Clermont chuckled, this time with real amusement. “Bring Pierre Herbert for healin’,” he said to someone at his side, and a young human raced down the steps, passing me. I didn’t like having anyone behind me, but I figured Derek had him covered. I gently pushed Muscles away and took a deep breath, trying to settle my heart rate and calm myself. It was never wise to go into a nest of vamps when one smelled worried. Muscles looked at me over his shoulder before moving up the stairs, his feet loud on the plain wooden treads. I followed more slowly, holstering my weapon as I climbed. At the top, Clermont and I looked each other over, taking in details and drawing impressions.
He was tall for a man of his time, nearly six feet, lean and gangly, with dark brown eyes and blondish hair, a combination that seemed common in this area. He was dressed in worn jeans, an ironed white dress shirt, a suit jacket in pale gray or dull blue, and a narrow, charcoal-colored tie. And boots, which somehow surprised me, though boots were ubiquitous in Louisiana. A pair of reading glasses perched on his head and reflected the light.
I don’t know what he thought of me, but he indicated the chair closest and waited until I sat, the gesture of a man of his time for a woman, not the way a warrior would act with another warrior. But I wasn’t in a position to gripe about his good manners. I was now in the nest of vipers, and no matter how good Derek or Margaud was, any Doucette could kill me way faster than my people could react to save me.
Clermont leaned in and sniffed delicately. “What kind of predator you is?”
“Not one that will hurt you or your people unless you try to hurt me first.”
Clermont thought about that for a while, putting together the phrase try to hurt me with the thought that I obviously believed they would not be successful. He nodded slowly and studied me. “I like you boots.”
Which was just weird. I said, “Thanks. Um. They’re Lucchese. I like yours too. Tony Lamas?”
He grinned happily, showing only his human teeth, and pulled up his pant legs to display his boots. “You know boots? Dat a good ting. Tony made dese boot for me hisself in nineteen forty-two. Bes’ boots I ever have, dey is.” He dropped his pant legs and said, “I got wine, beer, cola, bottled water, coffee, tea. May I offer you some libation to wet you whistle?”
All I could think was, Crap, I have no idea how to handle this. I said, “Uh, thanks but no thanks. I’m fine.”
He spread his fingers as if to say, Fine. Down to business. State your piece, which was a lot to gather from a single gesture, but there it was. Clermont crossed his ankles and laced his fingers in what looked like a posture personal to him, back when he had been human.
I wasn’t good at diplomacy, blowing things up and shooting things being more my way, but I gave it a shot. “Leo Pellissier sent me to . . .” I paused and chose my words carefully. “. . . to inquire about Shauna Landry, who, he has heard, is here against her will, to be turned against her will.”
“Why?” When I looked puzzled, Clermont said, “Why Leo, Blood-Master of New Orleans, show an interest in us now? Why not a hundred year ago, or when he take over for dat worthless king Amaury?”
To that I had no answer. After a seriously awkward pause, I said, “I think he thought it was your choice to swear to him, or him to conquer you in a Blood Challenge, and he . . . mmm, he, mmm, respected you too much to come after you.” Which was a lot better than he thought you weren’t worth the effort. Knowing Leo it was the latter.
“Blood Challenge? Like a duel?” Clermont asked.
I hadn’t studied a Blood Challenge, but I’d run across the term and that definition seemed to fit the parameters. “Sorta, yeah.”
Clermont seemed to study the night sky. When his head moved, I realized he was in a rocking chair, and it started to squeak as he rocked, a pleasant rhythm in the night. Almost as if he called them to sing, frogs started to croak. I’d heard them before while in Beast form, the deep, almost-aching, nearly demanding basso profundo melody. Crickets joined in the song. A barred owl gave its hoot, hoo-hoo-hoo-hooooo. Something large splashed in the bayou out front. A night breeze strengthened and the lamp flame wavered, casting shadows that moved and crawled.
