Shadow Rites: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (5 page)

“Um-hum.” My mouth found his and I sucked his tongue into my mouth, pulling him close, until his need was pressed hard into the center of me. I shoved my feet around his backside and locked my ankles, nearly knocking us to the
floor. Again. Bruiser braced his legs on the seat across from us, grabbed the back of my head with one arm around me.

“If I never told you,” he growled, grinding us together, “I hate pants on you.” He kissed me so hard our teeth clacked together, and my lips swelled with the pressure. His heated scent filled my nose. I pulled him to me with one hand and slid the other into his dress shirt, sending a button flying, ricocheting inside the limo. Beast growled. The sound came out of my throat in a vibration that demanded.

And Eli knocked on the glass.

Bruiser cursed foully, promising a terrible death and dismemberment to my partner. I laughed against his mouth, my breath fast huffs of interrupted need.

The knock came again, along with a fainter click. Over the loudspeaker the driver said, “Forgive me for intruding, sir, but Mr. Younger has informed me that the Master of the City is awaiting Miz Yellowrock. With some impatience.” I heard that distant click again as the driver returned us to audio privacy. I could have sworn he was laughing.

“We,” Bruiser gasped, “will pick this up the moment I return from searching out the magical imperative of the brooch. And I don’t care if I have to drag you out of a business meeting with the Witch Council, the Mithran Council, and the governor. We will finish this.” Bruiser’s heart was thumping madly against my chest. It had been a while for us. I eased away from him, unlocking my heels and sliding to the seat beside him. He held my eyes for a moment, the look promising much more than any words could, his eyebrow quirking up. Just the one. I felt my belly do a slow roll. “You ruined my shirt,” he accused much more mildly.

“Just one button.”

“Do you intend to sew the button back on?”

“Nope. I intend to destroy another one as soon as possible.”

Bruiser barked with laughter, smoothing my hair back again. He rearranged the stakes he had misplaced in my bun. Kissed me again, much more softly and gently. “He will smell me on you.” He was speaking of Leo, who had once upon a time claimed me for himself, until it was explained to
the master suckhead that I was neither territory nor a slave. He had claimed Bruiser too, but that was before becoming Onorio had freed him from the chief fanghead.

“Good,” I said. “Old guys sometimes need reminders about who belongs to who. Whom. Whatever.”

Bruiser stilled, his brown eyes holding me. “And do we belong to each other?”

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say to that. We were exclusive. But the relationship hadn’t gotten to the three-word-phrase, four-letter-word state yet.
I love you.
Which thought totally terrified me. I looked down, straightening my clothes. “We’re still finding out.” With that cryptic statement, I grabbed my lipstick that had fallen out of my one good pocket and opened the limo door.

Bruiser said, “Don’t forget date night tomorrow night. You and me at the Rock N Bowl. And my place afterward to address the button problem.”

I closed the door and escaped.

You Will
Not
Blow It Up

Outside, Eli wore an expression even more obscure that usual. I expected him to tease me or say something, but he simply looked me over and handed me a tissue. “Wipe your mouth and put on new lipstick. You’re smeared.”

“Spoilsport,” I accused. “You enjoyed that.”

He chuckled evilly. Leaving me behind, he climbed the steps with the measured tread of a man with things on his mind. I wiped my mouth and chin and applied lipstick, following my partner up to the entrance of vamp HQ. This was why Eli and I were such a perfect team, the ability to anticipate each other’s moves, needs, thoughts, plans. It was especially effective in battle, and against vamps, battle was always likely.

“Where do we stand on the ability to prevent a shooter across the street?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at the windows there and surreptitiously watching the limo pull out of the drive and down the street. All the upper windows in the two-story building were closed, thankfully. I had been shot at recently from that vantage point, and the local law hadn’t caught him. Or her.

Eli said, “Leo’s lawyers are still in negotiations with the owner and the property management company, but the offer Leo made was too good for them to pass up. They’ll take it. And if they don’t, we’ll manage something.”

“You will
not
blow it up.”

“Now who’s the spoilsport?” He flashed me a slice of a grin before we stepped into the glass cage at the front door.

The front entrance system of the Mithran Council chambers was simple on the surface. Visitors stepped through the first “glass” door, which wasn’t just glass. It was triple-paned polycarbonate bullet-resistant glass, strong enough to stop most ammunition up to a small rocket. The doors locked behind the visitors, securing them in the see-through cage, also composed of polycarbonate bullet-resistant glass and steel supports. Then, when the security person watching the entrance on camera was satisfied that the visitors were welcome, the inner doors, ditto on the polycarbonate, opened. If the person watching wasn’t satisfied, the visitor would be asked to remove all weapons, empty all pockets, lift shirts, and remove shoes. Airport security measures had been incorporated too, with metal detectors built into the outer walls. As we stood inside the cage, Eli and I had now been scanned and inside HQ a quiet alarm had gone off. We didn’t have to do the partial strip show, however, since we were part of the team.

