“Indeed.” He kneaded harder into the arch of my foot.
I might have moaned. “You have very talented fingers.”
“I do. And I’ll take you to bed and prove it soon.” His fingers pressed and rolled and crept and knuckled up my calf to a sensitive spot in the middle of my calf.
“Oh... Holy moly.”
“Meanwhile, Lawrence is recuperating.” When I got an eyelid to open and looked blank, he said, “Lawrence Hefner. Leo’s valet? Injured in the were attack, trying to save Leo?”
I nodded, closing my eyes. Lack of sleep was catching up to me. “He hates being called Larry.”
“He has protested being in bed with Gee DiMercy, most vociferously. Leo found it necessary to promise to skin Gee alive if he so much as tried anything of a sexual nature with Lawrence.”
Gee would still try something. Something innocuous.Just to give Larry a hard time. I smiled and stretched to give Bruiser access to the tendon on the outside of my other foot.
“Leo told me about the potential three islands for the duel,” I said, “but what happens if the negotiations with Titus end up with us all in international waters, on a boat, instead of on land? Wouldn’t that leave NOLA open for a coup d’état?”
“Not if Edmund is left onshore.”
My breathing almost stopped at that. Edmund. Leo’s heir. One of the top vamp fighters in the United States. “That’s why Leo made Edmund his official heir. To protect New Orleans,” I said.
“And you the Dark Queen,” Bruiser said quietly, his fingers stopping, to simply hold my feet. “Between the two of you, with your ability to timewalk, you could protect the city and her people.”
“He’s planning to leave me ashore if an island isn’t chosen. Son of a gun. I didn’t know,” I said, just as softly, touching my belly and the faint pain there. Indigestion maybe. “I didn’t understand that move on the chessboard. Making me DQ wasn’t because he’s selfish. It was because he’s...” I stopped. No way was I going to say Leo Pellissier was a good man. “A good king.”
“Yes. He is.” There was something soft and sad in his tone, as if he wished Leo had been a better man too.
“But if Titus knows all this about Ed and me, that we could hold the city, then...” I opened both eyes and said, “Then what?”
“Then he won’t push to have the fight in the water, but on land, land that Leo owns or at least has some appearance of owning. Titus will want to kill you, Edmund, and Leo at the Duello.”
I closed my eyes again, letting the ramifications run through me.
Long pleasurable minutes later, Bruiser said, “Leo has scrapped your idea of having all his people go naked at the opening ceremonies of the Sangre Duello to shock and dismay the EVs.”
“Thank God.” I grinned evilly. “Too cold?”
“Precisely. Though he did profess sadness at not being able to see you naked in your half-fighting form.”
I opened one eye again and glared. “This is the stink-eye. Keep it up and I’ll give you the stink-eye with both eyes.”
“I consider myself warned.” His brown eyes melted me inside. Along with his very, so very talented hands. “The lab has sent a preliminary report of the contents and DNA from the bottle of mixed blood found in the Caruso Family Funeral Services. They have detected the blood of five major players and perhaps a dozen lesser players, all very old and powerful Mithrans, mixed with traces of chemicals, a long list of them. And unlike the usual putrefaction and decomposition of Mithran blood, these chemicals keep it stable for a long period. Months. Perhaps years.”
I opened my other eye, so I could see him with both, this time in concern. “Is it drinkable? Can humans or vamps drink it to be turned?”
“No. But it stops necrosis of flesh, is bactericidal, and speeds healing dramatically.”
“The U.S. military PTBs would give their accumulated right testicles for that formula. Eli told me so.”
The laughter in Bruiser’s eyes went deeper, as if he was envisioning a pile of right private parts and a long line of pained military brass. He said, “As would any pharmaceutical company, any foreign power, any billionaire who wants to live forever without becoming bound to a vampire.”
I almost said,That sucks, but it would have been funny and funny didn’t fit here.
“They have managed to reverse engineer the formula,” he said. “Leo has personally completed preliminary testing. It works.”
“Mmm. And if Leo can reproduce it in quantity, he will have the single most financially lucrative and medically important pharmaceutical product to hit the health profession since penicillin.”
“Indeed.”
