Broken Soul: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (32 page)

I rotated to my feet and groaned my way out of the room. I found the stairs and limped down to the locker room to clean up and change clothes, coming to a few conclusions. We needed several things: a full debrief, to find Brute, and to figure out where the
arcenciel
was in all the hullabaloo—still with Peregrinus, or escaped? We needed to know where Bethany had gone with the missing people. It was gonna be a long night.

I was on the stairs when I realized that Bruiser hadn’t shown up. I pulled my cell. Communications were up and I had three text messages. Eli’s said,
Heading back to vamp HQ. W alive in hospital. Edmund feeding healing him.
Alex’s said,
Gimme call. Got info.
Bruiser’s said,
On the way. Be safe.

That text was more than an hour old, but so far as I knew, he hadn’t shown. I texted him back.
Call me.
And then texted
the Kid to track his cell. Bruiser’s text was the one that mattered most.

•   •   •

I was in the shower when I felt cool air whoosh into the room. I shut off the water with one hand and simultaneously picked up the nine-mil. There was one in the chamber, ready to fire. The Judge was on the tiled ledge beside me, next to the shampoo.

“It’s me, Legs. We need to chat.” It was Derek. Who had disappeared, chasing after Peregrinus. Or helping him escape? I had to wonder whether he was in his right mind or whether he’d been rolled by a vamp who had managed to seize Grégoire, Leo, Katie, and all of vamp HQ in one night.

“Yeah?” I asked, not willing to throw back the shower curtain to see him. Knowing that if he wanted me dead, he could have already fired. I had no place to run anyway. But mostly not wanting to be naked in front of Derek. I took the weapon in a two-hand grip and spread my feet, balanced and ready. “Tell me something only we know. So that I’ll know it’s you talking through your mouth and not some foreign vamp who’s made you his.”

“You wore a party dress the first time I saw you take down a fanghead. You told me you had a magic charm to track down suckheads, but we both know you was lying.”

I chuckled.

“Also,” Eli said, “he’s got me, with a gun about three inches from his spine.”

Not again,
I thought, but feeling relieved. “You boys have got to learn to play together.”

“Too close, Ranger boy. I’d take you—”

“And you’d sit in a chair the rest of your life. So go ahead. Make my—”

“Go away!” I yelled. I turned the water back on and set the gun aside. They could play Ranger versus SEAL on their own time. I still had things to think through. And one of those was, why was I always the only female in the ladies’ room? Was I so terrifying and creepy that all the other female security personnel who used this locker room made themselves scarce when I was here? It was kinda weird.

•   •   •

Once I was dressed, I read my new texts and sent several, one to tell the Kid I was headed into the security conference room.
He’d know what to do. The guys were waiting outside the locker room door when I emerged, holding up opposite walls. Eli had an abrasion on his cheek that hadn’t been there the last time I saw him, and Derek was nursing a bloody lip. “Idiots.” I shook my head and asked Eli to run an errand for me, fast. He nodded and took off. I asked, “Your men?”

Derek’s face turned down, the lines beside his mouth making him look far older. “Red Dragon and Antifreeze are down for rehab. Trash Can and Acapulco are both dead.”

He didn’t want sympathy. I didn’t know what he wanted, but sympathy wasn’t it. I kept my eyes emotionless, but let my mouth turn down in acknowledgment of his loss. “I’d like to go to the services,” I said. “Anything I can do for the families, please let me know.”

He nodded once, a severe, clipped gesture, and I lifted a finger pointing to the conference room. Derek followed me down the hall into security, and I felt him behind me, more so than heard him. He moved as silently as a hunting big-cat.

If he had been rolled, then I could be a target, though I could tell by his body scent that he wasn’t fighting anything; nor was he overly, abnormally calm. He smelled like himself after exercise, and he also smelled angry, but it was normal, human “It isn’t fair” kind of angry, combined with a little “I need to hit something” angry. He stepped up beside me, our shoulders brushing. But his scent changed as we walked, a hint of adrenaline, an increase of testosterone. It smelled like a dominance thing, the scent telling me that the person he wanted to hit was me.

