thirties, not bad looking, standing about five-ten, with a lithe and wiry build, big thighs, like a cyclist, and it was clear that he found me amusing. It had to be the flight nerves.

  “If you need anything just press your call button.” He disappeared behind the closed door and I looked around. I was pretty sure most Learjets were not laid out like this one. The cabin was decorated in muted shades of white and taupe. It held four, fully adjustable, heated leather seats, with a galley and full bath between the seating area and the casket in back. Well, not really a casket, and I had been careful not to call it that out loud; vamps didn’t care much for the fictional assumptions that they sleep in caskets filled with dirt from their homeland burial grounds. But the back portion of the cabin was a cramped bedroom with no windows and stacked bunks. It slept four—six in a pinch—strapped in to the single bunks, in perfect security, allowing vamps to fly by daylight, safe from sunlight, the doors and hatches sealed on the inside. But still. Fifteen million dollars. “Crap,” I whispered.

  I went back to my reading, trying to ignore the bumpy ride. Fifteen minutes later, at Tory’s polite request, which I interpreted as orders, I yanked the seat belt again, cutting off the circulation in my legs, and grabbed the armrests as tightly as I could. The small jet dropped—this time on purpose, as the pilot descended for the landing at the private airport outside Sedona.