Cold Reign

  I walked to the side porch and opened the empty cooler, dropped Adrianna’s head into it. It landed in the corner, faceup, fangs down on their little hinges. From the kitchen I brought a five-pound bag of ice and banged it on the porch floor until the cubes were loose. I dumped the cubes over Adrianna’s head, watery blood gathering in the bottom. I latched the chest and dragged it inside and to the laundry room, where I could keep an eye on it. The house hadn’t been cleaned by Leo’s custodial team, which meant there was old blood on the floor and bodies and heads lying where they had landed. I should put the heads together, like a collection of bookends or salt and pepper shakers or something. Instead, I put them all in the cooler and checked the humans. They were all alive and mostly coming around. Group concussion. Adrianna had been an old, powerful, fast-as-blue-blazes vamp to knock them all out before even one could draw and fire.

  Bruiser was still in the kitchen with the captured vamp. She was no longer smoking and I figured he had allowed her to drink from his wrist to heal her. For the moment, she was holding his wrist and hand, gazing adoringly into his eyes, speaking with a sweet, feminine voice. She was a knockout: big boobs, tiny waist. Blond. I ground my fangs. I hated her.

  I stomped back to my room and dragged Adrianna’s body and the other vamp’s body into the shower so they could drain. Cleanup crew should have been by. It seemed the Enforcer wasn’t at the top of the night’s to-do list. Stepping across puddles of goopy blood, I toured my house. Clearly Adrianna had fed well and deeply in the short time since she had escaped HQ, because the fresher blood was everywhere, tracked all over the dried, tacky blood. I was so not mopping this all up. I located another unofficial cell and called Scrappy.

  “Lee Williams Watts,” she answered. “Mr. Pellissier’s personal assistant. How may I help you?”

  “Jane Yellowrock,” I identified myself. “Alex called for a cleanup crew ages ago. They. Are. Not. Here. Send a cleanup team and some bloodsucker healers to my home, now. I want them here in thirty minutes even if they have to fly. Got it? There’s blood everywhere, a wounded security team, a re-dead rev in the living room, and two dead vamp bodies in the downstairs bathroom.”

  “Just the two?” she asked, sounding perky.

  I looked at the cell. Considering my history, I guessed it was a legit question. I put the cell back to my ear. “Just the two. And the revenant. But there’s a lot of blood. And I need two sets of leathers cleaned. They’re soaked. And I need a new mattress. It’s bloody too.”

  “I’ll check the files for the brand and model and have a new mattress delivered by nightfall.” I heard soft tapping as she worked. “A cleanup team with an armor expert has been dispatched with an ETA of forty minutes to an hour, due to the weather. I’ll enter this number in as your new official cell phone and upload it with all pertinent data.” She paused. “And I’ll order you several more. According to my inventory, you’ve gone through a lot of them lately.”

  I sighed. I hated perky people. And fangheads. And blood. To my more-sensitive-than-human nose, it was already starting to stink, that sickly sweet reek of decay. “I’ll also need a new security team on my house, and Leo’s medical team to heal the ones that were on duty when the house was attacked. Tell Derek to send two vamps in a sealed car and a new team of”—I started to say four but changed it—“six. ASAP.”

  “Done. Anything else?”

  She might be annoyingly perky but she was efficient. “Nothing. Thanks,” I added grudgingly. I closed the cell just in time to hear Edmund retch. Wet leathers squeaking, I went back to the entry. He had his fangs buried in Alex’s throat, but it didn’t look as if he was enjoying it much. He was pale and shaking and he kept making gagging sounds. “Ed?”

  He withdrew his fangs from Alex’s neck and his fingers from the wound there. “I refuse to heal this child again. Not so long as he continues to drink poison.”

  “Poison?”

  “The foul energy drink. That beverage comes directly from hell.” He retched his way to the kitchen and propped his elbows on the counter, hanging his head over the sink.

  “Vamps can puke?”

  I spun to Alex, still lying in his own blood. “Hey, Kid. You’re alive?”

