Broken Soul: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (11 page)

“Alive,” Bruiser said. “Both were bitten. Both are unwell. We brought in the priestesses.” More gently, he added, “As you seem inclined to live, I’ll look in on them now.”

“Okay, yeah. I’m good. Keep me informed?”

Bruiser nodded and stepped out. Eli stepped in and gave one of his patented non-nods.

The security people in the room with us were armed to the teeth, taut with inaction and the need to do something. Anything physical. I rotated my shoulders and got to my feet, feeling a bit more steady than before the gaggy oatgruel, though my stomach ached as if I’d been kicked. “We have info to share and jobs to do,” I said. “But can we wait until I’ve cleaned up before we do this?” I gestured around the room. “This debrief?”

“We need more space,” Wrassler said. “Tables. Chairs. Doughnuts.”

“Computer access,” Eli said, his eyes hard.

Which was a clue to me that we had things to discuss. “Right. Okay,” I said. “I’ll get a fast shower and meet you in the conference room. We’ll talk, cuss and discuss, and reach some preliminary conclusions. Because we have a problem,
people. A big one.” I pointed to Wrassler. “Divide up your people. Two by two. No one alone until we figure this out. I want the grounds walked over, every inch. I want the roofs looked over. You’re looking for any clear slime or any crystalline grit from the attacking whatever-it-was. Plus which direction it came from and if it was alone or with something or someone else.”

When no one moved, I said, “Now!” The room emptied quickly of the ancillary people, which gave me more air to breathe and fewer stress pheromones to struggle through. As the door closed, I heard Wrassler giving orders and the sound of feet moving off fast. Yeah. They’d needed jobs.

I pushed my own feet into motion, though they felt like they weighed fifty pounds each, and moved toward the door. I was sore. I really hoped I wouldn’t need to fight again soon. Usually when I changed back from Beast, everything was healed, but this pain was new, as if I’d been put back together wrong somehow. “Eli, you’re with me.”

I pushed through into the foyer, Eli calling after me, “You want me to shower with you, babe?” he asked. “Wash your back?”

I smiled, though it was more like a baring of teeth. He’d choke on his tongue if I said yes. “
Watch
my back. Not wash it,” I called to him. He was by my side in an instant and I continued, much softer. “We don’t know how that thing got in and I’m not quite myself yet.” He looked me over in surprise and I felt good that I had kept
something
from him, which means that no one else had realized how worthless I was. “You’re my plus one until I’m better. I need to know how that thing managed to hurt Gee and Leo, and what effect it will have on them long range.”
And how it saw me in the gray place of the change,
but I didn’t say that. “And I need an update on the elevator situation.”

“Alex is already working on everything. He’ll have an update in fifteen minutes.”

“Good. Shower. Now.”

“Yeah,” Eli said, far too casually. “You really do stink, babe.”

I had been running around vamp HQ in my filthy Lycra and bare feet, and no one had said a word about it. Except my partner. He was such a good pal. Not.

Fortunately, the elevator had been cleaned, housecleaning
leaving behind a synthetic scent probably called Highlands Heather or Mystical Forest or some such stupid name. We were cleared for the gym floor, so I swiped my hand over the reader, punched a button, and soon I was standing, still clothed, under scalding hot water, letting it rinse away the stench of fighting.

Standing under the hard spray, I stripped, and something fell out of my shirt and jog bra. I caught the smooth, rounded, plastic-like thing before it hit the floor and set it aside to finish cleaning. When my hair was washed and combed, I was lotioned up, and was wrapped in one of the plush towels kept in the locker room, I called out to Eli, “I’m ready to dress now.”

“Clear,” came his response as he stepped out of sight of the curtained stalls. The towel covering me from shoulder to knees, I tossed my wet clothes into a sink and opened the locker assigned to me.

I never knew what clothes I’d find in my locker, provided by the HQ staff. Sometimes it was formal wear. Recently, I had found three pairs of dancing shoes—black, gold, and a silver pair that I was pretty sure had been put there by Del. Once, a pair of really nice formfitting pants and a gorgeous, black, cowl-necked sweater had been inside. Today, I found clean undies, a pair of black knit pants, a pair of black jeans, two sweaters, and several T-shirts. Leo was giving me a choice. That was a change. Underneath the clothes and tied up with a red bow was a brand-new, custom-made holster, a tactical SERPA carbon-fiber thigh holster, adjustable for various makes and models of guns. And my blades. And my stakes.

