Broken Soul

CHAPTER 8 You Want Me to . . . Wash Your Back?

What strength and energy I had left drained out in a rush and I landed on my knees on the ruined floor. Houston, I thought. We have a problem.

What is Houston? Beast thought at me.

Never mind. Are we stuck like this? Last time it went away naturally. And fast. But it’s worse this time. It feels . . . I don’t know. Permanent?

Jane likes half-Beast form. Jane hurt light-predator-snake-that-flies.

I thought about that for a moment. So I’m keeping myself like this? I’m doing it?

I/we are Beast. I/we like this form too.

So, that’s a yes. I thought about my human form, my Jane form. I reached deep inside of me into the memory of my human self, searching for the snake at the center of me, the double helix of DNA that made me both human and skinwalker. Instead, I found a jumbled mess.

My oddly shaped knees gave way and I sat hard on the splintered floor. It was cool beneath my backside. My peculiar-shaped hands folded, flaccid, in my lap, dangling from my too-big thighs. Hunger and weakness stabbed at me, striking deep into my middle, then twisting and clawing like the hand of a fanghead, talons extended. I groaned and gasped, panting to get enough air. But there wasn’t enough. Not nearly. Holy crap . . .

I pushed past the pain and studied the mess that was my current DNA. It no longer had just a double strand. It now had a triple strand in places, branching out and back in like a suspension bridge of weirdness. On the odd strands, the genes were doubled and tripled in places, genes totally missing in others.

“Jane.” I heard a voice from far away. I waved a hand to show I’d heard but was a little busy just now. Then I flapped it to indicate I should be left alone.

It wasn’t all the cells. Like, maybe half. Only half of my cells were cat. Made sense. My arms folded like a human, my feet like a cat. My flesh was half-pelted, half not. Feet were some weird paw shape; hands were more humanish. I zeroed in on one batch of cells, human cells, that made up my hip joints. All of that part of me was human. Totally human.

I exhaled in a rush, the panting growing faster. It had been a while since I’d needed to meditate to drop into the place of the change, to find the cellular structure and physiology that made me, me. Fortunately, I was halfway there.

Breathing deeply, holding the breath, I tried to calm my rapid heartbeat, tried to relax, to let the tension out of my shoulders and neck. Dropped my head and bowed my spine. Stretched back up, sitting straight, into a half lotus, funky hands on knobby knees. I released my breath until my lungs were empty. Fought the fear and the need to hyperventilate. Filled my chest with air slowly, exhaled, inhaled, breathing until my body was full of oxygen but the panic was under control. I exhaled one final time and let myself fall into the genetic structure that made me what I was. I had not left the gray place of the change completely and so, instantly, I felt my body twist and reshape. Bones snapping and popping.

Painpainpain! Beast screamed.

I opened my mouth on a breathless cry, one I hadn’t planned on needing. And then the gray energies slid back into me. I was lying on the ruined floor, face on something smooth and hard, about the size of my hand. I slid a hand under my jaw, gripped the thing I was lying on, and pushed myself upright, legs splayed as vertigo whirled the room around me. I held the rounded thing as I forced my eyes open and focused on my hands. Normal. Human. Mine. I touched my face. Ditto. Looked down my shirt. No fur. I sniffed the thing I’d found on the floor; it had a scent like fish and water plants and the smoke from burning herbs. It was clear, like glass, but slightly pliable like plastic. Rounded on one side and torn-looking on the straight side. Fingernail? The thought intruded. Maybe, but a big honking one, if so. And then I knew what it was. A scale from the dragon’s body. I pushed the scale into my shirt and bra, securing it. Though I had no idea why I’d need to hide it. Probably a leftover big-cat thought, but it just seemed right. And then the pain hit, that gripping, tearing agony, as if something inside me were being ripped apart.

I wrapped an arm around my middle as if to hold my guts in, but my outer flesh felt fine. The damage was inside and I pressed into my stomach to try to still the torture. The muscles there were rigid and tangled, and I pressed hard until the spasm eased and at least I could catch a breath. And great. Now I had done a half shift on multiple security cameras.