I could take him if he attacked. Most likely, I could. Probably. Maybe. Most days. Maybe not right now with my belly feeling like . . . “You shot me,” I said, casually.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the satisfaction flit onto his face, as he said, “Yeah. Sorry about that.” But he didn’t sound sorry. His voice went harder, colder. “Leo instructed me not to call in the cops for our DBs. He says it’s
too dangerous
for us to let any more
humans
in here.”

I suddenly understood all the mixed signals he was giving off. I moved to the side of the hallway and stopped again, turning to him. I put a hand on his arm, feeling the rigid, corded muscles there. His black eyes glittered in his dark-skinned face, but he stared into the distance. “I’m sorry about your men,” I said. “I’m
so
very sorry.”

“Vodka Sunrise was injured, but had enough life to be turned. He’ll be an insane suckhead for ten years, but he’ll be alive, if you call that living.” Sunrise had lost a tooth in Leo’s service not so long ago. He was good people. All Derek’s men were good people. I could smell Derek’s conflict, his anger, his grief, and I tightened my fingers on his arm, letting a bit of Beast into my grip. It had to hurt, but he didn’t meet my eyes. I understood that too. I wasn’t human. I was one of the monsters. And I hadn’t reacted with anger when one of the monsters had said no human law enforcement involvement. I was getting in deep.
Too deep? How deep did I have to get to be happy that Sunrise had been turned instead of dying?
“We’ll honor their sacrifice. Your men and me. And right now,
I
honor their sacrifice.”

I closed my mouth with a soft snap. I didn’t have time for this, but I also didn’t
not
have time for it. I shoved my conflict down deep inside and shook his arm until he looked at me. “In the ways of The People, the War Woman was responsible for restitution and revenge after battle. I am War Woman.” His eyes widened slightly and his scent changed, though I couldn’t tell what the pheromones meant, except more confusion. “I promise you the right to choose how our enemy will die. If you choose, then for each man true-dead, I will cause our enemy to scream until he can’t scream anymore. I will let him heal. And I’ll make him scream again for the next man. For the men turned, I’ll bring them a cup of his still-warm blood to drink. If you choose this, the death of the one we hunt will not be clean or easy.”

Derek’s head went up, his mouth hard. “You’re asking me to let you torture a man.”

“No. I’m asking what you want done.”

“Clean death,” he spat. “I’m not a monster.”

I smiled, and knew it was bitter. “No. You aren’t. And for that I’m thankful.”

He blinked several times, then said, “You don’t want to . . . do what you said.”

“I really,
really
don’t. But for you, to honor your men, to remember your men, I would have.” I let a small smile soften my face. “The last time I counted coup—to use a word
not
of The People—I was five years old and my grandmother put the knife into my hand.” Derek’s scent changed again, this time taking on a clearly identified horror in the chemical mixture.
“Humans, ordinary humans, can be far worse than the monsters. To torture a man when you’re a child, when your mother and grandmother stand beside you and guide in the methodology and the mechanics, it changes you. It changed me, changed who I became; who I am now. But I’m willing to go back to that time if you need me to.”

Derek took my hand from his arm, but instead of dropping it, he curled his fingers around my wrist and pulled my hand into a soldier’s handclasp. I gripped his wrist back. “They were soldiers for the United States. We’ll honor them with a soldier’s burial.”

We stood nearly eye to eye in the hallway, arms clasped. “Okay. Good. You want me there, I’ll be there. If not, I’ll understand. I’ll contribute to the families’ funds. And I’ll get Amy Lynn to feed your man. With a little luck and her super-duper special vamp blood, he might be back in as little as two years, rather than the standard ten.”

He released my arm and I let him. He said, “Savin’ my mama is worth part of my soul. And bein’ Leo’s Enforcer sounded—”

He stopped, and I could guess what it had sounded like. Easy job, lotsa money. But it had been a devil’s bargain. It always was, with fangheads.

Derek went on. “I don’t understand how fangheads think. Why not call in the law for the dead humans?”

“Leo had a hard time getting the human LEOs to leave, the last time one of his people died in this building. Leo has control issues
and
danger on his turf.” Derek didn’t reply so I said, “Honestly, I don’t really care what Leo does about the law.” Oddly, it was true. Once upon a time I called in the law every time a human incident took place. But it never did any good. Leo was his own law. Always had been. Probably always would be. And I was the Enforcer who carried out his law. I had quit, but not really. I was still doing the job and wouldn’t stop even when Peregrinus was dead. I still had a contract with Leo as his Enforcer for a cool half mil. And with the EuroVamps coming, this job might be the only way to keep my friends alive.

