“Until the Master of the City returns me to my rightful place in the clans, there will be no peace for him. None for them. No balance in their souls. No tranquility. I am necessary to them.” He tilted his head. “But then ...” He walked around me on the bike, graceful as a flamenco dancer, considering. “I have heard you have killed young rogues caught in devoveo. Perhaps you are the new Mercy Blade of the Mithrans.”

Kit killer, Beast hissed deep inside me.

“No,” I said to them both. I stood and brought my weight down on the kick start. Bitsa roared to life. “No way.” I left him there, on the side of the road. I was miles away, in the city, the lights of vamp headquarters lighting the night, before I remembered several things. Gee had never told me what he was. Gee had started Bitsa as if the witchy locks weren’t there at all. Gee had carried me, somehow, from Booger’s. And my silver chain-mail collar was still missing. I touched my throat, finding only the gold chain and nugget. Gone. The lacerations were healed, but the protection of the collar was absent. Replacing it was gonna cost me dearly. “Crap.”

My official cell rang while I was crossing the bridge and again just as I got to the far side. I pulled over on a patch of worn-out grass and smiled when I saw Molly’s number displayed. “Molly-girl, what’s cracking?”

“Nothing is cracking, Aunt Jane.”I chuckled and said, “Does your mama know you’re using her cell, Angie Baby?” Angelina was my goddaughter, Molly’s daughter, a scary-strong witch who had come into her powers a decade too young. She lived with those powers battened and corded down and yet, she still knew things. Could do things. I’d seen her.

“No. I’m bein’ a bad girl. But you gots to stay away from the blue man.”

Shock thudded through me. “Okay, Angie Baby. I promise.”

“Cross your heart?”

I dutifully crossed my heart. “And hope to die.”

“No. Don’t do that! You be careful! I love you, Aunt Jane.”

Tears stung my eyes. “I’ll be careful. I promise. I love you too, Angie Baby.”

CHAPTER 5

You Can’t Blame a Vamp-Killer for Trying

I wove my way through New Orleans city streets to vamp HQ, making a few stops on the way. I had a report to deliver and I had discovered that it was easier to give one in person than to write it out and have it messengered over. Vamps aren’t big on the Internet. They want things on vellum or parchment with fancy penmanship and flowery words. I was a modern girl. While my computer skills were only okay, my penmanship stank.

I motored up to the gate at the vamps’ official headquarters. For the first time I’d ever known it, the place was locked down. The wrought iron gate was shut, security lights lit up the grounds, and an armed guard walking a big brute of a mastiff was patrolling. The guard smelled like vamp and not blood-servant. Weird. The suckheads never did their own chores when there was a blood-servant around to do it for them.There was no sign in front of the stone-faced, multistory building—never had been—but the arched windows, the long line of steps up to the door, and the façade were bright with security lights. I spotted new cameras on the eaves and, with Beast-sight, saw laser paths lacing the grounds. My old pal Bruiser had been a busy boy, installing and integrating the hardware I had proposed to upgrade the system. Bruiser was Leo’s prime blood-servant, head of security for the vamps in the city of New Orleans, but he’d been a much more laid-back guy until lately. When Leo had cleaned house by killing off his enemies, not all of them had been so easily dispatched.

I sat-walked my bike up to a new intercom with a camera and pushed the little red button. When a voice responded, I said into the speaker, “Jane Yellowrock, with a report.”

“Please remove the face mask and present proper picture identification.”

I stuck out my tongue, though I had it properly back in my mouth when I pulled off the helmet, but there was nothing I could do about the cheeky grin. Not sure what proper identification might mean to a vamp, from a zippered pocket I dug out my bike license for North Carolina, my Private Investigator ID for the same state, and my official rogue-vamp-hunting card with the cutesy slogan. It was always good for a laugh with the long-lived vamps. This one didn’t chuckle when I presented them to the camera, but the gate did swing open.

I was met at the bottom of the long steps by the vamp and the dog. The vamp was an old one, a master himself, one of Leo’s loyal scions, though I couldn’t remember his name, only that he had a Texas accent. Lot of Texans in my life tonight. I called him Tex, and he didn’t seem to mind. The dog growled at me, showing teeth, but I wasn’t impressed. I’d been growled at by bigger critters tonight. “Knock it off, doggie. Howdy, Tex. What’s kicking?”

The vamp lifted one side of his mouth in a half smile and pulled the dog to heel. The growling subsided. “Evening, Miz Yellowrock. New security protocols set up by the boss, including an air lock inside the front door in the foyer, with an armed guard.”

“I hope so. What good is a guard if he isn’t carrying?”

Tex let his smile widen. “Couldn’t agree more, ma’am. You’ll have to remove your weapons there, before being escorted inside to Mr. Pellissier.”

