Blood Trade

house just off of Orleans Street did you drink down and kill? Huh?” I felt Soul at my back, but I kicked the cage again, shouting, “How many?”

The vamp on the floor of the cage started laughing, and if it started out as a pathetic gallows laughter, it ended up the goading taunt of the unrepentant killer. He dropped his hands and opened his eyes in the dark, staring at me through the gloom. “I lost count of the adults. But the children,” his laughter grew in power and resonance, seeming to bounce off the garage walls, “I remember them, each and every one. I drank down their terror and their whimpers. I sucked down their fear and panic like the elixir of life it was.”

I felt Soul step back. I smelled her reaction and so did our captive. With that fluttery, feathery motion, he crossed the small space to me and reached out, gripping the silver supports of the cage with one hand, his palm and fingers not smoking where they touched the metal. He pulled himself to his feet and crouched, his hair a scant inch from the cage top. His bare body was covered in scars and welts and fresh skin from the accelerated healing. Even starving, he was healing.

“Come here, nonhuman woman,” he said. This time he was speaking to Soul. “I will show you what I do to women. I will show you how I drink them down.” He closed his eyes at the remembered experience and swallowed, his dry throat making a noise like rubber tires on muddy earth, a squelch that lasted far too long. It left me with a sensation of how much he had enjoyed drinking the helpless to death.

Soul turned and left the garage, closing the door with an entirely different sound. I didn’t know how she could direct emotion into the sound of steel on steel, but I felt it. Soul would not try again to interfere with my treatment of the prisoner. She wanted him dead too.

Francis laughed, the sound low and vicious. “She should have stayed. I would have told her how my cattle died, with the women and their children weeping and begging.”

My foot slashed out and hit the cage so hard it slid across the small space into the back wall. Francis’ laughter died. He gripped the cage, stinking of ammonia and death, his body whipping with the force of my kick.

“Which vamp is in charge of the Naturaleza of this city now that Esther McTavish is true-dead?” I asked.

His face changed, his eyes bleeding back to near-human, his fangs snicking back into his mouth. He dropped to his knees on the floor of the cage. “She is dead?”

“Yeah. Headless, in the living room. And the basement was full of dozens of dead humans and several other vamps, all staked with silver.” Francis’ eyes lost focus at the thought, and when he didn’t reply, I said, “It looked like there had been a fight. A Blood Challenge, maybe?”

“Naturaleza do not challenge. They die by blood feud. They die by war. And each war is different from the others. How did my mistress die?”

I smiled this time, and his eyes widened at the expression. “She was staked through the abdomen and her head sawed off. Not hacked off. Sawed.” I chuckled slightly. “It’s the way I killed Lucas de Allyon, and it takes determination, a lot a free time, and a really sharp blade.”

His face changed again, and this time I couldn’t follow the emotional voyage. “You are the creature who killed my master?”

“Yes. In mortal combat, mano a mano, so to speak. So. Who might have killed your mistress and her scions? And who is in charge now?”

“There are three possibilities.” Francis sank back onto the cage floor and wrapped his arms around his legs. “I’ll give you one possibility for each Naturaleza blood meal you provide.”

I was willing to dicker, because I knew that nothing acquired—or given up—easily is truly valuable, so I thought about his offer and who I could hit up for blood meals while I let the silence build. “All three names,” I said finally, “today, for one drink, Fame Vexatum style.”

The vamp frowned, but I could tell he was going to bargain. That was one thing the older vamps understood—the art of bargaining. They had lived preretail, when humans often traded goods for goods in a marketplace. “One possibility,” he corrected me, “per drink, full meal, Fame Vexatum,” he said.

“All today—three drinks, for three names, within the hour. And if you drink and don’t tell, I’ll treat you like I did de Allyon.”

“To give you the names is to foreswear my allegiance. But the words I say will guide you.”

“And if they don’t?”

Francis seemed to ponder that a moment. “I will give you the possibilities first. Then, if you are satisfied, you will feed me.”

“Done.”

“You have my former mistress, Esther McTavish.” At my lifted brow, he waved that away. “But of course she doesn’t count, due to the pesky circumstance of her unfortunate demise. Charles Scarletti is Esther’s favorite scion.” I must have given something away when he said the name, because Francis gave a chuckle, low and hollow, like something from a Friday the 13th remake. “Yes, Scarletti joined us quickly after we arrived from Atlanta, eager to taste the wonders of the Naturaleza.”

“One.” I made a little give-it-to-me gesture with one hand.

He gave me a sly look. “And then there are the ones closest to Hieronymus’ heart.”

I drew in a slow breath. “Zoltar and Narkis?”

“I am not foresworn,” he reminded.

“Yeah. Whatever,” I whispered. “Big H’s sons. I am so stupid.”

I left the garage, dialing the number Big H had given me for his primo, Clark. When the call was answered, I said, “Jane Yellowrock here. I need three full meals for a hungry vamp prisoner. How quickly can you get them to my base?”

“I take it that you have bargained with food?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“Half an hour. If the vampire hurts one of my master’s blood-servants, I’ll kill him,” Clark said, his tone conversational.

I felt a real smile cross my face. “I’ll hold him down for you.”

Clark laughed, and it was strangely carefree for a guy who had just threatened death on a vamp. “One thing. Is the vampire in question ill with the Sanguine pestis?”

Crap. I’d forgotten that. Drinking from an uninfected human might infect the human. “Yeah. Send me someone who’s had the vamp plague and has gotten better. And thanks for thinking about that.”

“You’re welcome, Miss Yellowrock. All in a day’s work. Shall I send someone to supervise the feeding?”

I thought about what he might mean and said, “To keep the vamp from taking too much or hurting the . . . um . . . donor?”

“Exactly.”

Both, then. “Well, you need to know that silver isn’t going to hurt him and can’t be used as a deterrent.”

“Yes. I understand. But sunlight is still effective. And it’s daylight.”

I chuckled again, squinting up at the sun. “Yes, it is. Sure. Send along a bodyguard or two. And feel free to hurt the little vamp if needed, but don’t burn him to a crisp. He’s essential to my investigation for a while longer.”

“Understood. Half an hour, Miss Yellowrock.”

I hung up without telling him that his master’s sons were plotting against him, and went into the house. I came back out with the dart gun and medical kit, loaded the weapon with a one-dose dart, walked into the garage, and, without asking his permission, shot the vamp. He wasn’t expecting it, and the dart hit him midcenter of his body, just above his navel, where a mass of fading, puckered scars showed. Francis yelped and flung the dart away, cursing. It landed at my feet and I picked it up, turned on my heel and left the garage. Just before I closed the door behind me, I said, “You’re cured. You’re welcome, suckhead.”

Back inside, I was putting away the weapons when my phone rang. I could hear a car and the sound of tires on roadway in the background. I was on speakerphone. “Yeah.”

Eli said, “Two things. One: no way to track Misha’s location from her cell. It’s a dead end. Two: one of our staked vamps was Charles Scarletti,” he said, “his human servant, Wynonna, dead in the crook of his arm.”