My forehead wrinkled as a thought occurred to me. “The last time someone died here, it was one of the new guys. Wayne something? He had what I thought was a hawk tattooed on his scalp. But maybe it was a peregrine?”

“I’ll check back. Make sure.” He pulled his cell and started thumbing around for photos of the crime scene.

“I know vamps work ahead, plan things for decades,” I said thoughtfully, uncomfortable with the direction of my thoughts.

“Centuries.”

“Yeah. For real. But it would be hard to put that incident together with the EuroVamps and Satan’s Three, and Reach.”

“No, it wouldn’t. Not for a fanghead.” He stopped thumbing on the screen. “Not a falcon. No. It
was
a hawk. And it was done in reds and browns, not the blue tattoos on the wrists of the fanghead and his human.” He turned the cell to me and I studied the photo of the top of Hawk Head’s scalp. The hawk tattoo looked nothing like the peregrine falcons sported by Peregrinus’ followers, and his wrists were bare. “Hawk,” Derek insisted.

“Okay. But . . . let’s keep that in back of our minds, okay? I don’t like coincidences.”

“Jane?” Derek didn’t often call me by my given name. It was Legs or Injun Princess. Not Jane. I looked my question at him. “You’re a Christian. How could you do that? When you were five? How could you do it now?”

“I don’t know.” I laughed shortly. “I probably need therapy.”

“Yeah. We all probably do.”

•   •   •

The team was assembled in the security conference room, including a few new faces.

I remembered Wrassler telling me he was trying to get help. Carefully, I said to Derek, “Your people?”

“Grégoire’s people from Atlanta,” he said. “They’ve been in training in the swamps for the last six weeks,” he reminded me. “Basic training. Leo fed on all of them. They’re loyal and integrated into the communications channels. Training isn’t up to my standards yet, but they’ll do in a pinch.”

I looked them over and shook my head. They were covered in mosquito bites, were sunburned, skinny, rangy, scruffy, and hard-eyed. They looked like they’d been rode hard and put up wet, as a horse-loving roommate in the children’s home used to say, and they had the body odors that claimed they had been in-country without access to bathhouses for a
looong
time. But they also looked ready to go to war, with that hair-trigger awareness the battlefield soldier always wore. I nodded at them by way of welcome.

“They’ve been read in on the deets,” Derek added. “We can talk freely.”

Which hadn’t even occurred to me. My mind had been too busy on other stuff to sweat things like humans without enough info to understand what was going on. “Too much went wrong tonight, guys,” I said. “Angel, I need to see everything you have on camera. And you’ll note that the stuff on the secondary control panel you installed has been integrated into this one, and a bill for the design has been submitted to Raisin. To Ernestine,” I amended. One of the texts had been from the Kid telling me he had found and assimilated the secondary set.

Angel Tit’s eyebrows bunched and he glanced at Derek. “Told you she’d figure it out. Told Leo and Del she’d figure it out. Told all’a y’all she’d figure it out.” Derek grunted and Angel punched some spots on his integrated control screen. Security footage appeared on the overhead video screen. I watched the new men studying the videos as if their lives depended on it. And maybe they did.

The action lasted half an hour, with time not matching up anywhere as we followed from camera to camera, watching as men and women died, as Wrassler was mangled, as trained solders tried to ignore the changing of time and fought back. As the digital feed sputtered and went all blocky at times just as it had before from the presence of the
arcenciel
. But this time, the
arcenciel
was on-screen for only some of the occurrences of the pixelating blocks. “What’s causing the interference?” I asked.

Angel swiveled in his chair and grinned at me. “This time it wasn’t caused only by the light-dragon. This time the interference followed the vamp Peregrinus. I did manage to get some clear shots of him. These might explain it.”

I stared at the still shots plucked from the video. The fanghead was moving at vamp speed, and on regular digital camera footage, he would have been a pixel-blur, but on the new cameras, he was fairly clear—dark hair, dark pants, white shirt, leather belt, and boots. Necklace. But the jewelry looked different from the painting in the records room, and also different from the spare, stripped-raw moments when I had seen the vamp in person. Now the necklace looked larger, darker. Different.