The gate had been propped open with a long block of wood, allowing for egress. Ahead, flashlights revealed a revenant racing through the blackness, chasing a dozen older teenagers wearing gang colors just like the ones at the porte cochere. The rev was tracking them by scent, running blind. The group dashed ahead, waited until the revenant almost caught up, and dashed ahead again. They were leading it inside. I was reminded of Leo’s comment about revenants being bodies a commander was willing to lose.
Beside me, a few feet inside the door, stood Rick. His hands were empty. Dangling. His face was hard with horror. He knew this gate because he had been carried out through it by werewolves when he was kidnapped. After which he had been tortured and raped by a werewolf bitch and her pack. But he seemed frozen, standing, doing nothing. PTSD. Eli, now Rick. The horror of memories that had broken them. The magical storm was affecting everyone.
I walked up to him and seized his face in one hand. Pulled him close, until he had no choice but to look in my eyes. “You can beat this. You beat it the first time. You can beat it every time.”
He gurgled a laugh, sounding like a death rattle. “Beating I can do. But am I going to have to relive it every damn time?”
“Probably. But you’ll survive that too. Beat that too. And you can have a good life.”
“Without you.”
“Without me.” I let his face go and walked into the dark. But not before I saw movement in the gate. Carolyne Bonner and a cameraman, filming me holding Rick’s face in what had to look like a lovers’ tryst. “Well, crap.” I adjusted my weapons and took off after the rev and the kids.
CHAPTER 12
A Six-Foot Snowfall in Hades
Eli had followed and he fell in beside and slightly behind me. The passageway was narrow and stank of mold and kids, their sweat laced with violence and adrenaline. There was a faint reek of rot from the rev. They took the winding passageways through the place but bypassed the entrance leading up to Leo’s office. Instead, we came out in the ballroom. In front of us, the group had raced across the wide space and ducked into a small set of hidden stairs leading down to all the basements. I stopped Eli, a hand on his arm. In Beast-vision, the room was silvers and greens. Empty. But something was wrong.
I sniffed. Again. We were definitely alone in the ballroom, in the dark, and the stink of the rev was strong, but there was something different beneath the other stinks, something that hadn’t been there during the last inspection. I had smelled this scent recently. “Plastic explosives,” I whispered. “If you wanted to destroy the ballroom where the EVs and Leo will meet to obstruct or delay the parley, where would you plant them?”
“The columns,” he said, just as soft. “Bring down the roof and take out the windows. It could be repaired, but likely not in time for the EuroVamp visit. Plus it’s quick. Strap explosives to the columns and bug out. Detonation from offsite.”
“I smell magic too,” I said.
“No reason magic can’t be added to bombs. Military postulated magical weapons decades ago.”
“So who planted them? Outside vamps or ones from inside? Never mind, I know the answer to that. Sleepers.” We had enemies here at HQ. Always had.
If I’d been human I would have missed the sound of a sword being drawn. I whirled. Pulled a weapon. Racked back the slide. Aimed at the head behind. Before I could fire, he was gone. Popped away. A breeze touched my cheek. Movement from above as he leaped over us. “Behind us,” I shouted to Eli. And fired at the second vamp.
Vamps are fast but not faster than a bullet. I nicked her in the rear as she popped away. Stupid. Humans were present. I put the gun away and drew a vamp-killer. More gunfire sounded. Kids and twenty-somethings poured in through the porte cochere entrance. And boiled in from the stairwell entrance. Part of the first wave had made it inside. Bruiser and Derek followed the group from the back. Gunfire sounded, echoing against my eardrums. There were too many combatants. More raced in from the passageway to the hidden gate entrance.
Outside, lightning crashed down. Hitting in the backyard of HQ. Into the small chef’s garden. The world went bright and brilliant and full of glare.
