Death's Rival jy-5 Read online

  “I may not answer.”

  Without turning my head, I glanced at Nikki. His face was closed, as unyielding as a marble statue. No answer there either. Well, crap. “May I ask another question about your master, without giving offense?” What I’d like to do is beat it out of you, but I have my orders.

  Ro chuckled, almost as if she had heard my thoughts. Vamps are as adept as any predator at reading body language and interpreting vocal tones as cues, so maybe in a way she had. “Do you know how you were infected?” I asked. “Is the disease associated with your new boss?”

  Ro said nothing, but Nikki laughed, and the tone was not happy. “This illness is a scourge upon all of us.”

  Which I took as a yes, but that didn’t really help me much. From my memory, I pulled up the formal words for my next request—which was the primary reason for my visit, and the biggest reason I might not walk out of here under my own power. “The Master of the City of New Orleans,” which was Leo’s less formal title, “has dependable and confidential physicians in his employ who might assist with finding a cure. He requests . . .” I took a steadying breath. This was the most dangerous part. “. . . that you allow me to draw a sample of your blood for testing.”

  Nikki stepped toward me, vamp fast. I stepped back, toward the door. Beast does not run from predators. The voice in my head reminded me that running from vamps activated the chase instinct. Not that it mattered. The opening was suddenly filled with a blood-servant—the big, bad, ugly guy who had held the door, all brawn and speed and no brains. The tension in the room shot up like a wildfire hitting a stand of dry pine.

  On reflex, I ducked right, backed into the corner of the room, pulled the nine-mil and a vamp-killer, the one I’d killed the blood-slave with. I knew the vamps would smell the fresh blood, even after the thorough cleaning I’d given the blade in the ladies’ room.

  Nikki-Babe followed so fast I didn’t see him move. He was so close I could smell who he’d had for dinner. I heard the distinctive click of fangs snicking down on the little hinged mechanism in the roof of his mouth. In a single heartbeat, his eyes vamped out. “Pellissier must still be caught in the dolore of grief to ask such a thing,” he said, black pupils the size of quarters spreading into bloodred sclera. “He is insane still, from the loss of his son.” No trace of white or iris remained in Nikki’s eyes, and no trace of humanity. This was going to hell in a handbasket fast.

  I shoved the gun up under Nikki’s chin. “Silver shot,” I warned, on a whisper. He stilled, his eyes twisting back to Rosanne. “Look, lady,” I said to her, “I don’t want trouble. Leo just wants to help. Girrard DiMercy is back with him, and Leo is sane again.”

  Ro lifted a hand. The pressure in the room died. “Girrard has returned to him?”

  “Yes, and Leo thinks his private lab can find a cure to the sickness.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “You know how to do this taking of blood?” I nodded. “You may.” Nikki-Babe started in with a barrage of oddly accented Italian, clearly disagreeing with her decision, but I ignored him. According to the Vampira Carta, she was in charge. I slid away from Nik, keeping him in my side vision, and stepped to the desk. Ro rolled up her sleeve. Oh, goody. I wasn’t gonna get sucked to death.

  I holstered the weapons and opened the small tote, taking out the blood drawing kit. I wasn’t skilled at taking blood, but I knew how to do it. I pulled on gloves and tied the tourniquet around Rosanne’s arm. The pustules were here as well, and the smell of the sickness was gag-inducingly strong this close to her. There was a vein right in the middle of her arm, slightly plumped by the tourniquet. I cleaned the bottles and tubes, each with different-colored tops and containing different anticoagulants, with alcohol, and then the sticking site with foamy brown soap and Betadine. I pulled the cap from the needle and stuck the sharp needle under her skin. She didn’t flinch, though I wasn’t experienced with the procedure. If it had been a stake, maybe then . . .

  I stifled the thought and pushed the first bottle on, then the next, then four more tubes in succession. When I was done, I popped the tourniquet. Put a square of gauze above the insertion site and removed the needle. Flipped the safety cap closed.

