Mercy Blade

CHAPTER 22 Dry Cleaning Bills Are Outrageous in My Line of Work

Bruiser didn’t come alone. He had Evangelina in the car with him and a second car followed behind with two people in it, headlights casting bright beams across the drive and landscaping. They parked and all four got out, slamming doors. Two lawyer types were wearing suits, ties, and polished shoes. Bruiser and Evangelina were wearing jeans, boots, and white T-shirts, almost as if they had planned to look like the Bobbsey Twins. Something green and pointy twisted deep inside.

Keeping my bloody clothes out of the headlights’ glare, I met them at the bottom of the steps, our shadows going in all directions depending on how the spotlights in the shrubbery hit us. Taking the bag full of hamburgers and the bag of my clothes from Bruiser, I rolled the food bag open as we climbed to the front door. The smell was greasy and wonderful and I tore into the first burger instantly, standing aside, chewing, as Bruiser leaned in through the open front door and flicked on a light. Stasis spells don’t always stop electricity from working. Good to know.

Bruiser shook his head. Evangelina nodded to Nettie and said, “She’s under a stasis spell.” Well duh. But I kept that to myself. No need to antagonize the witch who was going to make it all go away without something exploding. She studied the room, seeing the spell from different angles. “The whole first floor is under a series of them, and they overlap like soap bubbles in a tub. This was not a cheap undertaking. Give me a minute to study it.”

“Wait,” I said, focusing on Evangelina and swallowing the bite I hadn’t finished chewing. It stuck midway down but I talked around it. “Leo’s under a hedge of thorns, a silver-tipped stake, one of mine, on the floor beside him, and he’s bleeding.” When I said it was one of mine, Bruiser turned at a slight angle to me, which freed up his right arm and positioned his body for an offensive strike. It was an unconscious move, but one that said he was primed for violence in defense of Leo. Which put me in my place, and said as much as anything where his loyalties lay. He might want to sleep with me, but he’d never put me or my needs in front of Leo. I could have told him that the stake was lost, but why bother? He should have figured that out for himself. I shoved my reaction to that down deep inside with all the other stuff I didn’t want to look at too closely. “There’s a hand showing at the edge of the security screen.”

“You went inside?” one of the lawyers said. “What if you had set off the spell?”

I could see the edges of the spell, which no human could, but I wasn’t about to say that. I made a slight eye roll. “But I didn’t, did I? And it’s a good thing I went, because I saw the security monitor with Leo bleeding and in danger. I have a feeling that his attacker is caught in a stasis spell only inches away. If you break the spells all at once and the hedge drops too, he can kill Leo before we can stop him, as weak as Leo is. And I got a good look at Leo’s blood-servants and blood-slaves. Some are hurt. Some look like they have wolf bites. If we have paramedics and the proper emergency equipment ready when the spells go off, we can treat the injured. Maybe even save Nettie.”

“I do not recommend calling the police until Leo is able to speak to this matter,” one of the legal beagles said, his face shadows and planes in the porch lights.

“If you drop the spells and Nettie dies, when you could have saved her by doing it my way, are you willing to accept the legal and moral responsibility?” I asked. “Because if someone dies, I’ll name you in a heartbeat, buddy.”

“Patrick Sprouse, meet Jane Yellowrock.” Surely I was imagining Bruiser’s droll tone.

Neither of us replied to the introduction, but the lawyer’s eyes trailed over my bloody clothes. “I was not suggesting that we allow the girl to die. However, Leo is wounded? And you are covered in blood. A great deal of blood.”

“Dry cleaning bills are outrageous in my line of work,” I said, going for flip and sarcastic. But I knew what he was really accusing me of. “I didn’t set this up and I didn’t attack Leo in his lair. The werewolves who set this up got off a lucky shot.”

Bruiser gave me that half smile, but I could see his concern as he took in the amount of blood on my clothes. Patrick stuck out his chest and said, “My first responsibility is to Mr. Pellissier. If the girl is under the employ of—”

“It’s Miss Yellowrock to you, lawyer-boy. And the girl a heartbeat away from dying in there has a name. It’s Nettie. Now call for help. The only reason I didn’t call the cops and paramedics already is to make sure somebody was here to handle the fallout.”

Bruiser laughed as if he’d won a bet. “I shall call in some of Leo’s scions to heal the less severely wounded, and bring healers and Sabina in to heal Nettie and Leo. But unless someone dies, there’s no reason to contact law enforcement.”

