taking a look at it on webcam pics. The car was on the far side of Highway 10, parked at a one-story house on Ursulines Ave. According to Google, there was a high school nearby, but not much else. Of course, Google was not something I wanted to depend on when planning an op.
“Trap for us?” I asked, sliding into my M4 harness and the holsters for the nine-mils.
“Could be.”
“Okay. I’ll meet them there.” Behind me, I heard the familiar clicks and metal-against-metal of guns being checked and glanced back to see Eli Younger weaponing up as well. I watched to see what he carried and it was pretty much standard, the kind of stuff I had utilized when I first started out.
“If it looks reliable,” Derek said, “we’ll send Leo’s blood-servants to be available.”
Leo was drained. Drained vamps are dangerous. Very. “Okay. I’ll get back to you.”
From my closet floor I lifted the boot box I use for a jewelry box and set it on the bed. Inside were the few pieces I owned, each stuffed inside athletic socks to keep them from rattling around. And to keep my socks all in one place. I placed the black velvet gift box on the bed and lifted out my silver and titanium vamp-hunting collar. Underneath it was the coyote earring that had appeared in the box following a particularly horrible nightmare one night. I paused at the sight. I didn’t have nightmares often, but this one had stuck with me. So had the earring, which was weird, but no weirder than the fact that the pocket watch had somehow gotten into the black velvet box with it. I distinctly remembered dropping the watch-amulet into the box, on top of the socks. The amulet’s magic still smelled like meat. Like blood. Good thing Beast wasn’t hanging around too much. She would want to taste it. Along with the watch, I stuffed the earring in a sock, wondering if they would both reappear, in a different spot in the box the next time I opened it. I removed the collar and put the box back on the floor of the closet.
“You going somewhere?” I asked Eli, questioning his weapons with lifted brows.
He shrugged. “Consider it a job interview for the brawn half of the Younger team.”
“Suit yourself,” I said. “We’re going to rescue a starving master vamp from some kidnappers and torturers. Try not to get your throat torn out.” That made Eli pause half a second in his prep work. He looked over my necklace collar, considering the implications. “No. I don’t have another one,” I said. “If I keep you around—”
“Yeah, yeah. You’ll spring for one.”
“Heck no. These suckers are expensive. I’ll send you to a supplier and you can buy your own.”
“Sweet lady.”
“Your brother had it right. I’m no lady. We’ll take your vehicle.”
Eli shrugged and we were out the door and heading toward Highway 10, Eli driving, me reading out directions on my cell.
The house was in need of a paint job, but it had a newish, post-Katrina roof. It was deep but narrow on the front, with steps up to a porch and working shutters closed over all the windows. In the Deep South, shutters are for hurricane protection, not just looks. Unlike most of the duplexes around it, this was a single-family house, up on seven-foot stilts, with the lower area used for low-head parking and storage. We pulled down the block, behind the SUV, and parked, trees between us and the house.
Chi-Chi climbed into the backseat and closed the door softly, handing us com units. “Lime Rickey and Hi-Fi have reconnoitered and are in position,” he said as we slid into the units and tested functionality. “The front door is six, and Lime is at two, Hi is at seven. We have a single-family dwelling with six-foot alleys to either side and a small backyard, fenced, with a couple of pit bulls, unchained. We have tranks and Lime can take out both dogs safely. What we don’t know is if Leo is inside.”
“Give me a minute,” I said, and slipped out. Eli had rigged his vehicle to be able to turn off all the interior lights, which made it easy to come and go without being seen by neighbors, not that many were up at this hour. I moved through the night, my nose to the wind.
And I smelled blood. A lot of it, which made sense of this whole kidnapping. Leo’s enemy had kidnapped him, drained him, and placed dinner before him. If what I was guessing about the transmission of the vampire plague was correct, it was probably someone who had the vamp disease. If Leo had drunk, it was likely that he was sick now, just like his old lover Rosanne Romanello.
“Copy.” “Copy that.” And a snort of laughter from Chi-Chi.