I looked around the room. The bleachers were empty. Quiet. But my hearing was still Beast-sharp and from behind me I heard breathing and the heartbeats of two people. I turned my head and saw Eli and Bruiser. And Grégoire. Yeah. Two heartbeats: two humans and one undead blood-sucker. Witnesses in addition to the footage.

“Hey, guys,” I managed, my mouth drier than desert sands. “What’s cooking?”

Eli released a breath. It was only slightly more pent than a normal one, but for him that meant he’d been really worried. I’d seen him fight off a werewolf with less change in his breathing. Bruiser moved to me and held down a hand. I let him pull me to my feet and held on as the room did a nauseating roll and spin. And then the hunger hit me, blossoming out from the pain in my stomach. My abdomen clenched and curled in on itself like a steel hand was kneading a batch of raw bread dough inside my gut. I gagged, a dry heave that left the room spinning. Okay, this was weird.

Bent in two, I got a glimpse of the floor and the workout mats and the coagulating blood and drying dragon gunk. It was crystallizing as it dried. On the edges there was nothing left but dust. A girl in hospital greens and sterile gloves was gathering some of the crystal dust into a sterile tube. Good. I croaked, “For workup in Leo’s lab?”

She met my eyes and then dropped hers back to the floor. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Get it messengered tonight.” I tried to find a drop of moisture in my mouth, but there was nothing. I went on anyway, my voice raspy. “Full workup and DNA—if the gunk has any. Fast as you can.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she repeated.

Eli placed an open bottle of water in my hand and when I could breathe and stand upright at the same time, I drained it. Not sure I swallowed it, exactly, but the bottle was empty. Then another. And another. By the time I’d emptied four bottles, I could force my knees straight. “Steak?” Eli asked.

“Oatmeal,” I grunted around the twisting in my guts. “It’s faster to get into me.”

Grégoire made a small motion to someone out of sight and Bruiser slid his arm around me, supporting me—okay, half carrying me—out of the gym and to the hallway. Grégoire fell in beside me and his scent wrapped around me, a near synesthesia I sometimes found when Beast was very close to the front of me—a pale green, the honey gold of spring flowers, a scent I’d always thought was luscious. The vamp smiled, not that slow smile they do when they’re trying to charm, the one that transforms their faces into angelic beauty, but an uncertain one, which made him seem almost human. He took my arm, above the elbow, as if I was about to fall. And with the floor moving up and down like waves, and around like the water in a toilet bowl, maybe I was.

The four of us made it into the elevator before I threw up, all over the elevator floor, at least ninety percent of the water I’d guzzled. Grégoire stepped back quickly to protect his shoes, which were a wine-colored patent leather. If I hadn’t been tossing my cookies, I’d have giggled. Eli was still in the hallway, out of the line of fire. Bruiser didn’t react at all except to give me a clean hanky to wipe my mouth. “Sorry about your shoes,” I croaked.

“They’re just shoes, Jane,” Bruiser replied. And the spare phrase made something turn over inside me. Just shoes. Not important. As if I was more important than the shoes.

The others stepped inside, onto a clean patch of floor, and the doors closed, leaving me in a tiny little cage that reeked of vamp scent, human scent, the heated warmth of Bruiser’s sweat, which was no longer human but wasn’t vamp either, and my own stink, both on my clothes and on the floor. Grégoire, holding something lacy to his nose, palmed the display with his other hand and activated the button panel on the elevator. It lurched gently into motion as Eli offered me another bottle of water. “Try it slow this time.”

“Hindsight,” I said, sounding more human. I sipped the water and looked up at the lights on the display. And I dropped the water, jerking my weapons out of Eli’s arms. Once again he didn’t question, just followed my lead.

“Jane?” Bruiser asked, warning in his voice. Beside him Grégoire vamped out at the sight of the guns and blades.

“We’re going down. Way down,” I said. I’d been so sick I hadn’t noticed.

Grégoire hissed. Placed his hand over the biometric handprint reader and pressed a button. The elevator came to an abrupt stop, so fast I lost my precarious balance—still not back to normal. But Bruiser’s arm tightened around me, and I let myself lean against him. Just a little. And then the lights in the elevator flickered, browned down to a dull glow, and went out, leaving us in the darkness. I think I growled, just enough of Beast left in me to manage that with a human throat.