  I met Ro’s calm eyes, and she smiled slowly, tilting her head the barest fraction. The expression on her face suggested that she had accomplished a goal, and I was reminded of the photo that arrived at Leo’s from an anonymous source. Yeah. Ro had sent the photo and had known that Leo would send help. She might have preferred an armed rescue, but she trusted Leo or she wouldn’t have allowed me to draw the blood. Vamps were sneaky. I liked that about them. I nodded back slightly to show I understood.

  I held the site while I dropped the torn packages, the bottles, and tubes into a zip-lock baggie and sealed it up. I was supposed to label the tubes with name, date, and time, but that could wait. I was ready to get out of here and so was Beast. I could feel her unease padding through my mind like a lion in a cage, back and forth, back and forth.

  Chilled moisture soaked my thumb and I glanced at the puncture site to see blood oozing up from beneath my grip. I grabbed more gauze, applied it, and held harder, but the blood welled faster. Vamps don’t bleed. Not like this. “Crap,” I whispered.

  Nik pushed me aside and took Rosanne’s arm. And he did something I’d never seen a vamp do before. Instead of licking it clean, he wiped the puncture site, tossing the bloody gauze into the garbage. A vamp ignored blood. Didn’t lick it. And then he spat onto the wound. I almost said eeeewwww but caught myself in time. I realized he was worried she was contagious.

  Vampire saliva closes wounds, causing the veins and skin to contract and constrict. It’s usually applied with a tongue laving. This was weird. Okay. This gig was making me rethink everything I thought I knew about vamps, and I had been on a steep learning curve ever since I hit New Orleans.

  The tiny wound stopped bleeding. Nikki-Babe looked at me and I nodded my thanks. “I’ll be going now,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” a voice said behind me. I turned and saw a man, human—or as human as the fangheads’ dinners ever are. I knew this guy wasn’t one of Ro’s usual blood-servants; even if I hadn’t been able to smell the new master on him, he wasn’t in the dossier. He was maybe seventy years old, looked twenty-five, and was powerful—meaning that he had fed on the blood of a master for a very long time. Bald, six feet and a smidge, blue eyes, reddish beard needing a trim, casual clothes, shirt half-tucked, as if he’d dressed and gotten here in a hurry. He was a righty.

  And he had a gun pointed at my chest.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I Started to Squeeze the Trigger

  Holding his eyes, I slid the tote strap around my shoulders, shoved it back out of the way, and walked straight toward him. Keeping loose. Letting Beast bleed into my bloodstream and into my eyes. My heart rate sped as her adrenaline pumped into my body. His blue eyes widened. Beast-fast, I swerved right, forcing him to move cross-hand. And back left, into his personal space. I body-slammed him. Hard. Hooked his ankle as he shifted and shoved.

  The gun went off. Wild shot. Toward the ceiling. I caught his gun hand, flipped him, and landed one knee in the middle of his spine with all my weight. Took his gun away while he tried to remember how to breathe. Banged his head on the floor so hard he had to see stars.

  Fun, Beast thought. More!

  The shadow over me shifted. I lifted my eyes. Nikki-Babe was standing over me, still vamped out, blocking the light. Fangs latched down, claws out, waiting. If I really tried to hurt the stranger, he’d kill me, and I didn’t know why. Ignoring the looming shadow, I leaned in and sniffed. Blue Eyes smelled of witchy-power, not his own, but something he had obtained from a powerful witch or coven—probably an amulet of some sort. The witchy stench nearly overrode the blood-signature scent of his master, but not quite. It was a vamp-scent I recognized. The undertang made me hesitate, but only for a moment. For now the amulet was more important. Whatever spell he had was under
neath him, inactivated, and I had better keep it that way. I pulled his arms back and secured them with a zip strip. Then added three more strips. He was a blood-servant to someone very powerful, with a witchy charm on his person. I wasn’t taking chances.

  I flipped him over, slamming his head against the marble floor. He grunted.

  “Have a care with our guest,” Nikki said, his mouth near my ear. The last word was nearly spitting, as if he would have used another, less kind and less hospitable term. Curiouser and curiouser.