  “Halfway.” He gripped his throat with one hand, tracing the scar on one side with his finger and the site of the punctures, now closed, with his thumb. “I didn’t see a bright light. No angels. Didn’t see fire and brimstone either, so that was good. But the last thing I remember was Adrianna attacking. I think she tried to cut off my head. Like I was a vamp or something.”

  Relief scoured through me like coiled steel and white light. “Yeah.” I held down a hand and he took it, allowing me to draw him upright. “Question. If you had been too far gone to be healed, would you want to be turned?” I put an arm around his waist and gripped the top of his bloody pants to hold him standing. He was shaking and paler than any ghost was reputed to be.

  “Until today, I’d have said no. I’d be too long out of the field. Woulda lost my edge. But now? I’m leaning toward signing the papers.” He fingered his throat. “Hurts.” He looked around him on the floor, at the amount of blood. “All that mine?”

  My own throat nearly closed up on my reply. The blood was everywhere. It looked like gallons. “Yeah.”

  “Eli’s gonna go apeshit.”

  I didn’t fuss about the language because my new cell rang. It was Eli. I filled him in. My partner went dead silent and when I was finished, he disconnected. Without a word. To Bruiser, I said, “I’m changing and going to fanghead central. You coming?”

  Expression blank, he looked up from the adoring blonde and said, “I’ll stay here.” It could be his natural reticence. Or more storm and magic. “Will report as soon I have everything.”

  There was something about the emptiness of his expression that reminded me of the lying, sneaky, former boyfriend, Rick LaFleur, but I knew that Bruiser wouldn’t cheat on me, so the lack of emotion was something else. “You want to talk about it?” I asked.

  He looked at the curvy vampette on my kitchen table and then back to me. “I now have a bond scion,” he said unhappily.

  “Another superpower?”

  “Yes.” He said, “And I have no place for her to sleep.”

  Edmund said, “I’ll care for her. She can sleep with me.”

  “I’ll change then and go with you,” Bruiser said, his voice still empty. “Nicolle. Go with Edmund. He is the primo of Jane Yellowrock. You will do as he says and obey him in all things so long as they do not conflict with your service and vows to me.”

  “Yes, my master.” She released his arm and slid her feet to the floor, standing, all vampy and slinky, like a rain-damp sex goddess. To Edmund she asked, “May we share blood?”

  “I was counting on it. This way, Nicolle,” Edmund said, leading the way to the weapons room hidden behind the bookshelf. They disappeared into the dark cavern and the shelf clicked shut.

  My sweetcheeks and I eased around the puddles and splatters of blood, stripped, toweled off, and changed clothes in the laundry, the only clean room in the downstairs. There was nothing romantic in the process, but I couldn’t help but see Bruiser in my peripheral vision. Long and muscled, yet lean and hard. Every inch of him. His face was haggard, however. “You want to talk about it?”

  He paused in the act of pulling a long-sleeved T-shirt over his head, his skin pale in the darkness of the storm-shadows. His brown eyes were troubled. “I didn’t mean to bind her. I have no place to keep a blood-bound scion. And no desire to keep her. I only want you.”

  For a moment my heart warmed, and then I figured out why he was so upset and all my happy-happy-joy-joy leaked away. “She’s going to want to sleep with you.”

  “Yes. Constantly.”

  Part of me wanted to laugh. Another part wanted to go drag her out of the weapons room and into the daylight and watc
h her burn. Beast murmured into my mind, Mine. My mate. Her claws extruded and she milked my brain. It hurt but the pain helped me to think. To Bruiser, I said, “Can you give her away?” She’s a thinking sentient being, not a slave, I thought. But if she was bound, that was exactly what Bruiser had created. No wonder he was upset. I had bound Edmund. I hated that. What were we two becoming?

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I need to talk to Brandon and Brian. I’m still . . . new? . . . to the powers of an Onorio.” He pulled the tee into place and slid jeans up his legs and buttoned them. Tight and fitted to his butt. Bruiser had the best butt. And the best nose, Romanesque and proud.

  I finished dressing in jeans and rubberized boots and layered tees. And all my weapons. It was daylight, which made us—mostly—safe from vamps, but not humans, though they were far easier to dispatch than vamps.

