Mercy Blade

CHAPTER 9 He Got a Whiff of Me

The blood-servants’ breathing changed. The younger vamps blinked, startled. Leo stood, still as pale marble, his skin glowing with recent feeding, drawing power from all the vamps in the room. His eyes were bright, as if lit from within, with an odd sheen to them, as if they swam with precious oil. The scent pattern in the room changed as Leo stood there, demonstrating his power, siphoning off theirs, his own peppery scent overpowering all the other vamp smells. Every eye in the ballroom was on him.

Leo had no heir, and as MOC, he was entitled to additional scions, so there was no surprise when four master vamps stepped behind him in a semicircle, all males. I wondered if—under different circumstances—my landlady, Katie, who had been Leo’s lover in the past, would have stood behind him, a lone woman in the midst of the men.

All of Leo’s henchmen were familiar. I’d learned their names after they tried to burn down my house. Alejandro and Estavan, both of Spanish origin, but different centuries; Hildebert, a German guy whose name meant bright battle; and Koun, who claimed to be pure British Celt by birth, though history said his people were destroyed long before the first vamps appeared in the British Isles. Hildebert and Koun were the warriors of Clan Pellissier, and I’d really rather not have to face either one in battle. The fact that Leo brought them with him instead of someone prettier and more delicate was significant. My heart rate sped. Leo moved his eyes across the room until he found me, searching me out as if he could hear my blood pound and place me by the sound of my heartbeat. Crap. Maybe he could.

Staring at me, he said, “The Council of the Mithrans is ... gathered.” The word reverberated through the room; shivers raced over my skin, raising to sharp pricks of pain. For the vamps, there was power in the word gather. When they gathered , they joined in some arcane way, cooperating to make decisions and conduct business. It was mystical in ways that I couldn’t understand. Leo inhaled and I exhaled, as if sharing with him my breath. Another breath followed. And another. It was intimate and intense, his eyes holding mine, and when Beast again placed a clawed paw on my psyche I caught myself, holding my breath a moment to break the exchange. I hadn’t given my blood to him. I hadn’t fallen in thrall to him. Which meant that Leo shouldn’t be able to draw power from me. Yet, I could feel the strands of his power sucking something from me, even now, even with Beast’s intervention. This was freaky, and maybe tied to the magics I’d been exposed to, like radiation poisoning, weakening me.

The Master of the City stared at me for a long moment, assessing my independence and self-containment before sliding his eyes away. When he did, something snapped inside me, like a dried stick breaking, audible and sharp. I put out a hand and caught myself on the nearest doorframe, my balance unsteady for a moment. I glanced around the room to see every vamp and blood-servant staring at Leo, mesmerized. Yeah, freaky.

Leo looked them over, breathing in their scents. His eyes closed and he raised his face in something like ecstasy. He jerked his head to the right and opened his eyes, searching the ceiling and the perimeters of the room. Confusion and anger etched his face for an instant before it melted away to the usual expressionless manifestation of vamp-dom. I had no idea what he had smelled or what his reaction meant. He took a breath, this time so he could speak.

“We will meet and treat with our ancient enemies, the Cursed of Artemis,” Leo said. “We will parley and be bound by the treaty that we sign in blood. We will be bound as the fathers of all Mithrans, the Sons of Darkness, are bound, by honor and by duty. By command of the Sons of Darkness, this night begins cooperation between species on this hemisphere, as it has already begun in Europe and elsewhere. The humans have grown strong, too strong to battle. They have not constrained their population growth, and our territory shrinks. The Cursed of Artemis and the Mithrans have no choice but to parley.” The words “no choice,” were spoken without inflection, yet still managed to sound forced and unwilling. “Are we agreed?”

With one voice the vamps murmured, “We are agreed.”

Leo stepped into the room, his scions behind him, ten blood-servants behind them, Bruiser at the forefront. He looked pale. They all did. Leo had fed well on his most trusted. I hoped they didn’t all pass out from blood loss.

