Shadow Rites

  “Get a room,” Eli said, sounding snarly. Or jealous of our lovey-dovey stuff. He hadn’t seen his honey bunch in a week.

  Bruiser poured Eli a glass, passed it to him, and poured a glass for himself. The glasses were real crystal and rang when we followed his example by lifting our glasses and clinking them, then sipping. I didn’t make a face. It wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t beer. As Bruiser might do, I lifted my eyebrows in question.

  Ignoring my inquiry, Bruiser closed his eyes in appreciation of the champagne. When he opened them he said, “It’s possible that the scan of your house was more than simply a scan. It was likely an initial attack of some sort, possibly for a future goal or need. And despite the witches being gone, this may not be over.” He looked at me, his brown eyes hard.

  I took another sip of the champagne, waiting, knowing I wasn’t going to like this.

  He said, “I told you I intended to do a search of the house and grounds while you changed clothes. I found no traces of magic anywhere inside or on your grounds. But in the alley where you were taken and where the two witches disappeared, I found this.” Bruiser reached over and opened the liquor cabinet. From it, he removed a foil-wrapped object, about four inches by three, and about half an inch thick. He placed it on his suit-pants-clad knee and carefully removed the foil, folding back the layers that were wrapped around and around. As he worked, I drew on Beast-sight and the thick flash of magics were instantly visible. The energies were a bright glow, light green, the exact shade of the scan that had gone over my house.

  When the foil was unfolded, the pale green energies glowed with power, so bright I had to close my eyes against the brilliance. With my eyes slitted against the glare, I studied Bruiser’s find. It was a brooch, the focal stone a large green jewel carved into a scarab. There were peacocks to either side of the scarab, the birds facing away from the green, beetle-carved, central gem. Jeweled tails swept up and out from the birds and over the scarab, their jeweled peacock tails spreading above it.

  “Are they the same color energies used by the women in the working?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Where did you find it?”

  “In the alley. From what you said, it was possible that they dropped it when they fled, possibly why the younger woman screamed, unable to retrieve it or keep it from being captured by the police. The older woman may have stopped her from going after. Or . . .” He turned the brooch in his hands, the long fingers brushing the edges as if reading the magic. “Or it could be bait leading to a trap.”

  “Why leading to a trap?” Eli asked. The limo made a left turn and the green energies wafted off to the side in a slow trail of light that even Eli could see. “The energies point west,” he said, understanding.

  My internal compass was pretty good, but Eli’s was better. He said he had iron filings in his nose so he always knew which way was north. I hadn’t laughed. He might have been serious.

  “That’s why it might be a trap,” Eli added. “And that would make the scanning of the house all smoke and mirrors.”

  “More,” Bruiser said. “It has a scent.”

  I leaned in and sniffed it. “No, it doesn’t. Except for magic.”

  His eyes on me, Bruiser said, “You can’t smell it. Because it’s your scent.”

  Eli’s eyes narrowed. I went still for the space of several heartbeats. I unfolded my left hand from the stem of the champagne glass and looked at the palm, thinking back. “I was asleep and maybe dreaming about Angie. There was this prickly sensation crawling over my left fingertips, up my fingers. It snuggled into my palm like Angie’s fist. I remember being happy. Smiling in my sleep.

  “Then it burst up my hand and arm and into me.” I looked between my business partner and Bruiser and set the champagne glass down. “It felt like a magical bomb going off.” The remembered sensation rushed through me again. “I remember thinking it was something like . . . like burning cactus, the thorns on fire, the blooms like some kind of weapon blossoming open through me. For what was probably only a few seconds I felt scorching thorns ripping through me like heat-seeking missiles. Which had been way too poetic for me.”

  “The actual wording of a spell, perhaps?” Bruiser murmured. “Or something tied to the brooch itself?” Studying the jeweled pin in his hand, holding it by the edges as if to preserve fingerprints, Bruiser rotated it, tilting it one way and another. Then hefted it up and down slightly, as if weighing it. He said, “There is a distinct pulling sensation to the west as well. When I move it, I can feel a directional tug on my fingers. If it isn’t a trap, it could be a homing beacon. Or a tracking beacon.”

