Black Arts jy-7 Page 7

  Leo raised his eyes from his hands and sat back, moving slowly, the way one predator moves in the presence of another, to not startle or give cause for attack. “Your eyes glow golden,” he said, his voice like a caress. “There is nothing in the few histories of skinwalkers that speak of such a bright glow. Yellow eyes, yes. But not this glow.”

  I struggled with my heart rate, trying to keep it steady as Leo said aloud something that been my secret, mine alone, and then mine and Molly’s, for so very long. But my flesh went hot as I thought about what he might mean by the histories of skinwalkers and I had to wonder what he had discovered. What his priestess might have told him.

  Leo went on. “You are different from others of your kind, I think.”

  Beast’s hackles rose and I shoved down on her, feeling her slink away, her surprise as intense as my own that Leo would talk to me about all this, about any of this. But like any cat, she was also amused and delighted at the power play and at Leo’s . . . tentativeness, was the only word I could find. She sat in the back of my mind and extruded her claws, pressing them into my mind. It hurt. She intended it to.

  When I didn’t respond, Leo lifted the fingers of one hand, as if throwing something to the side. “But that is of no matter. What is imperative is that I make this right. I forced a feeding. I hurt you.”

  I nodded, the movements jerky. My hands gripped the upholstered arms of the chair as if to keep me in place. “When I took your blood, against your will, when I attempted to bind you against your will, I broke . . . not law, but . . . custom, perhaps. That which is custom for masters. For the forced taking of your blood, I owe you a boon,” he said, “at the very least. A great boon. You could have half of my kingdom.” He smiled, but I just stared, not acknowledging his use of scripture in the analogy. “Until such a time as you claim it, you own part of me. I am yours to command.”

  “Ummm.” Yeah, that’s telling him. But really. What was I supposed to say? And You own part of me? Say what? I said instead, “But you gave blood to help Misha’s daughter Charly stay alive.”

  “That was charity for one injured by Naturaleza.”

  “Okay. You owe me a big honking boon. Gotcha.”

  He didn’t smile. “And”—he took a breath, deeper than the ones that simply allowed him to talk; it was a human breath in its depth—“at some time in the future, when you are able”—he looked back at his hands and said in a perfectly human tone—“I would have your forgiveness.”

  If one of my vamp enemies had been in the room, he could have meandered over and drained me dry, before I could react, I was so stunned. “Uhhh.”

  “George and my servant whom you call Wrassler have additional information for you regarding the gather. You are dismissed.”

  Like usual. But this time I didn’t even care. I stood, walked to the office door, and out into the hallway. Bruiser was waiting for me. Leo’s primo looked me over, lifted a single elegant eyebrow, and closed his mouth on whatever he was going to say. Instead Bruiser said, “You look . . . peaked.”

  “Yeah.” I blew out my breath and stuck my hands deep in my pockets, my shoulders up near my ears. “I think that means I look crappy.”

  Bruiser smiled, the motion slow as he took me in again, his eyes roaming almost possessively. He gestured along the hallway, indicating it was time for us to move. When we were some ten feet from Leo’s door, he said, “You do not look crappy. You look lovely.”

  I shook my head but I couldn’t help the grin his words brought to my lips. I wasn’t a lovely woman by anyone’s estimation. Interesting, maybe. When I was all doodied up maybe a bit better than interesting. But never lovely, which implied more natural grace than I’d ever had and bone structure that was less strong. But I wasn’t good with compliments and so I just shrugged and followed him. Which was easy. Bruiser had, by far, the best butt I’d ever seen on anyone, and it flexed as he walked toward the front of the building.

  “The boss said you have info for me?” I asked, changing the subject from me and taking my attention off his backside, to something I could converse about. Like business.

  “Yes.” Bruiser’s lips pulled down into a scowl and he turned to me, tilting his head down so our eyes were on a level. “We have a Mithran missing, in a strange manner, and I have a bad feeling she is true-dead.”

  “True-dead how? When you behead a vamp you have a lot of proof, most of it bloody and gory and hard to get out in the wash.”