As the group cleared the open doorway, two other forms stepped into the opening, one from the left, one from the right. A voice from the back of the room announced, “Sabina Delgado y Aguilar, priestess, and Bethany Salazar y Medina. Outclan, keepers of the histories, the Blood Cross, and artifacts of power.”

I watched as the two women, who studiously ignored one another, stepped into the room. I mentally filed away the surnames of Bethany, as they weren’t in any dossier the cops had on her. Once again, I had to wonder, as I had over the last few weeks, how and where the women had gotten the last names, as neither was from a Spanish region, and neither surname had likely been around a fraction of the centuries they had.

The women walked with heads high and feet soundless into the reception room. They were as different as two women could be, Sabina looking matronly but starved, chaste, and set apart in her white, nun-style dress and wimple, her skin the pale olive of her Mediterranean origins. Bethany was dressed in African splendor with ivory and gold necklaces, earrings, rings, and bracelets. Her body was swathed in a billowing red silk shawl over a full, apple-green silk skirt and a tight matching top that seemed to make her dark skin glow. She was barefooted and gold rings were on her toes. She flowed to Leo and kissed his cheeks, holding his face between her palms. Sabina came behind her and kissed Leo as well, murmuring, “The outclan honor the Master of the City.”

Leo kissed the women in the same fashion and said, “The Mithrans honor the outclan.” More softly he said, “Let us welcome our guests.”

Two lesser blood-servants stepped to a different doorway and unlatched the double doors; they swung inward, heavy and stately on silent hinges. On the other side stood Kemnebi, the black were-leopard I’d seen change on TV. He was ebony black with the sculpted features of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. His lips were full, his tip-tilted eyes were blacker than a moonless night. He was dressed in the flowing white outer robe of an Arabian prince; beneath it, a full black silk shirt was gathered into black trousers. Black boots polished to a sheen threw back the light. His head was uncovered, black hair shaved close. He wore a gold torque around his neck centered with an image of a falcon. I was sure the falcon was the Egyptian god Horus, which was confusing, because the goddess, who had supposedly cursed the weres, was Greek.

Behind him stood a woman, wearing a long full coat woven of shimmering cloth of gold, that hung open from her midriff to reveal a white silk skirt and tunic. Hair—blue-black, lustrous, and glistening—hung from either side of her white headdress to her thighs. I had long hair, but this girl had me beat. Her skin and features looked Mediterranean, not African, and her bare feet showed in raffia sandals, toenails polished deep purple. She had henna tattoos on the backs of her hands and up her feet, disappearing beneath her clothing. The smell of cat, perfume, and faintly of dead fish wafted from her.

I felt Beast rise from deep inside me and stare out at the weres, curious, questing. Like Beast? she thought. I didn’t know, but my attention held to them with a laserlike focus. They were the closest thing to a skinwalker I had encountered since the insane liver-eater skinwalker who had been masquerading as Leo’s son. And him, I had killed.

“The International Association of Weres and the Party of African Weres greets the Louisiana Council of Mithrans. I am Kemnebi; this is my assistant Safia. We are black were-leopards from the African Congo, of the country of humans called Gabon, from the region of the Rapides Mabila, and from the tribe of the leopards who reside there. We come to parley with you.”

Leo started in with his names and titles. “Leonard Eugène Zacharie Pellissier, Master of Clan Pellissier, Master of the City of New Orleans ...” I blanked him out. Heard it all before. When he finished, he started in on the names and titles of Sabina and Bethany.

“Names are important to weres,” Bruiser said softly beside me. He had maneuvered close while Kemnebi spoke and I slid my eyes to him and back to the action on the floor, where Leo and the black were-leopard were shaking hands and sizing each other up. And both were sniffing the air, as if scenting was part of their recognition process.

“Is that so?” I murmured.

“Kemnebi is Egyptian for black leopard. Safia means lion’s share.”

On the ballroom floor, the vamps were forming a formal reception line, to pass in front of the were-guests and the vamp VIPs. Sabina and Bethany stood first, Leo next, with Kemnebi and Safia last. The female were’s head was down, her eyes on her hands clasped in front of her.

