From the sight of his armor, Eli’s Kevlar had stopped several lethal rounds. He was gonna be bruised.
Lachish came to me, standing in front of the chair whereI sat. The box she carried was maybe eighteen inches by twelve, and twelve deep. Even over the stench of battle, Eli’s blood, Koun’s, witches’, humans’, and my own, I smelled the familiar scent. I knew what was in the box. Things that hadn’t made sense suddenly did.
I raised my eyes to her. “You aren’t a prisoner here. You’re the guardian of the heart of the Son of Darkness.”
I had killed both Sons of Darkness, but from one of them, I had kept the heart and sent it Jodi Richoux, a human born from a witch family that had been decimated by vamps, as a show of peace. Unfortunately, I discovered after the fact that the heart didn’t decompose. It began to regenerate and add tissue. Now it was in a null house. To keep it undetected and not growing.
Which hadn’t worked to protect it. Nope, nope, nope.
Lachish sagged and Thema caught her too. I had thought she was uninjured, but I was wrong.
“You are bleeding, you stupid witch,” Thema accused. “You have been shot. Sit.” She flipped another chair upright and placed Lachish in it, the heartbox in the witch’s lap. The vamp cut her fingers this time and placed them at Lachish’s mouth. “Drink. And know that I dislike sharing my blood with a fool.” She looked at me. “The ambulances are almost here to take the injured to Tulane. This one is not dying immediately, but she will if not taken to a hospital. My blood will help to stabilize her injury and survive the ministrations of the paramedics until a surgeon can get to her.”
My newest and most independent vampire not-quite-scions were doing a lot of healing today, something they were not fond of, were not particularly good at, something they had once considered beneath them. Compassion was clearly still not their strongest asset, but I appreciated the efforts despite the sucky bedside manner. Moments later the vamps, including Koun, vanished into the shadows, leaving the non-vamp patients behind.
Human paramedics and firemen made their way into the suddenly too-small room and took over triage and stabilization of the patients, two men working on Eli and two women on Lachish, who refused to let go of the box. No one came toward me, not one person, even though Iwas clearly wounded, blood clotted in my pelt and all over my detached armor.
Everyone knew who I was. There was no mistaking the Dark Queen in any of my forms. But the medical community had no protocol for me, and I was currently too non-human-shaped for their ministrations. One of the men bent over Eli muttered under his breath, “That one needs a veterinarian.”
I laughed, a growly sound, which made the man flinch. I pointed to my ears. “Cat hearing.”
“Sorry. Your... magister.”
Magister. A version of majesty. “Jane is fine,” I said, but he didn’t look at me again. He was starting an IV on Eli. I met Eli’s eyes and he gave me the minuscule battlefield nod, followed by a glance at the door. That meantI’m good. You should leave. I nodded back, slung the Benelli around my good shoulder and into the spine holster, and walked out of the room under my own power.
My arm hurt like crazy now that I knew I was really injured, but the wound was closed and mostly what I needed was a shape-change, or a lot of water to rehydrate and time to heal naturally if I intended to stay in this shape. One-handed, I worked my arm back into the armor. The pain from the movements nearly brought on a fainting spell again and left me panting and nauseated. Mostly dressed and using my uninjured hand, I tucked my left hand into a pocket to keep the injured arm steady, andcrap, that hurt. I wasn’t leaking blood, but I wasn’t a hundred percent.
When the agony eased, I began a recon. With my cell and my good hand, I took pics of everything I thought might be interesting, wandering the house until I found a kitchen—a chef’s dream kitchen—and raided the fridge for fluids. I discovered that witches drank a lot of wine. Like, alotof wine. There were five previously opened bottles of red on the counter and eight open bottles of white in the fridge. In the back of the fridge was a bloated plastic half gallon of old, mostly-cheese whole milk and a gallon of blue Gatorade. I drained the blue stuff, burped softly, and left the empty plastic bottle in the sink, on top of all the stemmed glasses piled there.