The porch we sat on was maybe thirty feet wide and fifteen deep, the house and its entrance behind us and rooms on either end. This protected it from wind and rain on three sides and yet still provided a view of the bayou out front, the live oaks on the property, and the cypress standing in the water, knees pushed up above the surface anchoring the trees in the silty bottom. The last of the sunset was a pale pink line on the horizon, the sky quickly fading to a dark cerulean overhead.
I shouldn’t have felt so suddenly peaceful, but I did. I let my body relax into the chair, and I realized that I didn’t chill out very often. To take the opportunity in this perilous place was stupid and dangerous, but even knowing that, I let my muscles soften and my backside settle, just a hint, just a bit. “If the offer of tea is still open,” I said, “I’d like a cup of hot.”
“Black,” Clermont said to the shadows. “That good China black what come de mail las’ week. And bring out de girl. She can speak for herself to de famed vampire hunter.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Shauna arrived before the tea, holding the hand of a male vampire. She fit her father’s description and the small graduation photo provided by Lucky. Her hair was pulled back and braided, leaving her face and narrow jaw fully exposed. She was prettier than her photo, or she had already been fed a lot of vamp blood, improving her skin and her vitality. The boy holding her hand was fully vamped-out, his two-inch fangs down, his pupils wide and black in bloodred sclera; he was close to losing control. If he had been aping human he would have been a pretty boy, with brown hair to his waist, some braided, some hanging free, an aquiline nose and almond-shaped eyes. Gently I asked, “You’re Clermont’s son?”
“And heir,” he said, his words only slightly misshapen by his fangs. “Gabriel Doucette,” he said, pronouncing it Gab-rel Doo-see. “I can give her everything. A home. A place. A long, full life. I love her.”
While he spoke, the girl held his hand tighter and gazed at him with fierce adoration in her eyes.
Well, crap. So much for kidnap or vamp glamour. I hadn’t studied Shakespeare in high school, but even I knew this was starting to look a little like it was more along the lines of Romeo and Juliet than a kidnap plot. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, however, this story left one family holding all the cards. Lucky Landry had lied to me. Surprise, surprise.
Because he was so close to the edge, I turned my gaze to the girl for a moment, indicating I was speaking to her, before looking off into the night. I said, “Your father thinks you were kidnapped. You’re here of your own free will?”
At the word kidnapped, power spiked along my arms and settled in my fingertips, an electric pain that promised more if I wasn’t careful. It was an attack spell, something prepared beforehand and waiting, a defensive measure worthy of my friends the Everharts. And I had a feeling if she let loose with it, I’d get hurt. Shauna’s voice, when she spoke, was calm, determined. “I love Gabriel.”
I thought about that for a moment before turning to Clermont. “How many witches have you turned in the last hundred or so years?”
His brows went up. He opened his mouth and closed it, pursed his lips, thinking. “Four,” he said, his voice quiet, almost buried in the night noises. I could see him thinking, putting two and two together—his history with witches, my question, my being here at all, which, considering the danger I was in, must be important.
Keeping my tone soft and gentle, I asked, “Have you ever seen a witch make the change into vampire?” When he said nothing, I added, “Witches don’t accept the change as well as humans. Witches seldom come out of the devoveo—what you may call the insanity—at all.”
Gabriel growled and his lips pulled back. Beast flooded me with adrenaline. Kit shows killing te
eth, she thought at me.
“Gabe!” Clermont barked. But Gabriel didn’t back down.
I kept my gaze in the distance and my voice soft, saying, “Shauna, did you know there’s a strong possibility you could remain insane forever if you get turned?”
She didn’t answer, but her eyes widened and her lips parted in alarm. And Gabriel let go of her hand. In the blink of an eye, everything went to hell in a handbasket.
Gabriel lunged at me.
A spot of red appeared on his shirtfront.
He yanked up my arm, his vampire claws piercing my wrist.
The crack of a rifle sounded in the night.
Clermont moved, his fist impacting his son’s chin.
Gabe’s body snapped back; his claws shredded my flesh.
Twin booms sounded off to either side.
Vamps all around me vamped-out.
The smell of blood and vampires filled the night.