Though vamp citizenship was being considered in Congress, at the moment they were treated as aliens, and carrying a weapon beyond the foyer of a council house would merit the same punishment as taking a weapon into a foreign embassy or a federal courtroom. It was a good way to get jumped on and locked up. “He’s here tonight?”

Something shuttered behind Tex’s eyes. “Mr. Pellissier is here every night, ma’am.” He turned away, pulling the mastiff with him. “Take care, you hear?” There was a warning in his tone, not that I needed one. Leo had been worse than unpredictable for weeks. But every night in vamp HQ, and not in his clan home? That was strange.

I made my way up the long steps to the front door, cataloguing the security changes. The front door was opened by a blood-servant flunky with the dead eyes of a burned out soldier—until he recognized me. A huge, gap-toothed grin lit the face of a seriously big guy; tall, well-muscled and bald, he looked like an escapee from the World Wrestling Federation. I grinned in return. “Wrassler,” I said. I nicknamed almost everyone I met, and had never asked Wrassler his real name, though his had evolved down from WWF-Guy to WWF, to the current Wrassler. He seemed to like the latest moniker.

“If it isn’t little Janie. Come on in.”

I shook my head at the name and looked over the air lock. It took up a six-by-six-foot space inside the foyer, and it was much more than it appeared, constructed of bulletproof glass and reinforced titanium bars. It was seriously cool. “Where do you want the weapons?”

“Here,” he pointed to a glass-topped table with beveled edges, which looked like a weird place to stack weapons until I saw the black trays. Wrassler looked me over and laid out all six, a grin on his face that said he was making a joke.

“Cute.” I felt like I’d been dressing and undressing—weapon wise—all day, but I wasn’t about to argue with security precautions, especially as I had been suggesting these for weeks. Vamp-hunting was fun and paid well, but the gigs were hard to come by. Security was my bread and butter.

I pulled the Benelli M4 and placed it across one tray, the barrel longer than any of the black resin platters. Three handguns went in the next, still smelling recently fired. His nose twitched and I knew Wrassler caught the smell. When he raised his brows in question, I shrugged, hiding my grin. His eyes tracked over me, noting my bloody, fang-ripped clothes. He stuck a sausagelike finger into a jagged rip in the leather over my elbow. “Bet that hurt.”

I grunted. “Yeah. And I’ll be submitting a bill for the repair.” Into the third and fourth trays I placed five vamp-killers each, lined up neatly; the crosses filled the fifth, laying them so the chains didn’t knot; all but two of my stakes went into the sixth dish. I was hoping the sheer number of weapons would make him overlook the pair of silver hair sticks in my fighting bun as a fashion accessory. It wasn’t smart to be unarmed within fang range of a vamp, not when said vamp had tried to kill me already, and may have sent me to die tonight. When Wrassler didn’t notice the hair sticks I’d retained, staring at the array of weapons in bemusement, I tapped my cheek with a fingertip as if thinking, made an “aha” gesture, and held out the vial of holy water to him. “You’ll want to hold this one.”

He laughed and took the vial, setting it with the crosses, which seemed appropriate. “That’s my Janie.”

“You do know that name annoys me.”

“Yep. Assume the position, little girl.”

“Even worse.”

“I know.”

After a thorough but totally professional pat down, I followed Wrassler to the stairs and up one flight. I’d been on most floors of vamp HQ, but the doors were always shut, making it hard to orient myself as to purpose. Wrassler knocked at an interior room, meaning no exterior walls, no windows, not that there wasn’t a way out hidden behind a bookshelf or something. “Entrez.” Leo’s voice, speaking French.

Wrassler opened the door, keeping his body between the room and me. “The Rogue Hunter, Mr. Pellissier.”

“Weapons?”

“None, sir.”

A hint of humor entered Leo’s tone. “How many?”

“Filled up all six trays, sir.”

“Mmm. Hair sticks?”

Wrassler looked at me and I sighed, pulling the silver stakes/hair sticks out of my bun and setting them on the carpet at my feet. “No hair sticks, Leo,” I said. I didn’t want to get the big guy in trouble. Wrassler gave me a glare, to which I shrugged back with a “So sue me” expression. You can’t blame a vamp-killer for trying.

“You may enter.”

The guard closed the door behind me, and I faced Leo’s office. Tyler Sullivan, a whip-thin, pale-skinned black man with dark eyes and full, sexy lips, Leo’s second in command, stood barring my way. His eyes were empty and blank and cold, his posture military-parade rest, but with something cocky and cruel in his bearing. He looked me over head to foot and made a little twirly gesture with one finger. I turned around and when I was facing him again, he said softly, “Assume the position, Miss Yellowrock.”