Broken Soul: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (3 page)

Duels Sang.
Sang
meant “blood” in French. They were training for Blood Challenges, the totally legal duels that established place and importance and right to rule. And were sometimes fights to the death. “Oh,” I said. Then I realized that likely meant me too. “
Oh
. Well, dang.”

Grégoire laughed again, the sound not unkind. “You will fight wonderfully, little cat. I have seen you.”

“Take Jane to my office,” Leo said to Wrassler. “See that a small repast is prepared and brought up
maintenant
. We will see to our
toilette
and join you.”

“Twa-let?” I asked when the males had entered the locker room set aside for bigwigs, and we were alone, heading to the elevator. “Like a French potty? One of those bidets?”

“He meant hot showers,” Wrassler said, “changing clothes.
Healing wounds
,” he finished, with a particular emphasis.

I nodded, pursing my lips.
Hanky-panky. Gotcha
. Well, at least they’d let me have food while I waited. Though I had to wonder how long the
healing wounds
would take. I only had all night, and
mant’non
could mean anything.

The elevator doors closed behind Wrassler and me. In the past, to reach most of the lower floors, a passenger had to swipe a security card. Now Wrassler rested his palm flat on an open plastic boxlike thing for his handprint to be read. I had implemented the security upgrades, but I’d wanted either retinal-scan devices or units that required a body-temp handprint, displaying adequate blood flow for life, to prevent anyone from cutting off the hand of an employee and using it to get around. Unfortunately, vamps didn’t have remotely human retinas, nor did they show signs of life as measured by a biometric screen, so I’d had to take the chance that no one would try an amputation. The system I had settled for recognized and stored all human employee and vamp handprints and gave the passenger the rights to access only specific floors. There were restrictions for most humans, and—because Leo couldn’t bind me like he wanted—that included me.

I had right of entry via the usual button control panel to all the normal floors, but none of my measures had gotten me onto any of the mystery floors. Until now. The elevator started going down. “Uh, Wrassler? I thought we were supposed to be going up to Leo’s office. Why are we going down?”

A small explosion of breath escaped Wrassler and he looked up at the display in shock, his face going paper white. “I don’t know, Janie. Something ain’t right.”

“How many subbasements are there?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said again, which was a surprise. “I think five. But I’ve never been down all the way before.” His face looked pale in the bluish light, and his sweat suddenly smelled of worry, which was odd. Wrassler topped my six feet and probably weighed in at 350, all of it hard muscle. He could take being rammed by a rhino and not even look ruffled. Something about his stance and expression made me pull my weapons. A silver stake from my bun and a small throwing knife from my boot. They weren’t much, but they were all I’d been able to conceal past the new security guys. The last crew woulda caught me in an instant, but the new rotation was not quite up to their level of awareness. Yet.

Beside me, Wrassler also pulled a weapon. It was a handgun—or a small canon; take your pick—the five-round Taurus Judge model .45/.410. It was capable of chambering both Colt .45 ammo and .410, two-and-a-half-inch shotshell ammo. The ammo would punch a hole through a pine tree. Wrassler’s gun
had been fitted with a fiber-optic sight, and he held it steady as the doors opened to a storage room. His shoulders relaxed and he holstered his weapon as he repalmed his print and hit the floor button. The doors closed.

I put away my weapons, analyzing the floor I’d seen. The room had been full of cardboard boxes and old metal-covered, hump-backed steamer chests, the kind that actually went on steamships, full of rich people’s clothes. Or maybe on sailing ships, long before steam. It also contained lots of old books on shelves. And paintings. One or two had been in Leo’s home before it burned to the ground. Or maybe in Grégoire’s clan home. I couldn’t remember, but they were familiar. In one painting, I recognized the spotted fur on the lapel of a man wearing tights and poufy drawers and buckled shoes. Sitting at his feet were three beautiful vamps. One was Grégoire; the other boy and girl were unfamiliar, though all three wore period clothing like the vamp who stood over them. They also wore jewelry, Grégoire a red-stoned ring, the girl a delicate bracelet, and the dark-haired boy a necklace of a bird in flight, set with blue stones.

