Death's Rival

A black panther, my white mind murmured. Elisi was a skinwalker. Like me. A protector of the Cherokee, a warrior of the tribe.

The door opened, the vision shattered. I sat up.

Aggie One Feather stood in the doorway, fully human, freshly dressed in the coarse woven robe she wore in a sweat ceremony. Just entering for the session. “I was delayed. My apologies.”

“No need to be sorry,” I said, sitting up, standing, my legs feeling wobbly. “But I think I’m done for the day. Can I come back? Soon?”

Aggie tilted her head, just like she had in my vision, but there the resemblance ended. “Certainly. If you’re sure?”

“Very sure. Thank you.”

* * *

Back home, I showered, dressed, and fell on my bed, face in the pillow. It smelled musty. I needed to change the sheets. Wash clothes. Maybe get a life. On that thought, I slept.

* * *

The sun was setting when I heard a ringing and forced myself awake.

I was in my house, or, rather, the house I was using as long as I worked for the blood-master of New Orleans. It was a nice house, two hundred years old, give or take, remodeled to give it all the modern amenities and still have all the old-world charm, at a nice address in the Quarter.

Yawning, I made my way to the kitchen to see a cell phone lying on two notes, both signed by Troll, Katie’s primo blood-servant and protector. The top note said “Frm: Derek Lee. Angel Tit had no luck with New York contacts.” The second was an invitation to dinner from Katie and her girls. I had missed the girls who lived and worked at Katie’s, and it would be the first relaxing moment in my life recently. I needed some relaxing. The cell started ringing again, so I answered. And heard gunfire. And Bruiser shouting.

“Jane! Are you in New Orleans? We’re under attack!” The phone shifted and I heard him shouting to the side, muffled, “Get him out of here! Alejandro, Estavan, take four men and get our master to Katie’s! Set up a perimeter. Keep them safe! Hildebert, Koun, take over on the battlefield. Lorraine, Bettina, go with Alejandro. Guard your master and his heir! I charge you with—”

“I am going nowhere. This is my home! I stay!” Leo shouted, his voice guttural and vamped out. Even over the phone I could feel the power he was drawing upon, the power of all his clan. “I will not run from my enemies!”

Beast flooded into my system. Phone to my ear, I raced to the side door. I had heard a knock while I slept and hoped it was a delivery. I nearly ripped the door off its hinges. It slammed back against the wall, and I spotted the shipping containers full of my weapons.

“You are of no use to us burned alive,” Bruiser said, going all upper-class British. “Get to a place of safety until we can formulate a plan. Please, Master!”

Master? Things were bad if he was calling Leo Master. I lifted the heavy containers and carried them as fast as I could to my bed. Gunfire sounded so close I held the phone away from my ear. I heard sirens, fire and police, and Bruiser’s voice, grunting. I knew that sound, that specific tone of pain. He was hit. Hit bad. The phone fell and clattered away.

I never had a chance to say good-bye to my father. I had no intention of letting that happen to me again. I tore off the top of the shipping boxes and started to reassemble my weapons.

* * *

I bent over Bitsa, the wind tangling my hair, which streamed out in the wind, chilling the necklace of interlocked links that protected my throat from vamp-fang—the new necklace of silver-plated titanium. I took the old bridge over the Mississippi, the pebbled roadway a patterned hum beneath the tires, weaving between cars and trucks of evening traffic, ignoring both speed and safety laws with abandon. I nearly flew into the countryside on the far side of the river. I could see the light on the horizon miles away. A fire. A big fire.

The smell of smoke was hot on the wind. Wood, plastic, metal, brick, each has its own scent markers as it burns. So does the smell of burning flesh. Human. Foul and horrible, like spoiled pork. I shifted my weight forward and lowered my head over Bitsa, the Harley moving at the peak of her engineering specs, taking curves at top speed. Beast shared her night sight, the shadows glowing green and silver and blue. Her reflexes allowing me to handle the greater speed. Mine, she whispered into my thoughts. Mine.