  He slanted his eyes at me again, dark humor lurking around his mouth. “Strange. Like something out of TV or film. One of Leo’s newly freed scions disappeared from her sleeping lair overnight. The only thing left was her jewelry, her clothes, and her personal items.”

  “No body. No head,” I clarified.

  “No. And nothing to wash out.” He smiled.

  “She maybe left with someone?”

  “No. Her new blood-servants went to bed with her. When the boys woke, all that was left was a pile of dust. Ash and some kind of granules, actually.”

  My mouth opened and closed. I had nothing to say to that for way too many steps down the hallways. I figured the term boys meant her young blood-servants. Ewww. I managed “That is weird, even for fangheads. The boys hurt her? Burned her to ash?” Though I had no idea how that might be possible.

  “No. Leo sent a master he trusts to drink from them. At dawn, they went to sleep in a pile like a bunch of puppies and when the boys woke, she was gone.”

  From a side corridor Wrassler emerged. “You tell her?”

  “I did. She seems as bemused as we are.”

  Wrassler popped the knuckles of his left hand, and then the right, and what would have been snaps in an ordinary-sized human were more like thunks from his meaty hands. “I’ve been handling it.” He looked at Bruiser and something passed between them that I couldn’t decipher in the heartbeat of time it lasted. “I got a minor promotion to security chief.”

  I thought about that for a moment. The primo was security chief as part of his duties as primo, but he seemed almost indifferent at the change in the status quo. I wondered if the change was due to Bruiser’s own change in status to Onorio and if he’d share later, or if I’d never be told what was up. Never was more likely. Even if Bruiser was some kinda superblood-servant, that didn’t mean he would be free from loyalty to Leo. I did wonder if Superblood-Servant warranted his own comic book and I had to smother a laugh at the thought of him in a black bodysuit and bat wings. “Huh,” I said, fighting the laughter. That’s me. So good at soliloquies.

  “Reach is researching any similar occurrences in the histories,” Bruiser said. “It’s nothing to worry yourself over just now, but be aware. Wwwrrassler”—he stumbled over the nickname and I let a smile form—“will send you reports if we hear anything useful.”

  I’d rather not spend my time bent over a bunch of electronic gear researching, so I wasn’t going to ask for the gig unless it got more physical—boots-on-the-ground kinda stuff. I shook my head. “Yeah. Okay. What do you know about the gather?”

  “Boss is nervous about it,” Wrassler said. “Which is why he’s got Bruiser overseeing the caterers personally, handpicking the blood-meals, getting his pet designer to make sure everyone’s clothes coordinate.” He ran his hand over his scalp. “Leo hasn’t been this worried about a meeting since the leopards came to visit.”

  “Who’s the visitor?”

  “Don’t know. But scuttlebutt says the gather will be to discuss a future visit by the European Council.”

  I stopped dead at the top of the foyer steps, and so did the men. Wrassler wore worry on his big, flat-featured face. Bruiser was watching me work it through. “Leo said he’d be getting a communiqué from the EC,” I said. “Not a phone call or a chat, but something that might be considered an order or a plan of action. The vamps from the council are coming? Sometime soon? Not their human lackeys?”

  “That’s what I hear,” Wrassler said. “If the gossips are right, it’ll be the firs
t time the top European Mithrans left the continent since the eighteen hundreds, and the visit could be, maybe, in as little as six months.”

  Six months seemed like a long time away, but to a long-lived vamp that was an eyeblink of time. I guessed the vamps had a lot to plan. The European Council probably traveled with their entire households, steamer trunks full of clothes, dozens of servants, a lawyer or two, interpreters, cooks for the humans, maybe provisions of food that their blood-servants couldn’t get here. . . traveling like visiting heads of state. If visiting vamps was the kind of rumors Leo had been talking about, then no wonder he was worried. I would have to readdress every bit of security, both physical and protocols, for that kind of gig, which was why Leo wanted me as acting Enforcer. I was more up-to-date on current security hardware than Bruiser, his real Enforcer. I started down the stairs again, Wrassler beside me, Bruiser following. And this time I could feel his eyes on my backside and legs. Bruiser was a leg man. I felt warmth rise in me, settling deep inside.

