Death's Rival

In the hallway, I met Derek’s eyes, dark and hostile. I opened my mouth to give him orders. Instead, I said, “You are the most brutal human being I have ever met.” I hadn’t intended to say the words, but they matched my thoughts. Deep inside, Beast huffed with amusement.

“Unlike humans, the vamps will heal,” he said shortly, lip curling. “It’s war.”

“The excuse of soldiers for millennia.”

He didn’t react. I didn’t expect him to. “The blood you sent was lost in the fire,” he said. “We got some from them”—he canted his head down the hallway toward the parlor and the cages—“but we need some from the others to compare.”

“I have some in my house from the Seattle clan’s humans.”

“Yeah? I’ll send Chi-Chi for it.”

“Sure. Whatever.” I walked away from him, showing him my back too. I left the house, closing the front door behind me. And dropped against the red-painted door, heaving breaths. “Holy moly.” I put a hand to my chest. “I’m not dead.” And I fought laughter, knowing they might hear me inside. Or smell me. Sweat started to trickle down my sides, sticky and stinking of the aftereffects of fear.

When I had myself under control, I pushed away from the door and melted into the shadows. The night was warm and muggy, and the sweat wasn’t likely to dry. So far, winter in the Deep South was a joke. I needed a shower, fighting leathers, and info. I needed food. I jumped the fence into the narrow alley separating Katie’s from the building next door and walked down the narrow space, checking the cameras I had installed as I moved. Instinct. Habit, to check my security work for Leo’s heir. It all seemed okay.

The brick fence behind Katie’s was taller than I was by far, and I took advantage of the small hand – and footholds as I half climbed, half vaulted it, landing on the other side in the dark, and relaxed. I could tell by the smell that no one was here. I was alone. Safe. For now. Weird how a house that wasn’t mine, and never would be, felt like home.

Inside, I stripped and showered, standing under the heated water, letting it pound my muscles, washing the smoke and blood off me. There was remarkably little blood, and almost none of it mine. I washed my hair, shaved my legs, all the girly things I do so seldom. When I shift and then shift back, the hair is always fully grown again, which, even with my Cherokee-lack-of-hairiness, is a pain to remove. But this time, it felt like therapy, like feeding my girl soul, which I so seldom did.

Afterward, standing in my bathroom in the steam, the exhaust fan going, I coated my skin with pure jojoba oil and plaited my wet hair into a tight French braid. It wouldn’t dry quickly, but the damp didn’t bother me. I dressed with care in my long silk underwear, and when I could put it off no longer, I dialed Leo. He didn’t answer, and I closed the phone.

I opened the bathroom door, heard a click, and stopped in the doorway. Sniffing. Someone was here. I looked around, breathing in silently, slowly, thinking, analyzing the sound I had heard. The click was the kitchen door. I had changed the locks, but that didn’t stop anyone really determined. I switched off the bathroom light, throwing the house into night shadows.

A man had been here. I sniffed again. Yeah, a he. Male. Sweaty. Nervous. A stranger. Just like the stranger in the hotel, the one I’d killed weeks ago. I sniffed again, mouth open. Gun oil. The stink of a gun, recently fired. Herbal shampoo. Not Chi-Chi, here to pick up the blood; not anyone I knew. But if I survived tonight, I’d recognize his scent again.

Soundless, eyes on the bedroom doorway, I stepped to the bed and felt around on the fighting leathers for the holstered Walther and a vamp-killer. I came up with the smallest one, six inches of silver-plated steel, crosshatched steel grip, and gripped it backhanded in my left. Safety’d off the gun, and stepped slowly, weight balanced evenly, into the foyer. Night sight kicked in, the shadows growing lighter, the light through the windows brighter.

By the scent traces, he hadn’t come in through the front door. I stepped across the foyer, paused at the stairs. He hadn’t gone up there, but he had paused here for a while. More nervous. Edgy. I followed his scent back to the kitchen, to the side door. He had come and gone through here. While I was in the shower. Weapons on the bed. Nothing with me but a hair stick I could use on a vamp as a stake. Nothing to defend against humans. Stupid! He could have opened the door and shot me. So why hadn’t he? Because he had come in to kill me and heard the shower go off? Seen the weapons? Assumed I had a functioning brain cell and that I’d be armed, and had decided not to try to kill me. Instead, he had done . . . what?