This was not a prison like I had expected, though there were closed doors with numeric security locks along the hallways. Feeling better after the blue fluid, I finished my perusal and photo-taking of the null prison’s public rooms and wandered back to the hallway where my people were. The paramedics were taking Lachish out on a gurney and I pressed my slender bony hips against the wall to make enough room.
As the women wheeled her away, the witch shoved the heartbox at me, and I caught it one-handed against my belly, nearly dropping my cell. “It can’t leave,” she said. “Only the null workings are keeping it in stasis.”
Except that the null workings were not protected by wards, or even a front door now. A vamp could walk in and take whatever they wanted. I had a feeling if I said that, Lachish would refuse medical help and bleed out. “Okay,” I said. “Null. Stasis. Got it.”
“Give it to Ailis Rogan.” Then she was gone.
Like always, it took a sec for me to put the name together with the person. Ailis Rogan had been one of Katie’s Ladies when I first came to NOLA. She went by the name Bliss back then. And she was a witch. And... Ailis had once been Lachish’s protégé. And Lachish wasn’t really in prison as an inmate. “Oh yeah. Right.” I tapped my mic. “Alex, is Bliss here?”
“Out front, behind the police crime scene tape. She hasn’t been allowed in,” he said.
“Okay.” Gingerly, I tucked the box under my injured arm and when I caught my breath after the torture eased said, “Will you ask the cops politely if they will please allow one Ailis Rogan inside to take over the workings of the null prison. It’s fine by me if you hint that more dangerous prisoners might escape otherwise.”
“Copy that,” Alex said.
While I waited for diplomacy to work, I continued to wander, this time deliberately, to the long hallways with locked rooms. In one room—thankfully still sealed—I smelled Tau, a crazy witch who had been really hard to take down, and Marlene, her mom, who was nearly as strong and crazy as the daughter. A battering ram had beenabandoned in the middle of the hallway and Tau’s door looked as if it had been hit several times before the effort had been forsaken.
The next two rooms had busted doors and when I leaned into each, I smelled witch, familiar witch, though I couldn’t place them in my memory, and I hadn’t been here when they had been imprisoned. It looked as if the occupants had left in a hurry, taking little or nothing. I wasn’t even sure if them leaving had been voluntary or kidnapping, but then I didn’t know who was missing yet. I stepped over the doorways and the null energies wrapped around me like a frozen woolen shroud. It hurt.Crap, it hurt.
I stood just inside the door and breathed, waiting the pain out, and when the pain eased enough to think and move, I snooped through the rooms. They shared a bath. Both of the connecting rooms contained a full-sized bed, craft things—one with a sewing machine and quilting frame, the other with yarn out the wazzoo—clothes in small closets, dinner trays on table-desk combos (partially eaten roast beef and mash with broccoli and a side salad for both missing prisoners), recliners, side tables, and laptops. Cell phones had been left behind too. The TVs in each room were on, one to a gardening show, the other to a news channel.
I gathered all the electronics and slid a pillowcase off a pillow, stuffing the cells and laptops into the improvised carrying case, and knotting the case to my left thigh on my weapon harness. I wouldn’t be pulling offhand weapons anytime soon. Carrying the heartbox in the crook of my injured arm hurt with each step, the shift of weight drilling into my nerves. But I could tell the arm was still improving, and I had my uninjured arm free to draw a weapon if needed.
In one bathroom niche was a prescription bottle containing meds for high blood pressure. I took a pic of the bottle, patient name, doctor name, pharmacy info, and texted it to Alex with the word “Research” beneath it. Gratefully, I stepped out of the null energies and into the hallway.
If I hadn’t been in such pain, I’d have shaken my peltand scrubbed my ears to get rid of the null effects. Instead, I just breathed, leaning my back and the spine-holstered Benelli against the wall.
The other rooms were still locked from the outside, with big modern locks, both digital and mechanical. From inside them I heard TVs, music, or silence. I wondered if the occupants of the silent rooms were leaning ears against their doors, listening. They had to have heard the gunfire and the battering ram.
