Mercy Blade (10 page)

Bruiser dropped his back to the wall and looked down at his hands, fingers interlaced and hanging limply in front of him. He breathed out, sounding gloomy. “I don’t know how much I can tell you.”

“I hope it’s enough to explain why Leo just offered me a hit.”

Bruiser raised his eyes to mine. “A hit?”

“A contract to kill Gee DiMercy.”

“Gee is still alive?” When I nodded, he asked tonelessly, “And Magnolia Sweets?”

“Dead. What’s going on, Bruiser?”

He smiled at the name. Bruiser was really George Dumas, a good-looking guy—not as pretty as Rick, but no one was—who stood six-four and had a great butt and a wonderful nose. That might sound weird, but I have a thing about noses, and Bruiser’s was dang-near perfect. His butt in a tuxedo or a pair of tight jeans won awards in my book too.

He sighed again. “You know about the previous vampire war in this city.”

“If you mean the one in the early nineteen hundreds, I know it happened. That’s it.”

The elevator door opened onto a sterile hallway smelling faintly of floor wax. The overhead lights were dimmed, but brightened as we stepped out. There were only three doors, all of them locked with keypads like the one in the elevator. Bruiser punched in some more numbers and opened one. Inside was a large room centered with an oval table and chairs, a modern bronze light fixture with a single large globe—almost as big around as the table—open side facing up, hanging over it. Closed laptops were placed in front of each chair and computers hummed softly at the back of the room. A huge monitor, maybe five feet across, hung from the ceiling, the screen black. There were papers at the foot of the oval table, and two chairs were pulled a little away, as if we were expected to sit. Bruiser claimed a chair and indicated one for me. I watched as he restrained himself from pulling out my chair like he would for a lady. Controlling my grin, I sat. He sat. I waited as he thought, smelling coffee and tea at the back of the room on a rolling beverage cart, and wishing for a strong cuppa.

“In the early nineteen hundreds, the mayor of New Orleans had been made aware of the”—he steepled his widespread fingers in front of his mouth, thumbs under this chin—“
monsters
in the midst of his populace.” As usual, when Bruiser talked of the past, his British accent grew stronger, more pronounced. I settled in for a story.

“When the vampires split into two aggressive factions and went to war, he might have stayed out of it, had not the human body count risen so precipitously.” Bruiser studied me over his fingertips. “The human servants did what they could to make the bodies disappear, but it was impossible to hide them all. The mayor charged his assistant, Roland Iveries, to bring an end to the carnage in Storyville and the French Quarter.” Behind his fingers, Bruiser’s lips twisted in a broken expression, empty and a bit lost.

During my previous hunt, I had learned about Storyville, a district of the city set aside by Sidney Story from 1897 to 1917 for legalized prostitution, houses of ill repute, saloons, gambling hells, honky-tonks, music halls, and similar places catering to the baser side of human desires. The vamp who had done my employment interview had owned one of the whore-houses and still did. Katie’s Ladies had operated outside of Storyville during the vamp war, in the house where I currently lived, and was still operating in the house that backed up to mine in the French Quarter. I didn’t know what the cops thought about the house of prostitution, but since it was run by a vamp and catered to vamps, maybe it fell under a “don’t ask, don’t tell” edict.

“Following a particularly vicious clash in late 1914, where several blood-slaves were killed under the eyes of a reporter of the time, Iveries called the clan masters together, the most powerful Mithrans in a thousand square miles. He volunteered to act as ambassador to parley a peace agreement between the factions. His boss, the mayor, had an important port city to run; the deaths were drawing unwanted naval attention. An angry admiral, I believe.

“It’s my guess that Iveries coveted the immortality the Mithrans could offer, and was hoping he could trade a service to them worthy of being admitted into their number via blood-rite.” Bruiser dropped his hands, meeting my eyes. “Back then, there had been no mention of the decade of madness experienced by new converts.”

“Converts?” I asked, mild derision in my tone. “New
rogues
.”

Bruiser flipped his fingers to the side in a hand shrug, not disagreeing. “Before the last war, my mother was the main draw in Katie’s Ladies.”

I blinked; quickly schooled my face to hide my surprise. “I thought your mother was gentry in England.”