The lightless interval didn’t last long. Maybe five seconds. But it was enough time to make me see monsters in the dark. Which made me titter with a laugh because I was a monster. And I was in an elevator, stuck between floors, with another monster, one all vamped out and smelling of something sweet and flowery. And watery vomit. My life was so weird.

The lights came back on. Grégoire stood with his back to a corner, pupils black in bloody orbs, fangs snapped down, holding blades in both hands, talons extended. A monster. He hissed, his eyes on me. It was as if Grégoire had never been human.

“Grégoire. My friend,” Bruiser added softly. “We are well. There is no need of battle. Jane, Eli, please put away the weapons.”

“There’s—” A dark room with something in it. A monster. Another monster. Right. Not saying that. I thumbed the safety back on and gave the gun to Eli. “There’s one in the chamber.” I remembered chambering a round when I grabbed the gun, but I wasn’t sure how because I’d still held the open bottle of water. The elevator quivered, dropped an inch, and then started up again. Grégoire’s eyes bled back to human so fast I would have missed it if I’d blinked.

No one spoke until the doors opened on the main floor, at which point I pushed away from Bruiser, standing on my own two feet in my own vomit. Ick. But I needed to clear something up. To Grégoire, I asked, “You know about the dark room at the bottom of the elevator shaft?”

“There is no such room,” Grégoire said stiffly. He sheathed his blades, yanked on the lace cuffs sticking out of the sleeves of his velvet coat—wine colored to match his shoes—and stalked off the elevator. Liar, liar, pants on fire, I thought. His liar pants were velvet too, which made me smile, though from the expression on Eli’s face, it was more a grimace. And I had to wonder when Grégoire had found time to change out of his fighting leathers.

“Yeah,” I murmured, “right.” I stood as straight as I could with the clamped fist in my gut and thought over the last few minutes. To Eli I said, “I want every camera angle from the workout room downloaded, all the footage from the doorway where that dragon thing came into the room and back up to any surface opening or any subbasement opening. I want to know how it got in. Get Alex on it, and secure the footage. I don’t want it appearing on YouTube.” I meant footage of me changing but he seemed to know that too. He was Mr. Mind Reader tonight.

Eli nodded and pulled his cell to call Alex. To Bruiser, I said, “Food? And someone to clean the elevator?” My gut clenched again and I doubled over.

“I’ll send housecleaning,” Bruiser said, scooping me up in his arms like some oversized fairy-tale princess. He carried me to the green room just off the foyer, and dropped me on the couch, the door still open behind us for the guest cart I could hear squeaking down the hallway. The cart was stocked with guest goody bags for just such occasions—though usually for a vamp in need of a good sunscreen or a casket to sleep in. Not that I’d ever insult a sane vamp by suggesting aloud that he might really sleep in one. That was an old wives’ tale and a terrible offense to suggest.

In short order I had brushed my teeth in the tiny unisex restroom and was drinking milk and eating oatmeal, or what passed for oatmeal in vamp central. It was instant, not stone ground, and had been cooked in such a way that the starch was activated. The oats had turned into a mushy gruel. It was topped with cinnamon and butter and brown sugar. Gag. Not the way I cooked oatmeal. I’d have to have a word with the cook, a thought that made me laugh like a madwoman deep inside, but not close to the surface where anyone could see or hear. I ate the vile stuff anyway, for the calories I’d used half shifting and fighting and then half shifting again. And I drank the milk, which was full fat and ice-cold and delicious.

As I ate, the room filled with security types, and the pain in my gut eased. I studied the room. Someone had rearranged and redecorated the odd room, and a mirror that used to hang on the end wall was gone, exposing the cracked and bowed plaster from the settling of the building and the constant humidity. It was cracked in the shape of a doorway. Huh. I looked up at the ceiling, putting the floor plan together in my mind. I wondered whether one of Leo’s secret stairways, or maybe even an elevator, was behind the wall, a useless bit of trivia I’d never need.

When I was done, I flopped back on the couch and looked at the people in the room, all men, all armed, all staring at me. And caught a strong whiff of myself. My clothes stank of sweat and blood and lillilend slime and ticked-off cat. And vomit. Ick. My nose wrinkled. But before I could take care of my stench, I had to know other stuff. “How’s Leo and Gee?”

