Black Arts jy-7 Page 24

  “The blood bar has a line and Gee DiMercy sent some more humans in to speed things up. And Leo sent word by Wrassler, and I quote, ‘With the exception of the pirate, my petitioners will not swear to me tonight.’ That mean anything to you, Legs?”

  The name Legs came through like an endearment, and though I knew Angel meant nothing of the sort by it, it made me blink against tears. “Yeah. Got it. It means the young vamps won’t swear to him tonight. The show is canceled. More?” And by more I meant Rick, but I couldn’t bring myself to say his name.

  Angel didn’t hesitate or sound pitying, and for that I was grateful. “The PsyLED cop and the leopard and the little green kitten left in a black cab, out the front door. Wrassler saw to it.” Relief made my knees weak, but he wasn’t done. “He also sent out word that you were checking a problem out back with the bomb-sniffing dog.”

  I felt my shoulders relax, steadied myself, and said, “Thank you.” It might be stupid to care what anyone thought about my abrupt vanishing act, but I did.

  “Copy, Legs,” Angel Tit said gently. “You say. Copy.”

  “Copy. And thank you.”

  “Ooh-rah.”

  I went back through the porte cochere as if I owned the place, pulling on Beast to lend me her cat’s grace and hunting calm. I had made a dramatic exit, I was certain, but if I entered seeming calm and centered, most of those who saw me leave would assume it was a security situation that called me away so fast, not a broken heart. It was stupid to appear weak in front of vamps. Weakness was a possibly deadly emotion, and I had a reputation to defend—the rep of a nonvamp who could beat Leo on the sparing room floor. Head up, I flowed down the hallway, looking neither right nor left, and stepped into the elevator. Appearing cool and collected would dispel or deflect many potential problems.

  Just as the doors closed, a black form stepped in, the doors barely grazing him on either side. I caught his scent even as I drew a weapon and I looked up into warm brown eyes. I shoved the blade back into the special pocket sheath. The door sealed and the elevator moved. “Wondered where you were,” I said. “New tux?”

  Bruiser smoothed a hand down the satiny black of his lapel. “Yes. I think we should dance.”

  I don’t know why that simple statement brought my pain to the surface again. I looked down at the small floor space, as much to keep him from seeing the fresh misery in my eyes as to inspect the floor. “Not much room. Besides, I’m working.”

  “So am I. And the location of our dance will be near the pirate and the traitor.” When I didn’t refuse or disagree, he went on. “When Shoffru goes to pledge to Leo, we will keep the defector company.”

  I thought about that while I spoke of more important things. “Was Adrianna around New Orleans when Shoffru ran with Lafitte?”

  An approving glint lit Bruiser’s eyes. “Oh yes. Adrianna ran with a fast crowd even then.”

  “The Damours.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Jackie Boy is a witch?”

  “So it appears, though it isn’t in his dossier, and Leo—who had to have met him at some point—didn’t know.”

  I grunted at that. Hard thing to hide, but Shoffru had done so. Which made him smarter and more powerful than expected. He had to make really good charms to hide witch-scent from a vamp. “Are you still Leo’s Enforcer tonight?”

  “I am, though I am choosing my replacement. What do you think about Derek?”

  I laughed shortly. Derek wasn’t fond of vamps, not even Leo, and not even when Leo had healed some of his men from wounds suffered in his service. “Be sure to film it when you ask him. That should be interesting.” The elevators opened and I took Bruiser’s arm. The heat of his body was like a fever, and I felt it roar through my flesh like Beast hunting. Teeth showing, intent. Pushing its way through my grief.

  We will scream out our pain to the moon at dawn, she thought at me. Then we will kill our rival. And retake our foolish mate.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said to her and to Bruiser, letting Beast have her way for now. “We might have to revise the middle part a bit.” I had no intention of killing anyone. “For now, let’s go dance,” I said. “Can you get some better music? I liked that track that was playing the night I beat the crap out of Leo.”

  “Which was a thing of beauty to behold.”

  I snorted. “His beating you was staged, wasn’t it?”

  “Not precisely.” Bruiser tapped his mic, requesting a change in music. He didn’t pause as we entered the ballroom to the opening strains of a Bonamassa instrumental I didn’t recognize, clueing me in on who at vamp central liked the blues guitar player. Bruiser. He had set up the music for my fight with Leo. In advance. I put that realization away for later.

