I led the way into Lincoln’s bedroom and jutted my chin, indicating the hidden door. Scrawny and Pickersgill took up position, Pickersgill at the side that opened, Scrawny on the hinged side, which I figured was smart. If Scrawny had a chance, she might get in my way. “Turn off the lights inside. And be sure to turn them on after the flashbang goes off.” I thought for a moment, wondering if I had left out anything. Probably.

“On three,” I said. I rotated my head on my neck and stretched my throwing arm. “One.” I reached deep, drawing on Beast-speed and strength. Pulled the pin. “Two.” I reared back. “Three.” The door opened so fast I didn’t see it move. The flashbang flew, ballistic, into the unlit room. The door slammed shut with an explosive gust of air. I covered my ears, just in case. So did the others. We could hear the detonation and the resultant screams even through the heavy door. Vamps who are dying, or think they are, give a piercing, eardrum-bursting shriek, like the love child of a screech owl and a mountain lion on crystal meth, amplified like a seventies rock band. Drawing two wood stakes, I said, “Open.” The door opened even faster than before, the lights blazing overhead, turning the noxious smoke inside into a thick cloud.

I launched myself into the scion lair. Smoke stinging my eyes, burning my nose. A naked form rushed out of the smoke, vamp-fast. I swept a leg forward and around and followed the rogue down with a belly stab, midcenter, deep enough to hit the descending aorta. Vamp blood sprayed out over me. I braced for a burn, but there was no chemical sting from the splatters. He was down. I left the stake in his belly and pulled another. I caught a flash of silver as a net was tossed over a female form. Three rogues came at me, vamped out, small fangs snapped down. Their pupils were smaller than a human’s at noon on a desert. They were effectively blind, but their nostrils were wide, sniffing, their breathing fast. I stabbed, took a step, thrust, pulled a new stake, stepped, thrust.

I’d taken down six, with eight stakes, when I realized that I should have counted the chained or thought to ask how many there were. Crap. Stupid, rookie mistake. I slammed my back against a cage, facing two vamps who came at me in concert. It wasn’t the usual mindless action of a rogue. These two were older than the others, their fangs longer, whiter. And they could see. They hesitated a fraction of a second, half a heartbeat. One dodged in. The other kicked out. I blocked the first one. Took the kick in the knee joint. Something popped. The world tilted. I went down.

A net flashed over the one who’d kicked me, glittering silver. He squealed like a pig being slaughtered. The other one fell on my injured leg. I smelled his hunger, his need. I was out of stakes. Training and instinct took over. I stabbed up with a vamp-killer, into the notch below his sternum. And remembered midstrike that I wasn’t supposed to kill him yet. I adjusted aim halfway in, trying to avoid a heart-thrust with the silvered blade. He grunted and slid from me. Curled up on the floor in the fetal position. Panting, mewling. I took a breath and started coughing, even as I pulled more blades.

Overhead, fans and the AC had come on, sucking out the smoke and the reek of vamp blood, filling the room with clean but frigid air. As the smoke cleared, I could see. It was all over.

Naked vamps were lying everywhere, most curled into the fetal position, bleeding profusely, their blood running across the stone floor to the central drain. Scarlet had been sprayed over the ceiling, walls, and cell bars like some kind of postmodernist paint job. Three blood-servants were down, all getting blood-sips and healing tongue-laving from the scions, which creeped me out, even though I’d been on the receiving end of healing laves and knew their benefits. One scion was holding his back as if he’d taken a tumble. He was feeding off Pickersgill, the two men in an embrace that made me feel like a voyeur. Scrawny was in a cell feeding a vamp, Amy Lynn cradling them both like babies. The girl was the one who had been weeping when I was here last. Now, her needlelike fangs were buried in her mother’s wrist, getting an infusion of vamp blood from mommy dearest.

I swiveled to my butt, and stretched out my right leg with both hands. It had been kicked and slashed by vamp claws, and it hurt. Blood coated my palm, not pumping, thankfully, so not arterial, but still a lot of blood. Some vamp-baby had hit a big vein. I wouldn’t be walking on it. Not until I shifted. But all the scions were down, all were alive, and miracle of miracles, the girl, Sarah, was being fed Dacy’s blood. I could make out a pulse beneath her ear, weak and too fast. She swallowed. I blew out a laugh and remembered to breathe. Pain radiated up and down my leg. Crap. This is bad. Good for the vamps. But bad for—

“Jane! The front door is open.” Grizzard stuck his head into the scion lair.

Dacy looked around, counting. “One got out.”

“Thomas.” There was dread in Pickersgill’s voice, and I couldn’t imagine what might alarm a vamp who had lived through the cold war, the Cuban missile crisis, and the death of President Kennedy, as well as all the post 9-11 stuff.

