Death's Rival

CHAPTER EIGHT Your Security Sucks

The heir of the Master of the City—and most of the Southeastern United States—looked up from Bruiser’s face, her eyes gathering up my consciousness like a spider weaving a silk grave for its dinner. My mind struggled in her grip, kicking. “You claimed the position of Enforcer. Leo did not refute you. Yet you did not drink from him? And he permitted this?”

My mouth went dry. When I didn’t reply, she went on. “An Enforcer must be bound by the Master of the City, bound body and soul by blood and . . . Pourtant, vous n’avez pas fait l’amour.”

I had an idea what she had said, and, no way, José, but I settled for a succinct “Uhhhh.”

“You claimed a right that you did not understand. I did the same once, when I was offered the life of the immortal night. I was young and beautiful and so very sure of myself, and foolish beyond understanding.

“As I did, you claimed the honor, not knowing what was required. No, you are not bound. I do not smell his blood in you. You are without the protection of the Master of the City.”

That part felt like a threat, and Beast thought so too. She bit down into my mind and shook it like prey, her canines like ice picks in my soul. The action and the pain brought me to high alert. I took a deep breath and blew it out. Put a hand on my new vamp-killer. Slowly. Deliberately.

Katie’s eyelids widened, pupils constricting in surprise. Her mouth made a pretty little O, distorted by fangs worthy of an African lioness.

And I grinned, showing my blunt human teeth and my beast-soul. Feeling Beast rise in me, knowing my eyes were glowing golden, like my Cherokee name. Golden Eyes. “Leo could have taken me at any time,” I said, “and forced me into submission.” I realized how true it was as soon as I said it.

We would have resisted, Beast murmured; I ignored her.

“So Leo wanted me unbound. He wanted me unbound, uncompliant, and unsubmissive. Free. Unlike the rest of you.”

“He wanted your love, free and willing.”

“Maybe that was part of it.” Most certainly that was part of it, but we don’t always get what we want, I thought. “But he left me free, for his own reasons. I’m guessing one reason is that some enemies require a clear mind. Some . . .” I cocked my head and let my eyes take in the vamps between me and the way out, the only door. Old vamps, all of them. Not one younger than early nineteenth century. “. . . some youth. Some creativity.” With my left hand, I pulled the brand-new cell from a pocket and tossed it to Katie, only feet away. With animal reflexes she caught it. “Call him. Maybe he has his cell with him, wherever he is, and assuming he isn’t true-dead. Maybe he’ll tell us where he is and to come rescue him. And while you have him on the phone, ask Leo why he left me unbound.” Katie looked from me to the thing in her hands. Someone would have tried to reach Leo already, but I knew from experience she had no idea how to use a cell phone, and only with reluctance would dial the old-fashioned landline on her desk. I let my smile widen. “Yeah.” I glanced at Bruiser, lying pale and broken. He had two scars on his chest, bullet wounds. His chest moved with a breath, faint and shallow. Abruptly I remembered the tearing sound when something deep inside him gave way and he bled to death. He had died. Right in front of me. And he was alive again.

I looked back at Katie, keeping my feelings off my face. “Keep him alive. Keep yourself safe. Leo values you both.” I paused and tested the words on my tongue before I said them. They tasted of truth. “Leo loves you both. I’ll be back soon.” I walked past Katie, snagging my cell, giving her my back, just as an African lion would give his pride his back, knowing he was bigger, badder than the others. I pushed through the vamps at the door.

I stopped midway and took Koun’s wrist in my hand. He was still cold, pale, and shaky. “Thank you. Leo will be proud of you for saving his primo.” Maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed to stand taller. “He is honored to have the great Koun as his warrior. But even more honored that Koun knows when to fight and when to heal.” It wasn’t a lie—or not exactly. Leo hadn’t actually said the words, but he had chosen Koun as one of his four closest scions at a time when Katie was unavailable for duty. That was a lot of trust from a vamp as powerful as Leo Pellissier, Master of the City of New Orleans and half of the Southeastern states.

There was a lot of divisiveness in Leo’s closest scions, at a time when that seemed dangerous. Maybe I could heal that some. “Leo will grieve the loss of the vam—Mithrans,” I corrected, “Louise and Peter and their blood-servants.”

The Celt met my eyes, his own human blue in white orbs. He turned his wrist to grip mine, his fingers and palm calloused and stronger than mine would ever be. He nodded and let me go.