  “In addition to the announcement,” Bruiser said, “we’ll have visitors for the gather, and an introduction of the new Mithrans.”

  Wrassler looked disgruntled at that and rubbed his scalp again, a gesture that meant he was disturbed. “Yeah. I got details.” He pointed to the waiting room cum holding cell just off the foyer. I went with him. Bruiser closed the door after me, leaving himself on the outside without a word. I figured he would catch up with me later. Wrassler opened the small fridge and handed me a Coke. I popped the top and took a swig.

  “Two months ago, Leo sent Grégoire to Atlanta, to reorganize De Allyon’s clans, to bring to the light the Naturaleza who refused to accept Fame Vexatum.”

  I knew Grégoire, Leo’s secondo heir, had been sent to clean up the mess there, but I’d assumed he was back by now. And “bring to the light” was formal vamp-speak for killing a misbehaving vampire true-dead. Fame Vexatum was the way vamps lived in the modern world. They pretty much starved, but the starvation allowed them stronger mental gifts of compulsion and more mental control than other vamps, Naturaleza vamps, had.

  “It’s a real mess,” he continued, opening a can of Red Bull. “De Allyon had a human breeding and slave program on a farm in the hills near Chattanooga.” Whatever he saw on my face made him chuckle dryly. “Yeah. Federal cops are involved, and PsyLED, and because of all the hoopla, Leo has instituted the hostage chapter of the Vampira Carta with Lincoln Shaddock.”

  “Hostage?”

  “Yeah. When Leo put Shaddock on notice for a decade of reorganization before he could apply for Master of the City status again, he set up an exchange provision.”

  I thought back to the night, months ago, of the gather, the ceremony where the chief fanghead of Clan Shaddock heard the result of his request for an upgrade in status. I remembered something Leo had said during the ceremonies. I quoted, as nearly as I was able, “For a certain amount of time there was to be the ‘customary and agreed-upon exchange of blood-servants and scions.’”

  He pointed a finger of approval at me. “That. A couple of our vamps and blood-servants are in Asheville, dealing with organizational stuff, so we get a new human and a vamp in exchange.” Wrassler drank down his Red Bull in three swallows and crushed the can. He tossed it into the recycle bin, where it clanged around with the rest of the aluminum. “Quarters are tight here as it is, until Leo moves into his new clan home, and no one’s happy about the new people. We had to clear out two bedrooms with four beds each already, four more for the gather, and the rest of us are bunking in together.”

  I sipped to hide my smile. “Sounds cozy.”

  “Not. Anyway, none of this household stuff is your job, since you already updated the hardware, but the gather will be.”

  “I’m supposed to be here before dusk to go over security for the ceremony.”

  “Come hungry. Stephen is making his signature chili, so hot it’ll melt your eyeballs and fry your brain.”

  I finished my Coke and tossed the can. “Somehow that sounds more dangerous than delicious, but I’ll be here.”

  “You only live once. Unless you’re a vamp or a cat.”

  I chuckled at the joke, ignoring his speculative expression. Yeah, I got killed, turned into a big-cat, and came back to life in the back of Leo’s car. Not going there. And didn’t say it aloud. “See you tonight,” I said, and made my exit from vamp central.

  CHAPTER 5

  Molly’s Dead Body

  The sun was rising over the French Quarter as I tootled home, trying not to think about all the things I had to do today. Trying to relax and enjoy the morning air swirling inside my helmet, warmer with the sunrise and the promise of springtime. Spring came early this far south, and flowers were already blooming, hints of the coming season in window boxes and narrow courtyards.

  The Quarter smelled of water from swamp, bayou, and the Mississippi churning nearby, of petroleum products and emissions, whiffs of garbage that hadn’t been picked up yet, and food. This early in the morning the air was redolent of strong coffee with chicory, bacon frying, eggs, grease, and cane syrup, the fresh smells overriding last night’s older cooking smells: seafood and grease and hot spices.