“Impoverished gentry, in Somerset, before we immigrated here. Far more impoverished after my father’s untimely death. Men—vampires—paid twenty dollars to spend an hour with her, a lot of money at that time. She accepted only a
very
few gentlemen callers.” Bruiser’s muscles went taut, his mouth hard, tight with history. “It was said that her blood tasted of lilacs and roses.” I thought of Gee, the floral scent of his skin, the peculiar metallic scent of his blood.

“What’s the difference between a place like Katie’s and vamps picking up donor meals in bars? Neither one offers a traditional blood-servant relationship.”

“True, but with vampire madams, the girls and boys are vetted according to age, general health, drug dependency, willingness, and a comprehensive understanding of a vampire’s deeper needs. While not a blood-servant bonding, it offers more than a one-night stand with a sick, stoned, drunken child.”

“Okay.” I filed that away for later consideration. “Go on with the history lesson.”

“The factions were loathe to gather in one place, even under a flag of truce. The werewolves had picked sides, and the balance of power had shifted precariously. The mayor’s henchman made certain that my Lady Mother, the Lady Beatrice, would be on hand to
assist with the negotiations
.” His voice went toneless, as if the memories were suddenly so weighted that they stole any music from his soul when he said, “Iveries hired a werewolf to kidnap my sister Jacqueline. He raped her, and Iveries sent back the soiled sheets.”

I couldn’t hide my reaction. Bruiser curled in a shoulder as if to say,
Yeah. That’s what I felt about it
, and went on with his tale. “My mother agreed to do whatever Iveries wanted to get Jacqueline back alive—if no longer unharmed. He required her to issue the invitations to a diplomatic parley, and because she would be there, five of the Mithran clan masters agreed to attend. With the balance of power attending, the other clan leaders fell quickly into line.

“The werewolves had been acting as strong-arm security for both sides in the war, and agreed to follow whatever outcome arose from the meeting. The previous Master of the City was not as vehement as Leo in his detestation of the two-natured. The wolves assumed that no matter who won, they would remain welcome.

“At most such human assemblies of the time, wine or champagne was offered. For Mithrans, there was blood. And sex. My mother served as willing donor for both.”

I had already schooled myself not to react, but I felt my small flinch. Bruiser gave me a smile, more tired grief than anything else.

“She brought me to the meeting and hid me in the next room. I was to listen and peer through pinholes in the wall, and if one of them mentioned where Jacqueline was being held, I was charged to bring my sister home. And to let my Lady Mother know that her daughter was liberated.”

I kept my reactions still this time, but I wanted to kick something. I watched his body language, listening to his breathing, calling on Beast’s senses as well as my own. I was sure he didn’t tell this story often. Maybe never. It wasn’t lighthearted conversation. I swallowed down my reaction to the barren expression in his eyes. He wouldn’t have appreciated sympathy.

“I knew what my mother was. I understood how she earned the coin that kept us fed and provided the education that would later keep us both out of the gutter. But I had never ... seen her work. She took them all on, men and women equally, giving of her blood and her body until she was bruised and nearly bloodless, whiter than the linen on their tables, white except where she was stained with her own lifeblood. And Iveries watched and laughed as his ‘gift’ to the vampires was consumed.”

His lips twisted hard, too fast for me to read the expression shuttered within. My own eyes were emotionless, my face carefully blank.

“They thanked Iveries for the gift. They all knew what he had done to secure my Lady Mother’s willing participation. But not one of them mentioned, or cared, or perhaps even knew, where Jacqueline was being held or if she would be freed.” Bruiser laced his hands on the table, his body language protective, controlled.

“Midway through, a vampire and woman came into the hidey-hole where my Lady Mother had left me. Before I could scream, the vampire clamped a hand over my mouth and set his teeth at my throat. It was Leo.” Bruiser studied his hands as if he’d never seen them.

“Leo was one of my mother’s lovers, her favorite. He was already powerful, old enough to be a clan master, though he was second in his clan, scion to his own uncle and blood-master, the Master of the City, Amaury Pellissier, in the next room.

