Death's Rival

built, adjacent to and in front of the vault. No windows, no doors. All the internal rooms are no-window, no-door rooms too. Three stories’ worth. And the reason the building was so hard to find? It was purchased by Ramondo Pitri a week before you shot him in your hotel room. It was listed under the name of a dead man. And it just went into probate—to the new owner, de Allyon.”

Finally. We had the tie-in between Ramondo Pitri and Lucas Vazquez de Allyon. I took a breath and it filled my lungs with a fresh, blissful delight. “You, Kid, are good,” I said. And then it hit me. We had to go after de Allyon, had to beard the lion in his den in a preemptive attack, which would be either the smartest thing we’d ever done or the dumbest.

The history of the Natureleza vamp suggested he didn’t have both oars in the water, and the whacked-out old vamps were always the worst. Any vamp taking out masters of cities, infecting humans and vamps with a disease, and targeting Leo had to be crazy, meaning I’d need a plan that allowed me to take the attack to our antagonist before he got his forces realigned after the battle in Leo’s fields. And I’d need lots of backup. And maybe a tank. And air support. Derek was put in charge of vamp security by day and ordered to move the blood-suckers somewhere safer before dawn. Katie’s had been compromised. Eli was put to work gathering supplies, and I added my own gear to the equipment that would be delivered to Natchez via separate vehicle.

His work on the safe room would become a long-term project, not something to use for today’s crisis. Leo and his vamps had other places they could hole up tomorrow, like the warehouse where Leo had attacked me. I still got an empty feeling at that thought, but Beast, the pragmatic one, simply yawned and milked my mind with her claws. We are not dead. We are not caged. We will soon be free of him, she thought. Which was the truth, as cats saw it, and would be something I could live with, eventually. And if he needs to be staked, she added, we will stake him. And eat his heart.

Which was a whole ’nother kettle of fish entirely.

* * *

Leo’s old limo was a charred shell, and so we borrowed Grégoire’s brand-new, heavily armored, slightly stretched Lincoln. I had helped design the bespoke limo from the ground up, taking ideas from a limo owned by one of Leo’s scions, and from the latest defense industry specs. It had a three-quarter-inch steel plate underneath to protect the occupants from possible bombs, and dark, polycarbonate-armored glass windows to protect them from daylight and gunfire. The car had a special braking system and heavy-duty suspension to accommodate the weight.

Inside, it was a work of art, with a long U-shaped steel-construction seat covered with cream-colored, butter-soft leather, a bar, flat-screen TV, satellite phone and Internet uplink, and cool weaponry that would rival anything Q would have designed for James Bond, including a Mossberg 590 twelve-gauge shotgun mounted under the longest section of window seat that ran along the driver’s side. There were three handguns on mounts near the bar, hidden along the passenger-side windows, all of them nine millimeter, with plenty of extra magazines secured in pockets along the sidewall.

The limo was black, low-slung, and totally cool. It only got about six miles to the gallon, but I hadn’t been worried about being green; I had been worried about being alive. I also hadn’t thought this through or I’d have ridden Bitsa. Or ridden in the gear truck that followed, just me and the driver. Instead, it was Eli and Alex. And Bruiser. And me. In a limo. Together. Driven by Wrassler.

Alex rode shotgun, occupied with video games and a music collection of head-banging rock, playing while search programs ran in the background on three laptops. I took the far backseat, facing forward, slouching, with my legs half on the seat, one foot on the floor. Studying the two men. They were as different as possible and all I could do was compare and contrast them.

Bruiser, on the long side seat, was wearing brown dress pants that had been made to order, polished Italian leather dress shoes, with a starched dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned, corded arms. He was even wearing a tie, silk, of course, though it was loose at the neck. His legs were stretched out, crossed at the ankles, and he sat with his hands laced together across his lap. He was wearing a tiny gold pinky ring, and he was the picture of elegance, marred only by the compact handgun under his arm.