In the hallway, I met Derek’s eyes, dark and hostile. I opened my mouth to give him orders. Instead, I said, “You are the most brutal human being I have ever met.” I hadn’t intended to say the words, but they matched my thoughts. Deep inside, Beast huffed with amusement.

“Unlike humans, the vamps will heal,” he said shortly, lip curling. “It’s war.”

“The excuse of soldiers for millennia.”

He didn’t react. I didn’t expect him to. “The blood you sent was lost in the fire,” he said. “We got some from them”—he canted his head down the hallway toward the parlor and the cages—“but we need some from the others to compare.”

“I have some in my house from the Seattle clan’s humans.”

“Yeah? I’ll send Chi-Chi for it.”

“Sure. Whatever.” I walked away from him, showing him my back too. I left the house, closing the front door behind me. And dropped against the red-painted door, heaving breaths. “Holy moly.” I put a hand to my chest. “I’m not dead.” And I fought laughter, knowing they might hear me inside. Or smell me. Sweat started to trickle down my sides, sticky and stinking of the aftereffects of fear.

When I had myself under control, I pushed away from the door and melted into the shadows. The night was warm and muggy, and the sweat wasn’t likely to dry. So far, winter in the Deep South was a joke. I needed a shower, fighting leathers, and info. I needed food. I jumped the fence into the narrow alley separating Katie’s from the building next door and walked down the narrow space, checking the cameras I had installed as I moved. Instinct. Habit, to check my security work for Leo’s heir. It all seemed okay.

The brick fence behind Katie’s was taller than I was by far, and I took advantage of the small hand – and footholds as I half climbed, half vaulted it, landing on the other side in the dark, and relaxed. I could tell by the smell that no one was here. I was alone. Safe. For now. Weird how a house that wasn’t mine, and never would be, felt like home.

Inside, I stripped and showered, standing under the heated water, letting it pound my muscles, washing the smoke and blood off me. There was remarkably little blood, and almost none of it mine. I washed my hair, shaved my legs, all the girly things I do so seldom. When I shift and then shift back, the hair is always fully grown again, which, even with my Cherokee-lack-of-hairiness, is a pain to remove. But this time, it felt like therapy, like feeding my girl soul, which I so seldom did.

Afterward, standing in my bathroom in the steam, the exhaust fan going, I coated my skin with pure jojoba oil and plaited my wet hair into a tight French braid. It wouldn’t dry quickly, but the damp didn’t bother me. I dressed with care in my long silk underwear, and when I could put it off no longer, I dialed Leo. He didn’t answer, and I closed the phone.

I opened the bathroom door, heard a click, and stopped in the doorway. Sniffing. Someone was here. I looked around, breathing in silently, slowly, thinking, analyzing the sound I had heard. The click was the kitchen door. I had changed the locks, but that didn’t stop anyone really determined. I switched off the bathroom light, throwing the house into night shadows.

A man had been here. I sniffed again. Yeah, a he. Male. Sweaty. Nervous. A stranger. Just like the stranger in the hotel, the one I’d killed weeks ago. I sniffed again, mouth open. Gun oil. The stink of a gun, recently fired. Herbal shampoo. Not Chi-Chi, here to pick up the blood; not anyone I knew. But if I survived tonight, I’d recognize his scent again.

Soundless, eyes on the bedroom doorway, I stepped to the bed and felt around on the fighting leathers for the holstered Walther and a vamp-killer. I came up with the smallest one, six inches of silver-plated steel, crosshatched steel grip, and gripped it backhanded in my left. Safety’d off the gun, and stepped slowly, weight balanced evenly, into the foyer. Night sight kicked in, the shadows growing lighter, the light through the windows brighter.

By the scent traces, he hadn’t come in through the front door. I stepped across the foyer, paused at the stairs. He hadn’t gone up there, but he had paused here for a while. More nervous. Edgy. I followed his scent back to the kitchen, to the side door. He had come and gone through here. While I was in the shower. Weapons on the bed. Nothing with me but a hair stick I could use on a vamp as a stake. Nothing to defend against humans. Stupid! He could have opened the door and shot me. So why hadn’t he? Because he had come in to kill me and heard the shower go off? Seen the weapons? Assumed I had a functioning brain cell and that I’d be armed, and had decided not to try to kill me. Instead, he had done . . . what?

I moved through the dark house to the kitchen door leading to the ground-floor level of the long, two-story porch. The door was shut, but the wood jamb was splintered where it had been kicked open, light-colored wood splinters on the darker floor. So . . .

