I studied the area and realized he had chosen a spot that would let us pull out over the sidewalk and down a side street. I was used to bikes and they were easy to get out of narrow spaces, so I didn’t think about getaway routes as a matter of course. Eli made me think outside my own coffin-sized box. I got out to adjust the weapons on my person, and the smell of vamp hit me like a wrecking ball. I put a hand on the SUV to steady myself and sniffed. A vamp smorgasbord met my nose and I opened my mouth, drawing in air over my tongue. Beast reared up in my mind and sniffed with me, parsing the scents.
I grimaced. Not that long ago, Beast had thought vamps smelled like things to hunt. Not so much now that she was chained to Leo—something I had to correct as soon as I figured out how. My new mantra:
I adjusted my weapons, chambering rounds but safety-ing everything. Popping Velcro loops, making sure the blades would slide free, and hearing Eli do the same on the other side of the vehicle. There would be a tug-of-war at the door, Hieronymus’ goons trying to take weapons off me and me not letting them go. I had a statement to make and keeping my weapons was going to be part of that. I wasn’t dressed in vamp-hunting armor, but I wasn’t dressed like a little old lady for Sunday church either. I repositioned the ash and silver stakes in my bun, fanning them out like a deadly halo. I’d had to smash them into the hair on the ride because they kept hitting the top of the SUV.
This event should be a simple business meeting, but with vamps nothing is ever simple. They were always trying to see who was an alpha predator and who was prey. So this little conference was going to be a dance on a knife blade, poised and balanced, having to prove myself on one side but not going too far and getting myself sucked dry on the other. I was much better at getting myself in trouble than anything else, but no way was I coming across as prey.
Lastly, I pulled a dirty white handkerchief out of the glove box and tucked it into my decolletage. I saw Eli watching and I said, “Insurance.”
It was a hanky with Leo’s blood on it. The scent claimed me as his. Bruiser, Leo’s primo, had marked me with it once to keep me safe. I’d been ticked off about it back then. Times had changed. Or maybe I had changed.
In theory, the MOCs of one city were supposed to respect the life and “property” of another MOC, but it didn’t always work that way in real life. I had no idea if Leo had enemies in the crowd I was about to meet, enemies who would kill me to tick off the blood-sucking fiend I worked for. Come to think of it, Leo likely had enemies everywhere.
For safety reasons, I had to go in looking like the Enforcer I was, but, technically, I wasn’t here in the capacity of Leo’s Enforcer. I was here outside of that job description and the safeguards it provided, so a little scent reminder of the biggest bad among the Big Bad Vamps might be a good thing.
“Ready?” Eli asked. I nodded and headed toward the door; Eli fell into step a little behind me at my left. I could hear the roar of voices and the
“Oops. Most vamps don’t like my scent,” I said as a warning to Eli. “They smell another predator.”
We kept moving, and three steps later two armed blood-servants rushed out the front door, weapons at the ready. I took a slow breath and felt Eli do the same, though neither of us missed a step or seemed to tense visibly. The humans pointed small submachine guns at us, but we just kept walking. Along the street, the security types moved in, forming a loose half circle near the door. The music from inside went silent. So did the voices.
“Looks like our cozy couple spread the word that something dangerous is approaching.” Eli said.
“Afraid so. And here I thought being an invited guest would make it easier.” I could think of four ways to handle this: stop and chat and get strong-armed, shoot them all and likely die in the ensuing firefight, run like my pants were on fire and lose total face, or take them before a fight could even start.
I drew on Beast and felt her pawing, milking my mind, her claws bringing on a headache. Strength flooded my system with a burst of Beast-adrenaline. My pace didn’t alter, but I smiled—a Beast-type smile, all teeth. I felt her looking out at the world and knew my eyes were doing that weird glow thing they do when she’s close to the surface.
We reached the door. I acted like the thugs weren’t there and put one foot on the single step. The two guys from inside moved quickly in front of me, close enough to make a wall of their chests and guns. I didn’t slow. I hit out fast, striking one in the side of the neck with my right fist. Pivoted hard. Kicked the other in the left knee. It was so fast and balanced, it worked like a single move. I heard a gag, a pop, and an agonized scream as I pushed between them and they started to fall. I walked into the warehouse-turned-party-room as if I owned it, trusting Eli to make sure I really did. Behind me, the sounds indicated that Eli further incapacitated the men I had taken down, and then started in on the rest of the security. Good thing vamp blood heals their servants’ injuries so well. My booted feet rang on the old wooden floors in the silent room as I left my backup behind.
I took in the place and the occupants. One big room on the lower level; lots of small tables and chairs. The seating was from various time periods and cultures: long couches in the Roman style; pillows, rugs, and hookahs in the Persian style; some odd seating that must have been African or maybe South American, the chairs low to the ground and carved from dark wood, dished like dough bowls. Weird.
Vamps in black tie and evening gowns were everywhere. Humans half-frozen in position looked to their masters for orders. From the loft overhead I smelled humans and blood. They had set the blood bar upstairs, with matching spiral wrought-iron staircases on either side and exotic, scantily dressed human blood-slaves at the bottom, like advertisements. The place reeked of vamps and blood and sex and sickness, but the sick stench was elusive, so I figured only a few vamps here had it. The vamps themselves couldn’t smell the disease, which was how it raced through them with such speed. Vamps shared a sick blood meal, and the partakers all became infected.
As the security detail tried to rush through the front doors and Eli reacted, I spotted Hieronymus against a wall on the lower level, sitting in a big peacock-style chair made of wood inlaid with green and blue mother-of-pearl and paua shells, delicate and beautiful.
I turned on Beast-speed and darted to him. Stopped fast, my boots sliding for the last few inches on the wood. “I’m Jane.” I flicked a business card into his lap. Behind me were grunts and thumps as thugs and their weapons hit the floor.
Big H stared at me with eyes that were bleeding slowly vampy. “You profane my presence with weapons and attacks upon my people?”
“You block the door and meet guests with guns?”
Hieronymus looked past me at the doorway while I studied him. He was paler than most vamps I’d met, and though his face was unlined, he had probably been older when he was turned than most—maybe forty human years. He wasn’t classically pretty, which was rare in a vamp, and, like in his photographs, his head was totally bald. The only hair I could see was a thin fringe of eyelashes, which hadn’t been present in the pictures I’d studied. He wore a tux, tie, cummerbund, and shirt all in black, and had an ancient copper chain around his neck, over the fancy clothes. Dangling from it, in the middle of his chest, was a sliver of corroded metal shaped vaguely like a toothpick, wrapped with copper wire. It was a peculiar fashion accessory—butt-ugly. It hadn’t been around his neck in any of the photos I’d seen of him.
The front door slammed shut and I heard something heavy fall. Keeping my host in sight, I risked a glance in that direction and saw Eli standing with his back to the closed and barricaded door, nunchacku in one fist, brass knuckles on the other, and blood on his face and thigh. “Any trouble?” I asked him, letting the words drawl.
“Negative.” He slammed his weapons into their hidey-holes and drew two handguns, holding them at his sides. He wasn’t even breathing hard. And only because I knew him fairly well could I tell he was having fun. Uncle Sam trained its killers well.
At his feet, five humans lay, all out cold, and I chuckled at the sight. Their weapons were in a pile in one corner. I shifted my attention back to Hieronymus. Big H sniffed the air once, taking in my scent. He cocked his head as if processing the signature and stared at me for a time that I could measure in my own heartbeats and that lasted way too long. He was doing that dead-as-a-marble-statue thing they do, where they don’t blink or breathe and you just know that in a fractured second they can be on you and drinking dinner. My chest started getting tight,
