Broken Soul

CHAPTER 21 A Bucket Full of Snakes

I came to in a room I didn’t recognize. A chandelier hung over me, one of the expensive ones, lead crystal and real gold gilt, polished and so brilliant that the light reflecting back from each facet hurt my eyes. The ceiling overhead was painted like the Sistine Chapel, or another fancy cathedral in Italy, with angels and humans sitting on clouds, faces etched with ecstasy. Vampires with wings flew among the happy group, fangs out. Weird. Vamps were weird. Their art was weirder.

I took a breath. It hurt so bad that I groaned, then coughed, which hurt even worse. I wrapped my arms around my middle, feeling cold blood on my flesh. Oh yeah. Right. I probably died. Again. This was getting old. Cats had nine lives, but I had already pushed that score into unknown territory and I had to wonder how many times I could die until the one time I didn’t get shifted in time.

Time.

I blinked, remembering. Beast had done something with time. Not just speeding me up, but taking me outside of time. A time bubble that let me do stuff inside it while the world didn’t go on without me. Folded time. My guts twisted into a knot and then yanked tight. I pressed into my middle, kneading, but the charley horse only seemed to get bigger.

I tried to stretch out and thought my insides would rip in two. Beast?

Jane must lie still. And wait.

Wait? I can’t breathe. I’m dying here.

Breast chuffed at me. Jane is not dying. Jane has air. Jane should think of time.

In the deeps of my soul home, Beast looked away, bored. She was lying in front of the fire pit, flames casting light and leaping shadows across her.

Time. Great. I fought to relax, to not panic, and closed my eyes.

I had actually seen a time bubble once, or maybe a time loop. I had been working with Molly way back when, and we had found a time loop in an old house that had been diagnosed as having a poltergeist. Wrong. It had a vampire stuck in a time loop, in a time bubble, with a witch. I had always been aware that time slowed down in battle. Soldiers had reported that phenomenon from time immemorial. But this was different. More distinct. More intense. Longer lasting. Now Beast and I had more control over the experience. Now Beast could do something like slow down time, fold time, at will. Or place us in a bubble at will. Freaky stuff.

Unfortunately, it looked like I would be the one to pay the price for the time shifts, not Beast.

I managed to get an elbow out and rolled over slightly, so I could see. I was on a bed, in a room with some light. Fighting panic, I pulled a pillow to my middle and shoved it hard against me. I was able to inhale. A long moment later I exhaled, slowly, slowly. My guts roiled like a bucket full of snakes. I pushed down on the nausea, hard. It would be really bad if I threw up right now. I took another breath and this time, I smelled Del everywhere, in the coverlet, on the pillows, permeating the air. This was her bedroom.

I coughed again. Stuff came up. Too tired to lift my head, I spat it onto the covers beside me. Old blood, black and phlegmy. Totally gross. Old blood meant that I hadn’t shifted totally. If I’d shifted, any blood in my system would have been absorbed by the shift and rearranged inside me. In a total shift, nothing got wasted. But in a partial shift, I was starting to realize, things could be way different. Things like my level of pain, and the degree of my body’s change, and the functions of my brain.

“How are you?”

I tilted my head to see Adelaide staring at me, but her head was at an angle that made my stomach roil. I closed my eyes. From behind the darkness of my lids I said, “I’m sick as a dog. How are you?”

“Alive. Thanks to your help. And thanks to the priestess.”

“And Derek. Last time I saw him he was chasing Peregrinus.”

“Peregrinus got away,” she said shortly.

I swallowed and the nausea faded just a hint. I could hear Del moving around the room. Cleaning up my mess. “The others?” I managed to ask.

“Leo and his heir are well. Grégoire is recuperating. Derek is injured, but will survive, as will most of his men. Your wolf raced away, last seen leaping through the front entry. And . . . and Wrassler. He said to give you his thanks.” I felt the mattress beneath me shift, which made sickness rise again. I swallowed it back down, desperate not to be sick, desperate to hear Del’s report. I pressed the pillow harder into me. “Leo has promised him the best of prosthetics for his leg. His arm may heal.”