  Eli shrugged. So did I.

  “So we’re back them dropping it on purpose,” Bruiser said. “To lure you somewhere?”

  “It didn’t smell or feel like that,” I said. My palms itched and I scratched first one, then the other.

  “Body language suggested the younger woman was violently angry just before they disappeared,” Eli said.

  “You have to report to Leo, so . . . we can let him examine it while we’re there,” Bruiser said. His eyes were still serious, his body held tightly, as if ready for a fight. Worried about how I would react to what he said. I scanned outside and placed the limo. We were turning onto the street at the front entrance of vamp HQ, the Mithran Council Chambers. At least I was dressed for it.

  “Leo wants to collect every magical thingy he can get his taloned hands on,” Eli said. “I vote no.”

  “It isn’t ours,” I said. “We know witches dropped it, and under current operating protocols set in place for the upcoming conclave, that means the Witch Council has legal claim to it. And while I’m not happy about whatever it was doing in my house, I won’t let Leo confiscate just it on general principle. There needs to be a good reason for me to let him steal something.” Which was as tangled a set of mores as I’d ever heard come out of my mouth.

  “If you keep the brooch, and if you, in your official capacity, request me to do so, I can track the spell. You don’t need an order from Leo,” Bruiser said.

  That statement was full of “ifs,” which meant it was full of political implications for the vamps and for me. I sucked at politics, though I was trying to learn. But the statement also showed just how much Bruiser had changed and grown. There was a time when he had been so attached to the MOC that nothing came before his master. Now I came before Leo. That gave me a case of the warm fuzzies all over. “I’d appreciate that,” I said. “We can always read Leo in later if needed.”

  “Make it so, number one,” Eli muttered. I kicked him in the shin and he laughed.

  Bruiser gave me an elegant nod and said, “I’ll let you off and have the limo take me home to pack a few things. Provided I can find a means to photograph it, I’ll send a picture of the brooch to Alex and to Leo. And I’ll be in touch. You go be Enforcer.”

  The job that used to be his. Bruiser folded the foil around the brooch and put it in his pocket. That was when I realized he had wrapped it in lead foil to enclose the energies. When did Bruiser start keeping lead foil handy, the kind one used to cart around magical devices?

  * * *

  We pulled up to the solid iron gate at vamp HQ, more properly known as the Mithran Council Chambers, and the driver spoke, then pulled in a bit more. Eli’s window rolled down in front of the security camera. I leaned in so they could see my face too, and Eli said, “Eli Younger of Yellowrock Securities and the Enforcer reporting as requested.”

  I sat back in my seat and considered all the new things I learned on a daily basis from my partners. For instance, Eli had called me the Enforcer. Not Jane Yellowrock. He surely had a reason for that choice. The iron gate began to roll back and Eli said to me, “Spin is everything,” as if he could read my mind. “Propaganda can do wonders both before and after a battle.”

  “This is not going to be a battle.”

  Eli
snorted with derision. It sounded remarkably like one of mine.

  Bruiser said, “With any Master of the City, undead life itself is a battle.” It had to be even more so when the Master of the City was also the overall Master of the greater Southeast U.S.A. With the exception of Florida, Leo Pellissier had the Southeast under his control and dominion, had the loyalty and gratitude of Sedona, Seattle, and a few other city masters, and was arguably the most powerful vamp in the United States.

  There were two other vehicles in the circular turnaround in front of HQ, both armored vamp-mobiles. Katie and Grégoire—Leo’s heir and second-in-line heir, both of whom were his dinners and his lovers (vamp feeding and sexual habits almost always combined the two), were here and were parked in front, which was strange. Eli said, again without my asking, “The back entrance is closed for security upgrades. We’re still installing the new traffic spike system under the porte cochere.”

  “Still?”