I turned and studied the house, feeling, smelling, tasting the air. The blood vials. I raced back to the bedroom and bent over the shipping container. “Crap!” The bag holding the blood vials was gone. Rage boiled through me, Beast’s fury. Mine, she thought at me. Came into my den. Took what was mine. Thief of blood, she thought. Beast was possessive of her belongings. Of my belongings, for that matter. But . . . The laptop was still on the bed, the tiny green light showing standby mode. So was my arsenal. The intruder stole only the blood.

That severely limited who the traitor in Leo’s organization might be. Because only a very few vamps, blood-servants, and humans knew I had the blood, and even fewer might have guessed it was in my house. A human from Seattle might have figured it out, but more likely, the traitor had been in Katie’s house only moments ago. And he or she called the enemy. Mentally, I listed the people in Katie’s tonight. Derek and his boys: Angel Tit, Martini, and Chi-Chi. Katie. Koun. Alejandro and Estavan—vamps of Spanish descent who had been loyal to Leo for centuries. Girrard DiMercy, who had not always been loyal. Five blood-servants. Bruiser. The priestess. Crap. The priestess? She was loony tunes. Or so she appeared. Reach had included her in the list of possible bad guys, Leo’s possible spy. Reach . . . Crap. Reach.

If he had access to the security, and I had to assume he did, then Reach knew a lot more about the internal workings of the whorehouse, and more about Katie’s plans and thoughts, than I did. For all I knew, he had eyes in my house. I hadn’t done a sweep for electronics since I first moved in. I put a search in the back of my mind for later.

There were an awful lot of choices to consider for the position of traitor. Anytime the number of possible suspects went above five, things got sticky, especially when one of them was my security expert. But what would be Reach’s motivation? He didn’t need money. He couldn’t be forced to be a traitor, like somebody kidnapped his dog, like on a cheesy TV crime show. But then, everyone had a vulnerability somewhere.

Leo would know the hearts and intentions of any of his scions he fed from and shared blood with. Had he fed from all the vamps there? I had no idea. No one but Bruiser would know that, which meant that Bruiser might be in danger. Again.

Still in the dark, I dressed fast in fighting leathers and when the knock sounded, I was ready. I shoved the last blade firmly in place, gripped one of the Walthers as I walked to the front door. Drawing on Beast speed, I ripped open the door and grabbed Chi-Chi’s shirt collar, yanked hard, pulling him across my leg. He overbalanced and I stepped back, letting him fall. But he was fast. He drew his sidearm as he fell, took the landing on his shoulder and rolled, the gun in a two-handed grip. He had me in his sights. I smiled as I stared him down the barrel of my own weapon. “My 380 will kill you just as dead as your nine-millimeter will me, and all we’ll be is dead. Let’s both just take a minute, okay?” I took a breath and blew it out to show him how to relax. “Did you send someone here to steal?”

“Huh?” Honest confusion leaked from his pores, but confusion from what? Landing in my foyer? My question? Or surprise that I had figured it out?

I sniffed, searching for anything that might suggest change in his pheromonal state. “Someone broke in here while I was in the shower and stole the blood I collected. That was too fast unless someone was dispatched here from Katie’s. Maybe with orders to kill me if the opportunity arose. Who did you call?”

His aim steadied. His full lips firmed. His dark skin gleamed in the streetlight pouring in. “Legs, don’t make me shoot you.”

I detected no scent of deception on his body, heard none in his tone. Saw none in his body language. But I firmed my stance. “Who at Katie’s used a cell after I left? Because someone called in a thief with a gun.”

I could see thoughts processing, his eyes taking on a slightly unfocused state as he replayed the last half hour. “Five people that I know of, but we dispersed. Could have been more.”

“Well, crap.” Why couldn’t it be just one? “If I stand down are you gonna shoot me?”

Chi-Chi barked a laugh, the humor not affecting his aim in the slightest. “I might.”

Great. “I have a problem with trust when the other guy is armed.”

“Don’t we all?”

We could stand here all night. And Bruiser could die. Hoping I wasn’t being stupid, I raised the weapon, removed the magazine, and unchambered the round. I stepped back. Chi-Chi shrugged, not easy to do while lying on the floor, and sat straight up. Still using mostly his abs, he rolled to his feet, proving he had stayed in top shape after finishing active duty with the marines. Lastly, he holstered his sidearm. “What entry?” he demanded. I pointed at the kitchen, and, keeping me in his field of vision, he walked through my house as I followed. He knelt and inspected the door, swinging it open and closed. He grunted, “One kick. Size eleven or twelve. Smooth soled, so not wearing boots. All our guys are in boots tonight.”