In another painting was Leo and another vamp, Leo’s predecessor, his uncle Amaury Pellissier. And then there had been the painting of Adrianna and a female vamp in clothing from the eighteen hundreds. Adrianna had tried to kill me on several occasions. Next time I saw her, her head was mine.

“Wrassler? Why’d we draw our weapons on a storeroom?”

Wrassler didn’t look at me when he answered. “Elevator’s been acting up all week. Taking us to the wrong floors. And there’ve been stories. Tales. For years. About a dark floor. Boo stuff.” Which I translated as stuff that went
boo
and made you jump in fear.

“Okaaay.” The elevator was rising again, and his scent now smelled of relief and the breakdown products of adrenaline. “So we’re good?”

Wrassler nodded, still not meeting my eyes.

“You know . . . Really. I need to see all the lower levels and all the access stairwells to determine the security needs. And I need admittance to them in advance of the EuroVamps’ visit.”

Wrassler pursed his lips as if holding in a comment. We’d discussed this before, and Wrassler had orders from Leo to keep me on the upper floors and the gym level. Leo was being stubborn, which meant that Leo had things to hide. I shook my
head and looked from the conflicted blood-servant to the doors with proper elevator etiquette.

“This is essential, Wrassler. You know it is.”

When the elevator stopped again, it opened to the correct floor and we stepped out. I flipped open my fancy cell phone in its upmarket, Kevlar-topped carrying case and hit the number for home. The Kid answered, “YS,” pronouncing it
Wise Ass
, which he could do without a head slap because of the distance between us.

“Funny. Can you dial in to the elevator system at vamp HQ?”

“It’s not on the communal system, but Eli wired it during the upgrades. Why?”

No one had mentioned wiring the elevator to me, but we could deal with that later. In private. “The main elevator’s been taking people to the wrong floor. Get in and take a look-see, digitally and any other way you can figure out. If you can’t find anything, we need to get the Otis people in here, pronto.”

“Otis?”

“The elevator repair company.”

“Will do.”

I closed the cell. If Eli’s unauthorized wiring had caused these problems, I might be in a world of hurt. Literally. But until I had proof that YS had caused the problems, I’d keep my worries to myself.

•   •   •

The small repast in Leo’s office was not small. By the time the waiters—wearing new liveries of black tuxedoes and white gloves—were done delivering food, setting it up to look pretty, and telling us what everything was, I was starving. There was a ten-pound bison roast on the center of the tea table, a copper tray of roasted, stuffed quail, a tray of cheeses, and one of fruit. There were also several bottles of wine—the dusty kind, with dry, curling labels that practically screamed
expensive
. Things were changing at vamp central and—with the exception of the varieties of meat—I wasn’t sure I liked all the hoity-toity alterations. Something about it set my dander up, as one of my housemothers used to say. “Why all the new duds?”

Wrassler explained while I loaded up a plate. “Leo will be moving into his new clan home, and with the Europeans coming, he wants the serving staff trained to present food and drink in the Continental manner, both here and there, for as long as the Mithran guests stay. Everything is to be perfect.”

He sounded worried and I had a feeling that the last line was a direct quote from Leo. Thinking, I plopped down in an upholstered chair and put my Lucchese-booted feet up on the coffee table. The boots, a gift from Leo, had been damaged the first time I wore them, and Leo had handled the repairs or replacement. I never asked which. They were gorgeous, and having them on the table was perfect for what I wanted to say. “Leo never read
The Taming of the Shrew
, did he?” I propped my plate on my flat belly and took a long slurp of wine. It tasted like, well, like wine. I grimaced and set the elegant crystal goblet aside. “Got any beer? That stuff is vile. It dries out my mouth.”

Wrassler pressed a button on the oversized desk. “Ask Quesnel for an assortment of beer, please,” he said. When he stood straight, he studied my posture. “
Taming of the Shrew
? You read Shakespeare?”