Had Leo given me this? He was a narcissistic, dictatorial, tyrannical, despotic, spoiled-as-a-child blood-sucker and he thought he could buy his way into my loyalty and my pants, so maybe, though guns didn’t seem his style. And then I saw the card. It was handwritten on heavy card stock in black ink. No envelope. I lifted the card into the light and read.

“If a blade, tea, and catnip were not sufficient, perhaps I might woo you with a tactical, drop-thigh holster.” It was signed with a simple script
G
.

A smile pulled at my lips. “Bruiser,” I said. And, “
Woo
. What an odd little word.” But the smile on my face lightened all through me.

I dressed quickly in the jeans, a leather belt, and the red, thin knit, cowl sweater. I liked the big loopy collars. They were
great for sliding silver stakes through and making them look like jewelry. They were also loose enough that the odd pain remaining near my belly button didn’t receive any unexpected pressure. I slid on the comfy slippers that were always in the locker. There must be a storeroom or closet somewhere that contained a stash, because I had taken several pairs home and there were always more here.

My fighting leathers and combat boots were on the long bench that divided the locker room, stuffed in a satchel that Eli had found somewhere, as if he’d known I wouldn’t want to wear them. My weapons were in a neat row on the bench. Eli had cleaned the blades. “I’m decent,” I said softly, knowing Eli would hear me.

Still geared up, he walked back into the main room and nodded to the weapons. It was Eli-speak for,
What weapons do you want? How do you want to weapon up? All of it? Or just some?
All that in a nod. We had learned to read each other’s cues so quickly that it was sorta disturbing. And maybe awesome.

I held up the thigh holster and said, “Looky what Bruiser got me!”

Eli spread out the custom-made thigh holster on the bench, studying it with approval. “The man’s got taste. And he seriously wants in your pants, babe.”

A flash of warmth brightened my face and heated its way down my chest, so I thumped his arm with my fist. Hard. And took back the holster while he laughed and rubbed his biceps. I strapped the rig to my right thigh. A standard thigh holster was constructed with three straps, two around the thigh, one that went up and looped onto a belt. TV cops wore the rigs low on the thigh, which looked cool, but for close quarters fighting I liked my weapons a bit higher than the specs suggested. The upper thigh strap to my new rig went near my groin, the lower around the largest part of my thigh. The custom unit had a vertical strap that went to my belt, directly above the holster, and a longer, distinctive strap that went around my waist and back to the unit for stability. The holster was more complicated than a regular thigh rig, but because I was so slender the extra strap gave me more control and also allowed me to fasten on a holster for a backup weapon when I was wearing long coats or sweaters, like now. There was even a loop to secure my M4 harness. The shotgun hadn’t gotten a lot of use lately, but it was
my go-to weapon when facing large numbers of big-bad-uglies. It cleared a wide swath, when needed.

I holstered one of my matched Walther PK380s at my right thigh, and the other one at the small of my back for a left-hand draw. The semiautomatic handguns were lightweight and ambidextrous, with bloodred polymer grips that perfectly matched the red of the T-shirt. Which was a girly thought and one I didn’t share with Eli, though I could imagine his expression if I did. The .380s offered less stopping power than nine-mils, but vamp central meant the possibility of collateral damage, and killing anyone or anything by accident was not on my schedule, now or ever. The .380 on my thigh, I pulled and holstered several times, testing the friction of the holster fabric, before I loaded it with standard rounds. The one at my spine was loaded with silver, just in case of vamp or were-animal attack. I liked to be prepared for both kinds of bad guys—human and supernatural big-bad-uglies.

There was a special sheath in the thigh rig for a fourteen-inch vamp-killer—steel with silver plating along the flat of the blade. Steel to cut flesh, silver to poison vamps or weres. The thigh holster had deep pockets for stakes, and I inserted silver-tipped ash stakes with little wooden buttons on the ends so I could shove them into a vamp without hurting the palm of my hand if needed, and also so that I could get a good grip if I ever wanted to pull one out. It had happened. The stakes were a new design and though they resembled knitting needles, they were easier to use than my old model. Into my calf holster went a six-round Kahr P380, a small semiautomatic with a matte black finish, loaded with standard ammo.

