Broken Soul: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (15 page)

I had wanted to prove something. I didn’t like what I’d proven. The bruise on Grégoire’s neck was spectacular, totally unlike any bruise I had ever seen on anyone, human or vamp. It was purple in the center, a long, narrow, deep purple indentation just below where the skull and neck came together, in the shape of my weapon’s blunt edge. The bruise around it was swelling, spreading, blooming like a scarlet flower, the blood beneath his skin flooding like petals. Like a fuchsia flower beneath the white, white skin.

Soft words filled the air in the gym. I didn’t understand a single one, but I knew Grégoire was cursing fluently under his breath, the syllables French-sounding, and Leo was whispering back in the same language. I heard a faint snicking sound and the Master of the City lifted his wrist, biting the flesh on the inside of his own lower arm. Blood rolled out and Leo placed the wound to Grégoire’s lips, cradling his friend’s head with his palm. Grégoire sealed his lips around the bite and sucked.

Bethany appeared with a small
pop
of air and settled to the floor with them. The priestess extended her fangs and bit into Grégoire’s arm near the brachial artery. Her hair, as always, was knotted and twisted into locks, worked with hundreds of gold and stone beads, the mass pulled to the nape of her neck, hiding her ears, but showing the many hoops and studs that hung there. Bethany Salazar y Medina was African. Unlike most vamps, whose skin paled after long years without the sun, her flesh had remained blue black, her lips like storm clouds at night. Her sclera were brownish, her irises blacker than that dark, stormy night. As she sucked, she lifted her head to me and stared.

Bethany was crazy, and not in a fun, party-girl kinda way. Bethany was scary. I took a step back as her power began to rise and tingle across my skin like needles. She poured her magic into Grégoire, healing magic that the others didn’t seem to feel, dancing on their skin, nearly as much as I did.

A small crowd had begun to gather, standing apart from me, except for Eli, and no one was looking at us. Eli murmured, “How badly are you hurt?” I turned from Bethany to him and then looked down, where his eyes rested on my bloody clothes.

“I don’t know.” I looked back to my opponent and Leo and the priestess. It occurred to me that she was around an awful lot lately. Or, rather, that she lived here and I was the one who was around a lot lately. I wondered who she was feeding off of to keep her relatively sane. I was pretty sure it used to be Bruiser. I shook my head to clear it of the effects of her magics, and took yet another step away. “How bad is Grégoire hurt?”

“He’s undead. How bad can it be?”

I spluttered with laughter that I turned into a cough as Eli took my elbow and led me from the room, to a small windowless space just off the women’s locker room. It was about ten by twelve, with two small sofas, two small chairs, and tiny tables covered with magazines. I had never been in it. Eli had been exploring, which was good. We needed to know this place much better than we now did. The room looked like a waiting area off a surgery suite, or off a courtroom, with dull brown and blue plaid stain-resistant furniture and industrial carpet. Eli quickly loosened his own white gear and then started helping me to remove mine.

I was hurt quite a bit worse than I had thought, with the skin sliced deeply into the muscle beneath, and the clotting
blood sealing itself to the fabric over the wounds. There had been no pain until I saw gashes, and then they started throbbing, a steady, pounding misery. I sat down fast, onto the unyielding surface of the hard sofa. Eli slipped out of the room, and with him gone, I pushed on the cut along the bottom of my ribs. Lightning pain flashed along my nerves and the breath I took sounded like a string of
S
’s. Blood flooded out across my side and belly, under my ruined undershirt.

From the hallway, I heard Eli say to someone, “Ask him to come now.” Closing the door softly behind him, Eli reentered, carrying a basket of rolled towels. He pressed one to the newly opened wound. Quietly, he asked, “Do you need to shift? Do you have time?”

“No. I don’t want to do that again. Not here. Not ever. Not near—” I stopped.

“Not near fangheads. Especially not near Leo. Who wants to own you enough anyway, without making him more covetous of you.”

My eyes found his face and I shuddered with a tiny laugh. He understood. Without my telling him, Eli understood. “Yeah. That.”

“I’ve asked Edmund to help. Okay?”

I nodded. Edmund Hartley had healed me before, and the unassuming but powerful vamp had been good. And helpful. And hadn’t tried to roll me with compulsion. I heard a knock and Edmund entered. He was five foot seven or eight, brown haired, hazel eyed, and he seemed kind, nonthreatening. Mild-mannered was a good term for him, until he turned up the vamp-o-meter.