  Bruiser led me forward into the middle of the dance floor—the pirate and his scarlet-haired traitor to my left and Bruiser’s right—and into a slow, slow tango. Totally not what I was expecting, totally not what my hidden heart wanted, but I moved with him, my feet and body finding the cadence of the steps in the odd rhythm of the song, one not arranged for the Latin dance. I concentrated on his lead and let the beat hold me to the floor, knowing that I might lose myself in the music and dance through the pain if I forgot that I was working.

  Bruiser was a masterful dancer, my body moving like a length of silk in his arms, bending and sliding and dipping, my feet shifting perfectly, though my shoes were leaving small bits of earth from the garden in our wake. There was something mystical in the music and the soil dropping from my feet, as if I had walked from a grave and into the dance. My heart began to lighten as Bruiser bent me back over his arm, his leg between both of mine, pressing into the center of me. I wanted to pull away, but he held me there for a moment, for several long beats, his eyes on mine. “They have stopped dancing,” he murmured beneath the music. “Watching us.”

  I smiled, slow, so slow, and let my head drop back, exposing my neck to him. It was a position of submission to the predators watching. A posture of a different kind of submission to Bruiser. His arm tightened across my back and I arched deeper. Closer into him.

  He rolled me up in his arms, trapping me, whispering in my ear. “Some night soon,” he said.

  I let my smile slide away, promising nothing, but not denying him. Knowing I wasn’t ready. Not right now. Especially not tonight. Maybe not ever. Yet he yanked my body against his, a reminder of his intent. I slid away from him, whirling, as I always had done before. And Bruiser laughed, saying softly, “No, Jane. Not this time.” And deftly, as if I weighed a feather, he whirled me back to him.

  The song ended with me at Bruiser’s feet, one arm up, resting at the top of his thigh, his Onorio heat blazing though the cloth of his trousers. He leaned down and murmured, “Shoffru’s heir, Cym, is no longer with us tonight. We should wonder why that is so.”

  “Yeah. We should.”

  A different Bonamassa song started, even slower than the first, and Leo stepped into the dance, replacing Bruiser as if they had planned it. And who knew? Maybe they had.

  Leo pulled me to my feet and led me into his arms. His black eyes caught mine. And I felt Beast staring up and out at him through me. The silver chain that bound her to him tightened, vibrating, a slight tremor that reached into the deeps of me, through my grief, through my anger at him for the forced feeding.

  My life was so messed up.

  Leo held me for two beats, then stepped to the side, into a bolero. The dance steps were so slow and romantic, the pauses with our bodies at sharp angles to each other, our legs intertwined as the steps ground us together. His body was ice-cold, where Bruiser’s had been inhumanly heated. Beast purred.

  Inside, I wept.

  CHAPTER 16

  Dead-Slab-of-Gravestone-Marble

  The dance ended. Leo released my body and, following the pressure of his hand and arm, I moved out to his side, facing the partygoers. Our arms were out, clasped hands extended in the air between us. “My Enforcer,” Leo said, releasing me. “B
ring me the supplicant.”

  Shoffru’s head lifted, his nostrils widening as he took a breath, hard and deep. But I had already pulled two blades, one a steel-bladed, silver-edged throwing knife, the other a twelve-inch-long vamp-killer. I drew on Beast-speed, racing to Shoffru’s side and bursting through the witch magics, throwing green sparkles into the room, feeling them burn against my skin.

  The keep-away spell was targeted, I thought, but not against skinwalkers. It’s hard to spell against something you don’t know exists or don’t have a blood sample from. Shoffru had expected to be escorted up by vamps or humans, and planned a little witchy surprise for them. Leo had turned the tables. The fanghead was good at that.

  I placed a blade at the pirate’s throat.

  His eyes widened and I grinned; it wasn’t a sweet grin. He leaned in and sniffed me. And his fangs dropped down on the little hinged bones, a soft snick sounding in the suddenly silent room. The music had stopped, and the room’s natural acoustics had taken over. “Hiya, Jackie,” I said, the sound warm and bright and carrying everywhere in the quiet. “Welcome back to New Orleans. Things are gonna be a little different this time around.”

