Death's Rival

there to temper his mood. Assuming I didn’t tick him off and make him kill her outright.

Deep in my mind, Beast huffed. We will see the vampire in his den. We will know much, just as when we saw his hidden place in his Clan Den. I had seen one of Leo’s lairs, deep beneath the clan home, which was now burned to the ground and beneath it probably. And yes, I had learned a lot.

And hey, Leo paid the bills. I’d probably suffer vamp-consequences if I didn’t go, once Leo was up to meting them out.

I checked the time and said, “Okay.” And I wondered if I had just screwed up badly or made the smartest move a vamp-hunter could make.

“I have sent the location to your cell phone. Meet me in ninety minutes.”

An hour later, after I had eaten a fabulous steak and a mediocre salad, I dressed in the kind of clothes I wore when I went to visit a vamp instead of to fight a vamp. No armored jacket, no Benelli strapped to my back, no guns except the one I tucked into a boot beside the hidden vamp-killer. Thick denim jeans like bikers wear instead of armored leather vamp-fighting pants. Only three vamp-killers. Hair braided tight. Stakes in the loops at my belt, ready to be tucked into my hair like ornaments when I unhelmeted. I put on the silver choker to protect my neck from fangs. Leo would have plenty of humans around to feed him, but that was no reason to be provocative, and a bare throat was a clear provocation to an injured vamp.

I pushed Bitsa into the street. I felt the eyes of the brothers on my back—and legs and other body parts—as I straddled the bike, rose, and kick-started my Harley. I could also feel their misgivings, which did nothing to quell my own. I checked the phone for the address and GPS directions Bruiser had sent to it, before heading into the Warehouse District of New Orleans.

The Warehouse District was just what it sounded like—the centuries-old storage facilities of the New Orleans docks, where indigo, rice, cotton, food crops, cloth, tobacco, and other items had been shipped downriver and to Europe, in return for silk, porcelain china, tea, and slaves. Later centuries had shipped cars, mechanical tools, raw and formed iron, steel, coal, technology, imported illegal drugs, and exported sexual slavery, cash, liquor, cigarettes. Everything, legal and illegal, moral and immoral, had been stored, for a time, in the warehouses. Now the old refurbished buildings housed artists’ lofts, cafés, exclusive restaurants, galleries, apartments, spas, fitness centers, and all manner of upscale social businesses.

The address I turned in to was a recently rehabbed warehouse, updated and secluded. There were bars on the windows, the wrought-iron fleur-de-lis made so popular by French immigrants, pretty as well as effective at keeping out burglars. The building also had electronic security up the wazoo: dynamic cameras with low-light and infrared capability, keypunch locks; two armed guards with earpieces, bulges suggestive of guns, and the look of trained soldiers patrolled the place. It was all stuff I had recommended to Leo for the Mithran council’s headquarters and his now-burned clan home. I’d have to remember to send him a bill, now that he’d finally followed my advice.

Blinding-bright security lights brought tears to my eyes and threw the place into sharp-angled shadows. I wheeled into the parking area and Bitsa’s roar went silent. I pulled my riding gloves off. I didn’t really need to, and didn’t often ride with gloves, but the finger-by-finger let me scope out the place.

Sitting on the seat, I smelled seafood, hot grease, and coffee—natch—and wine and beer—also natch—and the scents of mold, hot tar, exhaust, stagnant and moving water, and flowers—jasmine, I thought—that marked the city. I saw the last traces of the sun on the horizon, bleeding reddish in the cerulean sky. I smelled humans I recognized. Two of Derek Lee’s Vodka Boys were among the security I saw patrolling. I smelled Bruiser and Wrassler. I smelled Leo’s Mercy Blade, Gee DiMercy somewhere close by, and I smelled several vamps too, which was a surprise. Sabina, the oldest outclan priestess, had been in the parking lot before total dark set in. Day- walking, or dusk-walking, was something only the really old ones can do and live. I could think of no reason for any of them to be here unless they were here for Leo to drink from. Injured vamps needed a lot of blood to heal really bad injuries, even vamps as powerful as the Master of the City. Something tightened deep inside, though I refused to name it fear or worry for the MOC. I unhelmeted, strapped it to the back of the bike, and stuck the hair sticks into my bun, wishing I had brought more than six. I adjusted the vamp-killers so they were easy to hand.

