Death's Rival

at the heart. She was stabbing him in the right side of his chest. He was screaming and bleeding, his chest already punctured several times. I raced up and caught her wrist, ripping the stake out of her hand. Innara whirled on me, her short blond hair flying. Before I could react, her fangs were at my throat.

And then she was ten feet away, screaming in pain, dancing like a burned child. Her lips were blistering, swelling as I watched. I touched my silver mesh necklace. I’d never seen it work quite so well on a vamp. Usually they had to bite me, or attempt to, and their tongues might sting a bit before they jerked away. But this—

A blur I halfway saw and totally felt tackled me from the side; her anamchara. My spine formed a sharp C shape and slapped me against the earth with a whiplash speed. I might have cursed again had I any breath. Instinct made me grab her hands, forcing her back and off me. I caught a breath and it hurt when my ribs moved. Another broken rib. Great. I held Jena off; her lips were blistered too, and she hadn’t touched my necklace. Anamchara are mind linked, meaning that they know the other’s thoughts and feelings, and apparently, if they are linked closely enough, their bodies react to the other’s pain. Now I had both of them ticked off. Then I caught a whiff of the blood. Leo’s blood.

I whipped my head to the vamp Innara had been torturing, and threw Jena from me. She let me, landing on her feet and backing away, half stumbling, arms out to the side like a wounded bird.

Derek and El Diablo were holding the vamp up, Derek with the vamp’s hair in his fist, supporting his head. Diablo was still smiling, and this time the smile was calculated and cold. I was still holding Innara’s stake, and I twirled it like a marching band baton as I strode to the vamp. I didn’t even look at Derek. I bent over the vamp and breathed in his scent over tongue and mouth with a soft scree of sound. He hissed at me through two-inch fangs. Which I ignored. I leaned so close I could feel the grave-cold of his chest on my face as I sniffed. Yes. Leo’s blood mixed with the blood of this vamp. I moved close to his face and caught the odor of Leo’s blood on his mouth. I placed the tip of the stake against his heart and looked at Derek. “Do we know where Leo is?”

Derek’s dark eyes were full of disdain, the disdain of the human for the nonhuman. Me. I smiled at his expression, showing my teeth, letting him know I had seen the scorn. He cocked his head in a “We’ll have to fight one day” expression. I chuckled. We understood each other. “No,” he said. “Fanghead boss got to Katie’s front door, but was intercepted in the street. Three of my boys are injured. Leo’s missing.”

Leo’s missing. On my watch. I looked at the vamp and let my teeth show in what was not a smile. “You know, doncha, Corpse? You know where Leo is, right? And we’re going to find out. Take him to Katie’s. Him and any other vamp still alive. Make sure they talk. I want to know everything.”

“Torture seldom provides accurate intel,” Derek said.

“True. But if Corpse talks, I’ll make sure he lives and is adopted into a clan where he has a chance of moving up in the hierarchy. If he doesn’t, I’ll give him to Innara and Jena for dessert.”

The vamp spat at me. I moved fast enough that he missed. Derek didn’t like the speed, but I was getting tired of hiding what I was, feeling ashamed of what I was. I wasn’t fully human, never had been. Or maybe was both fully human and fully other. Whatever.

With a whoosh of air, the scene in front of me blurred in the moonlight. Corpse was gone, ripped out of Derek’s grip. I blinked and tried to focus, seeing Grégoire and Corpse rolling on the ground, vamp-speed making it impossible to tell their limbs apart. Grégoire’s blond head was my only clue who was who. He was latched on the stranger vamp’s throat. I leaned in and grabbed a handful of Grégoire’s blond hair and yanked, pulling him off Corpse and to his feet. Grégoire was maybe a hundred pounds and short, having been changed at age fifteen by a vamp with a predilection for young boys. Pretty, young boys, but he wasn’t pretty now. Grégoire was blood-smeared and vicious, wounded and smelling of the dead. He growled at me and struck out with fangs and claws. Derek and one of his men grabbed Grégoire’s arms. Four others subdued Corpse. I shook Grégoire. “He’s for info on where Leo is. He’s not for killing.”

“He drank from my master. I smell Leo on his mouth.”

“Yeah, I know. Which is why we want him alive until he tells us what he knows, and if he tells us, he gets to live.”