I dropped back to the chair and stabbed upward with a vamp-killer, the twelve-inch blade sliding into the belly of a vamp who was reaching for me, fangs-first. My angle was wrong to pull the M4, but I managed to get a .380 out. Off safety. Fired. Hitting a vamp in the face. Another in the shoulder. Vamps screamed, the piercing, horrible wail of death I could hear even over the acoustic damage of the firearms.
Some small part of my brain knew I’d just sentenced a vamp to a slow, painful death by silver poisoning with the vamp-killer, but the gun’s ammo was standard, and no vamps would die from that. Humans could, though. Collateral damage. I did not want to hurt the humans.
Derek and one of his men were on the porch. I saw Derek toss two hand grenades into the house, his movements seen as overlays of static images. I closed my eyes and threw an arm over them. The flashbangs took down every vamp inside with the blinding light and intense noise. More vamps were wailing, my ears vibrating painfully with the high tone.
I opened my eyes in time to see more forms flow up the stairs led by Lucky Landry. Magics spat down his arms from his tattoos and shot out his fingertips. Blue flames whipped among the vamps and humans on the porch.
“Bogus!” I screamed. Derek turned to the witch and hit him with the butt of his shotgun. It wasn’t a weapon Lucky had prepared a defense against. The witch fell like he’d been poleaxed. The forms behind him stopped and stared at their leader. And the vamps turned on them.
Beast shoved her power into me and I threw myself back and up. Taking Clermont around the neck in a sleeper hold, I shoved the vamp-killer at his neck. “Hold!” I shouted.
Everyone on the porch and steps and inside the house went still and silent. My ears buzzed with complaint. Into Clermont’s ear, I said, “Thanks for knocking your kid outta the way so I didn’t have to kill him. And sorry about that hospitality thing and all, but if your suckheads don’t back off, I’ll kill you. Understand?”
Clermont nodded slightly, the silver scorching his skin where it touched. I caught the scent of burned, dead flesh and curled my lips back against the stink. And realized that a sleeper hold was likely useless to a vamp except for immobilizing him. Good thing I’d been holding the blade.
“Derek?” I asked.
He bent over Lucky and checked his pulse and pupils. “He’ll live,” Derek said, his tone unconcerned. “I mighta broke his jaw, though.”
“Margaud. Report,” I said. “Numbers?”
Slightly garbled by my earbud, I made out Margaud’s words. “Vamps? Ten I can count. Witches? Six standing. Dem was under de house, behind de pilings, and their sigs blended in widda pigs’. Sorry ’bout dat.”
Sigs. Heat signatures. Right. I raised my voice. “Witches, sit on the ground. Vamps, sit on the porch. Now!” When no one moved, I said into Clermont’s ear, “Tell them. This gets settled one way or another, and I don’t really care how. Oh, and by the way. I have Leo Pellissier’s permission to take him your head. In writing.”
“Sit,” Clermont said. The vamps and their humans sat. When the witches didn’t follow suit, Derek kicked one witch in the backs of the knees. He fell; the rest sat. Derek and his men went around gathering guns and blades. They made a nice pile at the base of the stairs.
When everyone was disarmed and sitting, I said to Clermont, “I stabbed one of your people with a silvered knife. If they get fed enough blood by a strong enough vamp or their master, there is a chance they’ll live. Also, I fired standard ammo, but my sharpshooter used silver-plated. If it didn’t pass clear through him, your idiot son might have a silver slug in his chest. Can anyone here dig that out?”
“Surgeon, I am,” Clermont said, surprising the heck outta me, “or was, long time ago. I still know how to dig out a rifle round. And my blood is strong. I can treat my people.”
“Well, good.” Which sounded lame, but it was all I had.
“You gone call dat Leo? Take my head?”
“I’d rather not. You willing to make your son act like he has some sense?”
“I am. You willing to make Lucky Landry act like he have him a brain in he head?”
“I am. I guess that means I’m letting you go now.”
