“Peace ...” I added that to the foreign word
misericorde
, a picture forming. The word was the name of a weapon, the mercy stroke or mercy blade, a long knife used in medieval times to deliver the death stroke to a knight who had received mortal wounds but would lie dying, in great pain, for a long time. But a mercy blade in conjunction with the devoveo was something new to me.
When first turned, vamps went into a state of prolonged insanity, forcing them to be restrained and imprisoned for years, sometimes decades, until they regained their sanity and self-awareness. It was a mental state from which some did not ever return. “You killed the long-chained,” I breathed.
He nodded once, the gesture formal as a bow. “When the decade of devoveo, or sometimes two, had passed for a Mithran scion to regain sanity, the Master of the City would summon me, sending me to the scion-lair of the master whose child would never recover. I would seduce the master to drink of my sweet blood. It has been said”—he splayed a hand over his chest—“to be as intoxicating as the finest wine. And they would sleep while I performed the onerous duty and put the scion out of his misery.”
Gee lifted his swords and began to reweapon. That was the first moment I noticed my own were missing. A hot flush of anger and fear shot through me, a painful jolt. And then I saw my weapons lined up neatly on the grass, the blades shining and clean, the shotgun and handguns beside them, even the stakes from my hair that I’d never had time to draw.
Stiffly, I stood and reclawed, putting the blades into their respective sheaths and loops, the stakes into my hair. Several were missing; I wasn’t surprised. Beside the weapons was a card. The light was too dim to read, but it felt like a business card, and I tucked it into a pocket. I pulled the Benelli’s harness over my jacket, pain lancing up and out from my partially healed elbow. As we both worked, Gee talked.
“Before the last vampire war in 1915, the Master of the City, Amaury Pellissier, who was Leo’s uncle in the human flesh, called me to bring peace to Leo’s daughter. The girl had not found herself; she had raved for over twenty years. But Leo met me at his scion-lair. He resisted the taste of my blood, resisted the seduction that would have made the loss of his child easier to bear, and he fought me.” A trace of surprise flowed beneath the words. “No one had ever fought me before. Begged, yes. Pleaded or raged, yes. But never fought.
“Leo refused the proper dueling tools of swords or pistols, and attacked me with his bare hands.” Gee shook his head in wonder. “He wounded me. Rather badly.” He cocked his head at me and I felt his magics questing out; I wondered briefly what he looked like beneath the spell that covered him. “Would you care to see my scars?” he asked as if he had read my mind.
“No.” I said dryly. I was beginning to sense Gee’s magic was all about sex, compulsion, and glamour—in opposition to the job he’d described, which was all about death.
“Pity. I was forced to leave for a time to heal.”
“Leave this earth.”
“Precisely,” he said with that lilt of laughter. But his delight died when he continued, “By the time I returned, the war had begun and ended and Leo was Master of the City, his uncle and most of the previous clan masters dead. The ones who remained were not of the old ways. Like Leo, the new masters did not wish their young brought to true death by the blade of a stranger, at a time chosen by another. They wished to face that mercy-gift alone. The old ways were dying away.
“Leo banished me. He banished the weres. There were many reasons for his enmity,” he said. “They sided with the wrong faction in the war. They broke their own were-laws with impunity, as wolves have always done.”
I wondered which law they had broken. Maybe the one about biting humans, because they sure had bitten the crap out of me.
“Perhaps it was partly a whim; he had always hated the two-natured and Leo was always the passionate one, sensitive, fervent, full of intense emotions. Perhaps he will never allow them to return.”
I gave a half shrug, remembering Leo raving mad after I killed the thing masquerading as his son. But before that he had healed me from a wound that would have maimed a human. I had seen a different kind of passion then. I set my hair-stick stakes in place, the silver tips scraping my scalp. I picked up my cell, checked to see that I had missed three calls and several text messages. Those I ignored for now and brought up my location on the GPS map app and then brought up directions to see me back to a main road. I was only a mile from Booger’s. It was a handy little device.
“When I left, Leo’s prime blood-servant went with me.”
“Uh-huh.” I checked my ammo. Not much left.