  Ignoring my comment, he asked, “What species of predator are you?”

  “The kind who kills vamps for a living.” I chuckled, letting Beast’s power course through me and shine in my eyes. I could see the golden reflection in his pupils. The lizard poked his head up from the black shirt collar. It was sitting on Shoffru’s collarbone, its long tail curled down his chest. It was watching me, as if unafraid, curious.

  Shoffru’s body was still, that vamp-style, dead-slab-of-gravestone-marble still. I could feel him trying to bring up the keep-away spell, but with me so close, it wasn’t happening. I let my blade press against his neck, just enough to barely slice the skin. A line of red appeared. The scent of vamp blood flooded me, his caustic and sharp like cacti and desert nights. The lizard whipped his head to the cut. His skin turned a bright, interested green, a patch on his throat growing reddish and puffing out, as if he was excited.

  Around us, Shoffru’s vamps converged into a semicircle, starting to form a pincer movement, or a constriction like the mouth of bag drawn tight, to enclose us. Adrianna had vamped out, eyes wide black pupils in bloody red sclera. Her fingers were clawed with razor-sharp talons.

  From the doorway, I heard booted feet, and the mixed scents of Derek’s men blended into the room. Shoffru’s people hesitated, and the pirate seemed to know his rebellion had been anticipated. “The world is always changing,” Shoffru said. “Only the strong survive the evolution of life.”

  “Jackie’s a philosopher as well as a pirate captain,” I said. “Good. It’ll help when Leo bares your throat and drinks.” His pupils widened into black holes. He didn’t vamp out. I gave him that. He stayed in control. “Tell your girl to sit this one out.”

  “Adrianna, my love,” he said. “Please await me.”

  The nutso vamp hissed in displeasure, but she lowered her talons.

  I said, “Let’s go, Jackie. Move slow. It’s like a dance, but you follow my lead without touching me or the blade slides home to nestle into your cervical spine. Got it?”

  Shoffru didn’t nod—not with my blade so close—but he did school his face in agreement.

  I led Shoffru to the center of the dance floor, where Leo waited, Bruiser beside him. From the corner of my eye, I saw Wrassler standing behind Adrianna, and her facade was not the happy-camper face of a partygoer. It was the fang-down expression of a wanna-kill-something suckhead. I figured that Wrassler had a blade to her kidney. Good. And Derek had weapons leveled at Shoffru’s peeps. Even better. Gee DiMercy stood to the side, watching the little game like an interested spectator.

  We reached the center of the room, and when I felt Bruiser’s body heat at my back, I stepped away, letting Shoffru go. Leo and Bruiser had him boxed in like a layer of vamp jelly between two slices of deadly bread. I walked to Wrassler, blades still out, and said into my mic, “Play us some music, something dangerous,” knowing that Angel would hear. Just before I reached the traitor, the opening strains of “All I Wanted” by Temporary Empire began to play, soft and low. It wasn’t what I had asked for, but the heartache in the song fit my own broken heart, pulling the anguish to the surface again. It played softly, at the edges of my hearing.

  Grief and anger warred with a killing lust deep inside me as I reached Adrianna. “Hello, dead woman,” I said. “I’ll have your blood on my hands soon.”

  “Oh no, Enforcer,” Gee DiMercy said by my ear. I hadn’t felt him on my trail and I almost flinched, but I held it down, as if my other half had known of his presence. “That particular joy will be mine,” he said.

  I laughed, the sound only slightly louder than the near-silent music. “I’ll fight you for it, Mercy Blade. But later.” I whirled, my skirts spinning out around me, and I turned to the center of the room, giving Adrianna my back, in what any predator could only assume to be an insult, and I heard her hiss at the affront.

  In the center of the room, Jack Shoffru stood before Leo. The MOC of New Orleans placed his hand on Jack’s shoulder and pressed down. Jack’s upper lip curled in resistance and his body locked upright. At the edge of my vision, the swordswoman snarled, her body poised to draw and fight, her expression suspicious and confused.