The lawyer nodded, his eyes on Bruiser. “I concur. Who would you suggest we bring in?”

Bruiser turned to me. “Describe the lair.”

I understood what he was asking. Leo, as Master of the City, would have several lairs. “Pale gray walls, what looks like sterling silver or polished pewter poster bed, white sheets, except where his blood is, which is practically everywhere.”

“He’s here, then. That simplifies matters.” Bruiser named three vamps and said he would go himself to pick up Sabina. I knew the priestess would have to be the one to heal Leo. Only one of the very old ones could heal a vamp from silver-poisoned wounds. “Do you have their contact information?” Bruiser asked the lawyers.

“Yes.” The other lawyer, not worthy of introductions, perhaps, pulled out a cell phone and started punching numbers. I listened long enough to make sure he was calling vamps, and turned back to Bruiser. I didn’t say thanks. You don’t say thanks for doing the right thing. But I did give him a slight nod as I finished off my second hamburger and opened another. He eyed the fast food bag and shook his head. He and the witch sat on the top step side by side. The lawyers wandered back to their car, voices grumbling as they dialed vamps, grumbling about me, which made me smile.

Bruiser swiveled his head to me. “You do know how to make friends and influence people, Jane Yellowrock. I’ve said that to you before, but some sarcasm bears repeating.”

“Yeah? Then let me influence you one more time. Send some people who are loyal to you to find Tyler and bring him in. He’s in this up to his neck and sinking fast.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Think so, yeah. Well enough to convince Leo. And I already informed NOPD.”

Bruiser thought about that for a moment, maybe thinking that the hired help should have informed Leo and him before the cops. But he inclined his head in a brief bob, relief and thanks and something that looked like thwarted need on his face. “I’ll call on the way to get Sabina and send a team for him.”

“You can find him that fast?”

“If Tyler has his phone with him, yes,” he said standing and moving down the stairs for his car parked below.

I thought about my cell and the GPS tracking device in it. “One more thing,” I said. Bruiser paused. “The wolves who attacked Leo have Rick LaFleur and he’s been hurt. If I can—”

“I have no idea where the wolves are. But if I hear something, I’ll let you know. Before I call the police.”

Yep, the hired help had been put in her place, but it wasn’t like I could gripe about it when I was asking a favor. “Thanks.”

The cars all pulled away, leaving me alone in the shadows with burgers and a bag of clean clothes. I rolled the bag’s top closed and headed back to the barn to change. No need to advertise my bloody state if Leo’s fanged henchmen were arriving. Old blood never turned a sane vamp on, smelling like death, like leftovers spoiled in the fridge, but the predator in them might want to take a closer look at my wounds. No need to give them a reason to make me defend myself.

As I approached the barn, the wind carried the reek of old blood before me and the barn emptied in a stampede of squeals and thrashing hooves, while barn cats of every size and description gathered, some twining around my ankles and jumping up on stall doors to get a better view. I was under no illusions that it was me that attracted them. It was the blood and the burger bag.

Inside, I stripped and sniffed myself. Though all my blood and the chicken blood had been groomed off me by Beast or flaked away when I shifted, wearing the clothes had left me stinky. I found a hose and drain in a grooming area and washed, the chill water hitting me with a shock. It must be well water, because my shower water never got this cold. It was almost as cold as mountain water. While I rinsed, I drank from the hose, feeling my tissues swell like a sponge as I rehydrated.

When I was cleaner, I dried off using two towels I found folded in a stack. They were clean but rough, smelling of detergent and only slightly of horse, which was a nice scent after my own old blood smell. I dressed in clean clothes, jeans and a tee. “Mine,” I said to the cats, shoving them away from my food bag, and hearing an echo of Beast when she claimed things. Or people.

I shoved my feet into socks and the butt-stompers, and stuffed the stiff, bloody leathers into the small duffel. I wished for a brush, but made do with finger-combing the hip-length mass before braiding my hair and sticking stakes back into it. Dressed, I felt more secure, safer, though I knew better than most how little protection clothing really was. Last, I located the mangled silver collar that Beast had found at Leo’s and hidden. “Dang,” I murmured, turning it to the light as I made my way back to the house. It had defended me from multiple vamp-fang attacks and not been the worse for wear. Wolf fangs, backed up by powerful jaws, had ruined it. The pattern and some of the silver rings could be salvaged, but it wasn’t going to be cheap.

