Black Arts jy-7 Read online

  “Two changes to the protocol,” I said. “I want three people at both entries at all times when we have guests or when we have a social event. Two will stay put if one guest needs escorting. The one guard escorting will walk side by side with said guest, not in front to prevent attack from the rear. When two or more guests need escorting, one guard will lead, and the other will follow. The remaining guard will call backup to the front, maintaining a two-man team at the entrances at all times. I want that fourth guard in place before the others clear the foyer.

  “Back gates are to be treated like embassy security or prison security. Anyone here familiar with that protocol?”

  A hand went up and it was Tattoo Dude’s. “I worked San Quentin for ten years. Know all about the entrance protocols. If you got mirrors and other equipment, I can set it up.”

  “Get with Wrassler,” I said. “Make it happen.”

  When Tattoo Dude looked confused, Wrassler lifted a hand. “Me. If Janie likes or hates you, she’ll rename you.”

  “And if she doesn’t?” Derek asked.

  “I’m guessing she’s withholding final decision.”

  Derek stared at me. That wasn’t quite right. I didn’t know Hawk Head or Tattoo Dude, but they got names. That said, Derek and I had issues—like, even though he worked for the fangheads and for me, he didn’t like nonhumans. I shrugged at him and went back to my notes.

  “Night of the gather, I want all hands present. All leaves are hereby canceled.” Several people groaned, and I shook my head with a slight smile. “Next, I want everyone in teams. I’ll be going over the list for security personnel, and will be putting everyone in place on the night of the soiree. Go over the protocols, especially the amended procedures, and watch your e-mail in-boxes.” I made several more announcements, all of it boring stuff, and then said, “Derek, get with me early on the night of. Any questions?” No hands went up and I said, “Last thing. As of seventy-two hours ago, we have a new vamp in town. Rented a limo in Texas. Anyone know about it?” No hands went up, no one looked secretive. Wrassler looked baffled and troubled. Vamps did not enter another’s territory without certain procedures being followed. To him, I said, “Take it up with Bruiser and Leo. See if they know anything. See if one of the visitors for the gather is coming from Texas.”

  Wrassler said, “No one is coming from Texas. No one.”

  That wasn’t good. Vamps making trouble at a gather wasn’t unknown. A new vamp in town just before a gather was worrisome. “Meeting’s adjourned,” I said. “Let’s eat.”

  Moments later, Adelaide brought me a bowl of chili with beans, over rice, and a loaf of bread on a wood paddle, with a serrated bread knife. We sat with Wrassler and caught up on Asheville, and the new personnel in HQ, and shared info and files on our electronic tablets, including the dossiers on the new people. It was homey. Chatty. Fun.

  Until Beast sank her claws deeply into my brain.

  I saw movement. A smear of red and blue. A glint of metal—a blade, moving fast. I whirled to my left, lifting that hand in an instinctive block. Caught the descending arm on the meaty part of my lower arm. My right hand went for the bread knife on the table as I moved. Right foot shoved my weight, left ball of foot pivoting. Twisted my left arm around the attacker’s right, securing it. Knocked away the attacker’s knife with a right fist to his wrist. Heard the bone break.

  Rising but still ducked, I blocked his other arm. Twisted my body under the attacker’s arm. Slammed my shoulder into his stomach. Brought the knife in hard. Felt it penetrate clothes and slide off of leather, like a belt. Felt it press against flesh. Stopped at the first faint smell of human.

  I chuffed in disgust and continued my pivot, torquing more power into the shoulder, drawing on Beast’s strength. Tossed my blunt table knife into the corner. Lifted my attacker off his feet, his weight change part of the move. Whirled and dropped him.

  He landed flat. The sound was like a dozen sandbags hitting, and an “Oomph” of lost breath. I fell across him, one hand under his chin, clawing at his throat, the other clawing into his abs.

  “You’re dead,” he managed. It was a promise.

  Hunter attacked in safe place, Beast thought at me. Pack hunters!

  I blinked away Beast before she/I ripped into his soft belly. In the same instant, I hit him in the side of the neck with my fist, with enough force to knock him out. His eyes rolled in his head. I leaped to my feet and put my back to the wall. No one else was attacking. I risked a glance down. Dang. Hawk Head was out cold.