  Kill, I thought, suddenly, stopping in the act of pulling my weapons harness over my shoulders. Not dispatched. Humans weren’t errands. Or targets. They were people, and if they fought for one side or the other it was because they were bound, not free-willed. And I had killed five tonight. There was a time when I’d never have killed a human. New Orleans had changed me. Being around vamps had changed me. Having things, possessions, friends, family had changed me. I now had people in my life worth killing over. Bruiser had changed too, in a positive way, no longer a brainwashed vamp tool, blood-meal, and plaything.

  I pulled on an old leather jacket and said, “I’m here if you need me. For anything.”

  Bruiser stopped, one hand just about to settle a nine-millimeter into its holster, his eyes finding me in the shadows of early morning. A faint smile touched his lips, lighting his eyes. “You have my heart.”

  It wasn’t exactly the three little words, but it was dang close. I wasn’t sure how to respond, but settled on, “You have me. Pretty much all of me since my heart is stuck inside.” Oh crap. Did that last part come out of my mouth? Yes. Of course it did.

  He snapped the weapon in place and reached me in one stride, an arm around my back, pulling me close, his body a furnace, his arm like heated steel. He hesitated, his lips hovering above mine, so close. His eyes held me closer, moving back and forth between my own, and his smile spread. His kiss was gentle, as if he had never kissed me before, as if he were unsure, uncertain if I would pull away. Something altered inside me. A thing, something I had no name for, filled me, soft and sweet as jasmine on the night wind.

  I slid my arms over his shoulders and pulled myself into him. The kiss deepened and I sighed into his mouth. When he pulled away, we were both breathing harder, and Bruiser was still smiling, a strange light in his eyes. He said, “If your bed weren’t bloody I would have peeled your clothes away and taken you right now.”

  “If the floor wasn’t bloody I’d have taken you on the floor.”

  Bruiser spluttered with laughter and the moment was broken, though the sweetness remained as he dropped his head and laughed into my shoulder. His hold around me eased. “And that, my darling War Woman, is why you have my heart.”

  • • •

  We were almost back to HQ when I got a call. It was Lee. “Getchur butt to the Council Chambers. An emissary from the Europeans is on the way. There’s two on our shores and they’re headed here, ETA about twelve.”

  CHAPTER 15

  A Case of the Cheerfuls

  We made it to the back entrance of suckhead command only two minutes before the EV emissaries arrived. Full daylight in the storm was dim and dreary, but it was daylight still, which meant human blood-servants as emissaries, not vamps. They would be someone’s primo blood-servants, which meant vampy protocols had to be followed, though the lack of notice also meant some protocols could be ignored. The difficult part was deciding which protocols might be ignored without accidentally resulting in insult. Deliberate insult was a whole ’nother matter. Vamps were weird.

  Leo’s human delegation was gathered in the entry, watching on the security cameras as two human males drove up, parked, and stepped from their two-seater antique vehicle. It was the same two who were trying to come ashore when the Robere twins disappeared to hunt Grégoire. They were clothed in black, with purple shirts and ties, with black umbrellas shielding them from the rain.

  Wrassler murmured, “Royal livery. But more important, where in the world did they get a Daimler in New Orleans? George?”

  “A 1935 Straight Edge,” Bruiser replied. “And I have no idea.”

  I looked at the car on the screens and back and forth between the two males. I had no trouble believing that Bruiser was a luxury car nut, but Wrassler was a surprise. He struck me as more of a sports car kinda guy, or maybe a muscle car from the sixties, basketball and beer, baseball and hot dogs.

  Outside, the two humans walked through the storm, up the stairs, and into the airlock with its laminated “bulletproof” polycarbonate glass. They passed through the entrance’s X-ray device, which was part of the security upgrades I had instituted since I came to work for the MOC. The glass had been replaced several times in the months I had been here. “Bulletproof glass” didn’t always offer the protection one might think. The emissaries stopped and, on the X-rays, I got a good look at the weapons they carried—plenty—and at the men themselves. Beside me, Bruiser talked with Raisin, the oldest human living at HQ, on the in-house coms system.

  Bruiser muttered two names to her, with a vaguely Spanish accent. “Macario and Gualterio. I’d have expected minions, not the big guns.”