I stood and looked myself over in the long mirror and frowned. I looked long and lean and feminine, and even the gun strapped to my hip and thigh didn’t fix that. “It’s the cowl-neck,” Eli said, reading my mind again. “Makes you look soft and sweet.” He did that little lip-twitch thing he called a smile. “Good disguise, except for the gun. Which makes you look hot, in a deadly sort of way.”

I shook my head at the left-handed insult and passed him the clear, rounded thing I’d found under me after the battle with the lillilend. Not wanting to steer him to my own result, I asked simply, “What do you think?”

“This that thing you tucked into your boobs after the fight?”

“Yeah. Who else saw?”

Eli shrugged. “Bruiser. No one else, I think.” He ran his fingers over the curved side, which was blunt and smooth, and then over the opposite side, which was irregular, ripped-looking in spots, with longer fiber-like things hanging off. “Thin, clear, luminous, flexible, and slightly iridescent,” he said, bending it to test its plasticity. It sprang back into shape. “What I could make out of the thing in the gym, it was vaguely snakelike. Scale? Like from a snake? Ripped out of the skin underneath?” He mimed pulling one off.

“I think so,” I said. Weirdly, the spot on my chest where it had touched my skin continued to tingle. I rubbed my sternum, trying to stop the reaction. “I should send it to Leo’s lab, in Texas, for DNA testing, but they already have the gunk off the floor.” I bent it and held it to the light, where the surface swam with color like the surface of a pearl. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll keep it.” I tucked it into a slit in the thigh holster that buttoned shut, discovering as I did that there was even a small pocket in the rig, holding a tourniquet and sterile bandages. Bruiser had thought of everything. I liked that in a man. “Let’s get this debrief on the road.”

We were walking into the security/conference room when Eli’s cell did that little jangle-buzz that let him know he had a text. “Alex has everything secure,” he said, “and all non-Jane footage ready for viewing.”

•   •   •

The air of the conference room was redolent of scorched coffee, fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts, the heated scent of Onorio, to tell me that Bruiser was present, Grégoire’s intense personal vamp scent, gun oil, the reek of fired weapons, and testosterone. In other words, it smelled wonderful. The underground room had a security console, a huge monitor/TV screen, a massive table, and comfortable rolling desk chairs.

The primo, Adelaide Mooney, opened the meeting with the info that Leo and Gee were being treated by the priestesses. She assured us that they would both be okay, but it would be tomorrow night before we’d see them again. With the fast healing of vampires and whatever species an Anzû was, that sounded pretty ominous. Del looked haggard but elegant, dressed in a monochrome blend of blond tones that matched her hair, which was down and curling on her shoulders. I remembered seeing her at some point in the gym, sword raised. It had been only a glimpse, but it looked as if Del knew her way around sharp objects.

When she finished her report, I asked, “Can you tell us what Leo was saying when the thing flew into the room? It sounded like,
Lepree lumyear. Larcencel. Larcencel
.”

Del’s eyes flicked down and back to me. I wasn’t sure what the reaction meant, other than she wanted to be done and outta here. She stood and said, “The Master of the City said to give you this.” She passed a folded scrap of paper to me. On it was written in a shaky hand, with what looked like a ballpoint pen, the words,
Grand danger, mon cour. L’esprit lumière. L’arcenciel
.

It wasn’t Leo’s usual fancy, calligraphy-like script, and I’d never seen him use a ballpoint pen or write on a torn piece of paper, but the words on it had the right
L
s in them to be his handwriting. “Okay. What’s it say?”

Toneless, she replied. “It says, ‘Great danger, my heart. The light spirit. The rainbow.’”

“What’s wrong with his heart? Did the bite damage it?” For that matter, did Leo even have a heart? Fortunately I got my mouth closed before I said those words.

“I believe that Leo is calling
you
his heart,” Bruiser said, his tone droll.

“Oh. Okay. No.” I looked at Del and finally was able to deduce her expression as an unwilling possessiveness. Del and Leo had begun a relationship that included more than just blood sharing, and this read like I was poaching on her territory. Though how that all worked when Leo was still sleeping with Grégoire, I had no idea. “I’m not his heart. He just calls me that to tick me off.”