Blood Trade

my breath wanting to come too fast. Tension spread into the room like a wave of polluted water. I did not want to have to fight all the vamps in this building, but I could feel their bodies aligning toward me and their eyes boring into me as if picking which pulse points would be the most tasty.

I didn’t see his heir, Lotus, in the crowd behind him, but it looked like enough of his people had shown up that they could drain and kill us before I could fire off a single shot. Tension skittered up and down my spine like an army of fire ants, and I broke into a hot sweat that the vamps had to be able to smell. I worked at keeping my breathing slow and measured, but much more of this and my knees would be knocking. I decided to go with bravado. “Let’s start over. I’m—”

“Jane Yellowrock,” he said, reading my card as if he had never heard of me. “Have Stakes, Will Travel. Amusing. This is your motto?” He had an elusive European accent, the kind that likely started a thousand years ago and had undergone dozens of changes as languages transformed and evolved through the following centuries.

“My mission statement and company slogan. The weapons and the motto are for rogue vamps, Naturaleza vamps, and vamps targeted by the local ruling council as dangerous to their way of life and continued undead health. I’m not a vigilante. Much. I’m a licensed hunter. And as for the little display at the door, why hire me and my team if a few poorly trained human security toughs could take our weapons away? You want to hire the best? You’ve met us.”

Big H breathed out and leaned back, letting his body lounge against the pretty chair. I remembered to inhale. “You are impertinent,” he said. It wasn’t a question, and it was the truth, so I didn’t reply. I’d been called worse. “You are here with Leonard Pellissier’s acquiescence?”

“Not exactly. I work on retainer, under contract, like we’re proposing to do.”

“His Enforcer works on retainer?” It wasn’t exactly a question, more like a stunned recap.

“The Blood Master of New Orleans, Sedona, Boston, and Seattle, and all of the Southeast except Florida, needs more than one Enforcer. I’m his . . . part-timer.”

“It is not possible to bind more than one Enforcer,” he said.

Which was news to me. So I just raised my eyebrows, stared him down, let one corner of my mouth relax in what might charitably be called amusement, and waited. Never admit you’re wrong when silence lies that you’re right. Not that long ago, I’d have felt guilty about letting a falsehood persist. Now I just let it hang. And let my partner beat up humans. And didn’t even think about it. I was so going to hell.

“Leo released you to work for me.”

I let my smile rise. “Not only that. His laboratory in Texas came up with a cure for the vamp plague, so you won’t have to keep drinking down humans carrying the antibodies.” Big H sat up slowly, his hands resting on the inlaid chair arms. “I brought a supply with me,” I continued, “and will be giving out the cure to anyone who needs it. If we can come to an accommodation.” Which didn’t exactly say that I had permission to cure someone Leo was ticked off with, but I was going to hell already, so in for a penny, in for a gallon of blood.

Hieronymus’ eyes bled back to fully human. He lifted his fingers to his neck and stopped, then dropped the hand. As he did, I caught a whiff of the sick scent of the vamp plague. Big H had the disease. “You have this cure with you?”

“Not on my person, but it’s available to me. Leo is powerful enough to be . . .” I searched for a word and settled on “magnanimous.” Which didn’t actually make him magnanimous, but I didn’t say that. Skirting the truth with a vamp was scary business, because they could often smell a lie and they could always smell nervousness.

“I will validate our proposed contract, including the changes your legal advisor, Alex Younger, has suggested.”

I nearly dropped my jaw at the thought of the Kid as a legal advisor. And he had done what with my contract? “Ummm,” I said.

“You will destroy the Naturaleza who run rampant and wild through my countryside, and I will pay you the agreed-upon price—”

“Couple questions,” I interrupted. Big H frowned. Master vamps don’t get interrupted often. “How many are there, what steps have you taken to correct the problem, and where do you think they’re hiding?”

“My Enforcer was killed trying to track them down. Witnesses said he was attacked on all sides by the Naturaleza and torn to shreds. He is mourned and will not be forgotten. My primo, Clark, has all other details.” He waved a negligent hand at a nondescript human man to his left. Clark was a medium guy. Brown and brown, maybe five feet seven, slender, wearing—yes—brown.

Clark stepped forward, bowed slightly, and handed me a leather folder. “Estimates on numbers are imprecise,” he said. “Originally we thought less than twenty, but before he was killed, our Enforcer staked four who were later seen on the streets.”

“Naturaleza are hard to kill,” I said. “Locations?”

“They have been spotted all over the county and in Vidalia as well. We do not know where they lair.” Lairs were jealously guarded daytime resting places for vamps, so I wasn’t surprised, but it did make my job a lot harder. “If we knew where they were, they would be dead now,” he said, sounding just a bit snippy.

Big H was clearly done with question time. “I will accept the largesse of my sworn master,” he said, “and the cure he can provide my people. If you also negotiate a parley that repairs the rift between my master and me, I will provide you a generous bonus. The business details you may discuss with Clark at a later time. You will attend me before dawn with this cure.”

Before I could reply to that order, Big H stood, lifted his arms, and raised his voice. “My people. We have a guest. Meet and speak with Jane Yellowrock, the Enforcer of Leo Pellissier. She brings good tidings from my master and a cure for the plague that infects some few of us. Rejoice and enjoy the festivities.” Some of his people applauded and a number of others moved forward with unseemly haste. Scuttled like bugs was more like it, but I was feeling generous. I figured they were sick vamps needing the cure.

Hieronymus extended his hand, palm out, holding them back, and passed me a business card. “This is Clark’s contact information. Whatever you need, all assistance we can provide, is yours. And”—he gave me a fangy smile —“we are very generous.”

“Good to know.” I pocketed the card, in case my electronic genius didn’t have all the contact info already.

He handed me a microdrive shaped like a shark’s tooth, which was way snazzy. “The dossiers of the Mithrans you have permission to deliver true death to, and descriptions of the ones who were never mine and who are unknown to us, the ones brought by Lucas Vazquez de Allyon, may his soul rot in hell.” Big H dropped his hand, I pocketed the shark’s tooth microdrive, and was surrounded by vamps. Sick vamps. Desperate vamps.

I do not like being surrounded by vamps, especially plague-ridden ones who wanted to shake my hand, kiss me on both cheeks like some Old World mafia family, and tell me all their symptoms. I didn’t know if they were trying to thank me or infect me. But I survived the glad-handing and, promising to bring the cure to the MOC’s Clan home before dawn, slid out the front door as fast as I could. Eli covered my rear.

There was no security committee waiting on us this time, and though I didn’t race back to the SUV, I didn’t saunter either. Eli gunned the engine and had us two blocks over before my heart stopped stuttering and the rhythm evened out. “Crap,” I said as we curved up the hill and into the old downtown.

Eli gave a twitch of his lips, which could have been indigestion, but I chose to interpret it as mirth. I called Alex. When he answered, I said, “What did you do with our contract? Without telling me. Are you insane?”

“No way. I showed it to Eli. He agreed.”

I narrowed my eyes at my driver, who was chuckling, and wondered if I could take over the driving and shove him out into the street. And then maybe run over him a few times. “Nobody screws with my contracts.”

“We just added two tiny clauses,” Eli said. “One that lets us take the head of any vamp who attacks us unprovoked, and one that lets us take the head of any vamp not on the list who has gone over to the Naturaleza.”

I thought about that for a while as the tires sang on the pavement. I wanted to find fault with the clauses but they were good ones, ones I should have included myself, and would have to add to my standard boilerplate. “Let’s say I decide not to kill you both for changing my contract. And you both agree to discuss stuff like this with me and let me handle it.”