I lifted a leg, holding up a boot—black leather with green leaves and gold mountain lions embossed on the shafts. They were hand-constructed, hand-tooled, hand-stitched, hand-everything Lucchese Classics that sold for around three thousand bucks a pair. But they did not belong on a table. I crossed my ankles and set them back on the table.

“Past tense.” I chewed a bite of quail that simply exploded in my mouth with spicy, bacony, wild-bird flavor. “Holy crap,” I said around the mouthful of quail and bacon and some tiny little grain. “This is good.” It was also greasy and bony. I pulled a small bone from my mouth and dropped it on the plate with a piercing, crystal tinkle before licking my fingers. “In high school. For a while I thought I might like to go to college. Turned out there wasn’t money in the children’s home’s budget for a kid whose grades were only a little above average. Anyway, before I figured that out, I took some courses. The story’s based on the concept that if you try to please someone, they’ll only turn on you and look down on you. But if you act like a barbarian—”

“Like the one licking her fingers right now?”

“—then the fancy schmancy folk won’t know how to act and you’ll win by default of not doing the expected thing.”

“I don’t think Leo will go for that, Janie.”

Behind him, the door opened and one of the penguins entered, carrying a tray of cool bottles. Not cold the way we serve them here in the U.S., but cool, the way they serve beer in Europe, the temp of a root cellar.
Ick
. But I popped the top
and drank half of an Einbecker Ur-Bock. “He’ll never impress the EuroVamps. He’ll have to kill them all or prove he’s something different—more modern and newer than they are. Whatever. But not better at being what they are. Won’t happen no matter how hard he tries.”

Wrassler said a low “Hmmm” as I finished off the quail and started on the bison, picking the meat up with my fingers. I had noted the number of chairs in the small but opulent office, and figured that if I didn’t get my fill now, I might not get anything. It looked like a much bigger meeting than usual, and I had to wonder why we weren’t in the security conference room.

By the time my plate was empty, the men entered, smelling of various colognes and scented soaps and aftershaves. And endorphins. Yeah, they’d gotten happy.

They stopped in the foyer of the office proper, clustered in a fanghead/blood-meal group, and stared at me in what smelled like shock. I grinned up at them and licked my fingers again.

“Little Janie has suggested that we act the Petruchio to the Europeans’ Kate Minola,” Wrassler said, his voice toneless but his eyes dancing as he took in their reactions to my lazy sprawl. “American barbarians.”

Leo tilted his head, studying me, and he did that single-eyebrow-quirk thing that was so classy and that I totally could not do. I’d tried. In that moment he looked completely human, if a bit like he’d stepped out of the pages of a historical novel. He was wearing a shirt with draping sleeves and a round collar that tied at the throat, the ties hanging open. High-heeled leather boots went to his knees, with a pair of nubby silky pants tucked into them. Except for the boots, I’d seen him wear this outfit before. Either he had a dozen of them or he was wearing this one out. I saluted the group with my beer and slurped, watching them.

Leo chuckled, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. When he laughed, he looked so normal, so human. It was uncanny and kinda scary that one of the most dangerous nonhumans I knew could appear so ordinary. He crossed the office proper and took up my deserted glass of wine. He drank deeply, his eyes still on me over the rim. “Barbarians, eh?”

“And tech experts. Modern people. Just a suggestion,” I said, and sucked the rest of the beer out of the bottle with one long, low-class glug. “So. Wha’s up, dudes?”

It Is Done . . .
Factum Est. Consummatum.

“We have a minimum of three months to prepare for our . . . visitors,” Leo said, the last word sounding forced, as if he’d rather have said
invaders
or
attackers
or
enemies
. Leo leaned over the desk, resting his weight on his fingertips, and studied us from his standing height. Leo wasn’t tall, but his posture gave him a commanding presence I had used myself.

Dominance posture,
Beast murmured at me.

