Death's Rival

mustache in the style that used to be called a Vandyke. He wasn’t pretty, not even handsome, but he looked powerful, forceful, domineering, a man who never took no for an answer. The artist had managed to catch the brutal curl of his lips, and his disdain for anything and anyone who wasn’t him.

The heavy paper moving stiffly, I turned the page back to the picture of the conquistador and his dead prey, staring at the yellow-eyed woman, terrified at de Allyon’s feet. I realized that he wanted all of his enemies beneath his feet, and probably all his women. Captive and fearful.

On the next page was another miniature, but now de Allyon was wearing cloth pants and an animal skin over his shoulders. It was a mountain lion pelt, the puma’s head propped on one shoulder, showing killing teeth. The chill I was feeling spread and my fingertips tingled. Lying dead at his feet were more mountain lions. One had a human head. Another had human hands and feet. One was a black panther, the melanistic Puma concolor, a mythical beast as far as science was concerned. All were bound and bleeding from many wounds, but the largest wounds were at their throats where fangs had torn them out. De Allyon had killed my kind and drunk their blood.

Sabina had said, “Your enemy will know you by your smell.” She knew.

The protectors of the Cherokee had been captured and slaughtered to feed the blood appetite of a Naturaleza vampire. I felt tears prick at the back of my eyes and I breathed deeply to control my reaction, but my hands grew icy and my breath came short and fast.

The vamp was sitting in a gilded chair, vamped out, fangs down, his eyes black and scarlet, and he was holding a golden bowl, filled with blood. Blood streamed from his mouth and down his naked chest. De Allyon looked odd. It took a moment to figure out why he looked so different from any other vamp I’d seen. He was . . . not fat, but not cadaverously skinny. Most vamps looked . . . starved. Yeah. That was the difference.

Things started to click into place in my mind as I stared at the bloody, violent creature on the page. With the blood flowing down his chin and chest, it was clear the artist had been trying to show us that de Allyon had been drinking blood. A lot of blood. When vamps drank a lot of blood, they were well fed and powerful. Only the Naturaleza drank as much as they wanted.

I had fought a Naturaleza once, but the fight had been too fast, too violent for me to pay attention to his body. That and the fact that he’d nearly killed me. I closed my eyes and thought back to the kaleidoscopic images from the day. Thomas had drained and killed several humans. When I killed him, he had been mostly naked, but I hadn’t seen any ribs, stark through his flesh. No jutting collarbones. No chiseled jaw or sharp cheekbones. Yeah. Vamps got flesh on their bones when they drank a lot of blood. This vampire drank whatever and whoever he wanted. This vampire was why there were so few of my kind left in the world. He had killed them. Killed them and drunk down their blood.

Before, the fight against de Allyon had been a job. Now it was something far more. This thing that threatened me and my charges needed to be killed. And that was what skinwalkers did. We fought for our people.

Skinwalkers took vengeance on our enemies. I didn’t think that when God said vengeance was his, he meant for skinwalkers to act in his behalf. But I was. I was going to be the hand of God that took down Death’s Rival.

I turned another page and saw the last drawing, this one too tiny to see details. I looked around the room but didn’t see what I was looking for. I had been in Arceneau’s Clan Home and there was a library in the back, on the other side of the stairs. I hadn’t been invited to roam, but I carried the book with me, back to where I had once smelled books and the mold that clings to them. I opened the door to find the library empty and looked around. Books lined the walls from floor to the twelve-foot-high ceiling; comfortable reading chairs with low tables and ottomans were scattered around. A gas fire crackled merrily in a small hearth. There was a large magnifying glass on a bronze-hinged arm clamped to an antique desk, and I crossed the hardwood floor to it, holding the book’s page beneath. It was a drawing of a priest holding a sword in one hand, a cross in the other. He was running, his dark robe flying out behind him. The cross was blazing like a torch. In the distance a black horse raced, a man perched on its back. De Allyon outracing the Inquisition, maybe? It would explain why the man had disappeared so often. I wandered back through the house, the book in both gloved hands, one finger holding my place.