  “Problem with the timer. It’ll be finished by tomorrow, EOB.” EOB was end of business. Meaning by five or six o’clock p.m. Eli got out of the limo without the driver’s help and shut the door. He stood with his back to us, ostentatiously studying the grounds, giving me a moment alone with Bruiser. Who gripped my upper arm and pulled me across the seat, my bottom sliding across the leather with ease.

  “I’ve missed you,” he whispered into my ear as the privacy partition rose silently between us and the driver. Bruiser’s arms went around me and my head went back. The heat of an Onorio’s body warmed my skin. The scent that had always meant Bruiser, combined with the new notes that said Bruiser the Onorio, filled my senses. His mouth opened and his teeth grazed the tendons and muscles that connected shoulder to head.

  Inside me, Beast quivered with interest. Big-cats’ mating rituals included the female being bitten just there, or behind the ear, and held still while the mating took place. It was a pseudosubmission that Beast would never allow unless she wanted the biter as mate.

  Along with her interest was my own reaction that was never very far from me, the memory of being held down while Leo forced a blood meal off me. Bruiser was trying to help me through it, past it, and he was doing a great job, as the minuscule gush of fear had already morphed into something hotter and more demanding. I slid a leg up over his and he lifted me onto his lap, straddling him.

  His cheek and nose skimmed my neck and up to my ear. “Do you remember the first time we went to a party in this limousine?” he asked.

  Ohhh. Yeeeah . . . Us on the floor, one of his hands down my top and the other up my skirt. If I hadn’t been wearing a weapon strapped to my thigh, we might have gotten more than just frisky that night. The weapon had sorta stopped that. I hadn’t been supposed to carry a weapon into the party of vamps and their humans. “Mmmm,” I hummed in response.

  “Are you wearing a weapon tonight?”

  “Um-hum.” My mouth found his and I sucked his tongue into my mouth, pulling him close, until his need was pressed hard into the center of me. I shoved my feet around his backside and locked my ankles, nearly knocking us to the floor. Again. Bruiser braced his legs on the seat across from us, grabbed the back of my head with one arm around me.

  “If I never told you,” he growled, grinding us together, “I hate pants on you.” He kissed me so hard our teeth clacked together, and my lips swelled with the pressure. His heated scent filled my nose. I pulled him to me with one hand and slid the other into his dress shirt, sending a button flying, ricocheting inside the limo. Beast growled. The sound came out of my throat in a vibration that demanded.

  And Eli knocked on the glass.

  Bruiser cursed foully, promising a terrible death and dismemberment to my partner. I laughed against his mouth, my breath fast huffs of interrupted need.

  The knock came again, along with a fainter click. Over the loudspeaker the driver said, “Forgive me for intruding, sir, but Mr. Younger has informed me that the Master of the City is awaiting Miz Yellowrock. With some impatience.” I heard that distant click again as the driver returned us to audio privacy. I could have sworn he was laughing.

  “We,” Bruiser gasped, “will pick this up the moment I return from searching out the magical imperative of the brooch. And I don’t care if I have to drag you out of a business meeting with the Witch Council, the Mithran Council, and the governor. We will finish this.” Bruiser’s heart was thumping madly against my chest. It had been a while for us. I eased away from him, unlocking my heels and sliding to the seat beside him. He held my eyes for a moment, the look promising much more than any words could, his eyebrow quirking up. Just the one. I felt my belly do a slow roll. “You ruined my shirt,” he accused much more mildly.

  “Just one button.”

  “Do you intend to sew the button back on?”

  “Nope. I intend to destroy another one as soon as possible.”

  Bruiser barked with laughter, smoothing my hair back again. He rearranged the stakes he had misplaced in my bun. Kissed me again, much more softly and gently. “He will smell me on you.” He was speaking of Leo, who had once upon a time claimed me for himself, until it was explained to the master suckhead that I was neither territory nor a slave. He had claimed Bruiser too, but that was before becoming Onorio had freed him from the chief fanghead.

