Death's Rival

lately I’d been calling it what it was. My house. My place. I was part of the world of vamps whether I liked it or not, and that meant being part of vamp politics. I hate politics.

Jane wants to be first with all her mates, Beast thought at me, smug. And Jane needs good den.

“And . . .” Bruiser took a slow breath and I tensed. “If you’ll bond with Leo properly, and not do whatever you did to loosen the bond when he tried last time, he will be able to use you in the parley,” he finished.

And theeeeere it was. I knew my face changed, because Eli said to him, “Man, you are dumber than dirt. To have lived as long as you have, you really have no clue about women.”

I could smell Bruiser’s sense of insult, tart and bristly on the air. I didn’t look away from the house. “You need to get Leo and the other vampires to a safe haven for daybreak,” I said, barely moving my lips, “someplace not on any record, and with lots of protection around. Protection armed with high-caliber weapons. Bazookas if you have them. I think Grégoire has a lair in the Garden District. I also think there may be a lair beneath the Nunnery in the Warehouse District.”

“I know my duty,” Bruiser answered, confusion in his tone. “Leo and all his remaining personal possessions have been moved to a safe location.”

“Well, goody for you,” I said, and my tone was adult and understanding and gracious. Not. I opened the door and left the limo, stomped to my house, and let myself in. I slammed the door. “He really has no clue. He is dumber than dirt,” I said to the empty house. I went to my room and closed the door. Turned the small lock, though I knew it was no impediment to Eli.

Once I shifted, my flesh wasn’t dirty or bloody anymore, but my clothes were still grotty. I stripped in the dark, tossed my ruined clothes into one pile and the ones that were just bloody into another, showered, and dressed quickly in the dark, pulling on jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved knit T-shirt under my armored, vamp-fighting leather coat. I didn’t expect to be fighting anyone, but the last few days had been hard on my wardrobe. I didn’t have a lot of fashion choices left.

I could hear the guys moving around in the house, one upstairs showering, one in the kitchen. I left without seeing either, kicked Bitsa on, and took off. I had no desire to check out the security at Grégoire’s place—the Arceneau Clan Home—but it was part of the job whether I liked it or not. I’d left the Pellissier Clan Home in the hands of Leo’s true Enforcer and primo blood-servant, and that just got the place burned down. It wasn’t going to happen again.

I got to the clan home in the Garden District near two a.m. and pulled through the six-foot-tall, black-painted, wrought-iron gate, the twisted bars in a fleur-de-lis and pike-head pattern at the top. As I braked at the back bumper of the black limo, one of Grégoire’s identical twin blood-servants stepped to the porch holding what looked in the night like a small Uzi. I killed the engine, unhelmeted, and unwound my legs from the bike.

“Little Janie. I assumed you would be by here sometime tonight.”

“Security check. Will Leo and Grégoire be close by day? Close enough to be protected by you guys?” I asked as I walked up to the porch.

“Close enough,” the B-twin agreed. “And the lair is hard-wired in to the security here at the clan home.” The three-story house was larger and deeper than it looked from the street, forty-six feet across the front and nearly twice that deep, taking up most of the small lot. It entered into a foyer with dining room and parlor on opposite sides and a wide staircase to the right leading up to the second floor, the stairs carpeted with a blue, gray, and black Oriental rug.

Nothing décorwise had changed since my last visit except the clutter in the dining room. Stacked on the floor and on the hand-carved cherrywood dining table and chairs was a bunch of junk. By the sour stench of smoke, it was Leo’s junk, which meant expensive art and collectibles. Over the scent, I smelled tea and coffee and something sweet, like freshly baked pie or cake. My mouth watered.

The twin, who had no mole at his hairline, thus identifying him as Brian, closed the door and murmured into his mic, “Janie inside. Resume patrols.”

“How many do you have patrolling?” I asked.

“Two shooters in the attic at front and back, five on the grounds. Brandon is at the back entrance, and I have the front.”