“Alive,” Bruiser said. “Both were bitten. Both are unwell. We brought in the priestesses.” More gently, he added, “As you seem inclined to live, I’ll look in on them now.”

“Okay, yeah. I’m good. Keep me informed?”

Bruiser nodded and stepped out. Eli stepped in and gave one of his patented non-nods.

The security people in the room with us were armed to the teeth, taut with inaction and the need to do something. Anything physical. I rotated my shoulders and got to my feet, feeling a bit more steady than before the gaggy oatgruel, though my stomach ached as if I’d been kicked. “We have info to share and jobs to do,” I said. “But can we wait until I’ve cleaned up before we do this?” I gestured around the room. “This debrief?”

“We need more space,” Wrassler said. “Tables. Chairs. Doughnuts.”

“Computer access,” Eli said, his eyes hard.

Which was a clue to me that we had things to discuss. “Right. Okay,” I said. “I’ll get a fast shower and meet you in the conference room. We’ll talk, cuss and discuss, and reach some preliminary conclusions. Because we have a problem, people. A big one.” I pointed to Wrassler. “Divide up your people. Two by two. No one alone until we figure this out. I want the grounds walked over, every inch. I want the roofs looked over. You’re looking for any clear slime or any crystalline grit from the attacking whatever-it-was. Plus which direction it came from and if it was alone or with something or someone else.”

When no one moved, I said, “Now!” The room emptied quickly of the ancillary people, which gave me more air to breathe and fewer stress pheromones to struggle through. As the door closed, I heard Wrassler giving orders and the sound of feet moving off fast. Yeah. They’d needed jobs.

I pushed my own feet into motion, though they felt like they weighed fifty pounds each, and moved toward the door. I was sore. I really hoped I wouldn’t need to fight again soon. Usually when I changed back from Beast, everything was healed, but this pain was new, as if I’d been put back together wrong somehow. “Eli, you’re with me.”

I pushed through into the foyer, Eli calling after me, “You want me to shower with you, babe?” he asked. “Wash your back?”

I smiled, though it was more like a baring of teeth. He’d choke on his tongue if I said yes. “Watch my back. Not wash it,” I called to him. He was by my side in an instant and I continued, much softer. “We don’t know how that thing got in and I’m not quite myself yet.” He looked me over in surprise and I felt good that I had kept something from him, which means that no one else had realized how worthless I was. “You’re my plus one until I’m better. I need to know how that thing managed to hurt Gee and Leo, and what effect it will have on them long range.” And how it saw me in the gray place of the change, but I didn’t say that. “And I need an update on the elevator situation.”

“Alex is already working on everything. He’ll have an update in fifteen minutes.”

“Good. Shower. Now.”

“Yeah,” Eli said, far too casually. “You really do stink, babe.”

I had been running around vamp HQ in my filthy Lycra and bare feet, and no one had said a word about it. Except my partner. He was such a good pal. Not.

Fortunately, the elevator had been cleaned, housecleaning leaving behind a synthetic scent probably called Highlands Heather or Mystical Forest or some such stupid name. We were cleared for the gym floor, so I swiped my hand over the reader, punched a button, and soon I was standing, still clothed, under scalding hot water, letting it rinse away the stench of fighting.

Standing under the hard spray, I stripped, and something fell out of my shirt and jog bra. I caught the smooth, rounded, plastic-like thing before it hit the floor and set it aside to finish cleaning. When my hair was washed and combed, I was lotioned up, and was wrapped in one of the plush towels kept in the locker room, I called out to Eli, “I’m ready to dress now.”

“Clear,” came his response as he stepped out of sight of the curtained stalls. The towel covering me from shoulder to knees, I tossed my wet clothes into a sink and opened the locker assigned to me.

