Ouch. Tentative, I asked, “They hurt?”
“Yes, My Queen.”
No wonder he was so self-contained and formal sounding. He was in pain. I tilted my head, as a logical question presented itself. “And Thema didn’t offer you her blood?”
“No, My Queen.” His tone changed. “I believe she is in what the Consort calls ‘a snit.’ The Consort has called in two Mithrans of Clan Arceneau and a dozen humans have volunteered to feed me. Soon, I will drink my fill, sleep, and be healed. However, before I can deal with my healing, we have another problem.”
I grunted again. I felt the car seat under my shoulder and put my other hand on the leather, just there, pushing up. Koun braced me and provided some muscle. “Go on,” I said, pleased that I didn’t puke on Bruiser’s fancy leather car seats or Koun’s naked self.
“Your witch believes the circle that damaged the streetis a transport circle. Alex has security camera footage that seems to support this speculation.”
Yeah. I had figured that was likely. I leaned against the headrest and felt my scalp. Healed. Hair matted and full of dried blood. It would be a misery to wash it all. And the stupid crown was still stuck to me. And it hurt. In fact, I hurt all over, though it was a low-level pain like the flu or something. Gently, I wiggled to see if I had broken bones, but it felt like soft-tissue damage, not bones. Everything bent and stretched, for the most part.
“The witches disappeared from the center of the circle, right?” I asked. “Like a vamp goes poof, but this was more likeStar Trekteleporter than vampy-ness?”
“Yes. How did you know this?”
Calmly I said, “I went through a transport circle once. It kinda sucked.”
Koun tensed, as if his entire body became a coiled spring.
I figured he had put two and two together and come up with fifty-eight. “I doubt the circle in the street is for me. Chill out, dude. Let’s get me a shower, and you some blood to heal, and go over the footage.”
“Chill out, dude,” he repeated happily. “As My Queen desires.”
Koun wasn’t snarky. No vamp who had lived so long was snarky in the modern sense, because a bigger, more powerful vamp would have taken offense at some point in the centuries and killed him for disrespect. However, the final short phrase held just a hint of something close to it. A faint tang of mockery with a haze of... affection? Maybe? He’d lost his pal Helgebert not so long ago, and had been mourning, so the affection seemed like a good thing? A sign of healing? I chose to consider the touch of attitude as a good thing too.
***
All that white tile in Leo’s—now my—personal shower in HQ made the pale, pinkish, watery blood and the occasional clump of dried, dark-red goo really stand out. The pounding hot water dissolved the dried blood out of my pelt and hair, which was especially difficult because the stupidcrown still wouldn’t come off and the plastic was still crushed between it and my head. It freaking hurt. But eventually the water ran clear. It took an hour to get clean.
I was grateful that Quint, my lady-in-waiting and personal psychopath bodyguard, wasn’t here, or she’d have climbed in with me, taken a scrub brush to my head, muttering curses under her breath about me not taking care of myself and not protecting myself, while she tried to scalp me, abrade my skin off, and get way too personal with her scrubbing. I’d likely hear enough complaints when she got back from her two days off. Quint not being here for a major battle was going to result in either an elaborate tongue lashing or a scathing silence. I looked forward to neither.
Once I was clean, I turned off the hot water and suffered through an icy shower to kill the pain and decrease the swelling and bruising. I hated cold showers. But since anti-inflammatories did little for me, I didn’t have much choice.
It took a while to dry off. Pelt that had gotten wet to the skin was hard to dry, and if I didn’t get all the water off, I’d smell like stinky wet screamer-cat. Not something I desired. As I applied the hair dryer to my body, I considered the possibility of having a dozen heater-blower units installed to speed things up. There was room in the corner. It could work. It would blow a dozen breakers somewhere in HQ or a transformer out in the street, but it could work.
My hair in a single long plait, I considered the offerings in the closet. Everything was custom made, adjustable for the different shapes my body acquired and was predominately—as Quint put it—“winter attire suitable for the subtropics.” Which New Orleans was. There were three slender evening gowns, three dance skirts, a dozen tank tops, black pants, thin-knit long-sleeved tops, and a selection of sweaters and tops to wear over the thinner stuff. There was even a black business suit with slacks, a matching pencil skirt, and a white button-up blouse. Madame Melisende, the vamp couturier I had brought back into fashion (haha), had been busy. There were also two sets of armor and a nice selection of shoes and battleboots, a versatile mix of clothes and armor. Unlike the last time I looked in here for something to wear, everything in the closet was black, scarlet, or gold, matching my color preferences, “Coolio,” I said softly.
I pulled out white cotton undies and a super-soft set of black oversized velour sweats, lined in silk, that seemed to slide across my pelt. These particular layers were not something I would have expected to find hanging in any closet filled by the vampire fashion designer, so someone had been talking to her about my pelt.
Two of the pockets were false, leaving space for quick draws of weapons strapped to both thighs, and there were plenty of other pockets for phone, recorder, any comms unit I might be carrying, a key-fob pocket, and an ID and credit card pocket. With pockets left over. Ilovedpockets. Quint had clearly been working with Madam M to refine her designs to my bodily needs, weapons needs, and color choices.
Dressing from the pelt-and-skin out, in clothes I hadn’t chosen but that fit perfectly, had become commonplace, and I really liked these sweats. Also, the sweats matched a pair of expandable plushy house shoes, also in black, and they were so comfy. I feared I could get used to this whole “being taken care of” thing, though there was something missing. Weapons. Which I had tossed to the bed pre-shower. They had been bloody and thanks to my stripping in a hurry, there were blood smears on the coverlet. Duvet. Whatever.
I considered the weapons on the bed, and decided the Benelli was overkill for inside HQ, and the semiautomatics were still uncomfortable for my half-form fingers even with exchangeable super-sized grips. There was a time when I’d have cleaned the weapons before I showered, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind.
I had...peoplefor that now. I had servants and minions and scions and I didn’t have to dirty my pretty little—huge knobby?—hands cleaning my own guns. I had forgotten my weapons. Once upon a time Ineverforgot. Forgetting my weapons was the difference between life and death. I stared at the bloody mess of the bedspread, blinking, thinking.
Thinking back to what I really was. A rogue-vamp hunter for hire. Yeah. That. That thought grounded me. All this servant stuff? The protocol and pomp and circumstance? I could learn it. I could do it. But that wasn’t me. Biker-chick, rogue-vamp hunter, monster killer for hire. That was me.
This queen stuff was weird.
I cleaned off one harness, as well as I could without a good cleaning kit, and felt nearly human once I strapped a vamp-killer over the sweats, to my left thigh. Looking in the mirror, I chuffed a laugh. I wished I had my human face so I could wear lipstick, the one kind of makeup I could reliably apply on my own, but the idea of lipstick on my cat lips was ludicrous. The crown stuck on my head and the up-pointed, rounded puma ears were bad enough.
I turned to leave the room when my eye caught a glimpse of dark gray-blue and black coiled on a pillow, at the head of the bed, heavy enough to dent the pillow deeply. My hindbrain instantly saw a snake, interpreted before my modern brain saw a different pattern. I sniffed. The scents in the room hadn’t changed since I entered, though I hadn’t noticed the thing when I came in, covered in blood and still talking on a handheld comms unit. I hadn’t looked around. Which was stupid and totally outside of both training and instinct.
The thing was heavy, denting the pillow deeply enough that I hadn’t seen it. I eased across the room in case it was an ambush, but I caught a scent of gun oil and Eli.