  My stomach rumbled, and rumbled again when I realized that some of the smells were coming from my house. As was the babble of morning cartoons, the ringing of cell phones, and the chatter of news programs, so loud I could hear them in the street when I turned off Bitsa and pushed her down the narrow, two-rut drive. My quiet sanctuary was quiet no more, and I decided that I really didn’t care. Especially when the side door opened and Angie Baby and EJ hurtled through and right at me, screaming a chorus of “Aunt Jane, Aunt Jane, Aunt Jane!” I nearly dropped Bitsa catching them. Yeah. This was why it was all okay.

  “Morning,” I said, hugging them and then easing them to the ground. “Am I in time for breakfast?”

  “Uncle Eli is putting it on the table right now,” Angie said. “He’s makin’ us French toast,” she said, saying it like it was an exotic, mysterious food. And then I heard the term.

  Uncle Eli?

  “And syrup,” EJ added. “Lossa syrup.” He whirled and raced back through the open door and inside, his tiny blue sneakers pounding. Angie pulled me in after him, and I shut the door on the chilly air. I washed up and locked my weapons in the weapons safe in my closet, since I didn’t want to open the safe room. No need to make the kids think they should explore.

  I joined the others at the table. Evan and his kids sat with their backs to the windowed wall over the sink; my chair had the best vantage point since Eli was cooking, my back to the kitchen windows, but with both entrances in sight. Alex dragged to the table and slouched into his place, still wearing his flannel SpongeBob pj pants and holey T-shirt, eyes glued half-shut, and his body stinking of sweat. He might have steered himself down the stairs while asleep, but if so, he’d picked up his electronic tablets on the way. Or maybe he slept with them cradled to his chest. I grinned to myself, betting the latter.

  Eli shoveled two pieces of French toast onto each child’s plate; onto the adults’ plates, he shoveled bacon and eggs, with sides of French toast. I say shoveled, because the flexible spatula looked big enough to garden with. He slid the syrup down the table into Big Evan’s hand and Evan poured syrup onto the children’s toast. “Thanks, Uncle Eli,” I said, letting my lips curl up on one side.

  He grunted, sat, and started to eat, but was interrupted by Angie, the bite halfway inside his mouth. “God is great, God is good.”

  EJ finished with “Let us thank him for our food.”

  “Amen, dig in,” they both said. And did.

  Eli finished the bite and chewed, his eyes looking over the people gathered at the table. When he reached me, I waggled my eyebrows, as if to say, Fun, eh? He wiggled his eyebrows back, a bored, minuscule brow-twitch while he swallowed, and took another bite. Yeah. Like having a real family.

  The Kid stuffed in an entire piece of French toast and chewed, eyes
still closed. He drank down a half mug of strong coffee after and made an exaggerated sighing sound of happiness. It looked as if he’d had a rough night.

  When the children finished and had been dismissed to morning TV, Alex managed to get his eyes and vocal cords to function and said, “I found where and when Molly came to NOLA.”

  • • •

  Once the anger—on Big Evan’s part—and the delight—on my part—ended, he pushed his tablets across the table and said, “It wasn’t easy. That side trip she took? It was most likely to her mother’s house to pick up a credit card.” He took a swig of coffee and poured another mug, looking at Big Evan under heavy lids. “She lied to you, man. Your motherin-law, I mean, when she said she hadn’t seen Molly. She not only saw her, but she rented a car for her in Knoxville, on her home PC. And she gave Molly a credit card. Molly used the same credit card for gas, food, hotels, everything. But for the last thirty-six hours or so, there’ve been no charges on it.”

  The Kid handed me a slip of paper, folded. Evan’s eyes followed the motion and he frowned, but Alex quieted his worsening anger with the words “That’s for that Leo stuff you asked for.”

  Liar, liar, pants on fire, I thought. But it was a good lie, as it kept Evan calmer. I glanced at the page and said, “Hope you didn’t catch Big Brother’s eye on this one.”

  “No chance of that. I’ll have more intel later.”

  “Okay.” I pushed back from the table. “When you find where Molly went, let us know. I have an errand to run for this.” I tapped the paper and left the house, wondering why the Kid hadn’t wanted Evan to know what was on the paper—the words The Hilton on St. Charles Avenue. Checked in two days ago, under name Bedelia Everhart. Paid up front for seven days. The room number was at the bottom. And then I realized. Evan would have insisted he go with me. And what if Molly was dead in the room?