“Titles instead of personal names, maybe? And the woman—what?—belongs to him?” I had strong antislavery beliefs, but knew it still took place in many countries, parts of Africa included.

“Probably to both questions.” He changed the subject. “Leo wants you in the line, behind the Mithrans of Clan Arceneau, and in front of their blood-servants.”

I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice when I said, “I’m the hired help, not a guest.”

“As I explained to him,” Bruiser said, his voice tight. “Leo has his reasons.”

I thought about that. Leo knew I wasn’t human, though he didn’t know what I was. He thought I smelled like sex candy and a challenge all at once, something the vamps had a hard time resisting, though it hadn’t always been that way. Until Leo accepted me, the vamps had thought I smelled like an encroaching predator. I was betting Leo wanted to see what Kem did when the were-cat got a whiff of me. While I let that thought simmer, I said, “Where’s the little green guy?”

“In his room. Unless he found a way out past your men and the heat signature cameras they set up. They are exceptionally well trained.”

“They’re independents, mercenaries. I just get to pay for their services from time to time,” I said.

“Now,” Bruiser said. He touched the small of my back, just below the holster and just above my buttocks, and gave me a gentle push.

I wasn’t willing to be Leo’s experiment, but I didn’t feel like I could say no either. This might fall under the heading of security, to know how a were-cat reacted to me, and if so, that made it part of my job description. Leo was a bastard but he was a smart bastard.

I slid into place in the line just after Karimu, offering apologies to the blood-servant behind her, who would have objected, by saying, “Mr. Pellissier wants me here.” Then I added, to salve the man’s pride, “He wanted his Rogue Hunter in line with you and your clan as a ... sign of approval,” I improvised quickly. I felt brilliant when the man nodded and stepped back a half step out of my personal space. I usually stank at social situations, but his reaction was an indication that I hadn’t trespassed on blood-servant sensibilities. Karimu’s only response was a twitch of his lips. A vamp with a sense of humor.

I shook Bethany’s hand, and she didn’t react to my being in the receiving line, almost as if she didn’t recognize me, which made me all kinds of happy. I’d rather not be on her radar. Sabina took my hand, and hers was cold with the exact flaccid, loss-of-elasticity flesh of the dead, which made my skin crawl, but I shoved down on the reaction. She raised her eyes to mine. “You still retain possession of the sliver of the weapon?” she asked, referring to the sliver of the vamps’ Blood Cross she had lent me to kill a dangerous vamp. I had tried to return the artifact but found her gone from her chapel-lair in the vamp graveyard. I nodded, and saw from the corner of my eye, Leo look my way in surprise. “You will bring it to me. Soon.” She slipped her hand from mine, looking away.

Leo, next in line, took my hand. His was warm with another’s blood. “Leo,” I said. It should have been “Mr. Pellissier” in a formal receiving line and in the line of duty, but I was halfway ticked off with the MOC, and didn’t mind him knowing it. He showed me a lot of tooth and fang by way of reply and handed me off to Kemnebi. “Our fearsome Rogue Hunter,” he said, by way of introduction.

The visiting dignitary took my hand, looked into my face, inhaled, and froze. It wasn’t vamp immobility, but it was dang close. He spoiled it when his pupils widened and nostrils fluttered just a bit. And when he took a second breath, he inhaled through nose and parted lips with a scree of sound, flehmen behavior, the way I do when scenting someone.

“What is this woman?” he asked Leo. “What is she?” When Leo didn’t answer, Kemnebi tightened his grip on my wrist and yanked me to him. One arm went around my waist, hard as iron. His open mouth was at my throat. His breath hot and moist. His magic sought and quested at me like a big-cat twining around my body, but this was deeper, sharper, more intimate. Hot prickles of power sparked against my skin, painful and electric. Beast hunched down, pelt rising with alarm. She showed teeth and hissed.

“A beautiful woman,” Leo said, “one worthy of your bed.”

“What?” I tried to step back but were-cats are strong. Kemnebi resisted. A growl snarled out of me. I felt claws in my mind, piercing. Power leaped into my consciousness. Strength flooded my system as my Beast poured adrenaline into me. “Beast is not prey.”