I was back in the dining room, surrounded by Leo’s priceless things and the stench of smoke, when I realized the most important thing of all. Lucas Vazquez de Allyon would know what I was the moment he saw me. The moment he smelled me.

CHAPTER TWENTY I’d Save the Last Bullet for Me

I sat on my bed surrounded by readouts, stacks of printed paper, and a pad, as well as my laptop, with half a dozen tabs open online and twice that many files open. I was studying several things at once: the Vampira Carta, the deep background histories of Leo’s people and Derek’s Vodka and Tequila Boys. I was also looking for a way out of the trouble I was in, the trouble Leo was in, and was searching for the traitor we still had to have in Leo’s ranks. Though I couldn’t totally rule out anyone, I had narrowed it all down to two vamps—both longtime troublemakers: Amitee Marchand and Fernand Marchand—and two Tequila Boys, both new men on Derek’s team: Tequila Sunrise and Sneak Cheek. Both had been present at the raid on de Allyon’s three-story building in Natchez, and both had significant financial troubles. Worse, I didn’t know them well enough to make a judgment on their trustworthiness or lack thereof. Just in case, I sent texts to Bruiser, warning him to either keep all four away from the parley or keep eyes on them. I could deal with the problem people—alive and undead—later, when other situations were handled, and concentrate for now on the parley, and what I might do to fix things.

The day was mostly gone when I figured out what I could do. Could do. Maybe. If I could pull it off. I fell back on the bed and stared at the clean ceiling, thinking. Working it through. Crap. This was gonna be a booger. Leo and Bruiser were dead set (pun intended) on a parley with the murderer de Allyon and his scions, and I was going to be there, undercover, so to speak.

I’d had little sleep in days. Little sleep, less rest. The parley was fast approaching. Beast, normally so active in my mind, had been silent, watching, as tense and expectant as I was. She knew we were about to face an enemy, and she chose now to put a paw on my mind and force me into a deep sleep.

* * *

It was nearly sunset, two days before the new moon, and I was dressed for hunting, not in pelt and claws, but wearing guns and blades and lots of silver. And, weirdly enough, wearing makeup.

“So. Whadda you think?” Christie asked. She was popping gum, a black eyeliner pencil in one hand and a large dusting brush in the other. Her clothes were opaque, thank God, or the lights in my bathroom would have revealed far more than I wanted to see.

“She looks hot,” Deon said from the corner chair, his voice awed. “And scary as a demon.” He crossed himself.

I didn’t react, except to turn, my reflection turning with me in the mirror. I was wearing thirteen wood stakes and thirteen silver-tipped stakes in pouches and loops. I wore armored leathers, butt-stomper combat boots, and I was carrying newly sharpened blades—three heavily silvered vamp-killers and four throwing knives—and my vial of holy water.

I carried the two red-gripped Walthers in Blackhawk vertical shoulder holsters, on top of a skintight vest and T-shirt, the M4 on my back in its old harness, a short-sword-length vamp-killer in one boot, and a nice little, dependable .38 revolver in the other. A nine-mil was strapped against my spine under the vest and another was at my waist in a belt holster, next to two CS canisters. Two flashbangs were on the other hip, so I didn’t get the canister-style grenades mixed up with the colloidal silver ones. My gold nugget necklace now also carried my emergency shifting tooth, the tooth of the biggest Puma concolor I had ever seen. I had wired the tooth into a loop and now wore the nugget and tooth on the double gold chain underneath the double vamp-collars that protected my throat from vamp-teeth and talons. I was carrying a good twenty pounds of gear, enough to clank when I walked. But I had spent the time adjusting everything to make sure that I didn’t.

Christie handed me a tube and I slashed on crimson lipstick, the same shade as the Walthers’ grips. My hair was in a queue so tight my scalp hurt, and my tiny derringer was knotted into the bun, a last-ditch weapon. I