Dark Queen Read online

  I grunted. Ate some more.

  “Alex saw an anomaly on the screens during the fight. There was a witch in the Council Chambers.”

  My head came up.

  “Alex says he’s talked with Molly and she can’t think of a way—other than the lasers—to get tech to recognize magic.”

  I grunted and shoveled in another bite. “Where’s the witch now?” It came out like Ere ee wit now? but Eli understood.

  “The anomaly fled Council Chambers. We caught sight of it near Leo’s office. We have the MOC and Sabina under Derek’s personal protection.”

  I grunted again. Ate some more of the sugary delight.

  “We heard from Phillip Hastings.” His voice was toneless and sere.

  I looked up at him. Battle face. This would be bad news.

  “Bighorn Pack tracked down three of the rogue pack. The rogues had targeted NOLA’s homeless population and the grindylow had already killed them. The grindys and the wolves gathered the bitten humans into an empty boxcar to await the full moon.”

  The full moon. When the humans would change and then—if they had no control over their werewolves—would die at the claws of the grindys. Or stay human and live. I looked back at the oatmeal. Wondering if I could do something to stop that, knowing that I could not. Knowing that the humans’ fate was already decided by the were-taint in their blood. I shoveled in more oatmeal, though now it was tasteless.

  “Bighorn Pack has set up a feeding regimen and showers and portable toilets for the bitten men. They’ll be well cared for until the full moon, but they will be prisoners.”

  I grunted. Hating this. Hating not being able to save people who would die because of no fault of their own. This sucked.

  “You meditated when you fought,” Eli said.

  “Zen,” I said. Though it came out Chhhsssin.

  “And in a meditative state you are a fighting beauty to behold.”

  “Ducky,” I said. Or tried to. It came out sounding obscene and Eli chuckled. I swallowed and said, “I sliced and diced him to pieces.”

  “And took his head. And your rep as a fighter just went through the roof. Five challengers from the Sangre Duello just dropped out.” He watched my face and answered before I could ask, “Yeah, word got out fast.” More softly he added, “Andromeda Preaux is dead.”

  I looked up in confusion.

  “Andromeda. The woman in the jewelry shop. She’s dead. Her store was shot up this afternoon in what looks like a gang shoot-out. Six victims: three gangbangers, Andromeda, a blood-servant who smelled like lemons, according to the surgeon who worked on her, and a homeless man who had been sleeping in the doorway.”

  I closed my eyes, remembering the woman who had offered me a way out the back when she believed I was in danger. The woman who had been willing to defend a stranger. I pushed down the need to hit something, to save a woman who couldn’t now be saved.

  Hate pack hunters, Beast thought.

  Yeah, I thought back. I hate helplessness more. Hiding the need for vengeance, I asked, “And the lemon-smelling woman?”

  “She was still under from anesthesia when she disappeared from the recovery department. They think she was carted out in a laundry basket right in front of the sheriff’s deputy on watch.”

  “Des Citrons got her back.”

  “Looks like it. Let’s go. We have more ceremony tonight.”

  I wiped my face and gathered up my weapons harnesses. “I’d rather be chasing down and cutting up Clan Des Citrons. Ceremony is boring,” I said.

  “Not when you’re around.”

  I grunted a final time and led the way to the elevator.

  * * *

  • • •

  Back in the Council Chambers, I studied the hole in the ceiling and the small brick-walled tunnel beyond it. The space was maybe thirty by thirty inches and black as pitch. Eli craned his body around and sent a tight beam of light into the hole. Mr. Prepared always had a flashlight on him. The tunnel went straight up for about fifteen feet and then angled hard to the left. Right at the angle there was a smear of black. I sniffed and thought I caught the faintest scent of old fire and fresh lemons. “Soot?” I asked.

  Eli said, “Boost me up to your shoulders.” I bent my knees, hands on the floor. He stepped on my shoulders, the hard rubber of his boots cutting into my muscles. I didn’t complain, and stood to give him height, watching as he fingered the brick at the lower edge. It was broken and shattered evenly all around. “Hammers. I’d guess there used to be a fireplace in this corner and it was removed during some renovation.”