In an instant I was three steps back; the visiting envoy was staring at me wide-eyed. The room had fallen silent. That dead silence of terrible affront. Crap. I had spoken aloud.

Some silent, logical part of me played back over what I had done to break free. Basic moves. Stepped to my right. Twisting, dropping motion of my left arm to break his grip, the strength of my arm against the comparative weakness of his fingertips. Simple. But Kemnebi had not been expecting me to resist or to be armed. When his encircling arm had encountered the H&K at my back, he had reacted with broken hesitation.

Leo had just offered me to Kemmy-boy as a bedmate. I glared at Leo, remembering his Dark Right of Kings, which he employed to sleep with any vamp or blood-servant he wanted. Not me. I wasn’t a blood-servant or blood-slave he could order around. I wasn’t his to use or to give away. And he wasn’t going to pimp me out. Not gonna happen.

“My Rogue Hunter is, indeed, not prey,” Leo said smoothly. “As to what she is, I think, and my shamans think, that she herself does not know.”

It might have been nice to know that one, I thought. And then I smelled blood. Strange and pungent. The odor filled my scent receptors, big-cat and human, intermixed and prickly. I looked at Kemnebi’s wrist. There were claw marks across the inside of his wrist. Big-cat claw marks, bleeding. And I had no idea how I had given them to him. I glanced at my hands. Human. Perfectly human.

Kemnebi lifted his wrist and sniffed it, his eyes widening further. The woman beside him was staring at me, her lips parted in shock, her nose wrinkled back like a cat. Scenting me. “I do not like the way this woman smells,” Kemmy said.

He is dangerous. He is my enemy, Beast spat at me. But I kept it inside, silent and contained. I didn’t answer his comment with the insulting rejoinder on the tip of my tongue, “You stink too, dude.” It would have been a childish insult, on top of drawing his blood.

On the periphery of my vision I caught movement, a slight shift of darkness, and glanced that way, to see Bruiser. He had deliberately moved to attract my attention in the room of immobile bloodsuckers. His hand made a “move along” gesture toward the woman last in line, like an usher in a movie house. I shoved down Beast’s volatile reactions to Kemmy and held out a hand to Safia. I said something inane before moving away and to the safety of wallflower status, my mind whirling, figuring things out.

Leo had wanted me in the reception line to see how Kemnebi would react to me. Bruiser had known and not warned me. Leo had planned to offer me as a sex toy to the were-cat. Knowing Leo, he might have just been curious how Kem would react, but if the were-cat had agreed, Leo would have expected me to follow through just on his say-so. Bruiser had known and not warned me. Leo was an ass with the worldview of a feudal lord of the fourteenth century and felt that people were his to do with and give away as he pleased. Bruiser was an ass of a different sort, and I intended to see that his nickname was a description of his skin tone. Soon.

I spent the next two hours avoiding the prime blood-servant, doing my job. I made sure there was plenty of food and drink for the humans. I ordered coffee brewed as a secondary choice to the alcohol being served. I assisted in finding chairs and bringing them in from the rooms off the hallway when the vamps wanted to sit and chat with one another. I kept two vamps from coming to blows over protocol, which I didn’t understand anyway, offering to knock heads together and stake them, in order of importance, and let them choose who died first. They behaved thereafter. I went back and forth to the security room, checking the monitors and getting firsthand views of anything untoward. All the while, I took security reports on the earpiece of the headset, which was making my job much easier.

I touched the mouthpiece and said, “The green security guy. Update.”

“Still contained in his room,” Angel’s Tit said, satisfied.

I made another circuit of the ballroom. When Sabina stepped in front of me—make that, appeared like a magician’s trick and I nearly fell over her—I kept in the girlie scream but it was a near miss. We hadn’t spoken in weeks, and now I was the target of her attention, twice, which didn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling at all. She reached up and cut off my mike with one hand, her other a band around my nape, pulling me down to her. Her flesh was cold and hard as marble, and as always she smelled of old blood, like an ancient crime scene.