“I will hound him until the day of his true-death. I will challenge him in a blood-duel and chase him—”

Rage roared up in me. “Later!” I screamed. The night fell silent. Fury, like steam, boiled in my blood. I was breathing heavily. So were the other humans. But the vamps had stopped speaking, stopped breathing, and if their hearts ever beat, they went silent too. Like marble statues, they stood or kneeled or sat in the field of hay, immobile as stone. “You can sort it all out later according to the Vampira Carta and Leo’s wishes. For now, I want to know what he knows, and I’m not picky how that’s done.” If he’d been human, I’d have been way picky, a small quiet part of me whispered, which was a double standard I’d look at later. Someday. Maybe.

“If Leo has been kidnapped,” Grégoire said, “he will not survive until the new moon. The swine who calls himself a master Mithran, yet violates the Vampira Carta, will kill him.”

“Swine?” Corpse spat, again. It seemed to be a personal tic, an unhygienic version of a sneer. “Your master’s Enforcer killed my master’s Enforcer without any good reason.” He was speaking in a strong country accent, which still sounded weird coming from a vamp’s mouth. “The Carta and its protocols say she cain’t do that.”

“Ramondo Pitri?” Derek asked.

Corpse stared at me, ignoring Derek, his body posture doing the whole “I’ll never talk, no matter what you do to me” thing, all without him saying a word.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Derek said softly. “I have all the intel on ol’ Ramondo’s made-man past on the streets of New York. So gut this piece of crap. We don’t need him.” Which was just the opposite of what Derek had said earlier. I took that to mean that we were back to playing good cop, bad cop, but with versatile roles.

“No. We’ll give him an opportunity to talk,” I said. “Who knows? His boss might want him alive and come to save him, which would give us the chance to take him. We need a place to hold you, Corpse.” I looked at Grégoire. “And we need him and any of the others who are still breathing—even it’s only when they chat over dinner—alive. Or undead. Whatever.” My voice wandered to a halt as the fury in my blood drained away. Exhaustion tugged at me, a heavy weight.

“I have silver cages,” Grégoire said. “Two of them.” He smiled, and it was an eerie expression on the boyish, beautiful face. Terrifying. It made me not want to know what had been done to him when he was newly sane after being turned.

“Bring everyone still alive and your cages to Katie’s,” I said softly. “We’ll talk with them there.” I knew what I was saying. What I was condoning. I shivered that I could consider the torture of anyone, even a vampire. I wasn’t sure what I was becoming, but was sure I didn’t like me much.

* * *

I entered Katie’s Ladies, one of the oldest still-operating whorehouses in New Orleans, through the front door. I was one of the last to arrive from Leo’s and was greeted by Troll, a tall, bald, burly blood-servant with a voice like a hill of gravel being massaged by a shovel. His real name was Tom, but I’d called him Troll the first time I met him and it had stuck. “Jane. You’re late to the party.” His eyes and tone said he didn’t approve of the festivities, or maybe just the guests, but because he was a blood-servant, his opinion wouldn’t have been sought.

“Yeah. I had to deal with cops and fire trucks before I could get away from Leo’s.”

He leaned to me and sniffed. Blood-servants’ sense of smell was better than that of humans, and his crinkled his nose. “You stink. How’s the clan home?”

I smiled at the insult, but it fell off my face fast. “Gone.”

Troll grunted and there was remorse in the tone. “I liked that old house. What about people?”

“We lost two of Leo’s vamps, both from Clan Bouvier, Louise D’Argent and Peter Schansky. I didn’t know either one, but from their injuries, they were ambushed, immobilized, drained, and then cut to pieces.” I looked away. It had been bad—a slaughter. Whoever had killed them had wanted to leave a message, and it had been up to me to take their heads so that they didn’t rise as a revenant at sunset. That didn’t happen often, but when it did, it was bad. “We also lost two humans—their blood-servants. I had to deal with informing their clan masters.”

“Sorry, Jane.” Troll patted my shoulder. It should have felt awkward, but it didn’t.

“Any word on Leo’s location?” I asked.

He shook his head. “They’re in the parlor. It isn’t pretty,” he warned.

“Yeah. Big surprise.” I squared my shoulders and went on through the house, Troll following me. A thick Oriental rug muffled our footsteps in the entry, and I automatically checked out the security upgrades I had