  “There was,” Leo said calmly from behind us. “In 1917.”

  “Where does it go at the angle?” Eli asked, stretching to the left, his light shooting a thin beam of illumination up the shaft.

  His voice carefully unemotional, Leo said, “Down to the small library on this level and up to the fireplace in my office.”

  I bent my knees again and Eli leaped to the floor. I brushed off my jacket and stretched. “Let’s check out your office,” I said grimly.

  Derek said, “I’ll check out the library.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Leo’s office had been trashed. Upholstered furniture had been ripped open, the hanging draperies that hid the lack of a window in the inner room had been yanked down and lay in piles in the corners, and objets d’art had been shattered against a wall. Said wall was full of fist-sized holes.

  “Nothing of value was taken,” Leo said softly.

  “And you know that how?” I asked, standing at the end of the small hallway, where the space opened out into the office proper.

  “Because the wall she punched through is new. The hidden storage place is empty.” Leo pursed his lips and walked closer to the destruction. He scraped a finger along one hole and then held it up to the light. There was a smear of soot and blood on his hand along with the dust from busted wallboard. Leo sniffed. “Lemons.” He looked back at me. “The storage area was removed after the police conducted the investigation into the death of Safia, the black wereleopard who bit Rick LaFleur. Within it were papers related to the families and histories of many of the Mithrans in my domain, including Dominique’s.”

  “And?” I asked.

  Leo shrugged slightly and sighed. “And there were once two objets de magie hidden here. The amulets were removed and now reside with Sabina in her lair.”

  I texted Alex to check on the vamp cemetery, where the outclan priestess slept by day, and got back a nearly instantaneous response of, Nada. Cameras show silent as the grave. LOL. Then he texted, Our house is fine.

  Next I texted Derek about the library. He texted back, Pair shoes in front of fireplace. She came in here. No sign returning this way.

  “Leo, would you be so kind as to open the secret tunnel from your office?” I asked.

  “Secret?” he asked. “Hardly.” Leo walked to the wall beside the desk and tapped the lever that opened the access to the formerly secret tunnel. Everyone knew it was there now, including the several law enforcement agencies from that investigation into the death of the woman who had bitten Rick. The small doorway opened and the scent of lemons whooshed out.

  My cell dinged with a text from Alex. On the screen were the words, Got it. Dominique didn’t disable cameras in Leo’s office. Took nothing so far as I could see. Took escape tunnel and out through outer wall. Into dark SUV. Got plate. Running/tracking through traffic and security cameras. NOTE—anomaly was with her. Got a partial visual. Cleaning it up.

  What was she looking for? “Alex is on it. I’ll take off and—”

  “You will return to the Council Chambers,” Leo said in his command voice, a kingly, brook-no-refusal tone. “We have unfinished business.”

  I wanted to disagree, but . . . “Yeah. Okay.” What the heck. Alex could run this sear
ch through his tablet from the chambers. It would be a long night.

  Back in the chambers, I ignored things for a while and let Leo’s politics and the fallout run through my mind, combining tonight’s actions with the coming Sangre Duello. He had cemented things with NOLA’s previous four clans and restored a NOLA fifth clan, and he’d given himself loyal Masters of the Cities of Atlanta and Knoxville, to add to the loyalists in Sedona, Seattle, and other vamp-cities. And he wasn’t done yet.

  “Jane Yellowrock.”

  Pulled from my reverie, I narrowed my eyes at Leo, but otherwise I didn’t move. The business had progressed to smaller, less consequential things and I thought Leo had forgotten about us. Looked like I was wrong. Snake. In. The. Grass.

  “No ‘Yes, my lord and master?’” he asked.

  “No.”

  Leo laughed. He raised his hands and his magic coiled into the room, less painful than before, but still hot and biting. “Jane Yellowrock, Enforcer to the Master of the City of New Orleans, approach and kneel.”