I opened my eyes to see Del sitting on the edge of the bed. “How many dead and injured?” I asked.

Del sighed. “Of Peregrinus’ fighters, ten dead and left to rot. Of ours, seven dead, two of them Derek’s men. Nine injured, one critically. Four humans missing.”

“Missing?” I focused on her face. Missing didn’t sound right. Why would anyone be missing?

I realized I had spoken the question aloud when she said, “We don’t know. But it has something to do with Bethany. After she got all the Mithrans fed, she disappeared. And she took some of our people with her.”

I thought about that while I gathered my strength and pushed up with my arms, swiveling to sit upright, my knees held close, pressing the pillow into me as hard as I could. Del placed pillows behind me and I rested back on them. I was in a bedroom, a lacy, silken chamber done in shades of gold and cream and touches of sapphire. A nine-millimeter handgun—not one of mine—lay on the bedside table. The room looked like Del, all soft and reserved but with hidden surprises that could hurt you. “Sorry about the spread,” I said, my breath coming easier. “What time is it?”

She shrugged and crossed her arms over her middle. “It’s washable. And it’s nearly three in the morning.”

I could hear the vibration of generators. “I’ll have to deal with the power situation.”

Del nodded. I realized that we both were trying to avoid dealing with the reality. So I took a slow, deep breath and asked, “I’m guessing that everyone knows about the thing on the wall of Leo’s dungeon.” Del looked away. “What was it? Who was it?”

She cursed softly, smelling of worry and fear. While she debated on telling me the truth or an artful lie, I managed to get my knees to uncurl an inch, and touched my belly. It was still hard, and now ached. I should never do that again. Never. And certainly never in the middle of a battle.

The gesture elegant and lissome, Del dropped her arms and lifted her head, her shoulders relaxing, as if freeing herself from a prison. “They called him Yo-sace, Bar-Ioudas. Joses, son of Judas, in English. He is a Son of Darkness. A child of Ioudas Issachar.” She stood and walked to the door, looking elegant and delicate and all the things I would never be, blond and beautiful and graceful. She stopped at the door and looked back at me. “This changes so many things. The presence of Joses Bar-Judas, as a prisoner here, makes it quite likely that, rather than parley with them, we will go to war with the Europeans.”

Shock made my chest ache again. Leo. Leo had known. The Son was Leo’s prisoner. Leo had been . . . drinking from him. That was why the MOC was so strong. Why his primo could be saved—or brought back to life—and turned into an Onorio—because Leo had been made uberstrong by the blood of the Son. And why Grégoire’s twin primos, Brandon and Brian, had been turned into Onorios.

Reach had known or guessed Leo’s secrets and had given them up to Peregrinus. And this one secret had gotten humans killed.

Leo had done this. Gotten an old lady across the street from me killed. Gotten three construction workers killed. A cop killed. So many dead because of this secret. “Did you know he was down there?”

“No,” she said, her voice expressionless. “As far as I know, no one knew but Leo, his pet priestess, and his Mithran lovers.” She left the room and closed the door behind her.

The pet priestess and Leo’s Mithran lovers: Bethany, Katie, and Grégoire. “Well,” I said to the empty room. “That sucks. Too bad Leo didn’t stay dead one of the times I killed him recently.” Now I might have to kill him true-dead myself, and not stop at a simple staking.

This was Leo’s fault. All of it was Leo’s fault. Leo’s and Reach’s.

I stretched out my other leg and curled the pillow back around my middle as I thought about the thing on the wall in the basement, trying to remember what I had seen in the timeless moments while I was in the bubble, hanging in midair, and afterward when I was busy getting killed by Derek.

The thing had been male. Crucified to an old brick wall with silver stakes. The wall had been slashed repeatedly by his talons, which were more like the Wolverine’s blades than most vamp claws. The damaged wall had shown some kind of metal, tarnished in the candlelight—metal studs, maybe. Black-magic items—pocket watches—had been hanging on the Son’s body. Scraps of clothes. Body was mostly dried flesh, looking mummified. Eyes glittering and focused on me.