I moved through the dark house to the kitchen door leading to the ground-floor level of the long, two-story porch. The door was shut, but the wood jamb was splintered where it had been kicked open, light-colored wood splinters on the darker floor. So . . .

I turned and studied the house, feeling, smelling, tasting the air. The blood vials. I raced back to the bedroom and bent over the shipping container. “Crap!” The bag holding the blood vials was gone. Rage boiled through me, Beast’s fury. Mine, she thought at me. Came into my den. Took what was mine. Thief of blood, she thought. Beast was possessive of her belongings. Of my belongings, for that matter. But . . . The laptop was still on the bed, the tiny green light showing standby mode. So was my arsenal. The intruder stole only the blood.

That severely limited who the traitor in Leo’s organization might be. Because only a very few vamps, blood- servants, and humans knew I had the blood, and even fewer might have guessed it was in my house. A human from Seattle might have figured it out, but more likely, the traitor had been in Katie’s house only moments ago. And he or she called the enemy. Mentally, I listed the people in Katie’s tonight. Derek and his boys: Angel Tit, Martini, and Chi-Chi. Katie. Koun. Alejandro and Estavan—vamps of Spanish descent who had been loyal to Leo for centuries. Girrard DiMercy, who had not always been loyal. Five blood-servants. Bruiser. The priestess. Crap. The priestess? She was loony tunes. Or so she appeared. Reach had included her in the list of possible bad guys, Leo’s possible spy. Reach . . . Crap. Reach.

If he had access to the security, and I had to assume he did, then Reach knew a lot more about the internal workings of the whorehouse, and more about Katie’s plans and thoughts, than I did. For all I knew, he had eyes in my house. I hadn’t done a sweep for electronics since I first moved in. I put a search in the back of my mind for later.

There were an awful lot of choices to consider for the position of traitor. Anytime the number of possible suspects went above five, things got sticky, especially when one of them was my security expert. But what would be Reach’s motivation? He didn’t need money. He couldn’t be forced to be a traitor, like somebody kidnapped his dog, like on a cheesy TV crime show. But then, everyone had a vulnerability somewhere.

Leo would know the hearts and intentions of any of his scions he fed from and shared blood with. Had he fed from all the vamps there? I had no idea. No one but Bruiser would know that, which meant that Bruiser might be in danger. Again.

Still in the dark, I dressed fast in fighting leathers and when the knock sounded, I was ready. I shoved the last blade firmly in place, gripped one of the Walthers as I walked to the front door. Drawing on Beast speed, I ripped open the door and grabbed Chi-Chi’s shirt collar, yanked hard, pulling him across my leg. He overbalanced and I stepped back, letting him fall. But he was fast. He drew his sidearm as he fell, took the landing on his shoulder and rolled, the gun in a two-handed grip. He had me in his sights. I smiled as I stared him down the barrel of my own weapon. “My 380 will kill you just as dead as your nine-millimeter will me, and all we’ll be is dead. Let’s both just take a minute, okay?” I took a breath and blew it out to show him how to relax. “Did you send someone here to steal?”

“Huh?” Honest confusion leaked from his pores, but confusion from what? Landing in my foyer? My question? Or surprise that I had figured it out?

I sniffed, searching for anything that might suggest change in his pheromonal state. “Someone broke in here while I was in the shower and stole the blood I collected. That was too fast unless someone was dispatched here from Katie’s. Maybe with orders to kill me if the opportunity arose. Who did you call?”

His aim steadied. His full lips firmed. His dark skin gleamed in the streetlight pouring in. “Legs, don’t make me shoot you.”

I detected no scent of deception on his body, heard none in his tone. Saw none in his body language. But I firmed my stance. “Who at Katie’s used a cell after I left? Because someone called in a thief with a gun.”

I could see thoughts processing, his eyes taking on a slightly unfocused state as he replayed the last half hour. “Five people that I know of, but we dispersed. Could have been more.”