  Beast peered out of my eyes, and I could see their yellow glow reflected in Leo’s. Leo would be mate.

  Leo would be and do a lot of things if I let him. I stood and walked the few steps to the dais. I wasn’t real excited about kneeling to anyone, but I was taller than Leo, even with him on the step, so it wasn’t as bad as it might have been.

  Beast took over and dropped me, but I caught myself as she started to roll me over. Beast shows belly to alpha.

  No. No freaking way. I held myself upright on my knees.

  Turning to the clan masters of the executive council, Leo said, “Jane Yellowrock cannot be bound. Jane Yellowrock is loyal by choice. Jane Yellowrock will know that the Master of the City is loyal as well.” With his little jade-handled blade, he cut his thumb again and turned back to me.

  I stared at the welling blood. Crap on a cracker with toe jam. He expected me to suck his thumb. Which for some bizarre reason made me think of Leo sucking on a pink pacifier, which brought a grin to my face. Suddenly I was laughing.

  And Beast ripped through the Gray Between. The half-shift was instantaneous. Violent. I would have screamed with the pain, but I had no breath. My back arched, then bowed, snapping both ways. My body threw itself to the floor, ramming my head on the stone. I saw stars. But no way was I lying on the floor at Leo’s feet. I put both hands out and shoved myself to my knees. My hands were half-Beast/half-human, knobby knuckled, furred on the back, with retractile claws, already extended. Swallowing down stomach acids and a taste so sour it made my cat nose quiver, I stood. I was taller, shoulders broader and bony. Waist thinner, hips rangier. My clothes still fit, though the shoulders were stretched out and the slacks were hanging on my hip bones.

  Leo, eyes piercing, extended his hand and offered me his thumb. It was his right thumb, healed since one of the Mings had tasted him.

  Alpha offers blood, Beast thought. Is not mating gift. Is not meat. Alpha offers blood. Blood is food but not meat food. Vampires are strange predators.

  Staring at the blood dripping down his thumb and pooling in his palm, I dredged through what little I knew about blood sharing and blood offering. I’d fed on Leo’s blood when I was dying. On Ed’s too. I’d fed when Leo tried to force a binding, but that had included him forcibly taking my blood. This wasn’t a binding. There would be no pain, and without my blood as part of the bargain, no way to force anything.

  Leo binding failed, Beast thought.

  Yeah. He failed. And I/we are a lot stronger now. He could try to bind me again, but I had a feeling that my own magic would stop anything. Especially in half-form. I relaxed with a single exhalation and sank into my soul home. The cavern was palely lit, as if the sun was just beyond the stone walls, shining through, glowing, the way light glowed through the nacre of a pearl. In the cavern, I heard water dripping, steady and certain, the same speed as my heartbeat. I laughed again, and my laughter echoed off the stone walls, steady and confident. I looked up, to the angel wings that originated in the center overhead and feathered down the walls. Hayyel, standing guard. Yeah. I was safe.

  I blinked and was still standing in the Council Chambers, still chuckling. I knelt and opened my mouth. Captured Leo’s eyes with my glowing golden ones. He might have flinched just a bit, hesitated just a microsecond, but he recovered. He placed his thumb between my lips and fangs.

  Leo’s blood was salty and sweet. Tart. He reached out and cupped the back of my head in his other hand. He leaned down, breaking our gaze, and placed his lips on my forehead. I swallowed the blood of the Master of the City.

  His magic shot into me. But this time I was ready.

  Ice and fire, the heat of a volcano and the frigid air flowing from a glacier, twining together in a tornado of power. His magic whipped me, seared me. The pain of forge-heated needles stabbed and cut me. I reached out with a clawed hand-paw and put my magic over his. Pressed down, my claws cutting into his power. Held it still. Studied it the way Beast studied the movements of prey.

  Leo magic is in his blood, Beast thought.

  Yes. And he can control what he does with it. He can heal. He can seduce. He can bind. Probably other things. But this time, there was no attempt at binding, no attack.

  Instead, with my claws hooked into his energies, images lanced through me.