  They were both short by today’s standards, at five-six and five-eight. Both had dark hair and deeply olive skin. Both were dressed in black wool suits that dropped to gorgeous shoes—Italian leather buffed to a shine. They were also armed to the teeth with blades and sidearms, though no one would know that by looking at them. Their clothing was so perfectly tailored that not a bulge showed. Once I had a good look, I stepped into the shadows so they couldn’t see me in the bright foyer lights.

  “They’re both over two hundred years old,” Raisin said over the speaker, her voice scratchy. “The message is, we are here and our masters are more powerful than yours. They have kept us young for centuries. They always were pretty boys, with excellent manners and lovely penmanship.”

  “Excellent fighters,” Del said. Del was arguably the most influential human in New Orleans, and last I knew she was in Atlanta. Leo must have called her back to deal with the current problems. Today, even in the cold air, she wore a sleeveless dress in an odd shade of black, one with a red tint that became redder when the light hit it just right. Like blood-soaked cloth. She wore a sword at her side. Del was one of Leo’s people that these blood-servants would have to kill if they wanted a chance at Leo and his fiefdom. The others were the Enforcers: Derek and me. Ducky.

  Dacy Mooney, her mother and the heir to the Asheville clan, stood just behind her. I hadn’t seen Dacy since she healed Edmund of silver poisoning. “I’ve watched video of them taking apart other swordsmen,” Dacy said to her daughter. “You’re better.”

  “Open the doors,” Del instructed Derek, her voice quiet. Derek, an earbud in his ear and a mouthpiece hanging below his chin, relayed the message.

  When the two visitors stepped inside and the doors to the airlock had closed behind them, the one on the right said, “Macario and Gualterio Cardona, primo and secundo servants of the blood to Louis le Jeune, Capetian King of the Franks, turned by Eleanor of Aquitaine during their marriage . . .”

  I tuned out the titles and bloodline mumbo-jumbo and then grinned, lips wide over my fangs, thinking of what they would do when they got a good look at me in half-form. Wondering what they might do if I told them their speechifying was boring claptrap. Between fear and insult, they’d skewer me before I could enjoy the show. Inside me, Beast snorted. Less than five humans against more than five humans. Jane/Beast, Bruiser-mate, and blood-drinkers of Leo. Good hunters, more than five. We win.

/>   Probably, I acknowledged, taking in the Cardonas’ scents: blood and sweet peppers and rich cream. Watching the way they moved and shifted or stood completely still, as when Del began to respond. “Adelaide Mooney, primo blood-servant to Leo Pellissier . . .” I zoned out on her words and watched the men, letting some of Beast shine through, knowing that my eyes were taking on a golden glow. It attracted the attention of the unwelcome visitors, and my grin widened as they focused on me in the shadows with laserlike intensity. Taking in my casual clothing and my apparent lack of weapons. Like theirs, mine were mostly out of sight. But my eyes, my fangs, and my pelt scared them. Beast purred inside, enjoying the change in their scents. Beast and I chuffed in amusement, showing more fang.

  They flinched the tiniest bit but it wasn’t because of me. I zoned back into Del’s intro, replaying it in my memory, looking for what had spooked them even more than I had.

  She had been talking about Leo’s territory in terms of states, which I knew, but had added, “. . . over four hundred thousand square miles of territory under his personal domain, with more swearing fealty to him.” Ah. The emissaries of the EVs had forgotten that the U.S. took up a lot of map space, nearly three times as much as the original fifteen countries of the European Union. Which meant that Leo, under his personal control, had way more hunting territory than any single EV monarch had and maybe more than Titus the emperor had. Go Del. It was a lawyer’s zinger and I wanted to applaud. Didn’t. But wanted to.

  Del finished with, “No parley time has been decided upon by our negotiators. No parley location has been decided upon. No parley numbers have been decided upon. Yet you are here. Is this a declaration of war?”

  Macario and Gualterio both reacted to that too, showing surprise, even if it was only by their scent patterns. One of them said, “We are here to finalize the negotiations, not create an incident. We wish peace between us and between our masters.”