I never knew what clothes I’d find in my locker, provided by the HQ staff. Sometimes it was formal wear. Recently, I had found three pairs of dancing shoes—black, gold, and a silver pair that I was pretty sure had been put there by Del. Once, a pair of really nice formfitting pants and a gorgeous, black, cowl-necked sweater had been inside. Today, I found clean undies, a pair of black knit pants, a pair of black jeans, two sweaters, and several T-shirts. Leo was giving me a choice. That was a change. Underneath the clothes and tied up with a red bow was a brand-new, custom-made holster, a tactical SERPA carbon-fiber thigh holster, adjustable for various makes and models of guns. And my blades. And my stakes.

Had Leo given me this? He was a narcissistic, dictatorial, tyrannical, despotic, spoiled-as-a-child blood-sucker and he thought he could buy his way into my loyalty and my pants, so maybe, though guns didn’t seem his style. And then I saw the card. It was handwritten on heavy card stock in black ink. No envelope. I lifted the card into the light and read.

“If a blade, tea, and catnip were not sufficient, perhaps I might woo you with a tactical, drop-thigh holster.” It was signed with a simple script G.

A smile pulled at my lips. “Bruiser,” I said. And, “Woo. What an odd little word.” But the smile on my face lightened all through me.

I dressed quickly in the jeans, a leather belt, and the red, thin knit, cowl sweater. I liked the big loopy collars. They were great for sliding silver stakes through and making them look like jewelry. They were also loose enough that the odd pain remaining near my belly button didn’t receive any unexpected pressure. I slid on the comfy slippers that were always in the locker. There must be a storeroom or closet somewhere that contained a stash, because I had taken several pairs home and there were always more here.

My fighting leathers and combat boots were on the long bench that divided the locker room, stuffed in a satchel that Eli had found somewhere, as if he’d known I wouldn’t want to wear them. My weapons were in a neat row on the bench. Eli had cleaned the blades. “I’m decent,” I said softly, knowing Eli would hear me.

Still geared up, he walked back into the main room and nodded to the weapons. It was Eli-speak for, What weapons do you want? How do you want to weapon up? All of it? Or just some? All that in a nod. We had learned to read each other’s cues so quickly that it was sorta disturbing. And maybe awesome.

I held up the thigh holster and said, “Looky what Bruiser got me!”

Eli spread out the custom-made thigh holster on the bench, studying it with approval. “The man’s got taste. And he seriously wants in your pants, babe.”

A flash of warmth brightened my face and heated its way down my chest, so I thumped his arm with my fist. Hard. And took back the holster while he laughed and rubbed his biceps. I strapped the rig to my right thigh. A standard thigh holster was constructed with three straps, two around the thigh, one that went up and looped onto a belt. TV cops wore the rigs low on the thigh, which looked cool, but for close quarters fighting I liked my weapons a bit higher than the specs suggested. The upper thigh strap to my new rig went near my groin, the lower around the largest part of my thigh. The custom unit had a vertical strap that went to my belt, directly above the holster, and a longer, distinctive strap that went around my waist and back to the unit for stability. The holster was more complicated than a regular thigh rig, but because I was so slender the extra strap gave me more control and also allowed me to fasten on a holster for a backup weapon when I was wearing long coats or sweaters, like now. There was even a loop to secure my M4 harness. The shotgun hadn’t gotten a lot of use lately, but it was my go-to weapon when facing large numbers of big-bad-uglies. It cleared a wide swath, when needed.

I holstered one of my matched Walther PK380s at my right thigh, and the other one at the small of my back for a left-hand draw. The semiautomatic handguns were lightweight and ambidextrous, with bloodred polymer grips that perfectly matched the red of the T-shirt. Which was a girly thought and one I didn’t share with Eli, though I could imagine his expression if I did. The .380s offered less stopping power than nine-mils, but vamp central meant the possibility of collateral damage, and killing anyone or anything by accident was not on my schedule, now or ever. The .380 on my thigh, I pulled and holstered several times, testing the friction of the holster fabric, before I loaded it with standard rounds. The one at my spine was loaded with silver, just in case of vamp or were-animal attack. I liked to be prepared for both kinds of bad guys—human and supernatural big-bad-uglies.