  I growled low, the vibration filling the room. Fun! Beast chuffed at me. More!

  Everyone stared. No one else had moved. I was pretty sure no one was even breathing. Wrassler stood slowly and walked to my side of the table. He nudged Hawk Head with a pointed toe. “Derek, secure the prisoner,” he said.

  “Not just yet,” I whispered. I swallowed, forcing Beast back down. I managed a breath that hurt all the way to my toes. Chuffed it out.

  “Why not?” Wrassler asked.

  “Whose clan is he?” I asked.

  “Clan Arceneau,” Wrassler said. His face fell as he put it together. Grégoire and his heir were both gone, leaving the clan home in the hands of Grégoire’s secondo heir—who was well known to be my enemy, Adrianna.

  The memory came back in an instant, rushing through me like a steaming deluge.

  I had been at a vamp party. I had slid open the pocket door to the darkened powder room, seeing myself in a slanted mirror, haloed in shadows. Stepping in, I flicked on the light.

  A blur swept toward me from the left, crossing the mirror. Time dilated and slowed. Beast screamed deep inside, shoving her strength and reflexes into my veins with a rush of power and heat. Vamp fangs and claws flashed in the mirrors, falling toward me.

  The weight of two vamps crushed down immobilizing me. Fangs biting. The next few moments were desperate as I tried to fight my way free. But I was losing. Above me, another vamp watched, icy power flowing from her. Red hair, curly and wild, fanned out, a gold torque etched with Celtic symbols hung around her neck, a gold cuff shaped like a snake climbed one arm. I staked her just as Leo appeared. “Adrianna,” he had said, the word so full of power, it had made my skin ache.

  Yeah. That had been a bad one. Me bleeding in a building full of vamps. It was amazing that I had survived. And later, of course, I’d staked her properly. But for reasons of his own, Leo had brought her back to her undead life, and kept her somewhere until she recovered from her own double death and the mind-breaking separation of anamchara with one of the Damours—black-magic-practicing witch-vamps I had killed. Yeah. We had a history. None of it important, but all of it bad.

  And now, with Grégoire and Dominique out of town, Adrianna was in control of Arceneau, one of the most powerful clans in the U.S. Adrianna, who had flaming red hair, like the person in the car with Katie’s missing girls. And the girls had gone to Adrianna’s territory and then disappeared. Crap! No way was this gonna end well.

  I breathed in slowly and let the tension ease away from me. To force my body to calm, I walked across the room to the blade Hawk Head had dropped and studied it. It was a short blade, about four inches long, better suited to cutting than to stabbing, having a wide, curving edge and spine and a rounded point. I swiped a paper napkin from a table, wrapped it gently around the butt, and lifted the knife with two fingers. I carried it to the table where I had eaten and opened out several more paper napkins, placing the blade in the fold. I sniffed along the edge for anything odd. Because why would he try to hurt me with such a puny knife? It was hard to parse the scents with my human nose, especially with the pheromones and spice scents in the room, but . . . there was something there, something herbal and chemical both.

  Like poison.

  “Secure all personnel from Clan Arceneau,” I said. “I want them in separate rooms. No food, no drinks, no TV, and no personal items.” When no one moved, I snarled, “Now!” And they moved. Bliss and Rachael had been plan
ning to leave the vamp party at Guilbeau’s and go to another party at the Arceneau Clan Home. Something was really hinky.

  CHAPTER 7

  Sold Me to Leo

  “So Leo’s not in,” I quoted.

  A look of discomfort flashed across Adelaide’s face for a beat, before she squared her shoulders minimally and lied to me. “No.”

  I pursed my lips. I didn’t often tell people that I could smell the stress when they lied, and I wasn’t about to tell Adelaide, but I wanted her to know I didn’t believe her. “Leo’s new clan home won’t be ready to move into for another month. What’d he do, go dancing?”

  “Really, Jane. Dancing?”

  A tight smile set itself free on my face. “Leo can dance. Get him to take you for a spin on the dance floor. The fanghead is sex on a stick.”

