She chuffed in amusement.Is strong mate. Beast loves Bruiser.
I went back to the scroll. At the bottom were the words “Blood Master of Melker Clan,” followed by three initials that didn’t show up well on the photo of the curled scroll. “Melker,” I said, remembering. “Legolas’s real name.”
“The seal and the style of the letter itself tells a great deal,” Bruiser agreed. “The initials could be SML or SNL, or even SNQ. Whoever it is, they’re a Blood Master, one strong enough and old enough to use handmade paper and a wax seal for orders. He or she is ready to attack you. They are here planning against you, initials on a scroll of command. I doubt it’s the ultimate power behind everythingthat’s happened, but even an underling could be a powerful vamp.” Bruiser took a pic of the pic with his own camera and sent it to Alex before calling the IT wizard.
“What?” Alex demanded. It was the snarly tone he used when he was being interrupted.
“George, here. Alex, do you have any footage we can view?”
Alex had scripted supersecret programs for hacking into private security camera systems, and I had no doubt that they were all going at full speed. “I’m in four different security companies and scrolling through as fast as my programs can. Searching for visuals of the men on any of the streets that bordered the cemetery. So far I got nothing.”
“We’re bringing you a vampire head and his cell phone. We need access.”
“Yeah good. Bring it on.”
“On the list Bruiser sent, at the top,” I said, “is the address of the newly remodeled Arceneau Clan Home. It’s near where the fangheads were killed.” Alex didn’t answer. “Alex?”
“Sending you something,” he said. “It’s security video. Grainy as heeeeck.”
“Got it,” Bruiser said when his cell vibrated. On the screen, we watched as the two vamps stopped at an entrance to the cemetery. They stood still, not talking, not moving at all. A charred, burned, skeletal creature scuttled up to them on three limbs. They didn’t move. The creature reached up with its free arm and drew one down. Almost casually, it drank down the vamp. Then the other. The creature leaped the fence and so did the drained vampires, following. They disappeared.
Bruiser replayed it, both of us watching closely. “Male or female?” Bruiser asked.
But what he really meant was, was it Leo, risen as a revenant, or was it Sabina? The outclan priestess had been burned in the vamp cemetery fire. “Watch it again,” I murmured.
But even after three more viewings, I didn’t recognize the jerky movements of the vampire. Couldn’t prove or rule out anyone, of any gender. The vamp drank down two bloodsuckers, ensorcelled them to follow, and ripped offtheir heads. Killing one’s dinner in such a violent manner was a revenant action.
Except that the victims were not humans or clan vamps. They were enemy vamps on New Orleans hunting territory. That suggested choice and reason, not things revenants demonstrated.
As if we had shared that thought, Bruiser whispered, for my ears only, “What if it’s Leo? What if he is risen and isnotrevenant? What if he is simply confused and is going to war against his enemies?”
“That assumes the crispy critter is Leo and not Sabina. And if so, what is he? Something better? Something worse? He drank SOD blood. And he was beheaded, or close enough to not matter.”
“I don’t know. He always played the long game,” Bruiser said, echoing my own recent thought.
“So did Leo assume he would survive? Or assume he would die?”
“Both, I’m quite certain.”
“We need to see the vamp cemetery,” I said to the driver.
A van pulled up behind us. The vamp cleaning team had arrived to sanitize the site and send the bodies for full ID at the vamp funeral home. The rain began to let up. The cleanup crew, wearing white uniforms and face masks and gloves, raced to beat the sun. Our driver pulled away from the curb and wove through morning traffic, wipers working against the sprinkles and mist.
We stopped at a drive-through coffee shop where they made an adequate chai latte for me, and Bruiser ordered a coffee with chicory. The driver took care of the transactions. Despite the direction of our travel, I could get used to the perks of having paid servants.
Silent, sipping, we wended across the river and to the vamp cemetery.
***
I had never wanted to come to the burned fanghead graveyard, the charred mausoleums, the scorched destruction.Tsalagiof my time had not revered the resting places of the deceased. We didn’t go sit at the grave and talk to the dead. But the scope of the fire that had taken place hit me hard as our vehicles rolled slowly up the road in front of thecemetery. The inferno had burned so hot that the walls of the crypts were crumbling. The metal on the statues had melted in long black streams; the marble cracked and split. The scorched ground was sprouting new grass, wild things that had self-sown. The original grass had charred into the roots, the heat glazing the sand here and there. The white shell walkways that wove among the mausoleums had been baked into quicklime by the heat of the fire, caustic and potentially dangerous. The chapel was burned to the raised foundation. Nothing was left of it except the foundation bricks and the steps.
The gate was open, and we rolled closer to the Pellissier crypt and the two SUVs parked there. Wrassler was waiting at the side of the small building where he could see us and the damaged side of the crypt. We parked and walked up to him, moving as if we were attending a funeral. For me itwasthe funeral. I had missed the real one with all the pomp and circumstance and bloodletting. It had happened while I attempted to recover on the island where he died. My short visit to his grave, later, hadn’t been the same.
Wrassler greeted us with an unsmiling nod, which I returned before walking around the crypt.
This mausoleum had received the brunt of the heat. The walls were blackened char, the once-beautiful stone pitted. The door had expanded with the heat and had curved, wedged tight. The walls were intact, except the one closest to the next crypt. It was damaged. I stepped into the narrow space and dropped into a squat.
Just like Wrassler’s video had shown, the blocks of the wall had been knocked inside the hole recently, long after the fire was out. Had Leo escaped, they would have been pushed out from the inside. I looked over the nearby crypt wall. There wasn’t room to wield a standard battering ram. So maybe fist power, vamp-style?