Operation Cowbird was still in place, meaning that we were not just worried about attackers from outside, but were still apprehensive about bad guys already inside HQ, especially since two of the baddest of the bad were chained up in the basements, one troublemaker in sub-five and one a bit higher in a private scion lair. Neither vamp was physically capable of escaping. Neither was even coherent. Heck. Neither of them might have healed brains yet. But that hadn’t stopped vamps in the past and humans had paid with their lives. Unfortunately, unlike the rogue vampires I was famous for hunting, the vamps in the bowels of the building were important bargaining chips—or would be when they healed enough—saved for the European Vampires’ visit, and I couldn’t behead them, no matter how many humans they had killed.

HQ’s inner doors opened and the stink of vamp and blood and human rushed at us: the peculiar herbal scent of mixed vamps was peppery and astringent and reminiscent of a funeral home, with the assorted dying flowers. Humans and their blood were a permanent part of the circulating air system, always hanging in the air from feedings. And sex. Not to forget sex. Many humans, when fed upon, and when given small drops of vamp blood as payment, developed high sexual drives, while also being passive and nonresistant to advances. The perfect and willing blood-servant or blood-slave.

Something else I didn’t like.

Wrassler greeted us. “Evening, Legs, Eli.”

I nodded to the big guy and moved into position for the pat-down. Wrassler was seriously huge, nicknamed so because he was bigger than any World Wrestling Entertainment superstar. He motioned a woman to pat me down and took Eli himself, walking with a limp, on a prosthetic that had replaced a foot and lower leg lost in a battle here at HQ. I knew that his injury wasn’t my fault, but I still felt the responsibility to help him move forward and cope with his new life. Responsibility was a step up from guilt, so, for me, that was good. I was growing. I used to try to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. Eli and Alex had been working on me, schooling me to be fair to myself. I was trying.

The woman’s pat-down was professional and non-handsy and I declared the vamp-killer strapped to my thigh. “And I have wood stakes in my hair,” I said.

“No silver?” she asked.

“Nope.”

She stepped back and away before I could look at her name tag. She was one of the new blood-servants from Atlanta. We were still integrating the blood-servants and blood-slaves of Atlanta’s former Master of the City.

“Leo’s in the gym with Gee,” Wrassler said. “He’s asked you to join him there.”

We signed in and walked away, Eli silent in his combat boots, my dancing shoes loud and somewhat clompy. Once behind the wall on the way to the elevator, I asked, “Well?”

“Did not detect a thing.”

We stopped and checked our pockets for the miniature tracking devices that were being tested in advance of the next big hootenanny in town, when the European Mithrans came to New Orleans to kill Leo and take over the U.S. That was their plan and saying no to the visit and attack wasn’t an option.

It took a while, but Eli finally pulled a tiny device out of a stake sheath. He held it up to the light and it looked like part of child’s toy, a red and blue plasticized square. “That was a good plant,” he said. “A good location, and I didn’t even notice the insert.”

I, however, couldn’t find one on me at all. We turned and retraced our steps to the front, and on the way, I stopped and picked it up. Eli frowned, a slight downward hitch of his lips, before his face relaxed. He said, “She slipped it into your knife retrieval pocket and it went straight through.”

“Yep.” Back at the entrance, Wrassler stood to the side, his hands loose and ready, as if to draw a weapon. Losing a limb could make one hyperalert. “Wrassler’s insert was excellent,” I said. “I’m wearing slacks with false pockets and it went straight through.”

The little blonde grimaced. Well, she wasn’t little. She stood five-seven, but that was several inches under my six feet, so she was little to me. Her name was Brenda Rezk and she had been number three in security in Atlanta back when. So far, here, she was feeling frustrated and tentative. It was hard to move in an apparent downward direction in anything, but she was better than she was feeling right now, and if she kept up the progress, when she went back to Atlanta, she would end up higher than number three in the clan home of the new Master of the City of Atlanta.

“Where should I put it, then?” Brenda asked Wrassler. “Jane doesn’t have anything else on the outside, and I had no reason to feel inside her jacket to the inner pocket when I could do that from the outside.”

“You were doing a pat-down,” Wrassler said. “You should have squeezed the fabric of her jacket lapels, and
dropped it in whichever pocket was empty.” Wrassler motioned me against the wall, and I leaned in again, hands high. He patted me down, much less hesitantly than Brenda had, and when I stepped away from the wall, he turned me to face him and ran the jacket front between his hands, first one side and then the other, holding them each out to inspect for weapons holstered beneath each arm. He nodded to me and smoothed the shoulders of my jacket, the way a tailor might, which was intended to center my mind on my shoulders, not my jacket, leaving me that impression. Shoulders. Not jacket. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said to me. “I appreciate your kindness in letting me ensure the safety of everyone who enters the council chambers. Do you need a guide to tonight’s festivities?”

Festivities. Right. Wrassler was demonstrating the whole thing, which was probably a good idea. “No, thank you. I can find my way.”

“Enjoy your stay. And if you need anything, you’ll find house phones on each floor near the elevator, and in your rooms.”

I leaned around Wrassler, to Brenda and Eli. “Which pocket?”

“I couldn’t spot a thing,” Brenda said.

“Right,” Eli said. He had a fifty percent chance of being right. And he was.

“Good guess,” I said.