The black-magic watches contained pieces of the iron spike of Calvary, of Golgotha. The crosses of Golgotha had been used to make the thing that hung on the wall, in a black-magic ceremony.

Now Leo wanted the spike. So did the EuroVamps, who were really the earliest vamps created by the Sons of Darkness. Sooo . . . what did the iron from the spike do to the Sons? To the Son in the dungeon?

There were a lot of negatives and dangers to being turned by a vamp. Sunlight could burn them. Lack of blood could starve them. The devoveo—the years of insanity humans went through after being turned—had to be lived through, and if they didn’t come out of the devoveo sane, then they were put down like rabid dogs. Then there was the delore—the insane grief they went through when one of their loved ones died. The lack of stability that only emotionally stable blood-servants brought to a vamp. Blood-thirst. Lots more.

Though the Mithrans hadn’t yet found a cure for the long-chained—the scions stuck in the devoveo—the Sons of Darkness had parleyed with the Anzû to keep their progeny sane from the delore, by feeding them sips of Anzû blood. It had worked. What did Gee DiMercy—the only Anzû in Leo’s territory—know about the dungeon’s only prisoner? He clearly hadn’t known about the arcenciels being around.

Not so long ago, Leo had said that the Sons of Darkness had ordered the Mithrans of the Americas to make peace with the Cursed of Artemis—the werewolves and other were-creatures. That order would have been impossible to give with a Son of Darkness chained in the basement. So where did the order to parley with the were-community come from? Leo? The other Son? The European Council like the news media said? I hated vamp politics.

Even a future parley with the witches was now suspect. Was the order to reach rapprochement with the New Orleans witch coven because Leo needed the blackened prisoner and some witch magic to accomplish . . . what? Crap. I had no idea.

Anger raced under my skin, burning, hot, like acid eating away at me. So many dead. Hurt. Damn vampire secrets. Damn Leo Pellissier. But I could kill him later. For now, I had a deadly puzzle to figure out.

In the basement, we had a kidnapped Son of Darkness. Leo was playing political games with the lives of humans and of his people. Black-magic pocket watches containing parts of a magical item that Leo was looking for were resting on the Son’s body. And a werewolf who had been touched by an angel, had bitten the thing chained to the wall, and was running through the city with a mouthful of the Son of Darkness’ blood in him. I had to wonder what the bite would mean to the werewolf.

Oh—and the Devil was dead, along with Batildis, which could only tick off Peregrinus. Though he had taken their bodies with him. Could he bring them back to life, a human with no throat and a vamp cut in two?

And the arcenciel hatchling was still in Peregrinus’ possession. Soul was going to be really ticked off with me. After Bethany had said the arcenciel would be solid, I had expected to see the baby dragon, maybe held prisoner by Peregrinus via some arcane means. Or maybe with jesses and a hood, the way people trained raptors to hunt. I wasn’t sure what I had seen in the basement, about the arcenciel. It was all confused.

I also wasn’t sure what I was going to tell Soul, and she didn’t seem the patient, understanding type, not when she was in light-dragon form.

The weirdness was in overlays and none of it was going to be good. Nothing was ever good in the land of the blood-suckers. It was always FUBAR from beginning to end.

I laid my head back and studied the painting on the ceiling of Del’s bedroom. All that was missing was satyrs and images of torture to make it perfectly weird. I let my eyes trace the feathered wings of an angel as I tried to remember what else I knew about the Sons of Darkness. Something the other priestess, Sabina, had said months ago. Sabina was way more sane than Bethany, but she had lost her humanity centuries ago too. She had told me that the eldest Son of Darkness had visited, a century ago, and had failed to rise one night. Yeah. That was it. Leo and Sabina entered his lair together, and the place had stank of violence and blood—of the Son’s holy life blood, or so she had said, and the blood of someone or something else. That blood had been splattered on the walls. Had that blood been Bethany’s? Had she brought Joses to Amaury Pellissier, the previous MOC? Or to Leo? The century timeline could work either way, but there had to be way more to the story, in order for the missing Son of Darkness to end up a prisoner in Leo’s basement.