  “Good,” I said. “Old guys sometimes need reminders about who belongs to who. Whom. Whatever.”

  Bruiser stilled, his brown eyes holding me. “And do we belong to each other?”

  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say to that. We were exclusive. But the relationship hadn’t gotten to the three-word-phrase, four-letter-word state yet. I love you. Which thought totally terrified me. I looked down, straightening my clothes. “We’re still finding out.” With that cryptic statement, I grabbed my lipstick that had fallen out of my one good pocket and opened the limo door.

  Bruiser said, “Don’t forget date night tomorrow night. You and me at the Rock N Bowl. And my place afterward to address the button problem.”

  I closed the door and escaped.

  CHAPTER 3

  You Will Not Blow It Up

  Outside, Eli wore an expression even more obscure that usual. I expected him to tease me or say something, but he simply looked me over and handed me a tissue. “Wipe your mouth and put on new lipstick. You’re smeared.”

  “Spoilsport,” I accused. “You enjoyed that.”

  He chuckled evilly. Leaving me behind, he climbed the steps with the measured tread of a man with things on his mind. I wiped my mouth and chin and applied lipstick, following my partner up to the entrance of vamp HQ. This was why Eli and I were such a perfect team, the ability to anticipate each other’s moves, needs, thoughts, plans. It was especially effective in battle, and against vamps, battle was always likely.

  “Where do we stand on the ability to prevent a shooter across the street?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at the windows there and surreptitiously watching the limo pull out of the drive and down the street. All the upper windows in the two-story building were closed, thankfully. I had been shot at recently from that vantage point, and the local law hadn’t caught him. Or her.

  Eli said, “Leo’s lawyers are still in negotiations with the owner and the property management company, but the offer Leo made was too good for them to pass up. They’ll take it. And if they don’t, we’ll manage something.”

  “You will not blow it up.”

  “Now who’s the spoilsport?” He flashed me a slice of a grin before we stepped into the glass cage at the front door.

  The front entrance system of the Mithran Council chambers was simple on the surface. Visitors stepped through the first “glass” door, which wasn’t just glass. It was triple-paned polycarbonate bullet-resistant glass, strong enough to stop most ammunition up to a small rocket. The doors locked behind the visitors, securing them in the see-through cage, also composed of polycar
bonate bullet-resistant glass and steel supports. Then, when the security person watching the entrance on camera was satisfied that the visitors were welcome, the inner doors, ditto on the polycarbonate, opened. If the person watching wasn’t satisfied, the visitor would be asked to remove all weapons, empty all pockets, lift shirts, and remove shoes. Airport security measures had been incorporated too, with metal detectors built into the outer walls. As we stood inside the cage, Eli and I had now been scanned and inside HQ a quiet alarm had gone off. We didn’t have to do the partial strip show, however, since we were part of the team.

  Operation Cowbird was still in place, meaning that we were not just worried about attackers from outside, but were still apprehensive about bad guys already inside HQ, especially since two of the baddest of the bad were chained up in the basements, one troublemaker in sub-five and one a bit higher in a private scion lair. Neither vamp was physically capable of escaping. Neither was even coherent. Heck. Neither of them might have healed brains yet. But that hadn’t stopped vamps in the past and humans had paid with their lives. Unfortunately, unlike the rogue vampires I was famous for hunting, the vamps in the bowels of the building were important bargaining chips—or would be when they healed enough—saved for the European Vampires’ visit, and I couldn’t behead them, no matter how many humans they had killed.

  HQ’s inner doors opened and the stink of vamp and blood and human rushed at us: the peculiar herbal scent of mixed vamps was peppery and astringent and reminiscent of a funeral home, with the assorted dying flowers. Humans and their blood were a permanent part of the circulating air system, always hanging in the air from feedings. And sex. Not to forget sex. Many humans, when fed upon, and when given small drops of vamp blood as payment, developed high sexual drives, while also being passive and nonresistant to advances. The perfect and willing blood-servant or blood-slave.

  Something else I didn’t like.