There was a special sheath in the thigh rig for a fourteen-inch vamp-killer—steel with silver plating along the flat of the blade. Steel to cut flesh, silver to poison vamps or weres. The thigh holster had deep pockets for stakes, and I inserted silver-tipped ash stakes with little wooden buttons on the ends so I could shove them into a vamp without hurting the palm of my hand if needed, and also so that I could get a good grip if I ever wanted to pull one out. It had happened. The stakes were a new design and though they resembled knitting needles, they were easier to use than my old model. Into my calf holster went a six-round Kahr P380, a small semiautomatic with a matte black finish, loaded with standard ammo.

I stood and looked myself over in the long mirror and frowned. I looked long and lean and feminine, and even the gun strapped to my hip and thigh didn’t fix that. “It’s the cowl-neck,” Eli said, reading my mind again. “Makes you look soft and sweet.” He did that little lip-twitch thing he called a smile. “Good disguise, except for the gun. Which makes you look hot, in a deadly sort of way.”

I shook my head at the left-handed insult and passed him the clear, rounded thing I’d found under me after the battle with the lillilend. Not wanting to steer him to my own result, I asked simply, “What do you think?”

“This that thing you tucked into your boobs after the fight?”

“Yeah. Who else saw?”

Eli shrugged. “Bruiser. No one else, I think.” He ran his fingers over the curved side, which was blunt and smooth, and then over the opposite side, which was irregular, ripped-looking in spots, with longer fiber-like things hanging off. “Thin, clear, luminous, flexible, and slightly iridescent,” he said, bending it to test its plasticity. It sprang back into shape. “What I could make out of the thing in the gym, it was vaguely snakelike. Scale? Like from a snake? Ripped out of the skin underneath?” He mimed pulling one off.

“I think so,” I said. Weirdly, the spot on my chest where it had touched my skin continued to tingle. I rubbed my sternum, trying to stop the reaction. “I should send it to Leo’s lab, in Texas, for DNA testing, but they already have the gunk off the floor.” I bent it and held it to the light, where the surface swam with color like the surface of a pearl. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll keep it.” I tucked it into a slit in the thigh holster that buttoned shut, discovering as I did that there was even a small pocket in the rig, holding a tourniquet and sterile bandages. Bruiser had thought of everything. I liked that in a man. “Let’s get this debrief on the road.”

We were walking into the security/conference room when Eli’s cell did that little jangle-buzz that let him know he had a text. “Alex has everything secure,” he said, “and all non-Jane footage ready for viewing.”

The air of the conference room was redolent of scorched coffee, fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts, the heated scent of Onorio, to tell me that Bruiser was present, Grégoire’s intense personal vamp scent, gun oil, the reek of fired weapons, and testosterone. In other words, it smelled wonderful. The underground room had a security console, a huge monitor/TV screen, a massive table, and comfortable rolling desk chairs.

The primo, Adelaide Mooney, opened the meeting with the info that Leo and Gee were being treated by the priestesses. She assured us that they would both be okay, but it would be tomorrow night before we’d see them again. With the fast healing of vampires and whatever species an Anzû was, that sounded pretty ominous. Del looked haggard but elegant, dressed in a monochrome blend of blond tones that matched her hair, which was down and curling on her shoulders. I remembered seeing her at some point in the gym, sword raised. It had been only a glimpse, but it looked as if Del knew her way around sharp objects.

When she finished her report, I asked, “Can you tell us what Leo was saying when the thing flew into the room? It sounded like, Lepree lumyear. Larcencel. Larcencel.”

Del’s eyes flicked down and back to me. I wasn’t sure what the reaction meant, other than she wanted to be done and outta here. She stood and said, “The Master of the City said to give you this.” She passed a folded scrap of paper to me. On it was written in a shaky hand, with what looked like a ballpoint pen, the words, Grand danger, mon cour. L’esprit lumière. L’arcenciel.

It wasn’t Leo’s usual fancy, calligraphy-like script, and I’d never seen him use a ballpoint pen or write on a torn piece of paper, but the words on it had the right Ls in them to be his handwriting. “Okay. What’s it say?”

Toneless, she replied. “It says, ‘Great danger, my heart. The light spirit. The rainbow.’”

“What’s wrong with his heart? Did the bite damage it?” For that matter, did Leo even have a heart? Fortunately I got my mouth closed before I said those words.

“I believe that Leo is calling you his heart,” Bruiser said, his tone droll.