There were a bunch of us in the office, as I’d guessed: Adelaide (Del) who was Leo’s new primo; Bruiser, who was Onorio and Leo’s old primo; Grégoire and the bruised-up Onorio twins; the Mercy Blade, Gee DiMercy; and Derek Lee, Leo’s potential new full-time Enforcer. It was an eclectic group, not what I had been expecting in terms of attendees. Everyone was dressed in what I’d call Victorian Age Chic except for Derek, Adelaide, and me.

Derek was wearing casual slacks and a tailored shirt. Unlike me and my slump, the former marine was sitting upright in his wingback chair, taking notes on an electronic tablet, looking every inch the up-and-coming businessman that he was developing into. Well, except for the shadows in his eyes every time his gaze moved to Leo. He was having trouble adapting to the position of Enforcer, and the requirements that went with the job.

He said, “
Six
months
might
be long enough to get your
people ready. Assuming that we have the same team here straight through. Rotating out teams means constant retraining. My men need to work with whatever security will be here then, to integrate a real team, people who can almost read each other’s minds in hazardous situations.”

Leo looked at Del, who was wearing a little black sheath dress and low heels, and she checked her own tablet. “Clan teams end their two-month rotations in two weeks. We’ll get a new batch then.”

I interrupted. “Why do you rotate out that way? Why every two months? Why not have a full-time crew here all the time?”

“It is the way things are done,” Grégoire said with a sniff.

It might have been a disdainful sniff, which made me smother a grin. “You mean, the way they did things back in feudal Mithran times?” I asked. “The way the EuroVamps do things? The way that will let them know exactly what we are going to do and when?”

“Predictability is a liability,” Derek said, agreeing.

I expected Leo to differ, as he usually did when I suggested a change of plans or methodology. Old vamps get set in their ways, the school of thought that went, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” For centuries, sometimes. Instead he asked, “What alternatives do you suggest, my Enforcers?”

Coulda knocked me over with a Mercy Blade feather. If they ever showed their feathers to the world instead of the layered glamours they wrapped themselves in so they’d appear human. “Uhhh,” I said, not prepared for him being agreeable. “A permanent crew here would be good.”

“I got some of Grégoire’s new people in the swamps, training,” Derek said. I looked up at that. I knew he intended to integrate the two security forces—Grégoire’s Atlanta team and Leo’s New Orleans team—at some point, but not that it had already started. “Most of ’em washed out and got sent back to Atlanta. We still got a few sticking with it.”

“You training them like SEALs?” I asked, meaning was he wearing them down to skin and bones and guts, the way Uncle Sam trained his best fighters.

He grinned at me and said, “I’m trying not to kill any.”

“We could bring Grégoire’s crew in as permanent security,” I said to Leo. “We could also make the rotating clan home security teams’ cycles longer,” I suggested.

“Six months at a stretch,” Derek agreed. “And stagger them
so that the council house doesn’t get a complete batch of new recruits all at once.”

His voice silky, Leo said, “My Enforcers have been plotting.”

“Nope,” I said. “Just great minds thinking alike.” To Derek, I said, “I’ve suggested that to him about ten times now. He’s kinda stuck in a European rut, doing things the old-country way.”

Leo and Derek both frowned, but Leo said to Del, “Adelaide, compose a letter addressed to the masters of the other clans, detailing the changes and asking if their own security or comfort will be negatively affected by such a modification to protocol.”

Derek frowned at me and I shrugged, even less prepared for Leo to capitulate. Maybe Leo had needed to hear it from a guy? Or maybe he was worried and finally listening to his paid troops? I was betting on the guy thing.

“George,” Leo said. “You will send my card to each of the other clan homes announcing an official visit. You and Adelaide will then deliver the letter requesting the protocol changes, by hand, and introduce my new primo.”

Del looked down at her lap, avoiding Bruiser’s eyes. Bruiser looked at me and smiled as he answered, “Yes,
dominantem civitati
—Master of this City and Hunting Territories. It shall be as you say.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that, spoken in Latin and archaic-sounding English words, words that seemed to have a power of some kind over the others in the room, because their scents changed, smelling bitter, of shock, and maybe a little of horror.