Sabina and Leo had hidden the evidence. Reach had guessed or figured it out. Now everyone knew that Joses was here. Del was right. It would mean war with the EuroVamps, unless I could figure out a way to stop it.

Overhead, the lights flickered and the room went black. Which was the first time I noticed that I was in an internal room, one with no windows, one a vamp could stay in twenty-four/seven. And Leo and Del and been getting frisky, if my memory served. I sniffed the pillow again to be sure, but I didn’t smell Leo. They hadn’t spent frisky time here, which relieved me in ways I hadn’t expected. The lights came back on and the distant sound of generators went off. Power had been restored.

I rotated to my feet and groaned my way out of the room. I found the stairs and limped down to the locker room to clean up and change clothes, coming to a few conclusions. We needed several things: a full debrief, to find Brute, and to figure out where the arcenciel was in all the hullabaloo—still with Peregrinus, or escaped? We needed to know where Bethany had gone with the missing people. It was gonna be a long night.

I was on the stairs when I realized that Bruiser hadn’t shown up. I pulled my cell. Communications were up and I had three text messages. Eli’s said, Heading back to vamp HQ. W alive in hospital. Edmund feeding healing him. Alex’s said, Gimme call. Got info. Bruiser’s said, On the way. Be safe.

That text was more than an hour old, but so far as I knew, he hadn’t shown. I texted him back. Call me. And then texted the Kid to track his cell. Bruiser’s text was the one that mattered most.

I was in the shower when I felt cool air whoosh into the room. I shut off the water with one hand and simultaneously picked up the nine-mil. There was one in the chamber, ready to fire. The Judge was on the tiled ledge beside me, next to the shampoo.

“It’s me, Legs. We need to chat.” It was Derek. Who had disappeared, chasing after Peregrinus. Or helping him escape? I had to wonder whether he was in his right mind or whether he’d been rolled by a vamp who had managed to seize Grégoire, Leo, Katie, and all of vamp HQ in one night.

“Yeah?” I asked, not willing to throw back the shower curtain to see him. Knowing that if he wanted me dead, he could have already fired. I had no place to run anyway. But mostly not wanting to be naked in front of Derek. I took the weapon in a two-hand grip and spread my feet, balanced and ready. “Tell me something only we know. So that I’ll know it’s you talking through your mouth and not some foreign vamp who’s made you his.”

“You wore a party dress the first time I saw you take down a fanghead. You told me you had a magic charm to track down suckheads, but we both know you was lying.”

I chuckled.

“Also,” Eli said, “he’s got me, with a gun about three inches from his spine.”

Not again, I thought, but feeling relieved. “You boys have got to learn to play together.”

“Too close, Ranger boy. I’d take you—”

“And you’d sit in a chair the rest of your life. So go ahead. Make my—”

“Go away!” I yelled. I turned the water back on and set the gun aside. They could play Ranger versus SEAL on their own time. I still had things to think through. And one of those was, why was I always the only female in the ladies’ room? Was I so terrifying and creepy that all the other female security personnel who used this locker room made themselves scarce when I was here? It was kinda weird.

Once I was dressed, I read my new texts and sent several, one to tell the Kid I was headed into the security conference room. He’d know what to do. The guys were waiting outside the locker room door when I emerged, holding up opposite walls. Eli had an abrasion on his cheek that hadn’t been there the last time I saw him, and Derek was nursing a bloody lip. “Idiots.” I shook my head and asked Eli to run an errand for me, fast. He nodded and took off. I asked, “Your men?”

Derek’s face turned down, the lines beside his mouth making him look far older. “Red Dragon and Antifreeze are down for rehab. Trash Can and Acapulco are both dead.”

He didn’t want sympathy. I didn’t know what he wanted, but sympathy wasn’t it. I kept my eyes emotionless, but let my mouth turn down in acknowledgment of his loss. “I’d like to go to the services,” I said. “Anything I can do for the families, please let me know.”

He nodded once, a severe, clipped gesture, and I lifted a finger pointing to the conference room. Derek followed me down the hall into security, and I felt him behind me, more so than heard him. He moved as silently as a hunting big-cat.

