“No. I’ve called Tex. He’s bringing his dogs. One has a nose and he’s trained to track. If you see Brute, ask him to come to HQ too. I called because I found the iron witch circle, or where I think it is. Meet me at the Damours’ warehouse.”
It took a moment for me to place the iron witch circle. We hadn’t talked about it since I saw it in the vision of Ka, Adan, and Bethany. I didn’t like where this was going. Anxiety wormed under my skin like electric snakes.
The Damours were a vamp blood-family with a witch family linage that had been intwined over too many generations; they had survived the vamp purge in the late 1700s and ended up in New Orleans, where they continued blood-sacrifice of witch children, the most foul of black magic, right under the noses of two of the masters of the city. That magic had involved the blood diamond. Which had been incorporated into the making of the Glob.
“Jane?” he asked, quiet worry in his tone.
I pulled myself back to this moment. “I’ll be there in a bit.”
“Okay. Be safe.”
I hung up. Sipped my tea. My hands were shaking slightly.
Go to place where vampire witches killed kits?Beast asked.
To the place where lots of people were killed,I thought. We thought we had rooted out all the black magic from that place. Maybe we missed something.
Take killing steel and white man weapons. And weapons of magic.
Exactly what I was thinking.
I tossed back the tea and silently went to my room to change.
***
It felt amazing to kickstart the old bastardized panhead Harley and ride through the streets fully human-shaped, alone, the way I had come to this city. Or almost alone. My security team were all around, riding the white crotch-rocket bikes that Leo had bought before he died the second time. I heard the bikes’ high-pitched whine all around me, but I could almost pretend they weren’t there. Because of traffic, I beat Bruiser to the warehouse and rode around it, taking it in. The front of the place had been subdivided into three businesses, but all the leases had changed since I was here last. I pulled Bitsa off the street into the back parking area and killed the Harley engine, the rumble echoing off the nearby walls.
Setting the kickstand, I swung my leg over, adjusting the hip rig and the nine-mil. I was wearing jeans, a heavy T-shirt, and a leather riding jacket, the Benelli in its original spine holster. Unzipping the jacket, I slid it off, tossed it to the seat, adjusted the fit of the old spine holster, and strapped the helmet to the seat over the jacket. It all felt so normal. Some. I opened a saddlebag and pulled out a set of stakes, shoving three wooden ones into my hair and three silver ones into the stake sheath on my thigh rig. I added a glass bottle of fresh holy water, ready for throwing. Shoved the Glob deeper into my pocket, which was jury-rigged with padding against potential magical heat.
I was ready for most anything.
Out of the night, a white blur trotted down the street. Brute. The angel-touched white werewolf stuck in wolf form was showing up, out of the darkness, his movement slightly out of focus with my current reality. Timewalking. I didn’t take my eyes off him, but suddenly he was beside my thigh, sitting, looking up at me, panting slightly, tongue hanging out a little to the side of his mouth.
“Crazy wolf,” I said. “How did you even know to be here?”
He huffed at me, smiling.
Together we turned and looked at the building. We were at the back-alley entrance off Iberville, and this time there was no vamp scent, no smell of dead human bodies. “I don’t think you’ve ever been here,” I said to the wolf.
The warehouse had windows on the lower story at the back and sides, and wide, arched windows on the two top floors. Renee Damours and her husband/brother had used the back half of all three stories; one had been for storage for her long-chained children and her businesses, and the other two floors for living. Unlike in the vamp-owned days, the windows were no longer draped in heavy cloth but blank to the night. No lights shone inside. There were a half dozen security cameras, a single heavy-duty steel garage-style door, and a brand-new steel entry door with a keypad lock.
I wandered up to the door and checked it. Locked. I sat on a low brick wall and waited, Brute stretched out beside me, my security team all around, Quint in the shadows behind me, watching everything. Ten minutes later, Bruiser’s SUV and his two-SUV-security team turned in and parked. Bruiser stepped out of the passenger side door and walked up to me, his long legs in an unhurried stride. He took in the bike as he passed it, his eyes raking my clothes and weapons. A tiny smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Ready for war?”
“Entering this building has never been easy.”
“True.” He handed me a headset. Our men surrounded us, four in front at point, two behind at our six. The crotch rockets patrolling the streets moved in closer, the whine piercing.
Brute leaned against my leg, almost as if in comfort.
I put the headset on and heard Bruiser both beside me and through the earbuds, “Clear the building. Reconverge at the lower level.”
There were a series of “Roger that” and “Copy” comments as Bruiser punched in a code, and the door unlocked. Four of the unit moved into the dark, two wearing low-light / IR goggles, marking them as human, two vamped out. From the outside, more humans, Kojo, and Thema joined the crew, their low voices letting me know this had been planned, all without me, on the fly. I could console myself that I had helped design the protocols, but in reality, it just let me know how far behind I’d left my Enforcer duties. An unexpected sense of longing filled me about that.
I waited, listening, Bruiser on one side, tense and stiff, Brute on the other, probably getting white hairs all over my jeans. Beast lent me her vision, turning the world silvers and greens, allowing me to follow the action as the point men moved through the dark building. They repositioned with military precision, checking everything with goggles and vamp-eyes, giving reports as they advanced. I knew this building. It was imprinted on the back of my eyelids, the memories full of the dead, the long-chained children, the vamped, and all the horror that had been the Damours. Oddly, Beast wasn’t worried. Brute was pressed against my leg. Quint was at my back, covering our six. The security team gave quiet updates as they progressed, and with each statement, my worry increased, though everything they said should have lowered it.
“Hallway, clear.”
“Left room one, clear.”