He might look like a pushover, but Edmund was old and powerful. As he closed the door behind him, I could feel his power as he pulled it up and around himself, icy prickles, like spikes of frozen air. Yet, despite his dazzling magics, now lifting the hairs along the back of my neck, he’d lost blood-master status of Clan Laurent—a story I thought had a lot more going on than had been reported—to a vamp named Bettina and ended up as a slave to Leo for the next twenty years. When vamps lost, they lost big.

“I smell your blood. Again,” he said. Eli stepped aside and Edmund knelt near me. He breathed in and held the scent of my blood the way a wine connoisseur might inhale the perfume of a really good vintage. When he exhaled he said, “I
heard about the sparring match. No one mentioned that you had been injured as well.”

“Isn’t that just like the fangheads?”

Edmund smiled at the insult and leaned close to my side. I felt his cold breath against my skin. “Your clothing must come away,” he said, sadly. “Fast or slow?”

“Do it.”

Edmund didn’t give me a chance to change my mind. He gripped the hem of my undershirt in both hands and yanked. It ripped up the middle and out of the wounds. I hissed with pain and said something I didn’t usually. Eli chuckled and I speared him with a look just as Edmund put his mouth onto my side and his chill tongue slicked the blood away. Heat followed in its wake, heat that danced along my nerves and then dove deep inside as his tongue delved into the cut.

I closed my eyes and steeled my face to show nothing. Absolutely nothing. I worked to keep my breathing steady and slow, and managed to keep my heart rate slower than a speeding bullet. Maybe. For about half a minute. And then the heat ricocheted out of the slice and right to my core. I knew it was bad when Eli left the room. “Coward,” I hissed to his retreating back. And then moaned as the healing energies bent my head back and arched up my spine. Healing and desire, two halves of vamp magic.

Edmund laughed gently against my flesh; the vibrations of his laughter rebounded through me, and his arms circled my waist, pulling me against his body. I felt another moan rising and swallowed it down. No way was I gonna moan again. Not. Gonna. Happen.

He could have had me right there, on the small couch in the small room. But Edmund was a gentleman. Either that or Leo’s proscription against any vamp seducing me made him refrain. I was betting on the latter, and couldn’t decide whether I should thank Leo or stake him when, much later, Edmund rose from the floor beside the couch and pulled a knitted afghan from somewhere and covered me with it.

“You are well.”

I swallowed and said, “Thanks, Ed. And thanks for not, um, you know.”

“I like my head where it is,” he said, confirming my guess. “But the moment you no longer work for my master, I will come to you. If you are willing, then I will give you all the
pleasure that I am able.” He leaned in, close to my face. “And I am very, very able.”

“Oh,” I said, keeping my eyes closed like the fraidy-cat that I was. I waved a hand in what might have been agreement or might have been waving him away from me. “I’ll keep that in mind. And, ummm . . . thanks.” I dropped the hand over my face. “And, yeah. Thanks.” The door opened and closed behind him. I smelled Eli and I said, “If you say anything, even one single word, I’ll cut you and feed your lifeless body to the dogs.”

“We don’t have dogs.” That didn’t stop him from laughing, however, and somehow, the wordless laughter, low and mocking, was even worse than anything he might have said. Without looking at him, I gathered my torn clothes and the afghan and went to the ladies’ locker room, where I rinsed off Edmund’s healing-induced desire beneath a stream of cool water. And cursed the fact that New Orleans never had really cold water.

•   •   •

The meeting was held in the downstairs conference room, necessitating only a short walk through the corridors. I had put on a pair of slim pants, my thigh rig, and a short-sleeved, dark copper sweater I found in my locker, which looked pretty good against my lighter copper skin tone. Black slippers. With my slicked-back hair and red lipstick, I looked striking. Not beautiful—I’d never be beautiful—but striking I could do. Striking was easy for tall, slender women.

When I entered the room, the chatter, heard through the door, stopped instantly. I moved to my place, Eli to my left, this time, and looked around the room, searching faces. Leo, Gee, and Grégoire were all missing. My heart stuttered painfully. The rest of the gathered were seated and wore remarkable expressions: a third of them looked expectant; the others looked either furious or gloomy, or a combo of the two.

I pushed my rolling chair away and stayed standing, leaning forward to balance some of my weight on my balled fists, a little like Leo had stood not so long ago. My gold double chain swung forward, the gold nugget and the wired lion tooth focals catching the light as they swung. I looked at Wrassler. “Update on Leo, Gee, and Grégoire.”