If he had been rolled, then I could be a target, though I could tell by his body scent that he wasn’t fighting anything; nor was he overly, abnormally calm. He smelled like himself after exercise, and he also smelled angry, but it was normal, human “It isn’t fair” kind of angry, combined with a little “I need to hit something” angry. He stepped up beside me, our shoulders brushing. But his scent changed as we walked, a hint of adrenaline, an increase of testosterone. It smelled like a dominance thing, the scent telling me that the person he wanted to hit was me.

I could take him if he attacked. Most likely, I could. Probably. Maybe. Most days. Maybe not right now with my belly feeling like . . . “You shot me,” I said, casually.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the satisfaction flit onto his face, as he said, “Yeah. Sorry about that.” But he didn’t sound sorry. His voice went harder, colder. “Leo instructed me not to call in the cops for our DBs. He says it’s too dangerous for us to let any more humans in here.”

I suddenly understood all the mixed signals he was giving off. I moved to the side of the hallway and stopped again, turning to him. I put a hand on his arm, feeling the rigid, corded muscles there. His black eyes glittered in his dark-skinned face, but he stared into the distance. “I’m sorry about your men,” I said. “I’m so very sorry.”

“Vodka Sunrise was injured, but had enough life to be turned. He’ll be an insane suckhead for ten years, but he’ll be alive, if you call that living.” Sunrise had lost a tooth in Leo’s service not so long ago. He was good people. All Derek’s men were good people. I could smell Derek’s conflict, his anger, his grief, and I tightened my fingers on his arm, letting a bit of Beast into my grip. It had to hurt, but he didn’t meet my eyes. I understood that too. I wasn’t human. I was one of the monsters. And I hadn’t reacted with anger when one of the monsters had said no human law enforcement involvement. I was getting in deep. Too deep? How deep did I have to get to be happy that Sunrise had been turned instead of dying? “We’ll honor their sacrifice. Your men and me. And right now, I honor their sacrifice.”

I closed my mouth with a soft snap. I didn’t have time for this, but I also didn’t not have time for it. I shoved my conflict down deep inside and shook his arm until he looked at me. “In the ways of The People, the War Woman was responsible for restitution and revenge after battle. I am War Woman.” His eyes widened slightly and his scent changed, though I couldn’t tell what the pheromones meant, except more confusion. “I promise you the right to choose how our enemy will die. If you choose, then for each man true-dead, I will cause our enemy to scream until he can’t scream anymore. I will let him heal. And I’ll make him scream again for the next man. For the men turned, I’ll bring them a cup of his still-warm blood to drink. If you choose this, the death of the one we hunt will not be clean or easy.”

Derek’s head went up, his mouth hard. “You’re asking me to let you torture a man.”

“No. I’m asking what you want done.”

“Clean death,” he spat. “I’m not a monster.”

I smiled, and knew it was bitter. “No. You aren’t. And for that I’m thankful.”

He blinked several times, then said, “You don’t want to . . . do what you said.”

“I really, really don’t. But for you, to honor your men, to remember your men, I would have.” I let a small smile soften my face. “The last time I counted coup—to use a word not of The People—I was five years old and my grandmother put the knife into my hand.” Derek’s scent changed again, this time taking on a clearly identified horror in the chemical mixture. “Humans, ordinary humans, can be far worse than the monsters. To torture a man when you’re a child, when your mother and grandmother stand beside you and guide in the methodology and the mechanics, it changes you. It changed me, changed who I became; who I am now. But I’m willing to go back to that time if you need me to.”

Derek took my hand from his arm, but instead of dropping it, he curled his fingers around my wrist and pulled my hand into a soldier’s handclasp. I gripped his wrist back. “They were soldiers for the United States. We’ll honor them with a soldier’s burial.”

We stood nearly eye to eye in the hallway, arms clasped. “Okay. Good. You want me there, I’ll be there. If not, I’ll understand. I’ll contribute to the families’ funds. And I’ll get Amy Lynn to feed your man. With a little luck and her super-duper special vamp blood, he might be back in as little as two years, rather than the standard ten.”