“Leo and the woman with him had been working to bring an end to the vampire war, and had followed a werewolf, hoping to discover where Jacqueline was being kept. He discovered she was hidden in Saint Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square. He couldn’t enter a place with so many religious icons, so he gave me a gun and sent me with the woman to find her.”

Bruiser released a faint sigh. “We found the little room in the bowels of the church. We fought and I killed the werewolves watching my sister. We brought her to safety, but it was too late. At some point in the parley between vampire factions, my mother must have given up hope of survival. She imbibed a large amount of medical colloidal silver—with brandy, to hide the flavor of the vampire toxin. Before they realized what she had done, she had poisoned most of the blood-masters in the city.” Bruiser smiled, a cold, hard flex of lips with no humor in it.

“When they realized what she had done, they strapped her down to the table where they had come to speak peace, and set her afire. Alive. And when she screamed out the name of Iveries as her cohort, though he was not, they strapped him down with her. The fire spread, and the resultant conflagration burned more than a city block of Storyville’s best houses. It was the beginning of the end of the district set aside for legalized prostitution,” he said wryly, “and the end of the vampire war of the nineteen hundreds.”

I had sat through his recital, awful as it was, but I had no idea why he was telling me all this. So I said, “Um. I’m sorry. That’s awful—”

Bruiser held up a hand, stopping me, and said, “My mother’s sacrifice put an end to the violence. The heirs took over, reinstituting the Vampire Council, which the previous clan masters had disbanded. Now that Leo was clan master, he sent Gee DiMercy away for having earlier attempted to give the mercy stroke to his daughter. And the werewolves who were complicit in the war and guilty of the rape of my sister were punished in accordance with were-law. The remaining wolves were exiled.” He smiled sadly. “They swore vengeance on me and mine for the death of Henri Molyneux.”

Henri was Roul’s grandfather. Okay. Now it was starting to make sense. That was the problem with vamps. They lived centuries, and everything that happened today had roots in things that happened decades, centuries, or even millennia before. “Your sister. Was she bitten?”

“By the werewolf who raped her? Yes, but she survived, unturned. I never learned how.”

I thought about Gee’s comment that he had kept me from getting the werewolf “taint.” Had Gee helped Bruiser’s sister avoid the taint? “And the woman who helped you free her?”

“Magnolia Sweets.”

Leo’s prime blood-servant of the time. “And Leo and you killed Henri?”

“A small cadre of wolves had bitten a number of women, hoping to turn them so they might have mates. The penalty for attempting to turn a human is death, as stated by were-law, but there was no one to perform that justice in the United States. We carried out the penalty prescribed by were-law on the offenders, four wolves,” he said. “Henri, as alpha, was guilty by default.”

Which meant that on the surface the new MOC had punished the weres guilty of biting humans. But the reality of that justice was wrapped up in vengeance for the attack on Jacqueline. Gotcha. Vamp politics were often bloody.

“There were some deaths from wolf attacks in and around the city before Leo exiled the weres, and all the women they attempted to turn died. My sister lived into her mid-eighties, and died with her sons and daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren at her side.” Bruiser made a little tossing motion again, indicating an inconsequential addition. “A very few wolves remained, causing trouble, and refused to abandon their hunting territories until the next full moon, but they were handled.”

“So that’s why Leo is willing to open diplomatic discussions with the African weres and not the werewolves.”

“The most current reason. There are older ones.”

There always are.
“And Gee?”

“Gee left. And Magnolia Sweets went with him. Her abandonment and betrayal was more than Leo could bear. He was truly inconsolable with her loss. He appointed me his first blood-servant, though I was only twelve at the time, untrained, and not suitable for Leo’s other needs.”

I interpreted “other needs” to be sexual in nature. “And now Gee and wolves both come home at a time when the vamps are in disarray following another war and coup attempt, and the appearance of were-kind on the world stage. The timing is significant.”

“Not a war,” he said. “Not a coup. A war goes on a long time, between recognized opponents. A coup d’état means a change of leadership, usually by violence, which didn’t happen. It was a ... corporate reorganization.” He seemed happy with the phrase, but most corporate reorganizations don’t leave a lot of heads lying around or blood splattered walls. “And with predators, timing is always significant.”