  “I’m taking care,” I said, my voice flat. I fished in Blue Eyes’ pocket and pulled out a pocket watch. It was neither old nor new, cheap nor expensive. It was something no one would ever notice twice, but it was charmed. I sniffed the amulet, and the magics smelled like blood. Like meat. Weird. I tucked it into my lead-lined pocket with the silver cross while Blue Eyes was still disoriented, and patted him down. I searched for wallet, ID, or a cell, but he was clean. Figures.

  I leaned in again. Now he smelled only of his master. A close perusal of the blood-signature proved that the master wasn’t someone I knew, not someone I had ever met, but I had killed a blood-servant belonging to the vamp recently. In Asheville, when I’d been attacked in my hotel room. Once again, everything went back to Asheville and I didn’t know why. Beast didn’t have the olfactory memory of a bloodhound, but she was no slouch either. She remembered this scent, though it was much stronger than the last time she had scented it. It was peaty and spicy and, oddly, a little beery. The servant also had a funky chemical top-note, acrid and clear as a desert sky, in Beast’s synesthesia. A nonguest in the house of a deposed master . . .

  I put it all together and looked over at Rosanne. She was leaning her weight on her elbows on her desk, as if it took all her strength to hold herself upright. “This is your treatment, isn’t it? You suck on him and his blood fights the disease in you. Kill him and you die.” When no one disputed my claim, I looked up. “Back off, Nikki-Babe. I’m not gonna kill your mistress’ antibiotic.”

  Nik took a single step back but didn’t let his eyes bleed back to human. I grabbed Blue Eyes’ head and banged it against the floor again. Leaped to my feet before Nik could react. Shrugged. “Didn’t say I wasn’t gonna hurt him a little. I want him out until I’m ready to go. Is he the only one for Ro to feed on?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “And he is not enough.”

  “And he’s to call his master at prearranged times,” I said, “to let his boss know everything is okay here, right?” When she nodded again, moving as if her neck and head hurt, I asked, “Are you going to be able to handle this—my being here and knocking your new boy around—or do you need backup?”

  “We will be fine,” she whispered. She sounded certain, unwavering, and maybe it was just her trying to get rid of me, but I nodded.

  “Okay. I’m gone. If you change your mind and need help—”

  “We need nothing from you,” Nik said through his fangs.

  I looked him over, thinking, You let your mistress get defeated in a Blood Challenge. And now someone else has to fix your screwup. Seems to me you needed something, Nikki-Babe. But I didn’t say it. If I had given in to temptation, I’d have had another fight on my hands and I’d done enough for one night.

  I walked between the score of blood-servants and clan-vamps and out the front door. The night smelled wonderful here. Huge and free and heated. Beast wanted to hunt, but even she wanted to get down off this cliff first. I got in the car and fished out the key, drove down the drive and out through the soundless gate. Following the GPS directions, I made it back to Sedona proper without incident and pulled in next to a FedEx drop box. I labeled the blood tubes and bottles, wrapped them in bubble wrap, taped them up, boxed them, added more tape, and affixed Leo’s mailing label to the front. There were laws about putting biohazardous materials through the mail, and I was breaking all of them, which is why I used Leo’s address as both return and sender. If my plane crashed, at least the blood wouldn’t go down with me. I dropped the blood into the drop box and heard it hit other packages with a soft, slithering thump.

  I texted my ETA to the pilot, with the question “Can we use current plane?” at the bottom. With the police involved, Leo’s personal jet might be grounded. Unless Leo pulled strings, I might be getting on a charter. Satisfied, I whirled the steering wheel and pulled back onto the road. Following the directions of the GPS voice, I headed back to the airport. The pilot texted back a succinct “Yes,” which I read before tossing the phone into the passenger seat.

  My primary mission was accomplished, which meant a nice fee would be electronically deposited into my account as soon as Leo got the package. Mentally, I calculated my payment for the travel part of this gig. I was getting a base fee for each visit, travel pay, hazard pay, and I was getting a bonus for each sick vamp who let me bleed him or her. A very nice bonus, because vamps didn’t give up their blood to anyone who wasn’t family, scion, servant, master, or slave. Never. Now if it was just as easy to get a sample from the Seattle MOC, I’d be set.