  Adelaide’s face turned faintly pink, and I realized she was blushing. “Perhaps another time,” she said, and I wondered at the blush. Before I could ask, she went on carefully. “Even if he was in tonight, he will not be dealing with this issue.”

  Oh. I looked down at the names of the sequestered members of Clan Arceneau. All of them had been here for weeks, plenty of time to have been dinner for Leo—which meant something important. It meant that whatever was going on, Leo had to know something about it. Got it. “He wants me to deal with it so his hands are clean.”

  She shrugged, a delicate move of shoulder blade and collarbone that a ballerina might have envied. The light caught the purple fabric of her silk shirt, creating shadows and hollows and warming her skin.

  “It wasn’t a test?” I asked. “A way for Clan Arceneau security to see if the new part-time Enforcer was able to handle herself in a dicey situation?”

  “No. Not without Leo’s approval.”

  “Which he didn’t give,” I said, just to make sure.

  “He did not.”

  I dropped the page of Clan Arceneau names and paced the length of the small room, feeling caged by the lack of windows, the narrow walkway, the oppressive stench of nervous vamp in the lounge off the foyer. I had sent the knife to Jodi Richoux, the cop in charge of the paranormal unit at New Orleans Police Department. She was testing it for toxins and fingerprints and anything else that might be weird on it, all as a favor to the MOC of her city. She was also frothing at the mouth to get inside vamp central and deal with the issue of assault and attempted murder in human legal ways. Leo had sent word that Jodi’s services would not be needed. Which I’m sure ticked her off royally. Yeah. He was leaving this to me.

  There were twelve Clan Arceneau blood-servants in vamp HQ today, six on security, six in services—meaning the kitchen, paperwork, yard work, and housekeeping. To keep the council chambers and headquarters up and running, the clans rotated in servants, sorta like a feudal system where the peasants and knights were sent in to serve the king as part of their liege lord’s taxes or whatever. But in this case, the humans got to provide more than the usual services—they got to feed the chief fanghead his blood meals. And through that blood-taking, Leo could learn most anything they knew, and most anything he wanted. So . . . whether Adelaide knew it or not, Leo knew I would be attacked.

  “Son of a gun. He did it to me again,” I murmured. A slow heat burned its way through me. I was tired of vampire games. “Get me my weapons,” I growled to the security twin at the door. “Now!” I added sharply when she didn’t move quickly enough.

  Moments later they were in my hands. I checked the mag and load, and strapped the nine-mil on beneath my left shoulder, adjusted the draw until I was satisfied. Stuck the throwing knives into my belt, into special tiny sheaths there. I was good with the knives, though not perfect yet. Beast liked them. She called them flying claws.

  I strapped the vamp-killer on my right thigh and twisted my braid up into a knot on the top of my head, securing it with the ash wood stake. My hands high and twisted into my hair, I said, “Get me a vamp. One of Leo’s master vamps. One who can read his dinner’s minds. A hungry one.”

  Adelaide’s eyes went wide as she understood what I was asking. Not all vamps could read the minds of their dinners. Some could only bedazzle and charm and allure. But some master vamps could take it a step further. They could read the minds of their prey. I know. It had been done to me. Del picked up a phone and stopped, staring at the receiver. It was part of the in-house security system, an old part, installed before my time, but I had seen no reason to tear it out of the walls. It worked as backup in case of system failure of my own hardware. The receiver was attached to the wall via a long tangled cord and Adelaide watched it swing, thinking. After too long, she punched in a single number. “The Enforcer shall be interrogating Clan Arceneau’s blood-servants. She requests a hungry Mithran master. One capable of a forced reading of those from whom he feeds. I am not familiar with the Mithrans here yet— Yes. Of course.” She put the receiver down, slowly, the thick plastic clacking quietly. She didn’t meet my eyes and I felt compelled to explain.

  “I have few options here, Del. I can ask questions and they will answer unless they were told or compelled not to. Then I can walk away or I could use harsher methods to make them talk. I could try waterboarding. Or bamboo shoots under their fingernails. Or drilling out their teeth. Or I can question them, and when they lie, get a vamp to drink it out of them. Which is the kindest method?” She didn’t reply, her eyes on the far wall, and a thin line drew between her perfect arched eyebrows—the lawyer thinking.