“Dat be right nice. Pain in de neck, you is.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. And so did Clermont. As he did, his fangs—which I hadn’t even noticed—clicked back into the roof of his mouth on their tiny little hinges. Vamps can’t laugh—a human emotion—and be vamped-out at the same time. I let him go and he bent to the vamp lying on the porch boards. Blood was a dark pool beneath her, and she was breathing with the painful rasp of a human who had traumatic lung damage and whose lungs were filling up with blood. Clermont bent over her and held his wrist to her mouth. Her fangs bit into him, and her lips sucked like a starving baby’s, a weak and desperate motion. A minute later, she reached up and grabbed his wrist, holding him to her, and her sucking increased in depth and intensity. A minute after that, Clermont peeled her away and a human man sat beside her, cradling her close so she could latch onto his neck. It was intimate and lover-like, and I turned away. Some things I just don’t need to see.
The witches were sitting on the ground at the bottom of the stairs, three of them laying on hands, healing Lucky Landry. “Margaud?” I said. “We have anything or anyone else on the way or hidden with the pigs?”
“No, sir,” she said, sounding like a soldier who had just been censured by her sergeant. “Clear.”
“Derek, Clermont, Gabe, and Shauna. As soon as Lucky can think straight and Gabe has the silver out of his body, we’re gonna have us a nice long talk. We have aaall night.”
• • •
It took two hours to heal all the injured, and while I waited I drank the tea Clermont had promised. It was a delicious, stylish, pungent black from China, described on the package as a Super Fancy Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe. Having discovered that we were fellow tea lovers, he and I talked teas while he dug the slug out of his son. It was bizarre conversation, talking about attractive, chunky, golden-tipped first flushes from various provinces in China, India, Sri Lanka, Ceylon, and other places. To a non–tea lover it was silly talk, and I caught Derek rolling his eyes once as he drank coffee passed out by a beautiful, mixed-tribe, American Indian blood-slave, one who was over a hundred years old and not above teasing the much, much, much younger man with sly looks and come-hither stares. Not that Derek understood that she was a slave by choice and old enough to be his great-great-grandmother. Vamps and their humans are sneaky.
Derek called Auguste and Benoît in. The brothers had been waiting in the dark to remove us in retreat or victory, either one. And then Derek, Auguste, and a vamp went to get Margaud, who didn’t want to abandon her position to sit with the enemy suckheads. She put up a good verbal resistance and fired off three warning shots before I pulled out my earbud. Eventually someone took her off the air. I didn’t know how Derek finally convinced Margaud into the airboat, but De
rek was good-looking and persuasive, or maybe the former military angle worked. Or maybe her brother just picked her up and tossed her on board. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Near two a.m., I judged that everyone was healed and calm enough for discussion and called all the participants to the front porch. There weren’t enough chairs, so Clermont made everyone but the main participants sit on the floor, equaling out one and all. There were vamps and humans and witches sitting side by side, close together, sharing floor space without bloodshed. It would have been inspiring had Clermont and I not promised utmost retribution to anyone who caused trouble.
I opened the meeting with a few vampire terms and their meanings, including the devoveo and the dolore, the insanity of freshly turned vamps and the insanity of vamps who suffered the loss of a close loved one. I explained that witches were seldom successfully turned vamp, remaining in the devoveo forever, and ended with a plea for both sides to find a way to end the rift between the races and find a way for the lovers to be together. It was a lot of words for me, with even more mmms and hmmms and uhs and ahs. I’m not a public speaker. Not at all. It’s easier to shoot first and divide up the dead later, but maybe I was growing up.
When I was done, Clermont stood and spoke to Lucky Landry. Lucky was tied to a chair and to the porch railing, just in case, but he listened far better than I expected, maybe because Clermont opened with the words, “I tired o’ this war between coonass and coonass.”
Despite himself, Lucky chuckled and looked down. He took a deep breath and said, “I tired o’ it too.” He looked at his daughter, sitting on the floor, hand in hand with Gabe, love and determination in her eyes. “You want dis suck— You want dis vampire? You love him for real?”
“I do,” Shauna said. Her chin came up defiantly. “And I’m carrying his baby.”
Lucky pulled in a breath and the flames danced along his bound arms.
“I love him, Daddy. If you hurt him, I’ll never forgive you. Not. Ever. And I’ll spend the rest of my life keeping your grandchild away from you.”