He released my arm and I let him. He said, “Savin’ my mama is worth part of my soul. And bein’ Leo’s Enforcer sounded—”

He stopped, and I could guess what it had sounded like. Easy job, lotsa money. But it had been a devil’s bargain. It always was, with fangheads.

Derek went on. “I don’t understand how fangheads think. Why not call in the law for the dead humans?”

“Leo had a hard time getting the human LEOs to leave, the last time one of his people died in this building. Leo has control issues and danger on his turf.” Derek didn’t reply so I said, “Honestly, I don’t really care what Leo does about the law.” Oddly, it was true. Once upon a time I called in the law every time a human incident took place. But it never did any good. Leo was his own law. Always had been. Probably always would be. And I was the Enforcer who carried out his law. I had quit, but not really. I was still doing the job and wouldn’t stop even when Peregrinus was dead. I still had a contract with Leo as his Enforcer for a cool half mil. And with the EuroVamps coming, this job might be the only way to keep my friends alive.

My forehead wrinkled as a thought occurred to me. “The last time someone died here, it was one of the new guys. Wayne something? He had what I thought was a hawk tattooed on his scalp. But maybe it was a peregrine?”

“I’ll check back. Make sure.” He pulled his cell and started thumbing around for photos of the crime scene.

“I know vamps work ahead, plan things for decades,” I said thoughtfully, uncomfortable with the direction of my thoughts.

“Centuries.”

“Yeah. For real. But it would be hard to put that incident together with the EuroVamps and Satan’s Three, and Reach.”

“No, it wouldn’t. Not for a fanghead.” He stopped thumbing on the screen. “Not a falcon. No. It was a hawk. And it was done in reds and browns, not the blue tattoos on the wrists of the fanghead and his human.” He turned the cell to me and I studied the photo of the top of Hawk Head’s scalp. The hawk tattoo looked nothing like the peregrine falcons sported by Peregrinus’ followers, and his wrists were bare. “Hawk,” Derek insisted.

“Okay. But . . . let’s keep that in back of our minds, okay? I don’t like coincidences.”

“Jane?” Derek didn’t often call me by my given name. It was Legs or Injun Princess. Not Jane. I looked my question at him. “You’re a Christian. How could you do that? When you were five? How could you do it now?”

“I don’t know.” I laughed shortly. “I probably need therapy.”

“Yeah. We all probably do.”

The team was assembled in the security conference room, including a few new faces.

I remembered Wrassler telling me he was trying to get help. Carefully, I said to Derek, “Your people?”

“Grégoire’s people from Atlanta,” he said. “They’ve been in training in the swamps for the last six weeks,” he reminded me. “Basic training. Leo fed on all of them. They’re loyal and integrated into the communications channels. Training isn’t up to my standards yet, but they’ll do in a pinch.”

I looked them over and shook my head. They were covered in mosquito bites, were sunburned, skinny, rangy, scruffy, and hard-eyed. They looked like they’d been rode hard and put up wet, as a horse-loving roommate in the children’s home used to say, and they had the body odors that claimed they had been in-country without access to bathhouses for a looong time. But they also looked ready to go to war, with that hair-trigger awareness the battlefield soldier always wore. I nodded at them by way of welcome.

“They’ve been read in on the deets,” Derek added. “We can talk freely.”

Which hadn’t even occurred to me. My mind had been too busy on other stuff to sweat things like humans without enough info to understand what was going on. “Too much went wrong tonight, guys,” I said. “Angel, I need to see everything you have on camera. And you’ll note that the stuff on the secondary control panel you installed has been integrated into this one, and a bill for the design has been submitted to Raisin. To Ernestine,” I amended. One of the texts had been from the Kid telling me he had found and assimilated the secondary set.

Angel Tit’s eyebrows bunched and he glanced at Derek. “Told you she’d figure it out. Told Leo and Del she’d figure it out. Told all’a y’all she’d figure it out.” Derek grunted and Angel punched some spots on his integrated control screen. Security footage appeared on the overhead video screen. I watched the new men studying the videos as if their lives depended on it. And maybe they did.