I slowed, turning into the long drive, zigzagging between cars and fire trucks and emergency trucks, red, white, and blue lights strobing the dark, the artificial lights lost beneath the red-orange blaze of the conflagration. Men and women shouted. Water plumed up and over, aiming into broken dormer windows on the roof of the old wooden clan home. Smoke and fire billowed out from the windows of every story; sparks and flames leaped high into the air. Fire demons—tornadoes that sometimes formed above raging fires, sucking the flames into the gyre— spun high above the madness. The smell of magic tingled on the air, hot and spicy as cactus spines. Gunshots sounded in the distance, punctuated by muffled screams and shouted orders. Ahead, near the flames, I smelled Bruiser on the air, Bruiser and his blood, a lot of blood.

I dropped my Harley and helmet against a tree far from the fire, where the shadows would hide the Benelli strapped to the bike. I raced in, bypassing the cops who tried to stop me. Choosing the ambulance surrounded by the most people, I pushed through the throng, tripped over a hose. Shook off a hand that tried to pull me back. Rounded the ambulance, my boots grinding with my speed. Smelling the blood even over the smoke. Bruiser’s blood. Everything in my life narrowed to that one scent. I dodged another man who tried to stop me, shouting it was too dangerous for onlookers. I jumped into the ambulance. Bent over Bruiser, touched his shoulder, and leaned in to breathe in his scent, my unbound hair sliding forward.

His shirt had been half cut away, bloody rags still on one arm and half tucked into his trousers. Blood smeared his chest, as did brown Betadine and swathes of white bandages centered on his upper left shoulder and his right chest below his pec. Bags of clear fluid hung from IV stands; one was a plasma expander, the other normal saline. His eyes were closed and his skin was chilled where my hands brushed over his chest. But he was full of vamp blood. He would have some residual accelerated healing.

I tried to say something, anything, thinking, Are you okay? Or something like that. Something normal. Instead what growled out of my mouth was “If you bleed to death, I’ll kill you and Leo both.”

A faint smile touched his face, but before he could reply, the paramedic said, “Ma’am, unless you’re next of kin, get out, you.” Frenchy patois. Cajun background.

“She’s next of kin,” Bruiser said, without opening his eyes.

“Your wife, she is?” The paramedic sounded incredulous. I ignored him.

“Sure. She can make any medical decisions for me. My lawyer has the papers.”

Which was news to me, if it was true. And wife? I shook that away, even as Beast purred a satisfied Mine. “What happened?” I asked, knowing it had something to do with my trips and the vamp who was attacking other MOCs. “This is my fault,” I said.

He tried to laugh, but his breath caught with pain. I thought I heard something wet and gurgly in his chest, but the paramedic didn’t seem concerned and the sound stopped.

When he could speak, he said, “You struck the match? Carried the gasoline? Tried to kill my friend and master?”

Inside, I flinched at the two terms used together for Leo, who was both vamp and monster, but I kept it there, in the dark inside me. I shook my head no.

“Just after moonrise, Leo was sitting down to breakfast,” Bruiser said. “We heard gunfire. Vamps and blood- servants attacked, killed the gardeners and three security men in the first ten seconds. Inside of fifteen they had us pinned down inside. By thirty seconds, they had firebombed the house and were taking off on trail bikes that they must have pushed in. Then we heard the second wave, gunfire from the surrounding property. It was well coordinated. They were professionals, well trained, and they are still fighting out there.” He lifted a finger and pointed off behind the house. “How can any of that be your fault?”

I had seen the property from an all-terrain vehicle during my review of Leo’s security systems, and hadn’t liked the easy access to the house. But making Leo move into town and give up his family home hadn’t been an option. When I’d suggested the move, he had lifted a narrow black brow and uttered a laconic “No.” I hadn’t argued