Yes . . . Master of this City . . . It shall be as you say
 . . . ? And then it hit me. Bruiser didn’t call Leo
my master
. The phrase he used showed respect to the master of a city, but no more respect or loyalty than anyone might use, anyone unassociated with a master’s household. And the phrase had been all formal, in Latin.
Crap
. Bruiser had just announced publicly that he was no longer Leo’s . . . employee? Dinner? Sex partner, if he had ever been that? I hadn’t been comfortable enough to ask. Still wasn’t. But the phrase said that he was certainly no longer Leo’s blood-servant. Bruiser’s eyes were warm on me, a little smile on his lips.

My cheeks heated and I couldn’t control the speed of my
heart rate. I sure as heck couldn’t control the scent of my pheromones, which were suddenly all over the place. The vamps in the room looked from Bruiser to Leo and then to me, picking up cues from each of us that we might rather have wished kept private. What did this public announcement mean to and for Bruiser? In the odd silence of the room, he let his smile drop and turned to Leo, who was still leaning over the desk, maybe frozen there in shock.

Leo held Bruiser’s gaze for a long moment before turning that predatory stare to me, his nostrils widening as he scented the air. I could feel the ice of Leo’s gaze as he spoke, but I kept my eyes on Bruiser. “Are you certain,
primo quondam meus
?”

“I am certain,
dominantem civitati, magister quondam meus
.”

“You give up much,” Leo said, his tone slightly hoarse. As if the words were pulled from him, as if they hurt as they left his mouth. I didn’t know what was going on, but it sounded important. Life-or-death important. And everyone in the room seemed to think so too. There were a lot of wide eyes and very little breathing, even from the humans.

Del, her face white with shock, mouthed a translation.
Master of this City. My former master.

Holy crap. Bruiser was really . . . quitting?

Bruiser smiled and looked at me, his eyes heated. It was as though some closed, dark place inside me opened, revealing a painful, raw wound in an oddly empty space. “I gain much more,
dominantem civitati
,” he said. And the lesion in the dark, empty place within me seemed less painful somehow.

“It is done,” Leo said.
“Factum est. Consummatum.”

Which sounded like a death sentence. Or the end of the world. Or something equally awful. But Bruiser’s smile widened, and it didn’t droop when Leo leaned forward and added carefully, “All of my regulations and proscriptions shall stand. And you will remove the last of your belongings from the council home tonight, before the sun seeks to rise.”

Bruiser hesitated only an instant, as if measuring what the words meant before saying, “Yes, Master of this City. I shall abide by all regulations and proscriptions that pertain to me.”

Leo looked like that was less capitulation than he wanted, but he went on. “I require that Jane Yellowrock remain in the position of Enforcer, along with Derek Lee, for the duration of the Europeans’ visit. Derek and I have reached a settlement on remuneration for his services. Do you agree, Jane?”

I looked back and forth between Derek and Leo and held out my hand to Del. “You got a pen? A piece of paper?”

Without speaking, Del leaned forward and took both from a small drawer in the front of Leo’s desk, passing them to me. I half folded the paper so no one could see what I was writing and penned a number on the paper.
$1,000,000.00
. I folded it and passed it to Leo. He opened the paper and burst out laughing, the laughter again making him seem so human and so dang gorgeous. Monsters are supposed to be ugly; Leo simply wasn’t. His eyes glistened with amusement. The black hair he usually tied in a little queue came forward and brushed his pale olive cheeks. Still laughing, he passed the note to Grégoire, whose blond eyebrows went up in surprise that quickly translated into amusement.
“Vous avez été correct, mon seigneur,”
Grégoire said, his tone formal.

I didn’t know what that meant, but did catch the
correct
part, and when Grégoire pulled a ring from his finger and passed it to Leo, I realized that they had bet on my reply, and Leo had won. I narrowed my eyes at them, as Leo slid the ring onto his pinkie. The ring was gold, the band smooth and worn, centered by a ruby cabochon. It looked old and valuable, and a lot like the ring the much younger Grégoire had worn in the painting downstairs. I sat back in my chair, irritated for reasons I didn’t understand.

