these guys.
“Derek has new men,” he said.
I thought about that. In some way I had never questioned or understood, Derek was Leo’s before he was my guy. And Derek was merging ten new men into his team, shooters fresh out of combat, honorably discharged, all with nicknames based on tequila drinks, like T. Sunrise, T. Cheek Sneak, T. Grenada, T. Blue Voodoo, T. El Diablo, and T. Firecracker. They were a mixed crew, not all from the same unit, as Derek’s Vodka Boys were, but picked from several different units, or whatever the marines called them. I hadn’t gotten to know them well enough yet to say what I thought of them, except they probably weren’t part of our current stool pigeon problem. “Derek’s new guys were in service overseas when we first got our leak back during the Asheville parley. No. It’s not someone new, unless our bad guy covered his bases and used some big bad mojo to recruit
“Noted. You have a mission. Get on it. And see if you can make the security footage of the fight disappear.”
Post-9/11 means there are digital cameras at every mom-and-pop airport in the nation. I disconnected. Checked Tory. He was still breathing. I should have left, but I pulled my phone and called Reach.
“Evening again, Paycheck,” he said.
“I need to make all the outdoor security footage from Sedona Mountaintop Airport disappear. Review it first and see if you can ID the blood-slaves who just attacked me.”
He cursed, and there was a long silence on the other end. Then keys started clacking. “This is going to cost you, Little Janie.”
“Yeah, yeah. Bill it to Leo. Can you do it?”
“Yes.” The connection ended, but I had no doubt that Reach was ticked off. And maybe worried. If he got caught, it had to be a federal crime.
Security raced in on an electric golf cart, a red light on the top. I started laughing, and the sound had an edge, sharp and caustic. I cut off the laughter. Somehow, Tory was still alive ten minutes later, when the paramedics got there. I slid into the shadows as the real cops showed up, and made my way through the terminal, head down, away from cameras to the ladies’ room, where I pulled off the jacket and washed my clothes, drying them under the hand dryer. It didn’t take long. I had remarkably little blood on me, but I’d still smell like dinner to any vamp who got a whiff. And here I was, going into the clan home of one. My life was totally out of control. I dropped my weight onto the counter, the edge cutting into my palms. I stared at myself. I was shaking.
I’d just killed a man.
And my lipstick was still in place, vibrant against my coppery Cherokee skin. As if it never happened.
Nausea rose in my throat, but no tears started. My eyes didn’t fill. They were glowing Beast-gold. I’d left the pilot and Tory to the cops. The blood-slave I’d tied up and the blood-slave I’d killed. I was a traitor and a coward. I closed my lids and breathed, finding a small calm place inside myself. Though he had attacked me, I offered up a prayer for the spirit of my enemy, Cherokee-style, to the Christian God I had worshipped for all the life I remembered. Wondering if there would come a time when God no longer heard me, or worse, when I no longer prayed. That happened sometimes when one wandered into unfamiliar spiritual areas.
When I opened my eyes again, they were my ordinary amber. I finished cleaning up. Jacket back over my weapons, I smoothed the wisps of black hair that had come free, up into the braid and fighting queue. Straightened the hair sticks. Tugged the jacket. I looked long and lean and fashionably unremarkable. No one noticed me as I exited the terminal, careful to avoid the metal detectors.
The car with my initials in the windshield, written in marker on a piece of white cardboard, was waiting out front, and I slid into the backseat. The driver pulled away but wanted to talk about the appearance of the cops. I looked behind us, as if just noticing them, and said, “Really? Huh.” He took that as me not knowing anything, shrugged, and drove into the night.
The driver, gathering that I wasn’t the chatty type, concentrated on the road, for which I was grateful. It took us over forty minutes to reach the Romanello Clan Home on the outskirts of Sedona, a long, silent drive. I opened the e-file of the Romanello family dossier and tried to read, but the dark pulled at me. As the city fell away, the sky was so black it looked like being in space, and I had never seen so many stars, not ever, anywhere, not even in the Appalachian Mountains a century ago, before electricity lit up the nights.
There wasn’t enough light to sightsee, but I cracked a window and the smells kept my nose busy. The car’s headlights lit red stone bluffs, spiky foliage, low trees, scrub. I was quickly able to pin certain smells on specific plants. A coyote trotted across the road, stopped, and looked at the slowing car before trotting on. I smelled rodents and maybe some kind of squirrel. Baked earth. Smelled an animal with a musky, odd underscent—armadillo roadkill— half roasted from the late autumn sun.
The clan home of the former blood-master of the city was in a canyon, about halfway up, on a ledge. It was in a position that would have been easily defended in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds. The only way to attack it today, barring helicopter, parasailing, ultralight plane, or parachute, was the road. Or a really horrible hike, a mountain climb, and rappel down from the cliff behind the manor hall.
A mile out, a wrought-iron gate blocked the road. We slowed and stopped at a dynamic camera, one that could be operated via joystick from a security console elsewhere. It was a top-of-the-line model with every bell and whistle on the market: motion-sensor, heat-detector, low-light capability, a PIR sensor—passive infrared—and traditional optical. The screws holding it in place were fresh and shiny. The system was new. The fence that trailed out from the road had motion sensors on it and a current running through its wires.
I rolled my window down and heard a mechanical voice say, “State your business.”
I repeated the words Leo had told me to say. “I am Jane Yellowrock, seeking shelter and hospitality, here under parley rules, sent by Leonard Eugène Zacharie Pellissier, Blood Master of the Southeastern United States. I am armed, an Enforcer, but offer my word and guarantee that none shall be harmed by my hand except in defense.”
“Wait.”
Well, that was sweet. The camera swiveled to center on my face. I let them stare while I drew on Beast’s night vision and studied the house in the distance. Constructed of brick and the red stone of the land, it was large, with a wraparound porch, huge arched openings on the outside of the porch that protected matching arched windows on the house wall. The windows were uncovered, revealing the inside. Rugs and wood and plaster interior walls met my enhanced gaze, and though I couldn’t see them, I knew there would likely be automatic steel shutters on the inside to protect against sunlight and attack—vamp security.
A red clay roof had a solar array on its south side and three windmills. Two were modern, tall pipes, white against the black sky, with whirling, spinning tops that looked like serrated blades encased in steel. The third one looked more like a traditional windmill, and on the night breeze I could smell water. Only a little water, maybe pumped into an underground cistern, but a sharp contrast to the arid land.
It was a place of wealth and power, two stories tall, nearly impregnable. I’d seen specs of the clan home, such as existed, drawings made by visitors, but I knew how poorly most people remembered exact dimensions. And no one had mentioned a lair, neither for the vamps nor for their chained-scions, young vamps still in the devoveo of madness after being turned. So there was a lot I didn’t know about the house. I would be flying by the seat of my pants, which I was good at, but it was never safe, and eventually I’d pay the price for my lack of knowledge. I always did.
“Go ahead,” the mechanical voice said. The gate opened with a soft whir and Driver Dude pulled forward, up the hill toward the house. As we moved, low lights along the sides of the drive came on, brightening our way, and screwing with my night vision. Deliberate, I was sure. I closed one eye, peering at the world through the lashes of the other eye.
At the top of the rise, in the shadows of the house, I spotted five men. Each carried guns I could make out in the low light. I couldn’t tell what kind, but I could guess they were modified fully automatic and fully illegal weapons.
