Chicks Kick Butt

“Combat narrows the field,” he corrected. “But once we’re through, we got to be confirmed. And your senators are going to be looking for any possible reason to turn us down.”

“They’re not my senators,” I said flatly.

The senate employed me to clean up its messes from time to time, but the fact that I occasionally proved useful hadn’t made me any more popular. The only one who might not hate me was Mircea, second in command to the consul, the senate’s leader. Most vamps treated him like he was scary with a little scary on top, which I’d always found puzzling. He sparked a confusing tangle of emotions in me, but fear had never been one of them.

Of course, that might be because he was also my father.

“Look, I don’t care who does or does not get on the senate,” I told Scarface. “I just want to know why your master sent a hit man after me.”

“You’d have to ask him about that.”

“Is he in there?” A brief nod. “Then get out of the way and I will.”

He blew smoke at me.

“I’m going in there,” I informed him.

He dropped his cigarette to the stained concrete and ground it in with his toe. “I was hoping to wait until you recovered to beat you up,” he said regretfully. “It won’t be nearly as much fun this—” He broke off as I turned on my heel and headed down the sidewalk. “Hey! Where you going?”

“The side exit.”

His booming laughter followed me around the building.

The short alleyway stopped after half a dozen yards, ending at another brick wall. Three steps went up to a door, steps that were occupied by another bored-looking vamp. He didn’t seem surprised to see me, having heard my conversation with his buddy out front, and he didn’t even stand up. I decided that was rude and started rooting around in my big black duffel bag.

“What are you going to do?” he asked, amused. “Mace me?”

“Good idea.”

The heavy iron-headed mace caught him upside the head and sent him crashing through the rusted railing and into the river of slime flowing down the center of the alley. I didn’t wait around to see what mood he’d be in when he picked himself up. I threw open the door and sprinted inside, pausing only long enough to see that the sole source of light was on the balcony, one level up.

I heard a faint foot-scrape behind me and slammed the heavy old door in the vamp’s face. He cursed and staggered backward, and I took off across the dark dance floor. I reached the curving iron stairs to the balcony and took them two at a time.

I was halfway up when the guard’s foot hit the bottom step—and then abruptly fell away. He was soon joined by the rest of Cheung’s men, but they bunched at the bottom, making no effort to follow me up. That didn’t make sense until I burst out onto the catwalk and realized two things: there was already a vamp up here and he didn’t need any help.

He was standing in front of the manager’s office, halfway down the balcony. What he really looked like was anyone’s guess, of course, most of the older masters found it useful to present an attractive appearance. In this case, that meant bronze skin, high cheekbones, dark, almond-shaped eyes, and a hawklike nose with a proud tilt.

I didn’t know Cheung’s background, but he looked like the kind of guy who should be wearing heavily embroidered silk or possibly warrior leathers. Something exotic and powerful, anyway. So he appeared a little out of place in a double-breasted pinstripe tailored so tight he could have cut paper on it.

The elegance of the outfit made the large orange and black tiger tat prowling around his smooth olive skin that much more noticeable. Of course, the movement helped, too. I watched it stalk around the back of his hand before returning to the concealment of the shirtsleeve, tail slowly swishing. It was beautifully done—all long, sleek muscles under a rich blanket of fur, with watchful emerald eyes and an occasional flash of sharp white teeth.

Its expression wasn’t so nice. At the moment, both tiger and man wore the same one—of barely concealed impatience. “I thought I had warned you off,” Cheung said, without preamble.

“Was that what you were doing?” I moved forward, since it wasn’t like I could go back. “I guess the bullet grazing my ear must have confused me.”

“The fact that it missed should have told you as much.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I stopped a yard or so away, close enough to smell his cologne, far enough away to have a chance to reach my weapons. “Maybe next time you could shoot me an e-mail instead?”

Cheung ignored that. “I know your father’s power, dhampir. I have no wish to return you to him in pieces. If you swear to cease interfering in my business, you may go.”

“It would help if I knew what your business is,” I pointed out.

Cheung’s eyes narrowed. “You do not?”

“Would I be asking if I did?”

His expression darkened, but he didn’t reply, possibly because the front doors took that moment to slam open, allowing a dozen more vamps to pour into the room. It was starting to look like Cheung didn’t have anybody on staff lower than master level; either that, or he’d left the riffraff at home. These radiated enough power to ruffle my hair, even this far away, which made it a little ridiculous that they were dragging one short, pudgy guy.

He wasn’t halfway across the floor when I recognized him: Raymond, looking a little the worse for wear. He was trying to struggle but not managing it too well considering that neither of his feet was actually touching the floor. A tall vamp with Asian features but a pale blond buzz cut had him by the back of the neck, like an errant puppy.

I crossed my arms and got a grip on the stake up my sleeve.

Cheung noticed but didn’t do anything, other than roll his eyes. He looked past me as Raymond was dragged up to us and forced to kneel. Or maybe his legs just gave out. He looked pretty damn terrified.

“You appear to make enemies wherever you go, Raymond,” Cheung said, looking at him with a slight curl to his lip.

“I g-guess I’m just lucky like that,” Raymond said. It sounded cocky, even with the stutter, and won him a cuff upside the head from the blond. But I didn’t think it had been meant that way. Raymond was at the stage of terror where the mouth is on autopilot because the brain has retreated somewhere inside the skull in order to gibber quietly. If he’d been a human, he’d have soiled himself by now.

“Are you going to tell me what is going on?” I asked Cheung.

“I believe I shall let Raymond do that,” he said, looking with distaste at his cowering subordinate.

Ray looked from me to the boss and back again, but didn’t appear to find anything helpful. “Well?” I prompted.

He swallowed. “Uh. I might have, you know, mentioned that, uh, that the senate had appointed you as my, um.” He stopped, looking at me pitifully. His usually beady blue eyes were suddenly large and soulful, like the aforementioned puppy’s.

Or an albino rat.

“Your what?” I demanded.

“My bodyguard?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and thought about saving everyone a lot of trouble and staking Ray right here. But I doubted he’d told the senate all he knew yet. And without his information, we had pretty much a zero chance of shutting down the smuggling ring he’d been running. Not to mention that the little guy had done me a few pretty big favors recently.

I was going to have to figure a way to get him out of this.

I could always stake him later.

“Then he was lying,” Cheung said, looking satisfied.

I glared at Ray, whose eyes were still doing the huge and pleading thing. He clearly thought this was it. It didn’t help that I was pretty sure he was right.

I sighed and accepted the inevitable. “Not exactly.”

Cheung’s forehead creased slightly. “You are assuming responsibility for him?”

“I am saying I already have it.” I reached down and jerked Ray over to me by his collar. His eyes bugged out a little, but he didn’t protest. If nothing else, that told me how serious this was. He usually whined nonstop. “He’s