The action lasted half an hour, with time not matching up anywhere as we followed from camera to camera, watching as men and women died, as Wrassler was mangled, as trained solders tried to ignore the changing of time and fought back. As the digital feed sputtered and went all blocky at times just as it had before from the presence of the arcenciel. But this time, the arcenciel was on-screen for only some of the occurrences of the pixelating blocks. “What’s causing the interference?” I asked.

Angel swiveled in his chair and grinned at me. “This time it wasn’t caused only by the light-dragon. This time the interference followed the vamp Peregrinus. I did manage to get some clear shots of him. These might explain it.”

I stared at the still shots plucked from the video. The fanghead was moving at vamp speed, and on regular digital camera footage, he would have been a pixel-blur, but on the new cameras, he was fairly clear—dark hair, dark pants, white shirt, leather belt, and boots. Necklace. But the jewelry looked different from the painting in the records room, and also different from the spare, stripped-raw moments when I had seen the vamp in person. Now the necklace looked larger, darker. Different.

“On the clearest one.” I pointed at the shot of my choice. “Can you zoom in and let me see the necklace?” I asked.

“This isn’t TV or the movies, but yeah, I can get in a bit,” Angel said. By his self-satisfied tone I knew he had already done it for himself.

The screen changed and the necklace moved front and center, bigger, but more blurred. On the chain hung the raptor in flight, the same focal he had worn for the painting centuries ago. But now it was joined by a larger, black focal, wired onto the necklace. The focal was vaguely spear-shaped, wider at the top, pointed and clear at the bottom like a jeweled crystal pulled from the earth. Something was inside it. The thing inside trailed down to a point, the same way water runs down glass, all squiggly. I didn’t have to see it again. I knew what I was seeing. I knew why Soul had lost contact with the hatchling, and what the moments meant when he and the light-dragon had been in my presence. Peregrinus had captured the young arcenciel and made it tiny. He was wearing the hatchling in a jeweled crystal, wired onto his necklace with steel wire. And arcenciels were allergic to steel. I narrowed my eyes, letting that thought percolate until I realized that this could be what Bethany had been talking about, but hadn’t understood how to accomplish the act. Peregrinus was riding the dragon . . .

“Depending on the learning curve, I’m guessing the necklace means Peregrinus now has access to some of the arcenciel’s power, and some of her weaknesses too, whatever they are,” I said. And since I had caused the death of Peregrinus’ pals, and then chased him away from killing (or eating or draining or whatever) the chained Joses Bar-Judas, I could guess that he would keep coming after me, as part of finishing whatever he originally came to accomplish. And yeah. He’d be angry.

I checked the current time on the video screen. It was an hour before dawn. I doubted that Peregrinus would be back tonight. To Derek, I said, “Get what you can from the vids. See about making this place secure. Get battery lighting on every hallway and stairwell. Get Leo, Grégoire, and Katie fed on ample human blood and somewhere safe.” I felt the expression that curled my mouth down. “Get them fed on the thing in the basement. Its blood is strong. Peregrinus will be back, probably tonight, which gives us maybe twelve hours. I have to talk to some people. Oh. And please see that the security at the graveyard is turned off. No need to alert or disturb the local LEOs.”

“Yeah,” Derek said, with false complacency. “No need for the local cops to get off their fat butts just to arrest you.”

“They can try.” That got some laughter, which felt like a good note to leave on. I swung out of the room, to find Eli waiting in the hallway, his earbuds in. He’d been listening to the meeting.

“I made the call to Del. Where are we going?” he asked, managing to sound only mildly curious, as if the information wasn’t vital, like how I took my tea, instead of how I was gonna keep us alive. I barked out a laugh and headed for the stairwell and up. “If I don’t tell you, will it kill you?”

“No, but we’ll waste time if I have to beat it out of you. And I might hurt my knuckles,” he added thoughtfully, our feet echoing on the stairs. I shook my head, smelling blood and bowel contents, the stench of fired weapons, and the stronger reek of cleansers in the contained stairwell air. Someone had died here recently. Odds were it was one of Derek’s men.