“Not a guess. Wrassler’s got a weak hand from the injury. He’ll always use his strong hand to insert the tracker.”

“Huh,” Wrassler said. “He’s right. And we have to assume that the European Vamps have intel on everything inside.” He looked at Brenda. “Practice. You’re in charge of teaching lefties and righties to be ambidextrous when inserting the trackers. You’ll also run the detail handling the searches when the EVs get here.”

A fleeting smile crossed Brenda’s face, and her shoulders went back slightly. “Thank you, sir.”

I dug inside my breast pocket and found the tracker, dropping it in the tracker can. Eli and I made our way
down the elevator to the gym. When the doors closed, Eli said, “EVs. Bad influence, babe.”

“Yeeeah.” I drew out the word. “I heard that.” Once upon a time, everyone at HQ had used full names for everything and everyone. Since I got here, it was acronyms, nicknames, and a bit more snark than most vamps were accustomed to. “I’ll address it at some point.”

Negotiations for the visit were still ongoing, and slower than frozen molasses. I hoped they’d last another six months, because we weren’t ready to deal with the amount of magic and bad attitude the EVs would bring. Fortunately, with the EVs, any kind of negotiation took an agonizing amount of time because they didn’t accept or use or probably even know about the existence of e-mail, texting, or FaceTime. Their lack of electronic sophistication wasn’t something I had known going into this gig. I had expected the Visitation by Evil to take place right away, but when you live centuries, and even millennia, preparations for anything can last a long time. Time itself has no meaning when you are that old. And electronic media was something trashy done by the nouveau riche—or the nouveau fanged—and their blood-servants. For communications, they preferred and insisted upon heavy bond or handmade paper, or maybe papyrus, hand-delivered. It was ridiculous. But unless they thought they could get the upper hand by making a surprise visit, their whole stuck-in-the-past attitude was working to our advantage.

The elevator opened and I stepped out, leading the way to the gym. Eli stopped at the men’s locker room and came back out with a sword belted at his waist. “Seriously?” I said. Instead of a reply he drew the sword and shoved open the door to the gym, preceding me inside. “Men . . .” He was taking this whole “being my second” a little too seriously, though it was a position he had been forced to undertake on more than one occasion.

The gym at HQ was big enough for a full-sized basketball court, but it was usually set up for fighting rings. I had damaged one recently, and the antique wood on all three rings had been replaced with a modern practice mat, the
kind used in the Olympics for martial arts. They were easily replaceable, in case my claws came out again, forgiving to body slams, and less abrasive than most older-style mats. They had the classic tatami texture and smooth surface, giving better traction, but also had an antiskid, rubberized, waffle backing. The mats also eliminated odors, decreasing the reek of stale vamp and human sweat, looked better than the scarred wood, and were versatile enough for standing arts and grappling arts—meaning sword practice and hand-to-hand. Also, a final plus, blood washed out of them easily.

It was close to dawn, so there should be no vamps in the room, only humans, but I smelled Leo, the chief fanghead, and the city’s Mercy Blade, Gee DiMercy. He pronounced the name something like Zjeee, which sounded Frenchy. It was the misericord’s job to kill young vamp scions when they didn’t cure after the devoveo, the ten years or so of insanity that every human went through when turned. Not all of them made it. Until recently, humans made a bad bet when hoping to be turned, assuming that they would survive to the sane and blood-sucking stage. The odds hadn’t been great. However, things change, and Leo’s scions were now waking up sane and in control years before other masters’ scions did. Another reason the EVs wanted to conquer the American vamps—to gain control of the one vampire who could shorten the devoveo (the time between when humans were turned and when they regained sanity) from an average of ten years to around two. Of all the things the EVs wanted, Amy Lynn Brown might be the most important.

I didn’t see Leo at first. He was sitting against the wall on the bleachers with his new personal assistant, Lee. He had taken my advice and freed up his primo for important stuff, taking on the redheaded, perky Lee Williams Watts. Or maybe the last names were reversed. I no longer did the background checks on people and so I missed a lot of minutiae that I didn’t need to know, and sometimes the bigger, important stuff that I did need. Watts looked sweet on the surface, but there was something about her that said she was a firecracker when she got mad, and it wasn’t just the red hair. She was a tiny little thing, but I’d be moving slowly
around her until we were better acquainted. She looked scrappy.

Their heads were together while she took notes the old-fashioned way, on a spiral notebook with a pen in what looked like honest-to-God shorthand, not a skill many had these days. Her eyes looked stormy and tightly focused and she was scribbling furiously. Like an accountant with superpowers.

Eli walked a little ahead of me, to one side. I followed in his wake, passing the fighting rings where Gee was teaching two security types to fight with the sword. At the same time. A sword in each hand, he was keeping them both occupied as they tried to prevent their armor and their bodies, protected beneath, from being cut into nice even ribbons of bleeding flesh. It was like dancing, maybe some violent love child of the flamenco and the tango.

Eli nodded to Leo, a little head tilt granting Leo temporary command status. Very temporary. Eli and Leo both shifted their attention to me and I was about to speak when something changed in the air. Eli shouted, “Jane!”