  Behind me down the road, headlights pulled onto my street. I took note of their shape and the outline of the car they were attached to. GMC sedan. Another car moved parallel to mine one street over, which could be a standard tailing procedure, but when I turned right at the next intersection, the cars didn’t follow. They pulled on past and disappeared. I didn’t know Sedona at all, but maybe they were just leaving a club. Or getting off work somewhere on the night shift.

  It was long after midnight when I dialed Leo’s number, but it’s never too late to call a vamp. Bruiser answered, his voice like a long, low caress. “Jane.”

  I couldn’t help my smile. Or Beast’s inner purr. Beast likes Bruiser—George Dumas—and though my cat had been oddly quiescent, she always paid attention to Bruiser. He was Leo Pellissier’s right-hand blood-meal, and arguably the most powerful nonvamp in New Orleans. He probably had more political clout than the governor and he definitely had better looks and charisma than any purely human politician.

  I opened my mouth to say, “I have a report.” What came out was “Hi.” And a soft, sexy-sounding “Hi,” at that. I clamped my mouth shut. Bruiser chuckled at my tone, that secure, masculine laugh men get when they know a woman is interested. Which ticked me off.

  Two months ago, I had lost my first boyfriend since my early twenties and I was not in the market for another. Especially one who was bound to a vamp for his very existence. Blood-servants like Bruiser must have drops and sips of vamp blood on a regular basis to keep their vamp-blood-induced extended-youth thing going. I was not taking second place behind Leo. So even though Bruiser was sex on a stick, he was not going to be mine.

  Mine, Beast murmured.

  I firmed my tone and said, “I have a report.”

  I could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Go ahead.”

  I talked for twenty minutes as I drove out of the city, toward the stark country of red hills, cliffs, bluffs, and buttes, detailing everything that had happened. The sky was black overhead as I drove, too big, too dark, with too many stars. Beast liked it. Sedona was a pale glow, like a halo on the horizon. I finished with “Ro wouldn’t name her new master. She looks and smells sick. She’s covered in pustules. She’s bleeding from her nose, and when I took her blood—”

  “You obtained her blood?”

  “I got it. It’s in the FedEx box. But when I stuck her she didn’t stop bleeding on her own. Nik had to spit on her arm to stop it. Which, by the way, was gross.”

  “Spit? Not lick?”

  A familiar pair of headlights pulled behind my car. GMC sedan. Behind it was another car, about a quarter mile back; it had the same configuration as the car riding parallel to me earlier. Beast is not prey, she whispered into my mind. “Right,” I said to them both. “I’m being followed. If I’m not back at the airport in an hour, tell the pilot to—” I stopped. The substitute pilot who had been one of the few people who knew exactly whe
re I was going and when I’d get there. Before I could say all that to Bruiser, the sedan launched at me. I tossed the cell. Took the wheel in two hands. And floored the car.

  I wasn’t fast enough. The sedan roared up. I gripped the wheel hard enough to make the leather groan. The car rammed me. My spine whiplashed. The seat belt cut into my chest and abdomen before slamming me back into the seat.

  “Jane?” Bruiser’s voice, tinny. Far away. From the floor.

  The sedan raced closer. Rammed me again. The tail of my car spun into the oncoming lane. I hit the brakes. The antilock braking system kicked in. The car danced across the road. That shouldn’t have happened, was my last thought as my car hit something slick on the road and its slight spin turned into a twisting spiral. Off the road and down.

  The car bucked over the rough terrain. Up into the air, the headlights illuminating the red stone of a low cliff wall and the night sky, and down, into a ditch. The car’s frame shrieked, contorting as its own momentum forced it at an angle up the other side. My window flexed and shattered, raining me with rounded nodules of safety glass. Down the car went again, at a sharp angle, a long, fast slide. A bouncing, jouncing ride that ended suddenly. Too hard. Whiplash took me again, from my toes to the top of my head. The air bags released with explosions of sound. Socked me in the face. I saw stars and then nothing.

  I roused to the sound of an engine hissing. My headlights picked out a spiny cactuslike plant through the bashed windshield. Bruiser’s voice called me from somewhere, insistent. Frantic. My ears were ringing and I couldn’t focus to locate the cell. But my brain was starting to work again.