“Oh. Okay. No.” I looked at Del and finally was able to deduce her expression as an unwilling possessiveness. Del and Leo had begun a relationship that included more than just blood sharing, and this read like I was poaching on her territory. Though how that all worked when Leo was still sleeping with Grégoire, I had no idea. “I’m not his heart. He just calls me that to tick me off.”

“I see. Well . . . if you need me, I’ll have my cell and in-house radio.” She turned on her expensive two-inch heels and left the room. I followed her into the hallway, but she cut me off with a terse, “I don’t have time now, Jane.”

I stepped back fast at her abrupt words. An embarrassed flush shocked through me. I don’t make friends easily and—

“Sorry,” Del said. Her shoulders slumped and she rubbed her forehead. I didn’t get headaches much but Del looked like she was in pain. “It’s been a difficult week.”

Tentatively, I said, “Leo giving you a hard time?”

She dropped her hand. “I’m not the primo he’s used to working with,” she said stiffly, as if she had heard the words once too often recently. “He’s still grieving for George, and there’s nothing I can do to take away the fact that he’s lost his right-hand man. It’s also taking me a while to get up to speed. I don’t know where things are located, filed, or stored. I made a mistake ordering wine for a small gala Leo has planned. We got a delivery of ‘substandard, even for American swill,’ wine that I liked and that cost a small fortune. He broke every bottle. Every single one. Quesnel was horrified.”

Which sounded like underling-speak for the boss was being a pain in the butt. Was the jealousy a misread on my part? I said, “Ouch. Sooo, because you don’t have instant recall and superpsychic powers of vamp-omniscience, Leo bites your head off?”

She smiled slightly. “Metaphorically speaking.”

“Want me to stake him for you?”

Del spluttered with laughter, which was what I had hoped for, her pale complexion brightening. “I think not. Job security, you know.”

“Yeah. I bet it’d be hard to find a new position as primo in today’s job market.” The words felt familiar, as if I’d said them before. To Del? To Bruiser? Both had changed jobs recently.

Still chuckling, Del stretched her shoulders back and then let them relax. She said, “I’m sorry about my tone in there. Girls’ day out soon? I know this town has excellent spas and I’m dying to try one out.”

I didn’t do girlie stuff, manis and pedis and facials, but I’d had a massage once and it had been fantastic. “Soon,” I promised her with a nod, and then added, “Leo doesn’t understand the concept of monogamous. He’ll protect you with his life and give you anything you want except that.” Without watching for her reaction, I opened the conference room door and slipped back inside.

The lights were off in the room, security footage up on the oversized central monitor screen. A voice in the darkness said, “Legs, I’ll look over the footage again later for anything we might have missed, but so far, nothing shows on the cameras until the rainbow thing, whatever Leo called it, entered the gym.”

“Okay,” I said as I slid into a chair at the head of the table. Belatedly I identified the voice as Angel Tit, one of Derek’s men, a former active-duty marine and IT security specialist. And the scent beside me was Bruiser, silent, watching. He must have come back in through the other entrance. I could feel his eyes on me in the dark. “What?”

“That,” he said. That was digital footage from four cameras, taking up half of the screen, two by two. I’d installed the cameras to cover all aspects of the workout room and its two entrances. The screens showed footage that had been aligned by time stamp to show the moment the creature entered the gym in a flash of light. Instantly, all the cameras had splotches of white-out and partial white-out, in the blocky shapes of ruined digital feed.

Angel said, “I’m piecing together sections of footage that are still okay, so we can get a view of the fight. This is all I got at this time.”

A fifth screen appeared on the far right of the TV and showed the creature entering the room. It was a blister of light, a halo of nothingness with glistening movement to the side that could have been wings, followed by a smoky cloud of out-of-focus, thrashing tail. The camera angle changed, and changed again as it flew across the room. It whipped to Gee and bit him.