Wrassler leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands over his muscle-bound midsection. His face took an expression I didn’t know how to read, and his body was too far away from me to read his pheromones. “You broke Grégoire’s neck.”

I didn’t blink. I didn’t move. I didn’t even breathe. To my side, Eli still stood as well, and I could hear his breath tighten, but he didn’t move either.

“He’s never had his neck broken before,” Wrassler said, “and he’s unhappy.”

I still didn’t react.

“He’s also impressed. He says, and I translate his quote, ‘Our Jane fights well. She will not be killed in an Enforcer blood duel.’” Wrassler smiled, and now I could smell his satisfaction. “Word went out on Mithran social media that you brought down our best fighter. Now almost all the European Mithrans who had queued to fight you have backed down.”

A little zing of surprise shot through me. “Vamps wanted to fight me?” I asked.

“Ernestine was keeping a list of interested parties—blood-servants, and Mithrans—to be allowed to challenge you when the Europeans arrived. Ten of our own swordsmen wanted to test themselves against you in nonlethal matches. Five of our expected guests in Blood Challenge. Only the European Enforcers’ names remain on the list.”

“Rais—” I stopped in time. Raisin was my nickname for her, but might be interpreted as lacking in respect. “Ernestine was keeping a list of people who wanted to fight me?”

“Ernestine keeps all the lists,” Wrassler said. “And the pools.”

I shook my head in confusion. Beside me Eli asked, “So how many of you lost money when Janie kicked Grégoire’s butt just now?”

“About ninety percent of the people gathered here and about ninety-five percent of the city’s blood-servants and Mithrans.” There was a lot of satisfaction in Wrassler’s tone.

Eli said, “I’m guessing you were one of the few who were betting on Jane.”

Betting on me? Holy crap. These crazy people were betting on who would get hurt?
A hot flush that had nothing to do with vamp healing went through me like a brush fire in a high wind. Trying to sound mild and not angry, I said, “How long before Grégoire’s spine is a hundred percent?”

Wrassler shrugged, evaluated my expression, and apparently found something there he hadn’t expected. He sat up in his chair and laced his fingers together on the large table. The springs in his chair squeaked. “Couple of days. Between them,
Leo and Bethany can heal most anything. And if they can’t, then Katie can.”

I never thought much about Katie and healing. She had special blood since she’d been buried in a coffin full of mixed vamp blood. “Huh.” The sound was full of challenge. “And Leo? How long before he’s fully back to himself after the bite by the light-dragon thing? Just asking because he looked a little pale tonight.”

Wrassler, his tone now all business, sat straight and dropped his arms to the chair arms. The pheromones in the room changed too, all jocularity vanishing under the weight of my expression—whatever that was. “The priestess Sabina spent the last day with him,” Wrassler said. “He was pretty close to ninety percent until he fed Grégoire.”

“And Gee? He seemed fine on the gym floor beating my partner’s butt. Is the Mercy Blade the
only
one in a position of authority who’s up and at his best?”

“Gee’s fine,” Wrassler said shortly. Beside him, Derek sat straighter too, his face thoughtful. Across the table Adelaide Mooney shifted position as well.

“Del, are Leo and Grégoire up to speed on Satan’s Three? That they may be in town?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “They have not presented themselves to Leo, according to the Vampira Carta; therefore they are interlopers in his hunting territory,” she said formally, as if handing down a sentence against a lawbreaker. “You have carte blanche in any dealings with them.”

“Good. As part of Protocol Aardvark, I want Katie here on-site until Leo is fully recuperated. Once everyone is on-site, all travel is to be curtailed, and any travel that the vamps insist upon is to be by armored vehicle with standard three-vehicle precautions, a definite itinerary, and no deviation. And if you can distract them from travel, all the better.” We all knew that
distract
meant blood or sex. It didn’t have to be said. “Bethany is with Grégoire. I want blood-meals—the strongest blood we have in the city—for Leo and Grégoire until they’re fully healed and a hundred and ten percent. And whatever they need to be made totally well. If that means dragging the clan blood-masters to help, then that’s want I want to happen. I want this city’s vamps at full power in two days, without giving up the protection of Protocol Aardvark. I also need a private audience with Grégoire. ASAP. You have an hour before dawn
to see that my orders—the orders of the
Enforcer
,” I corrected, “are carried out. Take whoever you need to get the people in place. Then get back in here.”