  Leo and his brother at play by day, racing on horseback through fields and woods.

  The night they were turned, a night of fear and excitement, as they were sold by their father, who had two too many younger sons. The rage of the devoveo, the madness and thirst.

  Later, fanged, the brothers rode finer horses, galloping by the light of the moon.

  Leo and his uncle, reading by a campfire.

  Leo and Katie, the night they first met. The instant attraction. The immediate desire.

  Grégoire, the first time Leo saw him, old, though still in the form of a teen, on his knees, forced to service his master, in public, a shame and humiliation that was ruining him, destroying him. Leo’s instantaneous and urgent vow to free Grégoire from Le Bâtard. His uncle’s hand on his arm, the crushing grip stopping him from drawing his sword and challenging Le Bâtard to Duel Sang—personal combat—on the spot. Amaury telling him that Grégoire had gotten away once, had been free for over two hundred years. And when Le Bâtard found him, the old pedophile tortured the Mithran rescuer and laid waste to his entire town to teach the world a lesson.

  The night Leo stole Grégoire away from Le Bâtard, the two of them riding through the darkness of a new moon night, racing their horses twenty miles before the sun rose. Falling into bed together in the safe house before dawn broke. Waking together, Grégoire crying with relief and fear and murmuring over and over, “Je suis libre. Je suis libre.” I am free. And Leo holding his new friend in his arms as Grégoire wept.

  Battlefield after battlefield spread out before them—wide and clanging with the clash of war, or the boom of cannon, or empty, the army on the far side. Fires everywhere in the night. The sound of music and singing. Laughter. The smells of smoke and bread and gunpowder and human blood, of fear so strong on the air it was sour. Over and over, war after war.

  Leo and Katie and Grégoire on the docks of New Orleans in the deeps of night, having been rowed ashore by blood-servants. Amaury Pellissier stalked just ahead, disappearing into the dark. The smell of the city and her sewers in the heat of the summer night. The clouds of mosquitoes. The sounds of revelry. “We are safe here,” Katie said. “We three, safe at last.”

  Leo’s first sight of George’s mother. Then of George, in a small room near where his mother was dying.

  The sight of Amaury dying, after drinking the silver-poisoned blood of George’s mother.

  Holding George the night the boy saved his own sister and killed her attacker.

  Dancing with Katie at Katie’s Ladies. Group sex and feeding in a room u
pstairs.

  His first sight of a color television. Of seeing the sunrise on the screen. The shock and wonder and deep desperation to see it himself, with his own eyes, even if it meant true-death.

  The sight of his brother dying, Leo’s sword in his side. Then his brother’s head flying from his shoulders as Leo beheaded him.

  The darkness of depression and despair as the years spread out before him. Empty of the sun. Filled with only blood and those bound to him.

  Leo’s first sight of the woman Jane Yellowrock. Her scent that screamed of danger, of predator, of the ruination of all his plans. The shock when the damned woman branded him with a silver cross. A lesser Mithran would have been scarred forever.

  The sight of his son, dead on the carpet in the doorway. A monster. A beast of darkness, half sabertooth cat, half Mithran. Dead at the hand of the woman he’d brought into his lands and charged with killing that same darkness.

  His decision not to kill her. But to force her to love him.

  Months later, the attack by his enemies, when the Naturaleza had been draining him dry. The woman led the charge to save him. When later, still drunk from his healing, he attempted to bind her by force. George’s rage and ferocity. The woman’s resistance. His realization that he had erred, the sensation of a small part of the soul he feared he no longer had, slipping away. He had never told her that she had bound him instead.

  A vision of Jane, on the dance floor, a warrior woman of her tribe, dressed in vibrant silks. Dancing. Whirling. As sinuous as a snake.

  The feel of her body against his as he led her in a dance of passion. Her refusal to become his in truth. Her ability to thwart him at every turn.

  Her honor.

  His honor.

  Leo slid his thumb from his mouth.

  I blinked. No. Not Leo’s mouth. Not . . . Leo’s.