  The announcer said softly, “Jacques Shoffru, turned by François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, leader of the revolution in Saint Domingue. Survivor of the Purge of New Orleans, whereby two of the Domingue clans were slaughtered. Captain of the privateering vessels: the Ring Leader and the Lady’s Virtue. Copartner with Jean Lafitte in the Whale’s Tale Enterprises in New Orleans.” Jack, locked beneath Leo’s hand, looked as though he’d break a sweat if vamps did that kinda thing. Leo looked as if he were pushing down on a flower stalk, two fingers on Jack’s shoulder. The overhead speakers went on. “Once, secondo heir in the now decimated Clan Rousseau. Currently, and for two centuries, Master of the City of Veracruz and Cancún, Mexico, and all hunting territories between. Seeking supplicant status from the Master of the City of New Orleans.”

  Shoffru’s knees buckled. The vamp with all the interesting titles dropped to the floor at Leo’s feet. Leo now had one hand on his enemy’s shoulder; the other palm went to Shoffru’s forehead, pushing the pirate’s head back, elongating his throat. The posture was one of total submission, though it didn’t really look as if Jackie was feeling very submissive. More as if he’d been forced that way, fighting it with everything he had. Leo, on the other hand, moved with effortless grace. And the MOC hadn’t even pulled any power from the clans. Go, Leo. “Do you yield and surrender?” Leo asked softly.

  Adrianna hissed again, but so did all the vamps that had come with the pirate, and it sounded like surprise. I looked around to verify that impression and saw that Leo’s people were surprised too. So . . . yield and surrender meant . . . what, to a vamp?

  Leo said, “My Enforcer, attend me.”

  All of a sudden, I didn’t like this, not one bit. I still had my weapons out, however, and I stepped slowly to the center of the room, my dancing shoes making soft taps on the wood floor. I stopped three feet away and waited, but Leo didn’t acknowledge me, so I said, “I’m here.”

  Leo didn’t respond to me but repeated his question to Shoffru. “Do you yield and surrender?”

  Shoffru ground out, “For now. Yes.”

  “For one decade,” Leo said. “Or until we meet in formal Blood Challenge—which will be at a time of my choosing.”

  And then I got it. Somehow Leo had brought the wording of a Blood Challenge into the little tableau, and also somehow, that meant Jack was well and truly beaten, even though he was accepted by the MOC of New Orleans. The only leeway I thought might be in the wording was in the weapons used. Leo had claimed the time. Jack could choose the weapons.

  “I yield,” Jack said, “and surrender my titles and territories and cattle, for a time of ten years, or un
til I defeat you in formal Blood Challenge, at the time of your choosing.”

  Before Jack even finished speaking, Leo vamped out. He sank his fangs into Shoffru’s throat. I turned away, making a point of watching Adrianna and Jack’s peeps, not really wanting to watch Leo drink anyone down.

  My throat tightened as my own memories surfaced again. Fangs at my throat. The priestess holding my head. Bruiser stretched out beside me, as much a prisoner as I had been. I shoved the memory away, deep down, into the recesses of the black cavern that was my soul. But I couldn’t block out the sound of Leo drinking, flesh on flesh, soft sounds of swallowing. Before me, Adrianna was led off into the night by Wrassler and Gee.

  I whispered, “Turn up the music, Angel.”

  Around me the raspy voice of Keeb, the lead singer from Temporary Empire, rose, the lyrics weeping into the air, “. . . . Everything is quiet, everything is calm. Everyone’s a riot. Softer than a psalm.” Behind me, I felt heat and warmth. And I knew Bruiser stood there, not touching, but there. Waiting. The band was a little-known one out of North Carolina. Only Bruiser would have thought to find it for me. Only Bruiser would have cared enough to find it. But Bruiser wasn’t who I wanted.

  I sucked down a breath and forced the tears away. Damn you. Damn you, Rick LaFleur. How had I let him do this to me again? I was an idiot. But I didn’t have to stay one. It might take me several tries to learn a lesson, but it was well and truly learned this time. No matter how strong the mating magic and mating pheromones were, he could have resisted. He could have. I’d never trust Rick LaFleur again. Never let him into my life again. And the lyrics moaned, “. . . you’re all I ever wanted in this world. You’re all I ever needed . . .”

  Never again.

  Never.

  • • •

  The rest of the night went by in a blur. Shoffru accepting the terms of his servitude. Leo and Jack toasting each other with humans to sip from. Adrianna not reappearing. Vamps dancing while drinking from their human partners. Humans drinking hard, partying as if there would be no dawn.