The Gray Between ripped out of me. The world slowed, hesitated, stopped. Standing outside of time, my hands grew pelt, claws, but I willed my knuckles to stay human sized. They ignored me. I could operate a gun if needed, but not well. My face ached. Fangs pushed through my gums and I tasted blood. It freaking hurt. My shoulders expanded, my waist shrank. But my feet were human in the boots. The transformation stopped there. I was still me-ish. But time was stopped.
Beside me Eli faced a vamp, one I didn’t know, redheaded, glowing pale skin, blue eyes. The one that had somersaulted over us and landed in front. Dang ninja vamp.
Eli was bleeding from a nick on the outside of his forearm. The vamp had a sword and it was descending on my partner, wicked sharp. Three rounds hung in the air between them. I calculated the speed of the bullets and the speed of the falling sword, one powered by a master vamp. The rounds would hit the vamp midface, but using my own blade, the sword would continue to fall, slicing though Eli’s arm. I pushed the sword about three inches outside its current arc. It resisted, the vamp’s muscles engaged, but I put my back into it and the sword moved.
As long as I didn’t touch their flesh, they stayed in their own time. Or that was the way it had worked in the past. Things seemed to change a lot with magic, even mine. And one thing I didn’t want was for the enemy to know everything I could do with time. So while it wasn’t a perfect solution, this worked.
Eli safe, I stepped into the ballroom. In the bright light of the lightning, I counted two unknown vamps and seven gangbangers. Weird. It had felt like more. Chasing the kids up from the stairway were Bruiser, Derek, and some of Derek’s security guys. Wrassler was firing down the stairs, his weapon aimed high. Cover fire. Derek and one of the new guys were firing at the gang kids, who were also shooting up the place.
I guessed that Gee and others were in Leo’s office protecting Leo, Katie, and Grégoire.
I had time to study the two unknown vamps, the redhead, and the one I had shot in the tush. They were skilled and old, far older than they looked on first glance. They were vamped out and had old, old,oldeyes. Both vamps were using two long swords in the La Destreza style. From their body positions I’d guess they were masters at the fighting form.
The shot one was pale skinned, covered in ancient blue tattoos in spirals and circles and wavy lines. I had seen someone like her once and made a mental note to find Koun and chat him up. In the shadows of the lightning strike, I saw something unexpected. Two vamps I recognized. Onewas named Callan, the other Fernand Marchand. Both had been enemies to Leo and had reason to hate me.
Callan had been a vampire kept in a cage at Katie’s and I’d nicknamed him Corpse, verbally abusing him, allowing the vamps to torture him. Well, maybe torture was too strong a word, but they hadn’t been playing tiddlywinks with him. He had served a vamp named de Allyon but claimed it was only because his master kept him alive. He had boxer’s shoulders, the thighs of a cyclist, long, slender fingers, and an angel’s face, but he’d been turned for his looks, not his brains. Or so I’d thought. When De Allyon had been defeated, Callan had asked to join Leo’s power base and been welcomed in. He’d been healed by Sabina and fed by Christie, one of Katie’s working girls. Now it appeared that his loyalty was lacking. Part of the attack on Leo’s power base. And maybe the brainless part had been a ploy.
Fernand Marchand was a longtime troublemaker, had been a suspect in more than one security leak. Dark haired and jaded, he was the brother to Amitee Marchand...
My heart slowed and my fingers suddenly ached. The Marchands had come from France for Amitee to marry the vamp masquerading as Leo’s son Immanuel, the liver-eater I had killed when I first came to New Orleans. Everything, every freaking thing, went back to Immanuel.
Immanuel and his friends had wanted to kill Leo and take over the city. Immanuel, Amitee, and Fernand had been traitors. Yet Leo had kept the brother and sister around even after his heir was killed. Why? Was it part of the homily that said we should keep our enemies closer? Callan and Fernand were standing together, Fernand’s hand on Callan’s shoulder. It would have been all cozy, lovey-dovey if Callan hadn’t been pointing a gun right where I had been standing. I thought about hurting them both but put it off for now. There were other things I needed to see, and they might lead me to other enemies.
