He looked at me as he climbed down the ladder. “A few things. They’re in the safe. If you’re interested.”
“Not now. But would you mind sending a copy of the log to Alex in case I need something? Save me a trip over?”
“I don’t know, Janie. You’d miss out on my scintillating conversation.”
“It’s a loss, true. I’ll just have to pull up my big-girl panties and deal.”
He was still chuckling when the elevator doors closed, but his face went tight, and he touched his earbud while he slid his card into the security slot. “Lee with Yellowrock. We’re on the way.” His face was set in a familiar expression. Battlefield ready. Something had gone wrong.
CHAPTER 10
Wrassler Was Down, Just Inside the Security Nook, Lying on His Side
I let Derek take the lead. Drinking so much vamp blood after he dragged himself back from captivity and near death had made him faster, and I didn’t have to hold back much. I followed him to the main security room, and we burst through the double doors into the area. The scent of coffee, peppers, and fried seafood whacked me in the face.
The big table took up most of the room, and there were four security people sitting there with laptops open. No one looked up. The screens overhead showed the grounds and the entrances to HQ. It was dusk out. I had been here longer than I thought. My body might switch from human form to another at any time, which could be unfortunate. And embarrassing.
“Update,” Derek said, opening a weapons’ safe at the back.
Tequila Blue Voodoo was at the main station with a woman I vaguely recognized.
Voodoo said, “Something on the security screens. At least one hotspot on the grounds. Walls are still warm from the sun, so it isn’t easy to follow.”
Hotspotmeant that the person showed up on infrared camera, meaning that it wasn’t a vamp.
“Back corner,” Voodoo said, putting up a camera feed on the main screen, “behind the garden.” There was a flash of movement on the screen, reddish light, human shaped. “No indication of anyone else on the motion sensors or low light.”
“Front gate locked down?” Derek asked. He was weaponed up like the warrior he was. It had taken less than thirty seconds. But he wasn’t in armor.
“Like a tank,” Blue Voodoo answered from the main security panel.
“Which team is ready?” Derek gave me a single nod and raced out the door, heading for the action.
“Tango is on the way down. Clearing the hallways in case one of the delivery people made it past the sensors and guards.”
I wanted to go with them, but I hadn’t trained with them. I’d be a liability. Which I understood but I could still hate.
On the screens overhead, I watched as the six-man Tango team raced through the hallways, splitting and converging at the intersections, separating into three minigroups, each third taking a different set of stairs, communicating through the hardwired Wi-Fi comms booster system we had installed a couple years back. Then they were at the inner stairs near the rear entrance, and there were eight of them. I realized that Eli and Derek had joined the team. I had vaguely noticed my brother, off and on, carrying out Eli duties.
Derek said into his mic and to Voodoo, “Copy. Tango in place. Lights.” The lights inside the entrance and outside, under the porte cochere, went dark. Derek took off like his pants were on fire. His men and women, all human, unlike the vamp forces that he utilized after full dark, sped to the back exit. Stopped. One by one, they eased into the covered area. With the security lights off, they were visible on the infrared screens, low-light screen, and on a positional layout screen that showed the house and grounds and the trackers each wore. They spread out, communicating with Derek. I wasn’t wearing a headset, and though I didn’t want to disturb anyone, I said, “Audio on.”
Not that anyone was speaking. It was all mic taps and hand signals when the speakers went live.
The light was fading. The vamps were rising. The cameras in the hallways showed them leaving their rooms, alone or with a human in tow. Some of them were day-stupid and had to feed to be alert. Others came out of their rooms weaponing up, and those few were the warriors among the vamps. A group of six vamps met just off the foyer, weapons trained toward the front entrance. Wrassler was in the secondary security room off the foyer, visible to them and on one camera. He gave a hand signal, and the vamps moved closer to the foyer.
A team of four vamps gathered in the main security room downstairs, congregating around me, speaking so softly only a vamp could make out everything they said. They were Clan Yellowrock vamps and visitors: Tex and Koun were actually breathing hard. They had crossed the French Quarter vamp-fast from the freebie house. Thema and Kojo were with them.
On the screens, vamp and blood-servant security worked the backyard in what was clearly a well-trained and practiced maneuver. The exterior steel shutters were still closed over the windows for the day. A lucky happenstance. Over comms, someone screamed, “Incoming!” The screens lit up. Blinding. The vamps and I jerked our heads away, closed our eyes.
The screens were so bright they faded only slowly back to visuals.
A fireball had exploded.
On speakers, there were a lot of overlapping orders and updates.
Outside, three more fireballs detonated, a second apart, each from a slightly different location. The attacker was moving and casting at once. Over the speakers was gunfire. Presumably from our side. Derek and Eli were out there. In that firestorm.
I took a step for the door, but Koun and Tex each grabbed an arm.
