The paramedic came back, staring at me, studying my face, my body, and only now noticing the array of weapons. His gaze lingered on my ringless left hand. “Are you really his wife?”
“I don’t wear rings when I fight. They can get hung up on things.” Which was a lie of omission and misdirection, but I didn’t care. My voice went breathless. “Is he going to live?”
“We don’t know. He has a sinus rhythm sometimes. A normal heartbeat,” he clarified. “Sometimes not. My partner is bagging him.”
“Bagging him” meant Bruiser wasn’t breathing on his own. I blinked tears away just as Koun stepped from the back of the ambulance, licking his own wrist. I had been healed by vamps a few times, but I didn’t know what it took to be healed from . . . death. Apparently blood, and from Koun’s pale skin, a lot of blood. He was half-naked, dressed in sweat-slick skin, blue and black tattoos and a loincloth, sword at his side. Koun was taller than I was with the shoulders of a Viking and eyes like the North Sea. He was blondish, forever young, and mercy had long burned out of him. He looked and saw me. “I left my master’s fight to heal a human,” he snarled. “You owe me a boon, woman.” He pulled his sword.
I stepped back, going for my Walther. But he was on me in an instant, moving faster than I could see, with a little pop of displaced air. His long blade coming at my throat. Time slid into slow motion. His sword sliced at me, level and lethal, catching the red of embers, wavering in the heat of the burning clan home. Beast slammed power to me. The blade slicked into my throat as I jumped away, still fumbling for the gun even as my feet went out from under me and my muscles went into a shoulder-tucked roll. I landed hard. Heard officers shouting, “Put down the weapon!” And, “Police!” like a chorus of the tone-deaf. Gunshots sounded and Koun stumbled, coming back up upright, the wounds not even slowing him. He stood over me, one foot to either side, much as the cop had stood, his sword held in both hands, blade down, over me. “A boon!” he demanded.
I thought a boon was a favor, but with more connotations, and I wasn’t going to agree to the unknown without a negotiation, even if I sucked at them and I had a sword at my throat. “What boon?”
“I am weakened, and the primo requires yet more blood. You will fight in my place.” With one hand, he pointed to the trees, in the general direction of the gunshots, which were coming closer, more distinct.
“Done,” I said. He stepped back and I rolled to my feet. “How many are there? Who are they?”
“Perhaps three score of the enemy were still alive when I left, unless our attackers have reinforcements. They did not announce themselves by name or clan. We have half that many, fighting against shadows and cowards.” At Koun’s words, the humans nearby should have commented or questioned or at least said, “Huh? What?” They didn’t. More vamp mojo I didn’t understand.
I thought a score meant twenty, so sixty opponents. Crap. It was a small war. I turned my back to him and trotted across the pasture, stopping at Bitsa to pull the M4 and slide into the harness.
My breath deepened; my heart thumped like a bass drum against my ribs. “Not fun, so much,” I said aloud. No leather and armor, no silver studs, no magical shield to protect me from bullets.
I laughed. “Yeah. I do.” I trotted past the barn, where horses milled, restless and anxious with the smell of blood and smoke. The scent of their fear was like an aphrodisiac to Beast, but the added reek of big-cat sent the horses into full-blown panic. Hooves struck stall walls, screams of terror and challenge bugled on the night air. I sped up to take my scent away from them. Ahead, smoke and lights danced drunkenly in a field, illuminating surrounding pine trees and another horse barn, the central barn doors open to the dark and the stall doors like half-open eyes, staring out over the field. This barn was older, without the telltale scent of fresh manure. By the smell, it was full of hay and diesel-powered machines. The pasture around it had been planted in hay, thigh deep and brown, ready for the final harvest of the long growing year.