“Magnolia Sweets. His sweet Magnolia.” When I didn’t react to the name, he went on, while I changed out empty magazines for full ones. “He loved her to distraction, but she could not stay with him. Within the year, she was gone.”
Blood-servants who no longer sip of their master’s blood age rapidly. Magnolia would have died of old age soon after leaving. Gee however, a self-proclaimed blood-servant, had lived. Yet, he didn’t smell of vamp blood, so his longevity wasn’t part of a new vampire relationship. The youth was his alone and not something he had shared with Magnolia to keep her alive. Maybe it didn’t work that way. What’d I know?
“Leo brought his daughter to peace some few years later, but he never summoned me back. And since that time, the Mithrans have suffered greatly.”
I straddled Bitsa and sat. “How so?”
“To kill their own children? Would it not bring you to the brink of insanity?”
I saw an image from Beast’s past, a vision of dead kits. Their bodies had been ripped and torn apart by claws and teeth. I started. She had never shown me this, and at first I thought,
wolves
. But then I saw the prints in the soft soil and pooled blood. Mountain lion. A big one. And I smelled his scent in her memory. Our memories. We had tracked the male. Leaped down upon him from a high rock as he lapped at a river, the roaring water and cold wind hiding our presence from him.
I felt the impact as we landed. Driving the breath from both of us. Felt the fierce delight as our claws dug into his flesh. As our fangs bit into his spinal column just above his shoulders. And shook once, hard. The sound/feel/taste as his spine broke. The body collapsing beneath us falling into the water. The shock of cold as we followed him in and under. Released the kill and swam up through hated cold water to the surface. To the bank. Where we shook. And screamed our conquest to the jagged rocks above.
The memory faded and dispersed like a mist under a hot sun, leaving me with the taste of the kit killer in my mouth and the fury of vengeance in my mind. “Yes,” I said softly. “It would.” I puffed out a breath, not liking my next words even before they left my mouth. “But Leo isn’t ready to ask you back. He sent me to tell you to get out of his territory or face the consequences.” I couldn’t read his expression, but giving him that message after he saved my life was wrong on every level I could name. “He said to use whatever measures I thought necessary to make sure you left. That part of the message I’m refusing.” I tried to smile and couldn’t, as something akin to survivor’s guilt trapped me. “I’m sorry.”
“Until the Master of the City returns me to my rightful place in the clans, there will be no peace for him. None for them. No balance in their souls. No tranquility. I am
necessary
to them.” He tilted his head. “But then ...” He walked around me on the bike, graceful as a flamenco dancer, considering. “I have heard you have killed young rogues caught in devoveo. Perhaps you are the new Mercy Blade of the Mithrans.”
Kit killer
, Beast hissed deep inside me.
“No,” I said to them both. I stood and brought my weight down on the kick start. Bitsa roared to life. “No way.” I left him there, on the side of the road. I was miles away, in the city, the lights of vamp headquarters lighting the night, before I remembered several things. Gee had never told me what he was. Gee had started Bitsa as if the witchy locks weren’t there at all. Gee had carried me, somehow, from Booger’s. And my silver chain-mail collar was still missing. I touched my throat, finding only the gold chain and nugget. Gone. The lacerations were healed, but the protection of the collar was absent. Replacing it was gonna cost me dearly. “Crap.”
My official cell rang while I was crossing the bridge and again just as I got to the far side. I pulled over on a patch of worn-out grass and smiled when I saw Molly’s number displayed. “Molly-girl, what’s cracking?”
“Nothing is cracking, Aunt Jane.”
I chuckled and said, “Does your mama know you’re using her cell, Angie Baby?” Angelina was my goddaughter, Molly’s daughter, a scary-strong witch who had come into her powers a decade too young. She lived with those powers battened and corded down and yet, she still knew things. Could do things. I’d seen her.
“No. I’m bein’ a bad girl. But you gots to stay away from the blue man.”
Shock thudded through me. “Okay, Angie Baby. I promise.”
“Cross your heart?”
I dutifully crossed my heart. “And hope to die.”
“No. Don’t do that! You be careful! I love you, Aunt Jane.”
Tears stung my eyes. “I’ll be careful. I promise. I love you too, Angie Baby.”