Listening, sniffing, I moved around the house, drawing on my Beast senses. At one window I heard voices. Panting. It was the sound of pain, when one has been so damaged that one can no longer even scream.
I tapped my mic. “Leo is in a room at nine o’clock. He’s hurt. Where are the blood-servants?”
“Pulling up now,” Chi-Chi said.
“When we go in, have them slit their wrists and follow close.”
“Say again?” Chi-Chi said, startled.
I chuckled, no humor in the sound at all. “Leo will attack any human who gets near. If he scents blood, he’ll likely go for that site rather than rip out their throats. I’m guessing that they know all this, but just in case, remind them. The wound doesn’t have to be deep, but it has to be actively bleeding. It might save their lives. “
“Son of a— Copy,” Chi-Chi said. “Why don’t you take point?”
In this case, point wasn’t a position of honor for the best warrior in the bunch, but the most dangerous position for the one they liked least. “Gee thanks, Chi-Chi.”
“Anytime, Legs.”
At least there was amusement in his tone. I heard a car brake out front and I pulled my shotgun from its spine sheath. Chi-Chi said, “Takeout is here. Trank the dogs.” From the backyard I heard spats of sound and yelps as an air gun fired. The dogs went quickly silent.
“Dogs out,” Lime whispered. “Moving to the back door.”
A moment later Chi-Chi said, “Blood meals are appropriately bleeding.”
I raced around the house to the front door and up the steps, hearing the sound of untrained feet running noisily behind me. The door was steel. Fortunately, when I turned the knob, it clicked open. It wasn’t locked. Which meant very sloppy vamps or a trap. I said a small prayer and pulled on Beast-speed as I pushed open the door and raced inside. The place was unlit and unfurnished, all the rooms I could see were empty, but the smell of blood was everywhere.
Eli moved to my left and just behind: Chi-Chi and Hi-Fi were behind him. We checked each room, though the scents told me everyone was in the room with Leo. From the back of the house, I heard Lime Rickey enter.
I lifted my nose and followed the scent to the room on the left in the middle of the house. A light was on inside. Beast pounded her strength and speed into my bloodstream. I caught a breath and whispered, “On three.” I turned the knob. “One, two, three.” And slammed open the door.
In the space of a single heartbeat, light stabbed my eyes, and the smell of sickness assaulted my nose as I took in the room. It was a bloodbath. There were two bleeding blood-servants standing beside the back wall, and two bleeding vamps, sitting on a blood-drenched sofa. The strangers were sick, all of them.
Shackled to the far wall was what had once been Leo. Silver cuffs burned into his flesh at wrists and ankles. He was vamped out, his jaw dropped and thrust forward, looking as if it was unhinged—three-inch fangs out and glistening. His hair clung to his gore-smeared, sweaty skin in wild, bloody strands. His clothes were mostly torn off. Or bitten off. Fang marks were all over him, at knees, crotch, and elbows mostly, all places away from the defensive weapons of his own fangs and claws. His skin was palepalepale, ashen, dead-looking. His eyes were wild. Insane. His fangs were pearl white, no blood was smeared at his mouth. He hadn’t fed from the infected offerings.
Before the vamps could move, I fired the M4, taking down the vamp on the left, then the one on the right as he stood. Nonlethal, standard ammo, midcenter, abdominal shot placement. Eli and Chi-Chi were standing over the humans, weapons aimed down at them. I hadn’t seen or heard them taken down, but I had felt the thuds under my feet as they hit the floor, forcefully. I couldn’t hear myself ready the shotgun for another round, nor my voice over the concussion in my ears, but I knew the vamps heard when I shouted. “You move, you die true-dead.” One sank back on the sofa, clutching at her belly. The other one rushed me.
I reacted without thinking, dropped to one knee, and fired again, this time a head shot. The vamp dropped like a thrown rock—with momentum. I dodged left, out of the way of the falling body and bloody bits. So much for keeping them all alive.
Leo threw himself against the shackles at the smell of more fresh blood. It was the final proof that he hadn’t