“Half that,” Leo said. “No more. However, I will also pay expenses for you and salary for your crew. Take or leave it,
mon petit chat
.”

I thought about it, remembering the room full of books and papers in the basement, and decided to up the ante. “Leave it,” I said. Leo looked up from admiring his winnings, surprise on his face. Yeah, he hadn’t expected me to refuse. I adored surprising a vamp. It happened so seldom with the old ones and their expressions were priceless. “This is a negotiation, so you don’t get to demand. Half, plus expenses, Younger’s salary, and also access to everything in every vamp database, library, and storage available to you, no matter the language, about the history of witches and Mithrans, and the existence of other magical beings. I want access to anything and everything that you and any of your people have.”

Leo murmured, “Witches again. Are your loyalties divided, my Enforcer?”

I thought about what he might be asking me to claim and I
said, very carefully, “My loyalties are perfectly aligned according to who I am, what I am, and according to my word and to my contracts.”

Leo watched me, sniffing slowly, smelling for a lie. “This bargain is acceptable to me.”

“Done,” I said.

Leo nodded. Still watching me, he said, “We have an infiltrator.”

I dragged my gaze from Leo’s to Bruiser’s. “Reach?” I’d shared my suspicions about the mysterious researcher and electronic security genius with Bruiser previously, and had since proven them. Reach wasn’t quite a traitor, more an entrepreneur, gathering and selling information to the highest bidder, instead of keeping proprietary info secret. I still hadn’t decided what to do about him. For that matter, I didn’t know what we
could
do about him. He’d made no secret of working for the customer who offered him the most money; he had no blood-bond with Leo to keep him loyal; and Reach had ways of finding out things that bordered on the mystical. Once he had his electronic claws into a system, it was nearly impossible to remove them. I more than halfway believed that he had his claws in my own system and in Leo’s, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

“No,
we
have not been infiltrated.” Leo waved a lazy hand as if wiping away the thought of Reach. “I have a well-placed and well-paid infiltrator on the European Council of Mithrans.”

Every eye in the place settled on Leo, and he gave a languid smile, enjoying the astounded stares and olfactory responses. “You have a spy in Europe?” I half asked, half stated. “Dang.”

Leo’s smile widened and he did that eyebrow-lift thing. “Yes. This person has been in place for many years.”

I noticed that he didn’t say
Mithran
or
blood-servant
or give a gender. Cagey, Leo.

“This person has informed me that this visit by members of the European Council will be used to discover weaknesses in our organization. This information is nothing new. However, this person has confirmed that the preliminary delegation will be followed by a larger mission whose purpose is to destroy us. They wish to acquire our territory and bring it under the control of the Europeans, and not simply because we have grown too powerful.”

Grégoire sat up slowly, horror on his face.
“Pas François!”

Leo said, “Not your sire, my friend.”

“Who?” I asked.

Bruiser leaned toward me, his mouth at my ear. “Grégoire’s sire was François Le Bâtard, an illegitimate son of François d’Angoulême.”

I had heard Grégoire’s titles once, and they were as sparse as they were royal, as I recalled. It helped that I had a file on him. I pulled up the file on my official cell, which was mated to my laptop at home, and discovered that there was nothing in his titles about a François d’Angoulême or a Le Bâtard. He was simply “Grégoire, blood-master of Clan Arceneau, of the court of Charles the Wise, fifth of his line, in the Valois Dynasty.” So I looked up the royal Charlie the Wise.

As I searched, Leo added, more gently, “But your brother and your sister Batildis have begun to rally their supporters to this end.” I remembered the painting of the man wearing tights and poufy drawers and buckled shoes, spotted fur on his lapel. Grégoire close by. The boy and girl vamps with him had been unknowns, but maybe not for much longer. They had worn jewelry, Grégoire with a ruby ring. The girl’s face had been terrified. “And yes,” Leo said, “that might eventually garner the interest of Le Bâtard, though he is not scheduled to travel to these shores with the European Council.”