CHAPTER 5
You Can’t Blame a Vamp-Killer for Trying
I wove my way through New Orleans city streets to vamp HQ, making a few stops on the way. I had a report to deliver and I had discovered that it was easier to give one in person than to write it out and have it messengered over. Vamps aren’t big on the Internet. They want things on vellum or parchment with fancy penmanship and flowery words. I was a modern girl. While my computer skills were only okay, my penmanship stank.
I motored up to the gate at the vamps’ official headquarters. For the first time I’d ever known it, the place was locked down. The wrought iron gate was shut, security lights lit up the grounds, and an armed guard walking a big brute of a mastiff was patrolling. The guard smelled like vamp and not blood-servant. Weird. The suckheads never did their own chores when there was a blood-servant around to do it for them.
There was no sign in front of the stone-faced, multistory building—never had been—but the arched windows, the long line of steps up to the door, and the façade were bright with security lights. I spotted new cameras on the eaves and, with Beast-sight, saw laser paths lacing the grounds. My old pal Bruiser had been a busy boy, installing and integrating the hardware I had proposed to upgrade the system. Bruiser was Leo’s prime blood-servant, head of security for the vamps in the city of New Orleans, but he’d been a much more laid-back guy until lately. When Leo had cleaned house by killing off his enemies, not all of them had been so easily dispatched.
I sat-walked my bike up to a new intercom with a camera and pushed the little red button. When a voice responded, I said into the speaker, “Jane Yellowrock, with a report.”
“Please remove the face mask and present proper picture identification.”
I stuck out my tongue, though I had it properly back in my mouth when I pulled off the helmet, but there was nothing I could do about the cheeky grin. Not sure what proper identification might mean to a vamp, from a zippered pocket I dug out my bike license for North Carolina, my Private Investigator ID for the same state, and my official rogue-vamp-hunting card with the cutesy slogan. It was always good for a laugh with the long-lived vamps. This one didn’t chuckle when I presented them to the camera, but the gate did swing open.
I was met at the bottom of the long steps by the vamp and the dog. The vamp was an old one, a master himself, one of Leo’s loyal scions, though I couldn’t remember his name, only that he had a Texas accent. Lot of Texans in my life tonight. I called him Tex, and he didn’t seem to mind. The dog growled at me, showing teeth, but I wasn’t impressed. I’d been growled at by bigger critters tonight. “Knock it off, doggie. Howdy, Tex. What’s kicking?”
The vamp lifted one side of his mouth in a half smile and pulled the dog to heel. The growling subsided. “Evening, Miz Yellowrock. New security protocols set up by the boss, including an air lock inside the front door in the foyer, with an armed guard.”
“I hope so. What good is a guard if he isn’t carrying?”
Tex let his smile widen. “Couldn’t agree more, ma’am. You’ll have to remove your weapons there, before being escorted inside to Mr. Pellissier.”
Though vamp citizenship was being considered in Congress, at the moment they were treated as aliens, and carrying a weapon beyond the foyer of a council house would merit the same punishment as taking a weapon into a foreign embassy or a federal courtroom. It was a good way to get jumped on and locked up. “He’s here tonight?”
Something shuttered behind Tex’s eyes. “Mr. Pellissier is here every night, ma’am.” He turned away, pulling the mastiff with him. “Take care, you hear?” There was a warning in his tone, not that I needed one. Leo had been worse than unpredictable for weeks. But every night in vamp HQ, and not in his clan home? That was strange.
I made my way up the long steps to the front door, cataloguing the security changes. The front door was opened by a blood-servant flunky with the dead eyes of a burned out soldier—until he recognized me. A huge, gap-toothed grin lit the face of a seriously big guy; tall, well-muscled and bald, he looked like an escapee from the World Wrestling Federation. I grinned in return. “Wrassler,” I said. I nicknamed almost everyone I met, and had never asked Wrassler his real name, though his had evolved down from WWF-Guy to WWF, to the current Wrassler. He seemed to like the latest moniker.
“If it isn’t little Janie. Come on in.”
I shook my head at the name and looked over the air lock. It took up a six-by-six-foot space inside the foyer, and it was much more than it appeared, constructed of bulletproof glass and reinforced titanium bars. It was seriously cool. “Where do you want the weapons?”