  “Leo drinks from every servant who comes here, Del, and every one of them on this list has been here long enough to be tasted. Leo knew they were going to attack me. And he didn’t tell me. And he didn’t stop it.” Adelaide turned to me, the movement jerky, her blue eyes clearing, focusing in on me. “So clearly he wants me to find out something else too, something he only caught a part of, or a peek at.”

  “And since he can’t look weak or uninformed, he’s going to let you do his dirty work.”

  “Yeah. Kinda.”

  Adelaide crossed her arms over her chest. “Can you torture people this way?” When I looked away, trying to decide how much to tell her, Del said, “A forced feeding is painful. No human who is working against Leo will willingly allow a feeding. And it . . . hurts, Jane. It’s a violation of body and soul.”

  My face softened. She had given me an opening and I decided to take it. “Yeah. Been there, done that.” Her eyes, already wide, dilated farther. “Leo tried to force a binding on me. He attacked me and drank. And yeah. It was awful.”

  She breathed, the purple shirt moving with the motion, the only sign of her agitation.

  My voice a burr of sound, I said, “He apologized to me for it.” I heard the wounds in my own voice, the words hoarse with remembered pain. I forced down a breath past the tightness in my throat. “And he says he owes me a boon. A big one.”

  She shook her head as if amazed or disbelieving. “And you stayed with him? Even after that?” Her face changed again as she added two and two and came up with a total. “Oh no. The binding. He forced you to become his Enforcer. And now you can’t leave.”

  “Not in the way you mean. He tried to bind me. It didn’t work like it was supposed to.”

  “Because you’re a skinwalker?” she hazarded, still adding things up in her lawyerly brain. When I didn’t reply, her tone changed into legal-cool, and she asked, “If you aren’t bound, why did you stay? Revenge?”

  I sighed, realizing that Del was asking the kind of questions a vamp’s lawyer might make, which told me where she stood on the matter—like Bruiser, she belonged to the vamps, no matter how much she might like me personally. Once, she had said she wanted to be my friend. I had a feeling that was going to be a lot harder than either of us thought.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That . . . sounded wrong. Unkind. You aren’t the revenge type.” I snorted in disagreement and Adelaide chuckled sourly. “Okay. Let me rephrase. Why did you stay all this time when you could have left?”

  I stared d
own, focusing on nothing. Beast was bound. Couldn’t say that. I settled on “Lots of reasons. I’d been killing vamps for years, and never thought of them as anything but monsters who deserved to die. I was acting on my own instincts. Me. Alone. When I got to New Orleans, I discovered that there was something more to it all. Something other than see-vamp-kill-vamp. Some vamps may have just needed more time to cure.” I rolled a shoulder forward in a shrug. “But I killed them before they could finish the change that might have let them be something more. That said, according to vamp law, they deserve to die if they kill a human, no matter if they are technically insane when they kill. Once a human is turned, everything gets all mixed up. So yeah. It sounds stupid, but that’s part of it.”

  Adelaide nodded in agreement with my legal judgment and said, as if clarifying, “But Leo hurt you. And you’re staying anyway.”

  I nodded.

  Softer, she said, “He hurt you, and you would do that to someone else?”

  My old pal guilt squirmed under my skin. Knowing I was slipping down some slippery slope, ever farther away from any kind of high ground, I said, “Every blood-servant here has been drunk from. Every one of them signed away their rights to personal freedom. Being here, being dinner, isn’t against their will. No one’s going to refuse being sipped on except the ones holding out on me. I won’t force them, but they will be turned over to Leo for judgment.”

  “And you think them signing a piece of paper is an excuse to let a Mithran hurt them?” This time her tone was curious, as if she were peeling back layers of me to see what rotted underneath, at the heart of me.

  “They signed a contract. You’re a lawyer; you know what that means. I could ignore it, but that person might have other orders, like, to kill Leo in his sleep, or set off bombs during the gather. Orders that will kill people, Del. Humans. Vamps. People I like. People I don’t like but have sworn to protect. So yes. I’ll hurt the guilty.”