Eli took the seat facing backward, and was wearing button jeans, scuffed combat boots, and a skintight T, with a shoulder holster, an ankle holster, and probably three or four blades concealed on him somewhere. A wrinkled denim jacket lay on the seat near him. All in black. He looked dangerous and in control. Yet, in a hand-to- hand fight, Bruiser would win. Despite his casual and relaxed demeanor, he was full of vamp blood. He’d be faster, stronger, meaner, and though I’d never fought Bruiser—except the first time I ever saw him, when I’d gotten the drop on him—he’d had a hundred years to practice martial arts, and I was betting he fought like he danced. Perfectly balanced, and totally in control.

As we pulled away from the curb, Bruiser swiveled his head to me. And looked at the floor. Reminding me of the times we had landed on a limo floor. And almost done something I’d likely never regret. I tilted my head and slammed down hard on the blush that wanted to rise. Eli looked back and forth between us, taking in everything and drawing his own conclusions.

Fortunately, before I could feel too uncomfortable, Eli reached for the remote and turned on the television to Fox. The two men started into a discussion of politics and I closed my eyes and feigned sleep as we hit the road out of New Orleans.

The surfaces of most major highways in Louisiana are horrible, composed of concrete with expansion joints every ten feet or so. The joints rose in the heat of summer and stayed deformed forever, creating a rocking, bumpy ride, noisy and unpleasant even in the limo. But for me, it felt soothing, like a rocking chair, and my fake sleep quickly turned into real sleep. We were rolling into Natchez when I woke and I stretched, touching my mouth to make sure I hadn’t drooled in my sleep.

I didn’t know much about the town. Natchez, named after the tribe of Indians sold into slavery by the Europeans, was the first major Mississippi port city north of New Orleans, and had once been a major hub of steamboat travel and trade. It had been a bigger place before the war—the Civil War—and had struggled to hang on since. Union troops hadn’t burned it to the ground, and after the war ended, Natchez had been left with swamp, forest, bayous, a checkered and notorious past—all set high upon a bluff above the Mississippi. It also had lots of fancy, prewar buildings, antebellum homes, churches, graveyards, and old live oak trees swathed in moss. After the war, the town also had hundreds of freed slaves needing work and carpetbaggers by the dozens bringing in an influx of cash. Its location and history allowed it to survive and thrive when most other towns around the South had suffered.

Natchez was rife with gossip. The locals knew everything. When we stopped for gas, Wrassler chatted up a local girl working inside behind the counter. In minutes, he’d learned most everything that had happened to the town in the last twenty years. Back in the limo, Wrassler moved his massive bulk into the car, shut the door, and said, “You were right, Kid.” To the rest of us, he said, “De Allyon has been hiding in plain sight here, having taken over from the local MOC, Hieronymus—who owes Leo allegiance and loyalty and who did not call his boss to report the presence of an enemy.” He started the limo and pulled into the street. “Funny how Leo’s research guy didn’t know any of this. Not you, Kid,” he said to Alex, “but that other guy the master uses.”

I laid my head back on the leather upholstery and thought about our leak. Leaks. Whatever. Not only was someone sharing info with our enemy, but our own intel sources had left us high and dry on what was happening in Leo’s organization. That needed to be addressed, eventually, once this crisis was over. With vamps, there was always something.* * *

As for this little out-of-town gig, the possibility that there was more than one leak—Angel Tit and a snitch in Leo’s camp—came back and perched in the forefront of my brain, like a buzzard over roadkill. Was there a chance that the spy was Reach himself? Reach had electronic fingers in everything, and he was nearly paranoid about security. If he was the spy, he’d already have taken down Leo’s security and finances and, well, just about everything. Reach had that kind of . . . reach. I let a bit of humor bubble up through my worries and forced my shoulders to relax. They had crawled up my neck to my ears with tension at the thought of Reach as a traitor.

“It isn’t Reach,” I said politely. “Go on, please?” Who said I didn’t have class?

Wrassler met my eyes again in the rearview, and I couldn’t see enough of his face to tell what he was thinking, but he went on. “According to my date, Hieronymus initially billed himself as a producer, which was a new one for vamps, but fit the town perfectly.”

“How so?” Eli asked.