Stopping behind a large-bole pine, I studied the scene through all my senses, the night too black and the lights too bright to rely solely on sight. There were five or six vamps and as many human blood-servants in the barn, some bleeding, stinking of sweat and vomit. I caught the strong tang of a chemical that I now recognized, bitter and metallic and artificial. Beneath the metallic tang I smelled the beery scent that belonged to the vampire who had challenged and defeated three master vamps and left them sick. It belonged to the vamp who had sent blood- slaves after me, and who had killed and drained the men on the Learjet. And I realized, standing in the trees, the air saturated with the stink, that though the beery scent was native to the master vamp, the metallic, chemical smell was man-made, not natural in any way.
I looked out over the field of hay and the circle of trees, smelling and hearing others, injured or dead, lying in the tall grasses, some of them the enemy’s vamps and humans, some of them Leo’s.
I smelled Derek Lee, close, only a few paces over, his body strong with the bitter scent of battle. He was speaking into his com unit, and I could hear the new men, the Tequila Boys, his newest former marines, home from Iraq or Afghanistan, talking back into his earpiece, their voices muffled. In the dark, I saw a guy in camo bend over a vamp half-hidden in the grass, and offer his wrist to feed on. It was Tequila El Diablo and it was unexpected that he would be generous to a vampire in need. Not many humans, and even fewer marines, liked vamps enough to spit on them if they were on fire, but maybe they knew one another, or more likely, money talks. Vamps were known to offer most anything when they were wounded and needed blood to heal. El Diablo was unusual for one of Derek’s men. I liked him for reasons I couldn’t name, except maybe his ready smile and his laughing eyes. Marines with laughing eyes are a rarity.
Farther on, I saw another new guy, Tequila Cheek Sneak, as he clubbed a vamp to the ground. It wasn’t one of ours, so I didn’t react, but I made a note to keep an eye on him.
Farther yet, at the edge of the woods, I saw two other Tequila Boys pulling an injured soldier off the battlefield. A vamp followed them to help with the healing; I thought it was Leo’s former daughter-in-law, Amitee Marchand, which was weird on all sorts of levels. Amitee hated Leo, but maybe a common enemy had healed some wounds.
Closer, I scented Innara and her anamchara, Jena, the mind-joined female vamp leaders of Clan Bouvier. One moved, the light of weapons-flash catching her face, and I stepped back into the shadows. Innara was no longer the thin, petite, elegant vamp of our few meetings, but a warrior, lips pulled back in a snarl to expose fangs glistening in the dark, a silver-plated short sword in one hand and a handgun in the other, her eyes vamped out, the blood red sclera like openings into Hades. Her muscles were sharply defined and blood smeared her mouth and chin.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose and bristled. Beast hissed deep inside. I had never seen a vampire at war, and her vision didn’t blink away, but reappeared in negative image on the inside of my lids. She was wearing a headset, a modern accouterment to her primitive fury.
She was upwind of me and so didn’t know I was there until I said, softly, “Innara, coleader of Clan Bouvier.”
Her head jerked and focused on me in the dark. She growled.
“It’s Jane,” I said. “Koun sent me to fight in his place. Will you tell the others so I don’t get shot?” After a moment her lips relaxed and she nodded, speaking softly into her mic. Derek turned to me and I lifted a hand, seeing the low-light-vision goggles on his face. “Where do you want me?” I asked just as softly, trusting her vamp hearing.
Innara moved with the air-popping speed of her kind and appeared next to me. I tried not to jerk, but didn’t quite manage it, and Innara smiled up at me. Not a human smile of amusement, but the hunting smile of the predator who saw prey flinch. “Leo’s Mercy Blade was to lead the assault on the barn, with Koun at his side. In light of his removal from the field of battle, we are reconsidering our options, and then the master’s Enforcer appears, well weaponed. How fortuitous.”
Instead, Innara spoke into her mic and a moment later I saw a form that seemed to float through the trees like a dark mist, like an owl in flight, his feet never appearing to touch the ground. “The little goddess will fight with me?” Gee DiMercy asked, his teeth flashing in the night. “We fought well in the past. This battle will be a joy and a thing of beauty to behold.”
I flipped the long blade I held, letting it settle firmly in my hand.
“Attack from two sides at once, create a diversion, and leave the way open for the Mithrans to eat the fallen.