I really didn’t want to know, but I asked anyway. “What’s so bad about Thomas?”

Pickersgill said, “He was Lincoln’s primo blood-servant until he was injured in the line of duty and Linc brought him over. He’s been sane for three years, but he . . . uh—”

“He’s a Naturaleza,” Dacy stated tonelessly. “We didn’t know until he came out of devoveo.”

“Well, crap,” I whispered. The Naturaleza believed that they had a right to hunt and kill humans, just because they were at the top of the food chain. They were way more dangerous than any rogue, because they were thinking, intelligent, sociopathic killers, often with resources like safe houses and bank accounts their masters didn’t know about. If Shaddock had known, Thomas would never have been turned. He would have been allowed to die a normal human death, or been put down. If he was sane, and hadn’t yet killed a human, then he didn’t fall under the category of young-rogue, therefore he wasn’t mine to hunt until I was asked, and I wasn’t sure who was supposed to hunt him. Things had just FUBARed. I pulled a length of leather off a thigh strap and bound my injured knee, almost gagging with the pain, but the bleeding slowed. I rolled to one hip, pulled my phone, and speed-dialed Leo. He answered on the first ring.

“Things did not go well,” he said. The MOC was prescient. Maybe he read tea leaves. Or blood stains in the bottom of his glass. Or maybe he had access to the security system here at Shaddock Central. He had access to the cameras in all his Louisiana vamps’ clan homes, so why not here as well?

“No. They didn’t.” I considered Leo. Yeah. The MOC may not know much about computers, but Leo’s wealth could buy all the knowledge and expertise he wanted. Smart money said he had access to everything. “They had a sane vamp in captivity, a Naturaleza. He got free.”

Leo breathed a string of French curse words into the cell, then broke off right in the middle, and laughed. It was one of those silky laughs they do when they have you over a barrel, a gotcha laugh that made my skin want to crawl into a hole and curl protectively around itself. “It is my understanding,” he said, “that you are my Enforcer.” He capitalized the term, saying it the way he did Rogue Hunter, making it a title.

Titles and Leo’s delight meant that I was in trouble. If I said no, then I had lied to the vamps. If I said yes, then I was agreeing to a relationship with him. Which meant that I had to drink from him. And to Leo, drinking and sex went hand in hand. Or fang in vein. Leo had tried to kill me enough times while he was seriously whacko for me to avoid that like the plague. Crap. A dozen possible responses flashed through my mind. I settled on, “Not . . . officially.”

“Not . . . officially,” he repeated, as if tasting the words. “This is correct. I would advise you to choose your words with more care in future, when you claim to be something you are not.” I took a breath. I had dodged a bullet. “Yet,” he added. Ooookay. Maybe not so much dodged as still in the laser sights, but the trigger hadn’t been squeezed. “For now, I confer upon you the temporary entitlement to pursue and dispatch this Mithran who holds the Vampira Carta in such disregard. Allow me to speak with the sheriff.”

Yep. Ol’ Leo had access to the security cams. “How much?” I asked.

“Pardon?” he said, going all Frenchy on me. Leo knew what I was asking. When I didn’t reply, he sighed into the cell, and said, “I will meet your usual terms, plus twenty percent, as this Mithran is no young-rogue, and will be more difficult than others to dispatch.”

I thought about that for a long moment and nodded, though he couldn’t see it. Except in the cameras. I looked up at one and said, “Thirty. And you pay for any and all research and hazard pay for any backup, assuming I need them.”

Leo laughed, a low caress of sound that brought a flush of heat to my face even from hundreds of miles away. “Your terms are acceptable, my Enforcer.” The endearment flowed over me like a caress. Vamps, the really old ones, can do that—affect the pleasure centers of the brains with just their voices. Dang it. “Compel Pickersgill to heal your leg,” he added.

Yep. Leo was in Shaddock’s system. “I’ll make sure I’m healed,” I said, skirting an honest acknowledgment. I needed to shift to fix my knee. No vamp was gonna get his tongue on me if could help it. The mention of my leg brought the pain in it hammering to the surface.

I called Grizzard over and handed him my cell. I was just about to be assigned carte blanche to execute a thinking killing machine, and the local law was being told to stand down and let me do my job, all under the auspices of a clause under the Vampira Carta that was tenuous at best and down right illegal at worst. My only other choice was to let him go on a killing spree and allow the sheriff’s men to try and take him down. Between a rock and a hard place. Again. Go me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

You Are Dead Meat

Working the accelerator and brake with my left leg, I sped down 70 into a low-hanging fog, a bag of ice strapped on my knee with a length of flex. Using the speakerphone, I made calls as I negotiated the curves, the first to Reach. Fortunately Leo was paying for his services. “Jane Yellowrock,” he answered, “my most interesting client. What can I charge you for today?”