I let a small smile form on my lips. “You know what I like about you and your ugly brother?” He cocked his head in question. “You don’t get your panties in a wad when I ask questions.”

“Boxers, not panties,” he said, showing his teeth in what could only be called a rakish grin.

“Whatever,” I said, laughing. I pointed to the dining room. “I didn’t think anything had survived the fire.”

“The servants got everything out of the library, all the paintings off the walls, and most of Leo’s more valuable collectibles out before the fire spread. Grégoire had them transported here until we can arrange for storage elsewhere. Until Leo can rebuild. Sabina wanted you to have this. The Master of the City agreed.”

Brian was holding a leather-bound book and a pair of white cotton gloves. I looked the question at him and he said, “Gloves. To protect the book.”

I slid them on and took the small, very heavy book. I didn’t know much about old books, but I had a feeling that this one was very old. The leather felt slightly slimy even through my gloves, the paper inside was thick, like paper handmade out of old cloth, and there were pictures in the margins. The print was weird too, with lots of curlicues. Then I realized it was hand-scribed, not printed, each letter and each painting inked by hand. This was a really old book. Maybe from the Middle Ages. I saw a few words that might have been Spanish or maybe Latin. What did I know? I couldn’t read a word. “What is it?” I asked Brian.

He reached around me and opened it. On the right-hand page was a stylized drawing of a vampire. There was no title on the cover or the spine, but I did find one on the third page. “La Historia De Los Mithrans en Las Americas,” I said. I might not read Spanish, but I got this one. “Oh, crap,” I whispered.

Brian chuckled. “Yeah. Those Mithrans love to see themselves in print and paintings,” he said, sounding very upper-class New Orleans in that moment. “It’s for interesting reading. Sabina, the priestess, thinks you will find page 134 of particular interest.”

I turned to page 134 and found a drawing that slowly stole the breath from my lungs. It was a drawing of a Spanish conquistador, his plate armor shining, one boot resting on the fallen form of an Indian. The man beneath his boot was naked, his hair unbound and tangled on the ground. He was dead, his blood leaking into the dirt from a large throat wound. And his hands were furred and clawed. Silently I mouthed the word “Skinwalker.”

There were other naked Indians on the ground at the feet of the Spaniard; two had yellow eyes like mine, one was a woman. She was alive, fear etched on her face in stark black ink lines. “Can you read this?” I asked, tapping the text on the page.

“I am possessed of a classical education,” Brian said with a pretentious sniff, “but that book isn’t Latin, Greek, French, Italian, or modern Castilian Spanish. It’s some archaic form of Spanish. I can make out the name of this vampire, however.”

He reached around me, his body heat enveloping me like a warm blanket, and turned one page back. I had sparred with the B-twins once and their body heat had made the windows of the room sweat. I was cold now and wanted to lean into him. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Grégoire’s blood-servant pointed at the subtitle on the top of the page. “‘Lucas Vazquez de Allyon. El Rival de la Muerte.’ Death’s Rival.”

I took a slow breath, the air painful against my tight throat tissues. Lucas had known skinwalkers. Had killed skinwalkers. De Allyon was not just Leo’s enemy. He was mine as well.

“I have to get back to the door,” he said. “You’ll need to talk to Leo about the text. He can read it.” Brian walked away.

I remembered seeing books in the Pellissier Clan Home before it burned, secured in small, locked cases in his library and in his music room. How could I ask Leo about the text without having him see the yellow eyes of the prostrated Indians and draw a conclusion I wanted him to avoid? He had already seen me in a partial shift. He knew I was some kind of supernatural cat, though not a were. I didn’t smell like a were. Unless I left the vamps, and the hefty paychecks they offered, the time was coming when my secret would be made public, whether I wanted that to happen or not. But I wanted it to be a time of my choosing, not something that I let happen with no direction, no control.

I studied the small painting beneath de Allyon’s name. It was a pen-and-ink miniature of a vampire in his fully human guise, his eyes and hair dark brown, his nose large and Roman, jaw firm, forehead wide, with a beard and