Her mouth at my ear, she said, “I have smelled such creatures before. When the Eldest Son of Darkness visited, a century ago, he failed to rise one night. Leo sent for me, and together we entered his lair. The premises stank of blood and violence, of injury and pain; his holy lifeblood, and the blood of another was splattered against the walls. Though it was inconceivable for a single being to defeat a Son in battle, even by day, the lair scented of two combatants only. His attacker was an African cat, perhaps a lion. Or a leopard. Leo told no one. Now, you have allowed such a beast into this domain. If there is death, let it rest upon you.”

She released my neck and I jerked away from her threat, or her curse, whichever it was. She was gone; the place where she had stood and held me was vacant, filled only with swirling air and the reek of old blood. Real old blood. The stench curdled in my nasal passages. I didn’t know when the priestess had last fed, but she needed another dose. Cold prickles raced across my skin, as much a reaction to her words as to her touch and her strength. I hadn’t gone for a weapon. Hadn’t even tried. Not normal. Not good.

I shook like a cat after a dunking in a winter-cold stream and blinked away my fear. I could deal with my reactions to the priestess later, since I had lived through the experience. I touched my neck, missing the silver collar the wolf Fire Truck had broken in the fight where I first met Gee. For a moment I thought I smelled the peculiar pine and floral scent of him. My pulse pounded beneath my fingertips and I sucked a deep draught of air. Turned left and right, searching. The scent was gone. Had never been there at all.

I imposed calm on my system, and forced my thoughts to the info the priestess had given me as part of her threat. A Son of Darkness—one of the first vamps—had possibly been killed by a big-cat. By Leo’s own son, maybe, a skinwalker who had access to big-cat fetishes. Or maybe by another were-cat, here without the MOC’s permission. Was that what she was hinting? As usual, Leo hadn’t found it pertinent to share that information with me. I checked my mike and stepped to the doorway of the ballroom, scanning for trouble.

Everything was okay. Hunky-dory. Music was playing on the loudspeakers, a big band swing number, lots of horns and a funky sounding bass. I had a mental image of a vamp DJ spinning tunes somewhere out of sight. Or a Wolfman Jack. Definitely appropriate for tonight. Titters rose in my throat and I swallowed them back down, concentrating on the ballroom. Four couples were dancing, including Bruiser, who was spinning a master vamp through a series of complicated moves. He looked good with Dominique, her blond elegance against his dark sophistication. Humans were gathered around the food and drink tables. I glanced up at the nearest security camera and flashed an OK sign, knowing that Vodka Angel’s Tit would see it.

A half minute later, I heard breaking glass. From above. It fell like stained sleet, tinkling toward the floor, the colors of blood and sapphire, narrowly missing two vamps who leaped away with vision-stealing speed. I looked up. Caught a whiff. Pulled my H&K and a vamp-killer even before I identified the scent. Wolves ... The glass landed, nearly silent on the rugs.

Werewolves dropped into the room, plummeting from the ceiling ... like my dream. It was like my dream. But the three were in human form, falling from the broken stained-glass windows in the high arches, spinning down on zip lines, two males and one female. Clothed. Not naked. Not my dream.

“Werewolves in the ballroom,” I said into the mike, taking in the room. Leo was vamped out, fanged and clawed, Kemnebi stood beside him, scenting, his human lips wrinkled back, his hands black-furred and clawed. He turned to Leo, as his snout began to reform in a shower of blue-black sparks. “Backup. Now!”

The female wolf wore Middle Eastern dress much like the were-cat assistant, and her skirts belled out as she slowly descended, showing tanned leg and lace undies. The males landed first, on pointed toes like dancers and unhooking their harnesses as they landed; one guy turned and caught the wolf-bitch. It was graceful and balletic and dangerous on every level I could imagine. Wolves had gotten in. My security measures had failed. I had failed.

I took aim at Roul Molyneux. Before I could fire, three weres raced into the hallway behind me in wolf form, claws clicking on the marble floor.