“I knew it wasn’t one of your guys.” I almost added, It was a stranger’s smell, but didn’t. Go, me. I didn’t respond to his odd look either, after my comment about trust problems. What else could I have meant, right? “There may be a security leak in Leo’s chain of command, and it puts Bruiser in danger. He knows who drank from Leo, and therefore which vamps are loyal to Leo and can be eliminated from the short list of potential suspects. The ones who didn’t drink from the MOC may be involved in the attack. Go keep the primo alive.”

Chi-Chi raised a single brow. There were three shaved lines in it, giving the brow a jagged look, like a lightning strike. The look said that he wasn’t in my chain of command and didn’t take orders from me. I thought about that, and about the fact that one of Derek’s men might be the traitor. But who better to guard Bruiser than someone who wanted to keep his lack of loyalty hidden? I pursed my lips and added, “Please.”

Chi-Chi laughed again, the odd bark of sound. “You have trouble with that word.”

“How long have you known the Vodka Boys and the new men in Derek’s Tequila Posse?”

“Posse? Nobody says posse no more. We been together off and on for as much as nine years, most of us.”

“Any of you have bad financial trouble?”

His face hardened in the moonlight. “You calling one of us a traitor?”

“Not beyond the realm of possibility. Is it.” It wasn’t a question. The job market in New Orleans sucked. Chi-Chi walked back to the front of the house and out the open door. Without a reply, he disappeared into the shadows, silent as a cat. Drawing my gun, I reinserted the round from my pocket into the magazine, snapped it home, and chambered a round. I stepped into the shadow beside the door, feeling it close behind Chi-Chi.

“Your security sucks,” a new voice said.

Lips tightly closed, I smiled and crouched low to the floor, pointed my weapon in the direction of the voice. I had smelled him as he entered, a clean but musky undertone that was natural to him. Not my thief. But maybe there was more than one. I could start firing and hope to hit him, or I could chat a bit. Chatting sounded safer. “Unscented deodorant, no cologne, unscented shampoo, and a body odor that says you shower often,” I said. “You carry at least three weapons, all recently cleaned with an aerosol lubricant. Dry lubricant is better. It doesn’t leave such a strong scent.”

“Most people can’t smell lubricants after an hour or so.”

I adjusted my aim a fraction. “I’m not most people.”

“Sergeant Lee said that much.”

My insides clenched. Derek sent him? To take me out? “What else did he say?”

“You probably aren’t human. You pay well. You need security experts—weapons, tactics, intelligence, and electronics. I’m looking for a crew to join, but if the security of this place is any indication, you aren’t what I’m looking for.”

“Not my house. You got a name?”

“Younger. Eli.”

“Training?”

“Courtesy of the U.S. military.”

“Ranger?”

“Is this a job interview?”

I thought about that. I had asked Derek for some guys of my own. He said he knew someone, but if he’d given me a name I didn’t remember it. “Could be. How many knives do you carry? Silver blades? Stakes? Crosses?”

“In this town? Unknown territory, full of vamps? I opted for two of each. And I like steel—keeps an edge better than silver.”

“Silver plating on the flat of a steel blade poisons vamps, so if you didn’t get them with the first cut, they get sick, sometimes fast. I usually carry thirteen stakes and at least one cross, silver, in a lead-lined pocket. That way if a vamp surprises me, it won’t give away my location when it glows.”

“Hmmm.”

I had a feeling I had made a point, and that his cross was on his neck on a chain for all the world to see. “Silver is expensive,” he said, sounding grudging.

“So is dying. You work for me, I’ll supply the silver.”

I could practically hear him thinking. Even more grudgingly, he asked, “About this place?”

“Looks like I’ll be staying for a while.” I surprised myself with the words. I hadn’t intended to say them. Not ever. “You can handle the upgrade. Leo Pellissier or Katie Fonteneau can pay for it.”

He named a price that made me wince. “That’s for the first month, for two of us, my brother and me. Room and board is included in the price, along with a few upgrades on the house—easily secured windows, better doors, and a security system.”

“I don’t cook.”

“I do. But you buy the food.”

I took one hand off the weapon and reached up. Flipped on the light. Younger and I were aiming directly at each other, except his aim was a little high. Above my head. I chuckled softly. Eli frowned.