Back at Bitsa, I placed the clothes and most of the weapons into the saddlebags, and reloaded the shotgun. I strapped it to the bike, knowing that if the cops did get called, I’d have to hide them. The M4 smelled freshly fired, and there was no good reason to have a fired weapon and bloody clothing at the scene of a bloodbath. For now, I strapped vamp-killers on each thigh and hip, and the one holster that wasn’t bloody under my left arm. The strap rubbed uncomfortably on the tender skin of my recent wounds.

With as much accomplished as I could under the circumstances, I sat on the front steps of the house and nibbled the last burger, tossing bits of cheese and beef paddies to the cats that followed me from the barn. They were still milling around me when Bruiser and Evangelina, who seemed to be glued to his heels, got back, Sabina in the backseat. Three more cars pulled in within moments of one another, a human blood-servant/bodyguard/driver and a vamp in each. I recognized Innara, one of the coleaders of Clan Bouvier, and Koun and Hildebert, Leo’s warrior scions, and noted that none of the vamps had been part of the conspiracy-whispering taking place at the vamp/were sleepover that had started all this. Bruiser had chosen well.

As they left their cars, doors slamming, I got to see what vamps wore in the their free time, when they weren’t trying to kill me or attending a black-tie event. It was jeans for the guys and cotton pants and silk tank for Innara. Sabina was in her typical nunnish robes. She probably didn’t own anything else. The bodyguards were dressed in jeans and jackets to hide the array of weapons each carried. We looked one another over, assessing danger levels, and decided we didn’t have to react. I gave a little head bob to acknowledge them, and got one back from each, security personnel greetings, all business.

I gave a little head bow to Sabina, knowing that there was something more I should probably do to acknowledge her status, but I didn’t know what it might be. She wasn’t my priestess, after all. The vamps gathered around the open front door and breathed in, nostrils expanding and contracting as they scented, a weird, almost choreographed body movement, bizarre to observe on the non-breathers.

“Wolves,” Hildebert said, his lips curling into a snarl. His fangs snapped down. I tensed, readying myself for a vamped-out rage, but his pupils didn’t expand, his sclera didn’t bleed scarlet. He was ticked off but in control. For now.

“Gone,” Innara said. She bent and dipped her head, folding her body in a way that would have been distinctly uncomfortable for a human. It was creepy looking, like a lizard, her fingers outspread and her upper body whipping side to side. She took short sniffing breaths, following scent signatures. “For some time. I count ten or more. One was the woman. Her level of excitement is extreme. She is still in heat and smells”—Innara sniffed in little puffs of indrawn breath—“ill.”

The others nodded as they drew in the air. “Twelve altogether,” Koun said. “And the smell of magic is sharp and bright on the air. But what is that other scent?”

“Cat of some kind,” Hildebert said.

“I saw Kemnebi when I got here,” I said, to lead them away from thoughts of me, “in the tree line, hiding, watching. And there are barn cats. Maybe one of them, you know, got inside.”

“Yes,” Innara said. She looked at me under her lashes, assessing and suspicious. Which didn’t make me happy at all. “Perhaps.”

As soon as the vamps had sniffed their fill, the former—and surely soon-to-be again—prime blood-servant explained what they might expect to see immediately inside. He finished by saying, “I’ve sent Alej andro and Estavan for Bethany, but they may be some time convincing her to help us, and Evangelina doesn’t think we can wait for the stasis spells to wear off, in case that triggers some other disaster.

“We can’t see her wounds, but by the amount of blood Nettie has lost, she’s close to death. I suggest that Koun be at her side when the stasis spell falls, as he has the most experience treating battlefield wounds. If she has to be brought over to save her, are you prepared for a youngling?”

Koun shrugged his massive shoulders. “If need be, I will take her. She has the signing of the paperwork and contracts?”

“Yes,” Bruiser said, and I instantly wanted to get a look at the paperwork a blood-servant wannabe-scion signed just in case they got injured on the job. Talk about your worker’s comp. “Sabina,” he said, “you will need to be with me in Leo’s lair.”

My ears perked up. I wanted to see Leo’s lair. But I also wanted to see what Koun did to heal Nettie. I wished I had a body for each soul, so I could be in two places at once. Deep inside, Beast snorted with amusement.