Bruiser glided through the falling dark toward me as I tucked my gloves into a pocket. I studied him as he wove between cars. His dark hair fell over his forehead in a silken wave; his brown eyes were liquid and intent. He was the same, but better somehow, richer, more mesmeric. He moved differently too, smoother, catlike. Sleek. The breeze, hot and wet, shifted, bringing his scent to me. Vamp and human and . . . vamp. He smelled of mixed vamp odor, almost like a blood-slave, the herbal pong something they acquired as they were passed around. As he got closer, his eyes holding me still, I could see even more differences. Bruiser was so full of vamp blood that his eyes were half-vamped out, pupils huge in his brown irises, and not just because of the night. His eyes gleamed, cold and dark and empty, yet hot and speaking to me of sex even before he opened his mouth.

“My Jane. You have arrived.”

I grunted and swung my leg over Bitsa. His Jane. Yeah. Right.

Bruiser reached me and slid an arm around my waist. His arm felt different, harder, stronger, like a steel band, as if he could lift me up and toss me into the air, a dance move to end all dance moves. He pulled me close and ducked his head, nuzzling my neck, his lips hot and softer than velvet and finding that place under my ear that sent shivers through my body, raising chill bumps on my skin—hard to do in the heat. I wasn’t used to being smaller, shorter than anyone, and the sensation of feeling petite and weak against the taller man was oddly arousing. I let him lift me to my toes, breathed in the scent of his sweat on the warm night air. Almost with a will of their own, my fingers laced through his hair.

“I missed you,” he whispered as his other arm went around me, pulling me close, close enough that I knew just how he had missed me. Bruiser was four inches taller than me, and was now clearly stronger too. I knew that, predator to predator. But the knowledge faded beneath the onslaught of his scent, the heat of his skin, and his arousal pressed against me. “I missed you,” he repeated, the three words morphing into a growl.

Beast breathed in his scent with me, claws out but not yet pressing in. Vampire. Much vampire blood, she thought. But still your Bruiser.

He pulled me up, closer, my body crushed against his. I’d never been the little woman before. Ever. But I was now. Weirdly, I liked it. His mouth found mine, his lips hot and soft one moment, hard and demanding the next. My breath caught.

He broke the kiss before I was ready. “When this conflict is done”—his lips moved against my ear—“I’m taking you to my place, and we will not leave until long, long after dawn.”

Heat shot out from the touch of his lips and settled deep in my belly. Spreading out in tendrils of desire and need and pure want. I had to lick my lips before I could answer, half gasping, “Okay. Fine. Sure.”

Bruiser laughed into my hair and swung me to his side, effortlessly. I fell into step beside him. The warehouse had two heavy steel doors and, situated between them, one oversized delivery door. We made our way to it, Bruiser holding me so close my right arm was trapped under his shoulder. He pressed a button, and the delivery door began to slide up, revealing the darkness inside. Our shadows were long and thin across the charcoal-painted cement floor. The room inside was empty, all in gray, with a bar at the back. And doors leading off into the dark. “So, where is the lair?” I asked.

Then it all went to hell.

CHAPTER ELEVEN But He Didn’t Let Me Go

I smelled/heard/tasted the attack before it came, a single breath, pulled in over my tongue, the taste of betrayal. Scent-laden with pheromones: the clan’s Mercy Blade, vamps; Sabina, the older priestess who lived in the vamp graveyard; Katie and Leo. Distinct pops of displaced air, vamp-speed. Blurs of motion.

My expectations ruined me. I expected Bruiser to release me and move two steps to my side. I expected him to draw a weapon. I did not expect him to freeze, my arm clamped to his side, stealing