“It went straight to Gee,” I said. “I thought it was angling for Leo and got Gee instead. But it targeted Gee DiMercy first. Anybody have any ideas about that?” No one answered, but I could feel a growing discomfort in the room as the snake thing attacked Leo, fought, and finally flew away, then did it again, and again, as Angel replayed the footage. The uneasiness might have been the result of the appearance of what would have passed for a dragon in mythology, or maybe the part where Bruiser and I both vanished from the screen into a haze of gray energies, but whatever caused it, the humans in the room were not happy campers. Fortunately, no footage appeared showing me in half-cat form, and though it was strange that no one brought that up, I decided not to mention it. Discretion being the better part of valor, or I am a scaredy cat, or something like that.

We watched the footage several more times before I said, “Okay. Stop. Is it just me or does anyone else get a different impression of the action from what we saw in the room at the time it happened?”

“I thought my eyes were going bad,” a voice said from the front of the room.

“Nothing I see now is what I saw at the time,” Bruiser agreed. His voice wasn’t worried, but it was far more bland than usual, which was telling in its own way.

“Me neither. That’s not what I saw,” another voice said. Others murmured what they had seen.

“I saw a buncha bats. Nearly crapped my pants.”

“I saw bees, dude. Killer bees. Heard ’em too. Scared the shi— Ooof. Whadju do that for?”

“No cussing around Janie,” Angel Tit said, making it sound like a law.

“I just got dizzy, like someone spiked my drink.”

“I started itching. I got outta there.” Others agreed. The spectators to the sparring had cleared the room fast. Few witnesses had been left to see my partial shift. “Interesting,” I said, feeling a weight lift off of me. “So it makes humans forget they ever saw it. Pretty good survival mechanism. Everyone write up a report and send it to my e-mail.”

There were groans from around the room, the soldier’s universal hatred of after-action reports. Beside me, Bruiser chuckled under his breath. I said, “We need to know if it’s messing with our minds, our eyesight, or our memories.” That shut them up. No one human liked to think their minds might be an open book to some supernat.

I said, “I want to know what everyone saw at the time, versus what we just saw on the footage. Keep the reports brief and get them to me by nightfall. Angel, see if you can sharpen the images or fix the interference or whatever you call the blocky white-out sections. Send it to me ASAP.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Nice work with the tech lingo, Legs,” he said with unrestrained sarcasm. The men laughed, and some of the tension that had been generated by the meeting dissipated. “Just kiddin’, Janie. I’ll let you know what I find and send the Kid a copy.”

“Good. Lights, please.” We all blinked as our eyes adjusted and someone passed around a mega-sized coffee carafe and a tray full of mugs. Boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts followed. I wasn’t interested in the coffee but took a vanilla-cream-filled doughnut and bit into it, the sugary, doughy goodness practically exploding in my mouth. Vanilla cream squished out the small hole and I caught it on a finger and licked it clean. I had to wonder whether the local witches had ever heard of light-dragons, and I pulled my cell to text my best friend, Molly, to ask for me. Eventually, I’d have to meet the local witches myself, but so far, I hadn’t had to add that to my supernatural plate.

Mouth still full, I went on. “Okay. Last thing. Everyone knows about the elevator problems. The Otis people did the online diagnostic and pretty much got what Alex did, so they’re sending out repair people, ones who have worked in a vamp’s household before. They’ll be here at eight in the morning, in”—I looked at the time stamp on the monitor—“just a few hours. There will be two of them, and Alex has done preliminary background and social media checks on both. Neither seem to have overt anti-vamp prejudice, but I don’t want our guests wandering around alone. Eli will oversee their activities if they need to go into the shaft itself. Derek, if you’ll coordinate with him and position a couple more people to keep them in sight at all times?” Leo’s new Enforcer nodded, and I was happy to see him looking more confident about his position. Maybe our little chat at the clan home construction site had helped.

I addressed my next question to Angel Tit at the security console. “Angel? Who has day shift on the cameras?”

“That would still be me. I’m on till noon. I’ll stay over until the repair people are done.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I want them in sight at all times.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What do we do if the rainbow-snake-thing comes back?” Derek asked. The room went dead silent at the disquiet in his voice. I leaned back in my chair as if thinking about his question. When I replied I kept my tone dry and amused. “Try to keep it from eating anyone.”

The laughter in the room was quick and a hair uncertain, but Derek smiled and shook his head. “Ask a dumb question.”

“If there are no undumb questions, meeting adjourned.”