“Hildebert, according to Jane, it appears that the wolves bit some of the servants gathered in the formal room. We’ll need to deal with the more serious injuries first. Then, when everyone is stable, we’ll see if Bethany and Sabina are able to help them. Perhaps we can keep most of them from being infected by the were-contagion.”

Hildebert said something guttural, but cussing is a universal language. I got the point.

“I called Gee. He can heal them of the bites if he gets the message in time.”

Bruiser looked at me strangely and I got the feeling that he hadn’t known that. “Jane, you will be with Sabina and me. When Evangelina drops the spell, you deal with Leo’s opponent. Sabina will assist with Leo.”

“And you?” I asked.

“I’ll figure that out when Leo is stable.” Bruiser turned his attention to Evangelina. “Can you get us in place without setting off the stasis spells?”

“Jane can take you and the priestess in. I’ll get the guys in.”

Bruiser asked me, “Is there a stasis spell around the security console? I need to see the status monitor and make a few adjustments.”

“No,” I said, sounding grumpy. “Just follow in my trail. If I move left or right as if to avoid something, even if you can’t see anything, don’t deviate. The spell covers every bit of blood splatter, and there’s a lot of it.” Bruiser and Sabina close on my trail, I stepped across the threshold and led the way across the Anzu heraldic device to the security closet. “From here on back I don’t see any spells of any kind.”

Bruiser opened the door to the console and a moment later, he said, “Splendid. No one changed the passwords.” He clacked around on some keys and scanned a series of screens. “You were right, Jane. Tyler’s password is listed. He let them in.” Bruiser backed out of the narrow space, and indicated the hallway.

“We’ll take the stairs down and I’ll call you when we’re in place,” he said to Evangelina, who was still in the foyer, standing in front of Leo’s huge warriors.

I hadn’t known there were stairs down, but considering the artificial hill this place was built on, it made sense. I followed them, Sabina’s skirts swishing as she moved. I had noticed once before that her feet never made a sound, but her starched skirts did. It was weird, but all vamps were eerie. The old blood smell floated back from her as we walked, making my stomach turn on the greasy burgers and boudin balls.

There were bloody prints and smears all over the kitchen, most leading outside through a delivery door. The stairs were behind the kitchen, in a narrow nook between a walk-in refrigerator and a butcher shop-sized cutting board. The only indication that something was there besides wall was a small entry keypad. Bruiser pressed seven keys, placed his open hand on the wall, and pushed. The wall opened inward soundlessly, the stink of decomposing blood whooshing out, to reveal a dark hallway. When Bruiser stepped in, the overhead light came on, a motion detector at work, and revealed a steeply descending, switchback stairway, a metal handrail on one side and slick painted wall on the other.

Leo had made use of the interior space of the hillock under his house; the center of the mound had been hollowed out and reinforced. I spotted three security cameras and laser motion detectors. Not that they had done him any good, but it was hard to design a security plan for any eventuality. And I figured werewolf attack hadn’t been high on the designers’ minds.

We started down, Bruiser’s and my boots clomping echoes off the bright walls. Blood, smelling of wolves and Leo, had dripped all over the stairs, smeared with paw and boot prints, all dry.

The door to Leo’s lair was at the bottom, where Bruiser entered more numbers on another keypad. The door opened with a gust of air, a rotten blood and wet dog scent whooshing out along with a dull red light, to reveal the room. Leo’s home-base lair was a small apartment consisting of a sitting area and a king-sized, four-poster, pewter bed with a headboard of curlicues and fleur-de-lis. And a lot of blood. The sheets and pillowcases were drenched in it. The rugs below were sloppy wet with it. And Leo was in the middle of it all, half lying on the mattress, his position changed from the first time I’d seen him. His bare right foot rested on a rug, his left on the mattress, and he was leaning back against a mound of bloody pillows wearing black pants and a once-white shirt. His face and body were slack, his skin so white he looked like a mannequin, waxy with death. His eyes were closed. And his chest was still, breathless, with that vamp undead-death thing.

My silver-tipped stake was at his feet, bloody and well-used.

Hedge of thorns encircled the bed, casting a reddish light over everything, giving Leo the only color he had, making the blood appear even more vibrant and deadly. But unlike the spell that protected my boulder garden, this one hadn’t burned the rugs or walls and stopped short of the ceiling. And it seemed to provide an additional purpose than simply a last-ditch bolt-hole activated by the primary’s blood. This one was a trap. Caught in the hedge, held a foot off the floor, was Girrard DiMercy.