We left the stairwell and reentered the foyer. I hadn’t seen it since the lights came back on. There were uniformed men and women everywhere, mopping up blood. Men and women with hammers, plywood, and power tools working on making the entry secure. Not that the plywood was going to keep Peregrinus out. No chance.

I stepped into the empty weapons room and checked Wrassler’s Judge back in. No amount of firepower was going to help me where I was going. I picked up a set of keys and gestured to the back of the building.

“We jogging to the next gig too? Or are we stealing one of Leo’s armored SUVs to get wherever we’re going?”

“Borrowing. Not stealing.”

“Pa-tay-toh, pa-tah-toh.”

“Have you seen Brute or Bruiser?” I asked.

“Nope. Kinda worried about both.”

We pulled out of the back security gate, the vehicle smelling like cigarettes and weed. Fast-food wrappers were in the back floorboard, along with empty Red Bull cans and what might have been empty condom packages. I’d be talking to a driver or two: some guards needed to be taught to clean up after themselves; weed might slow reaction time; having sex on the job was stupid in a dozen ways; and smoke was a dead giveaway to any enemy vamp with half a nose. A visual which made me chuff with laughter.

As I pulled up to a light, I said, “We’re heading to the vamp graveyard across the river.”

“I got that part.”

“Yeah, well, the fun part will be me telling Sabina about the Son of Darkness chained in the basement, always assuming she doesn’t already know. And telling her about Peregrinus. And telling her we killed the Devil and Batildis.” Eli grunted ruminatively, so I finished with, “And then comes the not-fun part. Asking Sabina for the sliver of the Blood Cross, to kill Grégoire’s brother.”

“I read your report about the shard. It was taken from the wood of Calvary that the sons of Judas Iscariot used to bring their father back to life. And thereby accidently made the first vamp.” I nodded at his words. “Talking to Sabina sounds like fun,” he said, overly nonchalant.

“Yeah? Last time I did this, she nearly killed Rick and me. You know all the old wives’ tales about vamps being able to do stuff with their minds, like telekinesis and teleportation?” Eli grunted, still sounding bored. “Sabina can slam you against a wall with her mind alone, and hold you there, steady, while she tears out someone else’s throat and drinks them down at her leisure.” This time, Eli’s grunt was a little less sanguine. That was a good word, sanguine, its roots in the color red, like blood. And by the faint scent change in Eli’s sweat, he wasn’t sanguine anymore.

We pulled into the graveyard to find the hinged metal arms of the gate standing open in invitation. It was the darkest part of the night, the moon below the horizon, the sun not yet risen. The white stone mausoleums stood among the white shell paths, the statues on each roof looking like something out of Europe, white marble angels holding metal swords. There were no lights. Vamps didn’t need lights to see by, and any human who wandered in after dark to vandalize or find a place to neck, to use Aggie’s term, was likely to end up as dinner for the priestess and then wake up with no memory of the night before. The SUV’s headlights picked out the individual aboveground graves, the tree line in the distance, and the chapel. I rolled to a stop about fifteen feet away and cut the engine.

The chapel was small, though larger than the multi-casket tombs with their gated and locked doors. The chapel’s windows glowed softly with candlelight, bloodred, ruby red, wine, burgundy, the pink of watered blood. That candle flicker spoke to the old ones, a sign of all things good and safe. Inside, something moved past a window, a shadow only. “You need to stay here,” I said.

“I’m backup.” There was disagreement in his tone.

I shifted in my seat to Eli in the dark of the car, still brightened by the glowing dash lights. “She’ll assume I brought her a human to munch on.”

Eli grumped, giving in, by the scent. “Really like teleportation?”

“And really like mind-warping. You need to stay in the car.”

“So why am I here?”

“To tell the others and prepare for Peregrinus to attack tonight if she kills me.”

“You take all the fun out of a nice drive in the country.”

“I do, don’t I? I’ll be back in a bit.”

Eli stayed in the vehicle, watching as I took the steps to the front door, knocked, and entered.