I closed the Kevlar cover on the cell and carried it into my bedroom to shower, dress, and gather gear. The jeans and T-shirt on the bed had been perfectly suitable for bowling later on tonight but had no place in vamp HQ when trouble was brewing and Leo was in a mood. They also had no business at our first stop.
To visit HQ, I’d rather be wearing leather vamp-fighting gear, the kind with silver chain-mail armor between the outer leather and inner silk lining, and plasticized armor at elbows and groin, but I’d ruined all mine and the replacements hadn’t arrived. Since I started changing into a midshift cat—one with a vaguely humanoid shape and proportions but the hind paws, claws, and pelt of aPuma concolor, the mountain lion form of my Beast—I’d gone through all my fighting leathers and a goodly number of boots. Fighting vamps was expensive, and today’s ruined clothes just added to my financial irritation.
Clean and smelling fresher, my skin again lightly oiled with a gift Bruiser had sent me, a mixture of jojoba and coconut oils, I strapped a vamp-killer on my right thigh,two silver stakes on my left, and slid into loose-fitting black pants, a tight camisole, and a gold-toned, long-sleeved T-shirt. The pants had slash pockets with holes in the bottoms so I could reach the weapons. Of course I couldn’t put the cell or lipstick in them, but there were pluses and minuses for everything in life. The long sleeves of the shirt were so the shoulder holster didn’t chafe my scarred skin. The TV shows and movies that show the female heroine wearing tank tops and shoulder rigs are stupid. Those things would blister a girl’s underarms and side boobs in a heartbeat, even without the injury I sported.
I added my gold nugget necklace on its doubled gold chain around my neck. It was the one that tied me metaphysically to the location where I had changed into myPuma concolorform for the first time in years, after I graduated from the Christian children’s home where I was raised. When I was having trouble shifting, it helped to wear the talisman, linking me back to the past and the power of that first shift.
I checked the .380s, making sure they held standard ammo, since I wasn’t planning to hunt vamps, but I put a box of silver ammo, a change of shoes, and my go bag in my leather satchel.
Sliding into the black jacket was easy, as it had been tailored for me with weapons in mind by Melisende,Modiste du les Mithrans.Or the tailor and designer to fangheads, whichever works. And since I didn’t plan on shifting, even partially, I pulled on socks and the newest pair of Lucchese boots. They had been a gift from the master suckhead and he seemed pleased when I wore them. Maybe wearing them would make him less moody. I had often wondered if vamps had PMS, but I’d managed never to ask.
I plaited my hair in its dull, boring French braid and wrapped it into a bun, not a fighting queue, which was much more uncomfortable and much tighter, sliding some of the thin hair-stick stakes into it. Three wood and two cast in silver. Just in case I needed to really hurt someone fangy. Silver poisons vamps, especially a heart thrust. Young ones die fast. Older ones die too, just more slowly,unless a powerful master vamp decides to allow the dead to drink their blood. Leo had done that more than once—save a vamp I had killed. It kinda ticked me off.
I left my room and met Eli in the kitchen. He was giving last-minute instructions to the Kid, who was elbows deep in dishwater. That had been the deal. Eli cooked, Alex did the dishes, though the Kid had begun to step up in the chores department, which was helpful. He was growing up. We shared the laundry and the cleaning between visits by the housekeeping services. Mostly I did nothing and Eli and the Kid did everything, including groceries and major repairs on the house. I was a lazy bum in my own home. But it worked for us all, since they got free room and board.
Eli was dressed in fighting leathers. And lots of guns, stakes, and vamp-killers, two with fourteen-inch-long blades, none of which was suitable for the Elms, our first stop. I scanned him head to combat-booted feet and asked, “Why?”
“Not going to HQ unarmed,” he said, his combat face in place. “Besides, one of us gets to look pretty. I guess that’s me.”
I shook my head, smeared on scarlet lipstick, and dropped the tube in my satchel. I could see Eli wanting to say something containing the wordpurse, but he refrained. Which was wise. I was feeling much stronger.
My cell rang and I opened it, my mouth falling open. My eyes hit Eli’s and he muttered urgently, “Alex. Trace.”
The Kid was getting bigger, but he still moved with the erratic clumsiness of a teenager. He knocked over the condiments on the table trying to dry his arms and open a tablet at the same time. He met my eyes and said, “Go.”
I punched theCALLbutton above the Darth Vader smiley-face and said, “Reach. What’s kicking?”
At the name, Eli whipped to the switches and plunged the kitchen into dimmer light. Then he started circling the house, checking the doors and windows, and out into the street. The Kid pulled up another tablet and studied the footage from those new top-of-the-line security cameras he had installed outside around the house. It all happened with practiced speed.
“Money Honey,” the caller said. “Didn’t know if you’d take my call.”
Itsoundedlike Reach. And Money Honey was what he called me once upon a time when we had done business together. Before he dropped out of sight after supposedly being tortured by a human and her vampires for the data he had collected on vamps and other supernats over the years. My mouth pulled down in a “Could be him” expression as Eli moved past, silent, predatory.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Are you serious? How am I?”
“Fine. Whaddaya want?”
He said, “They found Ming. Beware.”
If he knew that much, then Reach still had his tentacles in HQ security. Or in my security. The Kid was still trying to close all the back doors into both systems but, like trying to track back to Reach’s location, it was taking time. Alex was tapping on one tablet while another ran the tracer program. I forced out a laugh. “Beware?” I said. “Seriously?Beware?That’s a little, I don’t know, horror movie, puerile, don’t you think?”
“Puerile? And you fault me forBeware? Money Honey, there is nothing so horrifying as reality.” The call ended.
I said something that my house mothers in the Christian children’s home where I grew up would have washed out my mouth for. I said it again for good measure.
“We’re clean,” Eli said, returning from a perimeter search.
Alex said, “Cameras are good. Premises are secure.” He rearranged his tablets and continued. “I caught the call between three cell towers in Chicago. Forty thousand people live in the area. Hundreds of businesses.” He tapped a screen again and repeated my curse word. His brother slapped the back of his head. “What!” Alex said, rubbing his head and pointing at me. “She said it first.”
Eli slapped the back of my head, dislodging a stake, which I caught Beast-fast. I could have dodged the slap, but I had it coming. We had rules in the house, and no cussing was one of them. And I had made that one, which meant I had to abide by it more than the others did.
Still rubbing the back of his head, Alex said, “The number is a cheap burner cell, but it’s one of the newer ones that has GPS, as mandated by Uncle Sam. It’s turned on. It’s moving. I’m tracking it.”
“Uncle Sam–mandated GPS?” I asked, putting the stake back in place and checking the bun for lose hairs.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “Well, the government asked for them. Politely. On the hush-hush. Most companies complied. The request came from Homeland Security, so they could trace all the cells of possible terrorists once they identified them. All you need is the number, the proper software, and access to the cell companies through the government’s back doors, and you can activate the GPS.”
